My Life in Photos
Jimmy Carter was president when I was born near the Grand Canyon, in a tiny hospital in Williams, AZ. My grandmother's Mormon Bishop (Dr. Bates) delivered me. Pulled me out with forceps. (Once when recounting my birth, I messed up and said Dr. Bates pulled me out with "triceps". I suppose that is also partly true, albeit irrelevant.)
Two years later, my platinum-haired little sister came along.
My father owned a gas station in a dodgy part of the Phoenix sprawl, a ne'er-do-well place in the shadows of Mesa and ASU -- Apache Junction (AJ). That is, he owned it until the gas station failed in 1993. A freeway was built that kept winter travelers from driving through AJ on their way to Tucson, so people stopped stopping in AJ for gas.
Both parents barely graduated high school and had few wage-earning options. Dad died at 59 in a van with a rolled cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers and a beer between his legs. He had disguised a baseball that was sticking out of his neck with a ZZ Top beard and had sunk into such an immobilizing depression that he was living in the van, parked at a friend's house. His laryngeal cancer wasn't diagnosed until autopsy, since he had no insurance and would literally rather have died than be hospitalized. (I used "literally" correctly here, by the way -- versus figuratively. He really did literally prefer death to giving up his autonomy, what was left of his dignity, and perhaps more importantly, his beer and cigarettes.)
I left home at 13 years old and have purposely had little contact with my biological family for decades. I put myself through college and graduate school.
There's a major gap in the photos: bupkis from 1989-2009. Those are the Dark Ages. Scant photo evidence exists for the survivalist years as a young teen and the early wonders of all higher education had to offer.
During the Dark Ages, a lot happened. I skipped grades (three in total), got two degrees in linguistics (a BA in speech pathology and audiology and an MA-TESL in applied linguistics) and an MTS in divinity (I'm an atheist and more-or-less culturally Jewish, but you'll have to wait for that explanation). I spent a summer in Papua New Guinea and learned Tok Pisin, a creole spoken there. I traveled to Taizé, a monastic village in the Saône-et-Loire region of Burgundy in France. Four years later I became a (temporary) monk: I lived as a Zen monastic at San Francisco Zen Center for three years, just like Leonard Cohen: with black robes, gongs, and poetry about the height of the moon. I even got a Japanese Buddhist name: Kogetsu Hekishin.
This all culminated with a job in genetics in Seattle, naturally. Notice that that last sentence is intended to come out of nowhere like the final line in a haiku. It's the pirouette to my current life. For nearly 15 years, I've been building a career in the crosshairs of genetics, epidemiology, and bioinformatics. You can see my CV for details about that.
I currently live in Brookline, Massachusetts, the most educated town in the US! Fourteen percent of those who live in Brookline have doctorates. It's a shame I don't know anyone here, due to COVID. But the brownstones and Queen Anne architecture are beautiful.
Two years later, my platinum-haired little sister came along.
My father owned a gas station in a dodgy part of the Phoenix sprawl, a ne'er-do-well place in the shadows of Mesa and ASU -- Apache Junction (AJ). That is, he owned it until the gas station failed in 1993. A freeway was built that kept winter travelers from driving through AJ on their way to Tucson, so people stopped stopping in AJ for gas.
Both parents barely graduated high school and had few wage-earning options. Dad died at 59 in a van with a rolled cigarette between his nicotine-stained fingers and a beer between his legs. He had disguised a baseball that was sticking out of his neck with a ZZ Top beard and had sunk into such an immobilizing depression that he was living in the van, parked at a friend's house. His laryngeal cancer wasn't diagnosed until autopsy, since he had no insurance and would literally rather have died than be hospitalized. (I used "literally" correctly here, by the way -- versus figuratively. He really did literally prefer death to giving up his autonomy, what was left of his dignity, and perhaps more importantly, his beer and cigarettes.)
I left home at 13 years old and have purposely had little contact with my biological family for decades. I put myself through college and graduate school.
There's a major gap in the photos: bupkis from 1989-2009. Those are the Dark Ages. Scant photo evidence exists for the survivalist years as a young teen and the early wonders of all higher education had to offer.
During the Dark Ages, a lot happened. I skipped grades (three in total), got two degrees in linguistics (a BA in speech pathology and audiology and an MA-TESL in applied linguistics) and an MTS in divinity (I'm an atheist and more-or-less culturally Jewish, but you'll have to wait for that explanation). I spent a summer in Papua New Guinea and learned Tok Pisin, a creole spoken there. I traveled to Taizé, a monastic village in the Saône-et-Loire region of Burgundy in France. Four years later I became a (temporary) monk: I lived as a Zen monastic at San Francisco Zen Center for three years, just like Leonard Cohen: with black robes, gongs, and poetry about the height of the moon. I even got a Japanese Buddhist name: Kogetsu Hekishin.
This all culminated with a job in genetics in Seattle, naturally. Notice that that last sentence is intended to come out of nowhere like the final line in a haiku. It's the pirouette to my current life. For nearly 15 years, I've been building a career in the crosshairs of genetics, epidemiology, and bioinformatics. You can see my CV for details about that.
I currently live in Brookline, Massachusetts, the most educated town in the US! Fourteen percent of those who live in Brookline have doctorates. It's a shame I don't know anyone here, due to COVID. But the brownstones and Queen Anne architecture are beautiful.
Sister at Disneyland (1980s).
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 Parents circa 1980.
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"My sock monkey" (early 1980s).
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My waterbed and wall (circa 1988).
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Mother and sister (Williams, AZ, 1986). My Mormon grandmother took the photo.
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5th grade (Mr. Thorpe's mixed 5th and 6th grade class) in Apache Junction, AZ (1989). I skipped the 6th grade, mostly because there was a boy I didn't want to be separated from. His name was Matt Frahm (furthest left on the backmost row), who was in the 6th grade. To my horror, he went to the junior high school the next year, leaving me to miss him. That was unacceptable. I took a battery of tests and argued my way to a transfer to 7th grade.
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Warren and Frida (Boise, ID, 2012). Warren belongs to Casey Keck, a good friend in Boise. I was at her wedding in Flagstaff during our graduate work in linguistics.
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Museum in DC (2013). I have taken thousands of photos of statues and paintings at the museums in Seattle, DC, LA, London, Athens, Venice, Florence, and Boston.
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Frida at Blue Heron Zen Center (2010). I was renting a room at this practice center while working outside during the day for the Washington State Newborn Screening Program. I'd get off of work, scurry home, walk and hug Frida, then go upstairs for evening meditation. Members of the community told me to stop adding harmonies to the chants. An old tick.
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Rockville, MD (2013). I was in DC/Rockville for a fellowship in the Clinical Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute.
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Bristol, England (2017). Before even finishing my PhD, I moved to Bristol to learn Mendelian randomization.
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Rockville, MD (2013). While in DC/Rockville for a fellowship, I boarded with a rabbi and her wife. They needed the extra cash and I needed a place for a few months after my lease had ended.
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Blue Heron Zen Center (Seattle, WA, 2013). I was lay-ordained in Soto Zen in 2007. Blue Heron was the second Zen center I lived at. From 2004-2007, I was a monastic at San Francisco Zen Center's Green Gulch Farm. But the picture here is at a Korean Zen center in Seattle. I actually lived at the Korean place twice! The picture was taken at the beginning of my PhD studies in public health genetics. I didn't stay long at the Zen center. It was too distracting!
Cloverdale, CA (2011). Cloverdale is in wine country. I had a beautiful vineyard in my backyard and woodpeckers galore.
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Winter 2010 (Williamsburg, MA). After three years of on-the-job training in genetics and public at the Washington State Newborn Screening Program, I did an MPH at Johns Hopkins. Most of the coursework was available online, which let me study biostatistics and epidemiology at home. (Johns Hopkins was prepared for COVID! Many of their faculty have been teaching online for years!)
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Frida at Blue Heron Zen Center (Seattle, WA, 2013). Yes, I brought my dog to a Zen center. I also once bought and brought an elliptical machine to a Zen center. I was getting fat at Green Gulch Farm, due to all the sugary vegan food. I tried to run off the accruing pounds to no avail! Sugar, not inactivity, was the problem. The only sugar in my diet now comes in the form of wine and berries.
Cloverdale, CA (2011). During my MPH at Johns Hopkins, I lived in Williamsburg, MA, Cloverdale, CA, and Boise, ID, while flying in and out of Baltimore for episodic in-person requirements.
(I like hats, which I started wearing in Seattle.)
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Bristol, England (2018). Bristol was a whirlwind. I wrote a grant, learned a new technique, and wrote a few papers.
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Rockville, MD (2013). Frida was everything to me. She slept at night tucked behind my knees. We were completely in synch.
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Rockville, MD (2013). I had just finished binging on Middlemarch and had picked up this blueberry-colored dress that reminded me of the provincial clothing of paupers of past times. I like the Sinatra song, "That's Life":
"I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate. A poet, a pawn, and a king. I've been up and down and over and out. And I know one thing. Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race."
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Northampton, MA (2010). I found myself in Western Massachusetts for a stint due to a relationship that whipped me back and forth across the country. The bulldog was a jerk, as was the guy.
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Rockville, MD (2013). This is a waterproof Barbour hat. I left the National Cancer Institute soon after this photo to start my PhD and drove cross-country to Seattle. Before I did, I asked one of the investigators, who had done his PhD in biostatistics at the University of Washington, this question: "What's your best advice for being successful?"
His reply: "Look forward to everything."
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Frida, Cloverdale, CA (2011). Little Frida was the love of my life. I recued her as a puppy in Seattle and took her to Doggie Day School. She learned to sit, come, stay, and shake. I've never loved anything more than Frida.
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Frida, Cloverdale, CA (2011). I also had a bird, "Chickenroost". You can see her cage in the background. She'd sit on my shoulder and preen my hair while I taught myself statistics.
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Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) (Seattle, WA, 2016). MOHAI is located across the street from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research and Treatment Center (the "Hutch" for short). I spent most of my PhD in an office there. I kept pillows and blankets under my desk and often slept over when coding late into the evening made biking home inconvenient.
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Oxford Prison (Oxford, England, 2017). I stopped over in Oxford on a day when Mary Beard was given an honorary doctorate.
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Birthday 2010 (Williamsburg, MA). I spent a winter in the woods of Western Massachusetts (not literally "the woods": I was wan't camping or homeless! Williamsburg is just tiny, and our house truly was in the woods. Bears kept stealing the bird feeders, which we told ourselves we put out for the birds. Truth be told, the bears coming to visit was about the only excitement we got that winter.)
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Studying biostatistics in 2011 (Cloverdale, CA)
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Tea in Bath (England, 2017). Jane Austen lived in Bath for a few years in the early 19th century. Bath was a quick train ride from Bristol.
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Dinner in Portland, OR (2010)
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Bristol, England (2018). This is the living room of my flat in Bristol in a lovely neighborhood with Georgian buildings and cobblestone. When I made the decision to move back to the US, my soul nearly died. I really loved England. I also knew that Mendelian randomization wasn't the only skill I wanted to hone. What I got from my time in Bristol was a deep understanding of causality.
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Blue Heron Zen Center (Seattle, 2010). This photo is from my first stint living at Blue Heron. I left soon after the picture to start my MPH. Come to think of it, every time I left a Zen center it was to pursue something academic. I have been Zen-center free for seven years! I still meditate, especially at night. It's not a big part of my identity, though. Sometimes people try to bond with me on benefits of meditation. But that just makes me want to "kill the Buddha".
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Frida (Tacoma, WA, circa 2009). I took a daytrip from Seattle to Tacoma to reunite with a friend then working as a physical therapist in Tacoma. I knew her from college in Flagstaff many years prior. I brought Frida with me. I brought Frida everywhere.
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Athens, Greece (2018)
Athens, Greece (2018)
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Bristol, England (2017). I had my first job at 12 years old. I worked as a cashier for a Chinese restaurant. My boss was this skinny, spirited, and beautiful woman from Taiwan. She and I would flip through clothing magazines on slow nights. She told me I'd be prettier when I was older. I finally got a bit of an edge in my late 30s. (Like the stereotype goes about nerdy scientists, most days I'm wearing UGG's or Birkenstocks, loose pants, and a floppy, oversized t-shirt or fleece. This isn't for a lack of a sense of fashion. It's due to the time spent writing and coding.)
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Athens, Greece (2018)
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Williamsburg, MA (2010)
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Williamsburg, MA (2010)
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