on time

Randy Pausch knew something about managing time-- "the only commodity that matters"-- when it is short. (When is it ever not?)

Happy feet

Football's back, the gaudy/violent spectacle of which makes some people very happy. Good for them. Personally, I pay no attention to football 'til baseball's done. I'll get back to y0u on the subject in November, after the Cards have taken the Yanks in six. (It'll be interesting if it happens; Older Daughter won't know who to root for.)

But I did appreciate this little appreciation of the game and all it represents from Amy Davidson, who reports that the Steelers' Hines Ward is the happiest man in football. Good, somebody needs to be. I actually am a Hines Ward fan, ever since I learned that he (like me) was a Randy Pausch fan.

Davidson gushes about Thursday night's Titans-Steelers opener:

At some point in the pregame show, between the Black-Eyed Peas shouting “Mazel Tov!” and Tim McGraw singing about Rosa Parks, Dolly Parton, and the Crimson Tide (it made sense), the spectacle, as well as the game, began to feel enormously appealing. There’s nothing wrong with letting a certain sort of All-Americanness wash over you."

I guess not. I'm sticking to one national pastime at at a time though, thanks.

But speaking of feet, the New Yorker also takes a bemused look at the Zappos happiness ("zappiness") franchise. The online shoe retailer's C.E.O, Tony Hsieh, turns out to be a fan of our next author in the Happiness class:

Soft-spoken and introverted, Hsieh has become an unlikely business guru: a young philosopher prince of the middle-management set, to whom he is fond of distributing an annual “Culture Book” of warbling testimonials collected from Zappos employees, as if it were the Gideon Bible, and recommending titles on the science of happiness, like “The Happiness Hypothesis,” by Jonathan Haidt, and “Happier,” by Tal Ben-Shahar. He is also writing a book of his own for Grand Central Publishing, tentatively titled “Delivering Happiness”—“a combination of talking about Zappos, the culture, core values, and the science of happinessss,” he said, stretching out the word. For Hsieh, happiness is a quantifiable quality that seems synonymous with “calm.”

“Generally, I associate drama with negative emotions, and I want to experience positive emotions,” he said.

Me too, me too!

Merry Christmas

I just listened to an annoying radio interview with Jose Feliciano, who was asked if he worried that anyone in the world might ever tire of hearing "Feliz Navidad." The gist of his reply: only the atheists are likely to tire of this tune and its simple message ("I want to wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart" etc. etc. ad infinitum) - and atheists don't like anything anyway.

Well, Jose, we like plenty - thank you very much. And I do want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I don't believe a virgin ever birthed a savior, but I'm happy to celebrate the birth of anyone who brought or brings tidings of peace, love, and understanding. I'm sure Jose is not alone in thinking that atheists are only nattering nabobs of negativism. That's a misconception, and I'll be doing my best to correct it when I teach a course next Fall I'm tentatively calling "Atheism: Old and New." My mission: make it clear to students that renouncing belief in God is not tantamout to renouncing life and spirit and meaning and hope.

This is my first post in this forum since July - and that was itself a cameo appearance. I'll probably blog again, but never again (I think) on a self-imposed schedule. I have a cartoon on my office wall: "Thank goodness you're here," says the desk-bound Everyman to Mr. Death, "I never get anything done without a deadline."

In fact, deadlines per se don't motivate me, except negatively: I resist and defy and recoil. But perhaps thinking about death, in some strange way, does inspire. My last post concerned the very public death of Randy Pausch. What was much on my mind then, but unacknowledged, was my Dad's leukemia-induced decline. He passed in September, after nearly eight decades of a salutary life. That loss feels heavier today than it has most days since.

I've not consoled myself at all with thoughts of eternity or reunion in heaven, and cannot. In one of our last significant conversations, I shared with Dad an exchange between William James and his own fatally-ill father, in 1882:

"As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything..."

Well, I can say of such a reunion that I don't expect it and - if faith is a condition - don't deserve it. But my disbelief is not simply a negation, it is an affirmation of the life he lived on Earth, and the example he set for those of us who attended and will follow. It is a commitment to pass the torch he handed me and my siblings to my own children, to the best of my ability. I'm not looking for a transcendental bailout. I don't think he was either.

Randy Pausch

Professor Randy Pausch, whose "last lecture" and high-profile struggle with pancreatic cancer won wide admiration and sympathy, died yesterday.

I passed my copy of Randy’s book along to my Dad, recently diagnosed with leukemia. He was moved and inspired by it, as was I. We agreed that for a young man with small children to muster such a courageous response to a terminal diagnosis - stoical but also joyous and celebratory - is truly heroic. I’m so grateful that Randy was willing to share his story and his example with the world.