Brief Spring Update

It has been a few months since I last posted, and I am afraid that I don't have much time to do an exhaustive, lengthy post. Nevertheless, I figured that posting something was better than nothing, so below are a few photos and stories of some events that have happened in the last few months of my life.

Susannah and I stand in front of the small
house where Edgar Allan Poe lived while a
resident of Baltimore

For my birthday, Susannah came down from New York City to help me celebrate my quarter century of life on this planet. We had a great couple of days that included walking all around Baltimore ("urban hiking," as Susannah and I call it) and eating some delicious food at my favorite restaurant in Baltimore, a delicious Afghani place called The Helmand. We spent one entire day visiting two museums, one an old house where Edgar Allan Poe used to live in Baltimore that has now been converted into a museum in his honor, and the other a museum of African American history. Because Edgar Allan Poe and I share a birthday (and a birth state, in addition to some other uncanny similarities), it felt appropriate to pay homage to him by visiting both his living quarters and grave on his and my birthday. The Reginald Lewis Museum of African American History and Culture was something that appealed to both Susannah and me because of how motivational we find the Civil Rights Movement to be and how much we are both interested in addressing some of the disparities and concerns that still afflict black Americans to a greater extent than their white counterparts. Susannah and I were both so impressed with the museum--the exhibits were beautiful and comprehensive, the building itself was open, spacious, and naturally-lit, and the entire experience was inspirational. Two of my favorite exhibits included one featuring the contributions of black Americans to the fields of medicine and healthcare (no surprise there!) and one in which high school students from Baltimore schools painted pictures inspired by the museum. The one that won the award took my breath away and made me tear up. It shows three prominent figures in black American history and then, on the right as though in a successive chain with his predecessors, a self-portrait of the artist himself. How beautiful. I love that he believes in himself and his people enough that he sees how he is their descendant and how he, too, is destined for great things. Isn't that incredible? How different would the world be if we all saw ourselves as inheritors of great privilege and great responsibility from the amazing people who came before us?



I wish I could meet the young man who painted this and tell
him how much it moved me.

Keeping this blog has taught me how obsessed with architecture I am since I so often feel compelled to photograph and then show others random buildings that I see that I find beautiful. Discovering this passion of mine has been exciting, and I'm hoping one day that I can take a course or two in the art of architecture to begin to put words and concepts to the styles that I find beautiful. Until then, I will just show you things that stuck out to me. Below are photos of my three favorite churches (architecturally speaking) in Baltimore. I got the chance to bike past all three of them (within a block or so) over the month of January as I volunteered in the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Baltimore truly has some gems, doesn't it?

Much else has happened in my life, but a lot of it is simply schoolwork and my relationships with my classmates. School has been interesting and busy, as always. In physics, we have dedicated most of the semester to learning about electromagnetism. Organic chemistry has mostly concerned itself with the chemical reactions of benzene rings and carbonyl-containing compounds so far, though we begin our study of biochemistry (polypeptides, carbohydrates, and enzymes) next week. Biology has covered everything from phylogenetics to plant physiology. And all of my lab classes have been good, especially biology lab, which has been mostly dissections, and organic chemistry lab, which is probably my favorite class. (We did a two-step synthesis of acetylsalicylic acid, commonly known as aspirin, in our first two labs. We've done a transesterification reaction starting with benzaldehyde, the molecule responsible for the pleasant smell of almond extract, an extraction of caffeine from crude tea leaves, a synthesis of banana-smelling oil last week, and many other fascinating experiments using cool laboratory techniques and equipment!) All in all, I have already learned a bunch this semester. And my relationships with my classmates, particularly my closest friends, have grown. Tim and I have grown even closer, for example. We've had some deep talks and a whole lot of even deeper belly laughter in between. We've also spent a lot of time together covering the dry-erase walls of the library's study rooms in reaction mechanisms and synthetic pathways for organic chemistry, as Tim is shown doing below. I don't know what I'd do without him and Anna in this program.

Tim stands proudly beneath a wall showing you just about
everything you can do to a ketone, aldehyde, ester,
carboxylic acid, acyl chloride, and other organic molecules!

That's all for now, folks. It's bed time for me. I think about you all often and hope you all are enjoying your journeys along the pathway of life!