What's In A Name?

My daughter just turned 8 months this weekend and, as I've mentioned before, her name is Elena Marie. My wife and I have named our children after the special people in our lives. Our son, Alexander Michael, is named after my parents Americo and Marion. We've been calling him Alex since birth, everyone else does, and he refers to himself as such, but in school he goes by the full Alexander. That was a good thing and I commended his Pre-K teacher for that. It made it easier for him to learn to spell his name.

Alex doesn't have any other name.  No, we're not going with Lex or Zander. Elena, however, has many different names.  She's named after my wife's sister and brother, Elly and Miguel.  My wife didn't want to give her a nickname like her sister because it would be too confusing, so she started calling her Laini (LAY-NEE). Alex calls Elena that too and, while I started off calling her Elly, I'm in the Laini crowd too. But it gets a little more complicated now. Our niece calls her Laila, and my wife has given her 2 alternate nicknames, one is Lulu (LOO-LOO) and the other, jokingly because of a friend from the neighborhood, Lailai (LAY-LAY) which is her "on the block" name.

Elena's young and she'll get to chose her nickname and she has a lot to choose from.

In Memoriam, 9/11

Eleven years. I don’t know if it feels like yesterday or decades ago. That day remains vivid in my mind, however. It was a clear blue Tuesday morning, just like today. What I have a hard time remembering was September 10, 2001. I remember going down to court the week before. The courthouse was not far from the World Trade Center. Coming out of the subway the Towers were to my left in the distance, dominating the skyline. I go to that same subway station and I have a hard time remembering how the towers looked from that view. It puzzles me. Pre-9/11 seems like a dream. Maybe that’s why I can’t tell if it feels like yesterday or in the distant past. There seems to be no prologue. Just the post-9/11 world that I’ve become accustomed.

I can look back on my life of the last elevn years and so much has changed. I got married, bought a house, we have a son and a daughter. Life has endured, as America has endured despite what had happened. That was probably the hardest thing to foresee on 9/11. How life would go on.

Nearly three thousand people were murdered that day and their loved ones have had to find a way to live on, and they have. There are countless articles and exposés on them out now to commemorate the anniversary. To the survivors, this past decade has been an elegy.

Happy 46th Anniversary, Star Trek!!!

Forty-six years ago tomorrow on September 8, 1966, NBC aired "The Man Trap," for the original STAR TREK. It was the first episode of the series aired, but it was not the first produced. Back then, studios got to chose what episodes to air and NBC likely chose "The Man Trap" because of it's monster-on-the-loose storyline. The original STAR TREK lasted only 3 seasons, but as we all know it became a cultureal phenomenon in reruns. Since I was born after the series went off the air, that's how I became a fan and have remained such for all these years.

As I previously wrote, my moral framework was formed by STAR TREK. I was a toddler glued to the screen watching reruns of the original series on WPIX. Yes, that’s completely geeky, but so what? I remember when I found out as an early teen that the US didn’t follow the Prime Directive (i.e., all peoples—alien or otherwise—had a right to self determination) and was devastated by that. There is something inherently noble about the original STAR TREK universe. Dave Marinaccio’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek perfectly captures what I learned from STAR TREK and all what I needed to know how to live, what to do, and how to be:

- Each person or each species, no matter how alien, has the right to live their lives as they wish. (AS long as they’re not trying to take over the galaxy or eat you or something.)

- Everyone has a role in life. Sulu is the navigator. Uhura is the communications specialist. Do your own job and the ship will function more smoothly.

- Whatever you are doing, answer a distress call. The most important time to help someone is when they need it.

- If you mess something up, it’s your responsibility to make things right again (Say you disrupt history and cause the Nazis to win World War II. To correct matters, you have to let Joan Collins walk in front of a car even though you’re in love with her.)

- The more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play

- If you can keep your head in a crisis you’ve got a fighting chance.

- The unknown is not to be feared. It is to be examined, understood and accepted.

- Close friends become family and family is the true center of the universe.

- End every episode with a smile.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. It was a sort of epiphany seeing this. Yes, this is how we should live. Thank you, Gene Roddenberry and STAR TREK, and happy anniversary!!!

[updated from my September 8, 2011 post]

Farewell Summer

Jeesh, it's September already. Where the heck did the summer go? I do feel that as I've gotten older the days have become shorter (since I've accumulated so many in my existence) that a week is like a day and a month is like a week. For my son starting 2nd Grade this week, the summer was like a year. But, of course, he's lamenting going back to school. Don't get me wrong: he loves it, but he loves camp more.
 

Me? I didn't take a vacation this year. I hardly do anyway and work through summer. My time "off" was taking two weeks in January after my daughter was born. But I enjoy the sun waking me in the morning before I get ready for the day and still being out when I leave work in the evening. The nice temperatures (I can even deal with a heat wave). That is what I lament. Spring is my favorite season because I think of birth and renewal. Life begins anew. The fall, while beautiful with the comfortable temperatures (and football season, of course), is bittersweet. If makes me think of endings and death.
 

The official end of summer is not until the end of September, but Labor Day has always marked it for me (and millions of others, of course). So goodbye, summer. It was fun, but all too quickly gone.

Dreamin' & Thinkin'

I have my moments of clarity every now and then. It happened to me recently when I was discussing Sci-Fi with a couple of friends of mine on a message board. We were getting all old fogy ("Get off my lawn!") and saying how kids today didn't have the Sci-Fi that we did and I wrote without much thought, "Yeah, Star Wars allowed us to dream, while Star Trek allowed us to think." Everyone was like, "Whoa, you're right!"

I didn't mean to be profound, but it came out that way, and it's true. I grew up in the late 1970s and early 80s with two versions of Sci-Fi, the cerebral like Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage, Forbidden Planet, etc. and the fantastical Star Wars, Buck Rogers, Battle Star Galactica, etc. The two major influences were Star Trek and Star Wars, of course. I've blogged before on how the original Star Trek set my moral compass and how it's a pretty good foundation to build our lives upon morally and philosophically. Trust me, the world would be a better place if we lived our lives by Star Trekian code.

But then there is Star Wars, which expanded our imagination and made us wonder. There is so much more thrills and excitement we can have and we are only limited by our imaginations. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, anything is possible.

Seven Months

As this summer flies by and I'm busy with work and doing revisions to go back on submission with LISTEN, it's easy to forget little milestones and, being a bad daddy, I nearly forgot an important one today.  Seven months ago today my daughter Elena was born.  Happy 7th Month Birthday!!!

One of the main reasons I almost forgot it is because this has been a laid back week compared to last week.  On Saturday, August 4th we celebrated our son Alex's 7th birthday with a big party at our house. A lot of family and friends, a lot of games for the kids, a lot of food for everyone, and a lot of booze for the adults.  It took me a day to recouperate after that one. But, unfortunately, little Elena got sick the day after the party.  We thought it was just a fever and related crankiness, but a day later her fever spiked and wouldn't drop so we rushed her to the hospital.

My poor daughter was suffering from coxsackie A virus.  It was scary at the hospital and until the doctors figured out what was ailing her, but once they did it was relief.  When you start thinking about blood diseases and leukemia it is absolutely frightening, and she had showed some signs of that early.  But all turned out well.  She stood in the hospital for three days with my trooper wife spending the nights there and me with them during the day. By late in the week she was fever free and back home with her appetite back and her relentless spirit to crawl everywhere no matter the obstacle. 

Back to normal and it feels great. So normal that I almost forgot the importance of today. I love you, Elena.  Happy 7th Month Birthday!!!

Dog Days of Summer

Chalk this one up to the old saying, "you learn something new every day." I was originally going to write a blog post opening with some thing along the lines of, "In these dog days of summer ..." and then realized, I wasn't sure when the dog days actually are.  I just thought of it has some time in late July through August when it's really hot and humid. The paradoxical time when summer seems to drag because of the heat and when summer seems to have rushed by because you realize September is right around the corner. So wanting to find the answer as to when the Dog Days are, I, of course, researched it.

When is not nearly as fascinating as how the term "Dog Days" came about.  I thought it was something recent, but oh, no.  The term "Dog Days" has existed since Ancient Roman times.  Yep, the Romans gave something else that still exists.  The Romans associated the hot weather with the star, Sirius, the Dog Star, named as such because it is the largets star in the constellation Canis Major, aka Large Dog.

For the Ancient Romans, the Dog Days ran from July 24 to August 24. In later times, the period was pushed back or pushed up, depending on the culture or what calendar was used.  I like the Roman version, even if we account for the fact that we use the Gregorian rather than Julian calendar today.  Late July through August seems about right.