Memories

I am back in an organize-and-purge mode to continue what seems to be the neverending process of settling and resettling.In the course of it, I came across a stash of pictures that had been on my office wall in grad school and beyond.

First there was the New Yorker cartoon that I've kept in one writing space or another since the early nineties. It's yellowed and marked with old tape now, but I still couldn't quite rid myself of it.



Then, there was a picture that has followed me for even longer, from the days when I played flute and spent my summers at Interlochen. What's remarkable about this—besides my old preppy look—is the power of the black-and-white printing. Until you've put a properly developed BW print next to the crap that comes out of automatic developers in most photo labs these days, you don't realize the stark contrast—hence the second shot under here, taken from the Staten Island ferry a little over ten years ago.





Then there was the picture of Erik and me at the edge of the Grand Canyon. This one came on a whimsical trip, shortly after we'd both turned thirty and not long before we would both become fathers. Two friends on the edge of a remarkable canyon, and on the edge of remarkable journeys in life.



And last but not least is the postcard I had saved from the motel I stayed at on my first two nights in Fayetteville. I can only imagine the glory The Chief must have seen in its heyday when Fayetteville was first coming up in the world. Imagination is all that's possible because by the time I chose it as an inexpensive place to stay close to the university, it was the refuge of a few transient families and locusts, saved only by the odd addition of one of the better restaurants in Fayetteville. That good restaurants would occupy a corner of dive motels was, in fact, an odd trait of Northwest Arkansas ten years ago. Good times...

Friday Fun — Monday cool edition

Since I'm running late with this, I'll run cooooool with it.



And throw in a little Serge Gainsbourg, to boot...

Trader Joe's and evangelism

Anyone who's known me in the past few years knows how much I love Trader Joe's. Actually, anyone who doesn't know me but visits this blog from time to time probably knows this. I'm not sure I've ever actually spelled out the reasons why I love TJ's and why I will evangelize about them to almost anyone who will listen and who hasn't actually bought into the TJ's cult yet. Here goes...

1. Size This may not be the first criteria most people bring up when evangelizing for TJ's, but it tops my list. At 15,000 sq. ft., the average TJ's is far more manageable and scaled to human needs than your average grocery store (50,000 sq. ft.) or superstore (a terrifying 250,000 sq. ft.). At this size, I can get in and out in a reasonable amount of time. Banana is also easier to manage in a store this size. She can help with the groceries without getting bored. Because things are closer to her scale, she can also take it all in without being as overwhelmed by hundreds of options for cereal/bread/cookies/crackers/cheese/you-name-it.


2. Quality With occasional exceptions, the quality of TJ's products is good and consistent. They have eliminated high fructose corn syrup and unsaturated fats from most (if not all) of their product lines. To the best of their ability, they source even their non-organic products from GMO-free sources. Their non-organic milk is rBST-free, as are most other dairy items. They offer cheeses from grass-fed cows, and their meats are hormone- and antibiotic-free. As a companion pointed out, they even specify the use of animal rennet versus vegetarian rennet in the cheeses. Their frozen foods are generally very good and can be a godsend when you need to pull together a quick, healthy dinner for a tired little girl, or when you need to pull together appetizers for cocktail hour.


3. Cost We finally get to cost, which is where most people start. I can get out of TJ's with groceries for a full week (breakfast, lunch, and dinner for two) as well as a couple six-packs of decent beer and a couple bottles of wine for a hundred dollars. Certainly some items cost the same as they might at one of the large supermarket chains, but there are many staples like pasta, yogurt, cereal, cheese, and juices that I can buy for significantly less at TJ's.


4. Customer Service I cannot emphasize enough the importance of customer service in this list. When managers and employees show genuine enthusiasm and are consistently friendly and helpful, the whole experience improves. When they go out of their way to pay attention to children with (healthy) treats and hellos, shopping becomes more fun than a chore. And any parent who has ever taken a kid grocery shopping will probably agree that keeping a kid happy in a grocery store is priceless.


5. Variety TJ's may not have hundreds of options for every item, but I don't necessarily want or need hundreds of options. They have the staples in enough variety that I can generally find what I need. Then there is the constant flow of new, interesting products. Whether it's cheese, prepared food, wine, ice cream, or you name it, there are inevitably moments in every shopping trip when I come across something new and worth trying. As a creature of habit who occasionally needs to be wrenched out of my habits, I appreciate this. I can say the same thing for shopping at Whole Foods, Ellwood Thompson (our local natural market), or the farmers market, but I cannot say the same thing for the standard supermarket chains.


6. Green awareness I've found them to be very good about the use of recycled materials and about developing and using smart packaging. They are also very good about sourcing from sustainable sources. That said, I do wish that their use of packaging for fresh items would be more limited. All the smart packaging in the world can't change the fact that you're still adding waste to the trash stream.

In the end, my only quibble with TJ's is that they are consistently going into locations that can only be reached by car and are often in the exurbs. Such decisions are short-sighted at best and indicate a strategy that ignores the smaller urban areas where their core customers congregate. In Richmond, for example, a store placed in or near the Fan or near West End would perform phenomenally — and would show a nod to green economy. All one has to do is walk around the neighborhoods on recycling day to see how many TJ's bags are out. Hell, you could have done that before the Richmond store opened and seen the numbers of people who made regular treks to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads for their TJ's fixes. I know; I was one of them.

The CPSC bows (a little bit)

Just picked this up from Consumerist. It looks like the Consumer Products Safety Commission has seen the light a little bit:

Large manufacturers and retailers say the cost of testing will not be a burden. But small businesses such as handmade-toy shops and thrift stores say the requirement would force them to spend tens of thousands of dollars to test products such as clothing, in which the threat of lead is almost nonexistent. Many thrift stores said they would be forced to stop selling children's clothing or close altogether.

The commission's two members (a third seat is vacant) voted tentatively to exempt:

• Items with lead parts that a child cannot access;
  
  
• Clothing, toys and other goods made of natural materials such as cotton and wood; and
  
  
• Electronics that are impossible to make without lead.

The commission also tentatively approved a rule that clarifies how it determines exclusions from the law.

Emphasis mine.

More Corporate Madness: How "helping" our kids could hurt in the long-run

I've been hearing rumblings on DaddyTypes and from my friend Phil who makes toys (among other things) about the law that the Consumer Products Safety Commission has drafted to go into effect on February 10. Considering my usual interest in small producers and quality products versus the marketing muscle of mega-corporations, I will take a mea culpa on not paying closer attention until this post. Apparently, the law affects toys and clothes, and it may be retroactive to extant items — whether or not they contain lead.

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger — including clothing — be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven’t been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

Effectively, what the government has done is to ensure that small producers — anyone from a single maker like Phil to a small company with small revenues — must go through the same costly testing requirements as the corporations whose shoddy practices caused the problem in the first place. Word on the virtual street is that many producers simply won't be able to afford to make and sell their toys or clothes anymore. And that you may not be able to find and buy all those gorgeous handmade kids sweaters, blankets, wood toys, felted animals... you name it.

Do a couple searches or head on over to the Handmade Toy Alliance for more information.

UPDATE: Here's a good post from Consumerist on it with a couple good links beyond...

H/T to Neatorama for catching my attention.

Does everything need to be redesigned?

I bought the game Sorry! for Anna for Christmas. It was a game I figured we could both enjoy, and so far my instinct proved right. One thing bothers me about the game, though: the redesign.

This was the game I remember growing up:



And this is the game as it is currently designed:




The older version certainly needed a little updating. The design showed it's age, but what Milton Bradley did was unconscionable. Whoever designed it threw every trick in the book at it.

Grunge design has been all the rage the past few years, and the trademark splatters are here. Big cartoonish design has made a comeback too; the big outlines and super-splashy "Bam," "Pow" stars speak to that. And don't forget about half-toning; some of that's thrown in for good measure. Then there's the odd turn to a retro, space-age feel with the circles and gradients and bubble effects with circle outlines thrown on top of them. The cherry on top of that particular sundae are all the extra arrows and line elements that come from the little techie elements that felt fresh ten years ago. And don't forget about the updated cool-retro typeface—the name of which escapes me now—on the cover, the requisite handwriting font to give it the fun marketing splash of a printed Post-It, and the crazy-cool type treatments on the game board. To top it all off, there are transparencies everywhere. After all, where would we be without transparencies in contemporary graphic design, right?

Oy.

It all adds up to a redesign that feels like every design cliché of the past five years puked all over the package. In the end, it went from dated-but-readable to so-busy-that-you-have-to-concentrate-just-to-figure-out-what-you're-looking-for. I'm tempted to blame design-by-committee, but in the end it feels more like design driven by marketing. I can almost see the brand and sales managers agreeing that it looks new, fresh, awesome while a designer sits in the studio counting all the layers in his Illustrator files.

navel-gazing

is over for the time-being. I'm returning Impolitic Eye to topics other than my own therapeutic navel-lint. Consider this an addendum to the previously posted list of resolutions. That's all, thanks for playing...

self-sabotage

One of my central goals over the past few years has been to understand why I seem compelled to sabotage myself. Anyone who's read this blog knows that I struggle to hack through and improve my attention to the details of day-to-day life and relationships.

My history of self-sabotage goes back much farther, however, to taking tests ill-prepared to partying before an important exam to not pursuing a good job opportunity until it has slipped away to any myriad of other spots in my life where I feel like could have done better; what I had in every case was an excuse. There was always a reason why I didn't do better or didn't need to do better than I had, and in this way I was protecting myself from something. Usually, I believe I was protecting myself from the need to follow up a success — it was easier to be just good enough and live down to that than to repeat excellence.

In this case, though, self-awareness has been of little use. I know I do this, and yet too often I've slipped back into the self-sabotage habit. I didn't really have an excuse until I came across an article today courtesy of Neatorama and LifeHacker that brought it all into relief. Apparently studying this tendency is a fairly new (since 1978) idea in psychology:

This is one reason that genuine excuse artisans — and there are millions of them — don’t wait until after choking to practice their craft. They hobble themselves, in earnest, before pursuing a goal or delivering a performance. Their excuses come preattached: I never went to class. I was hung over at the interview. I had no idea what the college application required.

“This is real self-sabotage, like drinking heavily before a test, skipping practice or using really poor equipment,” said Edward R. Hirt, a psychologist at Indiana University. “Some people do this a lot, and often it’s not clear whether they’re entirely conscious of doing it — or of its costs.”

This idea that those of us who intentionally stumble aren't always aware of it is dead-on, as is the reliance on excuses. There are innumerable times that I've slipped up even though I knew getting a few more hours of sleep or doing a little more advance work would ensure better results.

Like most aspects of self-growth, you can hope it's just a matter of time before you take what you know and actually uderstand it enough to put it in practice. Sometimes, that matter of time is now.

Resolutions or Intentions?

I was talking over brunch yesterday about New Years resolutions, and intentions was suggested as a better word. I agree. It seems less proscriptive. In any case, my initial thoughts were to get more sleep and take better care of myself — physically and psychologically. The more I've thought about these ideas, the more I realized that they were vaguer than I wanted them to be. So how about some specific ways I can fulfill this? Here goes:

1. Take deep breaths often.


2. Read more books.


3. Do some strenuous physical activity at least once a week.


4. Fold the laundry and put it away when it is finished.


5. Do the dishes while cooking and after meals.


6. Go through the mail when it comes in rather than when "I get the chance."


7. Do something — play a game, help with a project, go to a museum, etc. — with Banana as often as possible.


8. Challenge my habits.


9. Create something — art, writing, music — once a month.


10. Finish a task before going on to the next one.

Friday Fun — Schoolhouse Rock! edition

Banana got the Schoolhouse Rock! DVD for Christmas, and we've been watching them constantly since. It's been a delicious little nostalgia trip. So delicious in fact that the question of what to do for this week's Friday Fun was dictated by a few of the songs that have been rattling through my head for several days...

Happy Newwwwww Year

By all accounts, the paella turned out well. In fact, the entire evening turned out quite nicely, from the dinner party portion with kids enjoying Shirley Temples and adults sampling champagne to the dinner itself to the black-tie cocktail party up the street. I wisely avoided the temptation of whiskey and followed my companion's lead on drinking water in between glasses of wine and champagne. And when I arrived at our friends' house to pick Banana up post-sleepover, I found her sitting in her nightgown with a Happy New Year! tiara on her head. It was an adorable image.

On the topic of images, I add this one as proof of dads in formalwear working in the kitchen:

crashing to a close

So, tonight is my first black-tie event in recent memory, courtesy of a neighbor who's been throwing a NYE gala for several years. It should be a grand time. First, though, I have to sort my way through the early evening dinner party and kids while figuring out a whole new way of preparing paella.

Since we have at least two members of the group who eat fish but not more carnivorous options, I've dropped the chicken and the chorizo from the usual preparation. Instead, I'll build this year's paella around squid, clams, mussels and shrimp. There will be asparagus and peas in it, as well as home-roasted peppers. For a bit of a nod to southern traditions, I may also throw in some black-eyed peas. We'll see how the mood strikes as I'm working on it.

If it all comes off well, it will be a hell of a way to ring out another year of lessons in life, and a perfect introduction to a year that I hope brings even more positive steps forward for Banana and me. What that means exactly is hard to say, but I am determined to get even better about paring our life down to essentials and being more mindful and better about getting things done.

skating

I watched Banana really push herself at skating today. It helped that she had new (to her) skates and that we had a friend along (thanks, Eileen!) who was a polished enough skater to teach her a thing or two... like skating backwards. I realized one of the things that worries me about Banana, however.

As anyone who knows us or regularly reads this blog knows, she is an independent, head-strong little girl. Her usual reaction to being told she should take lessons or join a team is to say that she already knows how to do whatever-it-is. She will then, as she did today, demonstrate her version of whatever-it-is. Sometimes she's successful; sometimes not. I have yet to figure out how to convince her that someone can teach her how to do things better—and why that's valuable.

Granted: she's a smart, headstrong six-and-a-half year old. Still, I worry that she will follow my path. That is to say that she will follow the path where she does just enough to know she can do something well and then veers on to something else.

As I explored in an earlier post, it's a tricky question—this question of how much to push, how much to encourage, and when to let something go.

Notes from the holidays

Some days as a parent you feel like a super hero. Some days you feel like a super villain. I guess the key is finding the balance—remembering that at the best moments you will stumble and the worst moments you will do better. That said, here are some mental notes from the holiday season...

• A girl will fall in love with a pair of cool new boots. She will wear them every day. Gift success...


• It will be very interesting to see how many brands and/or retailers survive the current recession and holiday season. The sales are absurd. The discounts are so deep it's impossible to imagine how brands like Jos. A. Banks will maintain profitability and viability.


• The grocery shrink ray hit Reilly's food. California Naturals shrank the mid-size bag of their Herring and Sweet Potato food from 20 pounds to 15 pounds. The price remained the same. As a result, the per-pound cost went from $1.50 to $2.00, and the longevity of a bag is reduced from three weeks to two weeks. I appreciate the company's need to deal with rising costs, but I do not appreciated such a drastic loss in value for the consumer.


• Mad Men is an exercise in excellence.


• Once you accept that the holidays are about more than an orgy of consumerism, it is easier to see the beauty of the season. What it really comes down to is the ways in which any one of us can make the people around us feel better.


• Your grandmother's traditional dishes come out better when you stop reading the recipe and remember how to cook and how they tasted when she made them.

There will be more to come later...

A Good Day

Christmas this year began with my Grandmother's Swedish meatballs on the eve. It was a mopey start, however, because Banana was going to be with Mére until mid-day on Christmas. Even so, the meatballs and gløg came out well. In fact, I'd almost say they were the best I've ever done. Practice does make perfect, as my grandmother's example showed.

Christmas morning was a bit mopey as well as it is less fun to wake up without a kid chomping at the bit to open her presents. Nonetheless, I got up, made coffee, and worked at finishing up Christmas preps. Then a wonderful thing happened: Mére called to say that Banana wanted to come over earlier than planned. I had to race a bit, but things came together and I even managed to get showered before they showed up.

What followed was brilliant. Banana was naturally excited about the spread of presents—though in reality it was less this year than last year. Better yet, she was excited about everything she opened—from the stocking gifts to the Schoolhouse Rock DVD to the iPod Shuffle (pink, with her name engraved on back) to the Hanna Andersson outfit (including boots) to the framed picture of her ballet group from the spring. Honestly, it was sweet how she reacted to each and every one, and it was even sweeter that she made a point of saying "Thank you" for each and every one she knew was mine. And when it came to the Santa gifts (iPod and Pixos), she was beyond happy that Santa had remembered what she'd asked for.

The second part of our day — the day with the extended family — was mostly drama-free, too, which helped turn this into a grand Christmas. Ultimately, what made it great was the sense that the people who mattered — including my ex-father-in-law who came over for a bit while Mére rested — all had a grand time. Cynicism aside, it truly is a wonderful life sometimes.

Best Buy

On Friday, I tried to reach three Best Buy stores. Unsuccessfully. My goal was to find out how I could place an order for in-store pick-up in Ohio. After finally calling the main customer service line, I learned that there is, in fact, no way to place an order that someone else will pick up. This seems like something that should change...

Friday Fun - another Muppets edition

TV in the holiday season wouldn't be the same without the classic run of kids' holiday specials. There are many that bear repeating, and there are others that probably never should have existed in the first place. And there are others that I frankly wish would be repeated...







And kudos to them for doing this in German...



********

And Neatorama reminds us that there was also once a Fat Albert holiday special. I'd forgotten that one...

a foot grows in the brain

No kidding. A pediatric surgeon was operating on a three-day old baby and...

"The foot literally popped out of the brain," Grabb told TheDenverChannel Wednesday.
The appendage threatened the newborn's life.

When [Dr. Paul] Grabb performed the life-saving surgery at Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, he was in for another surprise: he also found what appeared to be parts of an intestine in the folds of the infant's tiny brain, in addition to another developing foot, hand and thigh.

Picked up from Boing Boing.

Bleed the World

Brilliant satire via Boing Boing:

art and pondering

These pieces are both more than two years old. Banana was not quite four when she did them. I'm still amazed by the control of line and image. In the bird, the use of color is surprisingly good.





I keep these near my desk at work. As much as any picture I have of her, these are my constant reminders of what faces me and what I'm responsible for day after day, week after week. The talent and potential are remarkable in all children. I remain constantly aware that it is my job to foster that rather than hinder it.

Without a doubt, my parents did what they could to foster my interests and talents. I went to Interlochen for summers when I was a teenager to study flute and later composition. My parents enrolled me in gifted programs and Saturday enrichment classes. I had piano lessons. We traveled extensively. For all this effort, though, it was the Nikon EM my father bought me in ninth grade that probably most influenced me — well, that and all the time we spent in bookstores and around computers.

What I mean to say is that I've started to see all of the time spent on music and the sciences as mis-placed energies. While I was being given every chance to succeed in those areas, I was also doodling. When I dove into Dungeons & Dragons, one of the things I most enjoyed was designing and drawing maps; another was meticulously painting those little lead figures we all collected. And while I was doing this, many of my musician friends would obsessively practice, and some of them have gone on to careers in music. My experience was different: when I got to college and out from under my parents' expectant eyes, I stopped playing and switched to theater.

This is where the camera comes back into play. In those years, I also took picture after picture, and in my last year at Interlochen, I was one of the photographers and editors of the camp yearbook, Scherzo. With the exception of showing up for classes and lessons, the flute was all-but-ignored. The camera was my companion. And when we were doing the design, photo cropping, and paste-up in the layout meetings, I slipped into the element that I would return to again and again until it became a profession in the mid-nineties.

In recent years, I've come to realize that the areas that truly interested me were not the areas I was exploring. My one regret for all the years I spent at Interlochen is that I never took a single visual arts class. Same with college. Why? I don't know. I was trained to pursue certain areas and not others. Even my mother acknowledged as much when I broached the subject with her. The fact was my parents didn't recognize what I was showing an interest in, and I didn't tell them that there were reasons why I didn't practice nearly enough. In the end, though, none of that can be changed. What's done is done; what I've learned on my own over the years, I've learned on my own.

Fast-forward to my life as a parent. I have a child with remarkable creative talents and not-inconsiderable scientific experience and knowledge. The latter I can only foster tangentially; her mother is a better resource there. On the creative (and athletic) side, however, I've made some clear decisions. I will do whatever I can to support the things she actually shows an interest in, but I will not push her in area once she's said she doesn't want to pursue it. Currently, this means I am supporting ballet, art, and possibly ice skating. Soccer and piano are out so far, as are other musical pursuits—though she has shown an aptitude there. And as long as she keeps working and wants to keep working at her ballet positions and her drawing and painting, I will do whatever is within my means to make sure she gets as far as she can. I just won't decide what she should or should not be doing, and I will not push her past the point she decides she's not interested.

Hopefully, I'll see years and years of elephants and birds—or at least brilliant ideas and solid achievement.

subway junkie porn

If you love turn-of-the-century New York and if you obsess over the history of subways, this video picked up from Gothamist is pure crack.

Friday Fun - the Cowboy Junkies edition

So I used the next band on my shuffle to determine this week's Friday Fun, and I picked a few of the top clips that allow embedding. Enjoy. I do.

exhaustion

Banana has a habit of waking up early. Today took the cake: 4:55 a.m. What's particularly odd is that she went to sleep almost an hour later than usual. The early wake-up—particularly since she insisted that I should get out of bed too—was a surprise to say the least. And since I am emphatically not a morning person and find it difficult enough to get out of bed at the usual time (6:15), I am not dealing particularly well with this recent trend.

note to self...

Most Chinese takeout food tastes the same, whether it's Richmond or Fayetteville or Bloomington. I don't know why I even bother any more. It's not like I'm ever really satisfied by looking at the same menu again, or like anything I eat remotely resembles the real stuff I ate while traveling in China. (A special exception is in Charlottesville. Then again, they only serve dumplings, buns, noodles and soup.)

Days like this make me miss living in New York and Boston. Just saying...


(Shot borrowed from here.)

the great Christmas debate

We live, of course, in a consumption-driven society. Getting, wanting and spending are the drivers of our lives. We live between the poles of want and need, and there are even whole sections of kindergarten curricula dedicated to discussing the difference between desires and necessities. But there is no other time of the year when it seems to become as crucial to consider the want vs. need question than at Christmas time.

Banana and I talked the other day about what she was going to ask for from Santa. The list was short, only three items. At the top of the list was an iPod. At the bottom of the list was a complete Littlest Pet Shop set. Believe it or not, I'm okay with the iPod. Shuffles are $49—not inexpensive, but also not bank-busting. When it came to the Littlest Pet Shop, however, I suggested that she probably shouldn't ask Santa for it. Since the summer we've been periodically purging toys, and several Littlest Pet Shop items have been purged. She said she'd play with the complete set, and with all the self-assurance that six-year-olds possess, she told me that the complete set was very different from the other stuff. I persisted a bit longer in part because while none of these things are needs, I am acutely aware that I want to spend money on things that will be used and would much rather spend the same amount on something that she will use for the foreseeable future rather than a few months. (The Polly Pocket racing set from last Christmas is a prime example here; friends play with it more than she does.)

So that brings us to the boots. Does Banana need $60 boots from Hanna Andersson? Probably not. But there are two reasons I will splurge. First, compared to the Circo boots at Target or similarly disposable items for a third of the price, I'd rather spend more on something that won't look worn out in two weeks. I also see a value in teaching her to look for higher quality items that last longer rather than seeing inexpensive as better. Second, I realized recently that Banana is seriously lacking in little girl clothes. She's been wearing more jeans this fall, but when she gets the chance to "girl up" she does. And I realized that her dearth of more-stylish clothing is a direct product of my pragmatism. Just as I'd rather spend more on a few better-quality items, I also tend to spend money on clothing that is more "practical."

The thing is, a little girl should be able to look like a little girl — even if she lives with daddy rather than with both parents. So these boots and the faux shearling coat she'll be getting from Grandma? They're also an effort to remind myself that life isn't all about jeans, sneakers, and fleece jackets.

life costs $40

Lately, I've been hit with a series of random and unexpected expenses—water filters for the coffee maker, water filter for the refrigerator, arthritis meds for Reilly, an impromptu dinner with the family, the Christmas tree, a batch of random necessities from Target, membership dues in the Ad Club. To a one, these expenses keep hovering in the forty dollar range. Individually, none of them are budget busters, but taken together and with other random expenses that have popped up lately (vet check-ups for old dogs can be expensive!), I'm suddenly in that uncomfortable position of realizing that Christmas is coming and I'm going to have to be a little more budget-conscious than I was expecting. Then again, it's probably time to sit down and take a close look at the budget line-items again.

Friday Fun

Good stuff. Maybe you can figure out my mood.

RIP Odetta

There's a remarkable interview the NY Times did with Odetta in 2007. It's a remarkable piece of oral history with some brilliant insights into her life and mind, and a few amazing moments of song. There are some pretty amazing moments of song here too:

oddly sad

The post on Craigslist is titled "i need a digital camera for my daughter for christmas." In it, the poster offers: "i have 2 leather jackets for trade i mens dress jacket medium ,i ladies dress jacket size small both black." I may be reading this completely wrong, but it strikes me as very emblematic of our current moment that someone is looking to barter his and his wife's leather jackets for a digital camera for their daughter. I know what it's like to feel so close to the bone. Had I been able to upgrade to the SLR I'm looking for, I would offer him my point-and-shoot for free...

brings tears to my eyes

I hope for this little boy's sake that he will not be able to remember the the horrific events he just witnessed. By the same token, I hope that he will retain some glimmering memory of his parents before that day.

Friday Fun (on Monday morning)

I don't know why, but this one came to mind yesterday. It's a classic...



And while we're in the land of odd covers, how about a ukulele cover of "Come Sail Away"? Why not? Come on...


(picked up from Boing Boing)

continuing journeys

A whirlwind trip of five days to Ohio and back is liable to make one feel like this:



In truth, despite traffic and very mild family dramas, something like this characterizes the trip much better:



I'm a bit tired to write more tonight. Suffice it to say for now that it is nice to feel old enough to return "home" without feeling all of the pressures, petty dramas, and angst associated with such journeys. It's also pretty amazing to turn around and look at your kid and say, "When did you get to be so big?"

On Going Home

I haven't considered Dayton home for many, many years. Still, it is the place I spent many of my formative years, and it is the place where I return once a year for a sort of homecoming. It is one of the places where I never have to think about how to get some place, and one of the places I stand a fair chance of running into someone I've known for more than thirty years.

That said, it is always a strange, somewhat challenging experience to return "home."

dreams into reality?

I know that I as a kid would have been ecstatic to have a jet pack. I'd still be ecstatic as a 38-year-old.

There is no parachute. There is no safety net. There is no air bag. But there is 800 horsepower on my back," said the former TV stuntman who on Monday piloted his hydrogen-peroxide-powered jet pack across the 1,053-foot-deep Royal Gorge.

In a 21-second burst of deafening thrust, 45-year- old Scott soared across the 1,500-foot-wide chasm, setting all kinds of first-ever records in the nascent world of rocket-strapped flight as hundreds of spectators gaped.

****************

At 135 pounds, Scott's pack is the most technologically advanced flying machine in existence, said Eric Strauss, the Boulder aerospace engineer who designed it. Strauss was almost hyperventilating after Scott's successful traversing of the Royal Gorge. So many things were uncertain, he said in a whisper.

It's just cool, just so cool.

foodblogging on cold, rainy night

We had some pork chops from Faith Farms thawed in the fridge, and some fresh, local cider that was about to turn the bend. Having read Elegant's recipe for cider-sauced pork chops, I decided to marry the two. From Elegant's recipe I dropped the cider vinegar and the whole grain mustard as these might make the dish a bit too tart for Banana's palate. In their place, I used a splash of orange juice to add tartness without the extra bit. The accompaniments were roasted tri-color confetti potatoes and whole garlic cloves with olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika, and steamed green beans.

The result? Banana declared the potatoes "famous" and the pork chops "excellent." I love my kid.

*******

Part 2...

In the refrigerator were the following: chicken carcass and carrots, parsley, shiitakes and kale all just past their prime. Add a couple quartered onions, salt, pepper, and water. Turn the fire on high. Wait approximately half an hour and your house fills with the smell of jewish penicillin. Once the initial boil is finished, turn down the heat to a simmer and let simmer for at least 8 hours. At that point, add water and any other spices to taste and raise to a boil. Turn the heat off and allow the stock to cool. Strain and freeze until the next cold.

Bigfoot wanted to play a little Chopin.

What a brilliant little mystery. A piano and a bench at the end of a road in the woods. Too heavy to be moved by one person. Set with the bench ready for playing. And best of all: apparently in tune. Perhaps the ghosts of Thoreau, Frost, Lowell, Dickinson, and Emerson were planning to gather and play us into an apocalypse ringed with maple and black flies.

Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods.

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

Picked up from Boing Boing, story here.

Friday Fun - The Darwin Awards edition

Just one more reason to love the interwebs...

Really?!?

Apparently, today is World Toilet Day. I am not making this up. Really. If it's a joke, it's a well-designed joke. To quote the site:

Toilets deserve better social status. WTO has been striving to elevate the status of toilets to make them status symbols and objects of desire.

Really? Wow.

a new 'puter?

So, Impolitic Eye has decided to expand our arsenal of computers by a factor of one. The thing is I can't decide between

• A new 13" MacBook, or


• A refurb 15" MacBook Pro (last generation), for the same price.

Any thoughts? Votes, suggestions, and comments are welcome.

oh, the memories...

When I first moved to New York, I gravitated to writing in dive bars and cafes. Often writing in a cafe would lead before long to pulling up at a bar and dropping my manuscript on the bartop where I would continue working and beginning drowning the caffeine buzz with pints of Guinness. The best of the dive bars were cheap places where you could go in the daytime and be left alone. Bartenders at these places tended to be generous with buybacks every third or fourth drink. "Cheers," they'd say as they left your money on the bar; the less loquacious would just tap the bar. The only exception was probably the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Marks. The bartender was never generous and the place was too dark for an aspiring young writer trying to slide down the gullet of New York to work in, but the Holiday had its other charms.

The bar that became my muse, however, was Milano's. The old men who came there had known the daytime bartenders since before their wives had passed and when they were still working men. There were regulars who'd grown up around the corner and came back to drink after they moved out to Queens. There was a bartender named Maggie who liked to talk for hours, which was great until the day she kept serving Jameson's with the conversation—never saw a bill for that one and barely remember getting home. There were the happy hours when the owner showed up and bought rounds for everyone in the place, and I swear the bartenders just figured out a fair price sometimes.


The price for the nostalgia, however, was that I stopped being a productive writer. I had to learn my lesson, had to stop going there, had to realize that for all the "character" I thought I was learning about in those times, I was also losing something.

So, yeah, I have a certain nostalgia for dive bars, but I don't have much nostalgia for what dive bars do to people.

My (Sporty) Concession

A week and a half ago, I took the 2004 Jetta in for its 40K service. Our local VW dealer had just gotten in a new shipment of cars, including a few Jetta SportWagens. I've been tempted by these since they were announced late last year. Well, it just so happened that one of the models had a manual transmission—still one of my requirements for a car.

I drove the car and found it stiff but sporty. The engine had a good bit of zing, and the car felt as stable as any I've driven—more like a couple of Audis I've driven than the last generation Jetta. It was also remarkably roomy inside. In the end, I played with the financing and thought through one basic issue: the '04 Jetta was coming out of its warranty, and I probably couldn't handle any major service bills that might come up, at least not in the foreseeable future.

In the end, it just came down to a decision to take one more step to putting the past behind me, and I came home in this:



I will admit I've had some moments of buyer's remorse—moments where I wonder if I should have stubbornly stuck out paying off the 2004 and moments where I wonder if I've made the ultimate concession to parenthood and approaching middle age by getting a wagon. In reality, though, neither is really a good reason for remorse. Paying off the 2004 would have been an honorable activity, but might have not have benefitted me in the long-run. And the wagon question? Well, the reality is I need to haul a kid, a dog, and all the stuff that goes along with those responsibilities. I also hope to get back to more active, outdoor pursuits, and a wagon just works better for that.

In the end, though, I'm a dad. I'm almost forty. I'm an adult in need of adult trappings. Would I love to have the cherry red GLI with its 6-speed gear box and 220+ hp engine I looked at before buying the last Jetta? Sure, I would. But that one will have to wait for the day Banana inherits our well-used, paid-for 2009 SportWagen... in 2019.

God help us all...

********************

One other thing I should add: I love the car. It truly is fun to drive. And when we came home from IKEA and Trader Joe's this weekend, there was room to spare. Time to add the Apple sticker...

dinners

My standard for dinner preparation is increasingly being held up to two standards: taste and ease of preparation. Banana crashes too early and I'm too fried after an average day to pull together some of the complicated meals I've tried in the past. Beyond that, I've begun to embrace the power of simplicity. To that note, tonight's dinner.

Center-cut pork chops from Faith Farms, kale and peppers from Victory Farms, and couscous. How many extra ingredients and preparations? As few as possible.



I added a little sea salt and cracked pepper to the pork chops before searing them in butter in the Calphalon Everyday Pan (my best kitchen purchase yet). After they were browned, I added some white wine, and once the pan was deglazed and the wine cooked off, I added a bit of balsamic vinegar. Total ingredients: 6

I briefly steamed the kale and peppers, then poured off the water and added a pat of butter and some salt and tri-color cracked pepper. I would have added a bit of lemon if I had any fresh. Total additional ingredients: 2

The couscous simply had butter and a bit of cracked pepper added. Total additional ingredients: 1

In the end, the meal was remarkably simply and easy-to-prepare. It tasted delicious—even though I omitted garlic for the evening, and was as local and healthy as possible. Banana even asked for seconds.

good stuff

First Saturday in November. Apples. Dads. Kids. And finally, beer.

The apples were courtesy of the Vintage Virginia Apple Harvest Festival in North Garden, south of Charlottesville. And the beer was courtesy of Blue Mountain Brewery.

The owner and brewmaster of Blue Mountain was with Goose Island in Chicago for several years before moving to the South Street Brewery in Charlottesville. He's turned out some really nice beers at Blue Mountain now. Their pale ale is excellent. The kolsch is nice and light. And the nitro porter is excellent. I also enjoyed the growler of aged hefeweizen I brought home. In addition to some nice brews, they have a stellar location looking out to the Blue Ridge and link in nicely to the locavore movement by growing their own hops and serving as much locally produced food as possible on the limited menu.



What I also appreciate, though, is the space they've created. The room is open and inviting, with big windows looking out to the deck. Because it's non-smoking and fairly sedate, it's also a very parent-friendly environment. In fact, it's exactly the kind of place I wish we had here in Richmond: a place where adults and kids can relax, eat, socialize.



My only complaint (and suggestion): Two dollars for a bowl of mini pretzels? Really? Kind of absurd. They should be free. Really.

Friday Fun - advertising edition

Went to the AICP show hosted by the Richmond Ad Club last night. There was some truly great work shown, and some spots just demanded to be seen again. And again.


Tide-to-Go "Interview"




Bud Light "Swear Jar"




Skittles "Touch" (Brilliant echoes of classic stories in this one.)




JC Penney "Aviator" (Touching, really touching.)




JC Penney "Magic" (One of many that show how nice it is to see the whole spot as opposed to cutdown versions usually included in ad buys.)




Guinness "Dot" (Someone had seen the classic MGM cartoon of the circle and the line before making this spot.)




StuffIt Deluxe "Pregnancy"




Epuron/German Ministry for the Environment "Power of Wind"




Peace on the Streets "Kill the Gun" (Reverberated with me for obvious reasons.)




And because I don't want to end on a somber note...

Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man"

days in the life

In a recent conversation with my old friend Bonnie in NY, I described life as a single dad caring full-time for a first-grade daughter and holding down an occasionally-demanding full-time job as "balancing a bunch of different things on the ends of sticks with one hand while juggling with the other hand while standing with one foot on a yoga ball while blindfolded and with a mongoose on your head. In a hurricane." She added "sharp tacks on the ball's surface." To which, I also added "balancing the ball on a balance beam over a pit of hot coals."

As much as life can feel like that, though, there are things like the birthday gift Banana made for me:

Dear B & H Photo:

I was shopping on your site, and I liked some of the prices I was seeing on the Nikons. Unfortunately, your site is now broken. I guess the error message means I will look elsewhere.

Signed,
indecisive

Coming Back

I'm coming back. Regularly. I swear I am. The happy hangover of the election has left me as speechless as did the final months of the race, but I'm going to be giving daily attention to this blog soon. Part of it depends on getting a new MacBook—it's easier for me to work when I'm not constrained to a single desk. Part of it also depends on the direction I plan to take the blog.

Politics will probably never leave Impolitic Eye altogether, but I have to admit that writing about politics doesn't particularly make me happy. I am reminded of a recent story on NPR about Berkeley Breathed's decision to end Opus. I am addicted to politics, but I prefer writing about parenting—particularly life as a full-time single father—and advertising and design. Food, of course, is an essential piece of the blog.

I guess the point is there are plenty of people covering the political beat, from small blogs to massive communities. If Impolitic Eye is going to have value beyond offering a public diary of my life, I want to find the ideas, the mental places where that value can be best realized.

Choices, Consumers and The Future

Picked up from Hugh Macleod, this is a brilliant exploration of the connection between assembly-line thinking and the marginalization of consumer (public) voices. Read it. Seriously.

Friday Fun - pt. 2, the seventies edition

And here is where I give you a couple classics that my generation grew up with. You may curse me after the third day they are stuck in your head.




(points if you can tell me which 80s video seems to take a few visual cues from this one)

Friday Fun - pt. 1

Pixel art and a music video created in ASCII characters in Excel? Awesome.

A New Day Dawns

I told Banana this morning that Barack Obama won, and she said "Yay!" Much of what I could or should say about this historic moment I've already written in past posts. It's time for us to roll up our sleeves and get back to the work of making our world a better place.

a note to my neighbor on Monument Avenue

You were correct this morning when you told me that political signs are illegal on public thoroughfares and are only allowed on private property. You were not necessarily protected by the law when you removed the signs, however, and the growl in your voice betrayed your politics. When you ignored my question about whether you would pull McCain signs — had there been any out — I got my answer about your motives. What you did not do, however, is change any votes, and I made a point of picking up one of the signs and replacing the one that had been stolen from my yard.

To you, I also say this: it must be hard to watch your well-defended Southern Republican world pushed to the point of a defeat of historic proportions.

a touching tribute

Barack Obama's remarks about his grandmother on her passing yesterday are an inspiration:

She was somebody who was a very humble person, a very plainspoken person. She is one of those quiet heroes we have all across America, who are not famous, their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard. They look after their families. They sacrifice for their children, and their grandchildren. They aren't seeking the limelight. All they try to do is do the right thing. And in this crowd, there are a lot of quiet heroes like that, people like that, mothers and fathers and grandparents who have worked hard and sacrificed all their lives and the satisfaction that they get is in seeing their children or maybe their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren live a better life than they did. That is what America is about. That is what we are fighting for.

what it comes down to tomorrow

Picked up from Daily Kos, this video is extremely well-done and pulls into a nutshell the history of disenfranchisement we confront as we go to the polls tomorrow.

catching up, pt. 2 — the garden edition

Our garden this summer produced the following:

• limited quantities of two kinds of cherry tomatoes
  
• a healthy basil crop
  
• no parsley
  
• no melons
  
• two peppers which were devoured on the plant
  
• one roma tomato
  
• one oddly shaped, but tasty cucumber

Next year, I'll do a little more planning.

Hard-working Americans

On Friday night, every conversation I got into turned toward politics. Whether I steered the topic or someone else brought it up, the presidential contest as well as a few local races dominated everything.

The conversation that stunned me the most was the final one of the evening. I had stopped in to say hello to my neighbors as the evening wound down, and M quickly enlisted me to help convince their visiting friend why she should vote for Obama rather than McCain. She tossed out a good many of the standard Republican and Fox News talking points and seemed stunned by some of our rebuttals ("we had to go after them" vs. "Iraq didn't attack us" followed by "he was planning to bomb us" vs. "he had no weapons capable of hitting us").

The talking point that struck me the most, however, was her contention that "hard-working Americans" should be able to keep their money. I stopped and asked her, "What makes someone who is making half a million dollars a year a harder worker than me?"

She said, "Well, I just don't think we should penalize anyone for being successful."

But I wouldn't let the taxation point go. "What," I asked her, "makes someone who earns ten times what I earn a harder worker than I am and why should that person pay a lower percentage of their overall income in taxes?" She came back with her comment about hard-working Americans, and that's when I really set in. "I earn a good salary on paper," I told her, "but I work full-time and am a full-time single father with no support. In what way am I not a hard-working American? Why is it fair for me to pay a higher percentage of my income in taxes than our neighbors in the million-dollar houses?"

My attack was harsher than it needed to be, but the point was still dead-on. I earn what should be a fairly comfortable middle-class income and work my ass off to do so both at work and at home. Hard-working people should be able to keep a fair share of their income, and the determination of that fair share should start from the bottom and middle of society rather than the top down.

As Phil and I decided yesterday, the rhetorical and ideological world conservative Republicans live in these days really is a topsy-turvy, carnival mirror take on reality.

I wish them good riddance on Tuesday.

toys

I went into the bathroom to stow some towels this evening. Half of the towel shelf was already occupied by a neat stack of towels; the other half was occupied by bath toys. Boats, fish, mermaids, all holdovers from Banana's toddler years. I'd held on to them through the move to our current house a year and a half ago and put them in the bathroom as though they would continue to be relevant to her life.

Over time, they were replaced by the Barbies she plays with during the occasional bath—often enough, she showers these days. When replaced, they moved beside our claw-footed tub. They eventually moved up to the shelves during a cleaning. In all that time, they were never purged. Until tonight.

Through a combination of lassitude and slack oversight, I'd managed to overlook them for this long. When I looked for a space for the stack of clean towels, I realized that this space-consuming collection of toddler toys would never be played with again, at least not by Banana. Should I become a father again, it's not going to happen soon enough to warrant keeping these obsolete toys in our active living space. So, out the toys went.

I suppose there's always a point in parenting (and life, in general) when you realize you've kept the artifacts of the past far longer than necessary. There's a certain bittersweet feeling to realizing that you truly have grown past that part of your life, and I know some mothers who mourn the moments when they realize their children are no longer their babies. In fact, it's happened to many of our friends as they sent their kids to first grade. Yet, though I fondly remember Banana's younger years, I also am coming to accept that we need to purge some of these artifacts (physical and otherwise) if we're going to move forward and grow into the next phases of our lives.