Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

My grandfather Lieutenant Maurice Francis Devine (known as Frank) sailed for France with his regiment in mid-1918. His wife, born Marie Dubuque, returned home to live with her family in Fall River. Four months later, their first child was born.

The baby was born at home, in Marie’s girlhood bedroom, at 6:30 a.m. on September 3. Her father, clearly shaken by the experience, wrote her a tender morning-after letter.

Boston September 3rd 1918
My Dear Marie
At last the great event of your life has arrived. You are now the mother of a boy (Joseph Murray?) whom I hope will become worthy of his ancestry on both sides, and be the joy of his immediate parents.
I congratulate you on the arrival of this welcome boy, my first grandson. I now have the proud distinction of being the grandfather of a nice little couple who will share, in equal degree, the affection of their grandpa.
May you live long to see your first born the object of your tender care and devoted motherly love.
I cannot tell you how glad we all are that you came through the ordeal all right. How pround Frank will be when he gets the happy news, and his folks also.
You can now see, better than you ever realized before, why a mother is the center of such sweet and tender affection. The explanation is that she has earned it by going through the great trial and suffering for, and devotion to, he offspring.
Suffering purifies and ennobles all things.
You have now laid the first milestone in your home career. Think of the blessings which will flow hereafter around your hearth. The light of a new world, so to speak, has burst upon you and your husband. You must both try to be worthy of this reward of your sacrifices.
May God bless you and your dear little son, and bring back to you safely his father home. The news from abroad are very encouranging. Let us hope it will not be long before his return.
With love to you and my dear little grandson
Affectionately grandpa
Hugo Dubuque
P.S. I am writing to Frank.

My great-grandfather Hugo Dubuque was a Massachusetts Superior Court Judge, who spent many days on the circuit from courthouse to courthouse. He sent many tender letters home, ostensibly to the baby Joseph Murray Devine, but in fact to amuse and comfort his daughter Marie.

Superior Court
Judges Room
Court House, Boston
January 6 1919

My Dear Murray
I envied you this morning, my boy, nice and warm in your cozy bassinette. It was very chilly for grandpa — the wind was North and snowing — the walks were very slippery, but Gaga is always careful so he did not fall down.
There is no heat at all in the Elevated cars in Boston on account of the influenza.
What was that I heard this morning? that you gave an unearthly shriek, like a sore of Indian war whoop, because you were so hungry? That is very rude for a little boy to do that, and scare his Mamma and Atta Paul [Aunt Pauline]. But, of course, when a young man is hungry he cannot always repress his feelings. So be a good boy and we will all love you dearly.
Best love from Gaga Dubuque.

I must inherit my singing voice from Grandpa Dubuque, to judge by this letter.

Boston City Club, January 27th — 1919
My Dear Murray:
It is the first time, yesterday, that my voice as a singer was ever appreciated. And you, sweet little grandson, were the one to do so. Nothing pleased me better than to see you apparently enjoy grandpa’s singing. You evidently could stand it with delight, on the ground, presumably, that any noise will do as an amusement.
Wait until your Dad gets home, he will sing “lullybys” for you. I t will be great for you to be carried around by a hero of the greatest war in the history of the world, that of 1914 – 1918. Oh my! but won’t you be proud! Keep on growing in strength so that you may wrestle with your Papa when the first chance comes–
Best love to you and yours,
Gaga Dubuque

I’m not sure what rare-ripes are, but it seems that my family comes honestly by its great love of gardening.

The Superior Court
Middlesex County
Lowell March 3, 1919

My Dear Murray
You missed it, Murray, in not getting up at 5 A.M. the same as your Gaga did this morning– There was a nice white frost, the harbinger of spring, spread over the trees and ground. The air was so sweet and pure. It is a real delight to be out early.
The spring will soon be here, and by the way this is your first spring. While you have seen flowers in the house, they are much nicer on their own stems in the sunlight outdoors.
Gaga expects to have a garden this spring, back of the house; so you’ll see things grow and you will learn farming and horticulture — garden and flower production — And you will sleep surrounded by flowers and vegetables, which will form a background to the picture of my little grandson–I hope your dad, when he takes you to Manchester, will have a little garden, if it is only to grow some flowers and a few of the ordinary vegetables like lettuce, tomatoes, rare-ripes, and the like. Best love to you and your dear ones who love you — Gaga Dubuque

A sad footnote, from a 1926 Manchester, NH newspaper recording the February 1 arrival of Marie’s second child, my Uncle Shane: “The friends of Captain Devine will be saddened to learn of the death of Mrs. Devine February 8.”

We got our first Mac in 1984, and Lawrence Krauss was the Johnny Appleseed who planted the first Macintosh seed.

In 1984, Frank and I were trying to collaborate on a book by using the arcane word-processing stuff on the VAX/VMS at UCSB’s Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Then one day, a young physicist named Lawrence Krauss rode into town, carrying with him everywhere
a big 15-pound plastic box he called a Mac.* We had never imagined lugging our good old
Atari 800 on our trips. (We used it to play simple games on an old TV set, and to write simpler games in Atari BASIC.) What did this “Mac” have that our computer didn’t?

Lawrence was eager to demo MacWrite and MacPaint. (MacWrite was [NOT*] the inspiration for Microsoft Word, only simpler and much more reliable.) We were instant converts, and so were our kids! I still have pages and pages and pages of dot-matrix printouts of their MacPaint creations to prove it.

The Mac was just what we needed to collaborate.

• Never mind that you had to save everything on a [128 K]** floppy.
• Never mind that no single chapter could be more than about 10 pages long.
• Never mind that the “illustrations” I created with the dot matrix printer were black and white and lumpy with pixels all over.

That first Mac was a wonderful revelation of just how much better computers could make people’s lives, and we’re still grateful to Lawrence Krauss (now here at the APS meeting with us, where he gave 3 (3!) fine talks!)

Long before Lawrence wrote The Physics of Star Trek, he helped us boldly go where no Wilczek or Devine had gone before.

** Oops again! and thanks to Kuba for pinging me that the size of the floppy “was 400 kB, while RAM of the original Mac was 128 kB, hence the so called Macintosh elbow when you tried to copy a floppy on a single-drive Mac (I once did 27 inserts – it was very painful!).”

That was the title of one of todays sessions here at the America Physical Society meeting in Tampa. Some other intriguing topics being discussed:

• Charm Physics
• Alchemy of the Heaviest Elements
• Cleo Bottomonia Physics

It’s been great fun re-meeting so many physicist friends–and riding the elevator with hundreds more physicists, including many –but sadly not enough–women physicists. (The pipeline for women from high-school physics to physics full-professorships seems to spring a bad leak somewhere before grad school.)

Physicists come in a lot of different varieties but I have not seen any who’d fit your popular image of naughty conventioneers.

Among the great shirts and bumper stickers for sale, here is my favorite:

PLEASE FLIRT HARDER, I AM A PHYSICIST

Dear Dr. Al-Uthaiman,

The King Faisal International Prize committee created an unforgettable event for its 2005 prizewinners. As the wife of Science Prize honoree Frank Wilczek, I want to express our gratitude for all your thoughtfulness.

The Al Faisaliah Hotel made us feel very welcome, with flowers and fruit and warm, hospitable staff. I was very impressed by their technology too–the computerized bedside console for opening curtains was something I’ve never seen in another hotel.

You offered many opportunities to see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with new eyes. Visits to a hospital, museums, and a suq offered a wide perspective. (I’m sorry we came too late for the desert picnic–people who had been there told us all about the adventures with camels.) We also enjoyed the chance for conversations over meals with local doctors and professors as well as many people who work for the King Faisal Foundation.

The ceremony itself was impressive and fascinating, while headphones offering instant translations between Arabic and English were a great success. It was also a pleasure to meet even more well-educated and dynamic Saudi women, including a young museum designer whose creations I hope to hear more of in the future.

Finally, it was a great honor for my husband and me to be invited to meet HRH Prince Bandar bin Faisal and to hear about the progress of King Faisal University, the projected first coeducational and private university in the Kingdom. I hope that this worthy project of the King Faisal Foundation meets with great success.

Best regards,
Betsy Devine

Niek just sent me great photos of our encounter in Schiphol Airport–can it be only last week?

I was especially impressed that Niek snapped a quick photo of Frank, under weird light conditions, and it came out as a wonderfully evocative image. That’s what I call a good photographer!

Hurray for science! Hurray for springtime!

• Here comes better microwave popcorn!
• Springtime hits NH, as seen from a motorcycle.
• Naked mole rats are only the fourth ugliest animal?
• Top ten useless limbs and vestigial organs
• Bonus linkiferousness: All the links from Mind Hacks

Magnolias so pink,
And the spring sky so blue….
Who could waste time on taxes today?
But … we do!

Niek has wonderful photos this morning of wildflowers that had “escaped” from the Holland flowerfields…

Meanwhile, Frank Paynter beautifully evokes the tranquil here-and-thereness of spring in Wisconsin…

Meanwhile, Kalilily is singing along with Perry Como, “It’s a good day from morning till night”…

Meanwhile, it’s sunny and cold in Cambridge, MA, with blue skies above the tree branches now hinting pale green. My front yard has tulip leaves but no flowers yet. Maybe when I get home next time, they will have opened. Yes, after two days at home, we are packing again.

No abayas this trip, but once again we need clothes for both hot and cold climates–an APS meeting in Tampa (where I also get to celebrate my little sister’s birthday!) followed by a Philadelphia tribute to Yoichiro Nambu.

But I’ll be reading all of your blogs for more signs of springtime…

“…it is not enough, before commencing to rebuild the house in which we live, that it be pulled down ..
it is likewise necessary that we be furnished with some other house in which we may live commodiously during the operations…”
René Descartes (1596– – 1650), Discourse on Method)

Descartes boldly set out to question all his beliefs– but didn’t question the need for some “code of Morals,” even though he expected that ultimately he would replace them with new guidelines of his own.

His first principle was to conform to the laws and customs of people around him,

“…adhering firmly to the Faith in which, by the grace of God, I had been educated from my childhood, and regulating my conduct in every other matter according to the most moderate opinions, and the farthest removed from extremes, which should happen to be adopted in practice with general consent of the most judicious of those among whom I might be living…”

This moderate and rational praise for conformity deeply impressed me when I was a teenager learning French. Re-reading it now, I see that I mis-remembered something fairly important. I (mis)remembered that Descartes urged conformity to avoid fruitless arguments with our neighbors, leaving us more time and energy for nobler goals.

I’m glad I cleared that up, though I don’t expect to be tested on Descartes again very soon…

Jon Carroll and/or radical Unitarians want to know:

Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus.