Meyer-Kaiser lab

"When you think all is forsaken Listen to me now You need never feel broken again Sometimes darkness can show you the light" - "The Light" by Disturbed Dear friends, it is December 18th, just days away from the darkest day of the year. I can't help but think of my friends at higher latitude in Europe and the Arctic, who have even less light than me right now. I think spending last winter in Norway has actually given me a bit of a different perspective - somehow, the days at 43 N don't seem so short this year. We're getting close to the winter solstice, but I'm finding ways to focus on the light. Christmas lights and a star from my friend in Germany adorn a doorway in my apartment. For starters, I received an early Christmas gift from a good friend in Germany this week. She sent me a string of lights and a paper lantern in the shape of a star, with a note saying "Friends are like stars - you don't always see them, but they're ...

"In restless streets I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone 'Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night And touched the sound of silence." - "The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel The song quoted above has been on my mind for the past couple days, because it's shown up in my social media multiple times and in a few different forms. The lyrics themselves speak to the importance of music, and the haunting melody has a tendency to hang around in one's temporal lobes. If you're interested, I recommend the cover by Disturbed, found here . Besides just the song, I've been listening the sound of silence for much of the past few days. The Oregon coast is strangely quiet now that the torrential rains have stopped - no more raindrops pounding the window, no more wind shaking the walls. My fellow OIMBers are leaving campus one by ...

Ah, the life of the traveling scientist. What a crazy life it is. A couple months ago, my dear friend, Stefanie, announced to me that she had been accepted to present her research at a conference in San Francisco. Stefanie lives in the Netherlands, so the trip to San Francisco was already a long one, crossing an ocean and a whole continent. Since she was already flying halfway around the world for the conference, she decided to take advantage of the opportunity and hop across the Pacific to see Hawaii while she was at it. (Yes, this is how we crazy people think.) She started looking into plane tickets and asked if I wanted to meet up while she was on my side of the world. Um, yes. Stefanie and I on Waikiki Beach. I spent the last few days in Honolulu with Stefanie, and for the most part, we were proper tourists. We swam in the salty Pacific and dried out on the beach. We saw the Hawaii state capitol building, Iolani Palace, and Chinatown. We toured Pearl Harbor on the anniver...

"Merciless though the wind takes hold with freezing cold Come, my friend, sit with me; take council in the warmth Torrents wash away everything Raindrops flowing all around" - "Torrents" by Asgeir I'm writing this post at my kitchen table in Coos Bay. I just finished editing a term paper for my brother (he's an undergrad), and I'm listening to the rain fall outside. Torrents of rain have been falling on the Oregon coast all week, turning my world into a dark, wet mess. An encrusting sponge on a dropstone I collected in 2012. This particular stone is about the size of the human hand. It's true what they say, you know: when it rains, it pours. As the world outside has tried to keep itself from drowning, I've been piled up with papers, projects, and plans. I set the shipwreck project aside for a while, mostly because I'm waiting on comments from my co-authors on my latest manuscript draft. In the meantime, I've turned my atten...

This past Thursday was Thanksgiving in the United States, so I drove north to spend the holiday with friends. I've known the Hansens since they first moved to the coast and attended my church in Coos Bay, and they've since become my surrogate Oregon family. I spent the day alternating between adult conversation and playing with the kids - an intelligent but shy 8-year-old and a chatterbox toddler. We played violin duets. We played Monopoly . We played "Chase the Squealing Child and Pretend You're Too Slow to Catch Him." I wasn't the only Thanksgiving guest, so I also got to know some new friends. Another family that attends the Hansens' church, one of Lee's colleagues. Remarkably, we all fit around the same table, even the kids, and it was a great time to share food, share love, share our lives. I'm thankful for the Hansens and for the community they're at the center of. They make Oregon feel like home.

Laptop. Check. Notebook. Check. Sack lunch. Check. Stack of CDs. Check. Full tank of gas. Check. Standing next to my car, I ran through the list one last time to make sure I had everything. It was late morning, and I was driving up to UO's main campus in Eugene to meet with a professor. She's a member of my advisory committee, and even though she's not a biologist, she's a statistical wizard and a great teacher. I needed her help with analyzing some data, so we had agreed to meet today. Every time I'm on main campus, I have mixed feelings about it. I mean, I love college campuses, and UO has a particularly beautiful one. The brick buildings, the public bulletin boards, the throngs of students in rain boots and North Face - there's a certain energy that pervades the campus. What bugs me about main campus is largely circumstantial. I always have to drive there, so I end up navigating the narrow, one-way roads of the university district with a quickened pul...

Friends, the video above contains my latest musical composition, entitled "The encroaching darkness." It's meant to represent the shortening days during my last weeks in Svalbard in October, and it serves as the fifth movement in my "Arctic" violin concerto. To be honest, it's not really fair to call it a whole movement, because it's only a minute and a half long and is missing the solo violin part. I really meant it just as an interlude, a moment of pause for the soloist between the other athletic movements of the concerto. If the video above doesn't play for you, try this link . If you're interested in the other movements of the concerto, find them here: I. Longyearbyen             Blog link           YouTube link II. Molloy                       Blog link           YouTube link III. Midnight Sun           Blog link...