Little Bun was trying to explain a conflict with friends of his over the game of Last Man Standing. Apparently a friend thought he had tagged Little Bun, Little Bun thought he hadn't been tagged, controversy ensued, and they've been on the outs all week and about seven of the kids give Little Bun angry looks now while about seven more give angry looks to the (former?) friend. By my calculations that leaves six students like Switzerland. First grade is socially complicated and highly political.
Miss I couldn't be left out of this conversation. She offered this parallel: "Like when Ethan said to me that the Hand Jive is Chubby Checker but I say NO! the Hand Jive is not Chubby Checker but he still thinks it is Chubby Checker." Not a comparison or a controversy I was expecting!
(Of course it could be worse -- both of my kids could be cage fighting).
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
I've almost made it for a full day without coffee (I drank 1/4 cup). I've also gone cold turkey on cola. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but if you review my archives you will find that it is a great challenge for me (it is why I cannot be hard on my friends who won't quit smoking). But the motivating factors this time are a ridiculously high resting heart rate (why it's like I'm not even resting!) and my doctor's insistence that we can attribute ten of the twenty pounds I'd like to lose to cola alone (I can't drink diet. I just can't). My husband, who drinks caffeine up til 11 at night and still sleeps soundly is no help with either of these. So . . . help!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
What's in a Nickname?
My daughter has bestowed on me the bizarre nickname "Sugar-free," as in "Hey, Sugar-free!" when she sees me. Any thoughts about where this might have come from?
I've engaged in and overheard several more conversations on Wright this week. I've thought a lot about why Reverend Wright's words aren't only "problematic" and sometimes perhaps "ignorant" but also "threatening" and "scary," why Obama's "faith" in him makes Obama a terrible unknown (though Obama's two books give strong clues), why there's some sort of implication of a "betrayal" to come.
I really think the real fear has little to do with Reverend Wright himself, and little to do with Barack Obama's faith or personal judgment, but plenty to do with perceived racial allegiances and everything to do with Obama's mixed race body.
It's all too familiar -- on some level scenes from D.W.Griffith's Birth of a Nation play on the screens of white American brains. I've read since that the racist subtext of the Clinton 3am commercial and its connection to Griffith's film/primal white American anxieties did not go unnoticed (New York Times 3/11/2008 -- I'm only a bit behind). The Clinton campaign willingly traded anxieties about the ability of a female president to respond to a crisis for more insidious anxieties about the possibility that a black president might betray "us." The suffragists should not have been impressed.
For those whose memory of Griffith's revisionist history of Reconstruction America is dim, Birth of a Nation adapts a novel The Clansman with the titular character and those of his ilk as the original American heroes. After post-Civil War blacks are freed, they take advantage of the misplaced generosity of the North, engaging in debauchery. Worse, a black militia forms and determines to take over the south.
Silas Lynch ("the mulatto"), the mentee of traitor to his race and powerful politician Stoneman, organizes "his people", who not only vote but also gain office. Scenes of whites judged by all-black juries and shoeless black senators ensue (as well as famous attempted rape scenes). The white minority is disempowered and nearly disenfranchised, certainly disheartened. Miscegenation is legalized; the real horror is revealed. Only the newly formed Klan can restore order (once they discover the power of the white sheet to terrorize small children on the beach) . . .
Birth of a Nation and its images linger like a national nightmare hanging vaguely on after awakening.
I've heard the argument that Obama is not "black enough," a charge he dealt with throughout his life and in part by attending Reverend Wright's church as a means of connecting with the African American community from which he had been largely excluded by his upbringing. Now the charge is that, with ties to a Black Liberation Theologist, (explained in a Forbes Q&A with a writer on BLT) he is "too black," that he not only believes in racial equality but also, like the black militia of the Birth of a Nation, believes that black people have not only the same right to walk on the sidewalk as white people but also the right to shove whites off.
I want to talk about the economy, taxes, trillion dollar wars, health care, poverty, education, Clinton, McCain, Obama -- but we can't do that with lingering nightmares from the birth of this nation. (And be honest -- don't you kind of feel like someone is keeping us distracted on purpose?)
I really think the real fear has little to do with Reverend Wright himself, and little to do with Barack Obama's faith or personal judgment, but plenty to do with perceived racial allegiances and everything to do with Obama's mixed race body.
It's all too familiar -- on some level scenes from D.W.Griffith's Birth of a Nation play on the screens of white American brains. I've read since that the racist subtext of the Clinton 3am commercial and its connection to Griffith's film/primal white American anxieties did not go unnoticed (New York Times 3/11/2008 -- I'm only a bit behind). The Clinton campaign willingly traded anxieties about the ability of a female president to respond to a crisis for more insidious anxieties about the possibility that a black president might betray "us." The suffragists should not have been impressed.
For those whose memory of Griffith's revisionist history of Reconstruction America is dim, Birth of a Nation adapts a novel The Clansman with the titular character and those of his ilk as the original American heroes. After post-Civil War blacks are freed, they take advantage of the misplaced generosity of the North, engaging in debauchery. Worse, a black militia forms and determines to take over the south.
Silas Lynch ("the mulatto"), the mentee of traitor to his race and powerful politician Stoneman, organizes "his people", who not only vote but also gain office. Scenes of whites judged by all-black juries and shoeless black senators ensue (as well as famous attempted rape scenes). The white minority is disempowered and nearly disenfranchised, certainly disheartened. Miscegenation is legalized; the real horror is revealed. Only the newly formed Klan can restore order (once they discover the power of the white sheet to terrorize small children on the beach) . . .
Birth of a Nation and its images linger like a national nightmare hanging vaguely on after awakening.
I've heard the argument that Obama is not "black enough," a charge he dealt with throughout his life and in part by attending Reverend Wright's church as a means of connecting with the African American community from which he had been largely excluded by his upbringing. Now the charge is that, with ties to a Black Liberation Theologist, (explained in a Forbes Q&A with a writer on BLT) he is "too black," that he not only believes in racial equality but also, like the black militia of the Birth of a Nation, believes that black people have not only the same right to walk on the sidewalk as white people but also the right to shove whites off.
I want to talk about the economy, taxes, trillion dollar wars, health care, poverty, education, Clinton, McCain, Obama -- but we can't do that with lingering nightmares from the birth of this nation. (And be honest -- don't you kind of feel like someone is keeping us distracted on purpose?)
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The Whos are What?!
Warning -- this could be quite triggering to those who are adopted, those who have placed a child, those who parent an adopted child and do not believe that that child was unwanted by her first parents or hope for that child to become the image of the adoptive parents, and people who read. I hesitate to share it but it's one of those things that is so bizarre that if someone else doesn't say she's seen it, I will feel like it never happened.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
I had another . . . ummmm, errrrrr . . .
Miss I announced at Panera yesterday, apparently based only on an internal stimulus, "I had another mother." "Oh," came a hesitant response. "Yep," I confirmed, and we took our soup to our table, where I offered to talk about it more but she smiled, declined and ate happily. She's really getting it.
I can't understand how ethicists are debating this practice:
Of course I'd heard rumors about outsourcing surrogacy to India, but here it is on MSNBC.
PS I don't think the twins are going to like this when they get it.
I can't understand how ethicists are debating this practice:
Of course I'd heard rumors about outsourcing surrogacy to India, but here it is on MSNBC.
PS I don't think the twins are going to like this when they get it.
Wright and Wrongs and Right
I want to be weighing in on the Wright debate, which I am told continues by the polster who called me last night, though it's my sense that Obama responded adequately, and appropriately, and better, as Jon Stewart reported, "spoke to us [about race] like adults." But I'm in the middle of a big work project with a 5:30 deadline.
I will say this, though. As part of a multiracial family, and as a person who values both justice and grace, and believes in the value of righteous anger but not aggression and agitation, Wright is not for me and wouldn't be for my family. I wish he weren't for the Obama family.
And this: Why does the "scandal" have the structure of breaking news, when the remarks have been made over a long period of time?
The real issue -- apart from the striking timing of these "revelations" some seven years after they've been uttered -- is how bizarrely shocked white Americans have been by statements that, however wrong, someitmes make sense. It amazes me that local callers to talk radio are surprised that "'they' are so angry at us still." It reminds me of a South Park (generally a heinous show I know) after 9/11 when the boys ask why everyone hates us, and the response is "because you have to ask why everyone hates you."
I loved Obama's speech, found I couldn't contain my enthusiasm by my normal cynical mechanisms, worried about the failure of my cynicism, and quit worrying and started to feel hopeful that we can get away from infantile questions about "why everyone hates us" (regardless of the everyone and of the "us") and on to adult matters.
On that note, I can't wait to read Jeffrey Sachs's Common Wealth, his follow up to End of Poverty. In a nutshell, Sachs argues that doing the right thing is cheaper and better and more sustainable than war without end.
I will say this, though. As part of a multiracial family, and as a person who values both justice and grace, and believes in the value of righteous anger but not aggression and agitation, Wright is not for me and wouldn't be for my family. I wish he weren't for the Obama family.
And this: Why does the "scandal" have the structure of breaking news, when the remarks have been made over a long period of time?
The real issue -- apart from the striking timing of these "revelations" some seven years after they've been uttered -- is how bizarrely shocked white Americans have been by statements that, however wrong, someitmes make sense. It amazes me that local callers to talk radio are surprised that "'they' are so angry at us still." It reminds me of a South Park (generally a heinous show I know) after 9/11 when the boys ask why everyone hates us, and the response is "because you have to ask why everyone hates you."
I loved Obama's speech, found I couldn't contain my enthusiasm by my normal cynical mechanisms, worried about the failure of my cynicism, and quit worrying and started to feel hopeful that we can get away from infantile questions about "why everyone hates us" (regardless of the everyone and of the "us") and on to adult matters.
On that note, I can't wait to read Jeffrey Sachs's Common Wealth, his follow up to End of Poverty. In a nutshell, Sachs argues that doing the right thing is cheaper and better and more sustainable than war without end.
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