I'm too negative here.
It is because I am too cynical.
Click here if you want to see me embark on my Oprah journey.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Leaning Tower of Awesome
He asked me if I knew what was in Italy.
I played dumb.
So he told me about a building that is falling over. He whipped out his illustration of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He didn't know its name. But now he does. My husband just took him on an internet adventure to teach him about the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I asked him why he thought caused the lean. He answered, "Probably an earthquake!" Not accurate, but not outlandish.
This stuff is the best part of parenting.
I played dumb.
So he told me about a building that is falling over. He whipped out his illustration of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He didn't know its name. But now he does. My husband just took him on an internet adventure to teach him about the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I asked him why he thought caused the lean. He answered, "Probably an earthquake!" Not accurate, but not outlandish.
This stuff is the best part of parenting.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Catching Up or Leading the Way
I'm reading a book called Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization.
My son wanting me to play video games with him wondered what book was getting in the way of his video game bonding time with his Mama. Before I start to look like a selfish mama, I need to point out that I had just finished reading yet another chapter of Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief aloud to him.
I showed him the title and he said: "How you it be about catching up AND leading the way. That's impossible."
I pointed to the word "or" which seemed to clarify things. I then told him that the book was about American Education during our time of globalization. I do speak like this to my kid. Been doing it his whole life. Hasn't hurt him yet.
I then asked him what he thought about American education. I asked him if America is catching up or leading the way.
To which he quickly replied matter-of-factly, "Catching up!"
Being me, I asked for a bit of elaboration.
Being him, he delivered. He explained in a feverish tsunami of words that his teacher said that American is only 200 years old and that there are countries that are 500 years old or 1000 years old and that America is still catching up. There were more iterations and words like weirdish thrown in for good measure.
I didn't correct him and teach him that American innovation is what makes us great and that other countries attempt to catch up with us. I didn't scare him by telling him that the centralization and standardization of education is what will ultimately stifle that innovation. I didn't tell him the history of graphite and its role in the history of 20th century American education. I won't ruin his childhood with facts and realities.
But I'd like to think that I am preparing him for the complexity of reality by talking with him about it in the first place, by making him feel like his opinion matters no matter how adorable it is.
My son wanting me to play video games with him wondered what book was getting in the way of his video game bonding time with his Mama. Before I start to look like a selfish mama, I need to point out that I had just finished reading yet another chapter of Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief aloud to him.
I showed him the title and he said: "How you it be about catching up AND leading the way. That's impossible."
I pointed to the word "or" which seemed to clarify things. I then told him that the book was about American Education during our time of globalization. I do speak like this to my kid. Been doing it his whole life. Hasn't hurt him yet.
I then asked him what he thought about American education. I asked him if America is catching up or leading the way.
To which he quickly replied matter-of-factly, "Catching up!"
Being me, I asked for a bit of elaboration.
Being him, he delivered. He explained in a feverish tsunami of words that his teacher said that American is only 200 years old and that there are countries that are 500 years old or 1000 years old and that America is still catching up. There were more iterations and words like weirdish thrown in for good measure.
I didn't correct him and teach him that American innovation is what makes us great and that other countries attempt to catch up with us. I didn't scare him by telling him that the centralization and standardization of education is what will ultimately stifle that innovation. I didn't tell him the history of graphite and its role in the history of 20th century American education. I won't ruin his childhood with facts and realities.
But I'd like to think that I am preparing him for the complexity of reality by talking with him about it in the first place, by making him feel like his opinion matters no matter how adorable it is.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
PROJECTS!
Okay.
The Fellowship of the Word Processor that I've been involved with over the past couple of weeks has SHOWN me the way. I have to write. Daily.
So...I am going to extend that idea to photography. I need to take photos every day. Not just snapshots, but composed photographs.
Plan: Project 365--a photo a day for a year. I'm also going to write about each photo a bit.
Plan: Self Portrait 52--a self-portrait a week for a year. And I'm going to write about it.
Isn't this exciting?
I just have to find a way to make Blogger only allow certain people to view photos. I'm trying to go incognita here.
The Fellowship of the Word Processor that I've been involved with over the past couple of weeks has SHOWN me the way. I have to write. Daily.
So...I am going to extend that idea to photography. I need to take photos every day. Not just snapshots, but composed photographs.
Plan: Project 365--a photo a day for a year. I'm also going to write about each photo a bit.
Plan: Self Portrait 52--a self-portrait a week for a year. And I'm going to write about it.
Isn't this exciting?
I just have to find a way to make Blogger only allow certain people to view photos. I'm trying to go incognita here.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Mad Women
I've recently discovered the AMC series Mad Men. The series is a lot like visiting another country. Everything is strangely familiar yet maddeningly foreign in a way which makes you homesick for even some of the more hellish aspects of home.
When I first started watching the series, I was shocked by the abundance of cigarette smoke and abundance of misogyny--which is arguably more cancerous on a figurative level.
My grandmother was valedictorian of her high school class. I didn't know this until I graduated as one of the valedictorians of my own high school class. Like most women of her generation, she rarely speaks of herself having been raised to put others before her. After her graduation, my grandmother went to secretary school and became a secretary working in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Two generations later, my reward for my diligence and intelligence is a near free ride to UCLA, one of the top public universities in the country. I can't help but wonder what my grandmother thought about her eldest granddaughter's post high school opportunities. She would probably shake her head in a bemused wonder at my generation predilection for public introspection in blogs like these. Two generations and two worlds apart.
I can't help but admire my grandmother for being a woman during this time period. It doesn't matter which character she was most like. She could have been a Peggy, or a Joan, or a Betty.
Again, it doesn't matter. She had to be quiet.
The only thing that I could possibly envy in the life of Mrs. Don Draper from Mad Men would be elements of her wardrobe. And those dresses would never be worth her the life she leads.
Named Elizabeth, often called Betty, nicknamed Birdie by her husband, Mrs. Don Draper is everyone and no one at the same time. She quietly trembles, gossips softly with an air of malicious contempt about a new addition to the neighborhood with her gal pals, calmly attends therapy sessions with an analyst who provides reports to her husband behind her back, and serves fish sticks with a smile all while smoking.
She seems incredibly alone and isolated. Fashionable--but alone.
In one episode she is given an opportunity to re-enter a career in modeling, but she does not realize that she is only being used to get her husband to move to competing ad agency. So when he doesn't make the move, she is told that they are going to go for someone with more of an Audrey Hepburn look. Being more of a Grace Kelly, Betty is clearly bothered by the rejection, but like all good women of the time seems to sweep that sadness/frustration under a rug.
Her chance out of suburbia, albeit to be a model and the epitome of objectification, is extinguished.
The beginning of the episode featured the neighbor's homing pigeons. I didn't need my degree in American Literature and Culture to tell you that those birds would return!
You can destroy a bird's symbolic value with a cage or with a gun. The writers of the show apparently like guns more (I'm not just talking about Chekhov's Gun*), especially guns in the hands of Grace Kellyesque suburban housewives wearing their whisper thin nighties in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of their manicured back yards. She is smoking a cigarette and aiming at the neighbor's homing pigeons. Plot wise, she seems to be getting revenge on her neighbor for threatening to murder her children's dog for going after the precious pigeons. Symbolically, she is trying to bring down the Birdies. If she can't be free, why should they?
I thought of that scene today as I drove home with a screaming five year old in the backseat of my care after a particularly frustrating day at work.
You might think that I might write about the illusory nature of freedom here. But it would be a lie (and--frankly--a bit of a cliche) to characterize freedom as an illusion. We have the freedom to change our lives; we just don't have an easy time doing it. Instead of dealing with the struggle, we opine and whine about how freedom is a joke or an illusion or only for the rich. Betty could change her life, but it would be very, very, very difficult.
What I actually thought about was how fortunate I am to be a woman and a mother today. I have a career and a family. Both carry frustrations. But today is it socially acceptable to vent. Today I can sit down and compose multiple paragraphs about a fictional television show set in the past as a way for me to work out my frustrations about my current reality. My grandmother had no such outlets. Neither did Betty Draper, and she went a wee bit crazy in her backyard.
To conclude: Today was a bad day, but I didn't end up clad in a nightie smoking a cigarette and shooting at pigeons. My bad day was not really that bad of a day.
It is all about perspective. I'm not trapped.
*Do I get points for having a degree in American Literature yet still knowing about Chekhov's gun?
When I first started watching the series, I was shocked by the abundance of cigarette smoke and abundance of misogyny--which is arguably more cancerous on a figurative level.
My grandmother was valedictorian of her high school class. I didn't know this until I graduated as one of the valedictorians of my own high school class. Like most women of her generation, she rarely speaks of herself having been raised to put others before her. After her graduation, my grandmother went to secretary school and became a secretary working in Los Angeles in the 1950s. Two generations later, my reward for my diligence and intelligence is a near free ride to UCLA, one of the top public universities in the country. I can't help but wonder what my grandmother thought about her eldest granddaughter's post high school opportunities. She would probably shake her head in a bemused wonder at my generation predilection for public introspection in blogs like these. Two generations and two worlds apart.
I can't help but admire my grandmother for being a woman during this time period. It doesn't matter which character she was most like. She could have been a Peggy, or a Joan, or a Betty.
Again, it doesn't matter. She had to be quiet.
The only thing that I could possibly envy in the life of Mrs. Don Draper from Mad Men would be elements of her wardrobe. And those dresses would never be worth her the life she leads.
Named Elizabeth, often called Betty, nicknamed Birdie by her husband, Mrs. Don Draper is everyone and no one at the same time. She quietly trembles, gossips softly with an air of malicious contempt about a new addition to the neighborhood with her gal pals, calmly attends therapy sessions with an analyst who provides reports to her husband behind her back, and serves fish sticks with a smile all while smoking.
She seems incredibly alone and isolated. Fashionable--but alone.
In one episode she is given an opportunity to re-enter a career in modeling, but she does not realize that she is only being used to get her husband to move to competing ad agency. So when he doesn't make the move, she is told that they are going to go for someone with more of an Audrey Hepburn look. Being more of a Grace Kelly, Betty is clearly bothered by the rejection, but like all good women of the time seems to sweep that sadness/frustration under a rug.
Her chance out of suburbia, albeit to be a model and the epitome of objectification, is extinguished.
The beginning of the episode featured the neighbor's homing pigeons. I didn't need my degree in American Literature and Culture to tell you that those birds would return!
You can destroy a bird's symbolic value with a cage or with a gun. The writers of the show apparently like guns more (I'm not just talking about Chekhov's Gun*), especially guns in the hands of Grace Kellyesque suburban housewives wearing their whisper thin nighties in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of their manicured back yards. She is smoking a cigarette and aiming at the neighbor's homing pigeons. Plot wise, she seems to be getting revenge on her neighbor for threatening to murder her children's dog for going after the precious pigeons. Symbolically, she is trying to bring down the Birdies. If she can't be free, why should they?
I thought of that scene today as I drove home with a screaming five year old in the backseat of my care after a particularly frustrating day at work.
You might think that I might write about the illusory nature of freedom here. But it would be a lie (and--frankly--a bit of a cliche) to characterize freedom as an illusion. We have the freedom to change our lives; we just don't have an easy time doing it. Instead of dealing with the struggle, we opine and whine about how freedom is a joke or an illusion or only for the rich. Betty could change her life, but it would be very, very, very difficult.
What I actually thought about was how fortunate I am to be a woman and a mother today. I have a career and a family. Both carry frustrations. But today is it socially acceptable to vent. Today I can sit down and compose multiple paragraphs about a fictional television show set in the past as a way for me to work out my frustrations about my current reality. My grandmother had no such outlets. Neither did Betty Draper, and she went a wee bit crazy in her backyard.
To conclude: Today was a bad day, but I didn't end up clad in a nightie smoking a cigarette and shooting at pigeons. My bad day was not really that bad of a day.
It is all about perspective. I'm not trapped.
*Do I get points for having a degree in American Literature yet still knowing about Chekhov's gun?
Saturday, March 21, 2009
No More "Just in Case" Thinking
For too long, I've operated under the "just in case" mentality. I should buy these shoes just in case I have an opportunity to wear them (and ::shocker:: I rarely do have the opportunity). I should buy these because they are on sale now just in case they aren't on sale when I need them (and ::shocker:: I rarely need them). I should keep these books just in case I want to read them again (and ::shocker:: I don't).
For awhile now I have been moving away from this mentality. I know that it is connected with the running in a way.
Running has changed me significantly.
I now have patience. Transformations take time. I can't expect instant gratification or immediate rewards. This patience has allowed to me to see my own power. So many people quickly say that they can't do something because they can't see immediate results. I know that I can do a great many things if I have the time. I once said that I'd never weigh what I weighed when I got married again. I thought it was a lost cause. Now I weigh was I weighed when I was sixteen.
When my current half-marathon training initially called for a tempo run or some speedwork, I was convinced that I couldn't maintain those paces for those distances. But I did. I can do more than I realize.
Every pound that is lost, every mile that is logged, every run that is a little bit faster is just proof that I am powerful and competent in a world where chaos and incompetence appearing to reign supreme gives most of us the feeling of being powerless.
I have self-confidence in myself. I don't need to fear a world of scarcity. I don't need stuff "just in case" something horrible happens. I can make life work. I'm resourceful and intelligent.
Letting go of the "just in case" mentality is not just about the tangible stuff. I don't need to stockpile social capital by being false and fake "just in case" I'll need the person later on. I do no one any favors by kowtowing to ineptitude or enabling others to develop delusions of grandeur just to build social capital.
And I just realized (literally just realized) that I can teach my son to have faith in himself he won't have to live life "just in case." I must teach by modeling it.
(By the way--I blame O Magazine and one of its contributors for giving me the language to discuss what I've noticed about me.)
For awhile now I have been moving away from this mentality. I know that it is connected with the running in a way.
Running has changed me significantly.
I now have patience. Transformations take time. I can't expect instant gratification or immediate rewards. This patience has allowed to me to see my own power. So many people quickly say that they can't do something because they can't see immediate results. I know that I can do a great many things if I have the time. I once said that I'd never weigh what I weighed when I got married again. I thought it was a lost cause. Now I weigh was I weighed when I was sixteen.
When my current half-marathon training initially called for a tempo run or some speedwork, I was convinced that I couldn't maintain those paces for those distances. But I did. I can do more than I realize.
Every pound that is lost, every mile that is logged, every run that is a little bit faster is just proof that I am powerful and competent in a world where chaos and incompetence appearing to reign supreme gives most of us the feeling of being powerless.
I have self-confidence in myself. I don't need to fear a world of scarcity. I don't need stuff "just in case" something horrible happens. I can make life work. I'm resourceful and intelligent.
Letting go of the "just in case" mentality is not just about the tangible stuff. I don't need to stockpile social capital by being false and fake "just in case" I'll need the person later on. I do no one any favors by kowtowing to ineptitude or enabling others to develop delusions of grandeur just to build social capital.
And I just realized (literally just realized) that I can teach my son to have faith in himself he won't have to live life "just in case." I must teach by modeling it.
(By the way--I blame O Magazine and one of its contributors for giving me the language to discuss what I've noticed about me.)
Friday, March 20, 2009
A Proper British Influence
My son is struggling to behave in Kindergarten. Kindergarten is a little bit fascist these days, so I am sympathetic to his outbursts, but I have to be the good parent and encourage proper suburban behavior.
My son's teacher does not have children of her own. This is a strike against her credibility in my eyes.
In our email discussions, she brings up the following:
I find this freaking hilarious. We don't believe in "very polite English dogs" here. We value things like Monty Python and Eddie Izzard. We value dry senses of humor and self-deprecation. Paddington Bear is not our style. Neither is Kipper--the poor man's Paddington bear.
But in all seriousness, she is trying to be nice about the whole thing. I can't blame her. If I taught 20 kids that age, I'd want them zoned out in a blissful ignorant contemplation of all things Kipper as well. It would probably make them easier to control.
My son's teacher does not have children of her own. This is a strike against her credibility in my eyes.
In our email discussions, she brings up the following:
I know he also likes to watch Sponge Bob. An alternative to Sponge Bob would be Kipper. I don’t know if you have heard of it but Kindergartners love the series. Kipper is a very polite English dog that teaches children about friendship skills, good behavior, among many other things. Perhaps you could research more about it and try it with him. It could become one of his incentives for good behavior.
I find this freaking hilarious. We don't believe in "very polite English dogs" here. We value things like Monty Python and Eddie Izzard. We value dry senses of humor and self-deprecation. Paddington Bear is not our style. Neither is Kipper--the poor man's Paddington bear.
But in all seriousness, she is trying to be nice about the whole thing. I can't blame her. If I taught 20 kids that age, I'd want them zoned out in a blissful ignorant contemplation of all things Kipper as well. It would probably make them easier to control.
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