Talking with Paul

I have an increasing awareness this week of the ways in which -- as Paul himself wrote-- we might "come to see disappearance not as loss but rather as transformation… joyful acknowledgement that what has lived beside us now lives inside us." I'm feeling, as he passes from his body, that he is living inside of me; certainly, each day brings new ideas--or, more likely, old ideas in new skins--that I find myself talking to him about, as I imagine his grinning responses.

This weekend it was Carl Zimmer's 6/26 Sunday Review essay about science (failing to!) correct its own mistakes: It's Science, but Not Necessarily Right--shades of all the discussion, on Serendip and beyond, about science as story revising. Earlier this week it was Benedict Carey's 6/23  Lives Restored: Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight --so much resonance here from all the work archived on Serendip regarding questions of mental health and diversity, in particular Paul's reflections on cultures of ability and a more recent student blog on seeing stigma. And so, endlessly, the conversation continues...