Whoa, first?
Actually, I've been giving this some thought lately. My father was the 2nd of 6 siblings; he and his brother ran away to the east coast for college and stayed, which I never understood until I started hearing the stories of being beaten for buying pie and hence apparently making a statement about how their father wasn't earning enough to feed them, at which point I started thinking, okay, maybe those stories about him twirling the cats around by their tails and whacking them into the walls, even if disturbing, were perhaps better than the alternative, the alternative being something involving not the cats but me or my sister--BUT ANYWAY--so, yeah, northern California, beautiful, why would anyone leave (oh right); okay, here I am; suddenly, whoa, Christmas, here are 22 relatives. I'd always thought of them as The West Coast Relatives, far away -- and yet now, not. And suddenly--also, perhaps, friendless and in a new place, more inclined to thinking about such things; family as those who have to put up with you no matter what, &c.--so. Yes. There's definitely something to that OP. Not that I'm coming from that same place, of the closeness, but rather -- coming from the very opposite, and then suddenly, apparently having the chance to just opt in--yes. Family: it's not like other things; there's value there; it's okay to say, "this matters."
But then again: I mean, a well-remunerated tenured job, for someone whose "thing" isn't exactly quite in line with what the discipline values--you can't give that up either. So, really, you just accept your lot as a tragic one, I guess?
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Gah: apologies for, really, everything about that last comment. One of those nights. I *was* just going to bike home at 2am after some dancing, but then I heard the music from a bike rodeo party a few blocks from my house; and the next thing I know, it's 4am and I'm writing extra performative-contradiction-ish "oh no, I'm totally undatable, but tonight's kiss was lovely; your move to text me back" SMSs to someone I just met. Christ. Will I never learn?
No. No, I will not.
Okay. Gah! Sorry. Really, carry on.
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My parents are each at the head end of a group of seven siblings, most of whom fled the nest. We were 8-10 hours' drive from the nearest relatives as I was growing up, but we still made those trips a few times a year and that kept me in closer contact than I am now, when we can maybe manage one visit and haven't even taken Mara to see my maternal grandma yet. My cousins were all born at least a decade after I was, but I had second cousins I loved as a kid and facebook is better at keeping them around than just going on with our lives would have been.
It's really helpful to have my parents living locally, though we were ready to cut them off if my mom had been jerky to Mara since she was busy being jerky about our ability to parent before Mara came. Instead, Grandma and Grandpa are great and will babysit Mara or let me borrow their van or climb a ladder that still required someone over six feet to reach the ceiling and screw the shower curtain thing back in, things where I feel better about asking family than friends.
One of my three brothers has moved away and will probably not come back. The other two are dating local girls and I suspect will be here, though I don't see too much of either of them socially at this point. None of them have kids or are likely to in the near future, though the two local girlfriends have nieces and nephews who sometimes play with Mara.
Lee's relatives are all far away, and she hates gong back to see how they've aged and changed. I've pushed her into a few visits she appreciated, but it's hard to do and she's only close to one other far-flung relative who has kids. The thing that's holding us here is Mara's siblings. It's not just that we'll be asked to take her mom's next baby if/when there is one, but we're really trying to nurture a relationship with the ones who are already alive and here. She spent five hours with the ones who are 16, 9, and 8 yesterday and it was just amazing for all of them as she got to do what they did and they got to really see what she's like. I know Lee still wants to move overseas someday, but I do think that this family thing is what will hold us here most strongly. (And I'm not sure if the thought of moving a child from siblings she wasn't raised with is really all that different from leaving behind beloved cousins, but I know to me it sounds and feels more urgent and essential. Part of that is that I think they're all cute, smart, generous, gentle, funny, coordinated, friendly in similar ways because of the genes they share and that I hope Mara gets to appreciate that. I rant about this enough already, though.)
I grew up with little contact with extended family, just one week trips every other year. To my knowledge they almost never visited us. I believe that my mother and father, without special bad feeling, liked it thjat way. All my HS friends had uncles and cousins and grandparents, but I thought that was sort of tacky. It's a bourgeois thing I suppose.
The cousins I didn't know were mostly either sort of Updikeish suburban Republican types or else Iowa farmers. The Republicans are now Obama Democrats, and the (rich) farmers are hard core Pat Robertson devotees. I started getting in touch with the suburban side recently, but the guy I most liked died of cancer and left a bitter estate fight behind him. No one in my family should ever get married once, but he got married twice.
The there are the third cousins in the Ozarks and their descendants. I don't think so.
The cousins of the next generation of the family do keep in touch a lot, though.
trapnel: don't be a silly; your comment is fine.
Don't spoil trapnel now. A happy trapnel would be less productive.
Eh. Sometimes when you live close, people allow daily life to prevent lots of good contact. Almost better when you are forced to have two solid weeks together. We live close to each other, but sibling feuds and busy kid schedules always seem to interfere with quality time together.
One of my best friends is an expatriate like you. We get more quality time with her and her family bc we are forced to vacation with them.
dude, I'm prejudiced against people who smack cats against walls.
I'm an only child, and not really close enough to my cousins to feel any strong need to see them regularly. It would be nice to see my parents somewhat more often--and for less extended visits when I do. But that doesn't really enter my thinking about where I should live.
Siblings are close, as in metroplex and phone calls multiple fucking times a day. We're kinda all we got, so we are the ones we talk to when the toilet clogs.
I have been dreaming of the extended back north lately. Yeah, I had a dozen+ in walking distance and more than 6 in HS with me at one time etc but we were never that emotionally close, never had conversations. Different types.
The two generations in front of me are now gone, and I was closer to my grans aunts and uncles than cousins.
I got an email at Xmas informing me that somebody got a pacemaker, the annual contact. Fuckers could have great-grandchildren, and I don't want to know.
Neighbor couple both died about 5 years ago, and left the house to their son. Means he has been next door from age 6 to 38. We are getting closer now.
dude, I'm prejudiced against people who smack cats against walls.
Well, it's one of those things, you don't inquire too closely. At one point there were four cats. At a later point, there were no cats. My mother ran one of them over, totally by accident. The others ... ran away. The circumstances are unclear.
Actually, what the fuck am I saying; he never denied it--yeah, he smashed the cats against the wall by their tails. Again, I used to be really disturbed by this. I'm still kind of disturbed by this. But now that I've seen the rest of his family up close, and heard more of what it was like growing up, I'm more like: "Okay, realistically, psychologically, it was the cats or me (or my sister). And I choose the cats."
But really, the actual moral of my story is: relax. Your daughters will still (most likely-- aneurysms are possible [my biking-crazed father had one 4 years ago] but rare) have the family there for them when they're ready for it, whenever that is; in the meantime they have the US citizenship and a UHB family and, most importantly, the social bases of self-respect (the most underrated aspect of Rawls, IMHO)--plus, hey, a beach house in tropical paradise. Don't sweat it!
Numbers have to wrong on the neighbor kid, since we have a year left on the mortgage. Maybe 8-37. He has two nephews living with him. Parents may have been dead ten years.
He has never married or had a live-in, not quite close enough to guess why.
Remember the fence that I was worried about? Somehow, unspoken, we all said fuckit, and dogs from both houses play in a big back yard, stealing each other's toys and bones. He, or the nephews, bring women over for hot tub and football parties. My female dog stands at the edge of their porch and barks at them for behaving badly.
It's all pretty cool.
7,8: I'm somewhat skeptical about "quality time" and inclined to think quantity time is what it's all about. that said, when you vacation together you really do bond in a way that you don't otherwise. I am building a house on an island off lombok (next over from bali); I've been meaning to post about its immaculate swippleness but am almost embarrassed. (extreme reading! living by the water! restoring old houses! sea kayaks!) the hope is that everyone will come see me and I must say the results are pretty good so far. bro's planning a visit; beloved college friend whom haven't seen in 9 years as well!
Oh, and:
Don't spoil trapnel now. A happy trapnel would be less productive.
What exactly would a less productive trapnel look like? Would it be distinguishable from a comatose trapnel?
But seriously, folks: after a bad week that involved my dear 4-y-o x61t tablet/laptop getting stolen, and taking 4 days off from exercise, all is relatively well.
I'm from southern Alabama, and have lived in Europe since 2003, since graduating college: UK, Belgium, and now Berlin. The first four years I didn't visit for four years, and didn't talk to my family too often. Maybe two or three times a year. Since that initial visit I've fell into a habit of visiting every two years. Just got back from one such visit a week ago.
I'm not especially close with my family. When adolescence came for my siblings and I, we all retreated into our separate worlds, didn't eat together as a family much, etc. So it's not like we enjoy each other's company. My parents are grade-A Fox News wingnuts, and otherwise their world mostly revolves around SEC football and church. There's precious little common ground there.
That said, we do love each other, and as I commence my 30s and they commence their 60s, there's a palpable sense - mutually felt, I think - that the years have slipped away, and are further rapidly slipping away. My mom badly wants me to return to America, which I have no interest whatsoever in doing; I have a good, solid career in Germany now, and the popular and political culture in the US wearies me unto death.
What I tell her is that it doesn't actually make much of a practical difference. If I lived in the US, it'd be NYC or Boston, or California, not Alabama, and I'd visit once a year maybe, for a week or less. Whereas now I visit every two years and stay for 3-4 weeks.
What can I say? Humans migrate sometimes, and sometimes they don't. I'm one of those that do, I guess.
I'm somewhat skeptical about "quality time" and inclined to think quantity time is what it's all about
One of my favorite lines is, "quantity has a quality all its own." It usually results in blank stares, which I like to interpret as gobsmacked-by-brilliance.
15: perhaps I should have more accurately said a continuous amount of time together. Play all day together, eat dinner together, have breakfast together. Rinse (optionals) and repeat for two straight weeks.
Cannibals! Headhunters! Komodo dragons! Latah! Amok! Hindu temples! Al is hiding the good stuff for fear of being thought orientalist.
Cat-butchering local politician and tax-evader in my home town.
Amazing how the media avoided mentioning his party affiliation.
This discussion makes me think of the people who moved west long ago. Basically, you said goodbye to your friends and family to never see them again. "Virginia is getting too crowded. I'm moving west!"
This discussion makes me think of the people who moved west long ago. Basically, you said goodbye to your friends and family to never see them again. "Virginia is getting too crowded. I'm moving west!"
Ex-Sen. Bill Frist (R. Tennessee) is a cat killer.
that Marx observes: "Here, as in natural science, is shown the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel in his Logic, that merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative differences."
Science!
1,000 lemmings become a snow owl!
25 is a small part of why I love bob. And now, to bed.
My immediate family is all in Britain, but for as long as I can remember the rest of my family has been one or more oceans away. I see some branch of my family once a year or so, usually for weddings or funerals these days.
It does sometimes make me feel odd not having a particularly close extended family like most of my friends do, or indeed my relatives in America. But I'm pretty used to feeling displaced anyway, so it just fits into that part of me rather than being a specific loss.
If I could change one thing, it'd be to live close to family. This is a big issue for me. Instead we spend extraordinary amounts of money flying to visit family, because we put such a high priority on seeing them on a regular basis.
Also we have this really neat house that we just added on to, and I love our area and my job and I'm not to keen to move. But if anyone wanted to move near us, that'd be ok.
I want my sister to come live with me sooo badly, but she's not mad about narnia and there are pain control issues...give my mom a break from caretaking. lovely husband x has said she is always welcome, because he is the greatest.
Nearer than I'd like, in most cases (the U.S. Northeast is quite compact), but at least none of them has called to ask for money lately.
I'm sad about this -- I see my parents often, my sister hardly ever, and my cousins only at funerals. Not really geographical distance, it just works out that way.
When I think of it, my father founded my family, basically. I feel good about a few cousins and the surviving aunt on my mother's side, but my family feeling is otherwise limited to brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, their cousins on the other side of the family, and the inlaws of my siblings. The farthest reach is my niece's ex-husband's daughter by his first wife, who brings us into the world of contemporary Ozark Mexican culture.
34: [From offstage, a soulful corrido is heard, enlivened by banjo.]
The academic job market even in 1979 put us midway between mom's family and dad's, so there were a lot of long driving trips at vacation time. Then for college I put a thousand miles between me and my folks, though it wasn't exactly (consciously) like that. They're really nice, btw. And then I developed a fear of flying so I wouldn't have to see them too often (probably not true) and had long drives again.
Now they still live in Bluegrassia but they were super savvy financially and were able to buy a place in DC where my sister lives so (with two friends left back "home" and no great affection for the place), I go there maybe every three years and see my folks in DC every few months for 2-3 days.
I actually really wish I liked being around them more. They're interesting, funny, good people but they're my family and being around them makes me feel vulnerable and insecure and aware of my mortality, so I clam up around them. DC is probably the perfect distance, as things are between us now.
This is something I've thought about a lot, because it's almost time for me to go establish myself somewhere. I think I'd like to live near my parents, but since I grew up far away from any extended family I'm not sure what the dynamic is like.
I think it's just the way we live now. I wish I could live in the same town as my parents and my sister and give my children the childhood with extended family that I had. Academic job market aside, I think this is difficult for a lot of people these days. We go where the jobs are-- the economy is such that many must choose between good jobs and staying close to ones family. The upper middle class unfogged type commenters like me will often choose success and advancement. My working class students wouldn't take a job 50 miles away from their families because that's too far away. Two of the houses on my block are inhabited by the children who grew up in that house. The "children" are in their fifties and have lived most of their lives in the same house.
If I could change one thing, it'd be to live close to family. This is a big issue for me.
If I could change one thing, it'd be to be close to family. This is a big issue for me. I already moved halfway across the country to live close to them, thinking that would do the trick. But it hasn't, which makes me very sad whenever I think about it.
My parents moved 200 miles away in 2009, which is a fair distance by English standards. We go there when we can, and they come up here more frequently (more money, more time). They had spent the previous 9 years just a couple of miles from me, so this is very different. The kids don't have their weekly sleepovers (though doubtless that would have dwindled as they got older) but they do get to go and stay for a few days by themselves 3 or 4 times a year. (The older 2 have done the train journey alone, number 3 has gone halfway and been met for the change.)
I really really miss my mum though. Phone calls just aren't the same.
C's parents live just the other side of town - his mum still in the house he grew up in. I prefer not to see her too often as she's a bitchy alcoholic. Certainly she doesn't do grandmotherly things like spends time with the grandchildren. C's dad and his wife do though, and we see them regularly.
Phone calls just aren't the same.
This is true, but I think Skype is a qualitative improvement over what used to be available. You really kind of feel like you visited with the person.
My mom, and both her parents (and thus her aunts and uncles), were Army brats. My father's father moved to Florida for his health in his 20s, but died in his thirties, have already been a widower for 5 years. While my dad and his siblings were taken in by an aunt, they completely lost contact with his mother's family. My dad was the most itinerant of his family, and I've probably moved the most of mine. Feels pretty natural.
My parents live in Florida in the winter, and BC in the summer. We visit them nearly every year, now more in the summer than winter. My brother in Mpls I see fairly often, changing planes at the least; my brother in KC I see every couple of years -- twice last year because he talked me into skiing in Utah with him. My sister in the Bay Area I haven't seen in quite a while. My wife plays scrabble with her every day.
I have 10 first cousins, 28 second cousins, and 81 third cousins. If I wanted to live somewhere convenient to have a lot of in-person contact, it would have to be some place like Atlanta or Charlotte. Or my native Hartford, I guess, with frequent visits to Florida. Not going to happen.
I wish we saw more of my daughter. I should really be plotting a trip to San Diego; maybe in May.
I've never tried skype, apart from waving hello in other people's conversations. My mum and I will talk for an hour or more when we do - it doesn't seem to me like you can wander about doing other stuff whilst you skype like you can on the phone? I don't have a laptop these days, just a phone for surfing and a desktop for working.
42: I think I have something like 35 first cousins. I'm the very youngest of the lot. The oldest is in her 70s.
it doesn't seem to me like you can wander about doing other stuff whilst you skype like you can on the phone?
No, you can't. I probably wouldn't use it to visit with other adults. Actually I think chat windows are the best for aimless cubicle-next-door visiting with friends and family.
Anyway, Skype is great for babies and toddlers to stay connected to grandparents.
My parents wanted to Skype when they were overseas. I think I may have lied and said my connection wasn't fast enough because Skype omg no. I gave up on Infinite Jest 200+ pages in after two separate lunges at it, but I think of the part about video phones every time anyone brings up Skype.
What makes you so jumpy about your parents, if you don't mind me asking? It sounds horrible and terrible for one of my kids to grow up and have a visceral jumpiness just being around me.
Well jumpy isn't really the word. My Skype comment is actually more about Skype. I wouldn't want to Skype with anyone.
And I am happy enough around my parents for about a day, sometimes two, the. I start feeling insane. It would be hard to say why without going on in a tedious fashion for a very long time, and it isn't something I've entirely worked out. It had something to do with the years after college when I didn't feel independent and didn't know if I ever would, and a need never now to express certain things like fear or doubt or sadness. It limits the ways I talk to them, and it's tiring.
But we talk on the phone once a week and email a little and there's almost never any real conflict and it isn't horrible or anything. I just feel bad that I don't get excited about spending time with them, more than anything, and there isn't a lot of openly expressed affection.
I live about a mile away from my parents. Growing up, I never thought that would happen; my folks both lived thousands of miles from their parents, and my grandparents lived thousands of miles from my great-grandparents, and there was never a logical gathering place for groups of cousins. So the default was basically you take off and move and set up an isolated nuclear family, a default which I'm now bucking.
But I love it -- it's great for my kid, it's a totally different relationship with my folks when I can just see them regularly and not as some big deal annual visit, and it also is nice to have a real sense of rootedness in where you live.
39 was me. Also, I love the song in the OP.
I live about a mile away from my parents.
Idly I think about buying a house on this street for one of our sets of parents to retire to. I would guess they're all in the 60-100K range, so it's not unfeasible, and we could rent it out in the meantime.
If either neighboring house became available, I'd probably jump on it, because then we'd have the double backyard thing.
This thread inspired me to apply for a job in the same part of the world as Narnia.
I think of the part about video phones every time anyone brings up Skype
ME TOO. And I try explaining it to people and I can't do it justice.
Who do you know who is teaching The Pale King this Friday? Oh right, it's me. I have an independent study on DFW. It's going to be awesome.
I have wondered if living in the same place as my folks and so, as above, not having big deal visits, would make everything easier. But I'm not moving to DC and I am sure as hell not moving to Lexington.
Yeah, I've wondered that too. Like if I lived nearer my parents they would have to just accept that I am myself instead of harassing me all the time about magically turning into their idea of what a perfect daughter would be.
53: I make the mask joke often. Nobody gets it.
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Paper copy of the NYT's Sunday Styles article about the Flophouse (3/9/2008): worth keeping?
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My parents [divorced], brother and nephew all still live in the town I grew up in, but I've not been back to Scotland at all in at least 4 years. However, my sister and my niece moved down to England a few years ago and are near enough that we probably see them every month or two. Sometimes quite a bit more often than that -- we've seen them two or three times over Christmas. And my grandfather and uncle, who are the only other members of my immediate family live close enough that we can just about see where they live from our window.* My mother and brother are down here at least once a year, sometimes more often. So I'd guess I see all of my immediate family except my Dad a few times a year, and I speak to my Dad on the phone often.
I don't particularly mind. I like my family but I'm not someone who needs their immediate presence. It would have been nice to have spent more time with my brother when he was little (and exercised a bit more influence on him), though.
We are back in the Czech republic at least once a year to see my wife's family, too.
* it's 10 miles or so, but we are up high.
There's a biggish extended family. Both my maternal grandparents had 10 or 11 siblings, and my Dad's family are a biggish Glasgow Catholic group. However, there weren't that many relatives the same age as either of my parents so they don't have close relationships with their cousins, great-uncles, etc. We meet at funerals, mostly.
My grandfather fled his ancestral city for family reasons, and while there are no similar ill feelings among the resulting extended family (which doesn't include anyone from his siblings), we almost all ended up in far corners of the country from each other. No obligation to regularly see extended family is felt; various miscellaneous visits are common. I go to see my parents only once or twice a year, but we stay pretty close by phone.
At the moment I'm in the same metro area as my favorite aunt, which is nice, as well as some slightly farther-flung relations who throw a lot of dinner parties.
Now that I think about it, most of their cities of residence kind of reflect their personalities.
I found myself once again trying to explain the mask thing when Google Plus came out. Nobody gets it, and they look at me like I'm crazy when I go on about it.
I moved 500 miles for college and just keep getting farther away. My parents had both moved at least a day's drive from their parents when my dad got his first post-school job, so we kids grew up only seeing cousins and grandparents once or twice a year. My mom's family is all in the Utah Valley/Salt Lake Valley area, and it was really nice having extended family around for a few years in college. They go on a big camping trip together every Memorial Day somewhere in southern Utah, and they have various low-key get-togethers. People end up fighting, but there's also enough different people that you can mostly spend time with the ones you like and avoid Uncle So-and-so when he's being a dick.
For years and years I maintained a bare minimum of contact with my parents, talking on the phone maybe once a month and visiting seldom. I figured out that a lot of my discomfort with them had to do with my sense that I had to maintain a certain false persona around them -- specifically, not to talk about any details in my life that might violate their odd sense of propriety, including anything about dating men, having friends who drank beer, not being religious myself, going to a coffee shop (because that implies drinking coffee) ... all sorts of very specific taboos that I'm completely familiar with but don't respect in the rest of my life. Even a brief phone conversation involved a sort of going back into the closet, which was surprisingly painful for me. About a month or so ago I let them know that this arrangement wasn't working for me, and that I thought it was a waste of time, too. We had all the bad parts of being family without the closeness that can be so rewarding. I gave them a specific list of things to do when they next talked to me ("Ask me about my boyfriend. Ask me about my friends..."). Haven't heard from them since, and I think it might be a year or more.
I do envy people who have a relatively free and easy, or at least open, relationship with their parents and family. My little brother is taking a job in New York this fall, which will be really great. And there's the family-of-choice thing that I really relied on immediately post-college; it's still a great idea and a big part of my life, although it turns out that with people moving for jobs and other stuff, those kinds of connections can be more fragile than they seem. I do have intense daydreams of communal living with good friends, probably to compensate for lack of family connections.
Maybe we could start a compound in NM/UT/NV that was not for fundamentalist polygamists, but rather awesome people who cook well and like to mix fancy cocktails? Sign me up.
61: Yikes, that sounds very uncomfortable and a bit of an emotional mind-fuck to have that kind of relationship where you have to feel ultra-closeted about all aspects of your life with your parents. Good for you for having an upfront conversation with them about what you want (like to talk about your relationship, friends, etc.). Hopefully it will work once it sinks in a little for them.
61 is super-shitty. My parents aren't quite that bad, but they have made it clear that they have zero interest in my life if it has anything to do with me not being exactly like them and permanently 16. (As an actual 16-year-old, I was as distant from them as I've ever been, so I don't know why they want to think of me that way.) They tell me explicitly not to tell them about anything I do or experience. It's really selfish, as Dan Savage sez. When we're kids we think of being secretive as benefiting us somehow, but when we grow up we realize that they want us to keep everything to ourselves so we can fit a fantasy they have that we are an idealized projection of themselves, while we have to deal with and embrace all the shitty realness of their full and crappy lives.
What I find particularly annoying are the platitudes about how one has *got* to be close to one's parents; they're *family*! or that you must trust that your parents will always always love you no matter what because they brought you into this world, etc. It's simply not true. My parents have never been particularly fond of me, but I've seen how they pull away whenever I tell them anything about myself. They love me less the more they know about who I am.
61 and 65 both deeply suck. Condolences.
I wonder if anyone in real life is able to put into practice that notion of loving family without necessarily liking them.
Yeah, 61 & 65 are awful. And no, I can't see loving without a considerable amount of liking. No one is perfect and there will always be something annoying but it can't be major.
Some of my family is in L.A., some still in Alabama. There's a bit more pressure to have things go perfectly when the distant people visit because of the scheduling and expenses but it's not terrible. The local stuff is purely casual, if lunch one day isn't convenient it will be some other day.
They tell me explicitly not to tell them about anything I do or experience.
Unambiguously expressed, easily-satisfied expectations are the key to a smoothly running relationship.
52:
Yes. Do that.
There will be difficulties. A friend of ours (mostly electronic, but we had dinner after a BSECS) retired from a Narnian position and now lives in the UK. He jokes that he'd better die in the next ten years because that's how long his retirement money will last. At least he doesn't have to pay for health care. Another friend who teaches, I think, in Narnia and who we see at conferences says that conferences are her lifeline. Rootless cosmopolitanism is a hard way of life.
But it's a lot better than a series of one year positions in the good old USA.
66.2 I sort of do that, but it's probably cheating since I like my dad fine and the problem is just my mom. After moving back here after college, I made a concerted effort to take my brothers out to things they'd enjoy to sort of model doing things together as adults rather than letting my mom control and dominate all the weird family get-togethers. None of them will commit in advance or anything and so inviting them around can be annoying and involves a lot of just having a vegetarian meal and nonalcoholic beerr ready in case that brother stops by or whatever. It makes Lee livid because she finds it disrespectful, but she lives far away from her family and minimizes contact so maybe she shouldn't really talk.
71: I don't get what is supposed to be disrespectful? Dropping by?
I think if you think conferences are good and positive your life has taken a dramatically wrong turning. you should give you friend my email. I mean, if she's cool. no, but I like meeting people and can make anyone like narnia through the sheer, tiggerlike appreciation of its awesomeness I can bring! when I'm not in the hospital.
so I have to go to my fashion shoot now and I woke up WITHOUT A HEADACHE!1!!!11ELEVENTEY!1
AWB: if you move to the narnian region you can really for real go stay at my place on lombok even when I'm not there (you would be required to see me sometimes, of course, but hopefully not too onerous). you can bring new hot dates there and they'll think you're james bond or some shit.
71: Sorry, I'm sure I left stuff out. The disrespectful part is that I'll invite them for something several weeks in advance, remind a day or two before, and still not hear from them until they're on their way over, if that. But the alternative would be never seeing them, which isn't okay with me either. Lee just flipped out that none of them congratulated us when Mara moved in and has been looking for reasons to consider them impolite and inconsiderate since, which isn't hard to manage. All three have girlfriends who are reliable about planning and so forth.
Oh, and I took photos of some childhood photos and put them in the flickr pool.
73 to 72
disrespectful to refuse to commit to coming over ever maybe? actually, given the extent my bro and his gf will hide upstairs in our attic getting stoned, and given tht I know he pulls this same maneuver on mo mom and sis when living cross-town (i.e. drops off the face of the earth) it's a good thing I haven't undergone some huge sacrifice to live near him only to have him stoned and refusing to text me back about anything.
73: It is sounding better all the time! The job is in HK, though, not super-close to Narnia, but in the same area of the planet.
Congratulations on the end of the reign of King Headache. That is a horrible feeling.
Number of cousins is very sensitive to birthrate.
Take a model assuming everyone ends up with a partner and has exactly c children and nobody on the chart intermarrying and everyone is still alive:
c=1 (old China plan): No family relations other than marriage and direct ancestry (no siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins etc.).
c=2 (replacement if no mortality): 1 sib, 4 first cousins , 16 2nd cousins.
c=3: 2 sibs, 12 first cousins, 72 2nd cousins.
For the generational cohort:
1+(c-1)+2(c-1)c + 4(c-1)c2+ ...
I think it is 2n(c-1)cn for number of nth cousins for that idealized model.
0th "cousins" reduce to siblings.
I have 18 first cousins and my parents have three childless siblings.
80: Well isn't that special, how many books do they have on display in their apartments? The urge to do some modeling of those kind of scenarios actually led me to take steps to begin building a small programming environment today (have not programmed in 15+ years).
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To that end, I'm not sure what language(s) I want to get back into and/or learn new. Lisp would be my preference from my prior experience (and perfectly adequate for this kind of thing), but I really want to aggregate data from various web sources and use it to build and display various representations and maps etc. using existing frameworks, and my not very extensive research and discussions to date would indicate that I should get up to speed on other tools/languages for those tasks (even if at the core I manipulate things with Lisp--but my thinking has also been, just learn perl, Python or what-have-you that has good "hooks" and interfaces and do everything in that).
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81.last: You want Python or Ruby on the backend, Javascript on the frontend. You could do what you want in Perl, but you'd hate life. I could go on about this at excruciating length.
PHP is handy for backend still. If you want to do modeling of large data sets and like Lisp, you might get a kick out of R.
83: I actually would be interested. Have been meaning for years to ramp up in something, and now have an opportunity to do so with two of my children. My somewhat eccentric path through programming had primary stops at Fortran and Lisp on a Lisp Machine (most extensive and which spoiled me) and a bit of C. Almost all of it before the early '90s when I went over to the dark side, however. But I get the sense that most Lisps are nowhere, and if Ruby or Python provide similar data structures, sure.
But I get the sense that most Lisps are nowhere
Speechist.
PHP is handy for backend still.
You are a cruel, cruel man.
Regarding the OP, we were one of the few family units to move away from Chicago. This used to mean traveling home every Christmas in a hurried fashion.
More recently, I haven't been several years, but I'm heading there for a long weekend in February to visit and show Thundersnow around.
Anyhow, I think we made out better by moving to Virginia, and I suspect some of the relatives might move this way eventually.
Lisp on a Lisp Machine
My first tech job was with a bunch of people who worked at Symbolic.
Anyhow, Josh is right. Python and numPy. You'll dig it.
84: I did have the thought I should take a look at R. What I really want to do is to bring data gathered by those more diligent than I to algorithms written by smarter, better programmers than I, but to my own perverted ends.
88: hey, I'm the one who has to use it.
JP should use Racket, a dialect of Scheme!
Most of my family lives on a different continent and I'm not really in touch with the couple people that live in the US. For the most part this is fine. I see my parents about twice a year and the others about once a year. And with my parents there seems to be sort of the opposite thing going to AWB's relationship. They would very much like me to share more about stuff in my life, but I'm wary. Partly natural shyness, partly because there's a bit of a Russian roulette thing with them being supportive - most of the time yes, but occasionally viciously negative. Others I've got that weird family closeness thing, that is I like them, enjoy hanging out with them, but they're not people I'd likely be close to if they weren't family. The exception is one cousin, but I relate to her more as a close friend that I've known my entire life than as a relative.
This thread is now reminding me that I'm probably going to fail to take the NLP class that starts next week. I don't know if I'd have actually gotten myself prepared had I been healthy, but when I got sick just before New Year's I stopped the computer stuff I'd been half-heartedly doing.
73 I think if you think conferences are good and positive your life has taken a dramatically wrong turning.
Please, tell me more.
I'm really looking forward to a workshop in Seoul next month....
I don't know what Lush is. Isn't a chain of makeup stores or something?
My first tech job was with a bunch of people who worked at Symbolic.
The "'chine 'ual" was the first thing that really brought alive the excitement and potential of computing for me. You could glimpse an underlying philosophy there (I guess what folks got more directly if their path crossed Structure and Interpretation), whereas Fortran had mostly just been cranking through the formulas*.
*I did get a glimpse when I wrote a couple of algorithms in Fortran to help solve specific Games magazine word challenges.
98: I have heard it described, not complimentarily, as drunken Scheme.
There's this new Narnia/Yale college that has like a half zillion job openings, right? I was kind of tempted to apply just for kicks but (a) even the thought of moving to the UK, let alone stepping through the wardrobe, makes me a little uneasy and (b) it's liberal-artsy and that sounds unlikely to be a good fit for me.
Ruby is a more popular language than Python for writing websites, but Python isn't far behind and has a broader assortment of libraries for doing stats, NLP, and the like. On the other hand, if you'd like to do it in a Lisp, Clojure (a JVM Lisp) seems to have gotten reasonably popular lately and integrates with Java.
Isn't a chain of makeup stores or something?
Also, like, soap and whatnot. Not to be confused with SOAP, I guess.
83, 85, 102: Thanks for the tips. I downloaded SBCL today, but did not get through building an environment to really be able to do much with it.
101: I almost applied to that too, but that was still when I figured I had a decent shot at a domestic TT.
86: Python and Ruby both have big developer communities and lots of resources; Python's probably got a bigger userbase in the scientific community, and it doesn't look like there's anything quite equivalent to SciPy and NumPy. Python values explicitness, which can either make for very readable or very boring/overly-detailed code, depending on your perspective.
As snarkout says, Ruby's got a bigger web developer community, and it's got a number of features that make it easier to create sub-languages, if that sort of thing appeals to you.
Perl can be okay, if you install a shit-ton of third-party libraries. The core language has some horrible design decisions baked into it, though, and no prospect of ever getting better.
106.last: There's Perl 6, which will surely be usable soon before the heat death of the universe!
Python values explicitness, which can either make for very readable or very boring/overly-detailed code, depending on your perspective.
However, not all Python programmers value explicitness.
To the OP: I grew up oceans away from the bulk of my extended family -- the only other branch of our clan in Canada is an aunt who lives a province away, everyone else is in Oz or SA -- and never felt deprived.
Basically it seems to me like it's a tradeoff. We don't have the extended family here to support and embrace us, it's true, and no doubt we miss out on some truly epic good times with the clan (as we have enough cousins to populate a small town). OTOH we also don't have to live with insane family politics, pressures and gossip. I suspect this has made a number of positive differences to our lives: that we kids were raised essentially irreligious, for instance -- which spared us the kind of agonizing struggles with faith and skepticism that our parents went through -- almost certainly would have been a huge scandal if it had happened around my extended family, the bulk of whom are deeply religious and many of whom are not particularly broad-minded or ecumenical. And our being a relatively isolated branch of the family has perhaps (I would say probably) contributed to our own closeness as a family unit. And on the other hand, we aren't completely isolated from everyone, anyway: we still get to meet members of our clan on visits, for instance, which allow us to get to know people in nice little chunks of time that don't allow us to get sick of each other. (And based on the few longer-than-a-month visits we've had, I'm betting the "sick of each other" point would be reached, in a lot of cases, with more extended contact.)
So there are lots of potential upsides to an arrangement like this, certainly enough that foregoing good career opportunities to be closer to the extended family wouldn't necessarily make sense. I doubt you're "fucking up."
python over perl. perl's error handling is shit, not suitable fir cgis.
oh long distance with extended family is fine, unless you need them or have real harmony. Like in fairytales.
FWIW, most of our programmers (which nominally includes me but I don't do a lot of coding, although I do some) use Python, and a little Ruby. With things like Pylons and Web2py (or Ruby on Rails) combined with javascript stuff (usually in the form of Jquery) for the front-end/ajax stuff.
101: it's totally fine; I have a friend who teaches economics there part time. these new universities are eager to establish their credibility and pay pretty well. everyone should move to narnia, it's lovely. the quality of life is very good now that it's always summer, and sometimes christmas. there's all these competing discount airlines that will fly you to BKK for like $180 round trip including airport fees and taxes. you can go for the weekend, for nothing.
AWB: hong kong is a great city, really cool vibe, beautiful in parts, incredible food. everyone speaks cantonese though (where everyone=ordinary citizens from whom you might buy bread or get a taxi ride). 9 tones is too many IMO. but then, it's super-cool. your colleagues will all speak english fine.
My brother lives in London and won't usually initiate contact. He's happy to meet up if we arrange things, so we do stuff like buy tickets for interesting things and then invite/tell him he's coming to e.g. see Hamlet on the 23rd.
I only have 3 cousins and the only one I'm at all close to is the Canadian one. We're both keen to stay close so our kids (his are similar ages to mine) grow up knowing each other, because having cousins in another country can only be beneficial to them.
We weren't particularly close (geographically) to many family members when I was growing up, but we would see a lot of them regularly. It worked out fine, I think. My sister moved to Philadelphia, where we have lots of relatives, a couple years ago, and the presence of family has I think been more of an annoyance than a plus the way she sees it. (There's more to the story than that, but I don't really want to go into it.)
Right now, of course, I'm very far away from everyone I know, including family. I don't really see that as a problem. If I end up staying here longer than my one-year internship, which looks pretty probable at this point, I think that would mostly function as a convenient excuse for family members to come up here to visit me. This is an advantage of living in a place that's far away but also a tourist destination.
This is the good thing about my parents' move (from my pov - lots of good things from theirs) - they have moved somewhere that I already loved, a beautiful county with fantastic beaches, so I try to think of it more as gaining a holiday home than losing my parents.
Speaking of family, I'm living with my sister (the substance abuse counselor) who I like and who likes me, though we have little in common. As long as we figure out how to have private time it's been great. But my other (Republican) sister who I don't like much just invited herself over, and she seems to take up a lot of space (having just taken over my favorite chair in the room where I'm most comfortable, for example.)
She's hurt that her four brothers essentially dislike her just because she watches Fox news and believes what she hears there. She doesn't seem to make the connection that Fox talks all the time about how horrible liberals are, when all four of her brothers are very strong liberals. "Why can't they just have their beliefs and let me have mine?" she asks.
She's got a masters degree and has been mostly independent, but her only wish in life at age 64 is to Have A Man, so she just got plastic surgery. She's here recuperating because she doesn't want her kids and friends to see her before she looks good, and she sucks up a lot of emotional oxygen because she's Healing and has that entitlement thing. She's in an emotional state too because the boyfriend of whom she was the on call spare girl just married his #1 real girl.
Yeah, yeah, accept people as they are, but fuck is this a pain.
She just turned on one of the braindead morning programs because she's bored. God damn her. Jabber jabber jabber jabber.
A friend of ours (mostly electronic, but we had dinner after a BSECS)
Don't be fooled. He's still a toaster.
109
... everyone else is in Oz or SA ...
SA? South Asia? South Africa? South America?
I don't get what is supposed to be disrespectful? Dropping by?
This drives me crazy with my mom. She is always calling and asking if it is ok if she drops by.
Every single time, I say "PLEASE! Come over anytime and every time. You do not need permission."
Drives me crazy. Of course, it is easy bc she never stays very long.
We have an open door policy. If you are near to us, please stop by. You are welcome to stay over if you want as long as you are ok with my daughter possibly waking you up early.
I love the part about my neighbor where everyone just shows up on doorsteps. Food and drink (and some watching of children so parents can run to the store/go for a run/take a nap) get freely shared.
Further to the programming language bleg above, just discovered that Python is the native scripting language for arcGIS, so that works out quite nicely.
I can verify 123. That neighborhood, man. You guys made me see a whole new kind of life.
I can verify 123. That neighborhood, man. You guys made me see a whole new kind of life.
Aww. Come back!
I spent most of my adult life distanced from my family. My wife had a (classic) feud with my Mom, and I went along for the ride, getting close to my wife's family, who are local instead of remote.
Then came the layoff and divorce (and overnight complete shunning by my in-laws) and death of my Mother and two sisters, boom boom boom, so my family is down to three of us, with me being remote. Damn I miss them all, even the annoying ones, which most of them were, including me I suppse.
My kids are moving away from me, and I can't even have a dog in this apartment.
Which leads me to my question: John, do you have a photo of this recently plastic-surgeried Fox-News-watching sister of yours, cause I'm in a pretty desperate place right now.