M. Peevie: Reflections on Social and Economic Policy

The conversation started with a discussion of Mitt Romney and his piles and piles of money. 
"Mitt Romney claims he's not even part of the one percent," C. Peevie said.

"What?! No way," I said. "Cite your source." That's a favorite riposte in our household.

"Rolling Stone," he said. 

I raised one eyebrow and looked over to Mr. Peevie for a ruling. "I'd need to see the article for myself," he said.

"What's the one percent?" M. Peevie asked.

"It's the people who have buckets of money, M. Peevie," C. Peevie explained. "The rest of us are the 99 percent." 

"M. Peevie," I added, "There are many people who don't have enough money to even buy what they need. Some people have to choose between paying their rent and buying food, or between paying the bill to heat their house and buying the medicine they need."

"But why do some people have so much money, and other people don't?" asked the budding socialist.

"Some people are really good at making money," I said. "But how do they do it?" she asked. She was like a machine gun, spitting out questions without taking the time to reload.

"Well, maybe they start a business..."

"But how do they start a business if they don't have any money?" she interrupted.

"The bank will lend them money if they don't have enough to start their business, and if they have a good business plan," we told her, all of chiming in with totally theoretically observations about the process of starting a business. And then we got back to the solutions for helping the poor.

"Some people believe that the best way to help people who are poor is to ask businesses and people with more money to pay a little more in taxes so we can use that money to set up programs to help them, and to create jobs," I told her. "And other people think that the best way to help poor people is to help the people who run businesses, because businesses make jobs. The more jobs there are, the fewer poor people." Or so they say, I didn't add.

"That's called 'trickle down,' C. Peevie interjected. "And it doesn't work."

"I think they both sound like good ideas," said the 11-year-old sage. "Why can't we do both?"

I looked at Mr. Peevie and he looked at me. "She'd make a good president," I said.

"I do not want to be president," she said. "Too much responsibility, and too much sitting behind a big desk and signing papers all day long."

These kinds of conversations make me anticipate with wonder how this girl will one day change the world.

Vagina Dialogues, Revisited

I stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some wine and noshes on Friday, before heading out of town with my girl peeps.  "Have fun, and behave yourself!" said the cheerful clerk.  (They're always cheerful at Trader Joe's.  It's part of the job description.)

"Make up your mind," I said hilariously.  "Have fun, or behave myself?"  Aaahhh-hahahahaha.  I do love my own sense of humor.

This group of peeps has vacayed together before; the stories are recounted in Vagina Dialogues I, II, III and IV.  This trip we were down three members (four if you include L-Tiny): Vespinator moved to Germany (how rude), Rock Star is promoting her new CD on a 10-day Midwest tour, and the Professor is re-prioritizing.  

We navigated Friday night traffic, met up with peeps along the way, and came up with the first catch-phrase of the weekend:  "This trip is a well-oiled machine," J. Cool kept saying, "Well-oiled machine.  Everything is under control and running smoothly."  This, after she spent an hour-and-a-half driving less than ten miles from her house to my house.

We finally arrived at the cabin in the woods around 10 p.m., and we were more than ready to tip a glass of wine or two.  Somehow we stayed up well past midnight--two of us until 3 a.m.--eating cheese and drinking wine with labels like Pirate Booty and Evil Twin.  Our conversational topics included boyfriends, movies, kids, jobs, house renovating, and the pronunciation of "gor-GON-zola" and "PAP-ricka."

We also discussed our plans to go kayaking the next morning, which ONE OF US had spent HOURS researching and planning.  After the long drive and several glasses of wine, the thought of spending a couple of damp hours testing our upper body strength against a swift current did not sound appealing to one or two group members.  Actually, all of them, except me.

The next morning we again debated the merits of going kayaking on the scenic Pigeon River.  The day was overcast and chilly, and the stakeholders were sort of inclined to noodle around antique shops and go to wine tastings rather than getting in touch with their inner outdoorswoman.

"It's so gloomy," one whined.

"My broken rib still hurts," complained the accident-prone one.

"I hate nature," said a third.

"Two-and-a-half hours?" they chorused.  "My muscles are sore just thinking about it."

We put Skip, the cheerful and obliging shop-keeper at Kayak-Kayak in Holland, MI, on speaker-phone.  "Tell you what," he said tinnily.  "Come on over to the shop, and I'll drive you down to the river.  If it's raining too much, I'll refund all your money."  This was a more-than-reasonable offer, and we headed up to Holland.  (Or is that down to Holland?  I'm bad at geography.)  It started drizzling, then really raining on the drive up, and Bob the Builder could not let it go.

"Here, E. Peevie," she said helpfully, "you can borrow my sunglasses."  Beat.  "They'll keep the rain out of your eyes."  Squeak, squeak, swish, swish went the wipers as we followed Skip and his trailer of brightly colored kayaks down the highway.

"I'm just going to close my eyes and imagine I'm sitting by a fireplace holding a glass of wine," Bob said.  I threw a Look at her, but even I was starting to wonder if maybe this was not a great idea after all. 

"How far away is this place?" we wondered, as the miles blurred by; and the rain kept coming.  We had thought it was a mile or two up the road, but--maybe because of the rain, and because of Bob the Builder's unrelenting teasing--it seemed like we were traveling to another state.

Finally, we pulled over and bounced down a rutted road.  Skip backed his trailer up against the shore and started unloading kayaks.  A tiny sliver of blue sky appeared, but the clouds kept drizzling, and we pulled our hoods and hats down over our faces.  Skip pointed us to the life jackets, but reassured the hydrophobes among us that the river would rarely be more than a few feet deep.  He pulled a blue tandem kayak off the trailer and dragged it to the water's edge.

"This one's ours, J.Cool," I said.  The others were all taking singles, but J.Cool has back issues, and I had volunteered to be her chief paddler. We climbed in, and Skip pushed us off the shore.  We paddled out into the middle of the gentle current and waited for the singles kayaks to join us.  Spike found a rhythm easily, and quickly turned out into the current; BrokeGirl wasn't very far behind.

But Queen and Bob the Builder, OMG.  They spent some time talking over paddling strategy with Skip, and then he pushed them away from the beach.  Bob headed straight into the weeds on the opposite bank; and Queen paddled in circles.  Bob freed herself from the river flora, turned herself around, and paddled back across to the other bank; and Queen paddled in circles.

J. Cool and I drifted and watched the unfolding drama of Urban Girls v. Pigeon River, periodically calling out to them supportively.  And by "calling out to them supportively," I mean "laughing hysterically."

"Shut the eff up!" Queen yelled, somehow switching from clockwise circles to counter-clockwise circles.

Eventually, the comedy portion of the kayaking expedition ended, and our group meandered down the Pigeon River.  The sky drizzled, stopped, and drizzled some more; the sun made occasional promises, but failed to deliver.  We disturbed a great blue heron, who lifted up from the shallows and spread his blue-gray wings against the gray-blue sky.  A hundred yards further down, we startled his mate, who also flapped languidly away.  A pair of wood ducks floated in the weeds, barely glancing over as we paddled by.

"This is my new favorite sport!" Bob the Builder allowed, and I maturely resisted saying, "I told you so!"  

Until now.

After an hour or so of paddling, drifting, and floating downstream, we headed back upstream to our beachhead, where Skip was waiting to pull us ashore.  I think he was a little surprised that we had stayed out as long as we did in the not-so-accommodating weather; or maybe he expected one or more of us to die a watery death and not return at all.  

"Way to go, ladies!" he called out cheerfully as we approached the beach where he waited in the shallows in his shorts and Keens.  "I'm so proud of you!  Next trip you get half off!"  He clearly enjoyed putting people on the river.

"I'll bet he's a retired bond trader who left the big city and opened up the little kayak shop that he had always dreamed of," profiled BrokeGirl.  Sure enough, when we asked him, he said he had retired from Goldman Sachs and moved from New York a few years earlier.

I love my peeps, and I could not be more grateful for their friendship and the opportunity to hang with them, away from the chaos and responsibility of real life.  But as it often happens, I was also grateful to come home to my little family, to eat grill-marked hotdogs with them, and to listen to my delicate flower of a little daughter belting out Bon Jovi's Shot Through the Heart in the shower.

NOTE:  I borrowed the heron photo from NJ Bird Photos which has hundreds of really fabulous photographs.

Three LittleThings That Bug Me

I don't want to sound like a giant crankopotamus here, but certain things bug me.  I'm going to get them off my ample chest here and now, and then I'm going to Choose to be Cheerful again.  K?

1.  I hate getting emails with a subject line that reads "Re:".  Just "Re:".  Re: what?  People:  are you really SO BUSY that you can't take the time to write even ONE WORD to identify the content of the email?  ONE STINKING WORD?

An email without a subject line is like a canned good without a label--open at your own risk. It's also a missed marketing and communications opportunity.  Q:  Are you listening?

2. "Lol" tacked onto the end of texts, FB comments, and emails to show that you have just made a joke.  If we can't tell it's a joke without you including a virtual laugh-track, then it's certainly not laugh-out-loud funny.  So knock it off.

3. OK, I can only think of two things that bug me at the moment.  That's a good thing, right?

One for All and All for One

We took two out of three Young Peevies to see DePaul's production of The Three Musketeers at the Greenhouse Theater Center tonight. The show started off with a bit of ostensible technical difficulty, but quickly evolved into an action-packed adventure with dramatic fight choreography and some creative use of ladders.

The Alexander Dumas story, cleverly adapted by playwright Ken Ludwig, offered real gunshots, plenty of swordplay, kissing, double-crossing, and hilarity. Twelve-year-old A. Peevie appreciated most of the humor, and really, really appreciated the testicular humor.

Credit set designer Vanessi Fusi for an amazing use of space. The stage at Greenhouse is tiny--not more than about 40'X20', and probably smaller (because I stink at estimating square footage). But they made use of every bit of space, including the aisles and the stairs, and they even involved the audience in a couple of hammy bits. The minimalist set design involved bendable, retractable ladders that also served as seats, weapons, tables, walls, and hiding spots.

There were not more than four or five children in the audience, and one little girl let out a loud, well-timed "Eeeewwwww!" at the moment D'Artagnan first smooched his doomed love, Constance--and the entire theater audience roared. I don't know how the actors stayed in character and continued their scene--but to their credit, they did.

Seeing this play reminded me how much I love going to the theater. Mr. Peevie and I used to go frequently in our child-free youth, but now that we are encumbered/blessed with three kids and their ridiculous schedules, we rarely make theater-going a priority. That must change, I decided. That must seriously change.

During intermission, when I took M. Peevie to the restroom, I overheard an audience member say to her date, "This is better than the Superbowl!"--and I have to agree.

The Three Musketeers is playing through February 21. It's free (but they do recommend that you call to reserve your free tickets), and boy is it fun.

Things My Daddy Said, Part I

My daddy used to say, "You're never too old to be spanked!" He was wrong.

But he was right about so many other things that I'm going to let that one go. For example:

"I'd just as soon hear crying as laughing."

This always came on the drive home from Ocean City after one of our family beach day trips. We'd spend the day body surfing in the Atlantic, making gigantic sand turtles with a garden shovel, eating peanut-butter-and-sand-and-jelly sandwiches and drinking sweet tea poured from a metal thermos into nested thermos cups, each a different color. My strawberry blond sister would get so burned that her skin would blister and peel; and I'd rub Noxema onto her hot, lobster-red shoulders.

We'd rent showers and changing rooms at a local beachhouse at the end of the day, sliding fresh cotton t-shirts and shorts over tan lines and sunburn. Then we'd head over to the board walk for dinner--usually a slice of New York style pizza, or a Taylor's pork roll sandwich, or a Philadelphia cheesesteak, washed down with a birch beer and followed with funnel cake and salt water taffy. We'd ride the bumper cars, play some skee-ball, and walk the boards from one end to the other, until we reached near catatonica.

But then, in the car on the way home, we'd get our second wind. We'd be so tired that everything made us laugh, and we'd giggle and hoot and snort until snot came out of our noses, and then we'd giggle and hoot and snort some more, until my dad would reach back as far into the rear of the station wagon as he could while still driving between the yellow lines--it was like an early version of WiiFit!--and smack one of us.

"I'd just as soon hear crying as laughing," he'd say grimly. "Now you kids knock it off. I want some peace and quiet for the ride home!" The smacked one would cry, and the others would pinch their noses to keep the snorts from coming out.

I didn't ever ask my dad to explain himself--that would have been grounds for further smackage--but it never made sense to me that it wasn't better for him to hear laughing than crying. It never made sense to me--until now.

Now? I get it. Sometimes, you just need quiet. Sometimes you just want to be able to hear yourself think. Especially in the car, when my eardrums and my brain and my SANITY are at the mercy of everyone else's decibels.

And if these Peevies are good at one thing, they are good at being LOUD.

Sometimes, I think to myself, I just as soon hear crying as laughing.

But my first choice would be QUIET.

Review: Blue Like Jazz

I'm late to the party, as usual.

Six years ago, when Blue Like Jazz came out, a bunch of people recommended it to me. I didn't read it. I tagged it TBR in my LibraryThing catalog. Every time it came up in conversation, or was mentioned in a book or an article, I'd say to myself, "Oh, yeah, I need to read that book soon."

So here it is, six years later. I borrowed it from a friend and read it in one day. The whole time I was reading Blue Like Jazz, I was pissed that I hadn't written it.

Donald Miller charts his spiritual journey in a series of autobiographical essays. His voice is sweet and almost child-like; he's real, and transparent, and funny. Miller, a lapsed Baptist reconditioned into a non-denominational Jesus-lover, struggles with the same existential dilemmas that keep me awake at night: the responsibility of being human, the irrationality of God, the meaning of life, and why girls like Pride and Prejudice so much, but guys don't.

He acknowledges that sometimes faith is inexplicable: "My belief in Jesus did not seem rational or scientific, and yet there was nothing I could do to separate myself from this belief." I feel Miller's pain on this. It doesn't mean that he believes that faith in Jesus is completely irrational; it means that even though some parts of the faith scenario make rational sense, some parts don't, like the resurrection, like the notion that a guy who lived 2000 years ago could have life-altering relevance today. It means that sometimes we just don't feel the presence of God in our lives, even though we confess that God Is There. It means that sometimes believing in God feels like having an imaginary friend.

That's why it's called faith--but there are not many modern Christians who write authentically about this struggle between their heads and their hearts. Miller's unpretentious struggle gives the rest of us the ability to admit our own doubts and fears.

Miller's faith encompasses his emotions, but it does not rely solely upon them. "Early on," he wrote, "I made the mistake of wanting spiritual feelings to endure and remain romantic...When this didn't happen, I became confused." From this confusion and fear, Miller decided to try self-discipline as the means for overcoming the encumbering sins of self-addiction. You know what happened: It didn't work. It never does. The cycle, Miller said, was dehumanizing.

Again: haven't we all been here? We misunderstand or misinterpret the gospel. We have been taught that as believers, we must look different, behave differently--and we want to, we really do. But sooner than we can say "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" or some other annoying Christian catchphrase, we're back in the middle of whatever idolatry holds our hearts.

This is why Miller emphasizes the relationship with Jesus, emphasizes the grace of the cross. Because it's what makes Christianity--or Christian spirituality, as Miller labels it--different from other faiths. We rely on something outside of ourselves to change us, to redirect us. We fall in love with Jesus, and it fuels our change.

I felt kinship with Miller in his pursuit of faith that is deeply connected to the heart, that is deeper than mere intellectual assent. "Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe," Miller writes. "By reducing Christian spirituality to formula, we deprive our hearts of wonder."

As the product of a strict, behaviorist upbringing, I am painfully aware of the struggle to grow a faith that is as real to my heart as it is to my head. In our household, loving God meant having the right behavior, with little or no regard for what gurgled behind the scenes in our hearts, in our emotions.

Miller gets this, and even though the Baptists don't like it, and the Presbyterians get nervous with this crazy talk about feelings and emotions (ohmyword is someone going to clap in church?), and even the de-converted despise his "tepid theology of the feel-good variety," his message is valuable to both believers and non-believers.

Miller--whose photo on his website makes him look like my boyfriend, Vincent D'Onofrio--said that when he started writing Blue Like Jazz, he "wanted to end up with something like Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies." He succeeded. I love Traveling Mercies (reviewed here) for the same reasons I love Blue Like Jazz: both authors speak honestly, transparently about what it's really like to be a Christian in a post-modern world.

So, better late than never: Put Blue Like Jazz on your reading list for 2010, if you passed it up in order to re-read Stephen King's The Stand (the uncut version).

Going Home Again

Last week I visited my parents (and sister) for the first time in over a year. (Bad daughter!) My trip was a medley of hilarity, sweetness, deliciousness, shopping, and napping. Here are the highlights:

• Shopping with my mama for a snow-white purse with two outside pockets with snaps, not too big, not too small, that doesn't requires the use of a paper clip to close the zipper.
  
• My BIL sitting on the couch eating frosting from a can, while we watched a Jeff Beck concert on cable and speculated about the age and origins of the bass player, Tal Wilkenfeld. (Photo credit: www.gibson.com)
  
• Raising eyebrows with the story of my stalker former boyfriend.
• Eating a Franconi's authentic Philadelphia cheesesteak. If you haven't sunk your dentures into one of these, you haven't lived. Culinarily, that is. (Photo credit: www.nymag.com)
  
• Shopping unsuccessfully for a rectangular pre-planted window planter to hang from mom and dad's patio railing. We went to four stores, with no luck. Finally, we went to Lowe's, bought the ingredients, and planted red and white petunias right there in the store's garden center.

"How are you going to plant flowers without a trowel?" asked my in-the-box daddy.

"I'll use my hands, Dad," I said.

"But you'll get all dirty!" mom worried.

"Yes," I replied. "And?" Have they ever met me? Dirt and I go way back.

• Shopping (again!) for button fly/button waistband PJ shorts for dad. Guess what? They don't exist. Every single pair of men's PJ shorts in captivity has an elastic waistband. But my dad remembers the PJs that mom bought him for their honeymoon 61 YEARS AGO and wants exactly the same thing. Which is sweet, but deluded.
• Visiting with my beautiful niece, her crazy husband, and my handsome nephew. Sadly, it appears that my sister's kids both chose spouses with personality disorders similar to their father: controlling, manipulative, and narcissistic. My nephew was visiting for less than two hours, and his wife called him four times to find out where he was and when he'd be home. Four times.
• Avoiding conflict with my opinionated parents. This was my personal favorite of all the highlights.

I asked my therapist for a script that I could use when my parents said something provocative, because in 48 years I have not yet learned how NOT to take the bait. He said, "Why don't you try saying, 'Uh-huh' or 'Hmmm.'"

So I tried it. My dad said something politically charged--I can't even remember what it was, but it was probably something about Barack Obama being personally responsible for millions of babies being killed--and I said, "Hmmm." He said something else along the same lines, and I said, "Uh-huh," and then I changed the subject to books.

It worked! I experienced a minor miracle first-hand. Essentially, I paid $150 for two words--and they weren't even words, just sounds! But as my friend Q said, that was the best $150 I ever spent. Hooray for therapy. (But seriously, why could I not come up with those responses on my own? That is messed up.)

The moral of the story: You can't go home again, but I guess you can shop there.

(Bonus points if you identify the source of the quote without googling it.)

The "Yes We Can" Moment

Last night, my family and I and our friend The Professor ate salsa-baked goat cheese with pine nuts and watched the election returns. Talk about reality TV!

From the comfort of the living room we felt the energy from the mobs standing shoulder-to-shoulder in Soldier Field and Grant Park. Part of me wished I was there, seeing the faces and living the excitement and optimism. But my motto is "don't stand when you can sit," and my other motto is "Have a glass of wine!", so I definitely made the right choice by staying home.

As the electoral votes inched steadily toward the magic number--270--the talking heads got more anecdotal and less objective. Warner Saunders recalled seeing young Emmett Till in his open casket, his 1955 murder catalyzing the civil rights movement which opened the doors for Barack Obama's presidential bid. By the end of the evening, Allison Rosati was wiping away tears. I think Mr. Peevie was stoic, but The Professor and I were both a little verklempt.

Chicago celebs were on hand to participate in the history-making, and we snorted and ridiculed the reporter who actually said to Oprah something outrageous like, "This wouldn't have happened without you." I can't find a story about this anywhere on the web, but that was some seriously ridiculous Oprah-worship. She pooh-poohed him, and changed the subject.

(It turns out that a social scientist dude interviewed on NightLine tonight attempted to quantify the Oprah Effect. Oprah's endorsement, he concluded, added 1.15 million votes to Obama's tally, giving him the advantage over Clinton in the early primaries. That's just one guy's math--but who knows? Maybe I jumped the gun with my snort.)

As Obama was making his acceptance speech behind the walls of bullet-proof glass, I'm sure I wasn't the only one wondering: Can they protect him?

The most mysterious images of the evening were the signs held in the crowd in New York City reading, "Cassoulet" and "Cassoulet forever." Why were they holding up signs for soup? Yahoo Answers has a few ideas, but none have floated to the top as the definitive explanation.

The unhappiest outcome of this election is the increasingly bitter division between right and left. Even though John McCain gave the most gracious and eloquent concession speech I have ever heard, I wonder whether his supporters will join him in

offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

It's going to be hard for many of them. My dad, for example, a one-issue voter who suggested to me that if Obama became president, it would be God's judgment on our country for the abortion holocaust. And my friend who told me she is feeling impending doom. I'm sure she's not alone.

I feel the opposite of impending doom. The celebrations that spontaneously erupted across the nation last night, the fact that Obama very nearly claimed a landslide, the emotions and tears of so many Americans--I am totally swept up in it all. I feel hope and optimism.

I cannot imagine what it would feel like to experience this election from inside a darker skin, from the perspective of people who have never seen a president who looked like them; who never expected to see a person of color become president in their lifetimes. I love that McCain acknowledged this hugely historical accomplishment: "This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight."

I do feel hope and optimism; but at the same time, I'm a realist. Obama is a politician, and by definition, a politician is a deal-maker, a compromiser. He can't make everyone happy. He's also human, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't walk on water--so he's going to make mistakes.

But we can be caught up in the "Yes We Can" moment, for a little while at least, can't we?

Yes, we can.

Can I Call You Joe?

Sarah Palin redeemed herself in the VP debate with Senator Joe Biden this week. She didn't win, obviously, but she didn't make a fool of herself, either--and that's pretty much how low the standards were going in. If I were voting Republican, I'd breathe a huge sigh of relief.

I enjoyed the VP debate much more than the presidential debate a week ago. This time I watched the whole thing--from the "Can I call you Joe?" kick-off to the "God bless you" finale. Excluding, of course, the minor (though annoying) kid-related interruptions. (They obviously do not have any appreciation for the historical importance of this political season, or they'd be more cooperative.)

Here are my random observations:

• If I were playing a drinking game during the debate, the drink-word for Palin would have been "maverick." She must have used it 20 times to describe herself and McCain. Maverick means "independent in thought and action." Palin was not specific about the policies and accomplishments that qualified either of them as mavericks, and I don't buy it.
• Here's the transcript if you want to check for yourself.
  
• Actually, I observed that Palin was not specific about much. Biden challenged her several times to specifically elucidate how McCain's policies would be different from W's, and she could/would not.
  
• Someone needs to tell Sarah Palin that soccer moms comprise perhaps 3 percent of the total U.S. population--so she needs to find a way to relate to the rest of us.
  
• The whole country wanted to swat at that little clump of bangs stuck to Palin's left eyelash every single time she blinked. Or maybe that was just me. (Props to Queen.)
  
• Biden's drink-word was "fundamental"--he used one form or another at least nine times.
  
• Biden deserves a medal for refusing to correct Palin when she twice referred to the commander in Afghanistan as McClellan (a Civil War general) rather than McKiernan--especially after she corrected his take on "Drill, drill, drill!" to "Drill, baby, drill!"
• Both Palin and Biden got their facts wrong at times during the debate. This website is a great source of fact-checking analysis.
  
• Gwen Ifill was no Jim Lehrer, if you know what I mean. Why did she not make any attempt to rein Palin in, especially when she blatantly said she would not be "answering questions the way the moderator would like"?
  

I know we tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear, but I came away from the debate with a renewed respect and admiration for Senator Biden. I thought he did a great job keeping on point and responding to Palin's criticisms with specific, pointed replies.

What did you think? Come on: Tell me what you really think.

Yes We Can

I loved this video. You can say it's all fluff and no actual stuff, no meat, no substance.

But words are powerful, and emotions are powerful, and this little video is powerful. It uses only the words of Barack Obama in his New Hampshire speech.

I dare you to watch it and not be moved--even if you're not voting for him, or don't like his stance on abortion, or whatever.

I get goosebumps every time.

Top Ten Miscellany of 2007

Do you love top ten lists? Here’s a Top Ten buffet that will keep you mouse-clicking contentedly for days. Time Magazine online offers the year’s best in news; arts and entertainment; science; business, tech and sports; and pop culture.

I haven’t made it through all 500 items yet, but here are my Top Ten Top Ten List Items From Time.com’s 50 Top Ten Lists of 2007:

10. Under the heading Top Ten Man-Made Disasters, the Minneapolis bridge collapse came in as number 5. I include this because we received a letter from an acquaintance that said he had been walking on that bridge half an hour before the collapse; and we were grateful he was spared.

9. From pop culture, #7 on the list of Fashion Must-Haves: a fedora. No lie.

8. “Put your big-girl panties on.” U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spelling encouraged deputy press secretary Dana Perino with this pithy proverb as Perino prepared to step in for exiting PS Tony Snow. #4 on the list of Top Ten T-Shirt Worthy Slogans.

7. In the science category, coming up #4 in the list of Top Ten Scientific Discoveries: Scientists announced that they had discovered 700 new species of organisms, including a new leopard, monkey, and sea cucumber. Honestly, this just blows my mind. 700 new species. I don’t know what it means, or even how to get my mind around it; only that describing the complexity of life on planet Earth keeps staying out of reach.

6. “I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon, but I want to stay alive.” Quotable Madonna, #10 in the Top Ten T-Shirt Worthy Slogans. Me too, girl; me, too.

5. Another science category item, and also listed in the Too Good to be True category, #6 on the list of Top Ten Medical Breakthroughs: No more periods, thanks to Lybrel, the first continuous-use birth control pill that eliminates monthly menstruation.

4. From Top Ten Sports Moments, the truth-is-better-than-fiction 15-lateral winning touchdown scored by Trinity University against Millsaps College. Even non-football fans can appreciate the cosmic combination of goofy good luck and heads-up footballing that made all the pieces fall into place on this play.

3. Mother Teresa shocks the world but testifies to the real struggle that people of faith endure when her letters disclose that she often did not feel the presence of God. This took the #1 spot in the list of Top Ten Religion Stories of the year.

2. “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s turns up as #7 in the list of Top Ten Songs of 2007. I was captivated by it and didn’t know why when I first heard it on the radio this year; but now I’d say it’s the simple sincerity of the lyrics and the sweet raspiness of Tom Higgenson’s voice.

1. My Number One Top Ten List Item of 2007, from the pop culture category, #9 on the list of Top Ten Buzzwords: Vajayjay. I know the feminists don’t like this one, but I can’t help myself. Call me immature, but I think it’s funny, and it has some kind of strange hold on me.

What are your top ten whatevers from 2007?

Housekeeping: Not my forte

"Do you have any idea why there is a baggie with a carrot in it in the middle of the hallway?" Mr. Peevie just asked me.

This is the kind of question that is "normal" in my home. We have the kind of household in which it is not entirely unexpected to encounter miscellaneous fruits and vegetables, in or out of containers, in non-kitchen parts of the house.

Grapes that aspire to become raisins could obtain asylum here, because chances are good that they will find themselves wrinkling up, forgotten and unmolested, in a random corner of the living room.

I have found dried-up apple cores resting comfortably under Power Rangers, and zip-lock bags of cereal salad in purses that I haven't used in six months.

Sometimes my house reminds me of Mel Gibson's house in Signs, when he played a widowed dad with a young daughter with a weird (and fortuitous) glass-of-water fetish. There are empty, half-empty, and nearly full glasses sitting around on most flat surfaces: window sills, counter tops, end tables, and shelves. Water-solvent aliens beware! Also, Diet Coke-solvent, and wine-solvent aliens.

My kids tend to melt down into puddles of woe and angst when they are hungry, so I try to avoid this by always making sure that I have healthy snacks with me. The end result, however, is that the rejected snacks gang up together to form science experiments in the car; or they find their way into the crevices between the couch cushions and start organizing a government and forming armies. I'm sure they will soon be powerful enough to split atoms, and then it will be time for us to move.

My housekeeping goal is to not make my kids or unsuspecting visitors ill. This is just another operational example of my life's motto: Low standards are the key to low stress and happiness.

You are welcome in my house anytime. Just make sure that you look behind you before you take a seat.

Vagina Dialogues IV: Catch-phrases

I’ve already mentioned one nominee for catch-phrase of the weekend:

“That moth is a metaphor for your farts. Get it OUT of here!”

As the conversation and beverages flowed, other potential catch-phrases for our Girl-Power Weekend in the Woods came up. Dr. Vespinator scribbled them on a handy travel magazine so that they would not be lost to future generations.*

So there we were, sitting around on the screened in back porch that Arid Queen was using as a bedroom. We listened to the loud conversation and raucous laughs coming from partiers around a firepit at a nearby cabin, and we thought about crashing their fiesta.

But we had our own festival of intimacy and hilarity going on. We listened to the saga of the long-lost-now-found adopted daughter; we rode the Tilt-A-Whirl of emotions with our friend as she relived the fear, doubt, hope, anxiety, guilt, joy, and tenderness she’d been experiencing over the past three years in the process of rediscovering her child, and part of herself.

We recounted work tales, relationship woes, and parenting frustrations. In the space and freedom of a weekend we found ourselves able to listen more deeply and share more honestly than we normally can do in the time-cramped quarters of our usual gatherings.

So I felt relaxed enough to spread out comfortably in an Adirondack-style chair, one leg stretched out in front of me and the other hooked over the arm of the chair. But this relaxed—but fully clothed, mind you—posture provoked a less-than-relaxed commentary.

“Do you have to sit like that? I’m staring right at your vagina!” said Bob the Builder. And Dr. Vespinator chimed in, “Yeah, it’s not very lady-like!”

Do I really have to worry about being lady-like when I’m sitting on a log-cabin porch in the dark with a bunch of chicks?

So J. Cool took it upon herself to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the tattling tittsters. She threw her legs up in the air in a giant V—and this is a woman with serious back issues, mind you—and yelled, “You got a problem?”

A minute or two later, after order was restored and we had returned to the non-genital topic at hand, someone directed a question to Rock Star.

“I don’t know,” she said, “All I can think about is J. Cool’s vagina!”

Now that’s what I call a catchphrase.

*Remember the scribbled catch-phrases not to be lost to future generations? Well, I’m sorry to say that they were entrusted to me, and hence, lost to future generations. Let that be a lesson to all of you.