Too Much Blue Sky

Dealing with it, whatever it is

2012-01-16T21:16:00.000-08:00

I don't even know how to start this. I want to use some witty introduction, a comfortable joke to ease into it. Maybe some deft wordplay. But I have nothing. So let me tell you what's happening.

My son's got some stuff that he has to deal with. We saw some behavior-related issues last year, but with support from his teachers and other school staff, plus the invaluable help of a therapist that works wonderfully with children, he got better. It wasn't a perfect year, but he ended the year on a good note.

This year - first grade - we saw a lot of the same things. We tried the same kind of techniques that had worked last year, but they didn't seem to be working. There's physical stuff like hitting and getting in other kids' spaces. There's name-calling. Unprovoked incidents with other kids. It's all behavior that we just don't understand.

See, our son used to be the kind of kid who was described as "really centered." Or "zen." "He's so calm," the other parents would say at play dates. And suddenly, we were in our second meeting in two straight years with the principal, the teachers, plus various other school staff. Suddenly, we'd be dropping him off at school and other kids would run up to us and tell us that he was being mean to them. Or that he had written on their book. Or hit them. This happens a lot.

So ... we're talking to people. He's still seeing his therapist, but now we're going the next step. We're doing a deeper psychological evaluation on him, running some tests to see what else is going on with him. We might be dealing with ADD. Maybe some sensory issues (things like heightened sensitivity to noise or crowds). Or maybe something like Asperger's.

So in the last week, I've been coming to terms with the idea that my kid might have some bigger challenges than just having problems at school. It's tough. There was a nice article in a local magazine talking about adjusting to the idea that your kid has special needs. That's a great catch-all term. It covers everything: asthma, ADD, obesity, obsessive-complusive disorder, depression, anemia, blindness, everything. And when you look at it that way, how many of us have kids with special needs? More than a few. Just in my small circle of friends, I know easily half a dozen parents who have children with some challenge or another: cochlear implants, feeding tubes, learning disabilities, ADD. Stuff. Kids have stuff, and they deal with it.

Am I surprised? I guess I'm not. My brother (about whom I've written before) was diagnosed with hyperactivity and had major issues at school. He was probably bipolar, too, or something similar. His mother and I both have anxiety issues, and I'm almost certainly ADD. So, yeah, it's not a surprise when I really think about it.

Am I disappointed? Not in him. This is something that he's facing. Would I be disappointed if my child had leukemia? Or high blood pressure? Or if he had to use a wheelchair? Of course not. He's my kid and he'll always be my kid.

I guess I'm disappointed in the way you are when you expect a sunny day and it starts getting cloudy. You know you can't do anything about it, but you just wish that things had turned out a little differently.

What I know is that he's my kid and I need to figure out what's going on with him. I need to help him. We need to know what we're dealing with so that we can help him cope with it. If that means he ends up in some form of special education, so be it. If that means a different school, fine. Whatever he needs.

Right now, we're learning. As one of my wonderful friends put it, the worst part of this is the WTF period, when you know there's something but you don't know what it is. Once we know, then we can help. Once we know, we can develop strategies and make recommendations and suggest adjustments.

But my job hasn't changed. I will never stop loving this kid or wanting him to be the best possible version of himself that he can become. My job is to help him get there. And I'll do everything I possibly can to make that happen.

Oliver: Then and Now

2011-12-12T21:02:00.000-08:00

Over 5 years ago, I wrote this about our little toddler Oliver:

How long? Not very long. Weeks. A month or two. Then he'll be walking. Then, the gates we've erected to enclose him in the living room are going to be nothing more than punch lines. Soon, soon, he'll be walking up to us with the book that we absolutely must read to him at that very moment right there. Soon, we'll be watching him waddle down the aisles of the supermarket, through the doors of the coffee shops and toy stores. He'll walk to the elevator himself, press the buttons himself, and walk us, hand in hand, to the car.

So I remind myself to savor these moments. They disappear before I realize they're gone. I didn't realize until it was nearly too late that the days of bottle-feeding him were nearly gone, back at the end of June. And then it was the last two days that he'd get a bottle from me, and then it was the last day, and then it was the last bottle, the last time he sprawled on my lap to let me feed him. And then, there were no more left.

Bottles. Child-proof gates. Hah.

It just seems so silly to look back on those days, when he still wore diapers, when he still drank milk from bottles. Was that ever our baby?

Our baby - hah! - weighs almost fifty pounds now. He presses the elevator buttons. He not only walks into coffee shops by himself now, but he knows what he wants to order there. (No, he's not drinking coffee. Mostly, it's donuts and fruit plates and the occasional hot chocolate.) He picks out the clothes he wants to wear to school.

He's in 1st grade now. School has been a little bumpy for him - sadly, he inherited anxiety issues from both me and his mom, and we're dealing with that. It's been stressful, for all of us.

So sometimes, it's hard to remember the baby that he once was. And sometimes, that's exactly what I need to remember. This is our boy. This is the same little guy I used to rock to sleep with one arm, the same little guy who had to learn to crawl and then walk and then say words. He learned all that. So he's got other stuff to learn? We all do. We've gotten this far, together. We can get through our little challenges now, too.

Blog Ads - No, Thank You.

2011-11-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

Why don't I run ads on my blog? Sure, I could make a little money. Maybe I could make a lot of money - who knows? but I also open myself up to having brands on my blog that I don't support.

Say, for example, Filipino dating services.

No, thanks. If I'm going to put embarrassing pictures on my blog, I'd just as soon do it myself.

Mushrooms

2011-10-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

It was so gross, I'm not even going to post a picture.

I live in Seattle. You've probably been told that Seattle isn't really as rainy as the rumors are. Forget that nonsense. Seattle is moist. It's damp. It's a place where lawns either flourish (because of the epic rain) or they die (because the soil drains water so quickly). An old term for long-term Seattleites is "mossbacks." See, because they grow moss on their back! Because ... well, you get it.

I had mushrooms growing in my backyard.

I'm not talking about small cute little mushrooms. These mf'ers were HUGE. Four damn inches in diameter. They were ridiculous.

I didn't see a caterpillar anywhere,

but that wouldn't have surprised me at all.

How long do they have to grow to get to be four inches wide?! Good lord! (And what does this mean about my yardwork skills?)

Now, here's the gross part. I cleaned them up yesterday. The mushrooms were not only huge, but they were DISGUSTING. Some of them were whole and intact and could be removed by the stem. But some of them ...

had rotted. They had liquified. The mushrooms had turned into nasty black tar that stuck to the grass when I picked them up.

You know what happens when you forget about a bag of lettuce in your vegetable drawer, and when you pull it out, it's black liquid. THAT was what I found.

There are now black puddles of ex-mushrooms in my backyard. I'm praying for some of that Seattle rain to wash them away, because it is the GROSSEST THING EVER.

My theory is that these were actually the zombie mushrooms. I found the ones that had died and then reanimated to zombify their fungal brethren. Except, they're mushrooms, so they're plugged into the ground. And that's why they liquified where they stood, like an incredibly gross version of what happens to vampires in Buffy.

Come to think of it, that would have been better. Why couldn't they have just exploded and turned into powder?

Because We Care

2011-09-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

I was talking to one of my co-workers recently. As I mentioned recently, the department has been gutted, so there's not a lot of us left and we're all dejected.

There was some material that went out and it wasn't up to our usual standards. It was terrible. A typo, poor wording, just not our typical quality. My co-worker is pretty frustrated about how far we've fallen.

But she turned to me and she said, " I don't know why I still care. I should be numb to all this. I shouldn't care anymore."

But yet, she still cares. Even though most of my department has one foot out the door, even though some of us (not me!) have been surfing job postings during our work hours, we still care. She is a dedicated worker, a gifted writer, a perfectionist. But the controls have been taken out of our hands. Other people are making the decisions for us, and the decisions are terrible.

But we still care. We're humans. We care about the work we do. We care about what goes out with our name on it. We - and I'm talking about my co-workers - are passionate about their work and it hurts to see poor quality product going out. So we fight our battles, and we argue with our superiors, and we complain behind the scenes when the decisions don't go our way. But we still care.

We could walk away, but there's something in all of us that is still hopeful that even though the iceberg has struck, even though the hull is taking on water, that the ship will be righted. We are hopeful. We have to be.

9-11-01 - The Aftermath

2011-09-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

It seemed to take the entire day on September 11 before we understood everything that had happened. Wild rumors filled the air. There was a car bomb at the Department of State, a fire at the Pentagon (that was the third plane), attacks on the White House. There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no instant news alerts via email. CNN's website crashed multiple times on 9-11 until they stripped it down to an all-text bulletin page. I kept trying to get the correct details. I wanted to know exactly where the plane hit the Pentagon, how many people were on board the planes, where they flew from, how they had been taken. What had happened in Pennsylvania.

I flew a month afterward. I had to go to Chicago for a conference. They had ratcheted down security so tightly that the lines to board planes went all the way out of O'Hare Airport and back around through another door. I remember seeing National Guardsmen patrolling the airport in camouflage, rifles strapped to their chests, at the ready.

September 11 really threw me out of my orbit. I couldn't stop listening to the news. Something about the way I had found out about the attacks after they were in progress got to me. I wanted to know when the next attacks were happening. Especially if they were going to be happening on the west coast. (Years later, it was revealed that the plan was to attack targets on both coasts, and that one of the potential targets was the tallest building in Seattle.)

I couldn't turn off the news. I watched the national news every night - something that I never did before. I became depressed, haunted, fearful. I worked in downtown Seattle, and we have an airport ten miles away, so planes fly over the city constantly. For months, every time I saw a plane flying near one of the tall buildings, I would watch it until I saw that it passed the building and didn't fly into it.

I ended up going into therapy, and I was taking medications for a while until I was able to regain control. But I still look periodically when a plane is flying low over the Seattle skyline.

About my girlfriend? Well, in September 2001, I had started saving up for an engagement ring. In November, at our favorite Brazilian restaurant, I fell to one knee and asked her to marry me. We've been married nine years. We're happy.

I'm not going to talk about the war on terror, or about homeland security, or about politics. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the effect of this on me, because this was an attack on us. This affected all of us, as a people, as a society, as a generation. We have survived, but we are not the same, and we may never be. The world into which my son was born is different than the one I used to live in, in so many ways. I hope his world learns to move past fear, past anger, past hatred. I want him to grow up full of hope, not full of fear. That's the world I'm trying to create for him.

9-11-01 - That Day

2011-09-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

My brother, who was kind enough to let me stay in his apartment, woke up shortly after the tv went on. He heard me pacing back and forth. "What's going on?" I think I gave him a brief synopsis, or maybe I just pointed at the screen, at the Towers on fire.

At some point, the towers collapsed. I didn't realize that this was going on. It seemed impossible, despite the flames and the impact of a fully loaded commercial airplane. How could one of the World Trade Centers just collapse to the ground? I thought it was part of one floor, or a facade or something. But not the whole building. My brain refused to process it until later, when I saw the collapse over and over and over again.

I went to my doctor's appointment. It was shockingly quiet. We all felt like we wanted to be elsewhere, with families, with loved ones. The radio was on in the background.

Then I went to work. The office, full of social justice activists, was a mix of shock, fear, and rage. A co-worker told me, resignedly, "This is going to be bad, man. There's gonna be a war." I knew she was right.

I worked with people who knocked on doors and called people and asked them to contribute to the fight for social justice. There was no canvassing to be done on that day. No one would answer the phone, we knew, and no one would dare answer their door, especially if it meant stepping away from the television. The office was closed for the day.

I went to find my girlfriend, who was also home from work. We watched tv for hours and hours. Peter Jennings manned the ABC front desk for an eternity, showing impressive dedication and only occasionally letting his own churning emotions show through. I grew to love Peter Jennings for what he did that day. We sat and soaked in the overwhelming news of the day, unable to move, unable to believe what had happened.

But I kept seeing the parade of Bush-appointed officials across the screen - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft. I remember thinking that if this was going to be war, if we were truly under attack, these were not people that I trusted. I didn't trust them with our country. I didn't have faith that they would watch our best interests. I was right, I'm sad to say.

We lived in Seattle, which was now considered a possible secondary target. We were a major city on the west coast, with a critical port and major technology companies in our area. Strikes on the East Coast and the West Coast seemed a distinct possibility. This idea haunted me for weeks - months - afterward, the idea that I lived in a city that could be described as "potential target of terrorism." We had already had our brush with terrorism in 1999 when Ahmed Ressam was arrested, claiming he was part of a plot to blow up Los Angeles' airport.

We went out to dinner that night at a pizza place in the University District, one of the few restaurants that was open. The owner was from the Middle East - Lebanese? I can't remember. But I remember he said that we would now understand what the rest of the world felt. I was surprised at his blunt statement. He was right, of course. For much of the world - England, Europe, Africa, Russia, South America - terrorism had happened in their country and was expected to happen again. They understood that they were vulnerable. Americans had always believe that they were untouchable. Our sense of safety had been obliterated.

I also remember thinking - and maybe I said this out loud to him - that he should be careful saying things like this out loud. Emotions were running high, and statements like that could be interpreted as support for the attack. Of course that's not what he was saying. He was just expressing a statement of fact. But people don't always react well when their sense of reality has been shattered. People who feel under attack can lash out in the worst and most unAmerican ways. We all found that out, as a nation, as the aftermath of Sept. 11 unfolded.

9-11-01 - How It Started

2011-09-10T22:42:00.001-07:00

I was sleeping. I was so busy - I had three events in four weeks to help organize. I think I had an event that morning. I know I had a doctor's appointment. There was something - a hand cramp, something - I wanted to see a doctor about.

I was awakened by the phone. My girlfriend of 11 months - who would become my wife the next year - was on the other end.

"Are you listening to the news?" We were both NPR junkies. I didn't want to tell her that I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"No," I answered.

"You'd better turn it on." There was a tone in her voice that I'd never heard before.

I turned it on. I listened, baffled and scared.

Then I turned on the television, and watched the unbelievable, undeniable images. I turned on the computer, turned on the internet connection, opened CNN's website. It was slow to load, because everyone was doing what I was doing.

That was how the day began for me. How did it start for you?

Changes Abound

2011-08-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

So ... I still have the job.

Yep, still working.

Ahem.

I've been watching the second season of Mad Men, and I'm starting to feel a lot like Harry Crane. At this point in the series (and PLEASE don't let me know what happens from here), Harry has invented a job for himself as the head of the television department, and suddenly realizes it's a lot more work than he expected. He's having a little bit of dread, actually, about how much work it's turned into, and how much harder he has to work than he expected.

I'm also feeling a little bit like ... oh, I don't know. Picture any movie you can imagine where the pilot of an airplane passes out, or dies, or turns into a three-headed dragon. And then the co-pilot/stewardess/stunned passenger in row 14 suddenly has to take over the plane. Yeah. Maybe that's it.

So as I said, I still have my job. My boss, however does not. Several of my co-workers also do not. My department has been gutted. My wing of the office is in tatters, and every day I walk in feels like entering a funeral home.

Oh, and also? We have a major product launch scheduled for the fall.

Wiser people than me might ask - why destroy the marketing department when you need them to do nationwide marketing? There are many reasons for that. Mostly, it comes down to money. We made some major mistakes, lost some money due to missteps, and we needed to bring down our labor costs to stay afloat. I didn't say I was working for a well-funded operation, people. Even though it's a bigger office than I've ever worked in, and a bigger outfit than I've ever worked for, it still just takes one mistake to throw everything off kilter. Some things never change.

So we're doing some innovative things. If you want to interpret "innovative" as "desperate," you can. We've contracted out with a marketing firm that might or might not be capable of doing what we've asked them to do. We're asking some people with very little communications experience to pinch-hit. And I'm suddenly being asked questions that I am absolutely incapable of answering. I get calls at least once a week that would have gone to the communications director before, but now he's not there, and nobody else is stepping in to take their place, and so they call me because ... well, I answer the phone. That's why they call me.

So to sum up - I'm in over my head, my boss is suddenly gone, my work is about to get really really crazy, and people are panicking. Everyone I talk to is either actively looking for a new job or they're getting their resume ready, just in case. The lifeboats are being readied.

Meanwhile, I just come in every day and do my job. I send out the messages I need to send out. I follow orders. I keep busy. I ingratiate myself with my new boss, who apparently thinks the world of me.

But I'm still working. And y'know what? I'm just going to be grateful for that.

Exercise and How It Is Killing Me

2011-07-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

People, I'm not saying this to brag, but I just did 113 pushups.

Not all at once. I did 20, and then 25, and then 20 more, and 20 more, and then twenty-eight bicep-murdering pushups. And then I collapsed on the carpet.

I've been doing this 100 pushup program - you know the one, where you work your way up gradually over a series of punishing weeks and you end up being able to do 100 pushups in a row and impressing all the ladies? Okay, that bit about the ladies wasn't anywhere in the description. But why else would a self-respecting man inflict himself to this kind of torture?

My arms are shaking. My hands are a little jittery from the exertion. I'm sure that, to my wife, it sounds like I'm being stabbed repeatedly.

You know that Shel Silverstein song where he says all these ridiculous things that happened to him, and then at the end, he says "And guess what happened next? I died!"

It feels like that.

All American

2011-07-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

Last night, on July 4th, we seriously had this for dinner.

Hamburgers.

Potato salad.

Corn on the cob.

And watermelon.

I was not wearing a red-white-and-blue straw hat, but I might as well have been.

After the kid went to sleep, we made margaritas. We've been married almost nine years, but it's the first time we ever made margaritas at home. My wife and I both looked at the glass and said "there's a lot of booze in this!" (It was a combination of shock and appreciation.)

A note? Homemade margaritas are delicious. Mrs. B picked up a sack of key limes, so we had fresh squeezed lime juice. AWE-SOME.

McFeces

2011-06-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like they've got some new shit on the menu at McDs.

I'm Still Here!!!

2011-05-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

Hey!

I know, I haven't written in two months. And you probably haven't read this blog in two months, either. (Because, y'know, math.)

So I figure I need to do something striking to get your attention back.

So here's something striking. My son, Oliver?

Y'know, this kid?

He's turning six.

Yes, really. Six years old.

He's finishing kindergarten next month.

He's reading now. He reads up a storm. Sometimes, he gets out of bed and starts reading books, and two hours later, he's still sitting on the couch, tearing through book after book after book.

He's grown so much this year. Such a personality he has. He's witty and charming and mischievous (like his dad, I suppose. The mischievous part.)

He's big. My kid is getting big.

A Genuine Hero

2011-03-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

One of Seattle's finest citizens, Irene Hull, has died.

A week to the day before her death, she attended her Communist Party club meeting in Seattle. Someone announced the Saint Patrick's Day rally in Olympia to protest budget cuts and to demand that the legislature "tax the rich." Hull spoke up: "I'll go if someone picks me up."

She was a tiny dynamo, two inches shy of five feet tall, barely over 100 pounds. She became a national labor heroine when the Seattle chapter of Jobs With Justice (JwJ) published a poster in 1995 of several enormous police officers arresting Irene Hull.

Lonnie Nelson, a Seattle JwJ leader and a member of Irene's CP club, recalled that day. "It was during a sit-in at Republican Party headquarters to protest their attacks on Medicare," Nelson said. "When the Seattle police told Irene to move, she told them, 'I'm going to go limp.'

"So they handcuffed all of us, hauled us out and put us on a transit bus and took us to the county jail," Nelson continued. "They had us in jail for hours. We sang union songs. We talked about standing up against the vicious Republican attack on Medicare. Through it all, Irene's big concern was my wrists aching from those tight handcuffs." Nelson laughed merrily at the memory.

I was privileged to get to know Irene when I was a community organizer. I took her to a couple of rallies and protests in Olympia. I sat with her at labor meetings and saw her at just about every protest I ever attended in the state of Washington. When I marched with 50,000 labor activists during the WTO protests, Irene Hull was there.

She was one of the most dedicated and selfless people I've ever known, and a genuine hero of mine. Without her, Seattle may be a quieter place, but it will surely be a sadder place.

Nisqually Earthquake - 10 Years Later

2011-02-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago, there was this little earthquake that happened in the Puget Sound. Here's how I remembered it.

I was driving to work. I had one of those jobs where I showed up in the late morning and worked until about 9 or 10 at night. I worked in Pioneer Square in a sixth floor office.

So I was in Lake Forest Park, driving south. I was driving down the street when two things happened simultaneously.

The first thing was that my tires rumbled strangely on the road. I thought for a second that I had a flat, but changed my mind quickly. I figured there were tracks on the asphalt. Have you ever driven on a part of a road where someone drove when the asphalt was still wet, and there's tire impressions baked into the road? It felt like that - like I was driving in a groove.

The second thing that happened was that Steve Sher and his guest stopped in the middle of a conversation and said things like "whoa!" and "oh, this is just like California." If you skip to the 1.00 mark in this video, you'll hear exactly what it sounded like.

So I knew two things: there was an earthquake, and nobody knew how bad it was. Sher said something like "I hope everyone is safe. We'll let you know once we know more."

So I had a forty-minute drive downtown still, and I didn't have a cell phone. All I had was KUOW, and I kept waiting and waiting to hear reports of damage, destruction, fatalities. I had no idea what I was driving into. For all I knew, everyone at my office had been pulverized.

As I got near downtown, I saw the strangest sights. Entire crowds of people were standing outside of their skyscraper offices. Huge mobs of people, standing on the sidewalk or even on the street. It was a little surreal.

I pulled off the highway, drove toward Pioneer Square. As I went down Jackson Street, I saw this scene.

That was just four blocks from my office.

I got to my office, and I saw all of my co-workers standing on the sidewalk. Nobody was hurt. The worst damage that happened was a potted plant had tipped over and spilled some dirt onto the carpet. A restaurant in the first floor of our building had a nasty crack in one of its walls, but the building was still sound. We called off work for the day. I called this girl that had been seeing for a few months - who later became my fiance, who later became my wife. She was fine. It could have been much worse. But for a few minutes, I was convinced that I was going to drive downtown to see the smoking ruins of buildings. It was a weird feeling.

Seven months later, the World Trade Center collapsed, and it really started to feel like the world was spinning out of control.

Back to Your Cage

2011-02-16T13:08:00.001-08:00

After the holiday is over, the balloons who could not find homes go sadly back to their kennels, doomed to wait until next year.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Six Grownup Books for Kids

2011-02-14T20:41:00.001-08:00

Oliver has books that I love reading to him. I probably love them more than he does. Oh, he loves them anyway, but there are parts of the book that just fly over his head. The language is just a bit too mature for children's ears. Or the books touch on themes - remorse, jealousy, sadness, longing - that he doesn't comprehend yet. Not yet. Not consciously.

I think it's entirely possible that he likes these books because they speak to him, the way songs in another language speak to me. Even if he doesn't understand everything that's being said, he knows that he's being told something important.

Anyway, these are the books that I secretly love to read him. I love the language. I love the moods and the emotions. I love that they feel real, honest; the way those formulaic books about Clifford and George and Franklin never do. They are written as literature, not as "kiddie books." The writer knew how to tell a story with engaging characters, compelling plot turns, and believable dialogue. Those are the books that I hope he still loves years from now.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Amos and Boris - William Steig.

One night, in a phosphorescent sea, he marveled at the sight of some whales spouting luminous water; and later, lying on the deck of his boat gazing at the immense, starry sky, the tiny mouse Amos, a little speck of a living thing in the vast living universe, felt thoroughly akin to it all.

Tillie and the Wall - Leo Lionni.

With a long, rusty nail they tried to make a hole to peep through. "It is only a question of patience!" said Tillie. But after working an entire morning they gave up, exhausted, without having made even a dent in the hard stone.

He Was There from the Day We Moved In - Rhoda Levine/Edward Gorey.

We didn't breathe for a whole minute. That dog just blinked. Then, slowly, he looked up with sad and patient eyes. Then, slowly, he looked up with sad and patient eyes. He blinked again, like he was giving it a second thought. Then he stood up, shook himself, and began to walk - like he was old and tired - toward the end of the garden.

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish - Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean.

There was a little rabbit hutch there, and next to the rabbit hutch was a little run with chicken wire all around it. My dad sat on the grass, in the chicken wire run, reading his newspaper and eating a carrot. He looked a bit lonely, and he had grass all over his trousers.

That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown - Cressida Cowell/Neal Layton.

A few months later, Emily Brown and Stanley were lying fast asleep in bed, dreaming of all the adventures they would have the next day, when there was absolutely no noise at all at the door, or the gate, or the window. Silently, in crept the Queen's Special Commandos... and they STOLE the rabbit that belonged to Emily Brown.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day - Judith Viorst/Ray Cruz.

There were lima beans for dinner and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas.

What are your favorite not-exactly-for-children kid's books?

Egypt

2011-02-10T10:39:00.001-08:00

This post will almost certainly be irrelevant in twelve hours.

Hearing now that a) the Egyptian army is taking control of the country, and b) Mubarak will almost certainly be stepping down today.

I know almost nothing about Egypt, but from what I understand, Mubarak's been running the country with an iron fist for decades. So removing him from power would be a tremendous step forward. But is it enough?

If Egypt remains under a state of emergency, is anything really changing?

If the military takes command and it continues authoritarian rule, is this really a victory?

Is the goal merely driving Mubarak from power, or is true democracy the goal? What is victory in Egypt?

When will the protestors know that they have won?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.7

Groupon

2011-02-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

Groupon fucked up.

I can't speculate why they did it. Maybe they were forced to quickly develop an ad after they found out LivingSocial was running one. Maybe they seriously thought the ad agency that developed Burger King's Subservient Chicken was the perfect outfit to promote their brand. I dunno.

What I know, however, is that as soon as that Tibet ad for Groupon ran, all hell broke loose on Twitter. I started seeing boycott talk within minutes. Instant outrage.

What happened? Well, if you believe Groupon, they wanted to do something that would promote their brand by mocking people who felt passionately about causes.

Er ... no, that's not right.

No, they wanted to mock themselves. Yeah, that's the ticket. So they did it by making fun of the disappearing rainforest, dying whales, and the suffering of the Tibetan people. Sure, that's a great way to mock yourself.

Well, here, you can read what Groupon's CEO said, in his defense:

Our ads highlight the often trivial nature of stuff on Groupon when juxtaposed against bigger world issues, making fun of Groupon. Why make fun of ourselves? Because it’s different – ads are traditionally about shameless self promotion, and we’ve always strived to have a more honest and respectful conversation with our customers. We would never have run these ads if we thought they trivialized the causes – even if we didn’t take them as seriously as we do, what type of company would go out of their way to be so antagonistic?

Got it? So, by trivializing the causes mentioned in the ads, they never meant to trivialize the causes. Sure, that makes sense.

Somehow, Groupon failed to notice that there are still a hell of a lot of us who take those "causes" seriously. I got very excited for a few seconds when the ad started, because I was so impressed that someone had managed to get a political ad running on the Super Bowl. And then Tim Hutton started talking about fish curry, and I realized I'd been tricked. And I got angry. A lot of us got angry.

Groupon has tried to defend themselves by noting that they started out as a "cause-based website," and therefore ... something. Therefore, they get why cause marketing is so important? Therefore, they never gave a fuck about those goddamn causes in the first place? It's hard to take them at their word when their own community forum has this lovely message from one of their staffers:

Cause-marketers bombard us with celebrity endorsements, emotional pleas and percentage-based models that passively generate donations without converting champions around the issue.

(I will note that there was a much more offensive version of this message posted earlier by someone named Patty H. That message said something about "manipulating people into giving." I should have taken a screenshot. That message has since been deleted.)

Hey, thanks for making all of us fundraisers in the nonprofit world look like assholes! I made my money for several years doing grassroots fundraising - oh, excuse me, bombarding people with emotional pleas.

Groupon also says that they're all about raising money for these important causes. That's why you saw a link to a major Tibetan NGO during the Tim Hutton ad. Oh, wait, you didn't. Whoopsie!

Groupon is getting slammed for these tasteless and heartless ads, and they deserve every bit of it. Look at their community forums. Every thread that tries to promote the "cause marketing" side of these ads is being bombarded by angry users and angry ex-users.

It is important to care about causes. The world changes when people stop thinking about their own lives and begin focusing on larger causes - like the Nazi holocaust, like the oppression of African Americans in this country, like the environment, like global warming. Groupon made a huge mistake in assuming that they could use serious causes as a backdrop for a cynical ad campaign.

So now they're apologizing. Fine. I'm not satisfied. I want to see some serious penance. Want to make up for this? Start running some serious prime-time ads promoting the people of Tibet, protection of the rainforest, and saving those whales that you don't seem to give a fuck about. Start writing your own checks to important causes, not just collecting donations while you rake in record profits. You want to show us that causes matter to you? Prove it.

Office Politics

2011-01-25T06:14:00.000-08:00

This is the biggest company I've ever worked for. It's actually the first actual private company I've worked for in a decade - a sudden change from the nonprofit world. This is a real company with dozens and dozens of employees.

I'm used to small shops. In the past, I've been the one-person development team. I would write the fundraising appeal, walk it down to the printer, pick up the copies when they were done, print the mailing labels, fold and stuff the envelopes, take them to the post office, and enter the checks when they started rolling in. Here, I've got departments. There's a marketing department, a sales department, an IT department, an executive team, an events team, teams of people who do what I used to do by myself.

It's weird, people.

You would think it would be a relief to have a team of people to rely on, but it's the opposite. I'm not used to having other people taking on tasks. When I'm sending out a marketing email blast, I have four different people from three different teams that have to sign off on it. That's odd - I'm used to just writing the thing myself and sending it.

And then there's the office politics. When you work in a small office, everyone has to get along. You might have petty grievances, but everyone has to get along and fundamentally like each other - otherwise, you're doomed. Not the case at a big company. People have to work together, but they do not have to like each other.

So my team, the marketing team, is not thought of highly in the office. It's our job to protect the brand. We approve any writing that goes out from our company, and in my case, we monitor online discussions to see what people are saying about us. Everyone else in the office thinks they have better ideas than the marketing team, but it's not their job to come up with the ideas to raise our brand's profile and build new customers. It's our job. They can throw out ideas, but it's ultimately our job. So they resent us.

The IT team is generally seen as a bunch of know-it-alls who are notoriously dismissive of most new ideas for technology. So most people hate the IT team. They work with them, but people talk shit about the IT director behind his back.

It goes on like this. IT doesn't particularly like us, we're not particularly fond of the new products team even though we have to sell what they're creating. The events team gets a lot of flak. And the sales - yeesh. Everyone resents the sales team. Everyone thinks they can do a better job than the sales team. Everyone thinks the entire sales team should be gutted and replaced. (And I mean gutted literally. Think Wolverine.)

But at our best, we lay down the swords and work well together. I just had a meeting last week - the IT, marketing and sales teams were all in the same room together. And we were bonding well. We laughed at each other's jokes. We enthused over each other's ideas. It happens. At the best of times, we appreciate each other's ideas and we genuinely like working with the other teams.

But at the worst ... well, I've used the term "trench warfare" more than once.

I like it better when we get along. I love the people we work with, on all sides. I am always impressed by the dedication and passion of my co-workers. But the trench warfare gets to me sometimes. I start getting into the backbiting, the closed-door smack talking, the petty grievances. Anger is addictive. It's fun, to be perfectly honest. In a childish sort of way, it's fun to compile a list of the things you hate about your co-workers. But it's not healthy, and it's no way to run a company.

Mistaken Monster

2011-01-13T07:53:00.001-08:00

I have vivid dreams these days, thanks to anti-anxiety medicine. Last night was a typically wild affair. I won't bore you with the details (there's nothing so pointless as trying to explain a dream to another person), but at one point, there was a monster who I was trying and failing not to disturb. His bed somehow got tipped over, he fell down, and I was convinced that he was about to kill me. So I ran. I ran in one direction and then another and kept looking back to see if he was behind me. I never saw him again.

In the dream, I assumed that I had lost him. But maybe there's another solution. Maybe the monster wasn't after me at all. Maybe I assumed that he was going to kill me, and maybe he was just going to find another bed.

The monster might not be trying to kill me. All scary things are not necessarily out to get me. I'm going to use that as my message for the day.

I've had some difficult interactions with co-workers today, so I'm going to use this to reframe the way I work with them. They're not necessarily trying to kill me - maybe I don't need to run and hide from them. Maybe I'll do better if I don't assume they're trying to murder me.

My New Year's Resolution

2010-12-31T23:15:00.000-08:00

I will write next year.

I will take, at a minimum, fifteen minutes every day to write. Not at work, not while watching Oliver, not while watching tv. I am going to isolate myself and write for at least fifteen minutes every day.

The wisdom I've always heard is that if you want to be a writer, write. If you don't write, you can't call yourself a writer. I haven't been taking that seriously.

I wrote sporadically. I do it when I think of it. Sometimes, inspiration hits me. Or sometimes, there's a news story that I can't resist commenting on. But it's not a habit anymore. It hasn't been for a while.

I write, sure. I write tweets. I write on Facebook. I write as part of my job, which I love. But posts - long, prosaic, thoughtful posts - I haven't been doing this kind of writing very much this year.

I need to get back into fiction writing again, too. I have a novel in my basement that I started writing in college, in 1991. I think of the characters often. After 9/11, I thought I had the inspiration to start writing again, but it never lasted.

But I'm not going to set goals of finishing the novel, or x number of posts per month, or x amount of short stories. 15 minutes a day. That's the goal. That is the resolution.

The West Wing - Big Block of Retweets Day

2010-12-31T15:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know when this all started, but one day I noticed that somebody I follow on Twitter had retweeted President Jed Bartlet. Y'know, the president from the West Wing.

Then I saw that President Bartlet was trading remarks with Leo McGarry's Ghost.

As I found one, I found another. Everybody from the West Wing is on Twitter, y'all. I mean, seriously, everybody. Here's the list of everyone I've found so far.

President Bartlet
President Santos
Toby Ziegler
Josh Lyman
Donna Moss
CJ Cregg
Leo McGarry
GlenAllen Walken
Lord John Marbury
Will Bailey
Sam Seaborn

There are more. There must be dozens of West Wing accounts. Who is maintaining these things? Whoever's posting for each character has them down pat - Bartlet is scholarly and irritable, Josh playful and pugnacious, Lord Marbury is ... well, Lord Marbury. It's amazing fun to see them all interacting with each other, having conversations just like the good old days. One of my favorite discoveries of 2010.

P.S. I just noticed, when tagging this post, that I have not ever tagged a post with "Twitter" before. How strange is that!

Not Failing

2010-12-31T15:46:00.000-08:00

A month or so ago, I posted in my misery about the tough time my son was having in kindergarten. Since I posted that, I meant to post an update and let you know how he's been doing.

First, we started visiting a therapist with Oliver. The therapist is someone who's experienced working with kids, and who understands childhood anxiety really well. She's been wonderful with O, and he's grown to trust her very quickly. She's pretty certain that he's being dogged by anxiety, and has really worked on teaching strategies for dealing with it himself.

So we had a meeting. Both of us were there. Both of his teachers. (He is in two different classrooms during the day, so he has two different teachers who share responsibility.) The special ed teacher, the nurse, the PE teacher, the school psychologist, the principal, and a bunch of people I can't even remember. It was stunning to see so many people focused on our little guy.

We also had our therapist with us. And she was a godsend, people. Every time one of the people would start suggesting something that sounded off-base - hinting at autism or ADD or other scary stuff - our therapist pulled the conversation back to his anxiety.

In a lot of ways, it was reassuring for us to see that the teachers really didn't know Oliver. We told them that for years, we'd go to playdates and the other parents would tell us what a nice, sweet little boy Oliver was. He wasn't a hitter. He didn't spit at other kids. He didn't start fights. This was about him being overwhelmed in a new environment.

So the teachers have been working, since that day, to make the environment more welcoming for him, and to find ways to reward him for positive behavior. He has a little chart every day that the teachers fill out, so we know how he did during the day. Each part of the day has its own section, so we can see if he has more difficulty in the morning or in the afternoon.

The teachers have moved him closer during class, too. And this little change has made a world of difference. O was getting mischievous when he didn't know what was going on during class and when nobody seemed to be paying attention to him. So that little change of proximity has eliminated most of that issue.

He's blossoming in school now. He's always been smart - we saw his report card, and he's showing great progress in reading and in math. He can count and do simple math in Spanish and in English. He is reading now - short words, short sentences. But he's so proud to be reading, and he loves to show us how well he's doing. He's happier in school, and I know the teachers are happier now to see Oliver doing well. This is what we were hoping to see, and thank goodness everybody's been working together to get him to this point.

Clifford's Really Awful Soundtrack

2010-12-31T13:41:00.000-08:00

Have you seen Clifford's Really Big Movie?

(I will remind you that I have Netflix and a five-year-old, so our house has been victimized by that movie multiple times.)

The movie itself isn't too bad, but the music is absolutely atrocious. I think they commissioned two songs for the movie. The music is mindless, the lyrics are insipid, and you hear them during the entire movie because they play them OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN all through the movie. They have slow sad versions, they have fast happy versions, they have instrumental versions. It's a lot like what they did with Simon and Garfunkel's music for the Graduate, except in this case the results are horrible.

Runner

2010-12-31T12:27:00.001-08:00

My wife has a sister who used to run marathons. Years ago, I asked Mrs. B if she ever ran, and she looked at me as if the question was "so, have you ever done any Satanic rituals?"

"No," she said with disdain. No, I'm not one of those people. One of those runner people.

My wife is now one of those runner people. Three days a week, she straps on her fancy runner shoes and goes running five or six miles along Alki Beach. She went for a run this morning, when it was 28 degrees outside. She said she ran an extra mile, just because it was so clear and beautiful outside.

Yep, she's definitely one of those people.

Part of her motivation is restlessness. Specifically, the elliptical machine we have in our office drives her crazy. The idea of running for 30 minutes indoors, staring at the wall, is unbearable to her. So much so that, sometime around April, she announced she was going to start running outdoors.

And she's done it, bless her heart. She started out slow - there was a training program she picked up for non-runners that she followed. So at the beginning, it was like 2 minutes of running, 8 minutes of walking. She's now doing 11 minutes of running with a one-minute walking break. Some days, she just runs the whole distance.

She's run a few 5Ks. She recently ran the Jingle Bell run in Seattle, when it was pouring rain and the wind was howling. She crossed the finish line soaked from head to toe, but jubilant. We were waiting at the finish line for her. (I wish I could say we stood outside the whole time, but we spent most of the time in a coffee shop, watching people's umbrellas blow inside out.)

She's going to be running a half-marathon in June. I'm so proud of her for keeping it up, three days a week, week after week after week. She didn't start running until this year, in her forties. We were in Oregon recently, visiting in-laws, and she asked me to drive her to a nearby town so she could do her Sunday run. It's what she does now. She has her running playlists, her little runner's cap, her armband for her iPod, a group of other women who run with her. My wife is a runner now.

10 New Year's Resolutions I Will Not Be Making

2010-12-31T09:47:00.000-08:00

Give up caffeine.
Begin using "sock it to me!" as my new catchphrase.
Give Glenn Beck the benefit of the doubt.
Master the Moog synthesizer.
Find out what this Brazilian wax thing is all about.
Get that eyebrow piercing I've always wanted.
Launch a rave club in my basement.
Find out if I really need to shower more than once a week.
Launch a Tumblr blog, because Blogger is so totally 2005.
Shave all the hair off my body and begin dressing in black suits and hats.

Sunrise in Seattle

2010-12-31T08:27:00.000-08:00

It's freaking cold outside.

Hard to complain when it looks like this, though.

One of the most breathtaking sunrises I've seen in Seattle. I used to think that the best sunrises and sunsets happened in Colorado, where I lived for several years. But Seattle's had some beautiful ones, this year especially.

I should add that it's also hard to complain when I'm inside a warm toasty house. Mrs. B is out running in the 28-degree weather. More on that later.

Brace Yourselves

2010-12-31T07:11:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I can do this, but I've been given a challenge.

The charming and witty Adria Richards is holding a contest for bloggers. The challenge: write 25 blog posts in 24 hours.

There are prizes and stuff, but really, the contest is about getting busy. Too often, I-and most bloggers I know-have lots of ideas floating in our heads that we never write down. With Facebook, Twitter, instant messaging, chatroulette, etc., we've lost that instinct to take our ideas immediately from inspiration to blog post. I want that spark back. Thanks, Adria, for a clever way to reactivate the blog.

If I get stuck, I see Adria is keeping a running list of her own blog post ideas. I might steal some of those. We'll see how quickly the well runs dry. (Although I don't do the work she does, and I'm not nearly the social media butterfly she is, so maybe that idea won't help.)

It's already 7:19, so I've missed a few hours. (Darn sleep.) One down, 24 to do. Yikes.

Jesus Has a Birthday, or, Three Magi of Very Little Brain

2010-12-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

Jesus sighed.

"Pathetic," he sighed. "That's what it is. Pathetic."

He rolled over to the other side of the manger.

"Just as I suspected," he muttered to himself. "Straw. Just the same as the other side." He sneezed from the hay dust, and glumly rolled back to the first side. "But nobody minds. Nobody cares. Pathetic, that's what it is."

There was a shimmering noise outside the stable, and the angel Gabriel peeked in.

"Good morning, O Lord," said Gabriel.

"Good morning, Gabriel," said Jesus. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Gabriel, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"Can't all what?" said Gabriel, rubbing his nose.

"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Hallelujah and all that."

"Oh," said Gabriel. He thought for a long time and then began singing softly to himself.

"Angels we have heard on high,
Sweetly singing o'er the plains.
And the mountains in reply,
echoing their sweet refrains."

"That's right," said Jesus. "Sing. Rum-pa-pum-pum. Here we go gathering Nuts and May. Enjoy yourself."

"I am," beamed Gabriel.

"Some can," said Jesus.

"Why, what's the matter, My Lord?"

"Is anything the matter?"

"You seem so sad, O lord."

"Sad? Why in heaven should I be sad? It's my birthday, Gabriel. The happiest day of the year."

"Your birthday?" said Gabriel in great surprise.

Jesus rolled his eyes, trying to resist explaining that he wasn't anywhere the night before, and how he was here, and so that meant he was born, and so this was his birth day. Gabriel sometimes could be so ... so ... well, he could be sometimes.

"Yes, it's my birthday, Gabriel. Can't you see? Look at this festive decor. Look at all the presents waiting for me." He waved a tiny hand from side to side. "Look at the birthday cake. Candles and pink sugar."

Gabriel looked - first to the left and then to the right.

"Presents, O Lord? Cake?"

"Can't you see them?"

"No," said Gabriel.

"Neither can I," said Jesus. Gabriel stared at him blankly.

"Joke," he explained. "Ha ha."

Gabriel scratched his head.

"Well, a great happy birthday to you, O Lord and Savior. Many happy returns of the day!"

"And many happy returns to you, Gabriel."

"Oh. But it isn't my birthday."

"No, it's mine."

"Yes. And many happy ..." Gabriel paused, unsure where to go next, and decided to step out of the stable before he became more confused. Jesus was alone again in the manger.

"Pathetic," he said again.

~ ~ ~

Melchior ran towards Jerusalem, excited. In his hands he clutched a vessel containing a large amount of myrrh.

"Oh, won't he be so happy?" Melchior thought excitedly. He had never met the Lord before - Jesus had only just been born - but he would love myrrh. Myrrh was such a soothing balm, and had so many uses. What would he wish to do with so much myrrh? He thought. Maybe he would burn it for the wonderful fragrance. Maybe it would be used as a balm to soothe His Holy skin. He wondered if he, Melchior, would be allowed to rub it onto His skin. And he thought about this, and about myrrh, and how sweet it smelled, and of a time when his own mother had rubbed his back and arms with myrrh. And running along, and thinking how pleased Jesus would be, he didn't look where he was going ... and suddenly he put his foot in a hole and fell down flat on his face.

SPLAT!!!!???***

Melchior lay there, wondering what had happened. At first he thought a great wind had blown him off his feet, and then he wondered what part of the world he had ended up in. He would have to find the star again to get his bearings again. But no, wait, here was the star, in the Eastern sky just as it was before. Unless he had been blown clear to the moon and was looking down onto the star from the moon. He wondered how he would ever get down from the moon and see the Lord again.

And then he stood up and saw that he was still in the same land where he started.

"Well, that's funny," he thought. "I wonder what happened? And where's all my myrrh? And why is the vessel filled up with sand now?"

He raised it to his nose to smell it. It smelled of myrrh. Myrrh-scented sand.

"Oh dear," said Melchior. "Oh dear, oh dearie dearie dear! Well, it's too late now. I can't go back, and I haven't any more myrrh, and perhaps Jesus doesn't like myrrh so very much."

He walked on, rather sadly now, and down he came to the stable where Jesus was, and he called out to him.

"Good morning, O Lord," said Melchior.

"Good morning, Melchior," said Jesus. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he. "Not that it matters," he said.

"Many happy returns of the day," said Melchior.

Jesus raised his head and stared at Melchior.

"Just say that again," he said.

"Many happy returns of the day."

"Meaning me?"

"Of course, O Lord."

"My birthday?"

"Yes," said Melchior.

"Me having a real birthday?"

"Yes, my Lord, and I've brought you a present."

Jesus rolled to the other side. "I must hear that in the other ear," he said. "Now then."

"A present," said Melchior very loudly.

"Meaning me again?"

"Yes."

"My birthday still?"

"Yes, and I brought you myrrh."

"Myrrh, you say?" said Jesus. "You did say myrrh? That lovely stuff that smells so nice, and that you rub all over and it makes you feel nice. Gaiety, tra la la, here we are and there we are?"

"Yes, my Lord. But I'm afraid- I'm very sorry, my Lord - but when I was running along to bring it to you, I fell down."

"Dear, dear, how unlucky! You ran too fast, I suspect. You didn't hurt yourself, dear Melchior?"

"No, but I - I - oh, my Lord Jesus, I spoiled the myrrh!"

There was a very long silence.

"My myrrh?" said Jesus at last.

Melchior nodded. He handed Jesus the vessel, which was filled with sand.

"Here it is. With - many happy returns of the day."

"Is this it?" said Jesus, a little surprised.

Melchior nodded.

"Thank you, Melchior," said Jesus. "Well, well." He sniffed a bit at the sand. "My favorite," he said to himself sadly. "Well, well."

Caspar and Balthasar stood now at the door of the stable, and Caspar called out, "Many happy returns of the day!"

"Thank you, I'm having them," said Jesus.

Balthasar called out, "Many happy returns of the day!"

Jesus didn't say thank you this time, so Balthasar started again. "Many happy returns..." Then he remembered he had already said that, and stopped himself.

"I've brought you a little present," they both said at once.

"I've had it," said Jesus, looking at his vessel of myrrh-scented sand.

Balthasar handed Jesus a lovely gold urn. "It's a Useful Golden Pot," said Balthasar. "Here it is. And it's got 'A Very Happy Birthday to the Child King' written on it. That's what all that carving is. And it's for putting things in. There!"

When Jesus saw the pot, he became quite excited.

"Why!" he said. "I believe my myrrh will just fit into that pot."

"Myrrh?" said Balthasar, confused. "Oh, no, myrrh is too sticky and gummy, and it needs a special type of pot. What you do with myrrh is, you take the myrrh-"

"Not mine," said Jesus proudly. "Look, Melchior!"

And as Melchior looked sorrowfully round, Melchior picked up the sandy myrrh and poured it in a great long stream into the golden urn.

"So it does!" said Balthasar. "It goes in!"

"So it does!" said Melchior. "And it comes out!"

Caspar, who was standing at the door with handfuls of frankincense in his hands, said nothing.

"Doesn't it?" said Jesus. "It goes in and out like anything."

"I'm very glad," said Balthasar," that I thought of giving you a Useful Pot to put things in."

"I'm very glad," said Melchior happily, "that I thought of giving you Something to put in a Useful Pot."

Caspar, having nothing to say, placed his frankincense at the foot of Jesus' manager and continued looking like someone who cannot think of anything to say.

Jesus didn't say anything at all. He was pouring the sand into the golden urn, and back into its vessel, and back again, as happy as could be...

Three Questions in My Head

2010-12-08T20:28:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, my son and I were sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast. He turned to me.

"Daddy, I have three questions in my head right now."

"All right," I said, bracing myself. Questions about monsters? Volcanos? The sun? God?

"How many hours are in a day; how many minutes are in a day; and how many seconds are in a day?"

Math. He had math questions in his head.

This is a boy who is made of me. I loved numbers when I was a kid. Loved clean multiplication, loved the spiraling Fibonacci numbers, loved adding huge numbers in my head, loved doing squares and cubes. 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36. 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216. 13² is 169. No mystery, no guesswork. It is what it is.

I still use math to go to sleep. I count squares, sometimes. Usually, my mind starts getting fuzzy around 17² (289), and I fall asleep before 20² (400).

I pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen and showed him how I calculated the numbers. The answers, before your own child asks you, are 24 hours, 1440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds in a day.

Failing?

2010-11-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

I've never felt more lost as a parent.

When my son started school, I expected that certain behaviors might become an issue. He's a very shy kid. He withdraws when he doesn't understand something. I expected that, if anything, he'd be the kid who stood on the wall, waiting for someone to invite him to play with them.

This is not what has happened. He's been hitting. He's gone to the principal's office a few times. We've had meetings with his teachers.

I don't know what's happening. I think there are several phases in parenthood where a dad just goes, I don't know what's happening with this kid. Right now is one of those phases.

I think a lot of it is anxiety, and it's anxiety that manifests by him acting out against other kids. Which is a crappy way to act out, I admit, but it's coming from anxiety, not him being a maniac serial killer.

He's still our sweet little boy. He still skips down the sidewalk, he still sings to himself in his bedroom, he still has little conversations with his stuffed animals when we're not looking.

But at school, he's a wilder, more out of control little boy. Is it us? Is it something happening at school? Is it the sudden shift, from a daycare he attended for years to a new school with all new friends? Are we failing as parents, or is his school failing him? Or is it some third option? Not sure.

But it's bewildering, and it's frustrating as hell. I hate the feeling that each day, something's going to happen. I pray each morning - yes, I say a prayer to the Lord above - that he has a good day. A good day right now means he keeps his hands to himself, he doesn't hit other kids, doesn't kick them, doesn't trip them in the hallway. I wanted to be hearing about the books he was reading, the kids he was befriending, the awesome things he was learning. Instead, the reports I'm getting are about which kid hit him first and how he responded. I hate this. I know someday we will move past this period, and we will look back at this as ancient history. I want that moment to be today. I want this to be over.

Pumpkin Season

2010-10-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

Age 2.

Age 4.

Age 5.

Happy Halloween, dear readers.

Shootings and Questions

2010-10-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

A man was shot and killed last night in downtown Seattle. It happened on 2nd and Pike, a block away from the Pike Place Market.

Why?

Was it a drug deal gone bad? We think of episodes of the Wire. Was alcohol involved? Was it a gang thing?

Why did this happen in our peaceful city?

Was it some kind of fight? Did they know each other? Was it an argument over a girl, a car, a football game?

How can this be not about me, but about the victim and the shooter? We don't want to believe we live in a city where random shootings just happen. Random violence is terrifying. The universe must have a plan. Things must happen for a reason.

Why did he get shot? Was he in the wrong place at the wrong time? 2nd and Pike isn't the most savory part of town. There are lots of shady characters hanging around there. Maybe he deserved it.

Maybe it was his fault.

Maybe this has nothing to do with me, with our city, with our society. Maybe this was all about him.

I know I'm not the only one who has these thoughts flooding into his head. It's ugly, but that's the way we think, in a civil society. We want to have a reason for violence that makes it about The Other, about something else. Because the alternative - that violence happens suddenly, inexplicably, unpredictably - is too terrifying to bear.

The Job that I Have

2010-10-10T16:38:00.001-07:00

I've been working. I have a job, ladies and gentlemen.

I've been working for ... um ... weeks, actually. Sorry I haven't mentioned it.

I haven't posted it because I haven't been able to figure out how to talk about it here. I'm working in communications for a very large and well-known employer here in the Pacific Northwest. I can't say more than that, and seriously, I cannot say more than that. If I go a step over that vague comment, you will know where I work, how to find me, and where my business Twitter account can be found.

And I will get in a lot of trouble if that happens.

So I hope you will forgive me if I don't share much detail. But I can say this about the job: I love it.

I feel like this is the job that I've been working my way towards for the past decade. I'm writing. I'm doing a lot of writing, in a lot of formats. I'm working with the media. I'm building online communities. I'm at the vortex of a very large virtual community, and it's an amazing experience. All the organizing, all the fundraising, all of the odd roles I've been taking on all these years. It all had been leading to this.

I'm exactly where I want to be.

I am so deliriously happy that I feel like dancing every day. People, this is a wonderful job. And that's what I can say: that, after the difficult jobs and the weird bosses and the firings and the layoffs, I have found something that is very close to my dream job. It can happen.

The Wrong Direction

2010-09-09T21:19:00.001-07:00

I started about a year ago, when I was weighing in around 220 lbs. I started using the LoseIt app to count calories and I started exercising regularly. I pledged to lose at least thirty pounds.

I lost about 40 pounds in nine months, and it's an amazing change for me. I feel healthier, I look better. I have more stamina than before. I can run for several blocks without feeling winded or having to reach for my albuterol inhaler.

At my best, about a month ago, I weighed in at 177 pounds - 43 pounds lost.

But things have started slipping lately. I've gotten lazier about tracking calories in LoseIt. Exercise has become more sporadic. There are reasons - mostly, it's harder to find time to exercise since I started the new job. But it's not just about being busy. It's just easier to not pay attention.

Last weekend, we went down to Portland. I ate four doughnuts - four! - from Voodoo Doughnuts and then had a fat burrito for lunch. I didn't track my calories that day.

I've been busy, but mostly, I've been lazy. I let the momentum slip, and it's starting to show. I weighed in this morning at 182. After a steady downward slope for nine months, I'm sliding in the wrong direction. I'm starting to notice my stomach again. I don't like that feeling, the feeling I had when I was heavier. I don't want to feel that way again.

So I ran for 30 minutes on the elliptical today. I'm going to go back and track everything I ate in LoseIt today. Everything - whether or not I'm over my calories for the say. I'm getting myself back on track. I refuse to let nine months of progress go down the tubes just because it's easier to be lazy than to be good.

The Thinking Place

2010-08-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to make a quick observation here about the ... um ... image of Gnomedex that was left burned into all the brains of the attendees.

This is the official t-shirt that was provided to everyone who attended Gnomedex 10 this weekend in Seattle:

And here is the scene that became the most indelible (in the sense of "please, god, let this image be taken out of my brain!") image of Gnomedex:

All I've got to say is that when Jinx taps into the zeitgeist of the moment, they seriously tap into some motherfucking zeitgeist.

Idiot on a Motorcycle

2010-08-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

I tried to figure out what was wrong with him afterward. Was he drunk? Hopped up on meth? Then I figured, nah, he was probably just buzzing on adrenalin and his own epic stupidity. He was just another angry douchebag on a motorcycle, and he had just tried to challenge me to a fight outside the grocery store where I had gone to pick up pull-ups for my son.

We ran out of pull-ups. I hopped into our boring little middle-class suburbia vehicle, so I could drive to our boring middle-class grocery store ten blocks away from our house and get pull-ups for my kid.

I turned onto a busy street, and yeah, maybe I swung into the street just a bit too quickly. I saw a motorcycle behind a van in the right lane and he seemed like he was following just a bit too closely. The rider was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers. (He looked remarkably like the guy in the picture above.)

I was in the left lane, they were in the right. I had to make a right-hand turn to get to the grocery store, so I did that instant calculation that you do in your head all the time: okay, these guys are probably going to speed up a little bit, and I'll just swing in behind them when that happens, or else I'll cut in when they slow down.

The van slowed down to make a right turn. I saw my opportunity. I started to move into the right lane - carefully, cautiously, using my turn signal appropriately - and was shocked to find the motorcycle roaring up behind me on my right. He was flying. I slowed down just fast enough to avoid sideswiping him, and then I beeped my horn at him.

It was an unconscious decision to honk the horn. It was one of those things you do without thinking. Someone does something stupid, you punctuate it with a beep on the horn. "Hey, I'm just going to make an observation here that you just did an asshole thing." Seattle people don't tend to use their horns very often, but I'm not from here, so I'll beep at any idiot who rubs me the wrong way.

It was just that fast: I turned on my blinker, I started to move, and then zip, brake, beep. It was a half-second sequence. And then the guy did something that I couldn't understand at first. He stopped his bike in the middle of the lane - forcing me to stop - cut the motor, and kicked down the kickstand. And then he started walking toward me, shouting and waving his fists.

I didn't get out. Hell, I didn't even roll down my window. I'm not stupid. (Plus, I had the air conditioning on.) So I don't know what he was saying, but I could guess. "Come on! Let's go! You wanna throw down?! Come on, bring it, motherfucker!"

I refused to bring it. I raised my open palms at him, which is the international code for "no thank you, I will decline your offer to throw down." At least, I hoped he read it that way. I was also communicating a second message: to wit, "are you out of your fucking mind?!"

A guy in the other lane had also stopped by now and he started to get out of his car, preparing to break up the fight. The fight didn't happen. Dude shouted for another few seconds and then got back on his crotch rocket and took off. It was absolutely bizarre.

I went into the store, shaken, looking over my shoulder to make sure he didn't come back to chase me down. And I bought the stupid pull-ups and drove home, still on edge.

Afterward, I tried to think about whether I had done something wrong. Did I cut him off somewhere else, in the six blocks before this incident happened? Was I being unsafe? But no. This was all on Crotch Rocket boy. If I learned nothing from the movie The Kids Are All Right, it's that guys who ride motorcycles are generally douchebags who do things without thinking.

It was scary, though, whatever the reason. It was a trivial moment that instantly escalated into violence. Or, would-be violence. One moment, I'm a normal dad running the most boring of errands. The next moment, someone's threatening to punch my lights out. I hate shit like that.

Duck!

2010-08-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

We were reading one of Oliver's old lift-the-flap board books this morning. We turned to a picture of a cow, and I asked Oliver what kind of animal it was.

"Duck!"

I look at him, baffled. "That's a duck?"

"No. The duck that people do."

I stared him, still confused.

He stood up and then did an exaggerated bow, bending his shoulders down to waist level.

"See? Duck!"

I looked at the picture again, and sure enough, the cow was ducking down in a doorway.

The Things He Says (Five Year Old Edition)

2010-07-27T20:52:00.001-07:00

When Oliver was younger, I loved posting about the new words he would say or the funny little phrases he would come out with. Now that he's older, his language acquisition moves so quickly that it's hard to keep up.

He still picks up new words, but usually, he surprises us by learning entire new parts of speech. Take conjunctions. Lately, he's been experimenting with the word "anyway." He uses it correctly as a verbal punctuation, to change the direction of a conversation that he's bored with. "Anyway, what are you going to get me for breakfast?" Neither of us taught him that - he just picked it up.

Right now, what I'm most impressed with is his talents as a storyteller. I'm amazed at his ability to create and wild careening stories just off the top of his head. One time, we were driving home from someplace and Oliver was falling asleep. Often, when he's tired I will tell him the story can try to keep him awake. This time, I decided to ask him tell me a story, just to see what would happen.

He began telling this crazy roller coaster of a story. I can't remember everything that was in it, but at one point, I remember there were polar bears building rockets so they could fly to Mars. The story lasted for 15 or 20 minutes and kept changing direction - adding new characters, changing scenes, shifting the landscape. And every time he changed the story dramatically, he would insert a giddy "all of a sudden..."

Mrs. B professes that she hates telling him stories, but she's managed to come up with her own special character for stories. He's called Fluffy the Cloud. She can put Fluffy in any situation - visiting Mt. Rainier, swimming in the ocean, fighting off bad guys with the help of Superman and Flash. He begs to have her tell him Fluffy stories, and he even offers to help her with the stories. "Mommy, I'll tell the middle and the end part, and you can tell the beginning part."

He is so much fun to listen to right now. He creates imaginary conversations with everything-with the stuffed animals, with his action figures, with blankets and pillows. I've even seen them start conversations with pieces of toast while he's eating his breakfast.

And he's still such a ridiculously affectionate little boy. Sometimes, I overhear his crazy little conversations between his stuffed animals or robots or whatever he's using, and I'll hear one say to the other, "I love you." The other one says back, "I love you too," and suddenly they're hugging each other.

Super Why is Awful

2010-07-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's the worst children's show on television. Yes, and I know Barney is still being aired regularly. Super Why is worse. It's horrible. It's an affront to thinking parents and a shameful way to introduce children to classic literature.

Super Why is one of those shows that sprang up in the wake of Dora the Explorer and Blue's Clues. (Apparently, it's produced by the team that created Blue's Clues.) It's purportedly educational and supposedly encourages literacy - the characters talk directly to their audience and tell them to point out letters and read words and stuff like that. That's fine. A lot of shows do that, and that's not a problem. Here's the issue, though. They're murdering the classics of children's literature - the Brothers Grimm, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Andersen, the stories we all remember when we were children.

They tell the stories, which is nice, I suppose. But they ruin them by retooling the morals!! They twist the fucking things around so that the moral of the story - the whole POINT of the story - is either wrong or watered down to some namby-pamby inoffensive platitude.

Example 1: they took on Hansel and Gretel in one episode. Once you sort through all the "point to the A!" crap, basically, they told the story of Hansel and Gretel. They went into the forest, they saw a witch's house made of candy, they started eating it. The witch came out and got angry. And then they revealed the "message" of the story - they should have asked permission first. Yes, sure, when you encounter a witch in the forest who wants to eat your cherubic German flesh, you should ask permission before eating her evil candy house.

That's not the goddamn story! The story is that the children are starving, the witch is evil and wants to eat them, she traps them with her candy house as bait, and they throw her in the oven and then take her gold back to their father and they never go hungry again. The moral is that witches are evil!!!!! (Of course, I mean fairy-tale witches, not any actual practical Wiccans or witches who may be reading this. Characters in fairy tales bear no relation to the real thing in real life, and I mean that referring to witches, wizards, bears, children, queens. Nothing is real in fairy tales.) It's not about asking permission. It's about many things - beware of strangers, stick together in difficult circumstances, never trust a candy house. It's not about "please, may I?"

Example 2: This was the one that finally set me off. They did "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" recently. It might be an old episode - I just saw it recently, along with Oliver. Same thing - blah blah blah read these letters, blah blah blah what's the magic word, blah blah blah let's solve the mystery! Kid keeps crying wolf, parents don't believe him, finally kid gets in trouble and parents don't believe him. Right? And the moral is - don't lie to your parents and they'll believe you when you need them. That's the moral that you and I remember from our childhood. That's the point of the story. "Crying wolf" = "lying."

Except these pinheads decided the moral of the story was "parents should believe their children." "Oh, we should have believed you," his parents lament at the end of the episode. No, they shouldn't have! The message is that telling lies will get you in trouble! This is one of those classic fables that has a scary consequence at the end - the wolf eats all the kid's sheep. There are even some versions where the kid gets eaten, too. Fables are scary for a reason.

Look, no one wants to see their kid get eaten or baked by a witch, but the heart of these fables is in the telling. By screwing around with the message of these fables, they're completely undermining their ability to educate kids. I read classic stories and fables to my kid all the time, and I'll even tell them to him as a bedtime story. I want him to remember the message behind them. Fables are for teaching morals and rules of behavior. If you want to teach someone their letters, fine. Use pointless and imaginary stories like Dora does. Don't fuck with classic stories for no good reason.

I hate Super Why. I stopped recording it on our Tivo, and I change the channel every time it comes on. I don't ever want Oliver to tell me that I got some story wrong because he heard it differently on Super Why. Stupid anti-literature show. Stupid brain-crippling piece of crap. Don't let your kid watch this show. It's horrible.

Temporarily Permanent

2010-06-27T21:35:00.001-07:00

Still at the temp job.

It's not bad, really. It's honest work. I stay busy every day, and despite all the smack I said in a previous post about my boss, she's not actually too bad. She respects my work and makes a point of telling me I'm doing a good job.

The biggest strain, really has been financial. I've been working since late May, and I just got my first paycheck a couple of days ago. Originally, I was promised a paycheck by the second week of June. It didn't happen. We had to wait for some other company to pay our invoices before we got our paychecks, and for some reason, they couldn't be bothered to get those checks to us. Every day, I'd ask, and every day, I'd hear that there was no word when the
paycheck would arrive. It got pretty tense for a while. We were literally running out of money. Mrs. B was putting off bills, which we both hate to do. But I finally got a check, and that makes us both breathe easier.

Even though I'm "working," I'm still filing for unemployment. Filing, not collecting, because I work too much each week to collect UI benefits. I thought the job would end last week, but it looks like it's been extended for the foreseeable future. I'm earning more than I did at my last job (though working more hours and getting no fringe benefits). And I'm still sending out resumes every week. So it's odd - working, yet unemployed. Working and yet looking. I can work here as long as I want the job, at least through the end of the year. My life could be a lot worse, I suppose.

Revenge of the Lawn

2010-06-11T08:42:00.000-07:00

I just looked at my lawn and said to myself, "I wonder why it doesn't look better."

I live in a rental home. I have never planted grass seed on my lawn. I have never fertilized it. I have clover growing wild in my lawn. Moss. Patches of thistle. Plants that I can't even recognize. It looks like a well-trimmed vacant lot.

I'm also mowing my lawn with dull blades. My lawnmower desperately needs to have the blades resharpened. Right now, it's not mowing so much as blunt force trauma. The grass grows long and crazy and points in four different directions, and there are some stretches where the mower didn't have any effect at all and the grass is just laying down, five inches long and silently mocking me.

I wonder why it doesn't look better, I thought to myself. And then I burst out laughing.

Temping It Out

2010-05-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

Oh my gawd, dear readers. I hope I land a real job soon, because the temp job I'm doing now is stressing me the hell out.

I'm working for a few weeks for a friend, partly as a favor and partly for the money. She's not the most organized person in the world, so I get a lot of late-night phone calls and emails at 2 in the morning. The last week has been a little weird, what with not knowing what my day is going to be like until I show up in the office. It's fine for a temp job, but the level of expectation my friend has is starting to bug me.

I'm looking for a permanent job, of course. And my friend knows this, and she's been saying the right things about how my search for a permanent job has to take priority. (It really has to. In order to stay eligible for unemployment, I need to be available every day for job interviews or jobs. So legally, a permanent job has to be my priority.) But she's been talking out of both sides of her mouth - simultaneously saying that she wants to give me the time to look for a permanent job, AND that she needs me available at a moment's notice to do anything that pops into her head.

She called me today at 1 pm to see if I could do a shitload of paperwork today. That afternoon. In the next two hours.

I was with my kid, in a toy store.

Yesterday, she told me that she would be dealing with this very stack of paperwork herself. But today it got tossed in my lap, and when I said I couldn't do it, I got the passive-aggressive guilt trip about not being available. The kind of thing that happens with nonprofit work. "What do you mean you don't want to drop everything for the job? Don't you care about the work? Don't you care about THE MOVEMENT?!"

I have a bunch of job interviews next week, and she's sweating me that one of the interviews is on a day when things are going to be frantic at the office. I need a damn job, not some temporary stopgap bullshit! I do not get paid enough to be at this person's beck and call like a genie in a fucking bottle.

Never work for friends. Never, ever take a job because somebody's a friend and you want to do them a favor. Jeezus Christ on a pogo stick.

Pink Slip

2010-04-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

For the second time in two years, I found myself cleaning out my desk this week.

Seriously. Again.

The first time, I was completely stunned. I didn't see it coming at all. I thought I was actually making good progress and was looking forward to discussing next year's goals, and instead, I was turning in my keys.

But this time...

This time, I smelled it coming. I had a really lousy week the previous week, and I knew my boss wasn't happy with me. I expected that we would have a stern conversation sometime this week. But when I walked in, and the head honcho was also sitting there, I knew things were going down.

I've definitely had some issues at work. A couple of deadlines that I was chasing pretty furiously. I was seeing this week as the week when I would prove my worth again, demonstrate again that I was the person they wanted in this position. They were taking a chance hiring me, and I wanted so badly to prove that the gamble was worth it. It WAS worth it - I learned a tremendous amount, I did some fantastic work, and I'm proud of what I did.

But I slipped. I let my anxiety and my fear of failure get the best of me, started getting sloppy on collecting information. Deadlines started creeping closer and closer. I started fibbing to my supervisor about where I was on projects. There's a thing that happens when you start falling behind and the workload never stops. You keep thinking you'll get to a spot where you can catch up, some quiet week. You think you'll work a few evenings, maybe some time on the weekend to catch up. You keep thinking that you'll catch up sometime down the road, and then the end of the road happens.

Could I have stopped this? Maybe. Did I see this coming in time? I don't think so. By the time I sensed trouble, it was already too late. Maybe I should have visited the therapist more often. Maybe I should have worked more on the weekend. Maybe ... maybe ... maybe ...

And then again, maybe it was inevitable. I was being brought in as an entry-level employee, doing way advanced-level work. Every fundraising job right now is being expected to overperform in a terrible economy; there's less money out there, but we're all being to find every available dollar. I was brought in as a rookie who was expected to perform like a ten-year veteran, and when I couldn't keep up with the frantic pace being set, I got the axe. Was it my fault for not being able to keep running, or their fault for pushing me too hard?

It doesn't matter now. What matters now is moving on. I've got to move onto another job, and this job search is going to be a little more complicated than the last one. But I'm feeling oddly relieved by this. Sure, I'm back on unemployment, and sure, I hate having to start the search process all over again. But maybe it's time to find a job that's actually at my level. This might be a genuine case where the last job wasn't a good fit, and I can use this to really find something that really matches where I'm at.

I'm feeling good about this, people. Really. If I got through the last search in the dead of the recession, I can get through this one.

Mumbleberry Pie

2010-04-24T22:02:00.000-07:00

I quite enjoyed this NY Times article on the National. It's a great piece on a band filled with literate, brilliant, and obviously strong-willed individuals. The tension between them explains quite a bit about the music they create.

The National Agenda

Also, it contains two of the best quotes I've ever seen in the Times on any subject.

This, describing the process of perfecting a new song:

“Lemonworld,” for instance, had by now sustained upwards of 80 takes followed by upwards of 80 onslaughts of derision. Versions of the song had been fragged for being really annoying, really bombastic, really boring, really cheesy, too destabilized, really meatball, really saccharine, too sludgefest, too Dave Matthews swank and too all-fancy razzle-dazzle. At one point, Bryan worried aloud, “We’re throwing the baby out with the bath water,” to which Matt replied, “What is the baby?”

And then this description of the lead vocalist, Matt Berninger:

Over the years, Matt has accumulated a flock of snide nicknames from his band mates, including the Dark Lord, the Naysayer, Mumbleberry Pie, Mr. Knee Jerk, Mr. Sony Headphones and the Echo Chamber.

Jesus and the Silver Surfer

2010-04-04T18:48:00.001-07:00

My son and I are hanging out in the office, watching Fantastic Four trailers on YouTube. (What?)

He sees the Silver Surfer appear onscreen. He asks if anyone knows who he is, and I say he doesn't.

"Except him?" Oliver asks.

I look at him, confused.

"Does he know himself?"

"Yes, I guess he does know himself." My son, the philosopher.

~~~

A few minutes later, he asks me if the Silver Surfer can die. I answer that I don't think he can.

"I hope he can't. I hope he's like Jesus."

Yes, that's the conversation we had on Easter: whether the Silver Surfer can rise from the dead like Jesus.

The Truth about Me

2010-04-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've been living a double life, and it's time to end it.

I've been hiding my identity for years, using a pseudonym. Most of you know that Sky Bluesky is not my real name. Parts of the life I describe on this blog are real, and some of them are fabricated to make it harder to identify me. I have wanted for years to tell the truth about who I am, but I had to wait until the right time when my words could no longer be used against me. I've said things on this blog that could make my professional life very difficult.

But it's time to end the mystery. It's time for me to tell the world who I really am. So on this day, April 1, 2010, I am removing the veil.

My name is Greg Nickels.

Yes, that Greg Nickels. The former mayor of Seattle.

As you can imagine, leading this double life has been extremely stressful, but it's also been a delightful creative exercise. I have had the opportunity to craft a new life, a new family, and speak candidly through the voice of another.

Obviously, the son I have created, Oliver, is a fabrication. I have two wonderful children, Jacob and Carey, and I have used my memories of their youth to create the fanciful adventures of my "son" Oliver.

As I said, parts of my story were true. I do live in west Seattle, as some of you know. One of the most difficult moments in my pseudonymous life was the snowstorm in 2008, when my office was pilloried for reacting slowly to the dramatic snowfall. Many jokes were made about whether my own neighborhood would be plowed out when so many other roads in Seattle were impassable. I heard you, loud and clear. I wrote about it, jokingly, but it hurt my heart that I had failed the city so badly.

Some of you may doubt that this is truly former Mayor Nickels, but I want you to ask yourselves: why did Sky Bluesky never opine about the recent mayoral race in Seattle? I couldn't, you see. Not only were my hands tied legally, but by speaking at all about that race, it would have tipped my hand. So I was forced to remain quiet, even though I very definitely had a favorite candidate.

I am, in fact, a tremendous fan of Wilco. I have had Jeff Tweedy over to my house twice, and he is a charming and decent fellow. He took the name of his last album from my pseudonym. We had a good laugh about that.

Everything about the weight loss is true, with the exception of the actual numbers. I have been fighting my weight for years, but I feel I have finally gotten the upper hand on this.

One more thing: Sky Bluesky was not my original choice for my pseudonym. As a play on my last name, I was tempted to call myself Henny Penny. (See how clever that is? Penny - Nickels? Get it?) I asked my deputy Mayor, Tim Ceis (the only member of my staff who knew about this blog) and he told me in no uncertain terms that it was not only a terrible name, but it was a lame joke. Ah well.

In the future, I look forward to sharing my thoughts here on the political landscape of Seattle and the country, as well as continuing to blog about my favorite music, odd stories that cross my mind, and the wonderful meals that my wife Sharon prepares. Godspeed.

Sincerely,

Greg

Good Knight!

2010-03-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

Mrs. B and Oliver had the most hilarious interplay last night. They were playing with legos or puppets or something, and Oliver decided to say that his little guy was a knight. A good knight, not a bad knight.

O: "I'm a good knight!"

Mrs. B: (slyly) "Good night!"

She burst out laughing. He just got annoyed. So he tried to explain again that he was a good knight.

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O: "No, I'm a knight!"

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O: "No!"

And then he tried to clarify. "There are two kinds of nights. I'm the kind of knight that rides a horse. I'm not the kind of night that you say when you say good night."

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O: "Stop it."

That kept going for at least ten minutes, and Mrs. B and I kept cracking up every time she delivered the line.

Why Health Care Matters

2010-03-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Some very smart people have written about what the historic vote on health care reform means. What it means for Republicans, what it means for Democrats, what it means for the public's view of government, what it means for the country. I'm not going to try and retread those well-worn paths. Let me tell you what this battle means to me.

Yes, that's right, me. All politics is local, and all politics is personal. So let me tell you about my journey of learning about why health care matters.

Ten years ago, I started working in the world of social justice. I was a canvasser. I was one of those people who knocks on your door and asks you if you have a minute, and tells you about some political issue you probably weren't thinking about, and then asks you to take action or donate money so that the fight on that political issue can continue.

It was a job. I had just been fired from my last job and had no idea what I was going to do with my life. It was a decent-paying job that required no experience, just the ability to make a good argument and to think on one's feet. I could do that. So I became a canvasser.

I became an activist, in the parlance of the movement. We weren't just canvassers. We were activists. We were community organizers, sowing the seeds of grassroots power, one doorstep at a time.

But the problem was this. We weren't talking about revolutionary issues. We were talking about ... health care. Prescription drug prices. Access to insurance. I didn't get it. I thought health care was a pretty middle-class issue, not very exciting, not very revolutionary. Health care just wasn't that big a deal. Why weren't we talking about homelessness, or defunding the military, or banning nuclear bombs? What did health care matter?

One thing I did notice, though. A lot of people didn't have anything to say, or didn't have time to talk. But the ones who did would open up. Their stories would come pouring out of them, often with tears and shaking voices and anger. And the more I talked to people, the more I saw how important health care really was.

I talked to men who would bring out their handwritten lists of medications - ten, fifteen, twenty different drugs - and tell me which ones they knew they had to have, and which ones they knew they could skip if they couldn't afford them. "These pills all cost money," they explained, "and sometimes, you gotta make choices."

I talked to people who faithfully paid their premiums every month, only to find that their insurance company refused to cover their illnesses when they became sick. They did nothing wrong except to become sick, and their insurance companies suddenly found exemptions, exclusions, limitations in their coverage. Profits over people. It happens more often than any of us realize.

I talked to people who were too young for Medicare, too ill to work, and too healthy to qualify for disability or Medicaid. They were trapped without health insurance, holding their breath and hoping that they wouldn't get sick. Prayer. That was their health care plan. Pray you don't get sick.

I talked to people who knew that if they got sick, their only choice was the emergency room. They couldn't afford the bills. They would get a payment plan if they had to go to the ER, and they would pay what they could, and they would fall behind, and the ER would send their account to a collection agency, and they would probably go bankrupt over it. Over health care costs.

I brought people to Olympia to protest against the high cost of prescription drugs. I helped organize rallies and town hall meetings to demand access to health care. I fought with my heart and soul against proposed increases in health care costs for the poorest of the poor, against threatened termination of our state's Basic Health plan. I met people who would weep when they thought about losing their health care. I met people who knew they would die without health care.

I met people who are dead now. They died because they had no health care, and they put off the visit to the doctor until the next paycheck came in. They didn't get checked because they couldn't afford the bill, and their illnesses got worse, and then when they needed to see the doctor, their choices were emergency rooms and sliding scale clinics with lines going out the door. Yes, people died. Lack of health care kills people in this country, thousands of people every year. People I knew and cared deeply about, and they died because of the injustice of our health care system.

I know that this bill will not solve everything. I know that we - the activists, the grassroots, the netroots - have much work yet to do. But twelve million more people are going to have access to health care now. Medicare and Medicaid will be expanded. More money will be available so people who can't afford health insurance can get it. The foolish policies that kept people with pre-existing conditions from getting health insurance will go away. Insurance companies will be banned from canceling health insurance policies when their customers get sick.

Things are going to get better. God willing, less people will die now because of lack of health insurance. And when they do, goddammit, people will pay attention. Because health care is one of the most important issues facing our country. Our health care system is broken, deranged, a failed machine running amok. This bill will make some long-needed repairs to the machine. It's not a complete fix. It's not a new machine. But we needed a fix, and this is a good fix, and it is too long in coming.

(Once again, thanks to the awesome Jamie Mulligan for the great canvasser picture.)

Endgame for ACORN

2010-03-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

ACORN has been crumbling in the past few months. Half of its state chapters have disaffiliated themselves from ACORN and reformed as independent organizations. Now, according to the New York Times, ACORN is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.

The past few years have been catastrophic for ACORN, but not for the reasons most people think. The trouble depended long before James McKeefe dressed up in his Pimps Я Us outfit and started harassing local offices.

ACORN has had a long and troubled history. I first learned about them when I got involved in grassroots organizing at the beginning of the last decade. Shortly after I became an organizer, the local ACORN office was facing a strike from its own "organizers" (their term for canvassers). They complained that they were working in unsafe conditions and not being paid fair hourly wages.

The ugly situation peaked when ACORN strikers picketed outside the Seattle Labor Temple while ACORN management was attending coalition meetings inside. It all ended after a NLRB ruling, a large settlement for back pay, the firing and replacement of the local office's manager, and the personal involvement of Wade Rathke, ACORN's CEO ... oh, pardon me, Chief Organizer.

Rathke, of course, was the center of a much larger scandal in 2008. A firestorm erupted when it came to light that his brother, who was also on the salary of ACORN, had embezzled somewhere around a million dollars, or possibly more. (The true amount has never been publicly revealed, to the best of my knowledge.) Most companies, faced with a massive embezzlement, would call the FBI or the police. But not ACORN, and not with the incestuous nature of the crime. Instead, they buried the story. A funder (apparently Drummond Pike, leader of the Tides Foundation) paid off the debt to ACORN and made a hush-hush payment arrangement with the criminal Rathke brother. Only a select few board members ever knew about the secret, until the New York Times blew the whistle in July 2008.

Afterward, Rathke attempted to explain why he would try to hide something this outrageous. They - notably Rathke, the founder, CEO, and public face of ACORN - said that revealing the crime would put a "weapon" in the hands of its opponents. But the cover-up revealed something much worse - no one was watching the books at ACORN. They had failed the most basic test for nonprofits - they weren't keeping a close eye on their finances.

Funders notice when things like this happen, and they reacted swiftly to the news. By the fall of 2009, several major funders including the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Bank of America and JPMorgan had all ceased their longstanding support of ACORN. ACORN was sending out panicky fundraising letters with language like "We need your help to survive."

By the time the videos started surfacing, ACORN was already on the way down. O'Keefe was beating a dead horse. It's possible that ACORN's crippled position made it easier for O'Keefe to get into multiple office. But O'Keefe did not destroy ACORN.

Republicans have been trying to make the name ACORN toxic since at least 2004. James O'Keefe did some serious damage with his creatively edited videos and his wild stories. (Note that no crimes have ever been charged in connection with the videos, except against O'Keefe himself.) They were the final straw. But ACORN's back had been broken long before.

What actually brought it down was its own poor decisions and malfeasance. If you want to blame someone for the collapse of ACORN, blame its founder. Blame the man who became convinced that he could do no wrong, the man who created the house of cards and who blew it down. Wade Rathke built ACORN, and Wade Rathke deserves the blame for its collapse.

And it's a damn shame. ACORN has done some monumental work in its history: fights against payday loan sharks, predatory lenders, redlining, fights for affordable housing. They were a mighty force for good, but in the end, like so many great organizations, the hubris of its leader brought it low. If we are fortunate, other powerful nonprofits will step in to take on the work that ACORN is no longer able to do. We will not be better off without ACORN in the world.

Previously:

ACORN Falls (November 6, 2009)

Dragging ACORN Through the Mud (September 23, 2009)

ACORN: 1.3 Million New Voters? (October 27, 2008)

ACORN - Demons and Smokescreens (October 20, 2008)

ACORN Haters Gotta Hate (October 13, 2008)

ACORN in Chaos (September 11, 2008)

More ACORN Fallout (August 18, 2008)

More Thoughts about ACORN (July 14, 2008)

The Fall of ACORN (July 9, 2008)

Wade Rathke - This I Pretend to Believe (February 2007)

And the Universe Began to Fold in Upon Itself...

2010-03-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

Question from Oliver: "Is today part of next week?"

Freddy Update

2010-03-11T09:43:00.001-08:00

Oliver: "Last night Freddy killed 900 monsters. That's a lot!"

He explained that Freddy could make some kind of energy ball appear in his hand "and it can destroy monsters!" He told me the name of the ball, but I couldn't make it out. It was one of his nonsense words, I think, although it could have been a word learned from one of his friends at school. The concept sounds like something out of a cartoon - Dragonball Z or Pokemon? Sound familiar to anyone out there?

Monsters, Part Two: Good Monster Freddy

2010-03-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

Is this Freddy?

The Good Monster Freddy report today:

Today, Freddy is four. Tomorrow, he will be five. The next day, he will be six.

Fun fact about Freddy: he cannot jump. (No explanation given. Maybe he doesn't have knees?!)

~ ~ ~

One day, after months of imagining monsters in every closet and around every corner, Oliver started talking about one monster who had a name, Good Monster Freddy.

(One unusual note: we don't have any friends named Freddy. I don't even think we own any storybooks with a character named Freddy. I have no earthly idea where the name came from, but that was his name and it's stuck. We've never heard him give a name to any other monster. Freddy's the only one.)

He talks about Good Monster Freddy all the time. His invisible world of monsters has transformed into one invisible and constant companion.

Oliver lives a parallel life with Freddy. When he's eating, Freddy is eating, often an identical meal. When he's waking up, Freddy is either still in bed or he's been awake "for hours!" Freddy lives in his own world, and somehow, as if he had one of those Lost-type wormholes, Oliver can see right into it and narrate the goings-on.

Freddy often comes along with us on trips and errands. We've been informed that Freddy has a tiny car that drives right under our car. Sometimes, though, he rides in the back seat with Oliver. He eats snacks with Oliver, joins him for dinner, lays down at bedtime with Oliver. He's your classic invisible friend.

We have no idea what Freddy looks like. Some days, he's tiny. Some days, he's 100 feet tall and has fifty heads and 300 arms. We've never seen him. (Obviously. Duh.)

He also don't know how old he is, because that changes every day. The only rule that he's established is that Freddy is a different age every day, and that seems to be the constant. Some days, he's one hundred. Some days (as in today), he's four. Some days he's a baby monster, some days an adult monster.

The monster war is still going on, incidentally, but it all happens through the lens of Freddy. Some days, we'll get the report that the bad monsters killed Freddy's parents. The next day (forgetting the last day's massacre), he'll tell us that Freddy killed every bad monster and ate all their heads. It changes every day.

We learn new things about Freddy every day, and some of them are completely out of left field. I'll try to post new Freddy facts as they arrive, but he's already delivered so many that I can't remember. Freddy is essentially the proxy for Oliver's ever-expanding imagination. He's the launch pad for a thousand crazy stories and wild flights of fancy. It's a hilarious and absolutely charming development.

Some day, he's going to outgrow his friend Freddy. I'm going to really miss him when that day arrives. I kinda like the guy.

Monsters, Part 1: Good Monsters, Bad Monsters

2010-03-04T20:44:00.001-08:00

Our life is filled with monsters. Good monsters, bad monsters, nice monsters, mean monsters. They're everywhere. At least, they are to Oliver. He sees monsters everywhere he turns.

Monsters are a presence in most American kids' lives. They're in hundreds of books - from Maurice Sendak's Wild Things, to the weird creatures who inhabited Dr. Seuss' work, to modern classics like the Gruffalo (pictured above). They're just a presence, and it's small wonder that so many kids are fearful of monsters under the bed. They hear about monsters all the time - at some point, they just begin believing in them for reals.

When it started, Oliver had a typical kid's relationship to monsters: they were bad, they hid under beds and behind closet doors, and they were scary. I had a can of "monster spray" (a relabeled can of air freshener) that I would dutifully spray around his room when he thought there were monsters in there.

Then, the pattern changed. He started announcing that there were bad monsters, but that the good monsters were keeping them out of the house. I don't remember suggesting that good monsters were out there - that was all him.

And then, so gradually we didn't even notice it, the description of the monsters started getting - I don't know the right word. It started getting creative. Eccentric. Weird.

Maybe it was when he started telling us that he couldn't sleep because bad monsters were playing their instruments too loud. That's the first time I remember him getting really weird with the monster talk.

Eventually, monsters became his primary topic of conversation. Bad monsters were outside of the car, trying to pull him out of his car seat, but the good monsters wouldn't let them. Good monsters were constantly fighting with the bad monsters. Bad monsters wouldn't let him eat his food. Good monsters were directing traffic. He would talk about bad monsters who sped and disobeyed traffic rules, and the good monster police who would arrest them and put them in jail.

On some level, they were his version of angels and devils. There was a war being fought between mischievous entities - the bad monsters - and the ones who maintained order and goodness - the good monsters. He would report the skirmishes, but he was merely an observer to the battle. He couldn't change the results. He was just like Uatu, a watcher, permitted to observe but never to interfere.

He would wake up in the morning and be sad because a bad monster killed a good monster's mother. How do you placate someone who's mourning an invisible battle casualty?

He would announce the size of the opposing armies. There were a thousand good monsters, ten million bad monsters. The next day, there were five million good monsters and only a hundred bad monsters. It changed every day. Some days, he would tell us that all the bad monsters all died. The next day, it would change.

He rewrote the rules every day because, after all, it was his war. He remade the conflict every day and adjusted the players as he saw fit, like any good writer would. He would add tension, draw battle lines, create a heartbreaking loss, a triumphant victory. The only constant was the monsters. Whatever the numbers were, whatever was happening, wherever the fight was being waged, there were always good monsters and bad monsters.

And then one day, he introduced us to Freddy.

(to be continued...)

A Rough Night

2010-02-28T10:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Oliver had a multiple-meltdown afternoon. We went shopping around 4 and stopped in a Barnes & Noble for coffee and cookies. He got completely wild after that (he wanted to go to the kid's section of the bookstore and we didn't have time to go there) and threw himself on the ground. I picked him up and he hit me. Several times, about the head and the neck. He also tried to pinch me in the neck, which he knows drives me crazy and also hurts!

I sat him down on the sidewalk for a timeout. After a few minutes, I asked him if he was able to control himself. He said, no. So I picked him up and brought him to the car.

He tried to blame it on the sugar. "The sugar made me act bad." We told him, angrily, that he's in charge of his own body and nobody makes him behave badly except himself. He was silent after that. I could just feel him fuming in the back seat.

We were planning to go out for dinner, but we told him that we might have to cancel our plans because of his behavior. Meltdown. Timeout. A few minutes later, meltdown again. More hitting. More timeouts.

After some discussion amongst ourselves, we decided to cancel going out to dinner. Which was punishing ourselves, really, but it's awful going out to dinner when he's being wild and uncontrollable. Plus, we wanted him to see hard consequences of his bad behavior. He needs to see that sometimes, just saying he's sorry doesn't fix everything. So we told him about our decision and of course, he melted down again. Wild sobbing, more hitting, more crying, more throwing of things.

It lasted all the way until bedtime, when he hit me on the way into the bedroom. He went to bed by himself for the first time in forever. (Which caused him to whine, "I want somebody to snuggle up with me!" It was a pretty drastic punishment, in his mind. One of us always lays down with him at bedtime.) Sigh.

And then at 3 am, Mrs. B started puking. She's got a nasty stomach bug and a fever to boot. She's upchucked a couple more times and she's been in bed all day. (it's 10:30 Seattle time, and she's still in bed.) So it's just been me and Oliver together all morning while she recovers.

Good news is that Oliver's behaving much better today. But there's no way in hell I'm dragging my poor pukey wife out to dinner tonight.

An Open Letter to NBC

2010-02-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

Dear NBC Programming Geniuses,

I live in Seattle, less than three hours away from the site of the 2010 Olympics. Yet I cannot watch the Olympics events live - most of the major events appear to be tape delayed. I could read news stories, Tweets, blog posts and Facebook reports about the opening ceremonies, and even watch video highlights - but I couldn't see it in my own home on my own television until three hours after it had already happened.

You have ruined the Olympics for me. I intended to make this an opportunity to share the joy of the Olympics Games with my son. But the opening ceremonies, which started at our traditional dinner time, were tape delayed until after our son had gone to bed! So instead of sitting around the television that night, watching the opening ceremonies unfold, I was forced to record it with TiVo and show it to him the day after. The Olympics are no longer a family event for us. Thanks, NBC.

And then there's the constant irritation of watching events hours after they happen. By the time I saw Apolo Ohno win his silver medal, I already knew how the race was going to play out, thanks to the internet. Do you people not know that the internet exists?! There is no suspense, no drama, no excitement. Why watch, when I can just watch the highlights on YouTube?

Do you see what you have done? You have ruined the entire concept of the Olympics as a must-see event? You're killing your audience. I don't even feel compelled to watch the coverage at night - I can just scan the internet and find out what happened. By delaying the coverage, you're destroying the reason we watch. Your asinine decision has made me see the Olympics as a giant inconvenience, not a worldwide spectacle. I think more about NBC's terrible programming decisions than I do about the actual competition of the Olympics.

I have been watching the Olympics with my family since I was seven years old. You have successfully ruined a family tradition for me, and ruined my love of the Olympics games by making them inconvenient and pointless to watch. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

Disgustedly Yours,

Sky Bluesky
Seattle, WA

300

2010-02-06T20:45:00.001-08:00

It's a small thing, but I'll share it nonetheless. I just broke 300 calories burned on our elliptical machine.

No, wait a second. It's not a small thing. This is kind of a big deal.

We have an elliptical machine in our house. (It's this one, if you're curious. It's fantastic, and also has a relatively small footprint in our office.)

When we first got it, my goal was to use it two or three times a week. It typically was, like, once a week. Twice if I remembered. There was too much to do, tv shows to watch, books to read, dessert to eat. I kept not doing it. I kept finding excuses not to.

And also (cue whining), it was hard! I was out of shape. I had asthma. My legs weren't used to exercise. When I started, I could only do twenty minutes. Sometimes, I would have to stop because I was gasping for air, even with regular pulls from my albuterol inhaler.

But I got stronger. Twenty turned into twenty-five, and twenty-five turned into thirty.

Then thirty started feeling easy. I could burn through thirty minutes fairly effortlessly. Now, I'm doing forty minutes and ... well, I'm not going to say I don't break a sweat, because I sweat like John Edwards in a room full of videographers. But I can do it, and I can do it comfortably.

What's also different is that I want to get on the elliptical now. Every other night, Mrs. B puts Oliver to bed, and those are the nights I work out. That means three or four times a week, and that's happening every single week. Last week, I hopped on the machine four times for an hour and 45 minutes total, and burned 762 calories. One recent week, I did two hours and twenty minutes on the machine, and burned over 1000 calories.

It's a routine. It's something I look forward to, not something I'm avoiding at all costs. I like that. It's a good feeling.

Remembering Jane

2010-01-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

Jane was here.

May her strength and courage live on in all of us.

A Series of Observations

2010-01-26T07:50:00.000-08:00

This morning's conversation with Oliver:

Oliver: "Daddy, monsters spin around all the time. And they never get dizzy. They get hungry!"

Me: "Oh, really. Why?"

O: "They get hungry because they don't have any tomatoes in their tomato soup. So they eat and eat and they get hungrier."

Me: "Oh."

O: "Daddy, did you know that monsters eat tomato soup all the time? It falls out of the sky!"

Me: "It falls out of the sky?"

O: "Yeah. That's why their houses don't have roofs. And did you know that they have tomato soup machines that catch the soup and put into cans?"

Me: "I didn't know that."

O: "They do. Good Monster Freddy's house is a tomato soup factory."

_________________________________________________

A few thoughts. Feel free to ignore this if you just want to enjoy the cuteness without explanation:

He's been talking about monsters all the time. More on that later. He has an imaginary friend called Good Monster Freddy who he talks about all the time.

The idea of soup falling out of the sky, obviously, comes from the story Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which I don't think we've read in a couple of months. He's read the story dozens of times, but we haven't seen the movie yet and I'm worried I'll hate the movie because I like the book so much.

We also just read The Phantom Toolbooth, which I think is where the idea comes that you keep eating soup and keep getting hungrier. Remember the Subtraction Soup?

He loves making up wild stories and presenting them to me with "did you know?" It's as if he has this whole secret history of the world, and he keeps quizzing me on it to see if I know as much about it as he does.

Neutral Milk Hotel

2010-01-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

I'm listening to Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea for the first time. Ye gods, this is such a strange and remakable album. I've been hearing for years that this is one of the classic albums of the 1990's, and yet it's such an odd, eccentric thing. The horns are mad, the music goes all fuzzy and out-of-focus at times, there's a singing saw, and the lead singer has this braying, barely musical voice.

It's fantastic.

It's an addictive album. It's such a guileless, unapologetic work. There's a very clear line of influence between this album and bands like Arcade Fire, Okkervil River, Beirut, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Decemberists, maybe even Wilco. That much is obvious. This is a touchstone of so much of today's indie rock.

What a great album. It's a shame it took me a decade to give it a try.

A Milestone

2010-01-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

I weighed in this morning at 199 pounds. Woo hoo!!!

I broke out in a big grin when I saw that first digit "1" on the scale. I'm under 200. That's big. I don't really know the last time I've been under 200.

I've lost, officially, 11 pounds since I purchased a scale. Unofficially, I've probably lost at least 20 pounds since I started this whole endeavor.

My pants are much looser. My shirts don't have that obnoxious bulge at the waistline anymore. It's definitely noticeable - my wife's commented on it a couple of times.

My secrets so far are pretty simple. I log every single bit of food I stick in my mouth. I work out on the elliptical at least 30 minutes, at least four times a week. Every morning I remember, I do 10 pushups and 20 situps. (I did 15 pushups this morning. It doesn't seem like much, but it's a big step.) I've also started doing some very mild weight lifting with our puny little 5 lb. barbells.

The other big support is my beloved wife. Mrs. B is also cutting back and she's lost ten pounds so far. It's so much easier with us both doing it - we can compare notes on foods and check in on each other when we haven't been exercising. Our conversations have gotten rather odd in restaurants, though. We both tend to whip our iPod touches (she has one, too) and start comparing calories in all of the dinner entrees, trying to find the one that's the leanest and most appetizing.

I made my spaghetti sauce the other day with turkey sausage. We bought small baguettes and roasted garlic instead of buying the premade buttery garlic bread. We've been eating more meatless meals, more lean meals. It helps a lot, being able to share the burden and the successes.

My original goal was to lose 30 pounds. That's going to happen in the next couple of months.

When that happens, I'll see how I feel and how much farther I want to go. But for right now, I'm celebrating.

Ten Years Ago...

2009-12-31T22:18:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago...

I had just declared bankruptcy. Moved in with my brother because I had nowhere else to go. I had just gotten a new job which was going really well - my first year in the nonprofit world.

I can't remember exactly what I was doing, but I think my brother and I just stayed in and watched the fireworks on tv. Or else I had gone somewhere to sing karaoke with a bunch of drunken strangers for New Year's, hoping to get lucky.

The WTO protests had just happened in Seattle, and everyone was feeling a little edgy. Seattle's New Year's celebrations were scaled dramatically. The fireworks went off as planned, but Seattle Center was shut down to the public. Some guy named Ahmed Ressam had been caught smuggling explosives on a ferry into Washington State, and he said he was planning to blow up LAX.

What a difference a decade makes. Happy New Year to all of my beloved readers.

Albums of the Year - 2009

2009-12-31T05:49:00.001-08:00

It's the end of the year, so let's do a frigging list!

Sometime, if I get around to it next week, I may put together a list of my favorite albums of the decade. But for now, here's my fave albums of two-diggity-diggity-nine. In no particular order. (That's not really true.)

It's an idiosyncratic list. It's only the albums I actually heard. So while some people thought Grizzly Bear or Animal Collective or Pearl Jam or the Dirty Projectors produced the best album of the year, I never got to hear them all the way through. So I can't judge. (To be fair, the Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective were two bands that I chose not to check out. They weirded me out a little bit.)

Now that I said that, I'm going to break my own rule with the first selection. That being:

Lady Gaga - the Fame Monster

I started the year not knowing who this woman was, and ended up the year fascinated by her. I haven't heard half of this album. Doesn't matter. Lady Gaga is one of the strangest and most interesting people in music today.

Wilco - Wilco (the Album)

Predictable, sure. (After all, they did borrow my name for their previous album.) But I really loved this album. They continue to produce sweet, introspective songs like "One Wing" and "You and I", and added some new classics like "You Never Know" and "I'll Fight." A great album, all the way through.

St. Vincent - Actor

This was such a delightful surprise for me. The combination of those lovely orchestral flourishes and snarling, scuzzy guitar really won me over. Saw her on Austin City Limits, and it did absolutely nothing to remove my crush on Annie Clark.

Taken by Trees -
East of Eden

Another surprise. Waif-like singer goes to Pakistan and ... what? Devours Pakistani music in a Graceland-like colonization? Tosses her vocals onto someone else's music like Jay-Z did with that Panjabi MC song? (Which I love, for the record.) No, instead this is a glorious merging of beautiful songs and sublime instrumentation. A gorgeous merging of styles.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis - Kitty, Daisy & Lewis

Thanks to TBTL for turning me on to this album. It's pure, old-timey fun music, full of old novelty songs and slide guitars and harmonica and hand clap percussion. Love this one.

thenewno2 - You Are Here

This was a real surprise for me. I listened to it because Dhani Harrison was on Sound Opinions. I was intrigued by the sound of the music, picked up the album, and loved it. It's right in that sweet spot between rock and electronica. Memorable songs, interesting and unexpected hooks. A band to watch.

Lunch Money - Dizzy!

That's right, I put a kid's album on the list. Lunch Money is completely awesome. They write effortlessly hooky songs that your kid can sing and will cause him/her to jump around the house like a maniac. Any band that sings out loud about how much they love their library gets my vote.

Seriously, go listen to these guys. Go listen to "Tiny Dinosaurs" or "I Love My Library" or "It Only Takes One Night to Make a Balloon Your Friend" and see if you're not grinning. I love Lunch Money.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

Metric - Fantasies

"Help I'm Alive" and "Sick Muse" were probably some of my most-played songs this year.

Passion Pit - Manners

Dark Was the Night - Various Artists

Biggest disappointment of the year: Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

I loved American Idiot, and I wanted so badly to love this album. But I've listened to it a couple of times and just gotten bored by it. They took all the wrong lessons from American Idiot. It sounds like show tunes and Hot Topic faux punkrawk and has the whiff of desperation. Omigod, we have a niche! Quick, let's plug something else into the niche before someone else does it! Sorry guys, I ain't buying it.

Books for Dads

2009-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

I was asked recently if I knew any good storybooks for kids that involved dads. It's a much harder question than you would think.

Fathers are given the short end of the stick in kid's books. Often, mothers are the only parent in sight, and fathers don't even exist in the book. Moms cook the dinner, moms play with their kids, moms tuck in their child at night. Where's dad? Oh, he must be working.

Sadly, when fathers are a part of the book, they're often portrayed as pathetically as they are in sitcoms: bumbling, disinterested, or just not involved at all. Look at the Olivia books, just for one example. What does dad ever do in those books besides read a newspaper?

Or else, they're about dads working. There are an amazing number of books out there that feature dads, but the story involves dad going away for a business trip and how much the kids will miss daddy when he's gone. So we're present in our absence.

And then there's all the divorced dad books - "Weekend with Daddy"-type stories. And I'm not complaining, because for all the dads out there in that situation, it's great for them to have something that reflects their reality. But there's not enough books that reflect the other reality - real fathers, as a part of the daily routine in the house just like moms are.

But there are a number of books that show dads in a positive light. I especially love finding books where dads are the caretakers - we tuck our kids in at night, we solve problems, we comfort our kids when they're upset. Because that's what we do, in real life, all the time. Here's a partial list of my favorites, along with suggestions I've gotten from friends. I can't vouch for all the books, but I wanted to provide the longest list possible. Let me know about your favorite books about dads in the comments, and I'll keep the list going.

Night Driving, by John Coy and Peter McCarty. This is my #1 favorite book about dads. It's the story of a boy and his dad driving cross-country at night. The pictures are beautiful and the bond between the father and son is really touching.

Other suggestions:

Owl Moon - Jane Yolen
The Ice Palace - Deborah Blumenthal
Baby Brains (and the other related Baby Brains books) - Simon James
The Gruffalo's Child (okay, it's about a monster and his dad, but that
counts, right?) - Julia Donaldson
Daddies are for Catching Fireflies - Harriet Ziefert
Daddy Makes the Best Spaghetti - Anna Grossnickle Hines
The Angelina Ballerina books
The Lilly the Mouse books - Kevin Henkes (Henkes always does a great
job giving dads and moms equal time)
Enemy Pie - Derek Munson (another great bonding book about dads and sons)
Born in the Gravy - Denys Cazet
The Summer My Father was Ten - Pat Brisson
Kevin and His Dad - Irene Smalls
Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl (probably for older
kids)
If I Were Your Father - Margaret Park Bridges
The Trumpet and the Swan - E.B. White
Horton Hears a Who and Horton Hatches the Egg - Dr. Seuss (not about dads exactly, but Horton = nurturing male role model)
Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too (where the dads walk their kids to school, and they end up saving the day!)

This is meant to be a partial list. Tell me in the comments about the books I missed. What are your favorite books featuring real dads?

More suggestions from readers:

Two Old Potatoes and Me (suggested by the author himself, John Coy!)

"Two Old Potatoes and Me is the story of a girl and her father planting potatoes and I think you'd enjoy both the story and the art."

On Our Way Home - suggested by anonymous commenter

"An outstanding book about a little bear and his Daddy on a hike. No mentions of absence or anything other than special time with Dad. For a bonus, Daddy tucks the little bear in at the end."

Some Dogs Do - suggested by JustineR

"'Some Dogs Do' is about a little dog who has a bad day, and his father is the comforting one. Mother dog doesn't even have a speaking role."

A Christmas Present to Remember

2009-12-20T19:44:00.000-08:00

I have to share the amazing feat I just witnessed.

Oliver got a lovely present from his grandmother - a copy of "The Night Before Christmas." It's one of those books that Hallmark sells where you can record your own voice reading the book. It's pretty clever. The pages all have sensors on them, so every time you turn the page, her voice begins reading the words on the page.

And he loves it. He's listened to it probably a dozen times in the last two days, over and over again. And one time, we saw him listening to it, and we noticed something interesting. After grandma was done reading her page, he would repeat everything she just said, word for word.

So tonight, he listened to it one more time as his bedtime story. And then he had me read it. But here's what happened. He started reciting the story along with me, so I started reading lines and then stopping to let him finish the line.

And then he took over. He started reciting the poem from the names of the reindeer - "On Dasher! On Dancer!" - all the way to the end, on his own. I didn't have to prompt him once. We just watched him, jaws hanging open, while he delivered the entire poem all the way to the end. All I could do was turn the pages, one by one, and stare at him. He didn't skip a single word.

That is a complicated poem, full of long sentences and quirky words. And he just rolled right through it, like he was doing Mary Had a Little Lamb. It was one of the most astonishing things I have ever seen.

Toasted Marshmallow Confusion

2009-12-16T12:20:00.000-08:00

I ordered a vanilla latte, and the guy obviously grabbed the wrong bottle of syrup. So I ended up unexpectedly with a toasted marshmallow latte.

The taste was at once bewildering - delightfully pleasurable, and completely disarming at the same time. Every time I took a sip, my mouth would react like "Mmmmm. Wait, what the hell is going on here?" The flavor was that cottony delicious sugar rush of marshmallow, with just a hint of charcoal and caramelization. It was a strong enough flavor to completely overwhelm the taste of coffee. I don't know what kind of chemicals they put into that syrup to generate those sensations, but it's amazingly lifelike.

Drinking a toasted marshmallow out of a cup feels completely wrong to the senses. It's like petting a shadow on the head, or tucking a sunbeam under your pillow, or listening to the pages of a book.

That being said, it was delicious.

Workout Playlist - Dec. 6, 2009

2009-12-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

A brutal workout today. I recently created a 40-minute routine on the elliptical machine, which might not sound like a lot to you hardcore workouty types. But it's absolutely punishing to me. And at the same time, incredibly satisfying. I'm dripping with sweat and endorphins right now.

Anyway, the playlist today was just fantastic.

Open Letter (to a Landlord) - Living Colour

Cult of Personality - Living Colour

Innervision - System of a Down

Zero - Smashing Pumpkins

Ashes in the Fall - Rage Against the Machine

Bonzo Goes to Bitburg - Ramones

Break the Grip of Shame - Paris

Date with the Night - Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Loud, crushing old-school rawk music full of roaring guitars and screaming vocals. The two exceptions were hip hop songs that both hit like a punch to the jaw. The Kanye song is the perfect right-in-your face song, one of his best. Jagged samples and a weaving, swaggering delivery by Kanye. And that Paris song is just perfection. Great flow, military-precision scratching, relentless beat. One of the greatest rap songs produced in the '80s, maybe ever.

Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher

2009-12-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

I know very little about this case. I have avoided stories of this story feverishly, even though it is a story that touches many of my neighbors. Even though the accused lives in the same city, the same neighborhood, as my family. However, I feel called to talk about it because it is so close to home, literally and figuratively.

I have avoided this story the way I avoid all stories of murder: gruesome murder, celebrity murder, exploitative stories about murder, tragic stories about murder. I avoid these stories. I don't watch movies that talk cavalierly about murder, or movies like Pulp Fiction that use dead bodies as a punch line. I wince at the way murder is treated in this country, and especially in the news.

So I did not seek out and I do not wish to know more about the Amanda Knox story: about her alibi, her claims of innocence. I do not wish to hear the cries from her family that she could not possibly have done something like this. I do not want to know. I don't follow murder stories.

My brother was murdered fourteen years ago, you see. (Some of my longtime readers have heard me talk about this before.) We found out weeks after it had happened. They found my father's address in his personal effects and were able to track him down, and they called him to identify the body of his son.

One of the killers was found and arrested, years later. He went to trial. I was asked to attend as a witness. I saw photos of my brother's body, taken at the morgue, depicting the blows that ended his life. I saw the evidence of what had been done to him. I saw these things and I wish that I never had.

I saw the man who was accused of murdering my brother. I heard the prosecutor and a witness to the crime describe the things that had been done to end my brother's life. I heard his attorney offer alibis, explanations, reasons why their client could not possibly have done these horrible things.

I met his family, the murderer's family. They couldn't understand how such a mistake could have happened. They were upset, angry, confused, and they know their son was innocent. They just knew it. He wasn't that kind of person.

He was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and was sentenced to life in prison. I have not seen him since that trial and I don't know if I will ever see his face again, except in my dreams, except when I want to think about my brother and instead, I see the ruddy face of the man who took his life.

So no, I don't want to know more about Amanda Knox' situation. I don't want to know the holes in the prosecution's case. I don't want to know the alternative theories of how the murder transpired. It's not that I dislike Ms. Knox or that I've prejudged her. I just don't want to know any more. I can't do it. I choose to just close my eyes and let the system do its job.

I know this, however. I know that Italy is a nation of laws, a nation with a legitimate government. I know that Knox' trial was not conducted by reading goat entrails or casting runes. I know that her trial was carried out in a legitimate court. And if the jury said that she was guilty, then I have to believe that she was guilty. A person was murdered. Meredith Kercher's family deserves justice. I will not, I dare not question the judgment of that Italian jury. It is not my right. None of us has that right except the judge and the men and women who made up that jury. That's how it works.

I believe that the jury who convicted my brother's murder carried out their role and meted out justice. I believe that the jury who convicted Amanda Knox did the same. I have to believe that. There are so many murders in this country and around the world that go unsolved, their perpetrators left to roam free, the families of the victims left with gaping wounds in their hearts. I have to believe that justice was carried out here, and I do believe that. It is disrespectful to Meredith Kercher's family, to that jury, and to the entire country of Italy to claim otherwise.

And that's all I can say about that.

And so it begins...

2009-12-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

I bought a scale. Yep, finally.

So you're probably wondering - how do I know I'm overweight if I don't own a scale? What was all this sturm-und-dranging about if I don't even know how much I weigh?

I didn't owned a scale for ten years, until now. The truth is that I was relying on doctor's scales, which of course means I was being weighed with clothes on. And my big ol' clodhopper shoes, which probably weigh two pounds each. But still, I was weighing in 10-15 pounds heavier than I had ever been before, even in a doctor's office, even with all my clothes on.

So I bought a scale so that I could actually weigh myself daily and measure my progress. Now I have an actual baseline of where I'm at and how far I need to go.

And like I'm said, I'm serious about this. So I'm 'fessing up right here. This morning, I weighed myself first thing in the morning, right before hopping into the shower.

My actual verified weight, as of 6:00 this morning, was ...

ulp ...

210 pounds.

I want to get down to 190. That's twenty pounds by next June.

My original goal was to lose 30 pounds, back when I thought I weighed more than I did. I'm going to see how quickly I can shed the first 20, and I'll see if I want to go for the extra ten.

___________________________________________

I realize I've started this diet, or whatever, at the worst possible time - right during the overeating holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was relatively good during Thanksgiving, largely aided by the fact that I was sick as a dog with a chest cold. But I was careful with the turkey, doled out my portions and weighed them dutifully on our little kitchen scale, and plugged them into my LoseIt app. At the end of the day, I only went over my goal by only 75 calories. I considered that a good day.

I was under for the week of Thanksgiving by over 400 calories, and that's pretty good. Again, I was sick, but I'll take it. Progress is progress.

Hatters Gotta Hat

2009-11-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

I just got a comment on an old blog post. I wrote a smart-alecky post about some clown driving around with a "Hustler" bumper sticker. The commenter wrote - and let me quote here -

Don't be a hatter

A hatter? I'm not supposed to be a hatter? I thought he was making some kind of tricky allusion to "Alice in Wonderland," and then I realized what he was saying. He misspelled "hater."

So I'm not supposed to be a hater. This word gets thrown around all the time - don't be a hater, don't hate, why you gotta hate on blah blah blobbity blah. If you don't like a tv show, you're a hater. If you don't like a song by Katy Perry, you're hating on her. If you don't like someone's outfit, someone's music, someone's style, a book, a movie, a car, what-the-fuck-ever, you're a hater.

Well, okay then. Screw it. I'm a hater.

I hate dumbass people who drive around with "Hustler" bumper stickers, because Hustler was a sleazy porno mag long before it was some kind of euphemism for "hard-working entrepreneur." Anyone stupid enough to wear a "Hustler" bumper sticker is not a hustler, they're probably just some douchebag who picked up the bumper sticker while they were picking up their Recommended Daily Allowance of Cheetos and beer at the local Circle K. If you're a hustler, you don't have to say it. People know.

While we're at it, I hate the term "hustler" in general. The term got popular because of hip hop songs as a way of saying "someone doing whatever they need to do to survive." Most of the time, that means - at least, in the songs' worldview - selling drugs, doing petty crime, robberies, pimping, etc. That's what a hustler means.

I don't want to be a hustler. I want to be someone who works hard. I don't call myself a hustler, and I sure as fuck don't call myself a pimp.

I hate that "pimp" has become a compliment. Pimps are criminals. Pimps are not to be looked up to. And I'm going to just guess here, but I'd bet 99.9% of the people who call themselves pimps (read: white kids who listen to rap) have even never seen a pimp outside of a music video or a movie screen.

Other Things to Hate:

I hate stupidity.

I hate that I get breaking news alerts about people whose only fame comes from being in a reality show.

I hate bad grammar. Even on Twitter. Even on Facebook. Hate it.

I hate people who don't take the time to proofread a four-word post.

I hate. I'm a hater. Everyone hates something, and that doesn't make you a hater. It makes you human.

This Time, For Real

2009-11-14T21:28:00.001-08:00

I weigh more than I've ever weighed in my life. I can no longer accept this. I've got to get serious about losing weight.

I've made some half-hearted, haphazard attempts to lose weight in the past. I've never taken it seriously before. Not really.

I exercise, when I think of it. We own an elliptical machine, so I don't even to go down to a health club to exercise. But I only use it about once a week. Twice a week, on a good week. When I feel like it. When it doesn't feel like too much of a hassle to get up off the couch.

I've pretended to watch my portions before, but not really. I'll skimp at lunch, only to serve myself an extra scoop of ice cream on dessert. I'll open a bag of tortilla chips and just eat handful after handful, not even thinking about how many calories I'm cramming in my mouth. One handful just leads to another, and then another.

I eat seconds for dinner, just about every night. I finish the leftovers on Oliver's plate. If there's an extra spoonful of mashed potatoes in the pan, I'll finish it off.

I went to the doctor last week for a freak injury. They took my weight, and I discovered I'm twenty pounds heavier than what's listed on my driver's license.

I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect that. I thought I'd been watching what I eat. I thought I was doing all right. I was wrong.

And the thing is, I knew it. I'd been denying the truth even as it stared me straight in the face. I've gained weight around my waist. A noticeable amount of weight. I can't fit into pants I wore a year ago. I had to buy new pants in a larger size when I went back to work in August. There are few things more humiliating than realizing, while buying pants, that you are no longer the size that you thought you were.

I have more asthma flareups now. There's a connection. I'm carrying too much weight. I'm having pain in my feet now. There might be a connection there, too.

I can't chase Oliver around the park for ten minutes without getting winded. I HATE that.

So I'm getting serious now. I'm using a program on my iPod touch called LoseIt! to track my daily calories and what I'm burning from exercise. (That has been a fascinating and humbling experience. More on that soon.)

I've worked out on the elliptical twice in the last three days. I started a small additional exercise routine - situps and pushups every morning. Right now, it's only ten of each, and I'm sure that I look awful doing them. But it's something. It's a start.

I want to lose thirty pounds by next summer. I'm not going to post my weight here, in order to preserve a bit of my dignity. But that's my goal. Thirty pounds, a pound a week. (And no, I don't own a scale. I'll take care of that soon.)

I'll keep you posted as to my progress on this blog. If I go more than a week without talking about it, remind me. This is serious this time. I have to get myself down to a dignified weight. I have to do this, for my sake, for my health, for Oliver and for Mrs. B. I have to do this.

The Smoking Gun

2009-11-10T16:43:00.000-08:00

Guy shoots up Fort Hood in Texas. Kills 13, wounds 30 more. How could we have possibly prevented this? Was it caused by depression? Anti-military fervor? He's a Muslim - was he a terrorist? (You know how those people are.)

How could we have stopped this?

The next day, a shooting in Florida. One dead, five injured in a highrise building. Oh, but this is totally unrelated to the Texas shootings. That was a military base, this was in a place of business. No connection whatsoever.

Last week, a police officer was shot and killed here in Seattle, shot in his own police car. But undoubtedly, it was unrelated to the other shootings. Different place, different motive. No connection whatsoever.

Yesterday, there was a shooting in the town where my wife works. Attempted murder-suicide, according to news reports. But of course, that had nothing at all to with the other shootings. No connection whatsoever.

Tonight, a man will be executed for committing a series of high-profile shootings in the Washington D.C. area. Any connection to the other crimes? Oh no, of course not. This was a serial killer, a psychopath, totally unpredictable. His crime was an aberration.

There's no connection at all.

Bullshit.

Here's the pattern that I see. Shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, and another shooting. The connection is guns. The connection is unmistakeable, unavoidable, and undeniable.

On the day that the Fort Hood shooting occurred, dozens of other shootings also happened and most of them never even made the news. Shootings in this country are an epidemic, and we're so inured to them that all we do is shake our heads when another one happens. What a shame, we say. Another senseless crime. Another unstoppable crime. We throw up our hands - what can you do?

Here's what you can do. You can call your member of Congress, call your city council, call your town's mayor. Ask them what they're doing to reduce gun violence, and make them get specific. Call the president and tell him to make gun violence a priority.

What can we do about it? Support sensible gun laws in your state and in federal law, like closing the gun show loophole.

What can we do? Support local organizations that are fighting the scourge of guns (we have a great local organization called Washington Ceasefire), or support the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Don't just turn your head. One hundred thousand people are shot in this country each year, and over ten thousand people every year die from gun violence. Our children, our neighbors, our families are all suffering from this plague. According to the Center for Disease Control's Leading Causes of Death Reports, from age birth until age 65 firearms are consistently among the top ten leading causes of death in our communities. And among our young people aged 15-24 firearms rank in the top three leading causes of death. Firearms take twice as many lives as AIDS does each year. (Thanks to the Brady Campaign and Washington CeaseFire for the statistics.)

These are preventable crimes, but we have to be brave enough to fight in order to prevent them.

ACORN Falls

2009-11-06T22:38:00.000-08:00

“This is an investigation of everything — Acorn, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities,” said David Caldwell, an assistant attorney general.

ACORN's offices in Louisiana are being raided as I write this. ACORN is going up in flames, and this time, it's for the right reason.

No, I'm not talking about Encyclopedia Brown the pimp and his sorry-ass Saved by the Bell reject wannabe hooker buddy.

The videotapes are bullshit, and you can quote me on that. They're preposterous, hucksterism, pointless, juvenile. This investigation is about the epic mismanagement of a national organization. And I believe it's the right investigation, for the right reasons.

They're targeting the embezzlement of around $1 million - maybe as high as $5 million, according to reports I've read - by the brother of ACORN's founder, Wade Rathke. ACORN has had a problem for a while, apparently, and only the publicizing of the crime made it clear how completely screwed up the organization was.

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that having one guy with as much power as Wade Rathke had was a situation bound to lead to disaster. He was clearly getting involved in things without the knowledge of the board. (Why do I say that? Most of the board's members didn't even know about the embezzlement - or the secret "settlement" - until years after the fact. Years.) When all power is consolidated in the hands of one person, and when that person stops believing he has to be accountable to anyone - funders, board members, other officers - then trouble is bound to happen.

Then, just think about the fact that his brother was working high up in the organization as well, and had access to the organization's bank accounts. Recipe for disaster, I'm telling you.

ACORN's trying to set its house in order, but there have been years and years of damage that they have to undo. The embezzlement happened in 1999 and 2000. This was hidden for eight years. Now they're being investigated for tax fraud, and the investigators are also trying to determine how much money was actually embezzled. Remember, ACORN was a tax-exempt organization, run largely on individual contributions and foundation support. They were operating for the public's benefit. When you steal from a nonprofit, you are stealing from the public. In ACORN's case, Dale Rathke was effectively stealing from the very low-income families that they were trying to help.

ACORN's funding is drying up. Foundations don't want to touch them with a ten-foot pole until they can be absolutely certain that their money is going to be handled correctly. This is what should happen. This is the natural repercussion of their poor management.

And now they're being investigated by the state of Louisiana - again, not because of the pimptastic videotapes, but because of their outrageous financial mismanagement. Maybe the organization will be able to answer all of the questions and sever themselves of the taint of Rathke's leadership. Maybe they'll survive this, maybe they won't. But at least this time, the questions that are being asked are the right questions.

Don't Hit!

2009-10-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

Parenting is hard.

There's so much I want to be excited about. So much I want to talk about here. His speech has taken remarkable leaps in the last few months. His focus is amazing. We can sit down and read twenty, thirty, forty pages of a book and he just sits, enraptured. And his dexterity, his confidence in his body, are growing every day.

But I need to get this out of my system.

Yesterday, Oliver hit Mrs. B today in the face. Not bad enough to leave a mark or draw blood, but still - he hit her in the face.

He had already done something else that was not allowed, and she was trying to bring him into his bedroom for a time-out. And that's when he smacked her in the face.

Earlier in the day, he also threw a shoe at her.

This isn't the first time he's hit one of us, and it's getting more and more frequent. He's getting more physical with his displeasure about things - kicking at us, throwing things, hitting. I see a glint of pleasure in his eyes sometimes when he's trying to hit me and I'm telling him to stop.

When he's angry, I've talked to him about throwing stuffed animals or hitting pillows, like you're supposed to, but he always seems to end up throwing something hard and usually in the direction of one of us.

Time outs don't seem especially effective, mostly because it's so damn hard to get him into his bedroom for a time out and usually he tries to hit or kick again. We're trying to adjust things a little bit. Our previous routine was that with time outs, we'd just put him in his room until he calmed down, give him a chance to apologize, and then let him come out. We've been looking at one of the Love and Logic books and changing our routine a bit. Following the book's suggestion, we're going to start having him sit for a few extra minutes in his room just to make sure he's completely calmed down before he comes out. It also seems like it's in the spirit of what I understand time outs to be: a change in the energy of the situation.

I hope this is just one of those things he has to go through, because right now, this sucks.

The Things He Says: Getting Runny-Aroundy with It

2009-10-08T17:56:00.000-07:00

The boy has been coming up with some hilarious turns of phrase lately. None of this will be interesting to anyone who has a kid, and then it will only be entertaining once you realize the kid is only four. Or hell, maybe it's not entertaining to anyone but me. Tough cookies.

Here's a few examples of his verbage:

~~~~~

I was at home with Oliver one day, and I was playing Living Colour. (What?)

Oliver loved it. He started dancing and running around the living room like a maniac. I commented: "I forgot what great dancing music this is. Do you think it's good dancey music, Oliver?"

Oliver: "Uh huh. And runny-aroundy music, too."

And then he commenced to run around the place some more.

~~~~~

He was describing a story that someone was reading at his school. I asked innocently, "Oh, was one of your teachers reading the story?"

"No, someone interesting."

~~~~~

This morning, he was trying carefully to craft a prepositional phrase. You could practically hear him diagramming the sentence in his head.

"By watching you guys..."

Long pause. Then he tried again.

"By watching you guys do it, I think I know how to button my buttons."

It seems like such a small phrase, but it was just so great to see him carefully put the sentence together in his head, and then try and recite what was in his head. He really wanted to say it exactly right.

The Roman Polanski Purge

2009-09-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

In which I vomit out all of my feelings about Roman Polanski, in hopes that I never have to think about him again.

I don't give a rat's ass about Roman Polanski. I have no stake in this battle. I've seen one or two of his movies, yeah yeah. He's done some stuff.

But this is about a crime that he committed. I'm not going to go into detail about what he did, because there are extremely graphic details about it all over the internet. You can find the details if you want them.

My problem with the whole Roman Polanski discussion is that there's a couple of points that are being completely ignored. So here's my attempt to correct the record.

Point #1 - This is not about whether Polanski is guilty. It's about him fleeing the country.

There is no question about whether Polanski is guilty of a crime, so quit with all the cute dithering about how it wasn't rape-rape and the age of consent in California. Polanski pled guilty in a court to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. By his own words, he is guilty.

Because of some stuff that happened between the judge and the prosecuting attorney, Polanski thought his plea bargain might not hold up, and so he fled the country. Let me say that again. He left the goddamn country because he thought that the judge might not give him a fair shake. He is a fugitive from justice. The whole legal discussion underway right now is about whether he should be brought back to the United States to face justice. It is not appropriate to be rearguing the merits of the case, because the case is not the issue. Polanski's flight from justice is the issue.

And that brings me to my second point -

Point #2 - The Roman Polanski discussion is all about class privilege.

Think about the case itself. Why was the victim anywhere near Polanski? He was a successful director, a rich man, a famous man who traveled in posh circles. He had been asked to guest-edit the French edition of Vogue, and he was taking pictures of "women" - ostensibly for the magazine. The victim - a "woman" who was only thirteen years old at the time - hoped to be featured in the magazine.

The private photo session that led to the rape happened at the home of his buddy Jack Nicholson, who left him the keys while he went out of town.

I don't know what Polanski was thinking at the time, whether he thought he could get away with it because of his fame, his connections. But the whole scenario happened because he was a rich man, a powerful man, and that was probably the reason why the victim's mother trusted her with Polanski. That was why the two were in the same room at the same time.

And then he was arrested, and then he pled guilty, and he was offered a plea bargain. Circumstances changed, the plea bargain appeared to be crumbling, and he made a decision. Did he ask for a new judge? Did he go public with his charges that the prosecutor was up to no good? No. He left the country.

Most of us do not have the option of leaving the country when it suits us. We have to face our crimes, our mistakes, our failures. Not so for Polanski. He could start over again. He could use his wealth and his good friends in Hollywood to continue in his chosen career.

Who are his defenders now? Harrison Ford. Woody Allen. Harvey Weinstein. Martin Scorsese. Debra Winger. There are more. Some see it as artists defending a fellow artist. Or you could see it as the rich and comfortable, defending the rich and comfortable.

Think about it. Think about what's not being said in the news stories. Now think about your average poor defendant. Would he have the choice to flee the country, set up a comfortable home in Europe, continue to practice his trade in a very public way for three decades? Not on your life.

Judges change their minds frequently. Miscarriages of justice occur. There are people who die in prison after being convicted falsely. People are identified by mistaken witnesses. People cry for DNA tests and are denied them. This happens in our country. It is not a perfect system, but it is our system. It needs to improve. This is a true statement.

The phrase "throwing yourself on the mercy of the court" is for the poor. For the rich, like Polanski, there are other options. If you don't like what the judge has to say, just skip the country and set up shop somewhere else. Those who can afford to ignore justice will ignore it.

Those who will defend Polanski need to think about this. If you believe in the justice system of our country, you believe that no one is above the law. If you support Polanski in this, you believe that the justice system is only for the poor unwashed masses, and that the rich are not obligated to accept justice when they can simply find another country who will treat them better, somewhere else where they can wipe their slate clean, where they can start over as an artist instead of a felon.

Dragging ACORN Through the Mud

2009-09-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's a damn shame what's being done to ACORN.

Disclosures: Most of you know that I'm a former community organizer. I have never worked for ACORN, but I have worked for organizations that worked with ACORN. I worked along the same territory as them - fighting for the rights of low-income, disenfranchised people.

I have written pretty bluntly about ACORN's failures in the past, so you know I'm not a cheerleader for them. They have screwed up massively in the past, and like most large organizations or companies, they will probably screw up again sometime in the future.

Having said that, they don't deserve what's happening.

For those who haven't been following the stories, there have been a series of videos supposedly showing ACORN workers giving two individuals - a "pimp" and a "prostitute" - advice on setting up a brothel. The videos have been shown repeatedly on Fox News and have been picked up to a lesser degree by other media. The "pimp" was O'Keefe, wearing a completely ridiculous outfit. The "prostitute" was Giles, masquerading as a prostitute who apparently favored the name Kenya. (There's nothing racist at all in her using that name, I'm sure.)

This is character assassination, plain and simple. Two people with a hidden camera are targeting ACORN offices, recording embarrassing videos of staff members. Both of the participants, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe, have admitted to having a political agenda. They're not out to find the truth. They're out to get ACORN. They're out to get ACORN, because in the feverish minds of some conservative activists and writers, ACORN is at the heart of Obama's election and bringing down ACORN will inevitably lead to Obama's collapse.

Look, I've worked as a door-to-door canvasser and I've worked as a community organizer. I've walked into some situations I thought were a little sketchy. I'm pretty sure that if someone wanted to catch me on video saying something embarassing, and they followed me around for long enough and caught me off-guard, they might be able to do it. It might happen. And so it's gone with ACORN that they've caught some workers saying some fairly embarrassing things.

Do the videos show the truth? Well, some staffers probably said some things they shouldn't have. But we don't know the whole story, because the full unedited videos haven't been released and probably never will. They could be edited. They could have manipulated the audio, or the video, or both. We don't know what actually happened in those rooms, and we will almost certainly never know.

Is the behavior of the ACORN workers criminal behavior? There have been no criminal charges filed in any state in connection with these videos. Why? Well, O'Keefe and Giles aren't police officers, they're private citizens. They have no legal authority to conduct "sting" operations. They aren't out to find criminal behavior - they're purely interested in embarrassing ACORN, and they have.

What criminal activity? All of the criminal ideas came from O'Keefe and Giles. They posed as a pimp and a prostitute and talked about setting up brothels. They talked about bringing in underage immigrant women to work illegally as prostitutes. All the criminal activity came from their own twisted minds.

As it turns out, there has been one lawsuit filed in Maryland in connection with these videos. ACORN filed it. Turns out that it's illegal in Maryland to record audio of another person without their permission. Guess our cutting-edge filmmaker didn't take the time to check out wiretapping laws before swooping in with his super-fantastic sting operation.

One ACORN worker, after giving them advice on setting up their house of ill imagination, allegedly confessed to having murdered her husband. That got her a call from homicide detectives and the local newspapers, where she admitted that she made up the whole story because she know that they were trying to set her up. (She also mentions conversations she had with O'Keefe and Giles that never made the video tape that ran on Fox. Big surprise.)

Another worker called the police after the clowns/filmmakers came to them with a story about smuggling underage immigrants for sex work.

Think about this:

We know that one of the videotaped workers lied to the filmmakers/clowns deliberately. We don't know how many others may have made up stories, or deliberately given false advice, because they knew they were being had.
We know that one worker called the police on them after his visit. We don't know how many others called the police.
We don't know how many offices the filmmakers/clowns visited in order to get their supposedly incriminating videos.
We don't know how many offices threw them out without a second glance.
We don't know how many staff members they actually talked to.
We don't know what actually happened on the tapes, because no one except O'Keefe and Giles has apparently seen the unedited videos.

And over all this, Congress has seen fit to withdraw all federal funding going to ACORN, an organization which has been helping people of color low-income people in this country for thirty years. Over all this, people have been declaring ACORN to be a criminal enterprise. Over all this, ACORN has been denounced by left and right and in the halls of our Congress.

President Obama was right. There needs to be an investigation into these videos. There needs to be an investigation into these malicious filmmakers and their gutter tactics of manipulation, distortion, and character assassination.

ACORN has made mistakes in the past. That is different that what's going on here. What's happening now is that someone with great friends in the media has gone on a personal crusade to destroy a social justice organization. He's doing it for ratings, for personal glory, to raise his own profile as an "activist" and as a "cutting-edge filmmaker." Well, he can call himself anything he wants. What he's doing is shameful, despicable behavior.

Sights Not Meant to Be Seen

2009-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

(Photo taken by swift447)

It was the strangest thing.

The mornings are getting later, and so this morning as I was driving to work, I saw the sun coming up. I could just see it peeking over the clouds, and it was the most startling blood-red sun I had ever seen. It was astonishing, almost unearthly.

See that picture above? (That's not today's sunrise, for the record, and it's not even Seattle.) It was weirder than that. The color was darker, more viscous. You could practically see it dripping.

I tried to find a spot to pull over. The sun rose in seconds, the blood-red crown rising into a full scarlet sun burning the sky, menacing all of us down below. And suddenly, before I could snap a picture with my cell phone, the otherworldly color was gone. It had transformed.

And then the sun was its normal color - that lovely friendly goldenrod yellow that we all think of as the sun's true color. But for a moment, it was the color of nightmare, warning, fear. I felt the way you'd feel if you caught a glimpse of a werewolf changing back into its human form. I had seen something I wasn't meant to see - the sun in its true diabolical form. The sun as a wild snarling beast of nature, warming us not for our pleasure but for its own amusement.

TBTL - a New Beginning? Or the Beginning of the End? (Part 1)

2009-09-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

The show was, indeed, too beautiful to live.

One of the greatest radio shows ever (ever!), TBTL (short for Too Beautiful to Live) has been cancelled as an on-air broadcast. The show will be turned into a web-based podcast. So it's losing the regular built-in audience of a major talk radio station in Seattle, and throwing itself on the mercy of the notoriously fickle internet audience. The website, the community, and at least two of the three major players will remain. The new show, such as it is, will be broadcast not from a radio studio, but from a room in the home of host Luke Burbank.

So this is the end of the world. Right?

Or is this really a new beginning? Is it possible that TBTL is going to be one of the new faces of the transformation of the medium of radio?

Here's the thing, friends and neighbors. Radio is changing. Example 1: me. I hardly ever listen to terrestrial radio anymore. I listen most Saturday mornings. I listen to NPR sometimes in the morning, and for about ten minutes while I drive to my job. Sometimes. Sometimes I just plug in a podcast and listen to that instead.

But am I missing NPR? Am I missing key stories? I doubt it. I listen to no less than eight NPR podcasts. I listen regularly to the NPR Story of the Day podcast, the NPR Shuffle podcast and the NPR Music podcast, and that captures most of the content that interests me.

I podcast Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, On the Media, and the magnificent WNYC show Radio Lab, and I never miss an episode of the latter two. Oh, and of course I podcast This American Life, because all of us radio geeks do. It's a rule.

But wait, there's more! There are two NPR podcasts that only exist in podcast form, and they are my favorite NPR productions: All Songs Considered and It's All Politics. Bob Boilen worked for years as a producer for NPR programs over the air, and on the side, produced a music podcast called All Songs Considered. It's eccentric, very personal, and absolutely fascinating, and I have picked up so many new favorite artists from it.

It's All Politics, fairly obviously, is a political podcast produced by NPR's Senior Washington Editor Ron Elving and Political Editor Ken Rudin, who both know entirely too much about the Beltway and are always happy to show off all the maddening Washington insider trivia stuck in their craniums. It's weekly, it's funny, the analysis is always sharp and often brilliant. I learn something every time I listen.

So that's my NPR listenership.

So am I an NPR listener?

I don't think I show up on the Arbitron ratings, because I'm not an over-the-air listener. Even though I listen to 15-20 hours of NPR content every week, I don't count as a listener.

And also, significantly, I don't count for their standard advertisers. I don't listen to the pre-broadcast sponsorship messages. I am not their audience in the traditional way. I'm still inflicted with lots of advertising on the podcasts, but not over the air.

I do still pay for my membership. And once I'm solvent again, I plan to send something into Chicago Public Radio and WNYC for all the great content they're producing.

Can TBTL still exist as a radio show without being an over-the-air radio show? Sure. Why not? There are plenty of podcasts that make a good go of it. Brian Ibbott somehow manages to eke out a living producing Coverville, by selling ads on his website and doing testimonial ad pitches doing every podcast. The Moth has only recently become a radio broadcast, but has existed for years as a brilliant podcast. Other examples come to mine - the Sound of Young America, Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, This Week in Tech. There are lots of free-standing podcasts. It's a tried and true medium.

But TBTL is the first show I know that has made the jump from on-air to podcast exclusively. (The only parallel I can think of is Howard Stern, jumping from terrestrial radio to satellite, and that is such an apples-to-kumquats comparison that it's hardly worth the effort.)

The jump could spell trouble. They somehow have to hold onto their loyal audience as they make the switch. Luckily (or not so luckily), the overwhelming majority of their audience was listening to the podcast and not the over-their-air broadcast. Most of their listeners are Time Bandits, in the language of the show. They didn't listen the same day, or even the same week. Sometimes, Time Bandits reported falling months behind and catching up in a mind-melting glut of shows.

In other words, the audience of TBTL is already used to downloading the show, not tuning it in. We listen on iPods and on our computer and in streams. We are already an online audience. As Luke Burbank said, this latest move by KIRO's management might be stripping away the worst weaknesses of the show - its on-air audience - and playing to its greatest strengths.

TBTL has always been a show that relies feverishly on its audience. Audience members are often guests on the show, bringing great ideas or unusual perspectives on news shows or just serving as available talent and the in-studio voice of the audience. Some of the greatest ideas on the show have come from its listeners. The blog is ferociously active, and the TBTL audience - the Tens - are a passionate lot, showing up for roller-skating events, baseball games, karaoke nights, concerts held in the back of Mexican restaurants, and other seemingly preposterous gatherings. There are at least 18 groups on Facebook dedicated to TBTL.

On its last night on the air, over 1300 viewers tuned into the webcam to see - what? The hosts singing karaoke and Luke Burbank heroically dancing in his underwear, fulfilling a promise to the audience. This was the essence of the show. No matter how ridiculous, how absurd, the show kept its promises to its audience. The love between show and audience is more pure and heartfelt than I have ever seen for a radio show. It is a beautiful thing. It was clearly not planned, but the love affair between TBTL's audience and its makers is the true center of the show.

The show was not killed. Let us all remember that. KIRO is still putting money behind the show in its new form. As Jen Andrews pointed out, the typical procedure when a radio show is cancelled is that it's pulled off the air immediately, the hosts not allowed to broadcast a final show for fear they'll say something reprehensible on the air about their former employers. With any other show, the hosts would have been ushered out the door by security guards, not allowed on the air. In this case, the TBTL hosts were given six solid hours of airtime to say a proper farewell to their audience. It was a remarkable statement of confidence, definitely not the sort of thing you do for people who you want to boot out the door as quickly as possible.

Let's hope the new format of the show proves that TBTL does not need to be on the FM or AM dial to drew listeners. Maybe it will take its new wings and soar. We can make it happen. We, the TBTL audience, need to prove ourselves worthy.

If you ever listened to TBTL, you owe it to the show to listen on the first day and tell your friends. Post it on Facebook. Send messages on Twitter proclaiming your loyalty. They need an audience that is there from day one and announces themselves loudly. They - we - need to be there for the show. The ratings will not be measured by the standard numbers. It'll be tabulated by downloads of the podcast, comments on the blog, tweets mentioning TBTL, web traffic.

This is a new experiment in radio and it will succeed if the Tens stay faithful and give KIRO a reason to keep funding it. Radio can survive without the ties to an AM or FM frequency. With a strong audience, an active online presence, talented hosts, and enough moxie, this show could become a completely new example of the new face of radio. Let's make it happen.

R.I.P. Senator Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T20:59:00.001-07:00

Note: this comic isn't coming out right for the way my blog is formatted. Please click on it to see the full image. It brought tears to my eyes.

As Joe Biden said, he was a man who restored our sense of idealism. He was one of the greatest politicians I ever saw, a true public servant. Vision. Persistence. Passion. He was one of the greats. Rest in peace, Senator. You've earned it.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I Got a Job!!!!!

2009-08-24T20:55:00.000-07:00

It's over. At long last, it's over.

I filed for unemployment for 27 weeks.

I submitted applications for 94 different jobs.

I was invited to interviews with no less than sixteen different organizations.

Seven second interviews. I made the final cut in seven different job searches. Seven times, I got close enough that they called my references, asked me questions like whether I would commute or drive, what days I'd prefer to work, whether I could start right away or if I need a week or two.

And six times - six stomach-churning times - I had to get the "sorry, we've decided to go in another direction" phone calls. I told you about one particularly crappy rejection in an earlier post.

No, wait, change that. I only got the call five times. One organization didn't even have the guts to call me to say they hired somebody else. They just politely forgot about me, didn't return my calls, discreetly took the job posting off their website.

But it's over. A few weeks ago, someone said yes. I am officially employed again.

We did the dance, just like with other companies. They asked me if I'd do a phone interview and I said yes. I did the phone interview on my cell phone, standing in my kitchen, a cup of coffee nearby. My resume, cover letter, and some hastily scribbled notes were spread out on a counter where I could glance at them easily.

The phone interview went very well. They called me back in a couple of days and asked me if I'd come for an in-person interview, and I said yes. I dusted off my suit, ironed a crease into my pants, asked Mrs. B to iron a shirt. (She does a better job on shirts than I do, and we both know it.) I picked out a tie and spent entirely much time thinking about it.

The interview went well, sure, but I'd had other interviews that went well before. They asked me for references, and I emailed them to the person in charge. And waited.

Two days letter, my references reported that they had been called. And that the person seemed to really like me.

And a few days later, I got the call.

I took a day to think about it. Mrs. B and I sat down to talk it over. The pay scale wasn't ideal, but the hours are great. I liked the people I met. I thought the job would be a good next job for my career ladder. (Thank goodness for that - I'd applied to several jobs that would have been a step backward, and would have gladly taken them if the price was right.)

I called them back and told them I'd accept the job.

The person on the other phone went "Yayyyyyyy!" It was the sound you make when you're ten, and your dad just told you that you're going out for ice cream.

It was the perfect sound to end this soul-crushing, never-ending, gut-wrenching job search. I was not only the best candidate, but they wanted me. They wanted ME.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going back to work.

Skinny Jeans

2009-08-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

I had a skinny-jeans moment the other day.

I have this pair of Levi's. I bought them, thought they looked good in the store, and then realized that there was an unfortunate reason that I couldn't wear them. My spare tire, um, was pushing the jeans down my body so they hung at around my hip bones. The result of which was that they were too long. I was mortified.

So they've lived in our basement for a couple of years. They lived the life of skinny jeans: designated to be forgotten until the wearer decides to challenge their self-esteem by trying them on. If they fit, joy and fireworks. If they don't, they go away again.

So I tried on my skinny jeans, not thinking of them in those terms at all. They were just those jeans that didn't fit. I was cleaning out the basement and came across them and thought, oh what the hell. And I tried them on and they fit like a glove.

I told Mrs. B about it. "Why did I think these pants didn't fit before? They look great now."

And she reminded me of the previous indignity. Apparently, my spare tire had shrunk - not disappeared, just shrunk - to the point where they sat properly on my waist. They fit now. I'm wearing them at this very moment. It's a small victory, but it's a victory.

The End of the Argument

2009-08-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Credit to Daily Kos' Suburban Blue for finding this golden nugget.

So some of you know that John Mackey, the CEO of WholeFoods, is getting the arugala kicked out of him because of a smarmy editorial he published in the Wall Street Journal about "ObamaCare" (his term of choice). Here's the editorial, if you haven't read it.

So in my opinion, it's disgusting. He starts off with a quote from Margaret Thatcher. He touts many favorite bumper-sticker conservative points: Health Savings Accounts as a solution to insurance, ending regulation of insurance companies, tort reform, blah bla blah dittohead blah. And the kicker of all kickers - he essentially suggests that anyone who gets sick only has themselves to blame, and that the secret to long life is, well, eating at WholeFoods.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.
Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

It's become a sensation. There's a new Facebook group dedicated to boycotting WholeFoods because of Mackey's comments (I joined - it's over 5,700 members in less than two days.)

Now, as an attempted response, there's a new thread on the WholeFoods website forum wherein conservatives have apparently proclaimed Mackey their new anti-government savior. The dittohead Glenn Beck-worshiping lot are spouting the usual crap about government being evil, nothing good has ever come from government, etc.

In response to one of the pinheads, forum user MB Shopper posted this. The entire thing can be read here on the forum. I don't know if he is the original writer or if he just reposted it, but this is sheer brilliance.

I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issed by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.
After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to ny house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.
The only reason government doesn't work is because conservative Republican administrations defunded and/or patronage staffed them with people with ties to special business interests: to wit the last FDA, Dept of Interior and Agriculture under Bush. No one seems to have a problem with pumping over $500Bil to the Defense Department which last I hear is a socialized entity.

The Key to Unlocking Death Cab for Cutie

2009-08-04T20:59:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Death Cab for Cutie on Soundstage. I was about to write a different post about the band, and then they began performing a song that completely changed my opinion of them.

I like Death Cab. I've seen them live here in town. I own one of their albums and would probably own more if I could just remember to buy them. They do the kind of songs that you always like when you hear them, but you never get crazy passionate about them. With one exception, I've never thought to myself, "boy, I've just gotta play that Death Cab song over and over again until it seeps into my bones."

I like several of their songs. Soul Meets Body. The New Year. The Sound of Settling. Crooked Teeth or whatever that song is called. I love their lyrics. They do a lot of great stuff. But their songs are always - again, with only one exception that I know of - a bit antiseptic, a bit distant. Ben Gibbard never screams. The guitars never wail. The drummer never goes wild and starts flailing like Keith Moon. They are a very literate, very restrained band of great precision. They don't rock out so much as they perform songs in the rock style, if you get my meaning.

I will say this, though - what an odd band to watch live. Most bands ramp up their energy for the live show. Their soft songs become a little more passionate, the harder songs get edgier. The guitars get louder. Not Death Cab. If anything, they get less edgy at their live show. They look awkward on stage. Ben Gibbard shakes his head back and forth in front of the microphone like he's trying to convince himself he has rhythm. Chris Walla bounces back and forth between keys and guitar, playing both without fanfare or showiness. He is an exacting artist. He does what is needed. At one point, they showed him sitting at the keyboard, cracking his knuckles, wating nervously for his part to begin. The drummer (Jason McGerr - I had to look it up) looks like he's teaching a class sometimes.

The bass player (Nick Harmer - had to look that up, too) is the only guy who looks like he plays in a rock band. Granted, he looks like he belongs in Journey circa 1984, but at least he's rocking out.

So I was watching the band, surfing the internet, halfway paying attention, thinking that this was one of the least dynamic performances I had ever seen. And then they started playing that song that I've made reference to several times. The song is a tidal wave called "I Will Possess Your Heart."

I love this song with an absolute fiery passion. It's terrifying, dark, and doesn't sound very much like anything they've done in the past. As soon as those first rumbling bass notes hit, you know that you're in a different world. The long version of this song - over eight minutes long - starts with three minutes of churning, driving instrumental music, during which the band locks into an enormous groove. It's their own type of groove, not the kind that a hard-rock band like Pearl Jam would unleash. There's some feedback, but it's whispering feedback, not roaring or screeching. The instruments are all precise, par usual, but this time, they're a little obsessively precise. The same piano melody plays over and over, nervously, as though it's trying to find something different every time. The sound of the bass guitar is huge. The drums are louder, and even though he's not doing much dramatically, he's playing his heart out. The entire sound is the sound of an obsessive going over the edge.

And then the lyrics start. In the album version, and on the Soundstage version, the music drops out almost completely when the vocals begin, and it's a stunning effect. Just a few seconds of nothing but Ben's voice, speaking the first words - "how I wish you could see the potential, the potential of you and me..." It gives you shivers.

And then the beat comes back in, and we're off galloping along with the lead character's crazy obsession, charging toward disaster, locked in that maniacally precise groove. It is the best thing this band has ever put to record, because it's so unlike them.

If Death Cab came out with some squealing guitar jam or some distortion-soaked freakout music, people wouldn't recognize them. This song is so great because it contains all the parts of the essential band - great musicianship, an eye toward perfection, carefully written and enunciated lyrics - turned up to the max. The precision turned to obsession, the enunciation turned into a crazy person shaking you by the lapels and whispering "you must listen to me, because what I have to say is very very important!" It is as if the band discovered another version of themselves, the funhouse mirror version.

Something happened to the band while they played this song. Ben Gibbard started shaking his head around, as though trying to break a spell, and sweat began to form on his brow. The guys seemed to lock into each other for the first time in the show, really following each other intently. And the music was stronger, because it was looser, edgier. They did the full instrumental lead-in for the song, and they tore into it with genuine fury. It's not a song that can be played gently, because there's so much fury in the music and so much underlying rage in the lyrics. It's an angry and a desperate song that has to be played all the way or not at all, the same way that I have to either turn up the radio when the song comes on or turn it off.

After that song, it was a different show. There was some feedback deployed. They got a little looser, a little bouncier. Ben's voice got a little louder and shakier. He sonded less constrained. They used some odd samples on the last song. Suddenly, the band seemed less like a dissertation and more like a rock band, playing for the joy of performing together on a stage.

You Use the Tools That Are Available to You

2009-07-28T21:38:00.001-07:00

We did the "three questions" thing again tonight, and he's still asking bizarrely eclectic questions.

Tonight's list:

1) Why are you and mommy married?

2) Why do we have a fan in our room?

3) Why do we sleep on pillows?

Seriously, this kid makes me think. I mean, think about it. Why do humans sleep on pillows? He won't take an answer like "just because." He wants a real actual reason. I told him it was easier on your neck to sleep on a pillow, but fuck if I know.

Later, he was telling me that there were monsters everywhere. Monsters in the ceiling - "and they have really long arms, and they can touch the door and touch the fan at the same time! And even your guitar, too!" Monsters were in our bedsheets. They were living inside the fan. "And they even set up a house next door to the fan where they live!" Suddenly, inexplicably, our bedroom was lousy with monsters.

When he presents a problem like this (i.e. sudden monster eruption), I don't bother trying to solve it anymore. When he was younger, I had a can of air freshener that I relabeled as "Monster Spray" that I'd spritz around the room to scare away the monsters. Or I'd dutifully look under the bed, in the closet, under his pillow, and shout to scare away all the monsters. Now, I just make him deal with it.

"So, Oliver," I ask, "what should we do about the monsters?"

"I don't know," he shrugs.

I tried to guide him to a solution. "Will your friends -" the various stuffed animals on the bed with him - "help get rid of the monsters?"

"No," Oliver shrugs," they don't have power like me."

"Oh, well then, how are you going to get rid of them?" I ask. "What kind of power do you have?"

"I can shoot fireballs out of my penis!" he shouts gleefully.

He gestures toward his crotch region, imagining a giant flamethrower rising out of his pull-up. And makes fireball-shooting noises. Pew pew pew! He does this for a minute or two. Shortly after that, he drifts off to sleep.

I wonder if he does this with Mrs. B.

Three Questions

2009-07-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of months, Oliver has insisted on us telling him a story every night. It's exhausting. Usually, we're exhausted by the time we get to putting him to bed, and the sheer brainpower to come up with a new story is painful. Usually, I resort to telling him fables or new versions of old stories: "Once upon a time, there were three bears, and they lived in a third-floor walkup apartment..."

So I tried something new last night. A friend gave me the idea: he can ask me three questions, about anything he wants. And then I struggle to answer. Easy, I thought.

So these were his three questions last night:

1) Why does the world spin around and around?

2) Why does Chloe have a tail?

3) Why do they put that floaty stuff (helium) in balloons?

Easy. No problem. I just had to explain planetary rotation, the basic principles of evolution, and the elemental properties of helium. That's it.

I just looked on Google to try and find a simple answer for 1), and this is the best I found. It's mind-boggling.

I think he's going to be a scientist, and a brilliant one at that.

Workout Playlist - July 14, 2009

2009-07-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Still doing the 30-minute workouts, although I'm debating upping the time a little bit.

You Know You're Right - Nirvana

Night of the Living Baseheads - Public Enemy

Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle - Nirvana

Huddle Formation - Go! Team

Great DJ - Ting Tings

A Shot in the Arm - Wilco

The Bends - Radiohead

All Because Of You - U2

Notes:

The right Nirvana song can turn a casual workout into a full-throttle berzerker throwdown.

"Julie and Julia" and Me

2009-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a little bit self-indulgent, so bear with me. I just saw a preview for Julie & Julia and I got unexpectly choked up.

I'll explain. Julie Powell started her Julie/Julia project as a Salon blog, around the same time I was starting up my original blog. I feel a kinship to her, even though we've never met and for all I know, she's never even looked at my blog. She was one of us, along with Meg and Patia and the Grumpy Girl and Phil and Nancy and ~~the guy who did Fried Green Al-Qaedas~~ Virtual Occoquan.

And then Julie exploded into a huge phenomenon. I don't think I knew at the time how big it had gotten, but I knew she had gotten to a level that most of us hadn't and probably weren't.

But that's was cool. I'm proud of her, even though, again, nothing whatsoever at all to do with her success. I can't wait to see the movie. And when in the trailer, they showed a quick shot of her computer with the old blog banner (albeit a completely different blogging service), I got a bit verklempt.

So congrats, Julie. I feel a little like the kid who used to play playground basketball with Michael Jordan before he became Michael Jordan. But I'm thrilled that it's come this far, and hope you're having all kinds of success and wish you nothing but more.

P.S. Oddly enough, I just looked up the old blog, and stumbled across this article about the movie. Apparently, there's a bit of controversy about the way her blog is depicted in the movie. Salon's Kerry Lauerman is quoted.

Workout Playlist - July 8, 2009

2009-07-09T20:22:00.001-07:00

Hmm, let's see if this works. This was my workout playlist from yesterday's workout.

Get 'em High - Kanye West (feat. Common & Talib Kweli)
Date with the Night - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Inside a Boy (Son Lux remix) - My Brightest Diamond
Scenario- A Tribe Called Quest
(I've talked before about how this isn't the best workout song. I skipped it this time.)
Thought @ Work - the Roots
It Takes Two - Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock
Baba O'Riley - the Who

I'll keep this post short, since I'm posting it from my iPod touch. How's it look?

Workout Playlist - July 2, 2009

2009-07-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

Crap, I said I was gonna do this, didn't I?

Oh well. Assume that I've been doing a hell of a lot of exercise besides just using the ol' elliptical in the last week. So here's my latest playlist for a 30-minute workout. I burned, I dunno, 225 calories.

I actually listened to nine minutes of a NPR podcast to start. Bjork playing guest DJ, playing choral music by Stravinsky and weird indie artists you've never heard of. So when my actual workout music started, it went like this:

There There - Radiohead
Ch-Check It Out - Beastie Boys
American Idiot - Green Day
All Because of You - U2
Scenario - A Tribe Called Quest
Deceptacon - Le Tigre

Because the last song was "Deceptacon," I heard "See you later!" as I stepped off the elliptical. That was pretty cool.

And then it launched into "Tie Your Mother Down" by Queen, which is a fucking amazing workout song. But my 30 minutes were up.

My one thought on this playlist is that "Scenario" doesn't actually work. The beat is a bit too slow, and the song drags a bit until Charlie Brown's verse starts. I just love the different styles here, and especially that Busta Rhymes verse - he's so dynamic and flows so ferociously here. So I'll keep it on the list.

My Michael Jackson Anecdote

2009-06-26T20:36:00.001-07:00

Here's the best anecdote I have about the impact of Michael Jackson in my life.

I went to high school in northern Colorado. For those who don't know the area, imagine Wyoming or Montana. Very rural, mostly small towns and long dusty roads that connected them. Most of the kids from the area were the children of farmers and ranchers. It was the kind of school where kids wore cowboy boots casually and drove pickup trucks. There was one black student in my entire high school.

In 1984, during my freshman year, the Jackson Victory tour was coming through Denver. I remember that there was a raffle to raise money for something or another, and the top prize was tickets to the concert. "Thriller" had been out since November of 1982 and Michael Jackson was still the biggest thing in music. Everyone in the school was dying to see that show. The tickets were won by a kid who just happened to be the son of the principal. I think he won them fair and square, but everyone at the time thought it was a robbery.

Michael Jackson in 1984 was pop music. Everyone listened to him, even in our little cowtown. Everyone wanted to see him perform, see him do that moonwalk and do that crazy-legged shimmying jittering dancing. There was nothing ironic about loving Michael Jackson back then. It was just what you did. That year, if you had ears, they were hearing the Thriller album.

Almost twenty years later, I was a community organizer in Seattle. I was sent to Boise, Idaho for a week to a cross-train with our sister organization, and I was driving a colleague's pickup truck to visit their members. I turned on the cassette player in the truck, and I heard "Wanna Be Startin' Something" come charging out of the speakers.

And it sounded fantastic.

Workout Playlist - June 24, 2009

2009-06-24T10:47:00.001-07:00

I think I'll start posting the songs I listen to during my workouts. It might be of interest to me more than anyone, but it might help give some of you ideas for new music for your various workouts/walks/runs/unannounced trips to South America.

Anyway, I worked out on the elliptical for 30 minutes today. Burned 228 calories. (Not sure if I'll always post that stuff, but there it is.)

Songs:

Don't You Evah (Matthew Dear Mix) - Spoon
Ch-Check It Out - Beastie Boys
Hypnotize - Audioslave
Voidy Numbness - the The
Elevation - U2
A Shot in the Arm - Wilco
One Vision - Queen
Chasing Heather Crazy - Guided by Voices

Our elliptical machine is in the same room as our mini Mac, which is handy because I can either play music or watch a DVD while working out. Today, I remembered that I can control iTunes using the Remote app on my iPod touch, which was just delightful. I could select and skip songs and even control the volume without getting off the machine. Speakers aren't the greatest, but it's better than wearing earphones while alone in the house. There's just something satisfying about playing loud music out loud.

Job Fair

2009-06-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a job fair. There were about fifteen employers in the room, and just about everybody who attended looked desperate, depressed, and willing to try anything. That includes me.

I don't know why I bother going to these things.

No, that's not true. Of course I know why I go to job fairs. It's because I don't have a job, and it's been over five months, and going to these things makes me feel like I'm doing as much as I can to find a new job. Leave no stone unturned, etc.

Except that there's nothing there for me. It's all companies that a) I'd never want to work for, b) are offering pure commission jobs, or c) aren't hiring for someone with my background. It's insurance companies and Avon and skilled labor jobs and sales jobs and the National Guard and the Border Patrol and temp agencies and Comcast's sales division.

I don't think I want to do sales, particularly for a big obnoxious company like Comcast. I'm not sure I want to sell insurance, particularly if my income depends on sales. I might consider a job if there was a base salary, but I need something stable.

I sure as hell don't want to be doing home parties for something like Avon or kitchen supplies or desserts. These companies are always at the job fairs, dangling the promise of fun and hoping people don't notice that in order to make a decent living, you have to sell a lot of crap to your own friends and family. And that's fine, but it's not for me.

And then there's the other employers, most of whom are offering entry-level jobs or management jobs that require skills I don't have. I don't think I do, anyway, and they don't seem to know what to do with me when I chat with them.

It's good to see that some employers are hiring, but there ain't a lot of them. There are always so many people waiting to get in the doors, and the reward always seems so small once you get inside. But you do what you can. You chat with people about careers you never thought you'd consider. You shake hands, give out resumes, chat with the other people about what they used to do. You try to be hopeful. You look for an opening, a chance, anything.

I remember going to job fairs for nonprofits, and there were ninety organizations in the room. Nonprofits! Now you can't even get twenty private employers in the same room at the same time. It's pretty stunning. It's literally stunning, every time I walk away from one of these things. I always feel somehow less hopeful instead of more hopeful.

The Little Man

2009-06-20T19:42:00.001-07:00

I'm learning. On-the-job training, I guess.

I was a bad helicopter dad for a long time, hovering over Oliver at playgrounds and in the backyard, ready to leap if he did something dangerous or needed some help. Or even if he just took a misstep. I'm better now. There are a lot of times when I grit my teeth and ignore him while he's in the backyard, climbing up his slide backwards with a garden hose in one hand. Sometimes I don't even bother to come outside.

Here's what I do. I shout into the backyard. "Oliver, I'm trusting you to make good decisions out there and not to do anything reckless. Can I trust you?"

If he says yes, I leave him alone.

At playgrounds, I force myself to stand on the sidelines, not next to him. I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be responsible. I want him to know that he's in charge of his own safety, not me. If he's slipping, he's got to catch himself. It's his job, not mine.

I want him to be safe, but more than that, I want him to be in charge of his own life. I don't want other kids to pick on him, but if they do, I want him to settle the issue himself, not wait for his dad to fix it for him. Whether that means slugging the other kid or yelling for a teacher, he's going to have to learn how to solve his own problems.

I'm trying to do the same thing with discipline issues and those other little domestic issues. For a long time, I tried furiously to figure out how to solve those little earthquake moments of the day. Oh, no, he won't put his shoes on! Oh no, he won't eat his lunch because it's on the wrong plate! Oh, no, he's throwing a tantrum because I wouldn't let him turn on the water fountain!

I used so much mental energy trying to figure out how to cajole/charm/threaten him out of the crisis of the moment, and now I'm just trying to let him resolve it. You won't put your shoes on? Oh, well, we'll just stay here then, instead of going to the zoo. Let me know when you're ready to leave.

You won't eat lunch? Okay, well, it's going to be a long time until dinner. I guess you'd better figure out what you want to do. I'll be over here, eating my lunch.

When he grows up, nobody's going to be scrambling to offer him a different choice for lunch or a different place to set up his office or a different door to walk through. He's going to have to learn sooner or later that he's in charge of his own life, and maybe by giving him a head start, he'll be a little more prepared to deal with other kids and with the outside world. Maybe it'll make a difference. That's all we can do as fathers. We decide the best way to raise our kids, and we do the best we can, and we see what happens.

I can't turn him into a major league shortstop or a Congressman or a successful writer. But I can raise him the best way I know how. I can show him what it means to be a good man by how I live my life. I can work at being a better dad. That's really all I can do. If I do all that, whatever happens, I know that I did the right thing.

But if I don't care - if I don't think about how I'm raising him - if I don't care whether it's a slap or a request that gets him into the car - then I'm a failure as a father.

It doesn't take much to be a good dad. Pay attention. Talk to them when they talk to you. Remember that your kid is always watching you. Read to them.

And care. Above everything else, care about your kids. Just care. They're going to be adults someday, and those little decisions you make now are going to stay with them for the rest of their life. Give a damn about the impression you make in their lives.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there.

A Manly Day

2009-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

If you saw some crazy guy walking a push lawnmower down the street yesterday, that was me.

I had a very manly day yesterday. In the morning, I took my lawnmower to get the blades sharpened. There's a guy in the neighborhood who does lawnmower repair out of his backyard. (And it was easier to walk the mower six blocks to his house than to load it into my car.)

So I got to hang out in his very swanky shed while he banged on my mower with a hammer (it needed a bit of an adjustment) and then sharpened the blades with a power sander. Somehow, I thought there would be some kind of sophisticated tool to sharpen them, but he just leaned over the mower and carefully touched up each blade while sparks went flying off.

(The mower is now awesome, a grass-cutting juggernaut. I might take it out today, but I'd better do it early since it's going to get up to 90 degrees today.)

I thought a lot about my days as a machinist, back before I discovered the nonprofit world. I worked for two years making machined parts - screws, bolts, bearings - for a shop that mostly supplied to Boeing. I had my own toolbox - two of them, actually. I perpetually came home with grease on my hands, not to mention nicks and cuts that I usually didn't remember getting. I had to shake the metal shavings out of my shirts before I put them in the wash.

There's a part of me that romanticizes that period, my hard work phase, the blue collar phase. But it wasn't romantic. It was hard work, detailed work. High demand, high pressure, long hours, less-than-thrilling pay. Because I had to program the CNC lathes, I usually had to use my brain as much as my hands. It was a great learning experience, but I didn't see it then as a learning experience. I saw it as the only job I could hold down, even though deep down I always knew that it wasn't going to be a career for me.

In the afternoon, I had to go to Home Depot to replace the propane for my grill. It's amazing the effect that walking into Home Depot has on most men. You become less verbal, start answering questions with one-word answers or grunts. You start looking at tools that you'd never use in a million years, just because they look cool. You begin speculating what you could get done if you just had a radial saw and a router.

When I got back, I hooked up the propane tank and tested the connections carefully, making sure that I didn't blow up the yard accidentally. Then I grilled dinner, making sure I had all the essential tools of grilling wth me - tongs, heatproof mitts, and a bottle of beer. I made chicken and veggies grilled in a shaker basket. Pretty tasty stuff.

One of Those Birthdays

2009-05-24T15:43:00.000-07:00

(Photo by Flickr user elston, and used under Creative Commons license.)

Let me tell you a story.

Ten years ago, I turned thirty. My life was in tatters. I was ending a chaotic and soul-draining relationship, and it was not ending in that clean surgical way in which relationships should end. It was like pulling away ivy that had been growing for years - pull out a huge chunk, find the next tendril, pull hard, try not to uproot something valuable, find the next tendril...

I had been fired three months before from a job that I hated. I despised the job, and yet to be fired seemed like the ultimate humiliation. I didn't want to be there, but I was furious that they were claiming I wasn't doing good enough work to be doing that job. I pursued legal action, based on firing without just cause, and quickly found out that it was impossible given my state's employment laws.

Because I was living paycheck to paycheck, my firing set in motion a series of events that eventually led to bankruptcy. Eventually, I left my home, ended up living with my brother for several years because I had nowhere else to go and couldn't afford my own place. (Thank you, by the way, to my brother for opening his door to me.)

At the time, I was living in a house that I hated with roommates that I couldn't stand. I had no privacy. I had no social life. I was working in a job that felt tenuous and temporary, and I didn't really know anybody there well enough to call a friend.

I was alone.

I remember that, for my thirtieth birthday, I wanted to get away. I drove to Bellingham, which was as far as I could manage to escape for a night. I drove sixty miles north to Bellingham, got a burger and fries from a highway burger stand, and parked by the waterfront. And I remember watching the sun slowly setting over the water, being alone, gratified for the privacy but aching from my loneliness and sadness. I cried several times that night. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

And then I drove home to my house that I hated, and went to sleep without talking to anyone. No presents, no cards, no cake. That was it.

That was a long time ago, and it was one of the worst birthdays or days that I have ever experienced in my life. I look back at that time now and it seems like a lifetime ago.

Tomorrow I will turn forty, and I've felt on the verge of tears for most of the day. My wife wants to know what I want for my birthday, and I don't know. I have no ideas. I don't want any presents. I don't know how to celebrate this birthday.

I have been out of work for nearly five months. Looking for a job is very much like dating, in the sense that it feels like rejection after rejection after rejection. The momentary bursts of joy are quickly washed away by the repeated slaps in the face. The thrill of the chase is replaced by the desperation of the chase, the fervent need to be exactly what someone (a company) is looking for, and the repeated discovery that you're not the guy. You're not the one they've been looking for, but you're very very close, and maybe someday you'll find the right match for you.

So I have been out of work for nearly five months, and our finances are a bit tight. And my sense of self-worth is pretty low these days. And I'm turning forty, which is supposed to be a pivotal age in my life, a watershed moment, a moment that means something. Some birthdays are just a birthday, and some birthdays are supposed to mean something. 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 65. Some birthdays matter, and you take note of where you are in your life.

I have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have a son who lights up my life on a daily basis. I have a close circle of friends, friends real and virtual. I have a decent home, music to play, food to eat. We drive good cars. We eat well. I am happy.

But I'm out of work. And that's eating me alive. It is such a small thing, with all the great things happening in my life. But it matters, and it's painful and frustrating and infuriating. And it makes this birthday something that I just want to be over.

It was just over ten years ago that I took my first job in the nonprofit world, and I immediately knew what I would be doing for the rest of my working days. I never realized that I could make money and generate social change at the same time. As many regrets as I have about the misdeeds and failings and imperfections of nonprofit organizations, they are driven by missions that seek to make the world a better place. That might mean cleaning up the air and water, or it might mean fighting social injustices, or it might mean creating jobs for the jobless, finding food for the hungry, finding homes for the homeless. But every organization for which I've worked in the last ten years is trying to make the world a better place, and I have been fortunate to work in this field.

I want to get back to work. It's been ten years since I joined this field, this vocation, the change-the-world career ladder. I'm looking for a way back into that career ladder, back into the movement, back on the horse.

It seems somehow portentous that I find myself back in this position. Ten years ago, I had the rug pulled out from under me, and I made a seemingly small decision that changed my life. Ten years later, the rug has been pulled out again, and I find myself scrambling for footing. Once again, I'm left unsure of myself, questioning my own talents and abilities. Once again, I'm facing one of those birthdays, one that signals a change of life. Once again, so it seems, it's time for another great transition in my life.

I want this period to be over. I hate the waiting. I know that soon, I will find a job that will change my life. I want the waiting to be over so the next change can begin happening. The waiting is what's killing me.

So tomorrow, I will celebrate my birthday that I have been dreading for so long. The next day, I have an interview for a job. It might not be the next great job, but it's the next interview, and that's something. It could lead to the next great job, and it is that promise that keeps me going.

Happy birthday to me.

A Danger to Himself and Others

2009-05-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

I do not know what is going on with this kid.

Twice in the last month, I've found myself walking around, whispering to myself, "He's okay. He's okay."

~~~

A dresser fell on him. He was okay, but a dresser fell on him. I left Oliver alone in his room for a minute. I've done this a hundred times before. He had the top drawer of my dresser open and he had a Lego block he was pressing on the side of it, like playing Tetris, trying to fit the block into the crack. I left for a minute to get something, and as I walked away, I saw in my head the dresser falling over, him pinned underneath.

I see images like this all the time. I'm constantly afraid of what he might do to himself, but I've tried to keep those visions batted down because otherwise I'll just make myself crazy. 99% of the time, I'm just being paranoid, imagining the worst possible thing that could happen to him.

But a minute later, I heard a crash. And I heard him say, "Ow. Daddy." He said it once, like a request, and then he hollered, "DADDY!!"

We both ran down the hall.

The dresser was tipped over at a 45-degree angle, every drawer popped out. Everything on top had fallen off, somehow missing him. One of the drawers was on top of his leg, and he was calling for help. I moved the dresser, Mrs. B pulled him out and inspected him for damage. Miraculously - and I mean that truly - he was not hurt. No bones were broken, not even a bump on the head. He got some splinters in one of his hands from trying to catch the dresser, but that's all.

(We found out that he was reaching for a box of pictures that we keep on top of the dresser. That's what tipped it over. )

~~~

Just last week, he poked himself in the eye with a broom. He's okay, but he popped himself right in the eye, hard. And no, it wasn't the bristle end of the broom, it was the stick end.

I don't know what he was doing, but it didn't surprise me he was playing with the broom. He has loved playing with our broom for years now. It's one of his favorite toys. Occasionally, for a lark, he tries to actually sweep with it. But it serves so many other purposes: as a bridge between footstools, as a stick that he can jump over, as a club that he can wave around and look menacing, as a poker that he can use to tip blocks over, and so many more purposes. It's a broom! It's like the supertoy for the 21st generation!

I think that he had it sticking horizontally out of the footstool. I don't know why, but it was there, about two feet off the ground, sticking out like an invitation. And of course, he tripped, and of course, he fell with his face hurtling toward the footstool, and of course, he pushed the end of the broom right into his left eye.

He cried forever, both eyes wedged shut, tears flooding out, his face red as a beet. Eventually, he opened his left eye again, and we checked for damage. No bleeding, no bruises. His pupil wasn't dilated. We asked him if he could see out of it, and he could. But we were both spooked, and so we called the triage nurse at the hospital. She told me about the basic symptoms to watch out, had me do a couple of basic checks to make sure he hadn't broken the orbital bone that surrounds his eye. (Thank goodness, he hadn't.) He got lucky. Didn't even end up with a black eye.

~~~

There's more that he's done. He trips constantly, stumbles over the flotsam and jetsam that covers our floor. He climbs onto stools that he should. not. be. on. and then tries to reach for things way above his head. We were going to catch the water taxi last week - it was a bit of a rainy day - and he slipped walking down the ramp. He slipped and fell twice. And if I hadn't been holding his hand, he would have gone flying down the ramp right into Puget Sound.

He tries to stand with both feet in his wagon, which is just a recipe for a broken nose.

Once, he tried to put our big red balance ball on the bed and then climb on top of it. I stopped him, frantically.

Here's what I think is going on. First of all, I'm going to say that there is a four-year-old developmental step that is massive and monumental, because he always goes to hell right before a developmental step. He's also very emotional and very clingy and melts down at the drop of a hat, which also seem like indicators of a massive development step about to happen.

The second thing is that he's physically growing. One of my friends put it well - it's the physical version of stuttering right before he takes a big leap in his verbal skills. His body is stuttering. He's clumsy right now because he's trying to get used to his new size and his new strength.

That's the best I can guess. I don't know. Really, it's exhausting right now trying to keep him safe, because it feels like he's trying so hard to keep himself unsafe.