Holiday road

We're about to head out on the road (with this stuck in my head) for Thanksgiving weekend with my fam in Massachusetts.

Going home for a holiday is always a new experience; things are different no matter how much they seem the same. It's interesting to see us for who we are now, not the way we remember each other during different phases of our growing-up. And to have the comfort of that shared history.

I love to see how we've all changed, and how we continue to evolve. Kinda like those pellets that turn into different animal shapes when you put 'em in a tub of water. You think you know what they'll turn into, but you're never sure...

Oh, and there's also great food + piling on top of each other on the couch + post-meal naps + watching the kids play. Can't wait!

And now she is well

Or seemed fine when she woke up, asking to eat. She said "I'm not sick anymore" and wanted to go to school. Hooray!

During the drive there, she dispensed some important advice: "It's not good to eat fire."

So true.

An unexpected souvenir

This morning around 5am I discovered an unexpected souvenir from yesterday's museum visit: a sick child throwing up on the pillow next to me. The poor girl has been retching all day, and has just now had her first small piece of toast. Ugh.

Hopefully this will play out before tomorrow morning. I feel so bad for her!

The rock star experience (for little ones)

Today Rob had a mixing session scheduled in our basement studio, so I opted to take Leah on a trip into the city. We bundled up against the cruel weather, and headed in after lunch. The train ride in was blissful... snacking + cuddling (my favorites). By the time we got to our first subway stop, she was reeling in the newness of the situation, and was giddily bounding about. Inches away from the edge of the subway platform. Crazy-making, for me. Fun for her.

Once we arrived at the museum, she was in awe. We spent all of our time on the 2nd floor, where the Dora + Diego exhibit (sponsored by Nickelodeon) was located. Leah has a love that burns bright for Dora and (more recently) Diego. The first corner of the "exhibit" contains a wooden cutout of Diego and his jaguar, along with a box with a button that, when pressed, starts a recording of the Diego theme song. (At least, I think it was. I've never paid attention to the theme song before.) When she first heard that music, she looked at me with an expression I think I'd have had on my face if I got to meet Steven Tyler in high school. Really, really awesome. For the first 5-10 times. Then I very gently pried her away to see the next thing in the room.

Where she showed her love for "Diego's" jaguar and some three-banded armadillos.



















and then started on "planting" flowers outside Dora's house. She did this again, and again. Until the museum closed. (Yes, for real.)

You too can be a model (for the kids)

This was forwarded to me yesterday, and it is incredibly disheartening. The issues surrounding teen sex have been a concern of mine since I was a teen, and while working at Planned Parenthood in high school, college, and post-college.

It bothers me that there is such a disconnect between the sexed-up images out there and our country's puritanical views regarding sex. These images are not just in movies or tv, but everywhere we go - in advertising, clothing + music marketing... in the push to divide the sexes into overtly male or female in presentation, but not to be bad. (Like sex is bad?)

I understand how sex can be embarrassing to talk about, especially if one is uncomfortable with their own sexuality. But how on earth else will our children understand how important + loved they are, and what positive sexuality is all about if we don't teach them? If we don't live it ourselves? Just some things to think about.

Edited to add: Where is the corresponding study + discussion about boys' sexuality? Why isn't Tyra shocked about the boys? More food for thought...

Another update (1/28/09): Check out the discussion on Feministing re: the NY Times article about the fact that most girls aren't really "going wild" at all. Very interesting...

And more good words (2/20/09) on Feministing re: the purity myth. Love this stuff.

Up, chuck

In her short life, Leah has almost never been sick. So it took us by surprise yesterday - at Rob's grandfather's 90th birthday party - when the poor girl puked all over herself. It was just once, and she seems fine today, but we are taking no chances. We're laying low, feeding her applesauce, toast, + water, and - most importantly - watching movies. Here is her favorite, an episode of Meg and Mog. I must admit, I love it, too!

Equal rights for all, that's all

I can't join in any of the protests today, so this is my tiny little blog-protest against California's Prop 8.

What It Felt Like to Be Equal
Judith Warner, NY Times
11/13/08

I had barely finished sniffling over Barack Obama’s victory when I received an e-mail message from Amy Silverstein, the wife of my best friend from high school, Angela Padilla.

She had been glad to read last week’s piece on “the groundbreaking immensity of the election of our country’s first African-American president,” she said.

Up to a point.

“I wanted to make sure you knew and appreciated that despite this seeming like an amazing step forward for all who have suffered discrimination and/or who are deeply committed to eliminating it, this election was anything but that for G.L.B.T. people and our families,” she wrote. “Especially in California, but in three other states as well, the electorate convincingly voted to deny us basic civil rights and made clear that we are a long way from being seen and treated as equal. Protecting traditional marriage is simply code for discrimination. There is no ‘triumph’ for us, and the long period of pain, indignity and injustice continues.”

There’s nothing worse than being told you have a major blind spot. That your self-assured joyousness is built upon exclusion.

Particularly when the person telling you this is right.

Now, I hadn’t exactly ignored the spate of anti-gay ballot initiatives that had passed — in California, Arkansas, Florida and Arizona — on Nov. 4. I’d read about the success of Arizona’s long-attempted gay marriage ban and California’s Proposition 8, which prohibited gay marriage just six months after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry was fundamental, and constitutionally protected, for all.

I’d read about how voters in Florida had decided to target not only same-sex marriage but all relationships that were the “substantial equivalent” of marriage, like domestic partnerships and civil unions, and how in Arkansas, where gay marriage was already banned, voters had decided to deny anyone “cohabitating outside a valid marriage” the right to adopt or be a foster parent.

How strange, I’d thought, reading about how, on the day of progressive victories — Obama’s historic win, South Dakota voters’ rejection of a wide-ranging abortion ban, Californians voting down a ballot initiative that would have required parental notification for abortion — these states had passed such uniquely reactionary and discriminatory measures. How ugly. That’s really too bad.

And then I’d moved on. As most people who were not directly affected by the anti-gay rights measures did. There was just too much else to feel good about.

“I think the country was like, 'Look, you get Obama, call it a day and go home," is how Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic state representative in Arizona, who’d opposed her state’s anti-gay ballot initiative, put it to The Times last week.

Ed Swanson couldn’t move on.

The day after the election, the San Francisco lawyer and his husband, Paul Herman, a stay-at-home dad, had had to face the fact that Proposition 8 could mean that their marriage would be invalidated. They’d also had to go to parent conferences and tell the teachers that their five-year-old daughter, Liza, might be struggling in school because she was scared that her family might fall apart.

Liza, who has a twin sister, Katie, had peppered Swanson and Herman with questions once she’d realized that marriages uniting “a boy and a boy” were no longer allowed.

“They can’t take yours away, right?” she’d asked her parents. “They can’t take yours away when you have children, can they?”

“That’s when we realized she was afraid something would happen to us,” Swanson told me by phone on Wednesday. “We said, ‘They can’t take us away from you. We will be here for you forever.’”

“It’s difficult to explain to a five-year-old why it is people don’t want your parents to be married,” he continued. “They’re young enough that there was a chance they could have grown up thinking all their lives that their family was equal and accepted. Now they’re not going to have that chance. They’ll have to spend at least part of their lives knowing that their family is something that people don’t feel is acceptable.”

Jeanne Rizzo, the C.E.O. of the Breast Cancer Fund, can’t quite move on either. She spent election night in a reception room at San Francisco’s Westin St. Francis Hotel. She and her long-term partner, Pali Cooper, were married in September, one of 18,000 California couples who managed to wed in the short space of time between the California Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage and the passage of Proposition 8.

In one room, Obama supporters were jubilant. In another, opponents of Proposition 4 — the parental notification initiative -– shouted their glee. In hers, the opponents of Proposition 8 saw their joy at Obama’s election turn quickly to “absolute disbelief and pain” as the results of the ballot initiative came in. “It was such a kick in the stomach. The whole hotel was just rocking with joy. We felt so disconnected from it,” Rizzo recalled when I talked to her on Wednesday.

It wasn’t that she begrudged Obama his victory. It was just that his historic triumph made the insult to her community all the more painful. An awful thought came to her that night: Now we’re the designated cultural outcasts. “It’s almost like we’re the last group you can be openly bigoted about,” she told me.

“You look around and you think more than half of the people in this state voted to take this away from us? At a time when we’re celebrating the election of an African American to the White House? I don’t know how you heal from it,” she said. “It’s hard to get it out of your bones.”

It’s easy, if you’re straight, to file away the gay marriage issue in a little folder in your mind, to render it, essentially, inessential. It can fall into the category of “bones you throw the religious right because things could be so much worse.” Or “things that would be great in a perfect world.” Or “what’s the big deal?” because you don’t actually get what a big deal it is to be able to get married when you’ve never had to consider the alternative.

Many of the gay men and lesbians I spoke or e-mailed with this week didn’t fully realize what a big deal it was to be married either. Until they were.

“I don’t think I had realized until then what it felt like to be equal,” Swanson told me. “Paul and I went on a honeymoon in Santa Fe. People would ask and we’d say we’re on our honeymoon; we just got married. We could say it not because it was a political statement but because it was a fact.

“I don’t feel equal anymore. It was a great feeling, while it lasted.”

In the garage this afternoon

Rob: "Leah, this is a hacksaw. It's used for cutting metal!"

Leah: "Oh! I like bunnies and rabbits."

Exciting times

in·teg·ri·ty (ĭn-těg'rĭ-tē) n.
1. Steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code.
2. The state of being unimpaired; soundness.
3. The quality or condition of being whole or undivided; completeness.

I've been finding it easier to live with integrity this past week. Having a president-elect who believes in the connectedness of all Americans + actually models that belief is exhilarating. Religion doesn't give us integrity. Nor does political party affiliation. Only we can give ourselves integrity, consistently matching actions to beliefs. Living honestly within + without. It's something I hear all the time, but it's certainly not commonly practiced, nor is it easy (or so I've heard... I'm certainly not there yet)!

I know he is not perfect, since he appears to be human like the rest of us, but my hope for Obama's presidency is a more united country; one that is excited about possibilities. I hope for a re-invigoration of democracy, with more of us getting involved in contributing to our local governments + communities.

Evidence of good things afoot:

Change.gov: Office of the President-Elect
"Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."
- President-Elect Barack Obama

Throughout the Presidential Transition Project, this website will be your source for the latest news, events, and announcements so that you can follow the setting up of the Obama Administration. And just as this historic campaign was, from the beginning, about you -- the transition process will offer you opportunities to participate in redefining our government.

Come back often as we define new programs and possibilities to engage and be part of this administration. More...

Obama Transition Team Adopts Ethics Rules
Brian Knowlton
NY Times 11/11/08
WASHINGTON -- A top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday that the transition team would raise about $7 million to cover its costs, supplementing $5 million in government funds, but would reject donations from lobbyists or corporations and rely instead on the same pool of small donors who helped propel the Democrat to victory. More...

The Climate for Change
Al Gore, Op-Ed Contributor
NY Times 11/9/08
THE inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.

The electrifying redemption of America’s revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet. More...

Perfecting the Union
Roger Cohen, Op-Ed Columnist
NY Times 11/5/08
Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental at stake in this U.S. election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people. More...

Heard at bedtime

"Remember when I was a baby humpback whale? And I started jumping over the cages... "

(And then she was out.)

Parade watching

I love the Veterans Day Parade in NYC. It's the only city parade I regularly see, since I'm almost always in the office, and have a fabulous view of Fifth Avenue out the window. Mayor Bloomberg just walked by!

I love the crowds, the flags, marching bands, bagpipes, and the drum cadences reverberating off the tall buildings. I love that I get to see so many different groups I wouldn't normally have the privilege to see - veterans of all eras, active duty military, ROTC and JrROTC units, civic + youth groups, high school marching bands.

Soo many flags waving, and a good crowd. Did I mention the marching bands? Almost makes me miss my high school marching band. (Shhhh!)

Even more exciting for me this year than marching bands is the special significance of our country entering a new era of hope + progress. Can't beat that with a shiny motorcycle or classic car.

A very good election day

Heard on NPR:

Rosa sat so Martin could walk.
Martin walked so Obama could run.
Obama is running ran so our children can fly!

Vote vote vote vote vote vote vote!

Many thoughts run through my mind as this election nears its completion. Those banging around in my head today center on the hard-won changes that have allowed our country to progress in a really positive way. For me, the best kind of change is that which allows us to gain greater rights for our country's citizens, and to advance in our journey as humans.

Civil rights, women's suffrage, and marriage equality are some hard-fought changes on full display this election. Although none has fully eradicated the huge problems they set out to ameliorate, they allow us to begin seeing each other as equals + begin to work toward a better understanding of everyone, everywhere.

Here are some scenes from the 2004 movie "Iron Jawed Angels", which covers a piece of the women's suffrage movement in the U.S. It was a huge struggle for our sisters to gain that basic right; the movie shows only part of that journey to pass the 19th Amendment... in 1920. I can't believe women have been able to vote in this country for a mere 88 years! So many impediments to voting have existed for so many in the not-too-distant past, and some continue.

I am so glad to be able to vote.



VOTE!

Oh, you wanted Halloween pictures?

Leah had a Halloween party at school on Wednesday, where she got to wear her butterfly costume and get her Halloween freak on. These pictures are from yesterday, not Halloween, as her costume was quickly shed that evening after helping hand out candy at our door, with no photo ops.

She is not too interested (yet) in all the Halloween craziness that happens in our town (parades, costume contests, trick or treating in town, etc), but gets supremely excited about the candy. Candy on tv, candy at her class party, candy in a bowl for trick or treaters, candy in her pumpkin pail... she has been talking about candy for weeks. Sugar makes her insane, so we've been seriously limiting it. But she still loves to pick through the candy, carry it around in her pail, and ask if she can eat it 20 times a day. Her other Halloween obsession is It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!. Good thing it has considerably less sugar.

Opus: Where is his final resting place?

Today's Opus comic strip is the final one. Thpppt!

Bloom County, one of Berkeley Breathed's former strips, was one of The Best things I read growing up, but Opus was a happy replacement. From the intro to a recent interview with Mr. Breathed:

Oct. 18, 2008 | As the country excitedly awaits our great quadrennial political climax, a smaller subset looks toward the first week of November with great anxiety and dread. On Sunday, Nov. 2, the comic "Opus" will end. Worse yet, creator Berkeley Breathed has made it clear that the strip's namesake will, in that final strip, find his "final paradise."

Sure, it's been an unnaturally long run for a penguin. Opus, who started with a bit part in Breathed's Pulitzer-winning "Bloom County" (1980-89), starred in "Outland" (1989-95) and finally took center stage in "Opus" (2003-08). But for those of us accustomed to seeing our own thoughts -- and fears, hopes and simmering anger -- take flight in the broken-nosed face of a penguin every week, there's no preparation for his exit, only mourning.

Breathed says it's the anger that led him to close the book on "Opus," that the increasingly nasty political climate has made it too difficult to keep his strip from drifting into darkness. Breathed has described his work as a hybrid of "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz's gentle humor and Michael Moore's crusading social justice. Perhaps losing touch with his inner Charlie Brown, Breathed has said that "a mad penguin, like a mad cartoonist, isn't very lovable," and wants Opus to take his final bow before bitterness changes him forever.

As for Breathed, he says he will turn to other projects, such as his children's books. His latest, "Pete & Pickles," is just out, a delightful love story of sorts between a practical pig and a whimsical circus elephant.

So here it is... the revelation of Opus' final resting place...





















.....





















and a few words from Berkeley Breathed. Sweet dreams, Opus! I'll miss you.