Screen Shots

With the semester over and the lab shutting down, Samantha headed off to Italy to spend the summer with Dave. She did this with her parents’ full blessing, as they’re in the middle of an intense political campaign and they don’t need any genetic weirdness compounding things.
Samantha left the dodos in the care of Rupert, and then tried to entice her cat Palmtop into coming along since there would be no one to tend for her at home.  Palmtop reluctantly agreed, but only under the condition that she be spared crossing the Atlantic in a pet carrier in the cargo hold. Samantha turned her into a human, as she had been as a bridesmaid at Brenda Scrim’s wedding, and as a roadie for Bambi on her first concert tour.
Palmtop didn’t notice back then, but during the long flight it finally occurred to her that as a fourteen-year-old feline she should have become an elderly human. Yet, she appeared to be no more than thirty. Samantha came clean.  Years ago, worried about losing her the way Dave had lost Clive the poodle, she used Remora’s long-lived mermaid DNA to extend Palmtop’s lifespan to be about as long as Samantha’s normal human length.
Palmtop was not amused, as this was all done without her consent. A loud argument ensued on the plane, but I doubt the other passengers took it seriously.   They were probably more worried about the pilot being unstable.

Happy Day After Cinco de Mayo!  For those of you with hangovers, read this very quietly.
It seems that whenever Samantha encounters a seemingly insurmountable obstacle, she finds a way around, over or through it.  When she realized that the posts of college professor and dorm resident advisor are mutually exclusive, it appeared that she would have to give up the role to which she’d grown so accustomed. That prospect genuinely pained her, and as it turned out she was able to hold on to it.
The key was that the dorm is owned by Bambi, who bought it in foreclosure from the university with the royalties from her first hit single.  Because the university only rents the building from Samantha’s friend, Samantha has a wide latitude of options.
Basically, when she was told to choose her professorial office space, she selected the dorm’s front desk. She’ll be an R.A. in everything but name, continuing her dorm duties, and also being more available to students than any professor on campus.
Win-win-win.

Samantha’s made her decision for a grad assistant, and apparently it wasn’t that hard. One   candidate was head and shoulders over the rest, and he was given the post. I don’t know that much about him as yet, so further details will have to wait.
A more pressing concern was raised by Palmtop, who correctly pointed out the very few professors (even newly-minted ones like Samantha) retain positions as  dorm resident advisors.  Samantha was genuinely shocked at the revelation; she had settled so comfortably into the job that she never really gave consideration to it coming to an end. Indeed, it suits her nature amazingly well. Her natural impulses to be caring and nurturing are given full rein, even this year when it ceased to be an all-female dorm and guys complicated things. She rose to the occasion.
Now, that occasion seems to have passed. I don’t know what she’s going to do or what other arrangements she’ll have to make.  It appears that she’ll have to leave a very important part of her identity behind.

Even with the challenge of having a newborn in the house, Ming is valiantly editing the film she shot last year of her pregnancy and delivery. She’s using Final Cut Pro on her Mac to do the heavy lifting. She reports that the timing is perfect for her due to the sudden focus on women’s choice into the political process.  While she doesn’t intend for it to be a polemic, she does want it to be statement in favor of protecting hard-won rights against those who would roll them back to the 1950s. Or beyond.
Samantha, meanwhile, is faced with the challenge of hiring a grad assistant for when she assumes the post of professor in the fall.  Although she has displayed unquestioned leadership skills among her group of friends, actual authority makes her uncomfortable.  (Oddly, she’s close to her mother, who running for Governor!) She’s begun the job search process and set out the credentials she’s looking for,  Now she’s nervously wondering who’s going to show up.

Samantha loves her friends and would move heaven and earth on their behalf (I know this personally.) but sometimes they can get on her nerves. Case in point: Rupert this week.
Samantha’s prowess at genetic manipulation is something she takes very seriously. She’s deliberately held back her career advancement simply because she doesn’t believe the human race is ready for that kind of power. Her labmates Rupert and Rosalind continually prove the validity of that viewpoint.
They regard these powers with dangerous disregard. The latest is that Rupert transformed himself into a turtle, just because he’s forgotten his lab coat.
Then something new occurred. The transformation began to alter his personality, and not in a good way. Samantha got him to change back and he was back to his old self, but this is a development she’ll have to watch for in the future. If one takes on the persona of the species they morph into, they could be changed forever.
I asked Samantha (via Skype) if that gave Rupert and Rosalind a greater respect for her work and its potential consequences. Then two butterflies flitted past the monitor.
Samantha just sighed, and went after them with a net.

Happy Easter and Passover!
Last week I reported on the new dodo that a team at Stanford is trying to recreate in order to replicate Samantha’s process. That’s just down the road from us in San Jose.
Nothing new on that, but I do have updates on two other newborns; these of the human variety. Namely, Luis and Jenny’s daughter Candide and Don and Ming’s son Clay.
They were both born at midnight on New Year’s, and they’ve been somehow linked ever since.  When they’re apart they’re calm and even-tempered, but when they’re in the same room a change comes over them. They become agitated, as if being spurred on by some unseen force.
They’re both at least a month ahead of standard baby development, which would normally delight the parents except that it’s running them ragged. Those of us who aren’t parents, like Marcie and I and Samantha and Dave, are taking note.
Speaking of Marcie, she’s training for the next WNBA season which will be starting on May 18,

Grand claims require even grander proof, so when Samantha announced to the world that she had successfully reintroduced the long-extinct dodo species into the modern world via cloning, it was inevitable that others would try to replicate the feat.
A team at Stanford was able to obtain dodo DNA from the same sample that Samantha used. (There’s precious little left, BTW.)  Samantha hopes that they’ll succeed, which would validate her accomplishment.  Even now there are those who believe it’s a hoax; they should what Samantha can *really* do with a gene sequence!
The baby dodo (who’s not really a baby anymore; he’s hit puberty) took an immediate interest.  Samantha had promised earlier to change him into an eagle so he’d have mating partners, but this changes everything.  He may want to stay a dodo after all.  The caveat is that all of the dodos have come from a single surviving sample, so even if the dodo species is revived inbreeding will be a factor.  That can’t be helped.
It’ll take about a year for the Stanford team to confirm its results. I know that Samantha’s dodo is counting the days.

Even though the election is well over seven months away, Jeanine Argus and her opponent are already eyeing each other. Samantha’s Mom has some powerful advantages; she’s the hand-picked successor of a popular governor, she’s established a favorable reputation in her own right in the state senate, and she’s viewed as a reformer.  On the other hand, her opponent has unlimited PAC money to throw negative ads at her. Meanwhile, most of her funding comes from donors giving $20 or less.
She’s going to be playing a lot of defense in the campaign, responding immediately to attacks before the end of that day’s news cycle.  Her manager Brenda Scrim has put together a finely-tuned staff using the organizational skills of, well, a Border collie.
Right now the people paying attention to all this are the statewide media and the political junkies. Since the state had its primary a few weeks ago the national reporters have moved on, so  the main order of business is to lay the groundwork for the fall.
I believe the other goal is to keep Samantha and her weirdness out of the country as much as possible.

Samantha’s back home after spending Spring Break with Dave; Florence is becoming her home away from home.  Of course, there are people who’d like it to simply be her home.
This visit was dominated by Samantha’s family history on her mother’s side. It seems that there was a prior connection to Tuscany in her background, as her grandparents met in the most challenging circumstances imaginable: World War II.
Her grandfather was a member of one of the honored units in the U.S. military; the all-African-American 92nd infantry division. During the battle to penetrate the German Gothic Line he suffered severe injuries in a mortar attack. A local woman discovered him in the nick of time and delivered him to a field hospital where Samantha’s grandmother was a nurse. Thanks to the quick action of the medical staff, he survived.
Back home in the States they were wed and had a single daughter, Jeanine. He lived into the mid-sixties, and Samantha’s grandmother never remarried.
Samantha didn’t seem to tell me everything about what occurred, which leads me to believe that Maria was somehow involved.

As soon as class let out for Spring Break, Samantha was on a flight to Italy. Of course, with her Ph.D in hand Samantha doesn’t take any more classes, but she teaches them. Not only that, as the dorm R.A. she has to wait until her charges have left the building before she can head off.
Dave was waiting for her at the Rome airport, and he drove her up to Florence where she and Maria watched him lead his team, Pallacanestro Firenze, to another victory. He had 23 assists and only six points (all on free throws).  Just like his stat line back in college.
Afterwards he drove Samantha to his home in nearby Vinci.  It was just the two of them…and Samantha’s Grandma appearing in reflections. Of course Samantha could have created instant privacy by simply removing the ring that makes the connection between them, but I believe all three individuals preferred that she be there.
Of course, she has her own agenda: getting the two of them to overcome their inertia and get married. At least they’ve set a deadline…for at most five years from now.
And it’s not like Grandma is going anywhere.