Return Engagement

Local Woman Saves the Planet

2009-08-08T16:33:00.007-07:00

I don't want to toot my own horn, but I know a real, live superhero, or actually, a real, live superheroine. (Why does my spell checker not appreciate the word "superheroine" when it likes the word "superhero" well enough?)

She doesn't perform martial arts in high heels and a catsuit, but she does perform miracles in places where miracles are rare.

She doesn't have x-ray vision, but she does have vision and can see a world where all children are healthy, well-fed and educated.

She can't lift a 20-ton boulder over her head, but she can coax funding from tight-fisted foundations and governments which takes even greater strength (and patience.)

Who is this woman of superlative quality? I thought you would have guessed by now, it's Ms. Vicki Wilde.

Who's she and what's she done that's so great?

She is the Gender and Diversity director for CGIAR who had a beautifully simple idea for transforming rural Africa from places where diseases and famines rule to places where gardens and communities thrive. She's tapped into the vast, unused resource of African women. These women, who do 80% of the agricultural work in Africa to begin with, become highly skilled agricultural scientists through Vicki's AWARD program then return to their villages to combat potential crop failures with the power that is knowledge.

Her test program started small, like every miracle, it survived on a miniscule budget, pure hope, and unalloyed dedication. It's difficult to argue with success and now that the results are in, people, important people, people who can provide the means to make Vicki's little program into a world-wide answer to that question which every poor woman asks, the one that goes "How will I feed my children today?", stand up and take note.

Here's a pic of one person who recently realized the beauty of one small program. See if you can recognize her.

(Vicki is the one in orange and absolutely beaming. What you can't see is me jumping up and down in front of my computer, screaming, "That's Vicki! I know her! I know her!")

Some other fans of Vicki's are Bill and Melinda Gates, you may heard of them. They're out to save the world too.

For more information about Vicki Wilde, the AWARD program and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's historic visit to Africa follow this link.

A Gallon of Gas and a Pack of Matches

2009-08-02T11:22:00.003-07:00

What would you do with a gallon of gas and a pack of matches? Or, more to the point, what did you do with them? Because you did, once when you were a kid, you did play with fire.

I love my job for a large variety of reasons, but one of greatest reasons are the others that populate my working existence. Some are young with little experience of the world, some are middle-aged parents like me, some are older and have seen it all, all have opinions. One of the subjects of this week's banter was the state of parenting and the inevitable results of too much protection for our children.

Are we raising a generation of humans who will be incapable of independent thought, cool-headed decisions in a crisis, or calculating the risks of doing something new?

I had never really thought about it until Dave brought it up at lunch. The difference between the relative freedom we experienced in our childhoods and the strictly-prescribed existence we have planned out for our kids. Our wrapped-in-cotton-batting progeny don't leave the house without full disclosure about where they are going, what they will be doing, who they will be doing it with and the very moment of their return (no more than 2 hours later.) They are laden down with extra water, hand-sanitizer, a cell phone with mom's number on speed dial, a 40-item list of important phone numbers, a protein bar, a GPS, helmets, pads, gloves and an extra pair of clean underwear. While out in the wide world they will not speak to strangers, always wear a seat belt, stay in the bike lane, look both ways while crossing the street, as well as strenuously avoiding trans-fats, high-fructose corn syrup, and gangsta rap. They will not smoke, drink, swear, spit, run, go online without parental supervision, discuss their parents' soft porn collection with their friends or point out that Grandma could use a shave. And they absolutely, positively will not play with fire.

All of which begs the question: Who taught you not to play with fire?

When Conor was learning to walk, he crawled under a low table and tried to stand up. He hit his head and sat back down with a bump. Then he did it again. And again. And then one more time again. Finally, he crawled out from under the table and stood up. I watched this process in tears, just knowing that I was the worst of all possible mothers. I knew that he would be permanently harmed by my lack of concern and protection. How could I be so uncaring? I never let him (or the girls for that matter) do that or anything like that again. But now I wonder if my first instinct of standing aside and letting them go through the learning process wasn't the right one. Maybe if I had stood aside more often my children would be less fearful of making mistakes and making decisions. Maybe they would be more independent and confident. Maybe they would know the real reason gasoline and matches don't mix, because all they know now are the rules in the academic sense. We (their parents) know the rules because we struck the match.

My Personal Pensieve

2009-07-25T13:27:00.005-07:00

Harry Potter makes me jealous. Yes, I'm jealous of a kid that regularly gets the tar beaten out of him by the forces of evil and still has to survive his godawful teen years. I'm jealous of a character created out of the imagination of a writer. Maybe it's J.K. Rowling who is the true target of my jealousy and not really for her fabulous success. (As far as that goes, she's done the writing world great service by growing a new generation of readers.) No, what I really covet is her Pensieve.

In the book (and subsequently, the movies), the Pensieve shows memories. I want that. I want the perfect retention of memories with all their subtle circumstances intact forever.

When I look at a photograph or image, I can recall the occasion but not what I was thinking or feeling at the time. The same goes for video. Only memory can retain part of the world. Over time that world fades, the details go away, maybe only an image remains, maybe not even that. I can't see the face of my first love anymore though I remember the yellow roses he gave me.

I remember a woman I met who was in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. The look of panic on her face left an indelible impression on me. No minute was connected to another. No face was recognizable, not even her own. She had run screaming from the house one day when she saw her own reflection in the bathroom mirror. And although Alzheimer's is the most extreme case of memory loss, every day I sense some small but precious detail leaves my brain. When I go back for it, it's not there. Time faded the detail, it left unseen.

Last night we took the kids to the aquarium to have dinner with the sharks. There's a memory I would like to keep with all of its gorgeous detail. The kids all lined up against the tank, looking up at the sharks gliding by, mesmerized by each other. Light music, darkened room, graceful fish, thrilled children, new worlds overlapping.

I can't stand the thought of last night with the sharks swimming away with time. Me and the sharks need a Pensieve.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

2009-06-20T20:02:00.002-07:00

There are many people and things I love, but few more so than my children and learning to make more efficient use of available technology.

In the last few months, my children have been amusing themselves by creating videos of themselves being the goofy, silly, funny, and fabulous kids they are. When I come home from work at night there is invariably something new on my computer to make me smile.

In honor of Fathers' Day, I've strung together a few moments of light-hearted youth using iMovie from iLife '09. It's a simple program to master and the results have the kids practicing their autographs for their forthcoming hordes of adoring fans.

It's was a ton of fun to put together, enjoy...

Cleansing the Palate

2009-06-06T21:48:00.001-07:00

Do you have the same trouble I do reading anything after a really great book? It’s not that I can’t read after a fabulous book, but that I can’t read anything I like after a page-turner. My literary tastes are overwhelmed; everything to come after has all the potency of cold, congealed oatmeal.

This pretty much sums up the scenario of my current read, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I almost feel sorry for her. Everyone else adored this book. They heaped accolades on it. It won the Orange Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, etc., etc., ad infinitum. All this and I still hate it. Well, maybe not HATE it, but I’m seriously not in love with it when by all accounts I should be. I’m tormented by the idea that the book is actually wonderful, but it happened to be in the wrong place in the queue. Bad luck of the draw, so to speak, because the book right before was fantastic.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini was brilliant. Excellent writing married to a great (though grim) story. And it has made an ugly step-sister of Bel Canto. Maybe I should put it down right now and read something I know to be sucky, like anything by Dan Brown. That might get me out of the Thousand Splendid Suns shadow and I can read without prejudice. Maybe I’ll find out that Bel Canto is actually great or maybe I’ll find out that it sucked all along. Reading is a risky business.

Summer: Baseball, Hot Dogs and Smooshing Scorpions

2009-05-31T20:59:00.003-07:00

In honor of my first kill (scorpion-wise) of the season, I'm reprinting an article I wrote a few years ago on our perennial and crunchy house guests. Enjoy.

Around 2am, my husband screamed. If there is anything in the world that will snap you out of a deep slumber it’s a 6’5” guy screaming. I leaped up, ready to meet the alien hordes.

“SOMETHING BIT ME!” he repeated, throwing off the pillows and bedclothes, flailing around looking for the fanged menace. On closer inspection, there was a large reddened area between his shoulder blades. Something had indeed nailed him, but there were no puncture wounds, nothing to indicate the relative size of the marauding predator. Whatever it was, it did not have fangs.

Forty minutes later, after completely dismantling the bed, we finally caught up with the perpetrator. It was a sandy-colored arthropod about two inches long, known as a bark scorpion (Centruroides exilicauda.)

As luck would have it, our surprise guest, the little bark scorpion, is the only variety in the United States whose venomous sting can kill a human in certain circumstances, and does so, with regularity, in the more remote parts of Mexico. As luck would further have it, the bark scorpion is found in abundance throughout Arizona, preferring rocky terrain, just like the topography where our house sits. They can also be found in lesser concentrations in parts of California, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. However, it’s the populations of scorpions roaming free within the walls of our home that will always get my undivided attention.

The folks at the Poison Control Center were very helpful. Apparently, we were not the only people in Arizona to have scorpions scuttling around under the covers. The specialist on the phone was heartily unimpressed with our bark scorpion encounter. They average 12,000 calls a year.

Through a yawn, she suggested ice water compresses for the sting area and some extra strength pain reliever for the big guy groaning in the background. She told me that the pain would subside in 4-6 hours, but that he should go to an emergency room if he starts to have any trouble breathing. I was okay with that. We have always had a standing rule in our house; anyone who turns blue gets a free trip to the hospital.

Major symptoms of a sting start within the hour and my husband’s did just that. First his eyes started fluttering. Under different circumstances, I would have thought he was being sexy. After that, the muscles in his arms and back started to twitch in a random pattern. We both watched with unabashed fascination, like a couple of mad scientists. He commented more than once that the pain in the sting area was the most intense he had ever experienced.

Even an unimaginably small amount of neurotoxin from the bark scorpion can lead to a large variety of symptoms. Some people experience numbness or tingling in their face and extremities. Others have problems with slurred speech or drooling. Kids often get irritable or hyperactive after a sting. The very worst-case scenarios, though, can have people on ventilators or heart complications. The vast majority recovers quickly and never has to see an emergency room.

It was almost anticlimactic. With all the fear of scorpions and their mythic sting, you’d think that my husband could do something more than make googly eyes at me. Remember James Bond in “Diamonds Are Forever?” One of the bad guys sticks a scorpion down the back of another guy’s shirt and he instantly keels over. Remember that? A scene like that can go a long way toward insuring the belief that once stung a person should immediately begin reviewing their last will and testament.

The lethal character of scorpions is so entrenched in the human imagination that even my daughter, after she heard that her father had been stung during the night, asked, in all her childish seriousness, “Did he die?” Since he was walking through the room when she wanted to know this, I had to direct her attention to his living, breathing person. It wasn’t true disappointment that crossed her face, but puzzlement. The stories that she had taken as gospel from her teachers and from her mother turned out not to be true.

I wonder how many ways that guy from Vermont thought that he was going to die when a stowaway scorpion made its way up one leg of his pants and down the other leg on a flight from Chicago to Burlington. The little critter stung him twice, once on the way in and once on the way out. He’s fortunate he got stung on the legs and not on a more vulnerable area. The airline fell all over themselves trying to make sure he wasn’t too unhappy about the incident. With so many people overly sensitive to the dangers of flying, they don’t need any more bases for phobias.

I don’t suppose we should have been too startled to find a scorpion getting cozy with us in our bed or on a jet taking off from Chicago. That little guy and his forebears have been hanging around this planet for 430 million years. They’re just reminding us who was here first. In the critter game of “Survivor”, scorpions win every time. Humans aren’t even a blip on the scorpion’s evolutionary radar.

They can survive years in stasis, without eating or drinking. They can be submerged in water for over two days and shake off the dunking. They can put off the birth of their babies for a year. They can live from 3 to 25 years, depending on the species. They can survive being frozen or broiled by desert temperatures. Our little bark scorpion friends can climb up a smooth wall and take a stroll on the ceiling. They, like Donna Summer, will survive.

In fact, any exterminator who says he can eliminate scorpions by spraying the baseboards of your home probably has a nice bridge he can sell you. Scorpions are impervious to poisons, for the most part. They don’t clean themselves like most insects do, so they don’t ingest the poison that is so cleverly designed to kill them. The smart exterminator won’t try to sell you ineffective poisons. He’s going to try to sell you something far, far more expensive and only a little bit more effective.

Home sealing is the darling of bug warriors in the desert. For between $2500 and $6000, they will come in and weather-strip your home against the eight-legged invasion. It’s all dandy for keeping out the millions of creepy crawlies living la vida loca outside, but doesn’t do a bit to stop the thriving critters inside or the hitchhikers that come in with us. After all, that’s where the party is.

The Extension Cooperative entomologists at the University of Arizona strongly urge people to use converted-lantern black lights for a periodic, thorough bug hunt. Scorpions fluoresce under black light and turn a prominent shade of blue when usually they are masters of camouflage. These well-meaning but undoubtedly socially challenged scientists suggest that these nocturnal safaris can be an entertaining source of family “fun.” I don’t know, but “fun” to me suggests a certain level of pleasure. Hunting insects that can deliver an excruciatingly painful sting doesn’t mesh with my definition of fun.

I have to hand it to these guys at the University of Arizona, though. They go full out when it comes to making scorpions mainstream. They close their webpage on scorpions with an impassioned plea to catch and release these “wonderful creatures” back into the environment. I may be playing Russian roulette with my spiritual karma here, but any scorpion found in my house is toast. I stop short of having them stuffed and mounted over the fireplace, but that’s about it.

Recent newspaper articles appearing in the Arizona Republic have mentioned the ubiquitous house cat as a meaningful line of defense against scorpions. Cats apparently are immune to the scorpion’s venom and are inclined to eat the little critters. All cats, that is, except for ours. Princess will go “on point” when she encounters a scorpion, maybe giving a half-hearted meow, but consuming them would be out of the question. It is for her minion (me) to rid the house of any creature with more than four legs.

Desert dwellers have come up with some clever responses to the eternal problem of scorpions. The Phoenix Zoo puts live chickens in the outdoor pens to keep the scorpions from harming the more fragile members of their zoo family. The chickens find the crusty bugs a tasty treat, and that makes them an extremely effective method of extermination, but I’m not sure I’m ready for scorpion hunting with poultry. Some folks put a barrier of diatomaceous earth around their homes. The ground glass-like substance scratches the exoskeleton of the scorpions as they scuttle over it. In about 3 days, the critters dry out and die. But three days is a long time in the battle to keep a home scorpion-free. One little scorpion could potentially wreak havoc on a family in three whole days.

We often apply a low-tech approach and put out sticky traps for the creepy-crawlies. I think they may be on to my plan though, since I once found one hiding under the trap on the part where there is no sticky stuff. In the last year, I’ve captured half a dozen spiders, a silverfish and about one million dust bunnies in my traps. As the old song goes, I think I better think this out again.

A lot of the desert fauna feasts on scorpions without fear of reprisal, although there are obvious drawbacks to inviting owls, mice, bats, the mighty tarantula or even less-menacing species of scorpion in your home to take care of your pest problems. If I could be sure that it wouldn’t bite my finger off or eat one of my children, I would consider bringing in a meerkat. Our cat, Princess, would find out the hard way that her residence here is conditional.

Amazingly, the little eight-legged cousins to the spider don’t just hang out in our bedroom, they exist in every type of habitat except for Antarctica. They have been uncovered at 12,000 feet altitude in the Himalayas. They have adapted to savannah and forest, from sea to shining sea.

All of the 1400 identified species are venomous, all are carnivorous, and all fluoresce under a black light, which is sort of cool. They all could certainly benefit from some better PR.

They are, for example, rather attentive mothers for the insect world. Their 25-35 offspring get a free ride on mama’s back until their first molt, and for 4 or 5 days after. With Mom’s constant protection and support while they are vulnerable, her young have a relatively better chance of survival. That’s very un-bug-like behavior. Some species may even congregate in social or extended family groups, sharing shelter and food. Their famous “courtship dances” with their locked pincers make for excellent documentary footage. It’s not often that mating gets a network G rating.

According to some paleontologists, scorpions were the first species to move from water to land, so they have had a long time to burrow into our mythologies and nightmares. The ancient Babylonians told of a race of scorpion men. These half man-half scorpion creatures shot arrows that never missed. Egyptians have revered the scorpion for ages. Serket is the goddess who appears with the scorpion sitting on her head. She and her creepy crawly friend protect the pharaohs and the dead. Her sister-goddess, Isis, has a bodyguard of seven scorpions. In ancient Greece, the mythic hunter Orion was killed by Scorpio the scorpion as punishment for being naughty in ways that only a demi-god can. He was placed in the heavens by Zeus 180 degrees away from his killer, Scorpio.

Folk tales also abound. In Egypt, the people believe scorpions are born from the corpses of dead crocodiles, that women are immune to a scorpion’s sting, and that only stings received in the morning are lethal. The English used to believe that they bred from bruised sweet bay leaves. My favorite story is the one that says a scorpion that is surrounded by a ring of fire will sting itself to death. Now there’s a dicey method of extermination. I wonder how often that theory was tested.

Legend has made the scorpion the fearsome creature that it is; but actually, only about 25 different species carry venom that can be troublesome to humans, with mostly small children and the elderly being in any jeopardy. With a little medical care and antivenin for the most extreme stings, the mortality rate from scorpion stings drops to zero. There have been no deaths from scorpions in Arizona for the last 40 years running. Places where medical care is uncommon or substandard have increased risk for humans succumbing to complications of a scorpion’s sting since their neurotoxin venom can interfere with breathing and heart beat.

Some pet providers even suggest that scorpions make an interesting and offbeat pet. Websites are springing up that deal with the care and breeding of these sincerely non-cuddly, venomous insects. I bet those guys from the entomology department at the University of Arizona were the first in line for the “beautiful creatures”. Conversely, the entomologists over at Kansas State University are a bit creeped out by trend of keeping stinging insects as pets and have posted warnings against doing so on their website. They must be dog people.

Scorpions are not just another pretty face. Science has found important uses for certain chemical compounds in scorpion venom. Medical researchers have parlayed the Giant Yellow Israeli Scorpion’s venom into an effective means of combating glioma, a fast-growing and terminal form of brain cancer. Results from human testing have been very positive.

So, scorpions aren’t all bad all the time. They have been victims of more bad press than Paris Hilton. I can almost find a bit of sympathy in my heart for their plight. But this isn’t the beginning of a beautiful friendship. If they continue sneaking into our house, I will continue smooshing them with my shoe, but now I will do so while respectfully acknowledging their extraordinary adaptability and lineage.

After exactly four hours, the pain in my husband’s back evaporated as quickly as it had come on. His body had conquered the neurotoxins poked into him on the end of the scorpion’s tail. Every sign that he had encountered a deadly poison vanished. He seemed pleased with his ability to overcome certain death.

My darling husband spent the next day marveling at the lack of any residual pain. I spent the next day making sure that little sandy-colored critters with eight legs and a nasty sting didn’t try to party with us while we slept.

Jobs I Have Had, Jobs That Have Had Me

2009-05-23T20:44:00.001-07:00

I started working when I was 12 years old. My dad (and mom, I suspect) didn’t want his girls playing all summer, talking about, thinking about, dreaming about boys. So I rose at 5:45 in the morning, threw on a heavy polyester nurse’s uniform, and stumbled out the door four days a week. When your dad is your boss, an interesting dynamic is created. I never did learn how to relate him in the office and often had difficulty figuring out if I was talking to my dad or my employer. Twelve-year-olds need dads but they don’t have a lot of use for employers. I got it wrong, a lot.

For the last week, I’ve been an intern at a software company and I find myself in the same sort of predicament. Not that I’m working for my dad, wearing that god-awful polyester straight jacket, but because I operate in the space outside the typical employee-employer relationship, somewhere between a guest and employee. I feel that weird dynamic again.

I have a desk, a computer, a phone and I even have email accounts from the company. I start at 9 and try to leave by 5. There is someone to oversee my work, someone to fix my computer when it misbehaves, and someone to show me how to work the coffee machine, but they notice the difference. A grunt who’s not a salaried grunt, a quasi-person.

But I came to learn, to get experience, and to sharpen my mad writing skillz. So far it’s been like drinking off the end of a firehose. New people, new systems, new programs, I have had to hit the ground running. All my spiffy A’s didn’t prepare me for new product releases, crisis mode management, and manuals that need to be delivered by yesterday last month. My department head who had to approve my internship suggested that this environment requires a certainly amount of flexibility. What he didn’t know is that it’s very difficult to keep up with my leg wrapped around the back of my neck. Flexibility I got, speed is what I need.

Wish me luck…

The Mom Song

2009-02-01T08:37:00.005-07:00

Every so often a song comes along so iconic, so thoroughly tuned in to universal truths, so valuable to human understanding it requires no explanation. We are given over to its genius simply by listening. Enjoy the trip.

May I present the Mom Song...

(Thanks Vicki :))

The Morning Bell

2009-01-25T08:48:00.002-07:00

I'm just finishing up my first week of classes for the Spring semester and already my head is swimming.

I may have bitten off quite a large chunk of education this time with 15 semester hours, but I'm determined to conquer this mountain of papers (and the writing they require) before May.

My courses this semester are:

Europe and Africa
European Migrations
Principles of Visual Communication
Principles of Writing with Technology
Technical Editing

The 2 history courses will finish out my degree program for that degree. Geez, that only took 20 years. I guess I had to take some time off from learning about history to make a little personal history (and three other historically-accurate, history-making beings.)

4 of my 5 courses are online this semester. That doesn't mean I have to work less, that means I have to work more (but I can choose from more convenient hours of the day, like 1 am to 5 am when it's nice and quiet around here). The price to be paid for the convenience factor is a decidedly larger workload. Really, my theory is that online courses remove the possibility of collective student whining about the work/test load. Collective whining, like collective bargaining, is the 900 pound gorilla that will have his way. It should never be underestimated.

Another feature of this semester is "blogging for grades." In addition to my personal blog, Return Engagement, I'm required to create and maintain two more blogs. The first one will corral all my cleverness about the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial interactions between Europe and Africa. Take a peek at A Play of Dark and Light: Europe and Africa if you need something to help you sleep at night. Personally, I love this stuff but I'm aware that for most people history has an anesthetizing effect.

My other blog is equally narrow in scope. It is designed to follow the genesis of a semester-long design project for my Writing with Technology class (my inner techno-geek is so happy). It's named Projecting Success: Principles of Writing with Technology. I haven't determined what my project will be yet, but I'll be getting down with my geeky, bad self soon enough.

I linked both to this blog.

My hope is to keep all 3 blogs fresh with new ideas and new insights. But for right now, I gotta go, there's papers to write (30 of them by my count). Adios amigos.

Time Flies When the Sh*t Hits the Fan...

2009-01-18T20:48:00.009-07:00

I'm so discomboobolated even my metaphors are cross-pollinating.

This past month has been pure mayhem. My 15 hours of courses this semester will be a relaxing day at the beach in comparison.

Here's the highlights:

We hosted DH's family for the holidays. Sister came in from Rome, Italy with her 2 children. Mom came in from OK with great-grandma.

My monkeys met their Italian cousins for the first time and it was love at first sight for everyone involved. At least until the comas set in. We learned Italian and they learned about near-lethal jet lag.

The guest house flooded on a cold and rainy day.

The washer imploded the next cold and rainy day.

Everyone learned that the flu is a cross-cultural event and brings people to their knees regardless of what their plans are.

We had pictures taken to commemorate the event 2 days after Christmas. The next day, illness and ambulances visited our house.

Cousins left amid great sadness.

Grandma and great Grandma still remain far from home, recovering.

Anyone who entertains the idea that life challenges only come in threes either can't count very well or else they indulge in some wildly over-optimistic thinking.

But don't think that I didn't have fun in the last month, because I had a blast in between life's little train wrecks and I even managed to finally finish Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I'll attach a review later but for now I'll leave you with this picture of one moment when we were all feeling the love...

Ready for the Holidays!!!

2008-12-18T14:31:00.004-07:00

Well, not really. I don't think I'm ever ready to see another year zoom by at light speed. I suppose, though, I'm doing better than last year. The Christmas tree is up and actually has a few ornaments on it. I completed Photoshopping this year's Christmas card photo. I have my cards ready to receive their addresses. But...

The shopping's not done
The presents aren't wrapped
The house isn't ready for our out-of-town guests
I haven't blogged a post in so long I feel like I should start a new one
We haven't seen Santa yet, he's shy one list (the other two were recently emailed)
The cookies remain unbaked. (Santa will need to be satisfied with a granola bar this year)
And our stockings are AWOL

I'm thinking of starting a new holiday tradition of eliminating one holiday tradition each year. I'm going to replace each tradition with a nap, lunch with friends or a spa treatment.

Anyway, before it gets axed in favor of a massage, I wanted to wish you all the happiest of holidays and may 2009 lead us all to better places.

My Nefarious Plans (for my children)

2008-11-30T22:48:00.004-07:00

Moms come in all shapes and sizes. No two moms will react to her children dying the cat pink or receiving a whopping $400 cell phone bill in quite the same way. Our shrieks of horror are as individual as a fingerprint. We contort differently when simultaneously voicing our displeasure and suppressing laughter. All moms have one thing in common, though we may not realize it; we all have plans for our little darlings’ futures. We may not have flowcharted Johnny’s trip to the White House by way of Harvard or predetermined the length of Janie’s first courtship with the slacker kid from down the block but we all entertain quaint fantasies of our children finding success, love, personal fulfillment and their own homes by the time they’re 30.

I’m probably sneakier than most moms when it comes to leading my brood to their professional and personal destinies. Conor, for instance, doesn’t realize that he will embark on a career in Hollywood that will rival the great Steven Spielberg’s. (I’d say Martin Scorcese, but those are mighty big eyebrows to fill.) All that daydreaming the boy does in school must be useful for something. So…I stealthily sneak in HD video cameras with his Lego-heavy birthday presents and then I slip in ingenious videos gleaned from You Tube wherever I think he might be watching. Places like…my blog.

(Shhhh. Conor doesn’t know he’s being molded. But before we launch into a full on explication of the symbolism in Citizen Kane, let’s start with something simple. One guy, one camera and one clever idea.) Meet Dan and Dan.

Now, on to Hana's doctorate in particle physics.

Time Is On My Side

2008-11-22T15:05:00.004-07:00

First off, apologies for not being a punctual blogger. An upper respiratory infection and the end of the semester have conspired to make me look quite flakey. Fear not, the end (of the semester) is near.

Secondly, I want to you all meet my new love, Dr. George Smoot

(He's not as iconoclastic as Feynman, or as articulate as Sagan, or as adamant as Hawking, but the man gives great Universe. And he brought pictures!)

If you have a few minutes, well, more like twenty take a look at the beginning of time and space.

We are in the presence of all time, all the time. Cool.

Sounds Like Fun

2008-11-02T17:53:00.017-07:00

You know I just have to share if I find a new, fun and interesting way to waste more time on the Internet. Blogs are cool. Forums are da bomb. But foley editing is just a plain old kick in the pants. Actually I’m getting credit for this little time waster since it’s part of my Multimedia class and I need to become familiar with the Audacity program.

First, go here and download the free audio editing program from Audacity.

Then, go here and sign up so you can download every kind of noise imaginable at Freesound.org.

Then play and play and play. Frighten your kids. Scare the neighbors. Terrorize your pets. This is a blast.

Listen to what I came up with this afternoon.

Note for those that operate on a higher plane of geekiness: The Audacity program saves your projects using an .aup extension. These files are only operable on computers that have Audacity software loaded, plus they're gargantuan, gigantic, really big files. You might want to export your projects to a .wav or .mp3 file. Since I run on a Mac, I needed a special...hm, what's the word for it...doohickey to convert .aup files to .mp3 files. If you, like me, have been living without this all important doohickey, you might want to go here and download their free converter. It's fairly cool and you can convert to a dozen different audio formats. I know I'm feeling better about the world, I hope you are too.

The only downside that I can see, besides ignoring the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, is the sheer size of some of these audio files. I probably ate up the better part of 2G downloading audio files to play with. But oh well, put it down to the costs of higher education.

11/3/08 I fixed the links. I shall now go beat myself without mercy for posting dead links. Carry on. cmk

That thing we MUST do...write

2008-10-19T14:53:00.007-07:00

In my email box this week, along with 27 notices that I had won the lottery in various countries in Europe for a cool $2.5 million (huzzah) and 52 ads for enlarging my member (um, okay), I got a letter from an old friend, Chris Baty.

Some will recognize the name. If you have ever separated yourself from friends, family and reality for the month of November, if you ever dedicated yourself to no sleep and spasm-inducing amounts of caffeine, if you ever toyed with the idea of living in your car with your laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter to get a little quiet time then you know who Chris is. He’s the pied piper of National Novel Writing Month, the clarion voice in the desert (well, San Francisco actually) calling more than 100,000 writers to their destinies, computers and coffee makers to pour their jittery alter egos into a 50,000-word novel produced in one month.

National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo to the obviously unbalanced insiders, is the gauntlet thrown down to all who would call themselves novelists, writers or word-whores. Come on, poseurs, says Chris, show us what you got. It’s easy, from the outside, to sneer at such a paltry amount, I mean, real writers write weighty fare like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged at 565,000 words. That’s a real book-length manuscript. Right? Yeah, right. 50,000 words is about 200 printed pages and a short novel to say the least, but it’s also a great start on your own Atlas Shrugged or It or A Suitable Boy. And the beauty of Nanowrimo is that if you finish 50,000 words before the end of the contest, you can just keep going and going and going until midnight on November 30th.

Since blinding speed is the characteristic most favored in this contest, painstakingly crafting elaborate, subtle or elegant plots is just plain silly. Nanowrimo is all about the messy, ugly, gross, misanthropic first drafts that may eventually become real manuscripts after enough love and revision. Or not. Think the Sistine Chapel done by toddlers with finger paints. It’s about just puking out a story onto the computer screen and not worrying that your adoring public or future public will think less of you for writing such crap. The goal is 50,000 words in somewhat coherent sentences that tell a somewhat coherent story, how you get there is your business. In fact, Chris’s answer to the problems and paranoia associated with plotting stories is his book No Plot, No Problem.

One of my favorite aspects of Nanowrimo, besides the camaraderie, the competition with other regions and that nasty bitch, Time, the insanity and mainlining pure adrenalin is the sister competition to Nanowrimo for students. The Nanowrimo Young Writers Program encourages grade school and high school students to join in the craziness by the classroomful. In the process, they learn how ugly a first draft can be, and how that’s alright. They also learn about competing with a deadline and working on a team toward a common goal. A bunch of kids whose first contact with writing is through the Young Writers Program turn around the next year and join the rest of us in pursuit of a novel in 30 days.

Even though I didn’t make it to 50,000 last year, I’m game of another go this year. I got kids, house, husband and a full ticket going at ASU but who cares. I'll give up sleeping. Chris, you won’t have to send your goons out to drag me back kicking and screaming, I already got my feet in the starting blocks.

So if you’re already horribly busy but plagued with stories floating around in your head, you must nano. If you always wondered how people came to wander through your office, bleary-eyed, mumbling about MCs and theme, you must nano. And if you ever wanted to prove to the world that you’re one crazy SOB, you must nano. Come, we’ll nano together.

Check out Chris’s brainchild that grew into a 40-foot gorilla in a pink tutu at www.nanowrimo.org

The Ma-Nah Ma-Nah Phenomena

2008-10-17T00:47:00.006-07:00

In terms of personal accomplishments, I don’t usually like to toot my own horn but there is one feature I am particularly proud of: I’m first generation Sesame Street. Jim Henson’s magical muppets helped teach me to read, to count to 20, to share and to cooperate with others. Robert Fulghum may have learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten, but my life lessons came straight from the curmudgeonly Oscar the Grouch and gentle Kermit the Frog. In fact, Henson’s large family of muppets has remained my good friends, entertainers and mentors throughout my life.

Here’s a short homage to some of my favorite people, um, muppets

My friend Kermit…

My secret love, Oscar the Grouch…

My esteemed professor, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker…
(with help from Waldorf and Stadler, Kermit, Miss Piggy and the very much missed Gilda Radner)

That culinary genius, the Swedish chef…

And finally, better than a fortune cookie, my little guru…

So thanks to Jim Henson and all his crew that have made and continue to make magic from foam rubber, sticky-outy feathers and techno color fake fur. I still know all the words to the “I Love Trash” song and sing “Rubber Ducky” loud and long in the bath. Some of the wide-eyed innocence may have been replaced with cynicism and gray hair, but I remain a member in good standing of the Muppets Mutual Admiration Society.

I leave you with one last video to remember… Ma-Nah Ma-Nah

3 Ways My Life Sucks Worse Than Yours

2008-10-11T11:52:00.002-07:00

I have a friend. We get together on an increasingly infrequent basis to girl talk over cosmos and large salads. When we get together we play a sort of a game, one that never really had a distinctive name but if we had to call it something it should probably be called 3 Ways My Life Sucks Worse Than Yours.

The rules of the game are fairly simple; an upsetting moment is recited, with particular emphasis on the residual angst and where on the hierarchy of personal pain the event falls. The listener makes no move to fly back in time to fix anything, she doesn’t become evasive or pretend to read the menu, she makes no judgments on the veracity of the speaker’s topic or indicates what actions she would have taken in the same situation, she gives no advice for the next time, in fact she rarely says anything other than to offer to buy the next round. Body language, however, is key during the game. When the speaker reaches the crescendo of crises in her horror story, the listener nods her head with understanding and empathy.

And then, that’s it. The game is over. Who won? Well, we both do, but I’ll explain how later. Meanwhile, back at the ivory towers of Academia, I am finding that they play a cut-throat variant of our little bar game. Their game is different enough to require a different title. Let’s call it, 3 Ways My Life Sucks Worse Than Yours and You’ll Never Understand My Experience So Don’t Even Try. Whole books, doctoral theses and careers have been created around this high-stakes version, then made sacrosanct by a close proximity to Knowledge.

On campus, this institutional form of the game is played by seasoned professionals who, for this semester at least, congregate in the area of Women’s Studies. Here they tell me that the oppression white females experience is a completely different animal from the oppression faced by minority women that is wholly alien to the oppression experienced by minority gay women. Okay. So it morphs into a more sinister game of My Oppression Is More Oppressive Than Your Oppression and You Still Can’t Understand It So Don’t Even Try.

It occurs to me, from my travels in the writing game, that by refusing to allow the reader/listener any access to the possibility of empathy, the speaker has burned her own bridge, not even burned it, more like, nuked it out of existence. Every character, every argument, every rant, every sentence, every tear, every wish, every love letter, every boring interoffice memo, every second wave feminist manifesto, every word waits. Waits for that silent nod of the of head, the one that says, “I understand.”

The disconcerting push-pull of “hear me” and “my experience is incomprehensible to you” destroys viable communication before it begins. Feminism is killed off by its own practice.

One vote, one never-ending means of harassment

2008-09-21T08:46:00.005-07:00

“Hello, this is your friend and neighbor, Candidate So-and-so, and I’m calling to alert you, my good friend and neighbor, about the challenges and issues facing us as a group of good friends and neighbors…”

I never knew I had so many good friends until this election season rolled around. How do I know they are my good friends? They tell me so, every day, over the phone and through my mailbox. Apparently, I’m smart, savvy, above average in almost every way possible. They like me. They like my family. My needs may have been ignored in the past, but now that my special qualities are known that’s about to change. But, they tell me, I’m also a little bit blinded, deluded by messages of hope or change, probably confused by all the rhetoric floating around about this issue or that scandal. Gosh, I may even be somewhat stupid for not affiliating with the right party in the first place. They’re very understanding though, and so helpful.

My voter’s registration card bears the word “Independent.” In the past, that meant I was not constantly solicited for donations. A likeable feature, I figured, since I would rather give my charitable dollars to organizations that actually help people in need. People need food, shelter and proper health care before they need to learn how to become ultra-conservative right-wingers, or so I thought. My invitations to the $1000 plate chicken dinners with candidates were forever getting lost in the mail. Cinderella never got invited to the ball. This year, that glaring error has been remedied. I’ve gone A-list, baby. PACs, parties, people of every stripe want me, want 5 minutes of my valuable time. Bring your wallet (and your precious vote.)

This election year, more than most, “Independent” is the holy grail. I’ve been thrust from my comfortable, rarely canvassed anonymity to everyone’s BFF. They call me, mostly on weekends and after 6pm on weekdays, just to say hi (that’s about all I hear before the connection is severed anyway.) I’d be flattered at all this loving attention lavished on little ol’ me if the candidates and their minion didn’t drool so much over my voter’s registration card, it’s messing up my jeans.

So, to the guy who’s called me every day for the last 2 weeks, there’s no extra points for persistence in this game, pal. To bigoted freak who called yesterday about Prop 201, you’re giving Christians a bad rep. Stop it. To John and Barack, I’m sure you mean well but I don’t care if you’re handing out solid gold bars with every vote, I know spin when I hear it. To all the minor candidates who make so free with my unpublished, Do Not Call listed phone number, I don’t recall when or where we became good friends, your names are absent from my Christmas card list. If you are the neighbor who borrowed our folding table and chairs though, I want them back.

I Need Things

2008-09-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

I need things.
I need tighter skin and looser pants.
I need to pick a realistic hair color, then really commit.
I need to increase my reading speed by a factor of 10, my writing by a factor of 15 and my wit, well, faster than that.
I need to learn four new languages by the end of the year; Italian, Spanish, Mandarin and HTML.
I need to guide my children through the Valley of Death and the parts of speech.
I need master the crock pot and sneaking broccoli into the brownies.
I need a more potent weapon in my battle against the Giant Fascist Dust Bunnies.
I need to discuss topics that haven’t been smeared with kid prints, licked by the dog or gnawed on by hamsters.
I need to do downward facing dog on purpose, not just to retrieve Kendall’s broken (but still lucky) eye off her blinded (but still lucky) bear, off the floor.
I need to stop and smell the roses, then while I’m down there I need to pull some weeds, then while I’m pulling weeds I need to remember where I left my favorite garnet earring.
I need to understand string theory and why I feel so insulted after seeing an episode of “Family Guy.”
I need to know where everything is, how it works, what to expect of it in the future and who to call when it starts making strange buzzing noises.
I need to breathe deeper and eat lighter.
I need more time.
More time.

A warning to my oppressors

2008-09-02T16:46:00.003-07:00

I started my odyssey through college last week. My class schedule looks like this:

Technical Communication
Multimedia Writing
Marginalized Populations in Europe 1000-1900 AD
Women in Contemporary Society

Except for the format, Technical Communications and Multimedia Writing could be interchangeable and except for the time period, Marginalized Populations and Women in Contemporary Society could be the very same class. I figure by the end of the semester I should be very adept at creating visually stimulating rants on oppression.

During Week #1 I learned the following…
I am a woman
Women have been oppressed for a very long time
During the Middle Ages, God said women and Jews need to be oppressed because women are lustful and Jews eat Christian babies at Passover
Interactive websites are cool
The 202 at 5 pm is a flipping parking lot
Don’t drink a bunch of water before getting on the 202 at 5 pm

Look over the list, maybe there’s something you can use in it. You won’t be tested later.

One of the interesting features of “new school” is this glaring lack of testing. The entire semester I will have to take only 2 tests in one class and have no finals for any of them. My recurring nightmare of studying all night, then sleeping through the final has become anecdotal and obsolete. Where’s my cramming, my cleverly disguised crib notes? Where is my caffeine-edged regurgitation of chapter and sub-chapter headings? What will I do with all these darn #2 pencils and Blue Books? They are lost to me forever. Alas.

Instead I have papers and projects to do. Lots of papers and gargantuan projects in lieu of cramming useless facts into my head then core-dumping them on to a piece of paper during a test. What do these people want me to do? Apply knowledge? What? I want my machine-scored testing back. I want to fill in the circle completely with a #2 pencil while making no other marks on the paper. I want to turn my paper over and close my test booklet when I’m done. I want my easy A, you educational oppressors.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Marilyn Frye’s seminal article “Oppression.”

“We hear that oppressing is oppressive to those who oppress as well as to those they oppress.”

Believe it.

Magic words of the 21st century

2008-08-29T14:23:00.003-07:00

So it’s my turn.

My turn for the August Blogchain at AbsoluteWrite.com. Take a peek-a-boo over at Kristi’s The Mommy Writer and have some ice cream with her adorable kids, then walk off those extra calories by toddling over to Ralph Pines’ Neither Here nor There (which sounds like it might be difficult to find, but it’s not. I put a link nearby, close to your favorite chair.)

Kristi’s post made me laugh. Kids will always find a way to make wearing a bag over your head in public seem like a reasonable option. Her kids notice the resemblance a man at the ice cream shop has to Santa Claus, mine discuss in bright, clear voices certain noted differences in the male and female anatomy.

It’s all my fault. I thought I was being so progressive, my kids wouldn’t be the ones using baby-talk euphemisms to describe body parts. Listening to mothers and their children use the word “num-nums” to indicate women’s breasts or “wee-wee” or “pee-pee” or once “the little man” made me want to run screaming from the room. My children would know from the get-go proper anatomical nomenclature. I can’t tell you all the many ways that particular area of knowledge has come back to bite me in the buttocks. But I feel I should try, as a service and a warning to mothers of pre-verbal children.

Rule #1 Do not tell your son he has a penis.

First of all, he knows. He knows because he came into this world fitted out with the best pull toy EVER. Fisher-Price and Baby Einstein will never come close to inventing a toy this cool and so convenient. If you can convince the young prince to keep it in his pants, you’re doing a far better job of it than I ever could. The real challenge, however, comes when he wants to give a name to his friend and constant companion. Don’t be fooled that this is mere curiousity, it isn’t. He wants to know what it’s called because he wants to talk about it a lot. To everyone. Everywhere.

For Conor, the word “penis” had a profound and magical effect on his life. Not only did his friend finally have a worthy name but every time he said it in public, which was daily and abundant, his mother would a) turn color or b) start moving that shopping cart at warp speed or c) dive into the closest hedge. All of which amused my tow-headed progeny to no end.

While standing in the check out lane at Safeway, Conor came to know the awesome power of his best friend’s name. Pointing a pudgy toddler finger at the large man waiting in front of us, Conor says, “Mommy, is he my daddy?”

“No. He’s not your daddy.” I probably should have continued on to say that his daddy is the lovely, hard-working man who lives in our house, the one I’m legally married to just to soothe the looks of horror I received from the man in question and the old woman behind me.

“Does he have a penis too?”

In hindsight I see I should have faked a fainting spell right there. Maybe if I had fallen to the ground or spontaneously combusted or even jammed my fingers in my ears and started singing “The Star Spangled Banner” I wouldn’t have been sucked into this topic, imprisoned between upstanding members of the moral police in the check out lane of Safeway. Anyplace they could have taken me would have been better than where Conor was going with this.

“Maybe we should talk about this later.”

I tried but there is no later for toddlers, there is only now. Now. Now. Now. I knew that before I said it, I also knew that Conor had latched on to his new favorite word like a barnacle on the Titanic. Even after the boat’s laying on the ocean floor, the barnacle is still attached, loving every minute of it.

“Is his penis as cute as mine?”

Someone just kill me because I’m going down in flames.

I must have blacked out because I woke up in the parking lot, attacking a quart of Butter Brickle with a rubber-tipped baby spoon, humming “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Do These Letters Make My Butt Look Big?

2008-08-24T11:56:00.007-07:00

In August of 1984 I took my first tour of the campus at Arizona State University. In addition to the sensation of walking around a tree-lined interior of a large oven, the youthful vitality of the students impressed me. Two girls in particular stand out in my memory. It wasn’t their tanned skin or long blonde hair that I found amazing, although in comparison to my doughy Midwestern pallor and Medusa hair, they were quite stunning. No, what made my corn-fed, oxford-shirted, just-burned-my-hands-on-the-steering-wheel-of-my-car brain go tilt was the large school logo emblazoned across the butt section of their shorts.

Yes, I did just claw my way out of a fashion coma and I wake up to find that people are using their asses for marketing purposes.

“Oh, I don’t think I can go here” became my singular thought-refrain. Suddenly everything about the place seemed over-the-top, mentally and physically unattainable. I couldn’t even understand the language they were speaking, a linguistic cross between Valley Girl and sorority sister never heard east of the Mississippi. I was a different species altogether from these willowy co-eds with writing on their butts. Before they spotted me, I ran back to my lair after purchasing some be-Deviled oven mitts for the drive home.

24 years and several incarnations later…

I’m standing in Victoria’s Secret close to campus. Classes are starting on Monday so naturally every female within 30 miles is stocking up on “University of Pink” wear. Me too, I admit it, but only for my pink-loving girls. As I look through the racks, I hear the unmistakable dialect of the ASU co-ed.

“Oh my gawd, I HAVE to have these shorts. They’re soooo cute!”

I turned around expecting to see the 2008 models of the leggy blondes I encountered in 1984 (and to see if I had to have those shorts too). Instead, the two young women gazing lovingly at the pair of shorts are done up in dark emo shades. Long hair dyed various hues of somber and depressed, India ink tats, piercings with sharp, pointy things (tastefully small and discreet but uncomfortable looking all the same), all this at polar opposites to blondes of 1984. The lingo was similar but with a noticeable amp up of obscenities.

I relaxed a bit. My 24 years of intervening life experience told me I don’t have to march in step to my fellow classmates. A worthwhile conclusion considering I’m older than both my advisor and my professors (except for one of them, an obvious fluke) and the squick factor associated with jamming things into my flesh. Finally, I’m okay. I wish my hair didn’t have streaks of silver in it and my eyes didn’t wrinkle so much when I smile, but those lovely blonde women of 1984 are considering a close, loving relationship with Botox the same way I am. Time is an equal-opportunity son of a bitch.

So, I think I can go here. And I am, starting tomorrow.

Walking out the store, I laughed out loud. The shorts-adoring co-eds walked out ahead of me, both with “ASU” logos blazing across their bottoms.

Fashion changes but the classics remain.

The future of parenting

2008-08-20T20:22:00.003-07:00

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
Kalil Gibran

I knew from the moment I became a mother that my children aren't mine at all. They belong to themselves so completely. And although I am responsible for their education and well-being along with Big Daddy, I know that I could not put a single thought in their heads, I could not move their hands to take mine or control the crazy curliques of their imaginations. I saw that they were entire universes where only the smallest part would be visible to me in my lifetime, like trying to count the stars in the Milky Way. But even that tiny part is so cool, it makes me smile just to think of it.

Yesterday as I was putting Conor to bed, he said, "I love you so much Mom. I'll always love you." I laughed and told him his future. "One day you won't love me. One day you will tell me you hate me and mean it." He looked stricken and said, "I would never say that!"

"It's alright," I said, "every kid says it to their parents or at least thinks it. It's part of growing up. But you know, on that day what I will say back to you?"

He braced himself for harsh words of rejection.

"I'll say, 'I love you forever' and mean it."

That kid positively glowed.

Of cabbages and kings

2008-08-16T11:15:00.003-07:00

I have college books! I love college books although I have to admit that I loved them a lot more when Mommy and Daddy were footing the bill for them. During my first go-around in school, I saucily purchased new, pristine books and recklessly marked them up, dog-eared their pages, and abused them with rude doodles. Sometimes I even tore them up after the class was over in a post-final exams hissy fit. Someone should have spanked me for what I did to those books but no one ever did, until now.

Now, my very used, yet still very expensive books will be treated as gingerly as a Gutenberg Bible in hopes that they will be able to be re-sold to some other poor student. I realize that I hope in vain. If a text is used 3 or 4 times, that’s a lot in the life of a textbook. Profs rotate in and out of texts as often as Britney forgets her bloomers, requiring new editions or altogether different titles. I recall one my professors requiring his class to hunt down and purchase a “supplemental guide.” It consisted of a spiral bound collection of illegible hand written notes coupled with unreadable articles on indiscriminate topics. If Mad Magazine put together college texts, it would look a lot like this. We used the proto-door stop once since no one, not even the professor who compiled it, could make heads or tails of it. I think he inhaled…a lot.

I had almost forgotten the fiefdom of the classroom. Most of my former professors could ably be described as benevolent dictators but some were full-on despots and a few, outright sociopaths. Those ivory towers of higher education can function as insane asylums if needs be. After 40 though, I’m a lot less cowed by the egos, the brilliance and bizarre behaviors exhibited by my professors. I still remember the hushed awe that swept through a historical survey class I took when the professor (complete with a Chief Inspector Dreyfus facial tic) concluded that Hitler’s megalomania was directly derived from his mother’s cancerous breasts. Allll-righty then. At 19, I sat quietly in honor of the prof’s obvious erudition, now however, I’d be stifling a laugh and an argument. I’ve become much more of a “show me” girl. Call me cynical, but you’re gonna need a lot more than Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams to prove that Hitler took command, co-opted whole countries and ethnically-cleansed at his whim because Mumsy couldn’t nurse little Adolph. But at least I got a couple of great anecdotes out of the class and an A as I recall.

I haven’t met this semester’s professors yet, but I look forward to it. Until I do, however, I get to recall my previous education, apply my current skills (mothering) and hermetically seal my textbooks. Anyone have an isolation booth I can borrow?

Are you experienced?

2008-08-13T16:26:00.003-07:00

Although I'm a neophyte blogger, I have taken a turn or two around the Internet. In the beginning, of course, my relationship with the cyber-universe was that of an intense new love affair. Barely a moment went by when I wasn't thinking of snarky-witty responses to the snarky-witty posts left by my new best friends at the Project Greenlight forums. (Sorry, no link exists to PG anymore, but I remember how good it was, Ben and Matt. I remember!) It was like sex with keystrokes and I climaxed every time someone noticed my insightful/funny/brilliant use of words. I still get a little thrill from the residual memory of those first days. But with time, experience and a demanding real-life existence, the excitement wanes. Or does it?

My relationship with the Internet has entered a more mature phase. The run-up to an orgasm is no longer noticeable when I hit the Enter key but there is still a sense of pleasure, a certain satisfaction that comes from knowing Google will answer all my questions, that Wikipedia is the reservoir of the obscure information I need to fill my flabby brain, that Dictionary.com will explain the meaning and Bartleby will quote me on it. And though I treasure my very own copy of the OED, those suckers are too heavy to schlep over to the coffeehouse. My sweet little computer weighs only a couple of pounds and travels so nicely in elegant satchel. It feels good slung over my shoulder.

So I go back often to my computer for all the information I need to impress my kids and make them believe that Mommy's knows everything. But I go for the camaraderie too. There are people in the pixels on my screen, wonderful people. These are people I love to talk to, laugh with, argue with and cry with. They are artists and writers, poets and pundits, icons and rebels all in the process of becoming something greater through their contact with all of us out here. I wanted to share some special gathering spots I've found in my keyboarding travels.

Absolute Write

I can't recommend this writers' website highly enough. It was the brainchild of author Jenna Glatzer as a place for writers to congregate and discuss the craft in its various styles and genres. It has grown into a vibrant, exciting, authentic community through the efforts of so many people, but mostly Jenna and the website's new owner, Macallister Stone.

Absolute Write is also the adopted home of Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim is really James D. MacDonald who is really a successful science fiction writer who really has created the best seat-of-your-britches writing course on the Internet. He keeps it here for everyone to learn from, free of charge (well, I do still owe him a beer.) But be prepared for lots of work, tons of reading and BIC, BIC, BIC.

(Not) Written In Stone

Macallister Stone, who owns and operates Absolute Write, also maintains a nice, quiet corner for readers. Every writer is first a reader and this is a great place to discuss the books and writers we love so much.

Author Scoop

This is my new favorite place on the Internet. It's a fabulous clearinghouse for news articles, videos, book reviews, essays, quotations and blogs with a distinct literary flavor administered by William Haskins and Jamie Mason. Their voices are sharp, brilliant and definitely, habit-forming. I'm glad it's sugar-free and so is my BICed butt.

So although I'm less inclined to spent my precious hours thinking up bons mots for the spammers and head cases roaming free on the vast plains of cyberspace and I have cut myself off from all chat room channels (cold turkey, thank you very much), I still find the Internet to be a worthy destination. My secret lover has grown into a quirky old friend, one that knows everything and nothing at all, one that listens to my blatherings and blathers in his turn, one that is powered by words. yeah, it's quirky but still mad sexy, if you asked me.

And Ben and Matt, we'll always have Project Greenlight.

The Worldwide Premiere of "Return Engagement"

2008-08-07T22:51:00.004-07:00

"Everyone has to have a first day."

Or so I say when the waitress hands me the wrong order or the customer service rep can't help me, the customer, with anything I need or my cable connection goes away because someone living two and a half blocks away switched services. I try to cut first-timers some slack, I really do because I know as well as anyone that firsts can be tense.

For example, this is my first blog post. I want it to dazzle and disarm the whole population of cyberspace. Of course, I expect that my readership will more likely encompass approximately 3 people, 4 if my mother ever comes to terms with the "glorified calculator" sitting on her desk. But like a new mother showing off her first born, I want everyone to cheer and feel their spirits renewed by the words here. So it's not a Brangelina baby, as long as it doesn't puke on your shoe, and maybe makes you think a bit or god forbid, even laugh, then it's all good.

Besides the obvious ego-stroking inherent in blogs, I have some legitimate reasons for beginning this adventure in anonymous journaling. First, my status as a Stay At Home Mom is about to drastically change. Time did this to me by making my children grow like kelp. One day I have 3 toddlers all in diapers, the next day I have to figure out how to simultaneously deliver three kids to three different schools. My youngest is 7 years old now. She'll be starting 2nd grade on Monday morning. Kendall is nervous about entering the 2nd grade, it's her first time after all. I try soothe her and tell her, "I'm going back to school too." But that doesn't soothe at all. In fact, she cries about it and explains to me that mommies don't need to learn anything else, they already know how to love their children.

Well, maybe mommies do know everything they need to know about loving their families, but I don't know how to write the books I want to write. I don't know how to make my passion for words a profitable one for my family. Yet. Although I'm sure no college course can cover such diverse topics as Magic Boo Boo Kisses, Differentiating the Cry of Pain From the Whine of Boredom, and Upper Division Sharing, my courses will educate me in the finer points of technical and multimedia writing. Kendall doesn't see it's not mommy who's going back to school, mommy who makes sure your teeth are brushed and that you put on clean underwear, no, not mommy but Carol, me.

Don't worry, baby blog, no pressure, no pressure.