Do the Yak

Worst. Commute. Ever.

2011-02-12T11:57:00.001-05:00

I left work at about 5:10 p.m. last night, It usually takes an hour or a bit less until I'm walking in the door. Last night? Not so much. I stood on the platform in Kendall for about half an hour until a train came -- packed like sardine can, naturally -- and I literally couldn't get on. (Meanwhile, a train going the other way was sitting at the opposite platform with its doors open. For about 20 minutes.)

But my patience was rewarded, or so I thought, when 10 minutes later another train arrived, and I crammed myself into the last few cubic inches of space by the door -- which also satyed open as the minutes dragged by. I overheard another passenger say it had taken the train 45 minutes to get to where I was from Park Street (two stops). That's about when thought to myself, "Do I really want to be snuggling upright with my fellow commuters for an indefinite period in a train packed to tight that I can't even move my arms enough to get at my iPhone or magazine?" So I stepped out again on the platform and went back upstairs to call Ben, who had the brilliant (to me) though obvious (to him) suggestion to get a cab to Alewife where my car was parked.

I got some cash and walked through the Marriott to the taxi side, where about 15 other people were in line for a cab. I figured I'd be there for quite a while, but I got into about the fourth cab, sharing it with three other guys who were also going to Alewife. So then we had about 20 minutes of driving before I got into my car, turned on the ignition at 6:45 p.m., warmed up... and sat there. For an hour. Waiting to get out of the parking garage. No lie -- it was exactly 62 minutes before I cleared the last stoplight between the garage and Route 2. Total elapsed time, door to door: three hours.

It hasn't snowed in about two weeks, and this article says the disaster was due to signal problems. If I were in charge, I would've sent every MBTA employee into the Red Line tunnel with an old-fashioned railroad lamp, stationed them every 50 feet or so, and said, "OK, you're now signalmen. Get those goddamn trains running." Or just politely asked the drivers to proceed with caution and beep their horns when approaching an intersection. I mean, really. As one guy put it in the news article, "the MTBA is as reliable as Lindsay Lohan without an ankle bracelet."

You rock, you farshluggineh kids!

2011-02-10T21:34:00.000-05:00

Usually Ben has little interest in this blog, but recently he actually suggested that I post something here -- something that tells a profound and historic story in images. I'll let him take it from here...

Ronnie James Dio apparently is credited with inventing the heavy-metal hand sign that means "You rock!"

In doing a bit more digging on the web, the honor also seems to have been claimed for Gene Simmons and even John Lennon.

Won't they all be shocked to realize that the gesture was actually invented in Farmingdale, N.J., by Jewish chicken farmers.

The historically important moment was recently discovered in a photo taken on February 24, 1946 at the wedding of none other than my parents (Ed. note: from left to right, person #1 and #3; person #2 is unknown but looks somewhat menacing and/or drunk.)
Look carefully at this picture and you'll see one of the invited guests expressing his enthusiasm for the wedding, proudly proclaiming, "You rock, and du bist shoen!"

Did I leave the keys in the freezer AGAIN?

2011-01-31T16:02:00.000-05:00

The aging brain. Perhaps instead of a senior moment, you could call it a WTF moment (in which the W stands for "where")

By the way, we're supposed to get another foot and a half of snow in the next two days. If we hadn't bought that snowblower, we'd either be hundreds or even thousands into a plowing service, or dead of a heart attack about two weeks ago.

Can cancer treatment be funny? With enough farts, yes.

2011-01-03T15:26:00.005-05:00

This can be verified by reading Steam Me Up, Kid (the same genius who brought you the classic Adventure of a Lifetime, Now With More Lethargy).

* * *

First day back at work after Christmas vay-cay. We basically slept our asses off and watched a shitload of TV, because we're an active, on-the-go family like that. But not jusst any TV -- high-quality streaming Netflix (thanks for the Roku box, Chanukkah bunny!) including, most recently, "Grumpy Old Men" (Burgess Meredith as Jack Lemmon's horny old father: "Looks like he's taking old One-Eye to the optometrist!") and season 1 of "Soap," which I'd never seen. LOVE the young Billy Crystal, though I was expecting his character to be a cross-dresser or something more flamboyant -- based, I guess, on my vague memory at the time of how controversial the show was. Ironically, Wikipedia says it was attacked by conservative Christians (no surprise there) but also by gay groups who felt the character reinforced negative stereotypes because he wanted to get a sex-change operation. Actually he's neither self-hating nor stereotypically swishy, so the show was in fact ahead of its time. The scenes with Harold Gould in the hospital after Jodie tries to kill himself are very moving.

We even did a few things that involved not sitting on the couch. We went tubing for an hour and a half (the snow was slow and wet) and did some bowling and gaming at the arcade, where I DOMINATED at Centipede* (six of the ten high scores -- oh yeah!) but also burned my tongue on onion rings. Still hurts. Over parts of two days, Ben and I went through boxes of random papers that we'd lugged around through several house moves while the kids played an extended game that involved throwing everything in Becky's closet onto the floor and turning it into one big multi-level dollhouse. I should take a picture, right?

* I'm proud to admit that I went to the Maine state championships in Centipede when I was in college. Got a T-shirt and everything. Because I was all into studying and hoarding my quarters for laundry and giving to the less fortunate and stuff.

* * *

Bad acid trip or a hallucination by a drug-free but B-vitamin-deficient starvation victim in the subway on the way to work?

Ending alone

2010-12-29T13:51:00.001-05:00

This is where our next-door neighbor was fatally injured just before Christmas.

His death was initially mysterious but ultimately just sad, as was much of his life. The final tragedy was his fall (probably) from the slippery roof of his house where he had lived his whole life.

Early that evening, we saw an ambulance and police cars outside, but this wasn't a major concern because we'd seen emergency vehicles over there several times before. This is because Bill called them himself when the voices got too frightening. He took medication for his condition, but sometimes it stopped working, or maybe he stopped taking it. In the past, he went to a hospital for a couple of weeks to stabilize and then returned home.

That night, after the ambulance had taken him away, a policeman came over to ask if we knew of anyone who had a key to his house, which was "like a fortress," he said. That's because Bill was afraid people were trying to kill him. He had an assortment of locks and alarm systems which he often changed. No one seems to have a key to the latest set. Ben cleared his driveway yesterday in preparation for Bill's sister's arrival. We knew when she got here because of the police and fire truck outside their house probably for the last time; they put up ladders and gained entry using the same window through which Bill left his house for the last time.

We knew about Bill's situation when me moved here three and a half years ago, but we weren't concerned for our safety because by all accounts he was harmless. My father knew him for years and hired him to do tree work, had him over for dinner once or twice. When we bought this property, we introduced ourselves and explained our plans for demolishing the house and building a new one. He sometimes came over to chat and see how the work was going, though he was suspicious of the workmen, who he believed were whispering among themselves about plans to have him killed. Bill was never violent -- quite the contrary. His illness made him fear for his own life, plagued by imaginary threats from other neighbors, passing bicyclists, random people.

Despite all this, Bill had friends and a bit of a social life. He was apparently active in the church community, and he would help the elderly neighbor on the other side of us, snow-blowing his driveway and helping him up when he fell outside. The neighbor doesn't need that help any more because he went into an assisted living facility last winter. Bill lost another human connection a few weeks before that when an old friend in the neighborhood passed way.

Just recently, Bill's world got even smaller. The last time I saw him was when he rang our doorbell a couple of weeks ago on a frigid afternoon, asking if we would mind if he put an outgoing letter in our mailbox to be picked up. Of course not, I said, inviting him in for a cup of coffee. He explained that he had ridden his bike to the post office earlier that day to pick up his mail, which was delivered to a P.O. box, but had forgotten to mail this one thing.

I looked up, surprised. "Why would you ride your bike three miles in this weather?" He replied that he had lost his driver's license.

Not wanting to pry but mightily curious -- and almost certain that alcohol wasn't an issue -- I asked what had happened.

"Psychological problems," he said matter-of-factly. "The police were getting tired of me calling them and saying someone was following me."

As he talked about other things, running along the familiar course of speculating who was plotting to kill him, I thought of Bill living alone in his house since his father died a few years ago, his neighborhood friends dwindling, now unable to drive to buy groceries and other stuff he needed, or to get to church or eat at a restaurant. I asked him how he would manage, and he said there was some sort of short-term help from a mental health program run by the state or the town or something.

"Well, I'll let you get back to what you were doing," he said calmly, handing me the empty coffee cup.

I found out later that Meals on Wheels was supposed to start delivering to his house, but he died before that got underway. In our leafy suburb, he had no easy way to go anywhere even if it wasn't bitterly cold. And in what was perhaps the last straw, I learned that shortly before he died, his television has gone on the blink. Who among us would not be driven to despair?

A few days after his visit, Bill called and Ben answered the phone. It was something that didn't make sense, Ben said -- he was calling to see if we were all right because he saw a light on in our house. An hour or two later, he called again. This time I answered, and he said he was checking to see if we were still living here, because people in his basement were saying that we had moved away. One more call came that night. This time it was Ben who reassured him that everything was fine, despite the voices in Bill's back yard shouting that Ben had killed his family.

After all that, it wasn't terribly surprising when we saw the ambulance a few days later. Ben walked over to see what was going on, and one of the policemen said he would stop by later to ask us some questions. Meanwhile, another neighbor called to say the police were spending a lot of time walking around in Bill's front yard, which seemed odd.

Later that evening, the policeman came and asked us about a key to Bill's house, which of course we didn't have. We figured he wouldn't tell us much because of patient privacy laws, and we were right. He would say only that Bill was in a local hospital. He asked if we had seen the name of the locksmith on the side of the truck that had been in Bill's driveway earlier that day, but we hadn't. He asked if we'd noticed anything unusual lately, and we told him about the phone calls, explaining that we were friendly with Bill when we saw him and that we knew his history.

After the cop left, Ben called Bill's sister and left a message. At 11:00 that night, she called back. The ambulance we saw was not taking Bill to a mental hospital, but to an emergency room after he fell off his roof. He died of his injuries a little while before she called, maybe an hour or two after the cop had come to our door.

Only later did we piece together from relatives what happened. He had called his mental health advocate that afternoon, saying dogs or wolves were chasing him inside his house. Apparently he opened the window that led onto the garage roof and closed it behind him to escape. It had snowed a few days earlier, a dry snow that hadn't melted, so he slipped, most likely. The mental health advocate either sent police to his house after getting the alarming phone call, or they went after Bill set off his burglar alarm by opening the window. He survived the fall with broken ribs, punctured lungs and other injuries, and died that night on the operating table as they tried without success to stop the internal bleeding.

We still have questions. Could we have done something to prevent what happened that day? If it had happened on a weekend, perhaps he would have come over to warm up and get our help, but it was a weekday afternoon when we're all usually at work or school, and he hadn't seen Ben come home early after a doctor's appointment. Should we have called someone after Bill's series of phone calls a few days earlier? And

Bill lived independently and got along pretty well, at least until recently. When he told me about losing his driver's license, it occurred to me that we could help by bringing him groceries or meals, but I hesitated because I was afraid of getting drawn into a role of being his permanent caretaker. So I didn't offer anything other than the usual vague "if there's anything we can do to help" kind of thing.

Now the houses on both sides of us are empty. At some point I expect new neighbors will arrive, and we'll go over with a lasagna they can eat while they unpack, and we'll tell them to be sure to call or drop by and let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

Soy un perdedor

2010-12-21T12:42:00.002-05:00

A phrase from a Beck song... yeah, it's been a while. In the interest of updating this blog a bit more frequently, I'm trying to be less of a perfectionist (MUST! TAKE! PERFECT! PHOTO!) and just throw over whatever I've got, because perfection is for the gods, as I keep telling everyone.

So.

One of the highlights of this fall was getting new tires for my car. I researched various brands and features and finally settled on buying from National Tire Wholesale because they had the nicest floor display:

See, that wasn't so hard, was it Yak? Lather, rinse and repeat...

I have NO. SHAME.

2010-10-08T15:22:00.000-05:00

And the proof is on Bye Bye Pie. Yes, that's MY ass looming out of your screen. Am I famous yet?

They SAY the Titanic hit an iceberg, but inquiring minds know better.

Last Saturday we drove to Connecticut and back to see an exhibit of Titanic artifacts. I've seen some version once or twice before, but this was a chance for the kids to absorb some of my sick fascination with this event. The artifacts were fairly lame, though the pictures and text on the walls were quite good. Turns out there are six sets of goodies touring the world at any one time, so RMS Titanic Ltd. is raking it in.

This is not the Titanic story.

The real downside, however, was that the exhibit was at Foxwoods, which I have never had an interest in visiting, and this just confirms it. The first thing you notice when you walk is is the aroma of stale cigarette smoke, which kind of goes nicely with the hideous turquoise carpeting and other decor. There are several casinos, including one -- ONE! smoke-free casino, and of course tons of restaurants. It was mid-afternoon and lines were out the door at some buffet joint -- probably all-you-can-eat.

The average Foxwoods customer,
minus the oxygen prongs in the nose.

Which brings us to the other depressing thing about Foxwoods: the clientele are overwhelmingly (a) old, (b) fat, (c) trashy, (d) smoking their brains out, or (e) all of the above. I remember when I was about to visit Las Vegas on business in the late 1980s. I was primed for wretched excess, bad taste and buttloads of neon, but some part of me still harbored an image of Rat Pack-type people gambling -- well-dressed, throwing ill-gotten money around, boozy, tacky and faintly criminal. Man, was I disappointed. Most of the customers were doughy middle-aged folk on their big vacation from Iowa, sitting like zombies in front of the slot machines, smoking and mindlessly pulling the handle over and over, even if the rapid clink of coins meant they'd won something. It was colorful and gaudy, but after a few minutes I;'m saying to myself, how much fun can this be, really? Same clientele at Foxwoods, only it gets worse: no mechanical slots with spinning wheels going CHUNK-CHUNK-CHUNK (all digital, of course), and -- get this -- no clinky coins. No flashing the cash at all. Everything is done via "Dream Cards." You buy chips and cash in winnings with a stupid debit-card thing. SO. BOGUS.

Bathroom tissue, bedroom tissues and sleeping children

2010-09-22T14:18:00.000-05:00

Funny how running out of toilet paper brings out the poet in some people.

* * *

Things I noticed about the kids this morning:

1. Sarah was sleeping with just the top sheet over her (never a comforter, even in winter), curled up on her front with her butt in the air and knees almost to her chin. This position was extremely cute when she was a baby in a one-piece sleeper and it still is. I hated to wake her, especially since she hates waking up. Starting at about three months, she's fallen asleep quickly and slept soundly for at least 10 hours at night -- lucky us.Which reminds me of something that happened around the time she had just started to sit up on her own. One night I heard her on the baby monitor uncharacteristically fussing after we'd put her in her crib -- not outright crying, but still. Finally she was quiet. An hour or two later I went in to check on her and found her sound asleep sitting up in her crib, leaning over with her forehead resting on the crib bars. Seems she's sat up but couldn't figure out how to lie down again.

2. Becky was buried under her comforter, bed full of junk (books, used Kleenex, clock radio, several hundred stuffed animals). I lay down next to her and gazed at the window-art creations (panda, dog, etc.) she made from a kit several weeks ago -- except today for the first time, I noticed that they all had circles around the heads -- black lines of goo she apparently added after they were already attached to the window . I woke Becky up and asked her what gives. "Space helmets," she answered sleepily. Of course.

* * *

Who are Ike and Zeke Leerly, Meg Meehan Hoffa and C. Bigby Heinz? They all work for Car Talk. Of course.

John Godges rocks!

2010-09-17T11:25:00.000-05:00

My good friend from J-school, John Godges, just published a book called "Oh Beautiful" that he wrote about his family's experiences as immigrants and as Catholics growing up in America. I read it in manuscript (the first book I ever read entirely in PDF form, actually) and it was really good. I mean, REALLY good. I was afraid when I agreed to read it that I was going to have to grope for something nice to say about it so as not to hurt his feelings if it sucked, but this was not a problem. John is an excellent interviewer, writer, and thinker of deep thoughts about all sorts of interesting stuff.

Go to his website and you can learn more about the book and even read an excerpt -- and of course buy it if you're so inclined, which would be nice for John even though I won't see one penny of the avalanche of proceeds that the blog post will generate.

Being raised by strict atheists, I didn't know much about Catholicism before I read the book. Actually that's not true -- I knew a bit about the theology and important modern-day stuff like the Popemobile and the sex abuse scandal, but I didn't have a clue about hat it's like to grow up Catholic and have it be at the center of your family's life. John gives a good indication of how Catholicism becomes an integral part of you when you when he described a conversation with a priest where he confesses that he's gay but is thinking about the priesthood as a career anyway.

Thinking about John's book and also about Yom Kippur tomorrow reminded me of the routes to religion taken by the many of us who were not raised in a particular faith. It can be a complicated path indeed.

Cleanliness is next to godliness, we hope

2010-09-15T15:06:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend the following things happened: I thoroughly cleaned the inside of my car, (including the disgusting floor mat, which I put in the "bulky items" cycle of the wash with a heap of Tide and Oxy-Clean); I swept the garage floor; and Ben made the inside of the fridge sparkle. No more nasty science experiments, and you can actually look at the shelves and bottom of the fruit and veggie drawers without having a sudden urge to take a long hot shower. These are things that have been on the to-do list for a long time, yet I didn't feel any particular sense of satisfaction while doing them. Mostly it was very boring. BUT! Now my heart soars like a hawk when I open the fridge or look at my impossibly clean floor mats in the car, which now also smells better. It really makes a difference after six years of sippy-cup spills, ground-in Cheez-Its, pulverized crayon, sand, salt and snot. I jut feel sorry fort the washing machine, which just gave up several years of its lifespan.

Coincidentally, we are in the Days of Awe at the start of the Jewish New Year. May my soul be purged and cleansed as thoroughly as my floor mats and produce drawers...

Stormy weather

2010-09-03T15:35:00.001-05:00

I was shocked to realize I hadn't posted during the entire month of August. What a twat, right? The random title of this post refers to the impending Hurricane Earl, which is supposed to brush Mass. tonight. A bit of wind and rain is all we're expecting in the Leafy Suburbs, however. Not like the last one that made landfall, Bob, on Aug. 19, 1991 (my 30th birthday, actually).

It was a Monday; I had been visiting my mother in England and flew back Sunday afternoon with no inkling of the impending excitement. Monday morning I awoke to no wind but a torrential downpour and went to work at the paper to covering the storm and its effects, which mainly involved a lot of tree damage and downed power lines. The wind soon picked up quite a bit. The day's highlights included watching big long waves roll backwards out from land into Long Island Sound, and then trying to interview some hardy soul who had stayed in his oceanfront cottage. I knocked on the door and asked if he would talk, he said yes but be careful of the wind, I said no problem, and his screen door slipped out of my wet hand an immediately tore off its hinges in the gale. I barely batted an eye -- "Sorry about that! So... why are here in the midst of all this impending devastation, etc., etc.?"

That night we gathered at a friend's house and drank beer as quickly as possible since it would soon be warm (no power of course). Definitely my most memorable birthday.

* * *

On August 7, Sarah had a birthday sleepover with four other girls. She and her best friend stayed up ALL. NIGHT. LONG. I myself slept fine, however. By about 9:00 a.m., Sarah had passed out like a freshman drunk in a convoluted position in a dining-room chair with arms. Ouch.

* * *

Sarah and Becky started school this week (5th and 3rd grade respectively). Sarah is now in middle school. What does this mean? Will I soon be hearing rumors of her first lipstick party? (Wikipedia assures me this is an urban legend born of "moral panic." Let's hope so.)

* * *

Ben and I took turns spending several hours on two different weekend days in the ER with Ben's mom, who was having trouble with her plumbing and ladybits. I won't go into details except to say that this was more of a problem than it would have been for someone without Alzheimer's because (a) she kept forgetting why she was catheterized, so it had to be explained repeatedly and at top volume since she's also hard of hearing, and (b) she refused to keep the portable urine bag strapped to her leg, so... let's just say there was leakage. And that's all I'm going to say. It was emotionally traumatic for Ben not just because it was his mother and he had to deal with ER idiots, etc., but because of the embarrassing nature of her immediate medical problem, which is why I took over on the second day of the crisis and also took her to the doctor the following day (a Monday). Fortunately things seem to have resolved.

BUT... the capper was settling gratefully into my chair at work midday on Monday after returning her from the OB/GYN appointment and then getting a phone call from Sarah's summer camp that went sort of like this:

"Hi, Sarah's-mom... no emergency, but we thought we should call you to tell you that Sarah told her counselor that she was bleeding from a place she shouldn't be."

[Puts forehead on desk, thinks "Are you fucking kidding me?"]

"Ah, um, okay... does she need me to pick her up or anything?"

"No, just thought you should know. I mean, it seems possible, given her development--"

"Yes, yes, I understand... well, I'll check it out with her when I pick her up. B'bye!"

THAT NIGHT...

"So Sarah, could you step into this private soundproof room in our house for a minute?"

[closes door, assumes offhanded yet concerned yet affectionate yet thinly veiled WTF motherly expression]

"So what's this I hear about... bleeding?"

"Oh well, it was just that I scratched myself when I was wiping. When I went to the bathroom. Because my fingernails, they're sort of long and stuff."

"Are you SURE? I mean do you want me to... look?"

[please God let me not have to see and talk about female private parts with both an 84-year-old and a 10-year-old within a 24-hour period -- shit I did NOT just think that word]

"Yeah, I'm sure. So what's for dinner?"

[Breathes sigh of relief, recalls conversation with former coworker that afternoon during which, when informed of the possibilities, she chuckles and says, "Yeah, you'll be going to CVS tonight." NOT!]

* * *

Last weekend we went to update New York for Ben's niece's wedding. A traditional Jewish ceremony, featuring at the outset a rare but moving reading from the ancient Hebrew Book of the Resumes. This involved the rabbi spinning a complete biography of bride and then groom, including education, hobbies, current employment, etc. I was half-expecting him to conclude by saying "References available upon request." But the food was awesome.

How do we spend our days?

2010-07-30T14:31:00.000-05:00

A blog post by Peter Bregman linked to two really interesting other pieces: an interactive graphic showing how different portions of the population spend their time each day, and a New Yorker article by Atul Gawande asking some pretty profound questions about what we -- and health care providers -- ought to do when death is clearly approaching. I think about this latter topic probably more than I should, but maybe that's understandable since my father and Ben's parents are all in their 80s and having had the experience of my mother's death in a hospice in 2002. When I read these things about all this denial by doctors pussy-footing around and patients who can't accept the inevitability of death and prepare appropriately, I think, jeez, I could do better than that, I would face the truth and concentrate on quality of life, yadda yadda. But maybe I'm kidding myself. Especially with young children, I might fight to the end for a few more minutes with them.

The thing that sprang out at me from Gawande's article was the realization that the American medical establishment gives terminal patients an either/or choice: use all aggressive medical measures to fight the disease, or opt for hospice -- in other words, give up, admit the disease will kill you soon, and focus on quality rather than quantity of life. Gawande notes some amazing stats about overall costs of end-of-life care (not to mention patient and family satisfaction) when patients are offered both -- in other words, keep treating the disease as much as the patient wishes, but also involve hospice staff in things like pain management and what to do in a crisis that doesn't necessarily involve calling 911 and rushing to intensive care. It's human nature not to give up, so it's not surprising that few people avail themselves of hospice when it's presented as what you do when you stop treatment and stop hoping.

I have to think seriously about these issues while there's still time because of this:

Damn cats. If you have a cat you're probably in the same boat -- just click to take the quiz. Also discover why it's more enjoyable to be punched in the privates than to call customer service. (The author says "punched in the testicles," but women don't like customer service any better than men do. I think.)Then there are the rare occasions when one slips into a sneaky hate spiral. but I'm not going there, because it's Friday and the weather is fabulous and I had a delicious Indian buffet for lunch and the Red Sox are finally playing at a civilized hour after a stupidly long West Coast road trip. And also? I finally got to see Lindsay Lohan is all about -- we watched "Herbie: Fully Loaded" starring her and Matt Dillon (FIOS On Demand: kids' movies under $2 -- yeah baby!). So now I have an easier time picturing her in solitary for 90 days. Because I like to know all about CFU (celebrities fucking up). I wonder how Briney Spears is doing? Ah who cares. It's Friday.

Now the Snuggie is even better!!

2010-06-18T15:49:00.001-05:00

A while back, I posted a link to this Snuggie parody that was so funny I snorted at work. Imagine my delight when I found this sequel.

But I'm a traditionalist. I'll stick to my plain red Snuggie, thank you very much.

Boring and incomprehensible

2010-06-17T16:03:00.000-05:00

The other day I was rushing off to work and I grabbed a pile of bills on the counter that needed paying. But Ben stopped me and said there were important things he needed to explain about some of them. In other words, they weren't all your basic log-on-to-BillPay-and be-done-with-it kinds of things. There were phone calls that had to be made to enlighten various entities about the torturous history of our health insurance, like when this policy in my name changed to that policy in Ben's name on such-and-such a date, and so the doctor's office resubmitted a claim to the wrong insurance company and SNZZZZzzzzzzz... SO. BORING. Which reminded me of these two great posts on Steam Me Up, Kid, where she described trying vainly to take in the workings of her furnace and how to jump-start a car. So fucking hilarious. I sent them to Ben and now he sort of realizes when my eyes get all glassy during one of these conversations. I don't even care that it reinforces negative stereotypes about women being inept mechanically. Come to think of it, maybe I'll write one where I try to explain to Ben about how to cook something. Yeah, that would be pretty funny. Did you know it's actually possible to fuck up Kraft Macaroni & Cheese? Oh yes it is, ladies!

Shit my dad says

2010-06-16T14:51:00.001-05:00

No, not my dad, someone else's. We're now at yet another level of entertainment technology -- they're making a sitcom out of the Twitter feed. but it's OK because it has William Shatner, and this could be the role he's been waiting for. We'll see how it fares with the profanity cleaned up -- there's not a lot left in many cases, if you look at the Twitter site.

Families... can't live with 'em, can't shoot em. In that vein, check out Awkward Family Pet Photos, an offshoot of Awkward Family Photos. The tender image of "Parrot and Rifle" is the best, I think.

Sorta glad I'm done dating...

2010-05-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

...after reading these personal ads.

* * *

Awesome weekend: the town garlic mustard pull on a beautiful Saturday morning... then an afternoon of fun with friends grilling, sipping beer and finding out that Ben is ridiculously good at Chuck-O... then a date night seeing "The Secret in Their Eyes," which was fabulous and which reminded me why I used to love to go to movies (still love to, just never do). The only slight flaw in a perfect evening was my cell phone buzzing repeatedly in my pocket -- tearful calls from Sarah missing us (combination of a new sitter and us having no lives and thus not having had any sitter for ages). On the other hand, we didn't go completely broke (the main reason we never see movies) because we skipped dinner due to the afternoon BBQ, and the sitter was a teenager who charged only $10 an hour. Yeah, only. Goddamn inflation.

So then yesterday it was even more beautiful. We took the kids to Hebrew school and Ben asked around to see if any of the other families wanted to come over in the afternoon. Turns out all of them did, so we had an impromptu cookout and sprinkler-fest for 18 (10 kids, 8 adults). It was basically everyone in our synagogue circle that we like: I&N (sociology professor and nurse), T&R (computer programmer and overqualified SAHM), D minus L (school psychologist), J minus J (some sort of financial-services job), and O (financial journalist).

Monday morning quarterbacking... on Friday

2010-03-26T14:56:00.000-05:00

Better late than never, which is the story of my life... Anyway, can anyone tell me the REAL reason why health care reform turned some (not all) opponents into hate-filled liars? I really want to know. Because that opposition sure wasn't based on anything factual or even plausible. I'm talking about the pieces in today's New York Times by Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert. And here's more good MMQ'ing from ElectoralVote.com: lessons from the whole health-insurance reform process. Now if Obama would just LISTEN to us because WE KNOW BEST, dammit.

On an unrelated note, here are some swell new emoticons from Hyperbole and a Half:

(::::) "I feel like I am the underside of a pregnant dog."

:O& "I LOVE PRETZELS!!!! NOM! NOM! NOM!"

:*( "You make me cry sparkly tears."

{:| "I am a Frenchman."

Q:| "I'm Davy fucking Crockett."

On Sunday we are going to Florida for a week. This is especially nice because it was fucking snowing this morning. We are going to a seder at "the club" which is the golf/tennis/gym/spa/restaurant HQ of the gated community where by in-laws have their house. This should be interesting to say the least. Keep on the lookout for brief posts and pix from my iPhone. Or not. Pass the Coppertone...

The rising damp

2010-03-15T12:36:00.000-05:00

The rising damp is a common affliction of houses in England, but now we get to experience it ourselves in our very own home. It's been raining quite a lot lately, and by "quite a lot" I mean "pouring steadily and without interruption since Friday night and it's now midday Monday and still coming down like a bastard." So we knew we'd get water in the basement, because whenever it rains a lot, it sort of leaks through the foundation on the uphill side of the house and trickles across the floor in one or two small rivulets to the sump on the downhill side. Not surprisingly, it trickled in more of a torrent over the weekend, but Ben has a Shop-vac so he kept at it, sucking up several hundred gallons. Then he went to check it out this morning, Day 3 of the Deluge, and found that the manageable rivulets had been replaced by several inches of water with bits of wood floating around and water going places it had certainly never gone before, including perilously close to the furnace which sits in some sort of big pan but the pan is only a couple inches high, etc., etc.

I have a 10-minute walk to the Alewife subway station each morning. It's right next to Alewife Brook, which floods whenever there's this much rain. People had hoses running out of their basements with water gushing into the street. And there was more flooding farther on. I took a pic with my iPhone and hey, I got myself in the noose-paypah! Take a good look, because this is probably the closest I'll come to having a byline in the Boston Globe. Maybe they'll give me the Pulitzer for "Photo Not Quite as Crappy as the Other Ones That Got Published." Ben congratulated me for doing my bit to hasten the demise of professional journalism. Ha -- what does he know? I'm laughing all the way to the bank with the big fat check the Globe gave me... wait, what? Oh. Anyway, here's another one I took. This is a road I have to walk along, which is not a problem when it's not abour eight inches underwater. You can see someone in a yellow raincoat doing what I had to do, which is the Olympic balance-beam event along the rounded asphalt curb. I had the foresight to wear waterproof boots that go up as high as hiking boots -- Not. Good. Enough. Tomorrow we break out the wellies.

Why I read newspapers

2010-03-11T10:53:00.004-05:00

And to think I once planned to pursue the broadcast news track while getting my master's in journalism.

Good thing I stuck with newspapers. They'll always be a vital and treasured part of our society, right?

Yeah, so how's that advanced degree workin' out for ya?

* * *

Seen and heard (or heard of) on the way to work:

1. A man rubbing his ass against a card reader in a subway station. Because, you know, it was too much trouble to take his T pass out of his back pocket. He just had to get... close enough.

2. The most laughably stupid thing ever done while behind the wheel. On a ride to the subway after dropping off my car for repairs, we were slowed by an accident (clear weather). I remarked that the offending driver was probably texting and talked with the shuttle driver about stupid things we've seen people do while driving.

Me: I once saw a woman zooming through the intersection in Brighton center while she was applying mascara in the rear-view mirror.

Him: I see that all the time. The best one I saw was the guy who was shaving while he as driving."

Me: "Wow, that's pretty dumb. So he was using an electric shaver, right?"

Him: "Nope, a blade and shaving cream."

Me: (:: blink blink ::)
Him: "Yeah, he had a cup of water in the cup holder and he was dipping the razor in there. (mimes the motion of shaking water, shaving cream and whiskers off the blade into an invisible spot where a mug of coffee would usually go).

And the thing is, this being Boston and all, I didn't doubt for a second that the guy was telling the truth.

Wretched excess

2010-03-05T11:56:00.003-05:00

The latest LasVegas hotel monstrosity? A new development for tourists in Bahrain? Nope -- it's the just-launched cruise ship Oasis, the biggest ever built. It has 16 decks, carries 6,300 passengers, cost $1.4 billion, and has seven "distinctly themed neighborhoods, each with its own unique shops, restaurants and bars to keep guest entertained during the evenings and the days where there is no port of call." For kids, there's a carousel on deck, buffets featuring animals carved from fruit, science labs, crafts centers and play theater. You can also get certified for scuba diving, take an ice-skating lesson, ride a zip line, play basketball, spar in a boxing ring, have a massage or see a version of the Broadway show "Hairspray" (see more photos here).

Snatches of conversations overheard on the maiden voyage:

"Wow, I can hardly feel the deck moving! This is some smooth sailing."
"Well, I can feel it moving... wait -- what? What deck? Whattya talkin' about?"
"Dude, we're on a ship. A big honkin' ship."
"Whoah. I thought I'd just had too many beers playing craps. No wonder the dice keep rolling."

"Mom, I'm BORED."
"So go to the science lab."
"I did that this morning, I mixed some shit together and it blew up and now I'm not allowed in there any more."
"Then go ice-skating."
"I did that too. But I fell down and the fucking Zamboni almost ran me over."
"Watch your mouth, young man... Go climb a rock wall without a harness, or ride the zip line right off the poop deck and into the damn ocean. Just quit buggin' me while Sven is giving me a massage. A little lower, Sven... mmm, yeah..."
"Gross. I'm going to the multimedia room equipped with a four-color offset press so I can make a fake ID and go to one of the 73 bars on this tub."
"Fine, whatever. Hey, before you go, pass me that pitcher of margueritas... Oh, SVEN!"

"Five floors of luxury suites, a garden bigger than Central Park... this is a lovely hotel, honey."
"Um, yeah."
"I'm glad I talked you out of going on that cruise -- you know how afraid of boats I am. And it was so cute that you made me wear a blindfold until we got into our swanky room!"
"Just an old romantic, that's me."
* Sudden lurch *
"AAAAAAH! What's happening?! The fucking hotel is turning UPSIDE DOWN! And now a giant aluminum palm tree is falling on my head -- OW!"
(sobs) "Not this whale! NOT THIS WHALE!"

The art of advertising

2010-03-03T08:53:00.002-05:00

A beautiful world of salsa...

...and manliness.

It's a beautiful world out there somewhere.

E.T., phone home!

2010-03-01T16:08:00.000-05:00

They use this glowing red fingertip thingy to monitor blood oxygenation levels these days. Here is a closeup (ignore the puppy with dangerously dilated pupils):

Here is the broader view (blurred right hand is waving at the fans):

This was during our recent 11:30 pm. visit to our friendly emergency room. Becky went to bed earlier that evening with the beginnings of a cold and progressed at lightning speed to croup so bad she was having trouble breathing and could barely talk. There were some good points, however:

When your kid can't breathe, they see her before any of the other malingering lame-o's in the waiting room AND they don't even ask you for your insurance info! At least not right away.
The hospital we went to has a whole section just for pediatric patients, with smaller beds and cute itty-bitty pediatric catheterization kits (OK, so I'm snoopy like that). Also, some plastic funnels with a wide mesh-covered opening at the bottom. For, you know, catching those kidney stones for your five-year-old. Needless to say I took one and plan to use it for loose-leaf tea. Or something.
They give you free stuffed animals and let you keep the johnny. No wonder heath care costs are THROUGH THE GODDAMN ROOF!
They have a flat-screen TV attached high up on the wall in each cubicle with a little DVD player behind it, and while you're there for two hours of observation, they bring a multiple-page list of DVDs you can request, sort of like a menu at a fancy restaurant but without the faux-leather covers. Becky watched "The Wizard of Oz" while I played with my iPhone.

We went home at 2 a.m. after some steamy epinephrine stuff and oral steroids. She was sick with this cold from hell for the entire subsequent week (e.g., school vacation). BUT! She could suddenly lift the dining room table with one hand!

More adventures in tasteless humor

2010-02-26T15:49:00.001-05:00

Today we bring you... Photoshopped Richard Scarry book covers.

Last night we watched Olympic curling even though none of us has the faintest clue as to the rules. So we just imitated their language and threw in some random cricket terms, like, "Wow, the hog on that set of overs really curled his wicket in the third end!" Mostly I just love watching the sweepers look like old-time janitors on lots of Dexedrine. Of course today I had to learn at least a little bit about what I was watching, so I went to the Source of All Knowledge, Wikipedia. I'd thought that the number of similarly baffled people accessing the curling page had to be enough to crash their servers, but it popped right up for me. Huh.

Milo is jealous

2010-02-25T17:36:00.000-05:00

...of Sockington, the cat who has 1.5 million followers on his Twitter feed. Milo would like you to know that he's a lot more interesting than Sockington. Just this morning, in honor of the Winter Olympics, he had a particularly lengthy game of drop hockey. This is where he jumps into the bathtub right after someone has showered, sits near the tap, and catches the drops as they fall from the faucet every few seconds. He swipes at them sort of like you would hit a hockey puck, then licks his paw.

Did I ever tell you the story of how we picked him for adoption from the crowd of potential pets at the cat shelter? We looked at many cats in their cages and read their cards, immediately eliminating any that said the cat was not good with kids (at the time, Sarah and Becky were two and a half and 12 months old). I liked the look of this cat as soon as I saw him, with his tabby markings nicely interspersed with white. But we had to see how he would behave, so we took him for a test drive in this holding pen where you can play with the cat you're considering and see if you get along with each other. Bear in mind that the pen was in the center of the cat room lined with cages holding dozens of cats, presumably fearful and traumatized by their recent history and surroundings. So Ben carefully picked up Milo, and what did this huge cat do? Relaxed and fell asleep. That's when Ben looked at me and said, "We have to get this one, don't we?" And I replied, "Of course."

This initial encounter gave an accurate picture of Milo's personality. He is the most mellow cat I've ever met (hence his name). When someone picks him up, not only does he not struggle or scratch; he relaxes into a limp blob of fur and wears a profoundly bored expression. The only thing that gets him going is chasing the red dot -- and drop hockey.

Catching up

2010-02-23T16:32:00.000-05:00

Olympics -- we love 'em. The girls clamor for ice dancing (usually on too late) while Ben sucks in air through his teeth as he watches YouTube clips of horrifying ski-jumping crashes.

* * *

Sarah has a new talent that is driving rusted railroad spikes through my skull: she has learned to make a noise exactly like when you blow on a comb wrapped with tissue paper. OK so maybe (no, definitely) I'm oversensitive to noises, but this one takes the cake -- every time she starts, I yell within milliseconds. I thought it couldn't get worse... until she brought home a long skinny balloon and started trying to make a balloon animal out of it. This involves a lot of twisting and sque-e-e-eaking and OH MY GOD IT'S GOING TO POP AND MAKE MY EYEBALLS EXPLODE JUST BEFORE I HIT THE CEILING. A dark quiet room is what I need at all times...

* * *

Becky is going to be eight in two days. She is getting too big and too independent to curl up on my lap. This saddens me. She and her friends are partying at Fire Your Desire where they glaze premade pots. This means that whatever clothes she is wearing will be utterly destroyed. She is the messiest non-handicapped painter and eater on her age class on Earth, I believe. She is also incredibly smart and funny. I just wish I could remember all the examples I keep meaning to put in this damn blog.

* * *

Sarah had her annual school concert recently. This is good news because she has FINALLY stopped singing Wakko's States and Capitals. The highlights: Pachelbel's Canon (and now for the first time, in harmony! Yay fourth grade!). Lowlight: endless choruses of "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang. With accompaniment, as always, from the cheesy MIDI file on the music teacher's laptop. Ouch.

* * *

Thirty-two days until we go to Florida. Mmmmmm....

This one caused me to dab my eyes with a tissue... at work

2010-02-03T13:46:00.000-05:00

Oh my God, the agony of suppressing shrieks of laughter... For anyone who's ever had a cat with Issues, this one's for you:

I live in a world of fur – Not the sexy 70’s porn kind either

...and then somehow I found this picture of The World's Most Disgusting Tattoo That Doesn't Even Involve Human Private Parts (but the cat, well...).

That is all for today.

The dark side of "The Sound of Music"

2010-02-02T15:13:00.006-05:00

Apparently not everyone loves "The Sound of Music," including Christopher Plummer and the author of Sweet Juniper, who gets a little more peeved every time his wife makes him watch the movie:

"I liked this family better before Sandy Duncan came along."
"That's Julie Andrews."
"Who?"

"Why am I supposed to feel bad for these kids living in their giant mansion in the mountains?"
"Because their totalitarian father didn't allow them music after their mother died."
"I thought Sandy Duncan was their mother?"
"No, she's the nun who takes care of them."
"Those kids better have leprosy."

"I know another girl who's sixteen, Liesl: her name is Anne and she lives in an Amsterdam attic and your creepy boyfriend is going to keep her from seeing seventeen."

"Why are they frolicking so?"
"Sister Maria is teaching them to sing."
"'La, a note to follow so?' Rogers and Hammerstein really phoned that one in, didn't they?"

"I thought if they won the singing contest, Captain von Trapp didn't have to go back into Das Boot."
"No, he still has to go. That's why they're running away."
"They're running to Switzerland on foot?"
"I guess so."
"Next time take some Jews with you, you assholes."

Years ago, Ben and I went to a singalong TSOM. They showed the movie in a regular theater, but added subtitles and a bouncing ball during the songs, when the audience lustily sang along. We were also given various items to wave around during appropriate moments in the film, such as a swatch of ugly "curtain" material for when Maria makes play clothes for the kids. The crowd had a large gay contingent, including the host, who made suggestive pelvic movements every time he mentioned "HUNKY HUNKY Captain von Trapp!" in his spirited introduction (are you listening, Christopher?). Needless to say, it was FABULOUS, but apparently not everyone's cup of team. With jam and bread.

No political ranting!

2010-01-27T09:06:00.001-05:00

Instead, I'm amusing myself with some new blogs: Yo Mama's Blog and Steam Me Up, Kid. Also today's post about the Big Three Boston-area furniture companies on Surviving Grady (Jordan's Furniture, Bernie and Phyl's, and bob's Furniture). They asked which was most annoying, and I commented thus:

Isn't Bob the one whose commercials say, in most severe Boston accent, "You get the DRESSAH, the MIRRAH..." just so cheesy but without the unintentional camp of the others. I'll excuse Barry and Elliot because they have something of a brain between them, and I have a soft spot for Bernie and Phyl because I can go around saying "Quahliddy, com-fit and price ... that's NICE!"

Becky is also amusing me. As I woke her from a sound sleep this morning at 6:45 (and don't get me started on predawn arisings), I tried to get her brain in gear by asking what she wants for her birthday (she turns eight in February -- jeez). After just a brief moment of thought, she said, "A little swimming pool and a purple walrus. With sunglasses." I'm on it.

The Democrats' debacle

2010-01-23T09:10:00.000-05:00

Lots of Monday-morning quarterbacking on the Scott Brown victory and what it means. Drew Westen in the Huffington Post nailed it down the best, I think: if we view Brown's victory as a referendum on Obama's performance on the economy and the health care mess, it's saying that Obama has disappointed voters by:

Not creating enough jobs (even though the recession was not in the least bit his fault)
Bailing out the banks and other big businesses with taxpayer money
Screwing up health care reform by not selling its advantages to Joe Sixpack and allowing the GOP to portray it as expensive and risky, and by allowing too much Kumbaya bipartisanship and foot-dragging transparency rather than just ramming the thing home with the mandate and large Congressional majorities he enjoyed.

On point #1, the argument was that the stimulus wasn't enough, even though it seemed massive sat the time. There is no way to say with certainty that if we spend X dollars, it will create Y jobs in Z period of time. I don't think you can blame Obama for not being able to predict the future, but I certainly understand that people are angry about not having jobs. Unfortunately they blame whoever's in office at that moment, rather than the jerks who created the mess in the first place.

On point #2, the Brown voters have my sympathy. They wouldn't put it in these terms, but I think Obama should have been more "socialist" and less business-friendly and let them fail. Experts said at the time that these businesses were too big to fail and letting them sink or swim (probably sink) without government handouts would cost many more jobs and more economic ruin in the long run. And that may be true; I don't have the knowledge of economics to have an opinion, and that's frustrating as well. I don't know if the left agrees with me, but I and Brown's supporters both seem to feel that it's just wrong for big business to get government money (and then give themselves big bonuses) while people are out of work and losing their homes to the same financial idiots who got bailed out after gave them mortgages they couldn't afford.

Point #3: YEAH BABY. Why the fuck can't the Dems just get shit done instead of all this bipartisanship crap? As Timothy Egan pointed out in a New York Times opinion piece, we still have 59 Democrats in the Senate, and "this huge majority... is far more than George W. Bush ever had, and he used it to do whatever he wanted to with the country." Most Americans DO want health care if you break out the actual provisions such as getting rid of policies that deny coverage for preexisting conditions, expanding care and choice, forcing insurers to put more money into treatment and less in their pockets. "What people are against is “the bill” — this radioactive product of arcane deal-making." As a result, voters somehow conflated the big-biz bailouts and health-care reform because they're both BIG. However, the latter is clearly in their best interests while the former isn't.

It's no coincidence that Obama announced plans to heavily regulate the baking and investment industry Roger Martin of the Daily Beast even speculates that this marks a major swing in the never-ending battle between capital and labor. We live in hope.

Utter disgust

2010-01-20T11:06:00.002-05:00

What. The. FUCK?! Some obscure GOP state senator wins a special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat?? Jesus Christ. All I can do is curse and moan. Plenty of blame to go around, apparently. My top choices:

Coakley and her aides did not take this election seriously after she won the primary. The campaign was asleep at the switch. And Martha had little to say other than "I'm a Democrat so of course you'll vote for me."
The lukewarm Dems and independents likewise didn't think this was worth going to the polls for.
Many voters were lukewarm about the health care bill or actively turned off by it, and voted for Brown as a protest.

ElectoralVote.com and the Boston Globe both have good analyses. One notion is that even some initial Obama supporters are disappointed in his record so far: watered-down health care reform, Big Business bailouts, etc. Obama voters wanted change in 2008 and haven't gotten it, so they stayed home yesterday, while anti-Obama types obviously turned out in force.

Though I voted yesterday, I'm disappointed in the Dems as well. Locally, this election should not have been a contest. On the national level, how the hell can we have a Democrat in the White House, a big majority in the House and 60 Dems in the Senate and STILL get nothing done? When the hell are the Dems going to wake up and take the gloves off like the Republicans have been doing for years? They should be ramming through health care et al using the budget reconciliation process and sticking to the values that got them elected. Instead of all this consensus-building bullshit, they need to stop singing Kumbaya and grow a pair (I'm talking to you, Harry Reid, as well as you, Barack). We now clearly see that bipartisanship is a myth. Go all out, make change by any means necessary, fuck the obstructionists and REALLY piss off the right, instead of trying to placate and compromise. Then if you later get rejected by the voters, at least you stood up for something and went out with guns blazing.

There's nothing to lose by going nuclear now, since Obama's political capital seems to be already spent. before Brown takes office, let's see some executive orders, like ordering the military to allow gays to serve openly, taxing the shit out of the financial industry, reinstating the Glass-Stagell Act, repealing the antitrust exemption for the insurance industry*, and striking down the Defense of Marriage Act if at all possible.

2004: Proud to be from Massachusetts (gay marriage). 2010: Not so much.

* For those who accuse the media of liberal bias, Newsweek's latest issue includes a "My Turn" piece by an insurance industry CEO titled "It's Not My Fault" which is one of the most self-serving, one-sided pieces of shit I've ever read in that publication. Ironically, they ran a long essay by a conservative lawyer who's fighting to reinstate Proposition 8 to allow gays to marry in California and hopefully nationwide. More on that in another post.

Why do we hate Sarah Palin?

2010-01-13T13:10:00.000-05:00

There's an interesting piece by Newsweek blogger Michael Scherer about Sarah Palin's recent hiring as a Fox News commentator. Scherer claims that Roger Ailes -- head of Fox News, former political consultant to Nixon, Reagan and Bush #I -- is a "genius" because while his peers hire on-air talent on the basis of their abilities (debatable, but OK), "Ailes knows you can also hire talent for who they anger, who they unite and what they represent... Ailes had not hired another talking head in Palin. He had hired a mascot for Fox News, a living breathing symbol of all that the network hopes to be: a place for the forgotten, besieged, suburban and rural American middle, long victimized, often dismissed, beset on all sides by elites and liberals, haters and foes." In reference to "60 Minutes," Palin herself is quoted as saying, "More and more Americans are looking at some of these networks, that biased journalism, and saying, 'Nah, that gig is up. We're not believing that stuff anymore.' That's why they are tuning into Fox News."

The scary thing? I think Scherer is unfortunately right about Ailes and Palin, and even Palin herself is partly correct. Not about "other" networks being biased (though you could fairly say that about both Fox and its liberal counterpart, MS-NBC), but about people "not believing that stuff." The core of the problem, I think, is that the vast majority people on both sides of the political spectrum and everywhere in between have a hard time separating fact from opinion. Someone on TV or the web says something, and if it strikes an emotional chord with the viewer, they'll disregard whether or not the supporting facts cited -- if any -- are true. Then they scream that the other side is distorting or disregarding facts that support their own view.

The reader comments on Scherer's post are very illuminating. Many of them concern the issue of elitism vs. populism, and what it means to be elitist:

"It's very easy to make fun of Sarah Palin. But in a world where it's still acceptable to put down intelligence as arrogance and embrace ignorance as a virtue, she's going to find an audience." (#18)
"I'd have a lot more sympathy toward [the conservative] notion that there's more than one sort of 'intelligence' if you guys didn't routinely say things that were demonstrably false. We can think of torture or attitudes toward the Muslim world or even opinions on health care or economics as different moral choices or different viewpoints. But let the subject turn to climate change or evolution and all of the sudden brilliant flashes of absolute stupidity emerge for all to see." (#18.4)
(This goes along with my belief that people can blithely ignore scientific data when it doesn't support their "gut feeling" on an issue.)
"What is it about [Palin] that turns the media's faces purple with rage? She's a populist, has a nasally Fargo sounding voice and isn't terribly informed. But does this explain the vitriol? No. I think there's more. As an independent (and one who would not vote for Palin), I've about come to the conclusion that Palin is just too common for media elites... She's just too white, too folksy and too churchy to ever fit in the club." (#31)

He's saying that the media, whom the right disparage as being liberally biased and elitist, hate Palin because she's a conservative populist. This assumes that "elitism" is (a) bad, and (b) politically left. So what exactly is an elitist? Wikipedia says elitists are "a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes... whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight."

Translation: paying attention to the experts in a given area is bad. Scientists are elitist so we shouldn't listen to them about global warming. Politicians with experience in government and perhaps a law degree are elitist -- but we should only ignore those on the left. Michael Jordan is an elitist in basketball so we shouldn't listen to anything he has to say about the sport. I don't know... I think I'd want an elitist physician if I had cancer and an elitist pilot flying my plane, so why wouldn't I also want to read the work of an elitist member of the media -- meaning someone with knowledge, training and experience in writing about national issues? Sure, I'll read George Will and William F. Buckley, because they have a large fund of knowledge and experience they draw on in their writing. But I guess they're also elitist, because they have excellent educations from elitist institutions and know a lot of stuff from reading things and talking to a lot of people. So yeah, I'm an elitist. To echo the first reader comment, when did this become a bad thing and why? Is it just jealousy on the part of non-elitists? Or maybe anger at what they see as elitists' arrogance? I can buy that, though the right-wingers in my view are usually a lot more arrogant as they spew their disdain and outright hatred.

Bottom line: what happened to reasoned debate and respect for knowledge cited in those debates? What happened to the reverence for education in this country? There's a difference between ignorance (lack of info) and stupidity (low ability to acquire info, or attitude that ignorance doesn't matter).

Reader comment #25: "Sadly, the collective IQ and thirst for truth is at an all-time low in the U.S. and the bar continues to be lowered every day."

Much sleep was gotten

2010-01-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

That sort of sums up the rest of our vacation. I'm ecstatic to report that the kids will now sleep as late as we do (or in Sarah's case, wake up earlier and read quietly). So Ben and I got to loll around in bed until 9:30 or even 10 on some of those mornings. There is no greater pleasure than a good night's sleep and a gradual awakening when it's not still dark out. What did we do when actually upright, you may ask? For the most part it involved sitting in front of the fire, playing Monopoly, watching DVDs, cooking and eating, seeing friends, and just hanging out. Somehow the time seemed to pass in a normal fashion.

We also caught up on some stuff we'd been putting off while Ben was unemployed, like taking the cats to the vet for shots and getting a plumber to deal with the clogged drain in the kids' bathroom. Isn't that exciting?Buy we did get out a bit... we went to a fun potluck in central Mass. at the home of an old colleague of Ben's. There were margueritas and '60s jamming by various guests, though thankfully there was no microphone for those who pitched in on vocals (ahem). Then yesterday we finally got off our butts and tried to go tubing at Nashoba Valley, but the constant snow had made the hill really slow, so we decided not to fork over $100 for four tickets and took the kids to One-Stop Fun instead. Tickets: $19.98. Letting the kids run around and clamber over things while Ben and I had an adult conversation? Priceless.

There was some sadness, however, as the husband of a friend of mine died suddenly at age 45 just before Christmas, so there were many phone calls and emails, as well as visiting hours and the funeral on the 30th. I can't really imagine what she is going through, not to mention their daughter, who is about Sarah's age. We're all looking for ideas on how best to help them going forward now that the chaos of arrangements and relatives has faded. Any suggestions?

Maybe posting once a YEAR would be more feasible?

2009-12-31T11:45:00.000-05:00

My last couple of posts referenced National Blog Posting Month where you post to your blog every single day for the month of November. Apparently the pressure caused a total seize-up of the creative machinery. So now that it's almost a new year, I hope to get back to this a bit more often. So what's happened in the last almost-two-months?

Thanksgiving involved a really nice trip to Delaware via Amtrak. Ben's mom was predictably baffled by the trip as she has lost almost all sense of time and place, but it wasn't really a problem.
Oh yeah, Ben got a job that started with a two-day orientation trip to Raleigh during Hanukkah, but it was totally fine, especially since so far he really likes the job. And Hanukkah was great -- I gradually bought little things for the kids starting in the summer and so I had time to get them stuff I think they really liked. My stepmother also got them Lego kits, which were even more of a hit than I expected.
Ben and I were in a short staged reading of two humorous skits at our synagogue during Hanukkah. It was a lot of fun -- I miss being a ham in public sometimes -- and the group of people in our synagogue are really great. We also went to two house parties hosted by fellow members that weekend.
The Saturday before Christmas, we went to the annual holiday party thrown by our friends T&G in Newton (T was the photographer at our wedding in 1998 and we've been friends ever since). Their parties are fun because they have a wide circle of friends who are politically active liberals, South Africans, and/or intellectuals/academics (T&G are obviously in all three groups and campaigned heavily for Hillary Clinton). It's become a tradition for Ben and I to enjoy this yearly adult-conversation and food event. Sometimes I pretend I'm in a Woody Allen movie, except the dialogue (usually) isn't quite as neurotic.
The day after that, after a foot of snow had stopped falling, we went to the home of another family from our synagogue, I&N, which was a blast. We were obviously friendly with them before, but I felt like this was a step toward being closer to them and also having another family to have fun with (of course they have kids the same ages as Sarah and Becky).
My stepfather B visited over Christmas, which was OK. In an odd role reversal, I found him fairly low-maintenance and only mildly annoying, while Ben had a harder time with his arrogance and sense of entitlement. I guess I mind that stuff less since my mother's death, since he is no longer competing with me for one-on-one time with her, and also because he really loved her and cared for her in her final years when her health was not so great. Now that he's in his 80s he says he won't be making this trip from England any more; he's thinking of moving to a retirement/assisted living place in Philadelphia. He's smart enough not to try to live in the same city as either of his sons or stepchildren (and of course not his daughter, whom he hasn't communicated with in years). One result of his trip is that we didn't have Christmas dinner at my father's, since Dad was understandably reluctant to spend quality time with the man who succeeded him as my mother's husband, but they came over for a drink, and Ben's nephew Z and family came over for a traditional Jewish Christmas dinner (take-out Chinese). And the night before we had a really nice time visiting with Ben's cousin and family at the home of his mother-in-law in Belmont. So it was a great Christmas -- all the family visiting with almost none of the consumerism and heavy cooking.

Stupid parenting -- with audio, even!

2009-11-03T09:39:00.003-05:00

I entered this anecdote in a contest sponsored by hilarious Let's Panic About Babies site, where they asked parents about an embarrassing parenting moment...

There was the cheery night after Sarah spent her first two days of life in the hospital gazing around beatifically before she came home and promptly got hungry as hell while my milk still hadn't come in. Of course I nursed her (though no more than every two hours as per the helpful schedule sheet provided by the hospital) so she couldn't POSSIBLY be hungry with all that delicious colostrum, but for some reason she still screamed like a banshee for hours on end. Ben and I were psychotic with anxiety and sleep deprivation. In yet another attempt to cure this baby of its mysterious caterwauling, Ben decided to change her again. And when the wet baby wipe hit her butt at 2 a.m... well, as we described it later, she bobcatted (actually it was a puma we were thinking of, sort of like this). Now the embarrassing part: in our psychosis, we immediately realized that Sarah's problem was... she was allergic to the baby wipes! Of course! And she needed a bath RIGHT NOW to wash off the HORRIBLE POISONS that were causing her to shriek uncontrollably! Oddly enough, the bath caused her to reach a new pitch we didn't think it was possible for a human larynx to produce. Finally in total despair and self-flagellation we reached for the bottle of sugar water that the pitying nurses had slipped into our bag. Well, talk about trying to suck a bowling ball through a garden hose... lo and behold, a few hours later my boobs were like Niagra Falls and she chowed down, I eventually learned how to feed her without excruciating physical pain on my part, and neither of us ever cried again. The end.

Giving NaBloPoMo a try

2009-11-02T13:50:00.003-05:00

National Blog Posting Month just started and I'm already a day behind. Whatever. Saturday was Halloween. Weirdest weather ever -- about 90 degrees with a 90-mph breeze. Becky (dressed as a yummy hot dog) got scared after only a short while, so we repaired back to the home of a neighbor who hosts a really nice pre-trick-or-treating party every year. We chatted with other adults who had stayed behind to guard the wine while their spouses took the kids around. Then it was Sunday with an extra hour of sleep -- YES-S-S-S! Did I let that stop me from also taking an afternoon nap instead of going grocery shopping? HELL no! Then we had leftover pizza with our good friends in Natick (our daughters are best buds from Hebrew school) and discussed Sociopaths We Have Known. And there have been a few.

One more bite

2009-10-24T18:31:00.002-05:00

We gather here today in memory of the departed innocents -- the kiwi and strawberries who gave their lives and were shamelessly mutilated and had their corpses displayed in vulgar fashion atop a burial mound made of Cool Whip. We will now pour cheap brandy over the whole mess and use the candles to set it on fire in the Hindu funereal tradition. As an added bonus, recently widowed Hindu women who make this dish may wish to participate more fully by committing sati. I myself might feel the urge after seeing my guests' faces after serving this vat of gooey white wonder.

Overengineering

2009-10-22T14:21:00.001-05:00

Have you seen those commercials for twin recliners that also have cupholders, coolers and reading lights? We always joke that if they just came with a Foley catheter attachment, the lazy slob would never have to get up. Well, this guy did it one better -- a motorized recliner for zipping over to the local bar for a beer or nine. Except he got arrested for drunk driving.

* * *

A few weeks ago, we were tripping and sliding over all the acorns in our yard (apparently there's a bumper crop of them this year), and foolishly I told the kids within earshot of Ben that Native Americans used to somehow grind them up and make acorn flour. This sent Ben hustling to the Internets, where he actually found a website explaining at length just how to go about doing this. And he gathered a bunch of acorns. A-a-a-and... he made acorn flour. I didn't think this was possible, but it had an even higher ratio of required labor to outcome quality than the Indian cutlet fiasco.

In a nutshell (HA!) you gather a shitload of acorns, roast them to kill the bugs, crack them individually (dental tool required), boil it for several hours while frequently changing the water (this removes the bitter tannins and stinks up the house something fierce), dry the stuff on every baking sheet and other flat surface you own, then grind it up in a food processor. And THEN you can use the flour to make something like ginger molasses cookies. Which the recipe cheerfully notes will taste not much different from cookies made from regular flour (and the recipe also calls for regular flour, by the way), because the ginger and molasses flavor dominate the acorn flavor. Fortunately. All you notice is an odd mealiness since the flour is both coarser and greasier than wheat flour. This is what unemployed people do to fill the hours, I guess. At least he's not drinking beers in the recliner (we don't have one) while watching NASCAR or Regis & Kathy Lee all day.

Pulling the plug on Granny

2009-09-23T20:47:00.001-05:00

...or maybe just letting her decide if there should be a plug or not. Terrific NY Times piece by Timothy Egan discussing the notion that hey, maybe we can talk about reducing the country's end-of-life care expenses without veering immediately into OMG-plug-pulling-Kevorkian-death-panels-black-helicopters paranoia and political cynicism. As Egan says, "how do we reform a system that lavishes most of its benefits on a cure for the 'disease' of aging" when many studies as well as common sense show that most people want to die at home, yet Medicare will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for endless hospital procedures and tests but won't pay for non-hospice home caregivers.

And then I read about a guy who was basically lynched by a bunch of hillbillies in Kentucky. Not because he was black (he wasn't), but because he was... brace yourself... a FED! (a census worker, to be specific). And we know this was an issue in motivation for the murder because they painted his body with that three-letter word, just so the world would know what special brand of evil this guy was. What the fuck is wrong with these ignorant Americans that they HATE HATE HATE the meddling Big Brother federal government except when it's handing out Social Security/Medicare/food stamps? The ultimate absurdity, of course, was the frothing-at-the-mouth guy at one of the health care town meetings screaming "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" What am I missing here?

Finally -- a practical use for Twitter

2009-09-23T10:28:00.004-05:00

It's Twitteleh!

...and another plug for Justin's tweets.

The loaf, it is liver

2009-09-21T20:33:00.002-05:00

Another rectilinear loaf, but this time it's unpolluted by other objects in the matrix -- it's pure, 100% Grade A horseshit. And yes, it IS possible to make liver look even more unappetizing than it really is. Thank God there's some comic relief from the big orange wood shavings and the little nuclear bombs made from radishes.

Lost your appetite yet? Fortunately, even the Weight Watchers folks can't fuck up saltines and melba toast, or the plastic parsley. Better yet, steal the silver knife and trade it for a couple of pizzas.

Molded in someone's twisted image

2009-09-16T21:34:00.001-05:00

Before we contemplate The Molds, please do check out James Likek's comprehensive and hilarious collection of Regrettable Foods. I particularly enjoy Meat! Meat! Meat! Part 2 and Bran Plus for Minus People.

There is apparently nothing you can't transform into a smooth, shiny, hideously unattractive foodstuff with a mold. Semispherical, rectilinear or any shape you care to imagine. Note the smooth and glistening semitransluscent Jello-O, which shows off the unidentifiable chunks lurking within. (*Urp* I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.) Or... the unidentifiable food-things could be arrayed decoratively on top, in the case of the calcified block of scrambled eggs. Very festive, those Christmas-themed slime worms. It makes you want to STAB IT WITH THEY STEELY KNIVES! Or silver cake server, maybe.

See food. Avert eyes.

2009-09-07T18:35:00.002-05:00

I have so many questions about the top image. Like, what is that barfy orange stuff held by Little Clam in back? And what's with the Magic 8-Ball in bondage? Oh, and what the hell is that mess nestling in the gaping maw of Big Clam? Seafood Garden Salad, you say? No... seafood is not found in a garden. Raw onions and peppers do not live side by side with creatures from the ocean; they much prefer dry land. And don't think this shotgun marriage is gonna work just because you're bringing them together in matrimony with Thousand Island dressing (ah, the barfy orange stuff 's identity is revealed). See, Thousand Island dressing has nothing to do with islands or the ocean; it's called that because of all the specks of chopped-up pickle you see in a matrix of ketchup and mayonnaise. But that's an abomination for a different day.

Let's turn to the lower photo, where we see... hmmm... is it rancid moo-shi pork combined with mushrooms that are way past their expiration date? Or it is simply something the dog brought up? No -- even worse -- it's... Mussels-Rice Casserole! Yum! Complete with its own hyphen and icky plastic parsley! If I'm the guest at this dinner party, I'm suddenly remembering an urgent appointment to vacuum the shower curtain. Christ, if it comes from the sea, throw it back!

Feel-awful falafel and other abominations

2009-09-03T21:32:00.002-05:00

Today begins a five-part feature inspired by Candyboots' Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 -- an all-time classic that every living human should have bookmarked. My mother-in-law had a Weight Watchers cookbook in her house, published in around the same time. This collection doesn't have quite the level of unintentional humor and ghastliness of the 1974 versions; I could find only five that really merited highlighting, but anyway, here goes...

Falafel was obviously still exotic back then -- in fact, people were obviously in the dark as to what it even ought to even look like (and as to the flavor, I dare not speculate). Scabby and scrofulous pita bread... and why are these falafel pieces so perfectly spherical? Did they use a melon baller? (Looks like they got it backwards; the falafel is supposed to be sort of lumpy and irregular, not the pita bread.) But the worst part is their disturbingly smooth, cracked and dry appearance. I hope to God that off-white goop in the corner is Neutrogena. Nice copper plate, though. Probably licked clean by the food photographer, who just LOVES falafel.

A recipe for disaster

2009-09-01T19:36:00.004-05:00

Last week we were doing our usual last-minute mulling on who we could invite for dinner. We settled on some people and Ben invited the guy, who tentatively accepted pending his social secretary's approval. Then we mulled over what to make. Ben suggested Indian food, so I told him where to find the cookbook. He found a recipe that sounded good and went off to buy the few ingredients we didn't have.

I got home a bit after six and found things not quite as far along as I'd hoped, though fortunately (and I really mean FORTUNATELY as you'll soon see), our friends couldn't make it for dinner after all. The thing is, this recipe turned out to be one of the most time- and labor-intensive recipes I'd ever made. Which might have been OK if it had turned out sublimely, or even pretty tastily, but this... this mess was basically inedible. It was actually three recipes, which obviously accounted for the time factor: spiced meat (tasty enough in itself) and mint-coriander sauce (delicious) completely torpedoed by a substance that was meant to be, I guess, a gnocchi-like potato-based dough surrounding the meat to make pan-fried so-called "cutlets," but it more closely resembled Elmer's glue mixed with flour that failed to get cooked, so the whole affair resembled shepherd's pie made with wallpaper paste with some crispy brown greasy bits at the edges. But with delicious sauce.

The thing is, I don't think we screwed this up -- the recipe for the "cutlets" really does yield breathtakingly bad results even as it consumes several hours of time and every clean dish in your kitchen. But judge for yourself. Sorry for the tiny text -- both Blogger and I have our limits when it comes to images.

Part 1 -- somewhat labor-intensive but pretty yummy when all was said and done:

Part 2 -- The vortex of despair. Bad news right from the innocent-sounding but totally misleading title. Since when is ground meat covered with sticky white goop called a cutlet? note that it takes the better part of three pages in the cookbook.

And here's part 3 -- the dip. Easiest and by far the tastiest segment of the whole fiasco. Make it yourself!

Again.

2009-09-01T15:48:00.004-05:00

Why am I still amazed or even surprised? Yes, Michelle Duggar has bagel #20 in her personal toaster; in another generation or two, there will be so many Duggars they will take over the world, which obviously has been the plan all along. Oh the humanity...

Ted Kennedy, 1932-2009

2009-08-26T15:56:00.011-05:00

Excellent obit in TIME
Photo gallery of Kennedy
Package of stuff in the Boston Globe

I admired him more than any other politician, living or dead (except Abe Lincoln and Ted's two brothers, maybe). He was really someone to admire: a liberal, a political pragmatist, a consensus builder, a highly effective legislator... and a man born to power and privilege who stood up for minorities, women, immigrants, gays and poor people. Over the years, he did more for civil rights than anyone in American history. As just one example, America would look very different today if not for his efforts to change immigration laws that favored Europeans. Many immigrants and children of immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia owe their presence in America to him -- a white male whose grandfather told him stories of "Help wanted -- no Irish need apply" signs around Boston in his youth ("Irish need not apply"). That grandfather, whose own grandparents were all immigrants who fled the Irish potato famine, rose to become mayor of Boston. Read or listen to Nina Totenberg's excellent piece on NPR this morning. My greatest fear is that his absence during the health care debate will irreparably damage its chances of passage, thanks also to the lying liars who lie (more on that tomorrow).

My friends and I used to mock Ted and his whole family for their boozing and womanizing (and for the women, turning a blind eye while pumping out the heirs). Ted's flaws mostly hurt himself and his own family, but of course also Mary Jo Kopechne. And yes, at times he set a terrible example for his nephews and sons (remember Au Bar?). Since then, my perspective has evolved such that I look at a person's positive accomplishments (or lack thereof) for the many as more than compensating for private-life flaws that hurt the few. Case in point: Bill Clinton. The Lewinsky affair was stupid but really hurt only Hilary and Chelsea directly; the bigger harm was that done to the political effectiveness of himself and his party. On the other hand, we have Bush, who by all accounts is a clean-living fellow who quit booze and didn't cheat on Laura as far as we know, but blithely sent thousands to their deaths in Iraq, condoned torture and committed many other misdeeds while believing he was actually doing the morally right thing. You make the call.

Being a base and tacky person, I immediately began speculating to myself about the funeral. This could be the biggest pageant of its type since Princess Di's funeral, when my English friend C. biked to our condo in the dark (the funeral was televised live at 4 a.m. EST) and we watched it on TV and cried and cheered her brother dissing the royals. Oh, and also... I was walking into the train station this morning and the regular guy was playing electric guitar, and out of nowhere I had the notion (I did NOT act upon it) to ask him if he knew any numbers by the Dead Kennedys.

Endings, both actual and averted

2009-08-14T08:07:00.001-05:00

For some time up until last week, I was having a private contest with myself (private because it's tasteless even for me) as to who would die first, Ted Kennedy or Jerry Remy. As the world knows, Ted has brain cancer; Remy is a beloved sports broadcaster and former second basemen for the Red Sox who had lung cancer surgery over the winter, started working again in the spring (albeit about 20 pounds lighter), then went on leave with a mysterious infection that lasted months beyond when it should have either been cured or finished him off. He didn't admit to the cancer initially, so I figured the "infection" was actually extended chemo and circling the drain from the advancing disease.

Turns out Remy is actually fine physically but has been suffering from a crippling depression. He appeared briefly during the Sox game a couple of days ago and was very upfront about everything. He looked healthy but his voice had a slight tremor from the ongoing depression, his nervousness on the occasion, or both. I'm glad that he's not dying of cancer and a bit ashamed I thought it was a conspiracy to keep us fans from The Truth.

Meanwhile, a Kennedy did die this week, but it wasn't Ted, it was his sister Eunice. The funeral was yesterday, so today's Globe had all the young Kennedys and Shrivers gathered around her coffin. Boy there sure is a strong Kennedy "look" among both men and women. Eunice herself had it as a young woman -- in this old photo she looks exactly like her brother Robert with lipstick -- though as she got old, she morphed into a sort of anorexic Katharine Hepburn lookalike. Is she not the skinniest woman you've ever seen? The still photo doesn't do justice; I saw TV clips of her walking around and was amazed. Give that woman a big plate of corned beef and buttered potatoes, stat!

Right-wingers are trying to make you die in pain

2009-08-14T06:19:00.002-05:00

Christ almighty, this is fucked up in so many ways. By "this" I mean today's news that the Senate health-care negotiators have dropped the provision in the health-care reform bill that would have provided hospice counseling and other end-of-life advice. First of all... VOLUNTARY, okay?? Secondly, since when does counseling about hospice = euthanasia? Do Americans even know what hospice is? Apparently not. They're so fucking stupid that they believe these BLATANT LIES put out by right-wing nuts who don't believe the lies themselves but are deliberately and maliciously doing whatever they can to torpedo health care reform and, by extension, Obama himself. And these sheep don't bother to do some basic checking to see if such an outrageous thing might possibly be, oh I don't know, maybe a wee exaggeration? Or even a complete falsehood? Nope, they just believe what they're told by liars. Who are using this provision to play on stupid people's primitive fears of death, which is hugely ironic because hospice eases the physical and emotional pain of impending inevitable death. So what the morons are unwittingly saying is "No, we don't want end-of-life counseling -- sounds kinda scary. I think I'd rather die a painful, isolated, expensive, undignified death in a hospital in the true American tradition! Living wills? Health care proxies? Bad idea! I'm not gonna die, and you can't make me!"

I feel strongly about this (gee, can you tell?) because my mother died peacefully and painlessly in a hospice staffed by compassionate and caring people. Since then I've done a lot of reading about hospice. Not surprisingly, the movement got a foothold in England before it did so here, and it's always up against denial and fear of death and pain, which ironically would be greatly lessened if they would just face the fucking fact that we're all going to die and accept some help with that -- not help in hastening death, but in making it more bearable.

And guess who are among these lie-spreading right-wing nuts?

That ignorant, paranoid, demagogic bitch, Sarah Palin -- surprise! She was fun to laugh at during the campaign (thank you, Tina Fey!) and during her totally incoherent farewell speech ("It is as throughout all Alaska that big wild good life teeming along the road that is north to the future..."), but this is NOT funny, it is frightening. Sadly, I bet more people are reading her ghost-written Facebook bullshit rather than a mainstream newspaper to get their so-called information.
Chuck Grassley, whose new title is the Shitbag Senator, who said at a town meeting, "you have every right to fear" the provision... There are some people who think it is a terrible problem that grandma is laying in a bed with tubes in her... and that the government should intervene."
Some mental case named Betsy McCaughey, who for some reason gets time on cable TV and radio to spout complete lies about "absolutely mandatory" end-of-life counseling. The AARP, which supports the provision (as does the AMA), had to issue a response noting that her commentary was "rife with gross—and even cruel—distortions." But that doesnt stop flaming assholes like Rush Limbaugh from spreading the lies.

Pwahl McCahtney at Fenway

2009-08-12T22:46:00.005-05:00

My stepmother got us tickets to see Paul McCartney at Fenway Park as a birthday present for me, knowing what a Beatlemaniac I was (and still am, I guess). I got there in a somewhat crabby mood because they wouldn't let me bring in my backpack (I had to pay $10 to check it), expecting to be appreciative but not impressed by the concert, but I was happily surprised. I expected a 67-year-old geezer phoning it in Vegas-style ("You've been a great audience -- thank you. I'm here all week... Please tip your waitstaff") but actually, he is a great performer and a showman to the core. A real hambone, to be sure, and he really can't pull off this cheeky aw-shucks crap at his age. Sometimes I was rolling my eyes, but eventually I was pulled in (even when he twice "offhandedly" remarked that at Beatles shows, they could never hear themselves play because of all the screaming girls, evoking a predictable response). And just once I got a tiny inkling of the feeling the girls once must have had, perceiving his combination of cuteness, charm, and thrilling-but-not-threatening sexiness, even though it was totally calculated, when he said, "Everyone’s gone and left me alone with you. But it’s OK. I kind of like it." And then last night a week after the concert I had an erotic dream about him (not fully X-rated), which had never happened in all my teenage years of Beatles fascination. He's still got it going on. Great body, still has most of his hair (though I saw some suspicious lighter areas on top when he bowed, not to mention the obvious dye job), a little jowly, but for 67 he looks great.

Other impressions:

We were surprised later to find out they'd sold 45,000 tickets. The bleachers and some other sections were blocked off, but of course there was field seating. It was weird to see the field and stands in darkness.
The crowd was amazingly multiaged, though all white, and definitely clean and sober.
Paul has a great feel for pacing a show, moving the energy level up and down, serious to light-hearted (though thank God he didn't do "Silly Love Songs." After "Blackbird" and "Here Today" (the sob song addressed to Lennon right after his death), he joked abut "bringing up the mood up from almost suicidal" and launched into the perky lightweight "Everybody's Gonna Dance Tonight."
Musically he and the band were strong and tight. His drummer had the physical heft and power of John Bonham, and another guy in the band was fantastically versatile, doing keyboards, accordion, harmonica, etc. And the electronic stuff was also excellent -- it really sounded like strings and other orchestral instruments, not tinny imitations of same. Oh, and Paul's falsetto is still terrific. And even his whistling.
At one point he noted the full moon (which I couldn't see), saying, "Give it up for the lighting! Hello, moon!" And although he made some obligatory references to the Red Sox, he couldn't have known about the famous lunar eclipse on the night they won the 2007 World Series here. (ETA: it was 2004 -- they won the Series for the first time since 1918. Stupid of me? Well, I was in the Deep South at the time...)
Nice tributes to George (playing "Something" on an initially unaccompanied ukelele that George gave him) and John ("Give Peace a Chance" refrain singalong).
Couldn't help cringing during the obligatory pyrotechnics during "Live and Let Die" because the fake flames reminded me of the tragic 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in Warwick R.I.
He ended the show with the Sgt. Pepper reprise ("we hope you have enjoyed the show"), then three encores. After playing the first (Day Tripper, Lady Madonna, I Saw Her Standing There), leaving and returning, he joked, "Are you not exhausted yet?" For the second encore he entered shadow-boxing (hammy again) and played "Yesterday" which I hopes we would escape, but the third encore was a truly kick-ass pairing of "Helter Skelter" and "Get Back.
The you-know-you're-in-Boston moment was when I went up for a beer and a guy behind me said, "I'm heah to see Pwaul McCahtney but I'm wonderin' how the Red Sawx ah doin!" (For the record, they lost in Tampa Bay, 6-4.)

Watery bookends

2009-08-04T09:13:00.004-05:00

Our drive to New Jersey on Friday was punctuated by frog-choking downpours, mostly on the Mass. Pike. On Sunday in New Jersey, there was another FCD, but fortunately it held off until everyone was back at Ben's brother's house having brunch. An hour earlier, and dozens of people would have been drenched, standing outside at the cemetery for the unveiling ceremony for Ben's aunt, who died last September just 22 days after being diagnosed with stomach and liver cancer.

Unveilings are apparently a uniquely American Jewish custom. Traditionally, family members bury the deceased within 24 hours and sit shiva (mourn) for seven days (shiva means seven in Hebrew). Some think the unveiling evolved as another life-cycle occasion to bring together geopgraphically scattered members of an extended family. Or if you're more cynical, you might see it as a way of saying "It's been a year, let's move on." In any case, it was very moving for the adults and sort of sobering for the kids, not so much the ceremony itself as being in a cemetery where they somewhat ghoulishly sought our the small gravestones of children. Mourning a 79-year-old woman is sad, but it's even sadder to see a gravestone with birth and death dates of a two-year-old, with a rain-sodden teddy bear propped up at its base.

In between rain and sadness, however, there was one of those euphorically perfect times -- Saturday, which was hot, sunny and clear, with perfect surf conditions at the beach across the street from Ben's dad. The water was clear and warm, the pebbles were pretty, and the waves were just the right size for body-surfing. I was transported back to the beach in Ft. Lauderdale near my grandparents' house. We would go there on winter vacations and go to the bdach twice each day. When we got home we'd wash off the sand with the outdoor shower and use a turpentine-soaked rag to get the tar off our feet (leaky tankers offshore, apparently). The garage had a flat roof surrounded by a low wall, so you could go up there and see the ocean two blocks away. Or steal a hammer and screwdriver from the garage and try to break into a coconut that fell on the lawn. The only downside was that Sarah got a mild ear infection which necessitated a trip to the walk-in clinic and thus no time to go to the boardwalk at Pt. Pleasant... but maybe later this month.

In orbit

2009-07-29T09:03:00.005-05:00

My daily commute consists of a 15-minute drive, during which I listen to WERS (highly recommended -- listen online if you're not in Boston); a 10-minute walk, during which I listen to my iPod on shuffle; and a 10-minute subway ride, during which I read a book. Today I was in one kind of mood when I got onto the train and a different kind when I got off; I'm not sure how to describe them, but the cause was the book I'm now reading, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer, who is my favorite living writer along with Michael Chabon. (If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, that would make three, but now he has to compete with hundreds of great dead authors instead of a few living ones.) The book is difficult at times, even frustrating, but absolutely brilliant -- one of the few that makes we want to shove a copy into the hands of everyone I know.

When I got to work, I immediately Googled "Dirty Laundry," which was a sort of underground compilarion taope of network news blunder set to the Don Henley song, which popped up on my walk this morning. I found the video on YouTube but the sound track but remopved because of copyright issues -- DAMN. Then I want to Wikipedia to read about JSF but was sidetracked by today's featured home-page article, which was about 243 Ida, a 36-mile-long elongated asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It has enough gravity to hold down a person, though little enough that the person could jump from one end of the asteroid to the other. Ida itself has a mile-long moon named Dactyl. It's amazing. I'm just all filled with wonder today, apparently.

Music on the radio: the next media RIP?

2009-07-22T10:40:00.001-05:00

Along with the rapidly approaching obsolescence of newspapers and CDs, now I hear of the demise of music radio as the place to go for hearing the latest tunes. The Boston Globe did an article spurred by the closure of WBCN, which in the 60s and 70s was the epicenter of the rock scene around here. Now we have the online streaming-music struggle between Last.FM and Pandora. I had heard of Pandora but not LastFM so I quickly checked out both their websites. I quickly decided I preferred the look and feel of Pandora and proceeded to create my own "station." Great! Of course you have to be at a computer, but then I found you can get an iPhone app to listen to your station on the go. Even greater! So now the only remaining issues I have are (1) the car (since my 2004 model does not have an MP3 jack and iTrip sucks), and (2) what about lousy cell reception and the radio equivalent of dropped calls? Then again, radio reception isn't always perfect either; you sometimes have static (the equivalent of pops and scratches on LPs). Oh yeah, and I have to get an iPhone. I lust for one. Maybe some day Ben will have in income again...

Getting back to the bad old days of scratches -- I hate that stuff and gladly traded the clean sound of CDs for the supposed loss of warmth or dynamic range or whatever that audiophiles claim as a shortcoming of CDs and MP3s. Even more, I hate commercials. I have all my presets on the car radio and my hand shoots out to click down the line anytime I start hearing an ad. As a result, I mostly listen to WERS (the commercial-free Emerson College station), NPR, and a smattering of other music stations when one of those is doing something boring. But I'm lucky enough to live in a city with an assortment of semi-listenable radio stations, as well as an iPod with the beloved shuffle feature. Ben thinks I have ADD and maybe I do -- I just can't believe I ever had the patience to sit through 10 minutes of radion comemrcialsd or an entire album side on LP.

Kid lit

2009-07-20T14:24:00.004-05:00

I cracked up reading Amalah's review of kiddie books and had to leave her a comment listing my own faves:

"Go Dog Go" -- love the utopian party-in-a-tree ending and the iconoclastic fuck-your-hats attitude interwoven throughout.

"One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" -- the best Seuss. I always hated "Cat in the Asshat" -- he's an egotistical jerk and I would NOT like to have a beer with him, which is a requirement for protagonists of books I read aloud to my preshus offspring.

"Polka Bats and Octopus Slacks" -- works on so many levels, including mine. Drugs were probably involved in the creation of this book.

"Kat Kong," "Dogzilla" and anything else by Dav Pilkey (including the Captain Underpants series for the more sophisticated reader)

"The Velveteen Rabbit" -- Never had it as a kid myself; I read it for the first time when I was in my 30s. SOB SOB SOB SOB OMFG SOB!! More powerful antidepressants were immediately obtained.

...and I echo Amalah's love of Sandra Boynton board books. Boynton's humor, general sensibility and cute drawing style hit all the right notes. Some classics: "But Not the Hippopotamus," "The Going to Bed Book," "Snoozers" (with off-key parental tunes supplied), and "Blue Hat, Green Hat" (Sarah used to totally crack up at this). Inspirations and synergies with "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish" -- discuss!

Another endangered feature of newspapers

2009-07-18T08:37:00.001-05:00

As I wrote a while back, we switched to four-day-a-week home delivery of the Globe, which has worked out quite well -- it's really a treat now when I get to fondle an actual paper over coffee -- but the one thing for which I couldn't get my daily fix was the comics. The Globe happens to have the best and largest selection of comics I've ever seen. As of a year or two ago, they're nicely packaged (in print) in the "g" tabloid color magazine insert, which also has the arts and living sections. But on Monday through Wednesday, what's a girl to do? All the strips are on one website or another, but who wants to do that much clicking? The Globe's website, boston.com, has a link to a so-called comics page but it's obviously been completely neglected -- it has a few lame comics that don't even run in the paper.

What I did was pony up $11 a year to gocomics.com to get a daily email with many of my favorite strips embedded -- just a gentle turn of the scrolling button on my mouse is all I have to do. (The only remaining problem is that there are a few of my favorite strips that gocomics.com doesn't license, so I still have to click around for a few of them three days a week, at least for now.) This is a business model I can totally live with. I have no idea if it's profitable for them, but I certainly think that $11 a year is a reasonable amount to pay for saving the labor of going to a lot of individual sites and pages -- even though the comics are still free on those pages (though you can't see archived strips for free). As of yet, papers haven't found a way to create an added value that people would be willing to pay for, since the content is already free and easily accessible. Maybe papers should deconstruct their websites' usability -- make it harder to find and read what you're looking for, even though all the content is online for free, so people would be willing to pay a bit to have it all nearly packaged and delivered to them with a pretty bow.

Here's Doonesbury's take on it from a couple of days ago:

How stupid is this?

2009-07-17T13:23:00.004-05:00

Am I missing something here? I just rediscovered the Globe Reader after they stuck an ad for it on today's paper. It's not new -- I remember checking it out a year or two ago -- but had forgotten about it until all this mess about the newspaper industry tanking. Here's the multimedia demo if you're curious. But here's the stupid: you can't download the Globe Reader unless you already subscribe to the print paper! WTF?! So... you're supposed to pay to have the paper delivered so you can kill trees and drop it unread into the recycling bucket just so you can get a decent online version? I'm very confused. The Globe is not saving any money on printing and delivery by doing this. The only thing I can think of it that the Globe Reader apparently serves up the content with no ads, which is great, but that freaks out the execs who can't get their head around making money from something other than advertising. Do they have some sort of senile fantasy that people will open the print edition just to look at the ads and read the content on Globe Reader? I am so confused. Besides, it's not like they're making any money from ads any more -- in fact, that's the whole problem. AND they just jacked up subscription prices to $12.25 a week for seven-day delivery (after the 50%-off intro period). That $637 a year. I did the math three times because I thought I'd made a mistake. Christ.

A most excellent vacation

2009-07-15T14:25:00.001-05:00

We returned Monday from four days in Nantucket, and it was one of my top 5 vacations ever. I have to write it down so I'll remember it, but if it's too boring to read, just go to Mimi Smartypants' latest, which is even excellenter than usual.

We left Friday morning for Hyannis and barely made the 11:00 ferry (who knew you STILL had to stand in line to get printed tickets when you had purchased them beforehand online?). The house that D1 and . rented in Sconset was absolutely beautiful -- a spacious living room with a strip of backyard and then the bluff dropping to the wide-open sea. We were in an adjacent guest cabin, while K, her 9-year-old daughter J, and D2 were in the main house as well (K, D, D2 and I all worked at the same place at various times). The kids loved battling the waves and then eating ice cream at Sconset Beach even though the water was pretty cold thanks to the worst June weather ever. Then we had a barbecue and cocktails in the front yard that evening while Sarah and J. quickly became fast friends.

On Saturday we had a ride in Nantucket Sound in B's beautiful boat, complete with fancy color GPS map that shows your location in real time, as well as water depth chart and sonar for finding fish. Kind of chilly in the wind but beautiful. Then a visit to the beach club (water, beach chairs, umbrella and towels provided; excellent shells collected). Then D1's 12-year-old daughter babysat while the adults had a great time eating and drinking at a Latin restaurant and then strolling around town. Surprisingly few pairs of hideous madras shorts seen on the men; must be the cool weather. Earlier in the day, however, I spotted what I took at first to be an African-American woman on the beach until I looked more closely and realized she was a bleached blonde (white) woman in her 60s with skin that had been tanned to the shade of rich Corinthian leather. Ew.

On Sunday we went to the pool (more plushy towels and a cool outdoor shower). Another barbecue that night. Monday included a visit to the little aquarium in town (stuffed animals were acquired in the gift shop, naturally), another visit to Sconset Beach and a walk back to the house along the bluff -- between the ocean views on our right and the fantastic homes on our left, one of the most beautiful walks ever. In between these excursions there were Bananagrams, reading, talking, Webkinz World (for the kids) and only one email check all weekend. I officially love Nantucket. Must start buying lottery tickets. I've never been good about including photos with my posts because I'm too lazy, but I'll try to upload a couple.

Remind me to describe the other Best Vacations Ever: Virgin Islands by sailboat, April 1991; and Paris, summer 1985 when you could get 10 francs for a dollar. Sweet...

There will be blood

2009-07-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

Funny coincidence the other night... out of the blue, Sarah asked me what tampons were (she had seen a tampon machine in a public restroom and it registered for the first tine, I guess). I'd talked about menstruation before, but we hadn't discussed a Lady's Way of Dealing With Aunt Flo. I described the reason for needing tampons and, warming up, began discussing the tampon's structure and function. I went into our bathroom to get one to dissect for her edification. Then just as I was reaching the high point of the story (pantomiming insertion fully clothed), there was a perfectly timed howl from elsewhere. Rolling my eyes I waited to see what Drama Queen was overreacting to now, when into the bathroom she rushed... dripping blood from her face, arms and hands. Yes, with her impeccable talent Becky had managed to give herself a whopping nosebleed by somehow bumping her nose with her own knee, and then dashing in, deus ex machina-like, to inadvertently illustrate my story. Except I didn't have the heart to point out to either of then that it was the wrong orifice...

****

For Ben's birthday we went on a date (his nephew babysitting for free, BOO YAH!), had delicious Indian food at a restaurant we'd never been to, then saw the new Star Trek movie and loved it, then saw a little fox in the dark mist on the way home.

****

The meteorological suckitude has scarcely abated. Today it did not rain. For once. But it still isn't hot like summer is supposed to be. At least we're saving a bundle on air conditioning, As in, NONE so far and it's the second week of July. Tomorrow we go to Nantucket for three-plus days. The weather is supposed to be decent at least tomorrow, if still cool. If there are thunderstorms when we're at the beach, there WILL be blood.

The scandals, they keep coming

2009-07-06T09:22:00.004-05:00

Another entertaining political career implosion for a politician who answered the siren call to Think With His Dink: Mark Sanford. Did I say Appalachian Trail? I meant Argentinian Trail! In the Andes! Of course for sheer hilarity plus chutzpah, nothing can beat Mr. Wide-Stance himself, Larry Craig. But even without the sex angle (that we know of at the moment), we can be entertained by career nosedives like Sarah Palin's inexplicable resignation. The best lines I've seen: "I-Quit-a-Rod" and this line from Maureen Dowd: "Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy."

****

What day would be complete without the latest chunk of masonry falling from the edifice of journalism? The Washington post ombudsman acknowledged in his own paper that more errors are getting through because the paper has slashed their copy desk to the bone. And let's face it, it's only going to get worse. The only thing that the established news business (as opposed to amateur bloggers) has going for it is professional credibility, but that too is washing down the drain at an alarming rate.

Clerihews

2009-07-04T09:45:00.002-05:00

I never heard of Clerihews until I came across the term in the Miss Conduct blog vv. The basic idea is that the first line is the name of a celebrity and the other three lines poke fun at that celebrity in some way. The rhyme scheme is A-A-B-B but there's no meter, so any number of syllables in any line is fine.

Like every other red-blooded American, I have Michael Jackson on the brain, so this is what I came up with in about 10 minutes:

Michael Jackson
Died with his slacks on,
Which is more than you can say for David Carradine,
Who was hanging out with a dirty magazine.

I entered it in Miss Conduct's contest (#24 if you click on the comments in the link above). It's gotta have a shot, right?

Along the same lines, there was an NPR story yesterday about the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. So I was inspired in the car to jot down my own entry, which came to me unbidden on a flaming pie:

He knelt and laid a trembling hand on her shapely head, acutely aware of her parted red lips, her wide eyes, and her heaving bosom; then he gently pulled tresses of her auburn hair away from her dear face, whose normally placid exprssion was transformed by an impulse deep within her as she purged the last few ounces of the pitcher of sangria she had immoderately consumed earlier that enchanted evening.

Something about this continually shitty weather is driving my creativity.

More newspaper troubles

2009-07-02T14:20:00.000-05:00

The Gannett Co., the country's largest newspaper chain (84 dailies including USA Today, plus 850 nondaily papers and 23 TV stations), is laying off 1,400 employees. The ongoing layoff count company-wide can be found on Gannettoid.com, which shows that most papers in the chain have had several round of layoffs in recent months. I have a friend who works at the Indianapolis Star (for the moment, anyway) and has hung on to her job so far, but her paper's union just voted down a 12 percent pay cut request from management by a vote of 97-9, because they knew perfectly well that such a concession would not avoid further big layoffs.

Robert Phelps, an old New York Times hand, thinks the industry has some kind of future, once people realize the blogosphere has no quality control or original sourcing:

What you have there now is almost an unedited cacophony, a Tower of Babel, with everybody saying what they want. They get they’re reporting from where? Because they read the newspapers mostly.
I think that the public will realize eventually — they’re going to zero in on things they can trust. And the advertisers will learn that. There’s a lot of advertising that when the economy improves will go back to newspapers. It won’t be as much. There’s no question about the Internet reach. I’m sure newspapers won’t be the way they were.

I think they’ll discover that the missing ingredient on the Internet is the lack of editing. It’s a tough thing to fight because people want something for nothing

I wish I could believe him, but I'm afraid it's wishful thinking, for these reasons:

People are willing to pay only when they have no choice. They'd rather have a crappy product for free than a good product that costs something. Everything was swell when newspapers were the only game in town -- there was room for scads of papers in New York alone, and they all charged something -- but not any more.
Cynicism alert: Most people can't tell good journalism from poor journalism, and most of those who can tell don't care, or are willing to trade quality for cost (see above). As either P.T. Barnum or H.L. Mencken said, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Thoughts on a morning in early July

2009-07-02T11:32:00.002-05:00

Okay, WTF with this weather?? I was woken up on several occasions last night by the loudness of the rain pounding outside. And thunder, of course. I could hear because the windows were open a crack, but only a crack, because it's TOO COLD to open them all the way. In fucking July.This morning it was dark as twilight -- headlights were mandatory -- and it was pissing rain and thundering during my drive and walk. Good thing I wore Teva sandals because I was soaked below mid-calf even with a raincoat and umbrella. It's going to do this all day. Just like all day yesterday. And tomorrow. If these clouds don't get the hell gone by next Friday when we go to Nantucket, somebody's gonna pay. Meanwhile, the Globe is handling the meteorological crisis with a helpful explanation of how to build an ark.

Despite everything, I dragged the kids to see The Nays last night (note the free downloads). I went to grade school with all those guys, but that's not why I like them -- they play excellent Beatles covers as well as other '70s music, and last night under the tent they even played "I Wanna Be Sedated." And also "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot -- quite a diverse playlist. Of course the kids were bored and wanted to tramp around the waterlogged park and then Becky slipped and fell into a huge deep puddle and we had to go home and have baths, but at least we got out of the house.

****

In this brave new Kindle/iPhone world when traditionalists are wringing their hands over the fate of newspapers and books, there is a new possibility for preserving paper: books printed on demand, right in your local bookstore. The big-machine-in-the-store image brought to mind the brief Personics era. I still have a Personics tape of soul classics that I made in a record store in New Haven in the late 1980s. Now of course we have various methods of MP3 downloading, and cassette tapes were always doomed to be a short-lived technology, but I'm curious to see if people eventually get comfortable curling up with a good book on a Kindle. Maybe if they include an electronic odor file with every book originally published before World War II or thereabouts, so when you access the pages you get a faint whiff of pleasantly musty yellowed paper.

Anadromous or catadromous?

2009-07-01T10:23:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure you know, diadromous fish travel between salt and fresh water. Among that diadromous group, anadromous fish live in the ocean mostly, and breed in fresh water, while catadromous fish live in fresh water, and breed in the ocean. Why is this relevant to anything at all, you may well ask. Because it applies to some fish we happen to own. They're not exactly diadromous in the strictest sense of alternating between salt water and fresh water -- more like alternating between brick and wallboard environments. Also they're not exactly alive. They actually comprise a sculpture made by John Buckley for my mother, who installed them on an exterior wall of her house in Oxford, England. Buckley is best known for the Headington Shark -- Headington is actually part of Oxford, and I could see the shark if I peered down a side street at the right moment on the coach from Heathrow Airport.

When my stepfather sold the house a couple of years ago, my brother and I shipped a lot of her stuff back to the States, including the fish -- after first carefully photographing them so we could recreate their exact positions in relation to one another in their new home. I have to admit they don't look quite as good when they're high up on a light-colored wall as they were on a smaller brick wall, where they looked like they were swimming right out of the wall at you, owing to their deliberate brick-like coloration (though I can't explain the green lips). But still. Ben recently photographed them in their new habitat and sent them to Buckley:

A perfect day (or close enough)

2009-06-29T14:03:00.003-05:00

An almost-perfect summer Saturday:

Going to the dump (oddly satisfying)
Scoring some books at the library, including some classics for Sarah ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "Misty of Chincoteague").
Grocery shopping -- pleasurable because I had no kids with me, so I got to use the boop-boop scanner thingy MYSELF! Wheeee!
A quick swim at the local pond, though the rumble of thunder caused the only imperfection to the day, because it meant everybody had to get out of the water and leave, which was disappointing for the kids but a good ting in terms of having enough time for...
Chopping and marinating for that evening's barbecue featuring my former editor Peter, his wife and 7-year-old daughter, who became instant best friends with Becky, which was extra nice because Sarah usually monopolizes "new kids."
And finally... eating steak and burgers, drinkin' Buds, talking, listening to music, watching the kids enjoy each other's company. There were five of them at that point: our two, Peter's daughter, and Z's two daughters.

Yesterday wasn't too shabby either: Z. and K. set up a bagel breakfast, then I read most of the Sunday paper in bed and had a short snooze, then puttered aroundm, got a few more groceries with K., then had another barbecue with the eight of us plus Ben's stepsister J. and her teenage daughter A. (visiting the East Coast to check out colleges for A.), and J's niece. Quite the crowd. Thank God for Chinet.

This morning was the best part of all. I woke up without aid of the clock radio at 7:30, more than an hour later than on previous weekedays, because school's finally out -- woo hoo!. And I didn't have to yell at kids to get dressed while I threw together breakfasts and lunches before the bus arrived. I got myself ready and tiptoed out of our bedroom -- and the girls were still sleeping (they were in our floor due to the crush of houseguests). And the Red Sox are in first place. Life is good.

QCD twofer

2009-06-26T13:57:00.002-05:00

Tacky I know, but boy they're dropping like flies. We'd just gotten over the loss of Ed McMahon and David Carridine when yesterday was a twofer QCD (quality celebrity death, for the uninitiated): Farrah Fawcett and of course Michael Jackson, who will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest singer/dancers and also one of the most screwed-up humans ever to walk the earth. The poor guy never had a chance, what with being a mega-star from age 5, no education, surrounded all his life by phonies and users and way too much money... Doesn't excuse the hanky-panky with the boys, of course; at least he had to fork over a $20 million settlement after the kid made a positive ID of Jacko's thingy. No, the two things about Jackson that amaze me most are: #1 his ability to blow through more money per year than most Third World counties do in a decade, and #2 the twisted obsession with plastic surgery, apparently with the goal of becoming a 90-year-old woman toting two tons of botox in her face (and I'll even give him the benefit of the doubt on the vitiligo-causing-loss-of-skin-pigment story). His transformation over the years reminds me of nothing so much as the Spongebob Squarepants episode where Squidward becomes more and more "handsome" after getting whacked in the face. Let's compare, shall we?

Could a simple series of doorways accidents explain poor old Jacko?

Enough already!

2009-06-24T12:57:00.004-05:00

That would be the weather. Apparently we're on track to have this be the gloomiest month of June on record. I don't mind the constant cloud cover (which I actually like in the winter, when the sunlight is a slanting, squint-making mockery). It's this endless drizzle. Ultimatum to weather gods: stop constantly sprinkling on the toilet seat of my life! Wipe it up, zip and get the hell out of my stall! It's supposed to be summer, not Irish spring. Feh.

Weather: sucky (see above). Home life: chaotic, more so than usual. Welcome to Zoo Dubrawvsky, which opened on Sunday, packed with laughter and love, joy, tears and extra beer, starring the four of us plus Ben's nephew's family, who are staying with us for a week while the floors are refinished on their new house they bought on Monday two hours after selling their old one. It's actually lots of fun because the girls -- our two, plus their three-year old Maya and their 11-month-old, who mostly sits and stares and thinks, "This is not my beautiful house!" -- play together beautifully, except when one or more of them is having a meltdown, but that has occurred in a significant way only once so far, which of course would be bedtime last night, which ran from 8 p.m. to about 10:30 p.m. until the ever-fluid sleeping arrangements were settled as follows.

Plan A: Maya on Sarah's floor, Becky in her own bed... REJECTED! Grounds: unfair to Becky because Maya slept with Sarah LAST night. Plan B: All three kids in Sarah's room for complete fairness, and Becky's room to be used by one of Maya's parents... REJECTED! Grounds: Maya now realizes this is no longer a one-night novelty, misses her own room and toys, sobbingly begs to sleep with mama. Granted. Plan C: Becky now on Sarah's floor so Becky's room can be used by Maya's dad, who are is crammed into guest bed with wife and three-year-old... REJECTED! Becky generally inconsolable for reasons that are unclear; whimpers to sleep with me and Ben in our bed. Granted, with much sighing and rolling of eyes. Final result: Becky snuggling with yours truly while watching Red Sox slaughter the Washington Nationals and their highly inflammable bullpen, while Ben keeps an eye on the game and indulges his raging Ken-Ken addiction on his computer. The end.

Click here immediately

2009-06-23T12:37:00.003-05:00

I had to stop reading this at work because I tried to stifle a major laugh and now my office mate is convinced I'm channeling Charles Nelson Reilly. So have a look, even if you don't have kids. And speaking of great laughs, a moment of silence for another QCD: Ed McMahon, who just popped his clogs.

* * * *

So if it's a cost problem, it's easy: Get the people in a room who have the most and the most direct impact on cost, and do the deal. Do the deal. It's not that complicated. If it's an access question, people don't have access to health care, then figure out who they are, and give them access! Hello?! Am I missing something here?

--RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest hosting Bill Bennett's radio show, explaining the simplicity of health care reform, as published on Taegen Goddard's Political Wire today.

Ben left a comment echoing something an old high school friend and I used to say, no doubt inspired by Monty Python: "World hunger... OK. The solution? Just give 'em more food! Next problem?"

Following my thread of the evils of socialism or at least socialized medicine, I wholeheartedly agree with what another guy (a doctor) said in a comment on the same post:

What I think should be mandatory is access for everyone for "basic" services. Don't ask for mega-specifics, but I would include things like health maintenance exams (cholesterol checks, blood pressure checks, mammograms for women/prostate exams for men, routine vaccinations, etc.). There should also be complete coverage for pregnancy, since we as a nation perform dismally in this arena, ranking somewhere around #43 in the world for positive outcomes following pregnancy. A lot of this could be avoided (not all, but a lot) if women could go to the doctor, get their checkups, their prenatal vitamins, their ultrasounds without having to deal with insurance for everything... And of course, emergency care should be completely covered as well. I think that should be the bare minimum of a universal insurance-type program. And by insurance, I mean guaranteeing payment, not filling out forms to get reimbursed. This should just be part of the package of being born or sworn in as an American citizen. The rest of it (cosmetic surgery, a more invasive procedure that may or may not be better than tried-and-true ones, a newer [and by definition more expensive] drug compared with an older one) should be available (free market, anyone?) with the people who can afford it getting it. But the bare minimum being provided over a generation or so will go a LONG way towards reducing the healthcare costs in this country as people don't have to have amputations and dialysis for uncontrolled diabetes, long-term care after a stroke caused by out-of-control high blood pressure, and numerous hospitalizations for people who never get well, but who merely get better enough to go home, until they're back again.

Unfortunately...

2009-06-21T15:35:00.000-05:00

On some blog or other, I recently saw a new game where you Google the phrase "unfortunately [your name]" and see what you get. I tried it with both my real first name (the first set below) and then my blog nickname. Pretty funny. This would be a good exercise to give a creative writing class ("Students, construct a coherent and gripping 500-word narrative using six of your resulting phrases from Google. You have 30 minutes. Begin."). Try it!

Unfortunately A. was sick for four days with a bug, but we still managed to juggle our days around all the vomiting...
Unfortunately, A. cannot respond to requests for help with academic assignments.
Unfortunately, A. took offense and refused to cooperate.
Their hard work in Monrovia brought them great rewards but unfortunately A. contracted African fever there...
Unfortunately, A., who has made a considerable effort to "glamorize" herself for the evening, angrily assumes that the glamorous but empty-headed Rita has swept Ralph off his feet.
Unfortunately, A. and Bob cannot simply use their DSA keys because DSA employs a generator of a subgroup of (Z/pZ)* and not of the whole group.

****

...it also had some problems, especially hot gas ingestion problems, so, unfortunately, the Yak-141 won't be entering service.
Unfortunately, the yak seem to love the burdocks and at times come back from a romp somewhere totally encrusted with them
...unfortunately the Yak seemed to have a lot of roll coupling...
Unfortunately the yak used in this study was a hybrid.
Unfortunately the Yak can sometimes get stuck when you are trying to lead him around and you may need to fiddle with the commands to tell the yak to move away and then once he gets unstuck, click on the command to make him follow you again.

Creeping crawling socialism?

2009-06-19T13:50:00.000-05:00

There was a long period of time when Americans were filled with fear and loathing of anything that smacked even faintly of Communism. Writers and artists were blackballed, careers were made and ruined (or both, in McCarthy's case), spies were executed... then the Soviet Union collapsed and we could finally direct our national paranoia to something besides Communism. For a while it was terrorists, but just recently it's socialism, which is also evil, judging by the bullshit making the rounds, such as the Facebook poll asking "Do you think Obama is leading America down the road to Socialism?" The phrasing of the question obviously implies that socialism is a bad and scary thing.

My opinion? I don't advocate a totally socialist system for our country. I'm all for preserving property rights (e.g., ownership of land, houses, crops, MP3 files, etc.). The problem is when you consider your money to be your exclusive property, and to what extent you're willing to allow the government to "own" some of your "property" via taxation. But it really pisses me off when people use the word in the same tone of voice as they would "state-sponsored child molestation" or "commie pinko fags." (Or even "liberal" -- remember when Dukakis was sneered at as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU"?)

Why is socialism a dirty word? And do most people even know what it means? When people hear the dreaded word "socialism," apparently they think of Karl Marx, state ownership of property and the means of production, proletarian revolution, etc. I'm guess it's the GM and banking bailouts that red-blooded Americans are objecting to. But as far as oversight of business is concerned, it cuts both ways. Big business wants to operate in totally free markets with minimum government interference (e.g., regulation), but then when they fuck up and ask for a government bailout -- which I don't think they should get, by the way -- they better shut the hell up about how onerous socialist oversight and regulation constricts free enterprise. I can't imagine that the bailout objections are coming from so-called working stiffs, since that's the type of people (assembly line workers, etc.) who are being helped.

If the recent "socialism" scare stems from distaste for health care reform, I repeat: shut up. Guess what? We already have socialized medicine -- Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP (a.k.a. children's Medicaid), the Veterans Administration -- as well as other programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (welfare), Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, unemployment insurance, Social Security payments to retirees and the disabled, etc. What's so bad? Higher taxes to fund universal health care? Try living in Europe, where you'd pay even more -- but you'd get a hell of a lot more back, both as an individual and more importantly as a society (no man is an island, etc.).

There was an interesting piece recently in the New York Times magazine about an American expat working in Holland. His initial reaction to his 52 percent federal income tax bite was as you'd expect: pissed. Until he saw the upsides. Also, he notes that in the U.S., while you pay a smaller income tax percentage, you also pay state and local taxes as well as higher real estate taxes, so it's not even that much more out of pocket in total. you have higher income taxes but the state pays (via those higher taxes) for EVERYONE'S medical care, education, child care, elder care, etc.; private enterprise, but plenty of regulation to counterbalance the natural human tendencies toward greed and excess. It's a simple question of fairness.

Here in the U.S. of A., people scream about expansion of government oversight or services, but just as loudly about the notion of cutting any of the those programs listed above or even subjecting them to means testing (in the case of Social Security). Because they're our American birthright! If the government (in particular a Democrat-controlled government) expands services as Obama et al are presumably considering, it's branded as socialist and BAD BAD BAD. Of course this doesn't apply if it's Republicans who expand services, like Bush boosting the prescription drug benefit for seniors. Gaaaagh... it's Friday afternoon and I'm pulling the plug on this damn computer!

More on the newspaper biz

2009-06-15T08:20:00.000-05:00

A few random bits of food for thought. As we know, the old business model of newspapers is no longer workable, but while pundits consider new revenue models, I think you also have to consider what sot of people will go into the field at a time like this. There will always be people who want to write; the question is, what other skills must they now have, and how will they earn a living wage? After all, it's not like the pay was so hot before.

4 steps to newspapers’ survival
"The notion that government subsidies may be appropriate for the ailing newspaper industry — à la national health care — surfaced recently among faculty at Boston University’s College of Communications."

The article is too brief, but raises an interesting idea about government subsidies as well as the suggestion that only local newspapers will survive as print products, which I think has merit.

Will Amazon's Kindle Rescue Newspapers?
"It's no secret that [NYT publisher Arthur] Sulzberger has been talking to everyone about how to save the Times; he recently visited Silicon Valley and had a number of salon-style dinners with technocrats offering advice. Amazon's Kindle, however, has already proven to be a promising source of revenue for the newspaper."

Again, we have to get rid of the notion of "paper" and think of the "news business" without regard to the means of publication and distribution. Personally I'm on the fence about the Kindle as a viable alternative. It's too expensive and doesn't even do color yet. Maybe in a few years...

Can J-School be Saved?
"I'm convinced that if all the programs in journalism—undergrad and graduate—disappeared tomorrow, America's newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters wouldn't miss a beat of the news cycle. Our culture produces news junkies, English majors, aspiring novelists, sports nuts, failed lawyers, and student journalists in such profusion that we'll never run out of the green material from which to build excellent reporters and editors."

He's right -- no one needs a J-school education to learn how to be a journalist; it's all about networking (which is probably true of business school as well). I got an M.J. at UC Berkeley's journalism grad school. Did it help me get a job? I don't think so, but it did two other useful things: it gave me something to do after college when I had no job and was living at home, and it was also a blast and made me several lifelong friends.

Can Computer Nerds Save Journalism?
J-schools are including computer programming, and programmers are learning journalism.

Beaky and spiny

2009-06-09T14:09:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's been a while. But today... today I have found something so inspirational that I can't help but share it with the world: long-beaked echidnas, beautifully described in The New York Times as "plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole, pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them." AND! Did you know the males have a four-headed penis? Oo la la.

***

Though it's been a while since her death, I must still mark the passing of Bea Arthur, who created the unforgettable character of Maude, a rather underappreciated sitcom, lost in the 70s shuffle of "All in the Family," "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "M*A*S*H" et al. One reason the show was so good was the writing, tackling fraught social topics and taboos just as AITF had before it. Here's a tour de force one-woman episode where Maude sees her analyst.

***

One of the funniest YouTube videos I've seen in a while: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" -- literal version. It's especially great because the original song and video were so wicked cheesy that they had top-notch material to work with. What is UP with that hair?!

Turns out there are many other "literal videos," including "Losing My Religion" (another embarrassingly arty-fartsy '80s video; Michael Stipe looks like he's in end-stage M.S.), "Take On Me," "White Wedding" and even "Penny Lane." But "Eclipse" is the best, I think.

***

Another enjoyable find: Wacky Packages on the web. Order your coffee-table book today!

Weighing in on Susan

2009-04-22T10:32:00.002-05:00

I tried to avoid it as long as I could, but that damn singing Susan Boyle is everywhere -- news sites, NPR, blogs, pieces by Nora Ephron and Tina Brown, and finally a Facebook thread I got roped into, even though I'd never seen the clip. So I watched her on YouTube -- and I was duly impressed. Yes, she does have a lovely voice singing a cheesy show tune, and yes, she is a dumpy, unemployed, middle-aged Glaswegian. But all the bloviating about her inspiring performance in these gloomy times (paging Capt. Sullenberger et al) skips over the issue of why she's so inspiring. Is she a good singer? If there was no trickery, then certainly. Is she the greatest singer ever? Hell no. But is she the ugliest good singer ever? By implication, yes. It's a comment on the appearance-obsessed judges and viewers that everyone was smirking when they took a look at her, because how could anyone who looks like that possibly have a decent voice? Reminds me of a story I read somewhere about musicians auditioning for a coveted seat in the Boston Symphony Orchestra (I think). Eventually they played for the judges behind a screen so what the musician looked wasn't a factor, consciously or otherwise. So of course the judges were spluttering with rage when they learned they had selected a woman cellist. And God forbid that she wasn't pretty to boot.

Martha, you balabusta!

2009-04-02T21:14:00.000-05:00

Getting ready for Passover can bring out the Martha Stewart in all of us. My friend Eleanor commented that she could imagine a Martha Stewart seder, which got me thinking. I use as my model that timeless classic, the Martha Stewart Holiday Calendar, for... the Martha Steinberg (you know she changed her name, right?) Passover 2009 planner:

March 30
Make guest list for seder. Peter Bacanovic is so not invited. Hand-write invitations (calligraphy with goose quill, of course) and mail.

March 31
Hire Union for Reform Judaism’s head rabbi to write personalized haggadah from scratch, omitting all references to slaves or lack of freedom (reminds me of that little prison stint -- thanks a lot, Peter!)

April 1
Finalize seder dinner menu. Decide between Argentine beef tenderloin (brisket? as if!) with port/beach plum reduction, or sun-dried tomato and garlic-crusted roast leg of lamb with tarragon-mint butter. Oh, and matzoh.

April 2
Harvest wheat from my organic farm; grind flour for my home-made shmura matzoh with Evian water. Bring in a rabbi; slip him a couple of benjamins to make sure I get that "strict rabbinical supervision" certification.

April 3
Bring in hazmat firm for annual chametz decontamination mission.

April 4
Buy lamb from local farm. Slaughter with bare hands; boil and dissect to obtain shank bone for seder plate. Save liquid to use for stock in lamb, fenugreek and fava bean soup for future TV episode.

April 5
Make my tasty charoset: Calville Rouge d'Automne apples, raw palmetto honey, American Eastern Black Walnuts, and three teaspoons of Châteauneuf-du-Pape '89 (Manischevitz in my house? Surely you jest!)

April 6
Make tasty gourmet gefilte fish... oh never mind. Who am I kidding?

April 7
Craft a hand-dipped scented candle (yes, craft can be a verb, you sillies!). Pluck feather from one of my free-range chickens. Hand-carve a spoon from olive wood. Spray-paint one of my paper bags. Use all of the above for bedikat chametz (ritual search for any crumbs of chametz those lazy bastards in white suits might have missed). Then start fire with L.L. Bean fatwood kindling and imported mesquite logs; burn chametz.

April 8 (morning)
Manually extract egg from one of my free-range chickens and boil in leftover Evian water. Stencil shell with scenes from the life of Moses. Then select and pluck only the most perfect sprigs of parsley from my organic garden (set fire to the rest -- it's just not good enough). Arrange prettily on seder plate.

April 8 (afternoon)
Cook seven-course dinner in 18 minutes flat.

April 8 (evening)
Begin seder. Drink four glasses of that scrumptious Châteauneuf-du-Pape '89. Get a teeny bit tipsy and try to hot-glue my hand-woven napkin to my neighbor’s lap.

April 9
Attend second seder at the Moskowitzes. Refrain from remarking that her green tablecloth is not quite the same shade as the karpas.

April 10
Make delicious kosher-for-Passover orzo with cannellini, herbed sausage, escarole and feta (rabbi from April 2 says it's A-OK!).

April 11
Start planning Shavuot festival with sprightly giving-of-Commandments theme and my fabulous dairy recipes, including Stilton cheesecake with rhubarb compote, and pear and ricotta blintzes with spiced maple-butter sauce.

April 12
Hire white-shoe New York law firm to defend myself against plagiarism suit by Epicurious.com.

Must...maintain...grip...

2009-04-01T12:33:00.002-05:00

I suddenly realized (after waking up in a state of tension at 2:00 a.m.) that coming up are:

My dad's 80th birthday party -- still trying to find a caterer who won't charge us a breathtakingly high amount
An exam in microbiology next Tuesday, and I've barely picked up the textbook since the last one, never mind started writing the take-home portion
Passover next week. We're definitely having a seder here, so much planning/shopping/cooking to do, though two segments of Ben's family are still seeing who wins the guilt-trip war over the location of the other seder (nephew's house in Mass. or brother's house in New Jersey). We are not going to Jersey. No way.
A weekend chock-full of kiddie activities that would be totally unmanageable were it not for Google's blessed invention of color-coded online calendars. I want to have Google's baby.
Saturday morning synagogue -- it's our turn to supply post-service food, and Ben and Sarah will be away on an overnight retreat, so somewhere before then I have to buy and make tabouli and fruit salad.

As I was musing on these knotty issues, I heard the sound of a snuffling child and discovered Becky had had an accident. While never pleasant, this is a bigger deal wetness-wise when the kid is 7, especially when you realize you finally got rid of that ratty old mattress cover that was waterproof on one side and replaced it with a nice new, big-girl, un-waterproof one. I grabbed some sheet or other and stuck it on her bed over a towel, but it soaked through (nice!), so I gave up and took her into our bed. And then Sarah whimpered in with a stomach ache. but fortunately, as she cheerfully explained a few minutes later after a trip to the bathroom, it was a "poop tummy ache" and not really a stomach ache per se, and she was fine now, thanks.

Today I'm at home because I was just too tired and stressed to go to work (AND! A parent-teacher conference this afternoon!). I wonder if I have time for a brief nap -- or some Pearl Jam at top volume.

I'm 47 but feel a lot younger all of a sudden

2009-03-25T09:02:00.002-05:00

Not physically, more's the pity, but in the sense of being my father's child again. The reason? I'm planning his 80th birthday party (catered at my house) so of course I'm starting to get wound up with wanting everything to be perfect to impress his friends. Not to mention the ordinary stress of event planning (invitations, caterers, where-the-hell-will-people-park, etc.). Fortunately he;s not the kind of person who actually expects an oh-so-perfect glitzy event with the fish forks placed just so on the table linens and whatnot. If my mother were still alive, I'd be a lot more worried about throwing a party for her as far as perfectionism goes. I'm trying to be smart: getting Ben's help (he's very good at this sort of thing), and concentraing on the fun stuff like putting together a PowerPoint of pictures and remarks that are amusing without being downright embarrassing. For some reason I find that task a lot easier to contemplate than negotiating with caterers. I'm sure he will enjoy everything and it will all be wonderful, lalalala, unless there's a kitchen fire or the cat poops in the crudites. Deep breaths...

Monday Monday

2009-03-23T13:37:00.002-05:00

Saturday: Excellent family party at home of friend who just turned 50. Pizza and basement play for kids, beer and tasty noshes for the grownups. Sunday: dinner at father's house. Fun quotient compromised by taking two antihistamines with Sudafed instead of just one. My thinking was that two are twice as good as one (duh!) and the antihistamine part won't make me sleepy because Sudafed is a stimulant. Result: my heart rate went up and my hands were shaking a wee bit from the Sudafed but I was also SO sleeeeeeepy. Got lots of sleep last night but still have that letdown Monday feeling. I hate Mondays and I'm not even sure why.

Amusement of the past week: The Mr. T Coloring Book on Sweet Juniper. I recommend downloading the PDF rather than reading it online as it loads slowly. My biggest question after seeing it was: what in the world was the subject of the original unsullied version, if not gay teenage gymnasts? It's a head-scratcher for sure.

Grieving for books, but then... funny raisins!

2009-03-17T14:06:00.000-05:00

I discovered "Sweet Juniper" only recently, so I haven't figured out this guy's general mojo, but he had two very different posts that I liked a lot: one having to do with the criminal waste at an abandoned public school in Detroit, and another with re-captioned raisins. In the humorous vein, today he points out some truly staggering Nixon-era children's books:

And I thought such titles were merely takeoffs in words or in Photoshop.

The pages keep turning

2009-03-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

More bad news for newspapers: the Journal Register company declares bankruptcy (no surprise there). And since the, the Rocky Mountain News (the oldest paper in Colorado, just shy of 150) and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have stopped printing, going to online-only operation. Time magazine has a piece on the 10 most endangered newspapers in America -- and by "newspapers" it means large, household-name dailies. And the list doesn't even include the Denver and Seattle papers. it does, however, include the Boston Globe.

This trend seem inexorable -- newspapers, liek everyone else, embraced the web and put content on it that they didn't charge for. Meanwhile the print versions were obviously losing tons of circulation. The question remains whether a WWNO (written-word news outlet -- I can't use the word "paper" any more) can sustain itself as a web-only business through online ads and whatever else they can think of. Will online ads generate enough revenue to pay the editorial staff and the techies, without having to subsidize the costly printing and paper distribution operations? We'd better hope so. If not, welcome to a journalism-free society. Ironic that it's easier thsn ever to distribute information, but harder than ever to make money doing so. Foster's Daily Democrat had a recent article about some online community newspapers such as Rye Reflections and the Melrose Mirror. They cost nothing to produce, but they're staffed by volunteers (retirees, mostly), and they're pretty light on hard news, which for community WWNOs means reporting Board of Finance meetings. And let's face it, would anyone go to those meetings if they weren't paid to do so?

The Oscars

2009-02-26T15:05:00.006-05:00

I didn't watch the show for the first time in probably 30 years. I was just too tired and hadn't seen any of the movies. I feel bad about that, but at least I had my Oscar-night phone call with my cousin in Florida that always starts with both of us singing "Hooray for Hollywood!" at top volume as soon as the callee picks up. For other like me who missed the trivia, I'd point you to Tom the Dancing Bug:

Circling the drain

2009-02-26T13:16:00.004-05:00

That would be the Hartford Courant, which had a huge layoff last year and just announced another 100 today. Great reader comments on the article -- some insightful, some poignant, some just insane (where do these foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing nuts live, anyway?). Aside from the loonies, some point to the obvious -- free news from sources including the Courant itself online -- but some also note that earlier budget cuts meant the almost total loss of local news, so they'd already lost a lot of reader support. Ironically, many of the local papers in that area have gone down in flames as well, so the market for local news (where it will come from and who will pay for it) is an open question. Anyway, here's a sampling of my favorite reader reactions along with some editorial comments of my own:

"Can the public vote on who should go?"

Several specific columnists (panty-waist liberals, of course) were requested as layoff targets by other commenters. I can think of some former Courant reporters I used to know, but they're already long gone. (For those in the know, think about who was tickled pink when Absolut came out with a blackberry product.)

"I take no joy in anyone (well, most folks) losing their jobs. That being the case, I have a bottle of champagne I'll pop when this disgusting liberal rag officially goes to the ash heap in which it so richly deserves to rot for eternity."

Um, okay... so when is your rabies booster shot scheduled again?

"Great! Fewer people to watch over the people that run this state. What will our elected officials get away with now that won't be reported on by the Courant? ... Local TV wouldn't know what is going on in the state w/o reading the Courant, Register or CT Post in the morning... If you listen closely during a live shot on the morning news you can hear the sound of paper crinkling as the article the TV reporter is using for their story is flapping in the breeze out-of-site from the camera."

Oh, is that what that sound was? I thought it was the cover slipping off the boom mike.

"It's not long before the Courant will be on the same level as a community newspaper and the only stories you'll see are AP or wire stories or feel-good stories about how a local PTA raised fifty bucks by having a bake sale.

God forbid they should sink to the level of a community newspaper.

"The decision of many newspapers to have free websites will go down in history as one of the worst business blunders of all time. By the time they figured out that people were just reading the news for free in preference to paying for a subscription the genie was out of the bottle and couldn't be put back in."

You got that right.

"Chain ownership is the worst thing to happen to newspapers. When they were owned by local families, they were not leveraged to beat the band."

There may be a grain of truth to that. My father similarly bemoans the advent of megabucks and free agency in baseball, yearning for the days when rich gentlemen owned teams for fun and didn't expect to make much money.

"Too bad, sorry to see you go, but once the Courant eliminated any semblance of local reporting there was no longer a need to keep my subscription. And now that all the coupons are available on-line along with better more timely news, I no longer need to get the paper. Of course if they start charging for the on-line news, I’ll still have our two local papers and CNN/MSNBC and Google News. The Courant, going the way of… what was that paper’s name in Willimantic? Not that it matters."

That would be the Willimantic Chronicle, a small but decent daily my grandparents subscribed to. And lucky you, that you still have a local paper, let alone two.

"Mr. Carver, It's the height of disrespect to your employees, let alone your readers, to suggest that a cut of 30 newsroom employees will not have an impact on your product. I guarantee your newspaper will suffer for the loss of people who have contributed their hearts and souls to the institution and its community. These are the worst of times for journalists. At least have the decency to recognize their contributions instead of parroting some Tribune marketing gibberish."

I don't know a thing about Carver (the Courant's publisher and CEO) but this commenter hit the nail on the head about Carver's obnoxious quote ("I wanted to get us into an environment where we could focus on our readers and advertisers going forward, and focus on growing the business,. We're going to perform at the level we've been performing"). Why the hell do corporate types and politicians lie and spin when, if they had an ounce of brains, they would realize they're fooling absolutely no one and they look a lot stupider than if they just said something approximating the truth? Like for instance, "We wish we didn't have to do this and we regret the loss of coverage this will inevitable cause, but we're just going to have to do the best we can, and we hope our loyal readers will understand the larger forces at work here."

"I've often wondered.... why do we taxpayers need schools of journalism at UConn and other State U's? Those graduates haven't gotten a livable wage job in their majors in decades."

Tell me about it!

"In 1968 I began working in the composing room of a major metropolitan newspaper with 213 other printers. In 2003 I was the last person to leave the composing room. During that time the circulation fell from almost 200,000 to 55,000. The content of the papers have nothing to do with the demise of them; it is purely a revolution in technology and culture. The upcoming generations have never taken to reading, rather they are glued to the mirad of electronic devices available to them 24/7. Very few of which are a reliable source of news. Unfortunately, the journalists who research and write the articles will go and where will the information to keep society in in a semblance of decency come from? Wait until the politicians have no one watching them and reporting to the public their deeds. When the papers are gone who will be the watchdogs of society -- the blogs? Don't make me laugh."

What's the minimum number of "real" journalists (e.g., hired through a competitive process and paid according to their market appeal and/or or recognized ability) you can have and still call the town/state/country a well-informed population?

"This is an organization that has lost its way and its mission. There's barely any locally written reason to buy the Courant any more."

As a capital-city daily, local town beats were the first to go when things got tough. I guess they figured they'd just do state, national and world news. Except the evil web does #2 and #3 a lot faster and more throughly than the Courant could ever do. and apparently their state coverage went down the toilet as well, at least juding by many of these reader comments.

"What an awkward coincidence this layoff announcement is. Ash Wednesday: From dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return. How sadly prophetic for a historical newspaper, the first to print the Declaration of Independence that created a nation that is on now also on the cusp of collapse. I take no joy for the pending demise of the Courant, which has been the first friend I have seen everyday for more than 75 years."

Impeccable timing and tact have always been the hallmark of how enwspapers do busines,s in my experience. I love how at my old paper, the Pictorla Gazette, the editor was working on an issue and was simply and abruptly told not to bother finishing. Boom. But yeah, the Courant did have a decent history and even some long-standing reader loyalty. It's never a happy day when a newspaper goes on life support, even if it was crappy and mismanaged (and the latter applies to most newspapers these days).

"The managers are cutting the reason why people still read papers: for the reporting. Maybe it is time to contract to a three times a week, or two times a week or even weekly basis. Similar to when many dailies had to cut morning and evening editions in the mid to late 70's (long before the internet). Newspapers' demise have been forecast since the advent of radio."

"I subscribe to the WSJ online. I pay for the content because I like it. I'd pay for the Courant online if I liked it too. I used to subscribe, but we just didn't read it everyday. The papers piled up and became a nuisance. Paper is just plain stupid for news. News changes every hour. It's a throw-away before it comes off the press. Maybe the Courant should cancel print altogether (save lots of costs) and become a niche online paper with high-quality local news that people want. They could syndicate their content and get printed in other little local papers in CT that need depth too. In my view, journalists as a professional class are basically idiots; they live by and for information and yet they completely misunderstood how to monitize the Web. It took the 'conservatives' at the Wall Street Journal to figure it out. They are doing just dandy with paid news."

"People will pay for a high quality product. The Courant could stand out with in-depth town-by-town local coverage online."

These last three make sense, I think. Put the Courant as a paper out of its misery. #1: Go online only, or do a weekly print version, maybe. #2: Concentrate on local news. There are now plenty of reputable online sources of national and intenartional news. Gone are the days when big U.S. papers all had foreign bureaus so they could report first-hand. Competition among journalists is always good, but you can't justify that kind of cost these days while you're also covering local news. As they say, write what you know.

Because who wants to think about the recession 24/7?

2009-02-19T17:06:00.001-05:00

For cat-lovers...

Working at home at the dining room table during the kids' school vacation... ben is next to me with headphones on, taking an online tutorial in something called Flex. He has a job interview next week, which is good news even if he doesn't get it, since it indicates there ARE some jobs out there somewhere.

Last night I drove to Connecticut and back after work in a snowstorm to retrieve my laptop, which I left ta my aunt's house when we all visited on Monday. Also visiting were her son (my cousin), daughter-in-law and their four kids (5, 3, and three-month-old twins -- I'm tired just thinking about it). Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I've reconnected with the part of the family as well as various college and grad school friends, a significant number of whom have also been laid off recently. While this is scary for those of us affected, it's also somehow comforting knowing we're not alone. It sort of sucks when you're out of work by yourself for whatever reason while the world goes merrily along without you.

One extra perk from this recent trip (or trips) was that my aunt offloaded a whole bunch of family history/geneology stuff onto me. My gradnfather and his father were into it and collected all sorts of records, geneology charts, diaries, etc. I'm not that into geneology for its own sake; we all have a family tree, and I think it's only interesting if it turns out that one or your ancestors had a story that's interesting, objectively speaking. The problem is that usually you can't get at these stories through just the birth and death dates, land records, etc. But the diaries loook promising. One of them is written in that antiquated fountain-open handwriting that makes it look like it dates from the mid-1800s if not earlier. Still, there's a lot of crap to wade through, so who knows when I'll get to it. My aunt, uncle and cousins never really did anything with it all. But hey, I have an advanced degree in journalism 'n stuff, so maybe I can craft the hundreds of tedious pages and yellowed photographs into a compelling multimedia narrative. Unless the people being documented were actually extremely boring, which is a distinct possibility.

Newspapers, the economy... and us

2009-02-10T20:15:00.002-05:00

Remember how I moaned here about the bleak future of newspapers? Recently I saw this piece in TIME about how newspapers could reinvent themselves financially in the wake of the double whammy of the Internet and the recession. The problem is, of course, that most newspapers' web sites are free, so why pay for 12-hour-old stories on soggy newsprint? And no one wants the expense or hassle of paying per article, even if the actual cost is pennies. Perhaps no one wants to go first in charging a fee, no matter how small and convenient, when just about everything on the web is free and there are zillions of people perfectly willing to provide that content with little or no compensation. Banner ads and popups may make a newspaper's web site itself profitable, but they certainly aren't making enough to subsidize the red ink of the print editions. Newspapers have to pull off something like Apple did with iTunes -- convince people to pay for something online where before they'd blithely downloaded the stuff (albeit illegally) for free. The idea of micro-charges for web content has never taken off for whatever reason. However, iStock, from which my workplace buys photos has a pretty good system whereby you make one decent-size payment for, say 50 credits, then you have credits deducted from your account as you buy images over time with different charges depending on the image (e.g., large images cost more credits). I don't see why newspapers couldn't sell blocks of 50 credits, with a short article costing one or two while a big magazine piece would five credits, for example.

But all that is really an aside. I was recalling my earlier posts, including the one where I expressed alarm at how both Detroit papers are putting out full print editions only three days a week now. Well, guess what? Given our new family finances in the wake of Ben's layoff last week, I went to the Boston Globe site... and cut our own newspaper subscription so it will be delivered only Thursday through Sunday. Saturday/Sunday was not an option, though I would probably have taken it if it was (the only other choice was Sunday only).

You know what I'll miss the most about the weekday papers? The only thing they don't have in one place online: comics. Just a few months ago, the Globe started running daily comics in color in a magazine-size insert, which I love, not least because the Globe has always had the best collection of strips of any paper I've seen. So what did I do? I set up a bookmarks tab on my Netvibes page (which I use as my browser's home page) and filled it with links to all the comics I like, which can be seen individually on the sites of various syndicates or (in some cases) the comic's standalone site, like Zippy the Pinhead and a couple others. And even this is a stopgap until I learn the ins and outs of RSS feeds so I don't have to manually go from one comic web site to the next each day. It's still not the same as colored newsprint spread out on your kitchen table, but in this economy, something had to be sacrificed... and this time, I'm sorry to say it was the newspaper, even if for just three days of the week.

Welcome to the new economy

2009-02-05T15:21:00.003-05:00

As the bad economic news kept washing over us, I felt a vague sense of anxiety (OK, let's put some brakes on spending somehow), but it remained generalized until yesterday, when Ben came out of a "reorg" meeting at his job.

Yup, he got laid off.

My first reaction was: been there, done that, got the T-shirt -- his multimedia company dying in 2002, both of us looking to escape the South in 2005, his last job in 2007... So between those career -careening episodes, house buying/selling/renting/moving, having babies, etc., etc., we have the life-upheaval thing down pat. My second reaction was controlled panic: "OK, we'll have to sell the house, but please God let's be able to stay local so the kids' lives won't be wrecked, let's just have a quick yet intense look at ZipRealty to see what's on the market in town that's wicked cheap, shall we?" My tyhird reaction was back to #1: we know the drill. Practicalities. Switch to health insurance from my job -- which plan? Start thinking about the budget: what do we cut right away? The after-school program for most days of the week... the babysitter we pay to drive Sarah to Hebrew school... that South Pacific cruise we planned (OK, not exactly).

Friends and colleagues are as supportive as could be. Now it's just... the uncertainty as always. How long will it take Ben to find a job in this economy? Should he direct all his energy to looking for consulting work? What about summer camp for the kids? Blecch. Yet one small corner of me is rising to the challenge. It's like having a hard deadline in newspapers. You deal with the stress, so the best you can knowing that some quality will have to be sacrificed, and move on. Now I can turn my creative energies to finding 1,000 ways to cook pasta and beans in bulk! Yum!

The WTF blanket

2009-02-02T07:40:00.000-05:00

~~The sad thing is, I actually coveted one of these, but now I'm far too embarrassed~~

Yes, I now own the Snuggie! Because... I admit it. I asked for it from my stepmother for Christmas/Hanukkah and it just now arrived. And I'm not ashamed. Well, maybe a little (I asked for it before I saw the hilarious video below). I haven't put the Snuggie on my body yet, but you can be sure I won't except in the privacy of my own home with only immediate family within sight. Because you know? I like to be warm on the couch, even if I do look like a retard.

Another recent amusement: the "diary" of Joe Torre, former Yankees manager.

The inauguration

2009-01-30T15:24:00.006-05:00

D'OH! This is a later addition -- I forgot to include the link to L's terrific inauguration multimedia experience.

I took notes on this momentous day because I was just so damn psyched I that I wanted to be able to remember it later. OK, so I didn't get around to actually posting it until 10 days after the fact... whatever.

7:00 – Awoke to NPR, which continued in the exciting historical spirit of last night’s CNN pre-coverage. Kept listening on the car ride to the Alewife subway stop. Highlights included the mayor of Newark and his father, and the story of 105-year-old Ella May Johnson attending the inaugural accompanied by a nurse and bundled in a sleeping bag, and Cory Booker, the black mayor of Newark (“Black Politician Says He Represents All Americans”).

Lest we get too giddy about everything, this disheartening reader comment on the latter NPR piece reminds us that ignorance and bigotry still alive and well in American as seen in this reader comment on that story:

You don't represent me! No good wishes for Obama, but I will if he was going to be the President of Ghana or Zimbabwe but not the USA. He is not qualified to be a President, and the idiots voted for him just because he is black. He has no achievements in his life. The Americans should have shipped back the slaves to Africa so we will not have this problem now, having a black President. On top of that Obama does not deserve to be President, he is not qualified, and he bought the white house with the money of his radical left. He is going to implement his radical left agenda, no good wishes for him.

8:30 a.m. – A guitarist who’s often seen in the performance space at Alewife is playing a beautifully harmonized instrumental version of “America the Beautiful” to commuters this morning. Really moving.

8:35 a.m. – Saw a coworker in the train who commented that “half the department is there” in Washington for the inaugural. I remarked that I’d heard of web sites where people could find someone’s couch to crash on in D.C. (as an alternative to paying huge bucks to rent an apartment) and she replied, “that’s what we did for the marches on Washington.” Other things that are new for me today: After not being able to zip up a pair of jeans due to holiday chowing, I've banished the word "diet" but have resolved starting now to simply eat smaller portions, Quite by coincidence I also started reading “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” I eagerly await President Obama’s first executive orders. Restore funding for overseas family planning organizations that provide abortion information? [Later: Yes indeed!] Stem cell research funding? Maybe even gays in the military?

10:46 a.m. – boston.com live video shows Cheney in a wheelchair going to his limo. Apparently he pulled a back muscle moving boxes into his new home yesterday. I don’t wish ill health ion anyone, but I confess to a certain satisfaction in the symbolism of seeing Cheney crippled as he leaves office. Can’t help but notice the resemblance to Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

10:55 – The limos are heading for the Capitol. The route is lined with thousands of cops facing the crown rather than the motorcade. There’s been publicity about the Secret Service counter-snipers who have special rifles made for their body size and arm length.

Lots of black hats on the men, lending an oddly Hasidic flavor. One of ‘em looked like Jack Abramoff on his perp walk.

11:13 – Royal trumpets with banners as each former first couple enters. George H.W. Bush walks in with a cane, tottering in like a penguin. Babs looks the same as she did as First Lady (old but tough). Now comes Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter. He looks pretty old but she looks great. Now Bill and Hill. He looks kind of depressed actually. Marines give slow synchronized salutes.

Now Malia and Sasha. Sweet girls.

11:38 -- First shot of Obama. He looks serious and serene. He walks without an escort.

11:40 -- Aaaaaagh! NECN web video just died.

11:44 -- Whew; it’s back, but choppy due to increased demand. I’m going to watch on the big TV in the conference room.

“Air and Simple Gifts,” a beautiful musical piece by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo-Ma et al.

Later: Turns out it was a recording; they didn’t want to risk being out of tune or breaking a string in the frigid air. Yo-Yo Ma said on NPR that they actually played their instruments, but they didn't make any sound because they applied soap rather than resin to the cello and violin bows, and they disconnected the piano's hammers from the keyboard. The clarinetist wasn't so difficult to fake, obviously.

My favorite bits from Obama’s speech:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
...
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers.

Favorite lines from “Praise Song for the Day,” the poem written and read by Elizabeth Alexander:

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
...
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

A bit from the benediction by civil rights icon Rev. Joseph E. Lowery:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around -- when yellow will be mellow -- when the red man can get ahead, man -- and when white will embrace what is right.

Back on line

2009-01-22T10:17:00.003-05:00

I had a couple of posts started but they kept appearing in Hindi, for God's sake. Much investigation revealed that deep in the bowels on this blog, SOMEHOW a setting got turned on that said "enable transliteration." So now we're good to go, but I couldn't recover the bits I'd written before, so there will be blatherings about the inauguration etc. as soon as I recover my equilibrium as well as the digestive-tract health of the entire family (three of us dwelt in the House of Heaves earlier this week, and I'm now at home with Sarah, the last to succumb). More soon.

Newspaper RIP... for real

2009-01-09T13:04:00.001-05:00

And I'm sad and angry. The Pictorial Gazette, where I had the most fun, learned the most and did my best work is no more. It's a small drop in the deluge of foundering newspapers nationwide, I know, but it certainly hits home. It was a good paper when I was there -- we won several new England Press Association awards. I actually quit in protest over the firing of another employee, high-minded person that I was (not to mention mortgage-less).

Here's the story from another paper on Dec. 20, 2008:

Journal Register Apparently Shuts Several Papers
Weeklies owned by parent of New Haven Register covered shoreline towns

Five weekly newspapers serving towns along the Connecticut shoreline, along with several others in the New Haven area, appear to have been shuttered by their parent company, Journal Register Co., which also publishes the New Haven Register.

Employees who worked for Pictorial Gazette, Branford Review, Clinton Recorder, Main Street News, East Haven Advertiser and a handful of ElmCity weekly newspapers were notified at a staff meeting Thursday afternoon that Thursday would be their last day, said Joyce Mletschnig, who until Thursday was the Gazette's associate editor.

The Gazette serves Lyme, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Chester, Deep River and Essex, said Mletschnig. Each weekly had a circulation of about 2,000 to 3,000, as well as a Web site. Friday, the papers' Web sites were still online.

”They announced that our jobs had been terminated,” said Mletschnig, 63. “And that we all had done a good job, and it wasn't our fault. It was the economy, bad revenues.”

Mletschnig said John Slater, general manager of the Shore Line and Elm City weeklies, told her Thursday not to bother finishing work on the Gazette, which is published on Tuesdays.

Future plans are unclear for the group of weeklies -- six along the shoreline plus a weekender, Shore View, and eight Elm City weeklies. Mletschnig said Shore Line Times, which covers Guilford and Madison, does not appear to have been eliminated, but that information provided at the meeting was vague.

In all, 21 employees were laid off Thursday, according to a source with extensive knowledge of the weekly papers' operations who wished to remain anonymous, as the person is still employed by the company.

Calls to John Slater, general manager of the Shore Line and Elm City weeklies, were not returned Friday. Calls to Gary Struening, vice president of finance at the Yardley, Pa.-based Journal Register, were also not returned.

Jack Kramer, editor of the New Haven Register, acknowledged Friday that some changes had been made to the weeklies but directed all questions to Slater. The Journal Register closed three weekly newspapers in Philadelphia last Thursday, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. The struggling company also announced last month that it would close two daily Connecticut papers -- The Bristol Press and The New Britain Herald -- in January if the papers are not sold by then.

The company has been operating with about $650 million in debt and is under a forbearance agreement with its lenders.

Mletschnig, the Pictorial Gazette editor, said Friday that the weeklies' employees knew of the parent company's financial troubles and weren't completely surprised by Thursday's news.

”I'm close to retirement and being there 20 years, I got a decent severance,” Mletschnig said. “But you know, I'm thinking now, what am I going to do? I still would like to work. There were some people … (who) were the breadwinners of the family. They're in a bit of trouble.”

Several points of note. I have friends who worked at the New Haven Register and they assure me that the Journal Register Co. has always been noteworthy for its crapitude even in a world where many newspaper are poorly run from a business standpoint. But they reached new heights by closing the paper with zero wanting just before Christmas as good old Slater just tells Joyce "not to bother finishing the paper." Ever.

Some reader comments to the story were also rather painful:

This problem does not speak to the newspaper industry's problems, really. It is more about Journal Register being deep in debt and running THEIR papers into the ground so they can't survive this economy. We need to be sure to remember that.

People blame the Internet for "stealing" readers of print newspapers, but this argument really only applies to national news. You can't read about your town's Board of Selectmen on Yahoo news. Someone still has to report and write the news, whether it be local or national, and it looks like there is no longer a healthy business model for local news in any medium. As another reader comment said:

Yes, newspapers need to make changes, but if they are not supported, then good luck to you in the community you live in... who will keep your local gov't in check? Who will tell you what is going on with your taxes or school system?All I can say is if you think that newspapers do not matter, good luck to you.

Ducks!

2009-01-09T11:49:00.002-05:00

Enjoy the ducks. They love us and we love them.

New Years' duck
Duck riding shotgun (watch the video)

RIP newsprint

2008-12-17T13:26:00.000-05:00

Election detox update: Autumn mania has faded, but a small inner glow remains. Cabinet choices: so far so good. Can't wait for the inauguration. A couple of my coworkers are going so as to experience the history along with thousands of strangers in the cold.

I've been meaning to write about the ongoing demise of the newspaper business but there wasn't a recent news peg until yesterday's announcement that the two Detroit papers are cutting back to home delivery only three days a week (with only a pared-down newsstand print version on those days), since the web has for some time been Numero Uno. In weeks previous, there've been articles about the Tribune Co. filing for bankruptcy, professional web-only journalists successfully competing with traditional media in several cities, and apparently at least one paper outsourcing all its editorial functions to India for pennies. Wow.

I got into newspapers at what was, in retorpsect, the last gasp of the golden age of the industry, even though it hardly seemed that way at the time, given the paltry wages and obsolete technology -- much as I try to repress the early-'90s memories of the hard-drive-lacking 640K computers and Trash-80 laptops for filing those smokin' Zoning Board stories in 20-degree weather from the payphone down the street from Town Hall at 10:00 p.m. Where was I? Right, so... newspapers are dead because they cost way too much to print and deliver compared to web production. Getting your news on a computer is certainly more efficient, searchable and durable; the only thing lacking is those big pages with interesting layouts and photos. But devotees of LP album-cover and gate-sleeve art adjusted to the CD wihtout too much fuss, because the overall benefits far outweighed the losses. As for myself, I really enjoyed the process of making a newspaper -- the layout, the typesetting, the wax and Exacto knives, the boards, the smell and sound of the printing press -- and I like scanning thbig pages. But I don't bring the Globe on the subway because it's too damn hard to work the thing when yu're crammed between your fellow commuters. So I guess you can count me as someone who doesn't mind the loss of the printed newspaper per se; I worry much more about the loss of editorial competence that seems to accompany this change. The drive to get news on the web the second news happens, plus the grassroots we-are-all-publishing-equals philosophy of the blogger movement, has meant a real loss of quality in writing and editing. Not that most small newspapers had a lot to brag about in this area, but still. And I hope that we'll find economically viable ways to gather and publish local news (meaning: relatively low readership) well as national news outlets and blogs are managing to do. I think the working-class Brits have the most to lose by all this change. After all, how can you wrap up an order of fish 'n chips in a Kindle?

When you have NO SHAME

2008-12-09T15:51:00.003-05:00

Massachusetts and New Jersey, to name just two, have a reputation for political corruption. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, could top the hinkle-pinkling of Ilinois Gov. Roy Blagojevich as just reported on CNN.com. Trying to auction off Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder? If he doesn't get enough moolah, maybe appoint himself to the seat so he could rake in more graft from the Senate than he could as governor and also rehab his already-crappy image for a 2016 presidential run? Or how about threatenting to withhold state assistance from the Tribune Co. unless they fired their editorial board that had been critical of him? It's so juicy I can hardly stand it. Plus as an added bonus, his photo on CNN.com reveals what I firmly believe is a toupee worthy of Buddy Cianci. No one who is 52 has hair that thick and dark brown, with the possible future exception of George Stephanopoulos. Diane Wilkerson looks like a nun in comparison.

Edited to add: A blog post in TIME clarifies that Obama is not implicated in any way:

The complaint states, "Blagojevich said he knew that the President-elect wanted Senate Candidate 1 for the open seat but 'they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. [Expletive] them.'

What's this country coming to when you can't even bribe the president-elect?

Stumbling upon things

2008-12-05T13:54:00.000-05:00

I've recently discovered StumbleUpon and have already wasted many happy hours with it. Some great yields:

Absolutely Ridiculous Christmas Card Photos (not to be confused with 1970s JC Penney catalog photos)
Australia Gets Drunk, Wakes Up in North Atlantic
2208 A.D. Looks Back on George W. Bush

...and I'm going to recommend Obama Victory plates on StumbleUpon even though it's not intentionally funny, but it's oh so America. (Be sure to have your speakers on to hear the ludicrous voice-over.) Get 'em while supplies last!

...and the most recent Mimi Smartypants, whose young daughter Nora was recently doing some sort of art project:

Nora: MOM! Do we have any of those, those, those things that make spinning happen?
Me: [Percocet? Stationary bicycles? Colonial Williamsburg?] Sorry, what?
Nora: The metal things! With the sides!
Me: Can you explain more...
Nora: AHHHHHHH! [runs away as I am clearly too dumb to live]
[blessed silence punctuated by faint rummaging sounds and exasperated noises from the kid's room]
Nora [comes running out of her room carrying some of those metal paper-fastener brad things]: THESE.
Me: Oh. No, I don't think I have any, but I'm glad you did. If you need them.
Nora: I do! Luckily I found some in my collection of Small Metal Things. You know, that shoebox? The orange one?
Me: Uh, sure.

More later on the woeful state of the newspaper industry, but not just now. It's Friday, dammit.

Raising a wee glass

2008-11-17T14:55:00.004-05:00

See Dozer. Dozer is a stuffed dog. See Dozer drink. Dozer is having a martini at my father's house. See children. See children smile. The children are my nephew Jack, Sarah and Becky. See children unfazed by boozy dog. Dozer is friendly. "Hit me again, bartender," says Dozer.

Yesterday the girls and I attended a show at the local library of Celtic music, storytelling and dancing. Sort of a mini Family Von Trapp -- a jolly bearded fellow, his wisp o' a wife and their kids, an 11-year-old girl who danced beautifully and an 8-year-old boy who played a drum but looked like he wished he was almost anywhere else. I learned a lot, including the difference between Irish and Scots bagpipes (apparently playing the Irish version must be done in a seated position while also doing the chicken dance with one arm) as well as the dances themselves. I never knew the fingers above the heads were meant to symbolize a stag's horns; I always figured they were just trying to look like snooty ballet dancers or something. Whereas in the Irish version, nothing moves above the waist for some reason of misplaced modesty, perhaps. Becky wants the group to come play at her birthday in February, but these clowns don't even have a web page, it seems.

Ben is in New Jersey emptying out his mother's house, which will finally be sold next month. Except for a fridge cleanout, the house has been in suspended animation since she entered the Alzheimer's place in April 2007. She lived there for 35 years, and needless to say, she is a pack rat. It's a large job and a sad one for Ben, but fortunately he has cousins and family friends who are helping. So I'm a single mom this week until Friday, whe I get to drive with the girls for six hours over rush hour to reunite the family in time for a bar mitzvah on Saturday. On the bright side, I slept so soundly last night I couldn't believe it. It was the absence of snoring from my bed partner, I think. I feel so rested today that I may have to look into some heavy-duty earplugs for use after he gets back.

Still basking

2008-11-07T12:10:00.003-05:00

Some more thoughts on Obama's historic election...

Gov. George Wallace's daughter movingly explains how her family has come full circle on race.
Colson Whitehead writes in the New York Times that finally we will have a skinny guy as president.
Amid the celebration, another reason to mourn the slow death of newspapers.

Suppose McCain had won. Would the national reaction and mood (as dictated by those who voted for him) be anything like what were seeing now? Hell no, because let's face it, no one was excited about McCain. Larry King asked Bill Maher, "Did the McCain campaign -- I know you admired him in the past -- did it disappoint you?" Maher's reply: "Terribly. I think it even disappointed the people who were voting for him. I sensed something in conservatives reacting to the election yesterday. Even the ones who voted for McCain, they sort of were relieved. I sensed that. It was like, 'yes, I guess I kind of had to pull the lever for McCain, but secretly a part of me knew that this country needed a breath of fresh air, needed a new kind of president, a new kind of politics, a new face, a smart guy, a flexible guy, a supple leader.'"

Very interested now to see who gets picked for top administration spots. So far the only one announced is Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. I'm a little nervous because he's a pretty partisan guy even though I'm on his side. I hope the usual rhetoic of "let's leave campaign partisanship behind and heal the nation, blah blah blah" isn't just the usual empty rhetoric.

Thank you

2008-11-05T10:14:00.004-05:00

Today I feel thankfulness. The country did the right thing and elected Obama as the 44th president. I still can't believe it, hearing phrases like "President-elect Obama" on the radio. Or just seeing it in print: President Barack Obama. "President Obama announced at his first press conference..." Wow. And I'm also thankful in the way you would be if you saw a car narrowly miss hitting a child that I won't have to see or hear the phrase "Vice President Palin," which in some ways would be worse thsn "President McCain." What a crushing blow that would have been. I mean was anyone, even those who voted for him, really excited about McCain? But now we don't have to spend any mroe negative energy deploring those two. At least just for today's it's all positive, and much more so for African-Americans. Funny thing... the media kept speculating on a hidden race factor, the Bradley effect, etc. Well, there was a race factor, but it was on the flip side of the coin -- blacks turned out in huge numbers to vote for Obama and feel pride and thankfulness I can only imagine. The Boston Globe had a story this morning that captured some poignant thoughts, such as these:

"At the time when I came up, I couldn't see beyond the cotton fields," Coakley said. "There wasn't anybody in my life I could look at who could see beyond the cotton fields. And to see this man come the way that he's come, through all the struggle and all the marching and all the hanging and all the lynching and everything that was done in this country, whatever doubts that I have, whatever I feel within me, this is the best country on the face of this earth. And we're not just talking about it. We're living it."

"They were hung, honey. Their homes were burned down," said Merlene Jackson, a 65-year-old poll worker at Morning Star Baptist Church in Mattapan, referring to violence she heard about as a girl growing up in Valdosta, Ga. Today, "they're coming in and no one is hurting them, no one is shooting them down. I never thought I would see this. It's just joy all down my soul. When you are down so long, you don't think you can get up, and this is the unreachable."

And to think it still could have turned out differently, despite a candidate of such charisma and intelligence on one hand and such a fucked-up economy and foreign policy on the other, if McCain had, for example, picked Joe Lieberman instead of Sarah Palin as his VP. More than 55 million people voted Republican (vs. almost 63 million Democrat), so I have to remember that this is still a conservative country and more frustrations inevitably lie ahead. But for now I'm just going to enjoy it.

Edited to add: The Onion is always a big help in the enjoyment department: "Black Man Given Nation's Worse Job" and "Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress."

And this New York Times editorial summed up the whole thing beautifully -- past, present and future.

Overcoming guilt

2008-10-31T13:44:00.002-05:00

...at not posting for so long. So very busy... but here I am. Sort of ironic that I went to BlogHer Boston to get all sorts of ideas an motivation for a blog, and since then I've written zilch. Maybe because actually I was more intimidated than inspired. There were a lot of interesting people there, and reasonably interesting panel discussions, but most of these folks were SERIOUS about blogging. Only a few did it close to full-time, but they are heavily into hit-tracking, multiple blogs and sites, networking online with other bloggers, handing out beautifully designed business cards for their sites, etc., etc. The only networking I do is with people who already know me in real life, so... whatever. Actually I'm mulling one or two new writing ideas, but HA! As if, given my copious free time and legendary self-discipline, but I can always dream, can't I? Anyway, just so I can finally throw away the business cards that have been smooshing around the bottom of my backpack, the people I met included Christine Koh of BostonMamas, Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother, Lydia Walshin of The Perfect Pantry, Megin Hatch of GNMParents.com, Chelsee Adams and Sue Anderson of We Are Not Martha, Candelaria Silva, and Angela of Mommy Bytes. Don't ask me to recognize them on the street or anything. But they did have some fun giveaways including a lovely set of terrycloth slippers courtesy of Yahoo Shine. I almost felt like a real convention-goer except I didn't booze it up at any after-dinner parties (actually I got bored and left mid-afternoon).

Four days until the election and we can stop obsessing over stupid stupid Palin and McCain and Ben's right-wing relatives, and start seeing what horrendous damage Bush is doing on his way out the door.

Poetry... flowers...

2008-10-10T21:37:00.002-05:00

I am a bad blogger. I have been extremely busy with my new job but in a good way. I am going to BlogHer Boston tomorrow morning for a whole day, and my husband and children are pissed. In the meantime, I would like to offer you the following stories that I've liked, most of which are outdated but who cares:

The poetry of Sarah Palin
Some random blogger whose hilarious Palin debate flow chart appealed to people, to the point where only days later, there are T-shirts and coffee mugs available...
More on the Palin ridiculousness...
But perhaps it doesn't really matter because it turns out American capitalism may be history anyway...

More McPain

2008-09-29T12:24:00.003-05:00

What in the world am I going to write about after the election is over? I don't care -- it's so fascinating and maddening that I can't help myself. On Saturday we had Maureen Dowd's observation about the financial bailout mess:

It was quite a memorable moment in history for the M.B.A. president and the nominee of the party of business. Who would have dreamed that when socialism finally came to the U.S.A. it would be brought not by Bolsheviks in blue jeans but Wall Street bankers in Gucci loafers?

The first debate held no surprises; the real action is in the careening McCain campaign and its redoubtable VP, whose paltry intellectual pantry was stripped bare by the two-fisted Katie Couric last week. This was part 2 of the interview in which Palin claimed foreign-policy know-how because Russia is sorta next to Alaska and you can practically see it 'n' stuff. Yeah, and I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me a fucking astrophysicist. My God, Friday's VP debate... I may have to double up on antidepressants for a few days beforehand. I almost can't bear to watch. As a fruiend once said, it's like a car accident with multipel DOAs -- horrifying but impossible to look away from. Just as long as Biden doesn't fuck up and act condescending; she doesn't need a-a-a-a-a-ny help looking stupid.

Back at the ranch (not the Crawford one)... we baby-sat last night for Z and K's two kids (two months and 2.5 years), and we'll see them two more nights running for Rosh Hashanah dinner swapping. I'd blocked out little details such as the experience of changing a poopy diaper on a toddler. But no matter. Sarah and Becky love them and I'm happy they have cousins about their age who live nearby. Happy new year!

Plese let this be a taste of things to come

2008-09-26T13:21:00.000-05:00

What with the financial meltdown and an increasingly obvious airhead as his VP (read this absolutely hilarious piece in the New Yorker), it's starting to look -- God, I hope -- that McCain is going down. Here's a Globe op-ed making the case. More interesting is the writer's suggestion that we Google "Top 10 McCain meltdowns." Now, I don't mind so much that the guy has a temper -- it's a common problem among power-hungry political/military types and not his biggest fault by any means -- but the list I found is pretty entertaining, especially Meltdown #1 against his own wife in 2000. I just have to quote it in case the link breaks:

Cindy McCain playfully ran her fingers through the Senator's hair and teased, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain reddened and fired back, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

Well. I can't wait until Kim Jong Il pisses off President McCain and he shouts, "Oh yeah? Well fuck you, Kim! You and your nuclear arsenal can kiss my rosy red wrinkled ass!"

Now for the feature I promised w hile back: greatest hits of my Anatomy and Physiology professor. He's about 5'6" and always wears big baggy dress pants with suspenders, and a baseball cap with the insignia of some military thing in Rhode Island. he's an ex-military guy (I forget which branch) from Dallas with a mighty broad twang and a withering sense of humor. I adore him. Here's him on the first day of class:

I use a card-reading machine to grade exams so it's fair. It's not gonna say "Well, she's a little bit ditsy but she's got a cute giggle" or "He's a little slow but he sure knows the NFL." That machine does not care. All it needs is lots of electricity and a little WD-40 at Christmas time.

A girl asked me once if I was giving any extra credit. I said, "Sure. Take this note to the eighth floor and give it to the fairy godmother." Out she went. She comes back and says "Hey... this building doesn't have an eighth floor!" Guess what? There isn't a fairy godmother either!

How many of you have had children on purpose?

ATP -- adenosine triphosphate. That's the powerhouse of the cell. That's what provides the financin' for the romancin'.

Here's somethin' for those of you who feel the need to write everything down like dutiful, obedient court reporters. It's not about what to think; it's how to think. Are you a mynah bird or a parakeet or somethin'?

And... they're off!

2008-09-19T14:52:00.000-05:00

It's fall again and we're off to the races... new schedules, a new job for me, logistics of Thursday afternoon Hebrew School transportation to consider... but also a new era without Ben's aunt Priscilla, who died Sept. 12. I've been a tad busy since then at the funeral and getting back on track here, hence the silence. We left that afternoon with a rented minivan after I couldn't rustle up one to borrow from family or friends (everyone was away). In true Murphy's Law fashion, I had to get Ben to come to the rental place in Harvard Square because it turned out my driver's license had expired. Which I knew about months ago and sent in for a renewal to the DMV, which fucked up and sent me a duplicate instead with an expiration date about a week after it arrived in the mail of course. Stupid fuckwits. So we left late and hit traffic. We picked up G. and handled her repeated questions about where we were going, where the funeral would be, etc. It started to rain. The kids had to pee about every seven minutes, so I got to see the inside of every gas station rest room between Framingham, Mass., and Howell, N.J. Fun trip. Fortunately we had G. stay with Ben's brother while the four of us slept at his father's house, which is small but extremely tidy and restful. They even hired a sitter Saturday night so the four of us could go to a restaurant.

The funeral was of course very sad. It was a graveside service with a rabbi and a eulogy by Priscilla's son, though we missed the beginning because Ben's dad got slightly lost on the way to the cemetery, as he apparently never takes the same route twice to go to even the most familiar places. It was fiercely hot and it it no exaggeration to say that sweat mixed with tears on the faces of several in attendance. This is my second Jewish funeral, and the hardest part is always when they shovel the first shovelful of dirt onto the coffin (it's lowered by workers as the rabbi finishes his remarks). You never forget that hollow thud of dirt hitting the plain pine coffin (Jewish custom -- no embalming, burial ASAP, the simplest of coffins). Then everyone else takes turns shoveling. The first shovel is taken up and placed with the shovel upside-down, to symbolize the fact that this is not labor in the usual sense, but a mitzvah (good deed). In fact, as the rabbi explained, it's the ultimate mitzvah, because it's the only one you can do for someone for which you can have no expectation of being repaid (since the person is dead, of course).

The second emotional low point of the weekend, for Ben at least, was when his mother caught sight of her car at Ben's brother's house, where it's been kept off the road for the last year. He had put a tarp over it but she still recognized it, hauled of the top (folding it carefully) and actually fished her car keys out of her purse and tried to start it and drive away. Of course the battery was totally dead, so she was PISSED and let Ben have it. She just does not accept the fact that she cannot drive and is not going home with her car ("just to the grocery store and back!") and in fact is not going home at all. Ben's greatest fear is the day when he has to tell her that her house had been sold (it hasn't happened yet but it's on the market) because she has said on more than one occasion that that would kill her. Oy.

Soon I will write more cheerful things about my hilarious professor of Anatomy and Physiology II, but now I'll break my vow of silence about all thigns Sarah Palin to note this spot-on column by Maureen Dowd in which she made me laugh aloud at her prose for the first time ever.

And so we wait

2008-09-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

Ben returned about 10:30 last night from a very difficult weekend in Delaware visiting his dying aunt and extended family (see last post). For Ben, the secondary drama was dealing with his mother G., whose Alzheimer's disease and being away from her familiar surroundings under such circumstances made her understandably confused and upset. This was just as hard to take in some ways as his aunt's illness. An example: G. asked Priscilla's nephew, who is a doctor, whether there was any chance Priscilla could recover. When he gently told her no, G. burst into tears and wept for a few minutes before calming down. And then asking the same question again. And getting the same answer, and experiencing the shock and pain of that information for the first time -- again. Ben did a wise thing, which was to have G. write down what she wanted to say in the way of a good-bye to her sister. Ben also made a short video using his cellphone of the two of them in the hospital room. It was shocking and sad to see how Priscilla had deteriorated so quickly, but also heartwarming to see the sisters holding hands. I think it was good for Ben as well to be able to be there and connect with his family. In some ways I wish I could have been there as well, for whatever support I could offer, but also in a sort of selfish way, to share in the experience of being brought together with others in a serious way, which sounds horrible, as though you need an impending death in the family to bond with people, which is not what I mean, so I guess I can't really verbalize it... but also I'm drawn to the experience in an odd way because Priscilla's illness has been so much like my mother's (feeling tired, getting tests, suddenly being told she has just weeks to live, then told you have only a few days as relatives rush to her side). It was a terrible thing when my mom died, but I almost feel I didn't experience it completely, if that makes any sense, because I had a two-month-old and a 19-month-old to take care of, so I couldn't have extended visits with her in the hospice, though my stepfather, who had no such contsraints, also visited her a few times a day after we arrived, as opposed to Priscilla's husband, who has been with her round the clock, sleeping in her room. Every family is different and everyone is entitled to make their own choices about dealing with the end of life, but the contrasts as well as the similarities in these two situations are striking to me, and so I've been preoccupied with reliving the details of my mom's death, wondering if we could have done things differently to somehow make it a "better" death for her and for us, as if such a thing were possible... well, obviously I'm rambling here; I think I need to take some time to write something more coherent about that episode, but not right now.

Anyway, it looks as though all four of us will be going back down for a funeral sometime in the near future. I say four rather than five because the weekend convinced Ben, despite extreme feelings of guilt, that he simply can't bring his mother back there for the funeral. She simply can't function away from her facility any more; she won't remember who died and when, or where she is, or why she is at a funeral, and all the repeated questions and explanations will be too painful for both her and everybody else. (For example, during the train ride back last night, Ben said she was asking, "Who was that woman we saw in the hospital?"). Ecch. The debilities of old age are the worst.

An impending tragedy

2008-09-06T10:10:00.006-05:00

Here I am at home on a Saturday morning with the girls... but no Ben. This is because he took a train with his mother yesterday afternoon to Delaware, where G's sister Priscilla is dying of cancer. A couple of weeks ago, Priscilla was feeling tired and vaguely ill, so she went to the doctor, who did some routine blood work and found that something was wrong with her liver, so he sent her to the hospital for more tests... which revealed cancer throughout her liver. The doctors suspected that it has spread from another site in her abdomen, so they did an endoscopy and found a large mass in her stomach. The cancer was deemed inoperable, and she was also too weak or too far along to benefit from chemotherapy. Now we're up to Tuesday (four days ago). The prognosis was three to four weeks and hospice was called in. So now Ben had to decide what to tell his mother (who's close to her sister) and when. The staff at her Alzherimer's place were in two camps. One guy thought G. should be told and taken down to see Preiscilla before her death. Others thought it would be better if she weren't told anything until her sister died, then told that the death was sudden and unexpected. Ben was still undecided untnil yesterday, when his cousin called again to tell him that his mother's liver was failling and the time left was even shorter than they originally thought. So Ben left work, picked up his mother and got on board a train for Delaware.

His mother, as expected, is having a hard time absorbing what's happening (especially how fast it's happening) and initially had a theory that Priscilla was poisoned. This evidence of continued mental dertioration in his mom is obviously hard on Ben, on top of grieving his aun't impending death. Priscilla and her husband are in some ways the glue of the extended family, since they host a big Thanksgiving gathering most years, and everyone gets along with them (which you can't say about quite a few members of the clan).

More in a day or two...