Second term
Do we really need multiple inaugural balls (or even one) for a reelection? Can’t the White House just have a pizza party and move on? How much did that all cost? It’s back to work the next day anyway.
Your husband hit you? Well, it’s your own fault, didn’t you know that?
I would think this is pretty funny if it wasn’t so horrifying.
A parish priest in Italy used his Christmas Eve address to discuss the increase in deaths of women in Italy due to domestic violence.
Is it possible that men have turned randomly crazy all of a sudden? We don’t believe so. The point is that more and more women provoke, fall into arrogance, believe they are too independent and exacerbate tensions. They trigger the worst instincts, leading to violence and sexual abuse. They should consider self-examination and ask the question: did we ask for it? - Father Piero Corsi from Lerici
It didn’t come from the Vatican, but I do wonder how much this thinking is rampant in the male dominated Catholic Church leadership. It’s so easy to point to the Other (Woman) and place blame when your system is set up to systematically exclude the Other from peerage.
Maybe I should be thankful he’s just spewing stupid words and not molesting little boys and getting a pass to another parish. I swear, I’m so disappointed in the Church of my childhood. How can anyone be a member of such a twisted institution, knowing what we know today, and knowing there is so little being done to address these issues? Forget about looking to Pope Benedict for leadership; that’s a hopeless, lost cause.
Stormin’ Norman quotes
I like quotes. Here are some from the late General Norman Schwarzkopf that are my favorites from a list The Daily Beast put together:
“Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.”
“Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.”
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I’ve never been in the military, and I don’t know that world at all. I have family members who are veterans and in active service, but it’s not a part of my personal experience. I just know I can support my family members and friends who are serving without necessarily supporting the policy that put them there. I have an appreciation that things are not so black and white as some politicians seems to paint them, and I like it when people on the inside indicate through their words that they, too, recognize that there is a lot of gray.
The world I’m bringing Baby into
First of all: I’m pregnant.
Second of all: I decided to learn the sex of the baby.
And now that I know, I’m suddenly conflicted. I would have been happy with either a boy or girl, that’s not what I mean, but my first thoughts were of the things that I want to AVOID in having a child of that sex, or the things I’m AFRAID of in having a child of that sex, or the potential PROBLEMS that we could have with a teenage child of that sex.
Sheesh, what’s wrong with me??
I wanted to avoid the over-socialization of gender roles by others before the child was even born, which is why we originally avoided learning the sex (and will – for now – still keep it a secret from everyone else). But here I am, automatically worrying about this or that related to the child’s sex before it’s born. Maybe it’s human nature. But I do find my own reaction interesting.
I didn’t think about colors or names or clothes or toys. I thought, “What will be the world’s social agenda for this child upon its entry to the world?” and “How can I protect this child from all the misguided bullsh*t that will inevitably befall them because of their outward appearance?”
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Last night, my husband and I went to see Dan Savage speak in Berkeley. It was hilarious, enlightening, heartbreaking at times, and just fun. I was very conscious the whole time that I was sitting there with a big fat belly, awaiting the arrival of a little one in a short five months. I would love for this little one to define themselves the way they want. I suppose it’s as likely to happen in the San Francisco/Oakland area as anywhere else in the world, but bullying and all those other awful things still happen here.
Metro living has its trade-offs, right? You might have to compromise on the school “quality” (at least on paper) or the safety risks, but what the children gain in terms of exposure to diversity and learning to navigate their way through more complex systems to be independent and self-reliant is pretty priceless. I like to think we can back up our kids’ formal education and teach them strategies to be safer, but I’m not sure you can teach kids about diversity without being immersed in it, and I don’t think you can teach kids how to get around without them having to actually do it.
Every parent makes choices. I feel strongly that raising our kids in Oakland is going to be a good choice for us. I’m hoping that the diversity frees them to be who they want to be, rather than what social mores dictate. Hell, maybe our kids decide to be Republicans. (I’m an atheist, so I don’t pray, but if there’s one thing I would pray about, it would be that they do not decide to become Republicans.) But even if so, I’ll know that we did what’s best for them, creating an environment in which going against the norm here in the Bay Area was something they felt empowered to do.
(As a side note, this does bring up the issue of which will be Baby’s first social democracy event. I typically don’t participate in those, as I’ve always felt those simply make protesters feel better rather than actually effecting change. I prefer to throw money at my issues to get the liberal and progressive agendas pushed forward. More effective in my opinion, at least in today’s environment, however unfortunate that might be. But before our child has any money to throw around, we would have to show them the way, and being out in the streets would be one option. If Baby were born last year, maybe we would have taken them to Occupy in NY when we went, that would have been cool. What does the next year or two or three hold? Who knows.)
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All this stemmed from learning the sex of our baby! It has sent me into a whirlwind of pensiveness and concern and hope.
Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Waterson)
I’m in deep doo doo.
My career/management coach floated the idea that I might be an adrenaline junkie. I was looking for ways to manage my time better, be more proactive, blah blah blah, and she asked, “Have you ever not been a procrastinator? Or did you always wait until the last minute to do things? Term papers the night before, preparing for presentations 5 minutes before you’re scheduled to go on, etc?”
Holy shit. She’s right.
Not only is she right, but my procrastination has actually been rewarded in many instances, only fueling it further. I can think of three examples in different stages of my life:
1. The dreaded English class Shakespeare paper.
Remember these? We had weeks and weeks to do them. And every time I thought about it, I couldn’t get my mind around a single thing I wanted to say. What’s my thesis? Hell if I know.
I remember having to write a paper on Macbeth. It was the night before it was due. I hadn’t written a word. I was in the kitchen pacing, stressing, and in a generally pissy mood when my poor dad happens to walk in. He gets an earful from a stressed out 15-year-old. Not the best way to wrap up his day, I’m sure. But as I ranted about the stupid assignment about a stupid play, a thesis around the role animals play in the story began to emerge. I started to get excited. I flipped through every page of that darn play, characterized the animals, and wrote a stellar paper that – get this – the English teacher later lauded to the rest of the class as a perfect example of careful planning, obvious multiple drafts, and true time and thought commitment.
I had a modicum of grace, enough to feel a little more sheepish than arrogant, but not by much.
2. The dreaded college term paper.
I took reading and writing classes in college to beef up my GPA because I could only pull C’s in my science major classes. (You would think that this might prompt someone to revisit their major, but not me! That’s a different blog entry…)
I took an upper division Comparative Literature course when I was a freshman, taught by someone who spent his life studying James Joyce. (Oh, I’m not out of my league at all…) The course wasn’t specific to Joyce, and in fact we only read Portrait with the rest of the content from other authors, but at the end of the semester, we had a monster paper to submit that could be based on anything in the course.
The only thing I could think of to write about what Portrait. I waited and waited for another idea to pop into my head - please please please let me come up with another idea on ANY of the other books! I didn’t want to be that freshman who wrote a monster paper on the one book in the class the instructor spent his entire career studying. But my prayers were not answered. The night before, without anything else left in me, I wrote the damn paper on Portrait.
And got a big fat A in the class.
3. The dreaded client deliverable.
Earlier this week, I was stressed out about the lack of traction in a client project. We’re working with hospitals and generally getting nowhere. I had a conference call with the client scheduled, looming on the horizon. What would I tell this client? How can we move things forward? I don’t know. I don’t know!
I lost sleep over it. The issue was just twirling around in my head, circling like vultures ready to eat me and spit out my bones once I have a colossal fail on this conference call.
But what’s this?! A brainstorm in the middle of the night? Could that actually work? Why, yes it can! And not only would it work, it’s an excellent way to get things going!
So I tell the client at the conference call, and he’s excited and says we should push forward. And I can’t tell if the glow I’m feeling is from successfully delivering for a client, or from the sheen of sweat covering my drawn face and dark circles under my eyes.
* * * * *
In procrastination, my mind goes into overdrive. This overdrive tends to result in a hyper-thought, like my brain understands my desperate attempt to save my own ass. It’s the desperation that I think causes me to think more innovatively, as well as to execute in an efficient and effective way. The calm of careful planning and the luxury of time – well, it just doesn’t produce the bigger ideas and efficiency that urgency and pressure produce.
So, I think I’m doomed. I would love to be the person who plans ahead, gets a good night’s rest, avoids panic mode. But then maybe I ought to be in a different line of work, one with some predictability. But it would certainly be less interesting.
Radio Moscow: how something new takes me back
I’ve been listening to The Black Keys on continuous loop for weeks now. I’m actually concerned that it will get to the point where I will be sick of the music, and I don’t want that to happen. So, to avoid that disastrous outcome, I started looking for other bands that had a similar sound that I could get into.
I came across Radio Moscow. They are on the more classic rock side side of things, less novel than The Black Keys and The White Stripes from what I can tell initially, but their sound is a bit richer since there are three to the band, drums, bass, and guitar, rather than just two, drums and guitar. I guess Dan from TBK helped them get their start.
So I downloaded two of their albums, but not the most recent one from 2011, since I like their older stuff better. I’ve been listening to it, and really like the music! I thought about how nice it would be to see them live. I thought, “I wonder if they’re doing any shows.” So, I Googled it. Sure enough, they’re on tour right now, and the last show is next month at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Score! God, I love the interwebs.
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The music does take me back to my childhood a bit. My dad’s taste in music greatly influenced mine. He enjoys rock and roll so much. It makes him smile, and it used to prompt him to tell stories about his young adulthood or the songs or artists. Music was fun. All the Jimi Hendrix and Lynyrd Skynyrd I listened to rubbed off, I guess. I’m still drawn to guitar-heavy music.
But I was also heavily influenced by what my friends at school were listening to. (OK, now I’m just wandering aimlessly down memory lane…) The hip hop and pop music of the 1980s and 1990s, especially the stuff you could really dance to, is still close to my heart! I still get excited hearing A Tribe Called Quest and Digital Underground! Brings back good memories!
