Scientific Ink

Dunrie Greiling Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI 48105

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Choose well, and choose what you chose again

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I officiated at the wedding of friends earlier this month. The bride and groom wrote their own vows and the ceremony, and they invited me to share some thoughts about love and marriage in the middle. What follows is a paraphrase of what I said, with more of my story and less about the bride and groom than was in their ceremony on their day.

Cullen and Jessica's wedding
“Before” at the wedding

After choosing a great partner, our next choice is to choose the marriage, over and over again.

The big events are easy: the right choice is obvious. For instance, when Dave had an opportunity to move to England for work, I took a year of detached study from graduate school and went with him. When I worried about not being with my dad ahead of an operation, Dave said, “why don’t you just go?” So I did.

A lifelong marriage contains a few big events and hundreds of thousands of small moments: in person, on the phone, in email, via text…In those moments, we have a choice of how to respond to what happens to us and between us.

The good news is that we don’t have to choose perfectly, enough good choices make a marriage resilient.

My blessing for my friends was that they continue to choose each other, that they have the experience Wendell Berry articulates in this poem:

The Wild Rose

 

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

 

suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,

 

and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.

“The Wild Rose” is available in Entries as well as in The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982.

Ashes to new roots, and a blessing

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Spring has arrived in Michigan, and this is a good thing.

It has been a rough winter, personally. January was particularly grim. I lost my dear friend and mentor Beverly Rathcke, we lost our long time cat companion Floyd. So it was good to start digging in the garden, always lifts my spirits and grounds me in the present.

We participated in the Global ReLeaf of Michigan tree sale/fundraiser by getting a few bare root trees and shrubs. I got them last weekend and we put them into the ground that very morning. And we sprinkled a little of Floyd’s ashes under each one and urged him to help them grow!

That was last week, and that felt good.

Well today it turned from lovely to perfect. At her death, my friend Beverly had given some statues to me. And today we retrieved her garden Kuan Yin from her back yard and brought it to our garden. Now Kuan Yin sits overlooking the springwater pond that Dave and his dad retouched last spring. The garden is graced by love now with the ashes of a beloved pet and a gift from a beloved friend in the form of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin.

A blessing.

Kuan Yin, pondside
Kuan Yin, pondside

Rest in Peace Beverly Rathcke, Thank You!

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My friend and mentor Beverly Rathcke passed away on Thursday, January 6, 2011. She died comfortably at home in Ann Arbor after a short illness.

Beverly was my faculty advisor for my PhD dissertation in ecology, and in that role she helped me think critically and write clearly. Yet, she fostered more than my scientific interests, she recognized and encouraged the creative artist in me, pushing me to explore my interest in and talent for photography. We attended music and dance concerts together. And, she catalyzed the transformation of my perspective and thereby my life by introducing me to my meditation practice, Siddha Yoga Meditation.

Her beautiful Old West Side Ann Arbor bungalow served as a gathering place. She brought out the gourmet chef in all of us, as we competed to offer potluck contributions that could stand beside hers on the dining room table. She invited others to cook, drink, dine and dance in her home, and was always grateful when someone wanted to clean up the piles of pots and dishes created during a collaborative cooking event.

Cooking paella
New Year’s Eve, December 2006. We made paella in Beverly’s kitchen. Yum!
From left, Dave, Victoria, and Beverly (foreground).

She lived a full and enthusiastic life and had, in my opinion, a good death, on her own terms, surrounded by devoted friends. I was honored to be with her and her friends in the days preceding her death as she slipped from consciousness. During the last few days I have met friends of hers new to me, and I have been impressed by her good taste. May I be as fortunate in my friends and in my passing. I feel so grateful to have known her.

Beverly Rathcke's students from the 1990s.
Beverly Rathcke (center, in blue), surrounded by her University of Michigan graduate students from the 1990s and their families.
Taken at her retirement party summer, 2010.

Travel off-season, a fall trip to Greece, part I

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I flew to Athens earlier this month, to meet a college friend who was on a business trip. She was speaking at a medical conference, and I came only for the sightseeing and the food. Her trip was a couple of days, constrained by work obligations on either side. I took the whole week, figuring if I was going to travel that far, I should make time to explore.

It wasn’t high season for tourism, yet everyone told us we had exceptional weather. So I think we lucked out – not too many crowds (though we heard many many languages other than Greek) yet shirtsleeve weather.

I spent most of the week in the Athens area, walking in the pedestrian areas near the Acropolis, visiting some of the more minor museums, saving the top of the Acropolis and the National Archaeological Museum for when my friend arrived later in the week.

Parthenon
My college friend Heather at the Parthenon. We did go first thing in the morning, and there were no crowds!

The people I met in restaurants, stores, and on the street all had more than enough English to make my trip easy, and many positively beamed when I offered up the most basic conversational niceties in Greek, such as hello/goodbye (Yassas), good morning (Kalimera), or good evening (Kalispera).

And the welcome was almost infallibly gracious. For instance I saw a beautifully coiffed, expensively clothed businesswoman in Constitution Square stopped at the pedestrian streetlight help a pair of Asian tourists struggling with a map. She looked like she could have been going to the Parliament building across Syntagma Square to serve in some important government office, and there she was, helping a couple of disoriented tourists locate where they were on their map.

I experienced such a warm playful conversational spirit there – many of the really touristy street restaurants have barkers out front to engage passers by and invite them in, but honestly they seemed happy enough for a little repartee (“maybe later” was enough to disengage without rudeness on either side, and once “why not?” when parried with “I just ate!” made me and the barker laugh), so it wasn’t annoying but kind of fun.

I was humbled to hear all of the conversations in English by non-English speakers, German, Scandinavian, French tourists speaking in English to the Greeks in the restaurants and hotels, and the Greek staff responding in English.

Given that tourism is Greece’s #2 economic driver, after shipping, I expect that the spirit of welcome may be there year-round. Perhaps since I went in the off-season, I received more, as it was undiluted across a throng of other tourists.

I had a wonderful time and was in tears in the airport. I told the gate agent that I didn’t want to leave, and she looked at me sweetly and said I could always come back.