Because I must, like all bloggers, assume that the excruciating and mind-numbing minutiae of my quotidian existence is endlessly fascinating to the rest of the world... I present to you my Weekend in Review.
It was God-damned hot.
Artscape had all the streets in my neighborhood screwed up.
I made, and drank, two pitchers of iced ttea from Stash® ginger-peach green tea.
My morning jogging route has altered slightly and so now I am at a hair over 4 miles each morning.
Half of the mouldings on the second-floor hallway are now painted.
Cynthia's friend Pearl came for a visit. I like Pearl. She and Cynthia shared an apartment when they lived in Hong Kong in the late 1990s. I hope she visits more often.
At Artscape I went to performances by M. Doughty, Gary B. and the Notions, and Rusted Root. Plus whoever happened to be at the DJ stage when I got a kielbasa -- the food court was by the DJ stage. The Soul Coughing fans and Doughty fanatics (you know who you are) will hate me for saying this, but I found the Doughty show rather dull. Gary B. and the Notions have a good garage-band sound and I will definitely go see them again. Rusted Root was a lot of fun but fairly predictable; they haven't really progressed beyond "Send Me On My Way." It was just too damn hot to stand out in the sun, anyhow. Next year: Whartscape, where I can see bands I've never heard of. The drawback is that 90% of them will suck; however, the 10% that will be a pleasant surprise will make it all worth while. You can't do anything new and good if you aren't willing to risk doing something new and lousy.
That last sentence would also be my dating advice for Pearl. Why is it that women are far more likely than men to fall into the trap of not liking anyone who likes them? I call it "Groucho Marx syndrome" -- he said he would never want to belong to a country club that would have him as a member.
While I'm giving unsolicited dating advice to Pearl, let me add: you can meet people and learn to like (or dislike) things about those people. Or you can create in your mind an imaginary perfect person and then judge everyone you meet against that imaginary yardstick, dismissing anyone who fails to meet these preconditions. One of the troubles with the latter policy is that if you somehow managed to meet a person who met all of these criteria... he probably wouldn't be into you. With the former policy, your world will become much bigger and more interesting.
Keep in mind, however, that unless I am talking about Maryland criminal law... I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. Which doesn't stop me from bloviating away, of course.
Back to the weekend:
Artscape ended at 10 on Saturday, and thus after 10 we could leave and return to the neighborhood with a reasonable chance of finding a parking space. So we went to the 10:30 showing of the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight." I must say, it was really good. The script was much more nuanced and complex than any other superhero movie I've ever seen. Heath Ledger's performance was really good, and I say that as someone who is completely unsentimental about the fact that it's a posthumous review.
On Sunday we took Pearl back to the train station for her trip home. I made Cynthia scrambled eggs for breakfast. I make scrambled eggs with a little bit of milk and a dash of herbs de Provence. The herbs make a big difference. Also, you can never stop scrambling. I whisk it together into a bowl and then when I pour them into the frying pan I keep on stirring away.
Also for breakfast on Sunday: bagels from Cynthia's favorite New York bagel place. I split them, lightly toast them, butter them, sprinkle some fresh chopped chives and rosemary from my herb pots onto them, put a giant handful of gorgonzola cheese on each half, then stick them in the oven at 250ยบ until the cheese melts and seals in the buttery herbs.
Or, from Cynthia's perspective: "I had eggs and bagels for breakfast. It was yummy." It's not that she doesn't appreciate good food. She really does. It's just that the kitchen is a black box to her. Bags of groceries go in, and tasty food comes out, but what happens in between is largely a mystery.
Later on Sunday we went to my aunt's house. My aunt is a bit of a neurotic. Her daughter, my cousin, is worse. I never met someone so... anxious, all of the time. My cousin has two daughters. They were sweet and personable. I wonder: given that my cousin has somehow managed to be more neurotic than her mother, will her daughters be even worse? How can that be?
I wish, actually, that I could remove a little of my cousin's anxiousness and keep it for myself. In moderate, being a spaz can be useful. She over-studies, over-prepares, over-worries. I under-prepare, worry insufficiently. If I had just a touch of her compulsion to fret and overdo, I might have accomplished a lot more.
But her quality of life...! Who can go their whole life without ever feeling comfortable?
At my aunt's house we borrowed a baby-seat base and tested to see if it would fit in the back of my car. It will, but getting a baby in and out of it with the top closed will be difficult. My solution: just keep the top open. True, it will be December when we bring him home from the hospital, but then again it's only about a mile and half.
My father gave me two CDs to check out when I saw him on Sunday. Reviews to follow. I am still digging the new My Morning Jacket, however.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
In which I pose three questions.
My three immediate concerns, in no particular order:
(1) Circumcise? Or not?
I am generally opposed to lopping off parts of some one's anatomy for religious and/or cosmetic purposes. If someone can present me with a decent medical reason for doing it, I might be persuaded. For the most part, though, it seems that the arguments for chopping off the foreskin boil down to "everybody else does it." Ladies, would you be less attracted to a man with a foreskin?
(2) Can I fit a baby seat in the back of my car?
Not only do I really like my car, but (a) it is paid for, and (b) now that I am a civil servant, I will never again be able to afford another one like it. It is six years old. I was hoping to get at least another year or two out of it. But while it has a back seat, it is a smallish two-door convertible. Should I trade it in now, while it still has some market value, and get a Matrix or a Fit or some other small, baby-seat-friendly vehicle? Or do we try to get another couple of years out of this car first? As part of the deliberations on this issue, we must consider that my car sits parked and motionless for five or six days out of the week, because live in the city and can walk nearly everywhere we need to go. And also, Cynthia -- my wife -- hasn't driven a car since she was 19. Plus, she can't drive a manual transmission, which is what my car has. So we don't need or want two cars.
(3) How will I afford infant care?
I don't understand how people can hand their infants off to their parents and go back to work. My parents are both retired, but I can assure you that they have zero interest in spending their days at home with a baby to take care of. They did their time raising babies. Decades ago. Cynthia's parents -- her mother, anyhow -- might be temperamentally inclined to provide regular day care, but she has a job. And lives a few hundred miles away.
Here is the list of countries which do not require paid parental leave for workers: Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States of America. I'm not sure what I can add to that. It goes beyond disgraceful. Beyond embarrassing. It's so pathetic it's funny.
My employer, and Cynthia's, adhere to the disease-model of parental leave -- 12 weeks of FMLA leave, which is unpaid, except to the extent that you have leftover vacation and/or sick leave to use up. After the 12 weeks, get your ass back to work. One wonders: where do employers think that each succeeding generation of employees comes from?
At any rate... a neighbor referred us to a downtown child care facility that offers infant care. We looked it up. It charges $1,700 a month.
That's simply out of the question. There is no way on Earth we could afford that.
Which leads to my next point: Cynthia and I, combined, make a lot of money compared to most other people in the city. We are not rich, by any stretch of the imagination; we have to skimp and save to pay for the repairs and upkeep on our house, and we don't own or do anything extravagant, but we make a little more than five times the median household income for Baltimore City, and almost three times the median household income for the state. Compared to our friends and peers, we are perfectly ordinary, but these figures mean that there are a LOT of people out there with a lot less than us. So what do they do with their children? They have jobs, just like we do; they have abominable parental leave benefits, just like we do; the childcare center charges them $1,700 a month, same as us. So what do they do? Do 2/3 of working parents rely on friends and family to take care of their infants while they work? What if your friends and family all have jobs of their own?
I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Mandating paid parental leave -- at at least 2/3 salary, for at least six months -- for large employers would be a net good thing, I suppose, although it wouldn't solve the problem entirely. France has a pretty good system -- creche care until age 3 or so, followed by preschool until age 5, all of it government-subsidized so that monthly childcare costs are no more than a couple hundred Euros. But to pay for that, we would have to either raise taxes (which the very rich people -- whom we now bail out with tax dollars, whenever market forces and/or their own greed and stupidity threaten their riches -- won't like) or cut vital services (such as stupid, mismanaged wars of choice.) Since the idea of collecting taxes in a rational fashion, or spending them according to legitimate national priorities, is anathema to the political leaders of both parties, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Which still leave the questions unanswered. How will we do this? And how do the many people less fortunate than us do this?
(1) Circumcise? Or not?
I am generally opposed to lopping off parts of some one's anatomy for religious and/or cosmetic purposes. If someone can present me with a decent medical reason for doing it, I might be persuaded. For the most part, though, it seems that the arguments for chopping off the foreskin boil down to "everybody else does it." Ladies, would you be less attracted to a man with a foreskin?
(2) Can I fit a baby seat in the back of my car?
Not only do I really like my car, but (a) it is paid for, and (b) now that I am a civil servant, I will never again be able to afford another one like it. It is six years old. I was hoping to get at least another year or two out of it. But while it has a back seat, it is a smallish two-door convertible. Should I trade it in now, while it still has some market value, and get a Matrix or a Fit or some other small, baby-seat-friendly vehicle? Or do we try to get another couple of years out of this car first? As part of the deliberations on this issue, we must consider that my car sits parked and motionless for five or six days out of the week, because live in the city and can walk nearly everywhere we need to go. And also, Cynthia -- my wife -- hasn't driven a car since she was 19. Plus, she can't drive a manual transmission, which is what my car has. So we don't need or want two cars.
(3) How will I afford infant care?
I don't understand how people can hand their infants off to their parents and go back to work. My parents are both retired, but I can assure you that they have zero interest in spending their days at home with a baby to take care of. They did their time raising babies. Decades ago. Cynthia's parents -- her mother, anyhow -- might be temperamentally inclined to provide regular day care, but she has a job. And lives a few hundred miles away.
Here is the list of countries which do not require paid parental leave for workers: Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States of America. I'm not sure what I can add to that. It goes beyond disgraceful. Beyond embarrassing. It's so pathetic it's funny.
My employer, and Cynthia's, adhere to the disease-model of parental leave -- 12 weeks of FMLA leave, which is unpaid, except to the extent that you have leftover vacation and/or sick leave to use up. After the 12 weeks, get your ass back to work. One wonders: where do employers think that each succeeding generation of employees comes from?
At any rate... a neighbor referred us to a downtown child care facility that offers infant care. We looked it up. It charges $1,700 a month.
That's simply out of the question. There is no way on Earth we could afford that.
Which leads to my next point: Cynthia and I, combined, make a lot of money compared to most other people in the city. We are not rich, by any stretch of the imagination; we have to skimp and save to pay for the repairs and upkeep on our house, and we don't own or do anything extravagant, but we make a little more than five times the median household income for Baltimore City, and almost three times the median household income for the state. Compared to our friends and peers, we are perfectly ordinary, but these figures mean that there are a LOT of people out there with a lot less than us. So what do they do with their children? They have jobs, just like we do; they have abominable parental leave benefits, just like we do; the childcare center charges them $1,700 a month, same as us. So what do they do? Do 2/3 of working parents rely on friends and family to take care of their infants while they work? What if your friends and family all have jobs of their own?
I don't know what the solution to this problem is. Mandating paid parental leave -- at at least 2/3 salary, for at least six months -- for large employers would be a net good thing, I suppose, although it wouldn't solve the problem entirely. France has a pretty good system -- creche care until age 3 or so, followed by preschool until age 5, all of it government-subsidized so that monthly childcare costs are no more than a couple hundred Euros. But to pay for that, we would have to either raise taxes (which the very rich people -- whom we now bail out with tax dollars, whenever market forces and/or their own greed and stupidity threaten their riches -- won't like) or cut vital services (such as stupid, mismanaged wars of choice.) Since the idea of collecting taxes in a rational fashion, or spending them according to legitimate national priorities, is anathema to the political leaders of both parties, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Which still leave the questions unanswered. How will we do this? And how do the many people less fortunate than us do this?
In which we put a stem on him.
Today we went for our third ultrasound. This one was the "anatomy scan." It took longer than the others. The technician had to look for the various organs and limbs. Oddly, the fetus looked much more blob-like than it did at the first two sonograms. The technician said it was because the fetus was moving around a lot, and kept turning away from the camera.
(Yes, I know it's not really a camera, but you know what I mean.)
The news we were waiting for: it's a boy. Or, as the ultrasound tech put it, "whoa, definitely a boy." (Does she say that every time? If so, good for her!)
So now I am not the last male "English" in a line that we've traced back for a few centuries. Or at least I won't be when my son is born in December.
It seems really weird to type the words "my son." Never truly believed it was going to happen.
(Yes, I know it's not really a camera, but you know what I mean.)
The news we were waiting for: it's a boy. Or, as the ultrasound tech put it, "whoa, definitely a boy." (Does she say that every time? If so, good for her!)
So now I am not the last male "English" in a line that we've traced back for a few centuries. Or at least I won't be when my son is born in December.
It seems really weird to type the words "my son." Never truly believed it was going to happen.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
In which I listen.
New pursuits: to reward myself for being a very good lad, I had the folks at Amazon send me two books and two CDs.
"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. Very good. Hardboiled Jewish Speculative Fiction. I'm not sure how else to describe it. It starts with a speculative premise: In WWII, the war in Europe took an extra year to end (with an atomic bomb in Berlin). Therefore in 1948, Israel was not strong enough to hold off the onslaught and was wiped, bloodily, off the map. The United States offered up the west coast of Alaska as a temporary place of refuge. The Jewish "Sitka" settlement grows to two million people, with Yiddish as the common tongue. Sixty years later, the territory is about to revert back to the U.S. and the protagonist, a broken-down Sitka cop named Landesman, is trying to solve one last murder that nobody cares about.
I like it a lot.
"Atlantic Cousins: Benjamin Franklin and his Visionary Friends" has been out for a few years and somehow I was late in getting a copy. Jack Fruchtman writes gracefully clear, eminently readable biographies that are more about the thinking than the lives of his subjects. In fact it's not entirely accurate to call them biographies at all, in the traditional sense. They are sort of... intellectual histories. This book doesn't concern itself so much with the minutiae of Franklin's life as with exploring the influences on, and from, his long life as a public intellectual. It reminds me in many ways of another excellent intellectual history, "The Metaphysical Club," about the common threads and influences running through the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, and William James. Hell, read them both. I am under no ethical obligations to make full disclosures in this blog, but I'll note that Jack Fruchtman was my poli-sci professor in college and later a personal friend.
While reading these books, I've been listening to "Evil Urges" by My Morning Jacket. Also excellent. And the superdeluxe re-issue of Whiskeytown's "Stranger's Almanac," which has been excellent for years and continues to be so in this re-issue with a second disk full of extra, also very cool, music.
Writing about music is sort of like dancing about architecture, which doesn't stop a lot of people from making a really good living killing trees in the name of describing music. My Morning Jacket is fun, smart, accessible pop. Whiskeytown didn't know it was helping define Americana and Alt-Country when they made Stranger's Almanac back in 1997, but they did. If you like that sound at all, Stranger's Almanac and Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression" are more or less mandatory listening.
As an aside: I really hate the term "alt-country." But I find myself using it (and also "alt-bluegrass" when it comes to the Avett Brothers and a couple of others) because if you just say "country," people think you mean the unlistenable bilge that is played on Clear Channel's country music stations. Instead of calling "real" country "alt-country," why don't we come up with a new name for the horrifying crap being churned out of Nashville these days? I'm looking at you, Rascal Flatts/Toby Keith/Kenny Chesney/etc. I am hoping to suggestions for the new name for this music -- I'm leaning toward "vapid, soul-killing flatulence," but that doesn't really roll off the tongue, so if anyone can think of something catchier...
"The Yiddish Policeman's Union" by Michael Chabon. Very good. Hardboiled Jewish Speculative Fiction. I'm not sure how else to describe it. It starts with a speculative premise: In WWII, the war in Europe took an extra year to end (with an atomic bomb in Berlin). Therefore in 1948, Israel was not strong enough to hold off the onslaught and was wiped, bloodily, off the map. The United States offered up the west coast of Alaska as a temporary place of refuge. The Jewish "Sitka" settlement grows to two million people, with Yiddish as the common tongue. Sixty years later, the territory is about to revert back to the U.S. and the protagonist, a broken-down Sitka cop named Landesman, is trying to solve one last murder that nobody cares about.
I like it a lot.
"Atlantic Cousins: Benjamin Franklin and his Visionary Friends" has been out for a few years and somehow I was late in getting a copy. Jack Fruchtman writes gracefully clear, eminently readable biographies that are more about the thinking than the lives of his subjects. In fact it's not entirely accurate to call them biographies at all, in the traditional sense. They are sort of... intellectual histories. This book doesn't concern itself so much with the minutiae of Franklin's life as with exploring the influences on, and from, his long life as a public intellectual. It reminds me in many ways of another excellent intellectual history, "The Metaphysical Club," about the common threads and influences running through the work of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, and William James. Hell, read them both. I am under no ethical obligations to make full disclosures in this blog, but I'll note that Jack Fruchtman was my poli-sci professor in college and later a personal friend.
While reading these books, I've been listening to "Evil Urges" by My Morning Jacket. Also excellent. And the superdeluxe re-issue of Whiskeytown's "Stranger's Almanac," which has been excellent for years and continues to be so in this re-issue with a second disk full of extra, also very cool, music.
Writing about music is sort of like dancing about architecture, which doesn't stop a lot of people from making a really good living killing trees in the name of describing music. My Morning Jacket is fun, smart, accessible pop. Whiskeytown didn't know it was helping define Americana and Alt-Country when they made Stranger's Almanac back in 1997, but they did. If you like that sound at all, Stranger's Almanac and Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression" are more or less mandatory listening.
As an aside: I really hate the term "alt-country." But I find myself using it (and also "alt-bluegrass" when it comes to the Avett Brothers and a couple of others) because if you just say "country," people think you mean the unlistenable bilge that is played on Clear Channel's country music stations. Instead of calling "real" country "alt-country," why don't we come up with a new name for the horrifying crap being churned out of Nashville these days? I'm looking at you, Rascal Flatts/Toby Keith/Kenny Chesney/etc. I am hoping to suggestions for the new name for this music -- I'm leaning toward "vapid, soul-killing flatulence," but that doesn't really roll off the tongue, so if anyone can think of something catchier...
Friday, July 11, 2008
In which I eat bagels
Baltimore is a pretty good food town, but it has some shortcomings. No bahn mi -- the Vietnamese sandwiches that I discovered in NYC. No really good Chinese, Thai, or Vietnamese restaurants. There are a few that are acceptable but the nearest good Chinese and Vietnamese places are in Columbia.
It is a myth that all pizza is better in New York. There is good pizza in New York, but there is good pizza in a lot of places. New Yorkers' belief that there is no good pizza outside of New York is based on tautology: if it's not from New York, it can't be good. This belief has nothing to do with taste. It's a sort of geographic animism.
However, I am saddened to report that the bagels in New York are generally better than the ones in Baltimore. There are acceptable bagel places in Baltimore -- Greg's in Belvedere Square comes to mind -- but a David's Bagel from Manhattan, kept in my freezer and thawed when needed, tastes better than a new, fresh bagel from Greg's. Sorry.
On the plus side, Baltimore's crabs are better (if you know where to look -- avoid the touristy places), its produce is better, the farmer's market is better, its microbrews are better. And you can't buy scrapple in New York. Or Berger cookies. (Or the Otterbein cookies, which frankly I prefer, although Berger cookies get all the press.)
WANTED: someone to talk me into going to the rockabilly show at Fletcher's on Sunday night. Ten bucks, a lot of good bands. But I am too frickin' old and broken-down to party late on a Sunday night nowadays.
This band will be there, and they are very good.
I keep telling myself I deserve it, I have earned it. I wrote two major appellate briefs this week and on Saturday I will finally finish painting the second floor of the Moneypit. But frankly, this just means that on Sunday night I will be that much more inclined to sit on my ass and drink beer.
Which I could do at Fletcher's, and hear some good music...
All of this exercising is supposed to be giving me MORE energy. Maybe it's incipient daddyhood.
It is a myth that all pizza is better in New York. There is good pizza in New York, but there is good pizza in a lot of places. New Yorkers' belief that there is no good pizza outside of New York is based on tautology: if it's not from New York, it can't be good. This belief has nothing to do with taste. It's a sort of geographic animism.
However, I am saddened to report that the bagels in New York are generally better than the ones in Baltimore. There are acceptable bagel places in Baltimore -- Greg's in Belvedere Square comes to mind -- but a David's Bagel from Manhattan, kept in my freezer and thawed when needed, tastes better than a new, fresh bagel from Greg's. Sorry.
On the plus side, Baltimore's crabs are better (if you know where to look -- avoid the touristy places), its produce is better, the farmer's market is better, its microbrews are better. And you can't buy scrapple in New York. Or Berger cookies. (Or the Otterbein cookies, which frankly I prefer, although Berger cookies get all the press.)
WANTED: someone to talk me into going to the rockabilly show at Fletcher's on Sunday night. Ten bucks, a lot of good bands. But I am too frickin' old and broken-down to party late on a Sunday night nowadays.
This band will be there, and they are very good.
I keep telling myself I deserve it, I have earned it. I wrote two major appellate briefs this week and on Saturday I will finally finish painting the second floor of the Moneypit. But frankly, this just means that on Sunday night I will be that much more inclined to sit on my ass and drink beer.
Which I could do at Fletcher's, and hear some good music...
All of this exercising is supposed to be giving me MORE energy. Maybe it's incipient daddyhood.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
In which I start anew
The blog is dead. Long live the blog!
I feel compelled, once again, to start with a manifesto. But Mimi Smartypants still writes the best mommyblog, I've never found a decent daddyblog, and these days I'm too tired/busy/happy to have much interesting to say.
And yet... here I am again, anyhow.
I feel compelled, once again, to start with a manifesto. But Mimi Smartypants still writes the best mommyblog, I've never found a decent daddyblog, and these days I'm too tired/busy/happy to have much interesting to say.
And yet... here I am again, anyhow.
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