Changes

It's Wednesday evening and this week has brought some changes to our little home-for-the-time-being in Southeast Portland.

On Tuesday, Celia had her first day of preschool. After a long search we've found a spot in a co-op preschool pretty close to our house. Celia will be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning. It's nice to have some more peer interactions available to her. It's a new school with a good teacher, but most of the kids are younger than she is. So I think we'll still be on the lookout for more opportunities for Celia to develop some peer relationships. For now, it's nice to add some more structure to her life and give her some more opportunity for exploration.

On the downside for Celia, this week has also brought the exit of Miner the cat. It turns out that the people who are looking after Miner's dog buddy Cole, now have room for a cat. And since Miner and Cole are tight, their owners want them to be together. Tonight someone came to take Miner away. Celia handled it pretty well, but she included a wish for a cat (actually two) of her own in her bedtime prayer tonight. It's been fun to see her and Ferguson bond with the cat these past two weeks. We'll miss Miner and even his habit of nibbling our chins at five am.

These few months have brought a lot of transition for our little family. I wonder a lot how Celia in particular is processing it all. She generally seems pretty happy, so I don't think it's causing her huge problems. But I'm not sure it's still the grand adventure for her that I thought it would be. Living in Portland has become her reality, very quickly. She doesn't really talk much about Juneau and Alaska. So I'm wondering if moving back will be another transition for her, and maybe something that will come as sort of a surprise. It's hard to say exactly what's going on in that world of hers. One thing seems clear, though; she and Ferguson are a lot closer these days. By sheer necessity, they've played more in the past two months together than they probably played together in the previous six months.

I've had a couple interesting new learning opportunities this week. On Monday, I was invited by a pyschology professor I've gotten to know to help critique a research paper with his graduate students. He studies sex offenders and helps review submissions for a few academic journals. So I got to read a submitted article and discuss it with his graduate students on Monday. As I've read more and more research papers, it's struck me how much the range of quality varies. And as I've learned more about statistical methods and their limitations, I've been struck that some writers are making claims that are probably not that well supported by the data. I'm learning to be a careful reader of research papers. But then it also seems that you can become hypercritical. Maybe sometimes you have to realize that a paper isn't perfect, but it does shed some light (however dimly) on a topic that needs a little more attention.

I also got to attend a presentation by attendees of the 2008 Summer Institute on Youth Mentoring on Tuesday. Three of them prepared talks on research topics that they learned about at last year's Institute and shared them at the monthly meeting of Oregon Mentors. It was fun to see other mentoring practitioners excited about research and see how the Institute affected their careers. They seemed more motivated about their work, more confident in their ability to read and understand research, and excited to share new ideas with their colleagues. It gave me another impetus to start looking at the data from questionnaires we've received from past participants. As soon as I get the right software installed on my computer, I'm eager to start looking at these questionnaires and try my hand at coding data.

On the fun side, this week also brought the start of the Portland Jazz Festival. I was lucky to get a cheap ticket for Sunday's performance of McCoy Tyner and Joe Lovano. Don Byron and his Ivey-Divey trio opened up. I have always been a huge fan of John Coltrane. So to see McCoy Tyner, his longest serving piano-man, was a real treat. Tyner is in his seventies, but still has plenty of chops. I was particularly impressed by how much touch he still had, from whispering out a soulful ballad to pounding away at escalating chords. I think it may have been intimidating for Lovano to play in the shadow of Coltrane, though. On the one Coltrane tune they played, he ended his solo pretty quickly, like he was trying on Coltrane's shoes and suddenly realized that they were much too big for him. Don Byron and his trio were tight, creative, and playful. And I even got his autograph at intermission. He is probably the greatest jazz clarinetist alive and brings a fresh spirit to the music.

I've got a ticket to Bobby Hutcherson and Lou Donaldson on Sunday, too. Yes, I am learning lots, but having fun, too!