Annual Report 2002/03

Hi folks,

So, this is the second of our annual mid-year reports, covering the period from summer 2002-2003. Is it really true that with two in a row this has become a tradition, a custom, an institution? In any case, the executive answer to the question on how we are doing? – “blooming” for details read on …

This year was bracketed by two eye operations for Robert. Many moons ago, repair of a retinal defect required that a muscle controlling the position of his right eye had to be cut and reattached. The retina has luckily been stable ever since, however, since then the right eye has never managed to point to where it was intended. It was always shifted to the lower left resulting in two images next to each other, a difficulty in seeing things in 3D, and the cause of often awkward but always hilarious moments during teaching when multiple folks in class answer at the same time because they felt that he was specifically looking at them. So, options for having this surgically corrected pointed to a practice at the children’s hospital in Columbus, OH, which specializes in this type of procedure. After the eye muscles were exposed under local anesthetics, the surgeon was impressed by the hardware that had been attached to the eyeball 20 years ago. That was followed by some rummaging around to remove scar tissue, and a change in the attachment of the muscles. The good part was that significant bleeding from within the eye socket earned me adulations from our filial unit, who apparently considered it quite “hip”. Unfortunately surgery improved my double-vision much less than my parental status, so a few weeks ago I broke down and gave the surgery another try - to much greater success this time around.

The academic year also began with a bang in September. Moira was progressing towards the final stages of her tenure proceedings. Her research and teaching record had earned positive comments from external reviewers but the most nerve-racking tasks followed with a seminar to the assembled faculty and a series of votes by administrative layers from the department, the college, and the university. As the year progressed these different hurdles were taken and the process was concluded in a small but tasteful reception with the University’s board of trustees. Now that both of us have received tenure in the Biology Department at Bowling Green State University, we consider it quite likely that we may remain here for some time. This is a welcome scenario as we actually like this place. Suitably, our teaching and mentoring duties at the University also occupied a major part of our fall semester. Robert’s graduate students, Karen Davis, finished her master’s degree in November. In a very ambitious field project she had collected weeks of underwater video-recordings of crayfish behavior. Camping in the woods along the Portage River for months with her Husky Indy and despite constant attacks by poison ivy, mosquitos, crayfish and leeches, she still seemed to enjoy it. Later that year, Jules Panksepp, Katie Drerup and Adam Stocker finished their degrees and they all have since dispersed into the wider world of science.

In November Robert attended the Kravitzfest in Woods Hole, MA, a great party to celebrate the 70th birthday of his postdoctoral mentor Prof. Ed Kravitz (Dept. Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School). Folks in academia are quite conscious or their intellectual heritage and the particular schools of thought from which they have emerged. It was great to see Ed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as always, and to meet many big names in neuroscience research, all of whom had come through Ed’s lab at one point or another.

During Christmas holidays we met up with Rick Born and family in Robert’s old Austrian stomping grounds in Salzburg. It was great to see that everybody in Robert’s family was doing well. Christmas in the old part of the city was nice as always, but a highlight for the kids was the open-air ice rink in the city center. We also spent some days up at the skiing hut in Werfenweng where the snow was great, the skies beautiful, and evening culinary forays to the “Strussing” always worthwhile. It was amazing to see that Sebastian was able to transfer his skating skills seamlessly to skiing. Within a few minutes he was following us in nice little turns, within an hour he was passing us going way too fast … - what can we do?

Skating continued to become more important for us this year. In a futile attempt to stay ahead of Sebastian for a little while longer, Robert took desperate measures - registering as an undergraduate for the “Hockey 101” class.  He also played regularly in the spring league with our Biology department team - 'McKay’s Bombers' - a group with several excellent Canadian, American and Russian hockey players. Gross and smelly hockey equipment, bruises, and a lack of sleep coming from games beginning after midnight, turned from an isolated incident to a constant condition. An A in class was the suitable conclusion for these heroics. However, Robert considered it unfair that, despite a GPA of 4.0, one has to have more than 10 hours a semester to make it onto the Dean’s honor list…. but then again this might attract unwanted attention from the administration anyway :-). McKay’s Bombers have now signed up to play in the 30+ age group at the Iceland International Hockey Tournament this fall in - well - Iceland. Our team has been beefed up with a goalie from the New York Rangers, a forward from the Belgian National Team, 2 more Canadians, and coach George in his tweed jacket :-) We are not sure what Robert is doing in this group - I think they keep him around for laughs and because he is one of the most active participants in the post-skating, re-hydration events at the “Brathaus”.

Robert, in close collaboration with an extremely cold winter, managed to kill our 2 beehives but we managed to reestablish them in the spring. We really don’t expect much honey this year as we enjoy messing with the critters way too much. We regularly take the hive apart, look for the queen, or nibble bits of honeycomb. On our last occasion Sebastian pulled out a frame by himself, he had bees crawling all over his hands, and he didn’t seem to mind the experience. Our bees are quite gentle and so far we have been stung only on rare occasions.

The year then almost continued with another bang when the nuclear powerplant on the shores of Lake Eerie almost blew up in March. The company that runs it, FirstEnergy, has been repeatedly found in violation of all kinds of laws and it was also the company, which later that year would cause the major power blackout in the Northeast. So, no, we are not particularly thrilled with having a nuclear plant in our vicinity and there is a grassroots effort under way to prevent it from being restarted later this year. With a brainless stooge of the big energy business in the White House, however, the chances for success are rather slim.

In March we were adopted by a stray cat, which Sebastian named Sipho (meaning 'Gift' in Xhosa). He is an impressive, fierce-looking critter; his canines are way too long and they stick out past the lower jaw. Curiously enough our little saber-tooth tiger is the sweetest, loudest purring, and neediest cat that has ever walked this earth. We were never particularly avid cat people, but Sipho has definitely earned himself a place in our hearts. His greatest stunt comes twice a day when he launches himself from some distance onto the screen of our storm door. The accompanying thud is his signal for us to pluck him off the door and bring him in. He never seems to touch the fancy cat food in tins but only crunches the cheap stuff. He prefers to obtain his animal protein through forays into the garden and the barn. We often see him pounce on things, we find bits of rodents in the garden, and he sometimes has feathers stuck to his face. At first, it had appeared that he had little interest in hunting but things changed in a hurry ...

As unexpected as Sipho’s arrival, our family count had grown yet again when our lawn tractor hit a clump of grass and out pops – a little fuzzy ball of pinkness – a bunny which could not have been more than a few days old. It had dodged first the blender and then the tractor’s tire by the width of a hair and, without our help, it would be heading back towards the very doom that it had just avoided. We brought it back to the house and Sebastian volunteered to take charge of hand-rearing this soft, curious, perennially nose-wiggling critter. Sebastian diligently cared for it, feeding it artificial cat milk via a syringe. It doubled in size each week and it began roaming the house, often sharing the same room with a cat that showed little interest until … As the bunny scratched around the inside of a cardboard box, a light-bulb went off, and the cat’s instincts visibly took over every fiber of its existence. The bunny had yet again cheated death by the narrowest of margins when Moira managed to snatch it at the last moment from immediate claw contact. The bunny, however, was never the same again. Although we had now demarcated our abode into an area for the cat and another for the bunny, the latter spent most of its time shivering in one corner or another, under furniture, or between cushions. By that time he had become large enough to eat dandelion leaves on his own and we decided to release it into the garden. It was probably a useful bunny lesson to learn that long-toothed predators may just put them to good use. Sebastian carried the young bunny out into the garden and released it at the side of the barn. Just as he placed it down, another larger bunny emerged from the brush next to him, hopped right up to him and gazed from a few steps away. The bunnies took off into the bushes, and over the next few weeks we regularly saw them racing around the garden with a third, smallish bunny. Ours would continue to let us approach him, but we never got again close enough to touch him. Although it had probably grown too big for the cat by that time we realized that, with coyotes along the river and cars out front, we should not get too attached to any of our critters, as their free life in the wilds of Ohio is not without hazards.

As a reminder of such perils, Sebastian re-discovered remnants of a stray cat that had been killed and half-eaten by something a few years back. Keeping it under the corner of the barn, it now consisted of a skull, part of the spine with one shoulder and arm attached, and a few patches of fur. While Moira and I were preparing things at a garden party for a couple of Sebastian’s friends, he had grabbed Elizabeth’s mother by the hand - to show her his “cat”. We had no chance to warn her that the “cat” may not exactly match what she was expecting - we heard a shriek from the side of the barn and a very pale, and distinctly wobbly lady came staggering back towards the house.

Dissatisfaction with the shack that we live in continued to increase and we began seriously considering options for a new building. The directory of the Green Building Coalition and a referral brought us to an architect, who unfortunately turned out to be a dud - we got back either exactly the ideas for designs that we had given him, or things that were completely opposite to what we were looking for. Unfortunately, the middle of this country is no hotbed for environmentally sound designs and so our quest for a technically modern house has been shelved for the moment. We, however, did buy 5000 pieces of Lego to plan out various ideas in 3D…

Robert has continued to serve as co-director of the Center for Neuroscience, Mind & Behavior <http://caspar.bgsu.edu/~neuro> at BG. In April he was encouraged to apply for the associate research dean position but after a lot of back and forth, interviews, and committee meetings, the chair of chemistry was selected instead. Together with developments over our attempts to hire an eminent neuroscientist for the Center, and the lack of commitment to nurture research endeavors through a decidedly difficult economy, this has created a sobering view of the vision present in administrative circles around here.

In June, Sebastian got his chance for the train trip that he had his eyes on for some time. Robert had been in Boston for a work trip and met up with Moira and Sebastian in Springfield, Massachusetts, where they arrived by train from Toledo. Randall picked us up and we stayed with him and Judy for a few days at their new house in the Berkshires. It was a relaxing time (hmmmm, well, for us that is) with another one of Robert’s attempts to seriously kick-start his running. Beautiful dirt roads through the hills, wild flowers and creeks were simply inviting. Upon return to BG that excitement again died among niggling pains that came from schlepping his much-too-large ass through the botany.

So, the remainder of the summer was spent with research, writing, and sometimes taking off a bit early to play with the growing one. During the last week of July, we took a great trip to Boise, Idaho, for the annual conference of the Animal Behavior Society. The science was fun as always and we did much of our commute on campus with rollerblades. The main Boise highlight, however, is floating down the river and landing in the middle of town. There must be hundreds of folks doing that each day. Together with Sebastian’s friend Hunter, and 20 other folks we set out a few miles upstream with two large rafts and a bunch of inner tubes. Barely 200 meters later the river drops over a little weir and you crash through a standing wave with a big splash and a good thump. We were all thrown around in the boat, everything got wet, Hunter started to cry, and my concerned eyes met Sebastian’s when he burst out “That was awesome, dude, let’s do it again…” I think we are in trouble with this kid …

In August we again moved northeast-wards for a few days to visit our Boston friends. It was nice to again hang out with Rick, Sophie and Ann, to hit Doyle’s for “Fish & Chips”, play a round of table tennis with Ed Kravitz, do some salmon fishing and blueberry munching in Maine with Tom and Karen, and lots of other fun stuff. Robert should have known, however, that this would end up in serious effort … Rick dragged him out first for the never-ending bike ride and then on a long swim across the pond in Walden, then Tom made him run kicking and screaming through the Maine wilderness along the shores of Lake Mooselookmeguntic. Neither exercise felt particularly pleasant at the time but the events kept fermenting and bubbling along, next thing we know, Robert joins the old fart’s crowd at the BG swim club, his bike is fixed, shiny and in regular use, and we bought a round of new running shoes for all three of us. Robert joined a group of BG triathletes and resolved to enter the Pineman race next September, an ironman-distance triathlon in Mount Sterling, Ohio. Well, now we know where Sebastian gets it from …

Moira noted that the report reads as though “the boys had all the fun”, and maybe that’s exactly how it was this year - but she promises to be better next year :-)