Father's Day - Signs of Hope

Father's Day is often a dreadful day in popular media.  I wrote a bitter and frustrated post about it a few years ago, after reading a particularly infuriating post in a national magazine.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this commercial, depicting a dad doing ... well, doing what dads do. He was swaddling his kid. 

His wife called to check on him, and he responded that he had matters well in hand. He was a dad. Dads didn't need help - they managed. So she hung up, and then he pulled up a YouTube video to see how to do a better job of swaddling his kid. 

I probably could have helped him with his swaddle technique, if he'd only asked.

And lo and behold, a dad swaddled his kid on national television. And it was a beautiful moment. It was a real moment. He wasn't perfect, but he was trying his hardest and he wasn't intimidated. He was doing what dads do. (The commercial is called "Swaddle Master. I know a thing or two about swaddling, so I loved it.)

Another commercial, this one for toothbrushes. (Yeah, I know.) But holy cow, this commercial slayed me. Dads holding their kids, and playing with them, and teaching them stuff. It's so simple and just so perfect.



I wish I had a third commercial, so it would be a trend piece. But whatever. Two is good.

Oh, wait, here's a third. It's not a commercial, but it still works. It's a new piece by Louis CK that ran on CBS Sunday Morning for Father's Day.


And this one is great because it adds a lot of elements that are also true to life. Louis is full of doubt and self-loathing and that fiery, angry defiance that defines him. "No, screw you, I'm going to do it THIS WAY!!"

Fathers are doubtful. We are consumed by doubt. We're not sure we're doing it right. The problem with dads having taken such a backseat role in parenting for so long is that now, we're not sure we know how to do it.

Here's the secret. Moms don't know what they're doing either. No, really, they don't. They DON'T. There is no magic innate motherhood gene. We all just learn by trying it and screwing up and waking up the next day anyway.

But we're not hopeless. Lots of dads are doing just what they're supposed to do. They change diapers and hold their kids and kiss their boo-boos and look at report cards and fix lunches. They strap in car seats and make dinners and wipe tears away and make their stuffed animals talk in ridiculous voices.

We do what we're supposed to do. We're not boobs. We're not idiots. We're people, and there are some great ones, and some really lousy ones. But in between, there's a hell of a lot of us who are just doing the job, day after day after day. I saw a great quote today, one that I'd never seen before. "Being a great father is like shaving. No matter how good you shaved today, you have to do it again tomorrow." It's from someone named Reed Markham.

We don't want medals. Just treat us like human beings. When you see a dad taking his kid for a walk, don't think "oh look, daddy's babysitting." That father is being a parent. It's not special anymore to see fathers doing the parenting thing. The world is changing. This year, for once, I'm a little more hopeful that the change is being noticed.

Richie Havens, the Voice of God

People have used the phrase "the voice of God" in a lot of ways. To me, I hear Richie Havens' voice and I hope that's what God sounds like. That unique combination of authority and compassion is so hard to find. His voice just cuts right through to the soul.

I loved Richie Havens. I love Richie Havens. My dad had the soundtrack to the Woodstock movie, which is where I heard him for the first time. And I heard this.



Later, seeing this in the movie, made even more of an impression on me. He had his eyes closed nearly the entire time. He wasn't singing the song - he was channeling it.

That's what Havens did. He was a channeler. The voice that sang those songs was deep and heavy with emotion: sadness, empathy, heartache, elation, joy. He could add new meaning to unexpected songs. His versions of "Just Like a Woman" and "Here Comes the Sun" are legendary.

But have you heard this? The original is a classic, but he finds new depths of despair in this song.




I was very surprised a few years ago to hear Richie Havens' voice again in a movie. Remember Collateral? With Jamie Foxx and Tom Cruise (back when people still thought of him as an actor first)? This was on the soundtrack.



The lyrics are simple, but Havens does so much with what he's given. The song is impossible to imagine with anyone else's voice. Even the moans - could anyone moan with as much conviction as him?

God bless Richie Havens. I'm heartbroken to hear of his passing. He was one of the first connections musically that crossed my dad's generation and mine. And many years later, I had the opportunity to see him live at Seattle's Folklife Festival. I've seen big name legends. I've seen Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Solomon Burke. But seeing Richie Havens was like touching eternity. I could have sat in the grass and watched him all night, and I think he would have been content to strum his guitar and sing all night.

Inspector Gadget Saves the Day, Maybe

My kid is watching an Inspector Gadget movie that he found on Netflix. I want to save you the trouble, in case your small child is thinking about watching it.

If you're able to tolerate Inspector Gadget, it's fine. It's about the Inspector discovering some giant egg that hatches into a gigantic flying lizard who wreaks havoc all over Metro City. Wacky hijinks ensue, and everyone seems to have a different idea what to do with the lizard. The mayor wants to turn it into a tourist attraction. Dr. Klaw wants to use it to destroy the city. Inspector Gadget wants to make it his juggling partner.

There's some weirdness in the show. Penny is 16 and doesn't look much like her original version. (Her voice is identical, which frankly is just weird.) There's a GadgetMobile, inexplicably voiced by Bernie Mac. (My guess: 1) money, 2) he wanted to impress his kids.) There's a Scottish bad guy, for no apparent reason.

The whole premise of Inspector Gadget is that everyone is incompetent. Let's just lay that on the table. The inspector is the biggest buffoon, of course. Every time he solves something, it's by complete accident. But the bad guys are also incompetent, and come up with absurd schemes that never work. And never make sense. The mayor is an idiot, the chief is a doofus, pretty much everybody is an idiot except the dog.

Here, the movie ramps up the incompetence factor. Dr. Klaw (who has the best voice of the show) wants to control the lizard, so he has his henchmen try to feed it some kind of remote control electronic device blah blah whatever. The lizard won't eat it. What kind of super villain has plans that fail because an animal won't eat something?! Goon.

The Scottish assistant is also incompetent. Penny is helpless - she seems more of a damsel in distress than she ever did in the show, in fact. She does a lot of screaming and flailing and crying for help. She has a boy who seems to have a crush on her (again, was there ever a boy in the show? We didn't need this subplot.)  The boy's also an inventor, but he completely fails at inventing some kind of potion that ends up saving the day. So the world is saved because Inventor Boy screws up.

It's a fine waste of time, but just be prepared as an adult to yell at the screen a lot. It's computer generated, so it doesn't have the warm feel of the original cartoon. One other difference: it sadly doesn't have the voice of Don Adams, who passed away in 2005. The guy who does the Inspector's voice does a fine impersonation, but it's clearly not the original voice.

I always thought that the device of the show was that Penny and the dog were the real brains behind the Inspector. But here, nobody has the brains. They all seem so confused that it's amazing the entire city doesn't come crumbling down around their ears. It's a little disappointing on that front. Still, like I said, if you're stuck inside and your kid has to watch something, it's not the worst thing on Netflix.

What the hell?

Maybe there have always been stupid people in the world and it's just easier to hear about them because of the connected world. Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram, everything makes it harder to hide your offensive stupid horrifying behavior.

But an honest question here. What the hell is happening in this country?

• In Florida, a police sergeant shows up at a shooting range with targets that resemble Trayvon Martin. You remember Martin - the 17-year old boy who was shot dead by his neighbor, who then tried to hide behind the "Stand Your Ground" laws in Florida? Now he's a shooting target. Nice.

• A judge in Montana emails around a "joke" that apparently suggested that President Obama's mother had engaged in bestiality. 

Let me say that again, just to be clear. He sent an email that suggested that the mother of the President of the United States had sex with a dog. Nice. Remember all those times when people said things like that about Barbara Bush? Yeah, me neither.

The judge has since retired. He wasn't terminated. He retired, which means that now the state will be paying a lifetime pension to a racist idiot.

• In New York, a teacher assigns her students to "think like a Nazi" and make a persuasive argument as to why "Jews are evil and the source of our problems."  The school has apologized. No word as to whether the teacher faces any punishment for this heinous behavior. 

• This comes after ANOTHER New York teacher was called out for story problems about beating slaves. The assignment was in 4th grade.   Nine and ten-year old kids were asked questions like "a slave was whipped five times a day. How many times was he whipped in a month?" No word if this teacher was fired, but the whole school is undergoing "sensitivity training." Ahem.

• And then, there was the Georgia teacher who took it one step further, asking questions about how many beatings Frederick Douglass received. Also, this lovely example: “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”

In GEORGIA. Which has a history of, y'know, slavery. Again, no word if the teacher was fired, but the principal was apparently looking into "what staff development is needed for the teachers."
 
Can someone explain exactly what kind of human resources training is needed to remind people that beating people is wrong and treating human beings like property is also totally the fuck wrong?! Jesus almighty Christ on a cracker.

I don't even know what to say. If a teacher assigned my kid something like that, there would be hell to pay. I'll be damned if some tone-deaf idiot is going to be indoctrinating my kid with their stupid racist 19th century ideas.

And the rest of them? I don't even know. What I'm going to do is raise my son to be open-minded, and to not be afraid to question authority. We all lose when people behave like absolute pigs and no one speaks up.

You Are Being Watched

We were in a fast food place the other day. I was pouring a cup of diet Coke from the fountain. I didn't even think about it, because I had done it so many times. Place the cup under the ice dispenser, get ice, put the cup under the Diet Coke spigot, push the button, fill the cup up near the top. Wait for the bubbles to disperse. Fill it up again, and wait again, and then fill it to the top.

That's just how you do it.

And then I realized I was being watched by a pair of seven-year-old eyes.

It's a humbling thing, seeing your child watching you. I wish I had been doing something really cool, like recoding a website or dismantling a carburetor. Or cooking the perfect omelette. But instead, I was just pouring a cup of soda. And my kid was watching me to see how to do it.

It must happen all the time. All the things I do all day that I don't even think about, and he just studies me like a walking textbook. Pouring cereal. Tying my shoes. Making coffee. Shaving my face. So many things.

I remember doing it myself, of course. I have clear vivid memories of watching my dad as he did the simplest things, things he hadn't even realized were things, if you see my point. Things like parallel parking. Like throwing a football in an effortless spiral. Like ordering food in a restaurant. And I watched him, because that's how you learn how the world works. You watch your parents. And the way they do things is the way that it's done.

Is that a little scary, parents and parents-to-be? Good. Because you need to keep it in mind. You are being watched all the time. Whatever you're doing - good, bad, lazy, admirable - your children have their eyes on you. Make yourself someone worth watching.

Photo from flickr user @ANDYwithCAMERA. Used under Creative Commons license.

"I've Got You."

We were watching the ocean waves crashing, far out in the distance. My son and I were walking on the beach, looking at patterns in the sand, looking at shells. I was lazily watching him. He was happily running on the beach, filled with joy. 

It was a bitterly cold day on the beach. But it was the ocean, and when you have a chance to see the ocean, you see it. We had traveled out to the Washington coast, and after a lackluster day, we drove to a place where we could walk out on the sand and see the ocean in its full glory. 

The weather was turbulent. We had been hit with a couple of surprise rain squalls. There were white caps on the water, and the waves seemed particularly explosive. 

A group of kids was out closer to the edge of the surf, and I heard their parents getting excited because the tide was coming in closer. The tide crept in toward them, soaked their shoes, and they went running away giddily. The tide kept rolling in, slowly but determinedly.

"Son, we need to get back," I called. "The tide's coming in too fast. We don't want to get wet." 

And then the tide devoured the beach. It came up to our feet, and it kept coming. My shoes were suddenly waterlogged; then it was up to my ankles. Then my calves. Then my knees.

It kept coming in, like a bathtub that had filled up suddenly. Oliver began panicking and screaming. I grabbed his hand, and we ran as hard as we could toward the dry sand, while the water roared around our legs. 

The water was up to his waist. He was running in slow motion and screaming at the top of his lungs. He was about as scared as I've ever seen him. I just held tight to his hand and I kept shouting back, "I've got you! I've got you!"

"It's trying to pull me in!" he screamed.

"It won't. I've got you, son. I've got you." We ran and ran. 

Finally, the enraged wave receded, and we were able to reach dry land. His mother, shocked, raced up to greet us. Oliver was still screaming, shivering from the bitter cold water that had drenched him. We ran back to the car where my brilliant wife had stashed an extra set of clothes for him. (I had no such luck. I didn't expect to need an extra pair of clothes. I had to drive back to town and buy a pair of emergency sweats.) 

~     ~     ~

They call them sneaker waves. We didn't see it coming; you never see them coming. The tide was actually going out, or so we thought. That's why we were so complacent. We thought we were safe.

Sneaker waves are dangerous things. They are impossible to predict and they take people completely by surprise. They pull people out to sea. It happens. I don't like to think about it now, but it does happen. Sometimes, they pick up floating logs or huge rocks, and then you have a dangerous wave with a weapon. Imagine, seeing a 1000-pound rock floating in toward you, being carried by an out-of-control wave.

I had seen the signs. The signs on the ocean beaches don't mess around; they use phrases like "you can die" and "you will be swept out to sea." But I didn't think about them. I thought those warnings were for people stupid enough to go wading out in the water. I didn't think we were in danger on the sand, so far away from the edge of the water.

I can't even describe how fast that wave came in at us. It moved with the speed of a monster tentacle in a horror movie; you think you're safe and suddenly PHWIP! it's wrapped around your waist. We went from dry and safe to overwhelmed and terrified in a matter of seconds. 

If it had kept coming, I don't know what would have happened. I would have picked him up and run if I had to. I would have thrown him to shore if I had to. It hit with the speed and the shock of a car crash, and here I am, a day later, sitting in a warm office, still shivering at the memory of the wave that tried to pull me and my son into the Pacific Ocean. 

The Rules Haven't Changed

(Note: I'm going to start working more to keep this blog more active. I have lots of readers out there, apparently. Thousands of you have found this post about double-swaddling, and I'm grateful to each of you for reading it and sharing it. I keep being amazed that people still read this blog, and especially that you still read posts I wrote years ago.

I used to blog a lot more when my kid was smaller. Now that he's older, I have to remind myself I'm still a blogger dad. I'm putting it that way because "daddy blogger" just seems like an insult. 'Oh, you're a daddy blogger, how cute!' No, I'm a dad. Who happens to have a blog. My job is being a dad.) 

When Oliver was little, it seemed like I would blog daily about what was going on with him. When he was a baby, it was easy. First of all, I was home with him for the first year of his life as a stay-at-home dad, so I had lots of time to sit and contemplate his existence. He didn't do much, but it was amazing watching him. He would roll over, he would look at me, he would reach his little doll-like hand out to me, and I would sit and think about how miraculous it all was, and then I'd write a blog post about it.

I'm working now, and he's going to school. So we don't spend nearly as much time around each other.

I'm fortunate, though. My wife and I have a staggered schedule, so she goes to work early and I get the morning shift with him. He wakes up three hours before he goes to school, so we have plenty of time to be with each other. He plays with Legos, he reads, he watches old shows like Godzilla and the Power Rangers and the Fantastic Four cartoons, and we eat breakfast and we talk about stuff. About school. About the kids in his class. About stuff.

And then we drive to school at a breakneck pace, trying desperately to make it before the second bell rang. Usually, we miss it but I just walk him to class anyway.

When he was a baby, I had to feed him bottles of Mrs. B's milk. It was very hard at first, and for the first couple of times, he fought and thrashed and wouldn't let me feed him. It was upsetting for me, and obviously, he wasn't digging it either. So I looked around a couple of other blogger dads, and I figured out that the more anxious I was at feeding time, the more anxious he was going to be. So I started forcing myself to be calm during feeding time. "You're all right, little man. It's just me, and it's just your lunch. No big deal." The more I relaxed, the better it went. Success breeds success, so the better the feedings went, the better I felt about them.

The same is still true. Especially now that we know he has Asperger's, I have to pay more attention to how he's feeling at different parts of the day and how I might be contributing to that, consciously or not. Our mornings have been problematic for a while, and I realized what the problem was. We have three hours - THREE HOURS - to get ready for the school day. And yet, I'd been waiting until the last five minutes of the day to ask him to do some basic things - going to the bathroom, putting on his socks and shoes. And my son is not a person who likes to be rushed. So he'd dawdle, and he'd get distracted, and inevitably it would take him twenty minutes for him to do something that I could do in 30 seconds. And we'd be late.

What's wrong with that equation? What's wrong is that I'm thinking about how I would do it. I would move faster. I would look at the clock. I would realize how late it was. Well, my son is not me. He does things at his own pace. And I just need to accept that. Instead of trying to force him to be me, I need to accept who he is.

And for me, that meant changing our schedule. Now, I give him a full twenty minutes to do those final last-minute steps before we walk out the door. And it works! We make it to school sooner. There's also less yelling, less hectoring, and less resistance from him. I just give him enough time to do his thing. If he gets distracted, I still nudge him back on track. But it's not an emergency anymore. I'm respecting who he is. And I have to remember that my anxiety level feeds directly into his. When the last conversation before school includes a lot of yelling and badgering, it can't be good for his psyche. I like it this way.

So the rules when he was a baby are the same as they are now. When I'm stressed, he's stressed. When I calm down and relax, things go better. He's still the same kid he always was. And I'm still the same dad, who sometimes forgets that.

Weirder than Life Itself

We were watching some goofy story on CBS Sunday Morning about an underwater sculpture park.

My son took one look at it and declared, "that's weirder than life itself."

We don't need to go to church. My son is in touch with the mysteries of life. He gets it.

There's One in Every Class

Photo from Flickr user Jez Page

How can you compose a eulogy for a six-year-old?

What do you say? They're not even at the beginning of their lives. What do you have left? Crayon drawings. Favorite books. Evanescent videos, recordings, photographs. Of course, photographs. We all take thousands of photos of our kids as if they're going to be snatched away from us any moment. We capture every moment, every romp in the park, every play date, every birthday candle, as if it will be the last.

If I think too much about what it must feel like, I just die inside. It cripples me. Because those kids who died in Newtown were our kids. Those children were just like the kids in my son's classroom.

I was just in my son's classroom on Friday. He has a decent-sized class. And there's the usual diversity. You've got the chatty kids and the sad, lonely kids who cry sometimes, under their desks or behind a table. You've got the girls with the pretty pretty hair they can't wait to tell you about. You've got the girls who barely seem like they comb their hair in the morning. You've got the bright-eyed, curious ones, filled with joy, beaming as though from an inner light. The ones who see every adult as a helper and every kid as a friend they haven't met yet. You know the kind. There's one in every class.

And you've got the odd ducks. The ones who glower in the corner, who make big red X's on their papers instead of completing assignments. The ones who flap their arms and shake in their seats and maybe they talk to themselves a little bit. Maybe they wear clothes a little odd, a little askew. They're quirky. I like that word. Quirky. It's not judgmental. I know a lot of quirky adults and I bet they were quirky kids, too. There's one in every class, you know.

Anyway, the arm flappers. The odd ducks. There was one in Newtown. One who died. His mother gave a eulogy for him. She said that he flapped his arms, and one day she asked him, why, and he said it was because he was a beautiful butterfly.

I didn't know this kid, but apparently he had some language challenges. Yet he could still express this, because it was the only possible answer to this question. Of course he was a butterfly. Just like my son is a monster. Of course this is true. It has to be. It's the only thing that can be true.

That kid was autistic. My son is autistic. For a while, I just said he had Asperger's, as if it was some different thing. But my kid is on the spectrum. He is autistic, and when I think about that beautiful butterfly, flapping his arms, I can't help but see my son.

He's not a flapper, by the way.  That's not his thing. He's a spinner, though. Sometimes he spins around and around, and sometimes he takes scarves or belts or just lengths of string and spins them in his hand, around and around and around. He jumps on beds, and he loves giving kaboom hugs. Y'know, the kind of hugs where he starts across the room, and gets a running start and charges at you and KABOOM! You get a hug that rattles your teeth. That's my kid. That's what he does.

I can't think too much about what happened in Newtown, but I know this. The kids in those classrooms were just like the ones in my son's classrooms. The bright ones and the dark ones, the pretty ones and the smudgy ones, the steady, calm ones and the arm flappers. Those kids remind me too much of his class, and your children's classes, and every classrooms. These weren't characters in a movie or a novel. These were just kids. Like my kid. Like yours.

Goddammit. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to sleep tonight. I just keep thinking about that little boy, the beautiful butterfly, and my heart breaks and breaks and breaks again.

A Gun Culture

I have friends who tell me that the problem isn't guns, it's our culture. It's our society.

I agree - the problem is our culture. And our culture is guns. We have a gun culture in this country. In our culture, when people collect guns, it's a hobby. Like collecting tea pots. Or rare stamps. People can talk about the stock, the craftsmanship, the rarity of the particular production year, and forget that what they're talking about is a weapon designed to kill.

I'm a parent. If I were not a parent, I'd be fully prepared to get medieval about this latest massacre. You know the way that anti-abortion people parade around photos of dead fetuses? It's the most grotesque, most shocking way to make your point. I'd be doing that with the pictures of the children who died in Newtown.

But I can't do that, because I can't even look at the pictures. I change the station when a story comes on.   I have a child. I have a son, and I'm going to go drop him off at his school this morning, and I'll probably take longer to say goodbye than usual.

I am heartsick, people. and I am every time this happens.

I remember the first time. It was in San Ysidro, California. A man shot dozens of people at a McDonald's restaurant, just like the one where my son and I had dinner on Wednesday. He had an Uzi, along with other weapons. It was 1984.

I remember Columbine. I used to live in Colorado, so that hit home for me. Before that, there was the kid in Moses Lake. And Kentucky. And Mississippi. And Jonesboro, Arkansas. Yes, there were school shootings before Columbine.  Lots of them.

Too many. Shootings in schools. Shootings in shopping malls. In restaurants. In homes. On street corners. Too many.

So what are we supposed to do, live in a police state? Station an armed officer at the door of every school, every mall, every public place? Turn our country into a military zone, all because we can't admit that guns are as much a part of our culture as Sunday football?

We have to do something. This is no longer acceptable. It wasn't acceptable in 1984. It wasn't acceptable in 1999. It's beyond acceptable now. We should all be rioting in the streets, demanding that our nation's leaders act now to keep guns off the streets and out of the hands of unstable people. We should all be angry. I'm angry. I'm sick - my heart is sick - but I'm angry. And today, we need to use that anger to demand change.

Blogging Greatness: The Worst Burrito Ever

Look, I can't compete with this. This might be one of the best blog posts ever written. Plus, his own illustration! Just read this:

Dear guy who just made my burrito:

Have you ever been to earth?

On earth, we use the word “burrito” to describe a tortilla filled with things you eat. Pretty simple stuff, and I’m surprised you at least got that part right. My burrito was, in fact, filled with food. In this, you and I agree and are friends. But this is also where my lifelong hatred begins for you and anyone else whose brain has been repeatedly scrubbed with the same mixture of bleach and Pop Rocks as yours has. Because that should have killed you, but left you around long enough to do what you did to me today. Let me explain:

You’re an idiot.

Let me further explain:

Burritos are eaten from one end to the other. So that means when you assemble a burrito with motherfucking ZONES of ingredients going that direction, you create a disgusting experience for the burrito’s end user. When you make a burrito, you should put the ingredients in layers lengthwise. That way, every bite has AT LEAST A FUCKING CHANCE of getting at least two types of ingredients, and there is little chance of becoming almost hopelessly trapped in a goddamned cilantro cavern.

Yeah. It's all like that, and better. Stop reading this and go read Luckyshirt's blog. Tell him I said hi.

Weird Dreams: Marc Maron, My Wife, and Drug Abuse

I don't often talk about dreams, but this one was a doozy.

My wife and I were on a bus of some sort. Who knows where we were going? In the world of dream logic, we may not have been going anywhere. The destination was the bus. Whatever. Oh, and also the bus had drivers in the front and in the back. Which sounds impossible, according to the laws of physics as I understand them.  Again - dream logic.

All of a sudden, a familiar face comes onto the bus, a guitar case strapped across his back. It's Marc Maron! What's he doing on the bus? (Why did he have a guitar?) He comes with an entourage. He's there to record a podcast, live on the bus. He's got some huge console that looks like an old reel-to-reel recorder, apparently to help record the show.

The next part of the dream is bizarre. Marc apparently has staged sequences as part of his podcasts. People prance around in costumes, singing choreographed numbers. This is weird. Definitely a WTF moment. (Pun intended.)

The next thing I know, my wife is singing along, delightedly, with the songs. I look at her and I realize that something's wrong.

"You've been taking drugs?!" I say to her, aghast. Her eyes are bright and delirious.

"I feel so good! I never sing anymore," she responds.

"What drugs did you take?"

"Unidentifiable!" she responds in a singsongy voice.

and ... that's all I remember. So if you're reading this, Marc Maron, you're not allowed in my dreams anymore until you apologize for getting my wife high on the dream bus.

Mitt Romney: Let FEMA Go Bankrupt

If you're one of those people on the East Coast bracing yourself for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, my thoughts and prayers are with you. (Yes, I'm a prayer kinda guy.)  I have family in Massachusetts, and I'll be anxiously watching the hurricane path over the next few days.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is still running for president. And in case you're still deciding who to vote for, please remember that Mitt Romney hates FEMA. He thinks disaster relief shouldn't even be part of the federal government.




"We should take all of what we're doing at the federal level and say, 'what are the things we're doing that we don't have to do?' And those are the things we've got to stop doing."

So yeah. FEMA is just a wasted budget line. Let's wipe out the budget, so we can kick more tax breaks back to rich folks like himself. Bear that in mind as the flood waters come rolling in, as roofs crumble, as we see the inevitable shots of rescued citizens and homes in ruins.

And, as Greg Sargent noted, Romney doesn't even stop there.

"There’s another nugget here worth highlighting, though. In that appearance, Romney also suggested it would be 'even better' to send any and all responsibilities of the federal government 'to the private sector,' disaster response included. So: Romney essentially favored privatizing disaster response."

So yeah. Blackwater gets to run your disaster relief. Good luck, civilians!

But just in case you really get hammered from the hurricane, Mitt has advice for you. Just go home and call 211.

The Job: Not Perfect, but Not Hell

This would have been a different post a few days ago.

A few days ago, I would have been raging about how I'd found yet another idiotic employer, one that didn't have any respect for the contributions of their employees, where I was once again being overworked and underappreciated.

I might have lamented the entire job sector in which I work, and maybe I would have idly wondered about becoming a mail carrier or a construction worker. It would have been seething with bitterness and resentment. And I would probably have gotten a lot of sympathetic comments from my friends and followers.

I can't write that post.

I can't allow myself to become jaded. I was scarred by my last job. I left wanting to burn the entire place to the ground. I don't ever want to work in a place that insane and dysfunctional again.

But I also don't want to have that kind of rage within me again.

Look, I have a good job. It's not a perfect job. There are moments when I don't love it. There are things I'm asked to do that I think are silly. I don't get as much money as I should.

But unlike my last job, I like going into the office every day. My co-workers like me and appreciate me and laugh when I send them silly cat pictures and Bruce Lee videos as responses to work emails.

They respect me. My last job didn't respect me.

They appreciate me. My last office couldn't have cared less about the quality of work I was doing.

They make me feel welcome. In my last job, I'd run into my office, close the door, and keep it closed for as long as I possibly could.

Most importantly, this job did something for my confidence. I was working in a place where I felt like dirt, and they gave me an escape. More than that: they said "we want you." Not just "come here and cower for a while," but they gave me an emphatic "come here; we want you; we're going to fight to get you on our staff." I need to remember how much better I have it now than I did six months ago.

So yes, there are petty annoyances. There are things I wish were better. I'm going to be sending out a few resumes to see if I can find a better offer elsewhere. But I don't hate my current job.  I refuse to hate it. I won't let myself go to that place again.

Romney: Sacrificial Lamb?

I'm not a professional political pundit, y'all. Just a smart-aleck sitting in his office writing stuff.

But I've never seen an election this weird in my life. Ever.

Romney may be the worst candidate this country has seen in a hundred years. He's an embarrassment. He is wooden, he's unbelievably bad speaking off-the-cuff, he has all the charisma of a turnip, and he doesn't seem to have any idea how to craft a winning policy.

But more than that - he seems to be doing this on his own.

I mean, sure, there are people like Reince Priebus who are paying lip service to him on the talk shows. but look at all the conservatives who have been undercutting him and questioning his candidacy. (This was happening before the damning videos came out, by the way. It's only going to get worse now.)

Erick Erickson:

But while we may be focused there, the fact is the Romney campaign isn’t functioning well. Lucky for you and me the election is not today. But something needs to happen in Boston and I am less and less hopeful anything will happen.

David Frum:

The policy problem is that the Romney campaign offers nothing but bad news to hardpressed Americans and the broader middle class.  How do you message: I'm doing away w Medicaid over the next 10 yrs, Medicare after that, to finance a cut in the top rate of tax to 28%?

 David Brooks:

Personally, I think [Romney is] a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not — some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign. 

And these are people who should be in his corner. Obama will always get hammered by progressives for not being aggressive enough on issues like demilitarization, stopping climate change, supporting full equality for LGBT individuals, etc. But in the end, they'll vote for him because they know he's better than the alternative. I'm not sure everybody in the Republican party believes that.

So here's my theory. (It's not a new theory, but it's the theory I've come to believe.)

I think that the GOP never expected to win this election.

You know how baseball teams will dump all of their veteran players, bring in a bunch of fresh-faced youngsters, and say that it's a "rebuilding year?" Well, this is a rebuilding year for the GOP.

They don't think Romney will win. They don't even particularly want Romney to win. It's obvious that many of the powerful people in the Republican party don't like Mitt Romney - not because he's an elitist jerk, but because he's a "moderate." They'd rather have a Tea Party-style paleoconservative like Paul Ryan be their flag bearer. So they're using this election to say "you see what happens when we run pretend conservatives? Next time, let's run a real one!"

Mitt Romney's being thrown under the bus. Just think about his competition. Santorum? Gingrich? Nobody of any serious political stature ran against him, because nobody expected the GOP to win this election. Romney is their sacrificial lamb. So after the election, the real fun begins. Watch the turmoil that happens in 2013 and 2014 as the varying factions try to take the reins of a Republican party that's falling apart. We're going to see a civil war for the heart of the party. That's the real battle being fought here.

The Ghost of a Tiny Bit of Cheese

This morning, Oliver told me that all of the ghosts and zombies and skeletons are "under his command." All except one.

"Which one isn't under your command?" I asked. Inquiring minds want to know.

"The ghost of a tiny bit of cheese."

"Oh. Well, what does the ghost of a tiny bit of cheese do?"

He paused for just a moment. "It runs away from the mouse ghost..."

Happiness is Good: A Work Update

I've been at my new job for about five or six months. Last week, I was riding down the elevator with a colleague and she turned to me and actually said, "Isn't it great that we get paid to do this?"

It is.

I'm doing what I've done for years: website, communications, press releases, working with the media, and dabbling in social media. It's a good office. It's a GOOD office.

Why? The answer sounds so simple as to be absurd: they support each other. They understand what it means to work as a team, and they do it without hesitation.

There is a happy chemistry in the office. People joke with each other, compliment each other on a job well done. They talk about their plans for the weekend, the boyfriend or girlfriend, cute kid updates. We chat about music, baseball, and still manage to get a tremendous amount of work done.

See how silly that sounds? But at my last office, all of that had disappeared. There was no joy, no friendly banter. People were miserable. Their souls had been crushed by thankless work, supervisors who were literally thankless (they had forgotten how to praise or even acknowledge their hard-working staff), and a budget crisis that seemed hopeless. Staff meetings were miserable, awkward, painful. Departments worked to undermine other departments, and people stared daggers at each other. It was awful.

I couldn't want to get out of there. I started sending out resumes, and to my shock, I got several calls after only sending a handful out. Several interviews followed. (I called in "sick" to my job, and no one noticed. I felt not a tinge of regret.) And I was offered this job.

I fought hard to hide my smile when I told them I was leaving. They asked me to fill out an exit interview. I was brutally honest. They asked if I would recommend the company to a friend, and I said no. I don't think the HR director had ever heard that before. I didn't enjoy saying that, but the truth needed to be told.

In the last job, I would drag my feet coming into work. I started working a day from home because I couldn't stand the toxic environment. But this job is different. I can't want to get to the office. Of course, I'd rather spend the day with my beloved wife and beloved son. But the job is good, people! I'm having fun. And everyone should have a job where they have a little fun.

I'm learning so much. It's an industry I've never worked in, and I know nearly nothing about. But that was true when I worked on health care issues, and when I worked in environmental issues, and even at my last job. It's more fun that way. In the sense of what I do - the press releases, the social media, web updates - it's old familiar ground. But I'm soaking in information every day about this new industry. I'm in a new world, again. And I'm having fun.

The Motorcycle Accident

Have I talked about this here? I don't think I have.

This happened a long time ago. Over twenty years ago. I was in New England, staying at the house of a college friend. We were driving - me, my friend, and her mother. We were driving around a quiet country road when, suddenly, a guy on a motorcycle came screaming by us.

We were on our way to something that seems meaningless now. A grocery store, an ice cream place, a park.

We were going maybe 30, 35 miles an hour. The motorcyclist must have been doing twice that. He passed us on a curve, ignoring the double yellow line and the "No Passing" signs. He sounded like a chainsaw passing by us.

"That guy's going to get himself killed," I said. I think I said it out loud. In my memory, I did. And that's what makes the next few minutes so horrifying.

I watched him for a minute, whipping around curves, and then lost sight of him. And then saw him again. He was coming up to a T intersection, and there was another car coming. He was headed west, and the other car heading south.

He hit his brakes so hard that I saw sparks flying out from beneath his back wheel. And then the impact happened.

He went flying. He ended up on the road, still as a memory. Dark red blood pooled beneath his head, his head that was still wearing his useless helmet. It was ineffective - he hit the ground too hard to have any hope. It was over instantly. I hoped - hope - that it was over instantly.

He hit the car (it was a big solid car, a Cadillac or a Lincoln Town Car) hard enough that the front wheel went flat. The front bumper was crushed. The elderly couple was coming around a corner, tried to stop, had no time to stop. They were horrified. So were we.

I had been to funerals, but I had never seen a dead body like this. I had never seen someone die right in front of me. And that's what happened. Five minutes ago, he was the idiot on the bike. And then, he was the dead body lying in the road.

The police came. They asked questions, took names and numbers. We went to the local police station to file an official report, since we were officially witnesses. I told them about the speed, about the sparks. The police officer thanked us for our time and said there might be calls later.

"That guy's going to get himself killed."

It's a horrible feeling, thinking that you predicted the future. It's something that people probably say all the time without thinking about it. Like Luke Burbank reported the other day, when he recounted his own motorcycle accident story on TBTL - "it would serve that guy right to get it in an accident."

You don't think it's going to happen. You literally aren't wishing ill of the other person. You don't want the other person to get killed. It's just something that you say without thinking about it. Sometimes, there's a tiny part of your mind that wishes the universe would exact its karmic revenge instantly. And sometimes, God help us, the universe does.

TBTL Promo

So this is probably weird.

I like a) the early phase projects of Steve Reich, and b) TBTL (which, if you don't know about, go dig it.)

A few years ago, the host Luke Burbank put out an open call for intros for the show. Some of their best sound drops and intros come from their very dedicated, borderline obsessive audience. And I'm one of those obsessive types. So I fed a few lines into a text-to-speech program, put the loops into GarageBand and played around with them until I had something that sounded fun. And I came up with this.

TBTL Loops - short version

I imagine that Luke was all "hmm, this is interesting" ...

And then he was all "maybe I need to drink more to get it"

And then he was all, "nah, I still don't get it."

It's a bit odd, I'll admit. I was going for an echoey sound like what Steve Reich accomplished with pieces like "It's Gonna Rain." I was really proud of it. Hope you like it.

By the way, this is my first post on Soundcloud, but it won't be the last. I've been doing a lot of odd little projects in GarageBand, and I'm going to start sharing them. Let me know what you think.

Flashback: Oliver's Birth Story (part 2)

(Note: Oliver turns seven this month. In his honor - and just because it's fun to look back - I'm going to repost the story of his birth. I posted this originally on the other blog way back in 2005.)

We arrived early and went back to the triage room. Triage is a word I learned from MASH - not in a good way. Triage - as I understood it - meant that there was blood everywhere, and people were missing limbs, and you were trying to sort out the people who were going to die from the people who might live from the people who weren't injured badly enough to worry about. There was no bleeding, no screaming. Instead, it was a nurse's station, with six glass-door rooms for expectant mothers. There were whiteboards with names and procedures written on them for each room. Our room had Mrs. B's last name written on it, and "3 miso." Mrs. B had had two misos the day before, and we had arrived to possibly get dose #3, and to definitely - definitely - have Mrs. B's labor induced. We went back into our room and Mrs. B assumed the position on the table. Then two (two?) nurses came in, and introduced themselves. They had vaguely similar names - Karen or Kelly, or Sharon and Shelly, or Rhonda and Rita. One was in training, and so she was shadowing the other nurse. Which, as it turned out, meant that after training nurse stuck her hand up to the wrist into Mrs. B, the other nurse would check and verify her readings. So up they went. Training nurse (TN) said something technical - "4 cm, partly dilated, moist," something like that, and supervising nurse (SN) went up and said, "that seems right." Let me tell you - it seemed cruel for a woman in Mrs. B's position to have to go through this in her position. I know that verisimilitude has got to be important for this job, and that they'd always have a real person instead of, I don't know, a full-size pregnant vinyl doll. But still, it seemed excessive. Thank goodness - things had progressed to a good point, and they got the doctor. Hey, it's our OB! We hadn't seen her all day yesterday, but here she was, and she decided that we'd just go ahead and skip Miso #3 and advance to the delivery room, across the hall. It was exciting. It was like we had won a prize. The labor rooms at Swedish Hospital are huge, and very well-equipped. The room had everything - a rocking chair, whirlpool bath, tv, CD player, and to top it off, an automatic bed with controls that looked thirty years old. I keep saying "we," but almost everything - down to the "squatting bar" that could be attached to the bed - was designed for the woman in labor. As for me, I had a fairly nice sleeping area - a wide cushioned area in the corner - and, well, that was enough. TN and SN came with us. They sat in our room the whole time, charting and checking R's vital signs. I thought it would feel like giving birth in the nurse's station, but soon enough I completely forgot about them completely." IV's were connected. TN tried valiantly to find a vein for the IV and missed badly, leaving R with a bruise that would stay with her for days after Oliver's arrival. Meters were strapped into place, and the pitocin drip began. And we got comfortable. It was Monday morning - we scanned the tv channels, watched "The View" and "Ellen." Mrs. B got her book out. We waited for everything to begin. There was a monitor similar to the one in the triage room for her contractions, and to monitor the little fella's heartbeat. This was a big deal - pitocin can cause pretty dramatic contractions, and can impact the baby if they come too hard and too fast, so it was important to make sure he was doing all right through the whole procedure. The monitor began spewing out folded paper with readings on it, like a seismograph. I went to get coffee at the hospital cafeteria after a while. We both somehow forgot that Mrs. B wouldn't be able to eat anything bigger than ice chips while she was in labor. She hadn't eaten breakfast before we arrived at the hospital. So I felt pretty guilty as I drank my coffee and ate my eggs. I can't provide blow-by-blow description of the whole labor process because I don't remember everything. I remember every second of certain moments, and there are entire hours that are gone. I really thought at the time that I'd remember every moment, but there was a lot of waiting and watching the meters during this time. The nurses would check her dilation, they'd read the paper and chart numbers, and we'd wait. I napped several times during the day. I somehow understood that I would need all of my energy the next day, so I tried to sneak as many naps as I could. I would curl up in my corner, sometimes pretending to watch tv, sometimes not even making a pretense. When things got slow, we played music. We had a stack of CDs from home, mostly gentle soothing music (James Taylor, Cat Stevens, and Oliver's first CD) and more upbeat music, in case R needed extra energy during the delivery (Beatles, Barenaked Ladies). I ordered lunch. Our OB had tipped me off that our room was eligible for meals as part of our hospital bill, so I could eat as long as I explained that it was for the patient. I ordered a burger or something. The food came via Bizarro World room service, on plates covered by hospital-blue rubber covers, and I ate, tucked into a corner so I wouldn't annoy R. Here's another important thing that I remember: the contractions got stronger. Well, not at first: they actually had to turn up the pitocin because R's contractions were barely registering. The nurse told her, "Honey, you've just got wimpy contractions right now." But then they really started to kick in. And then R was suddenly working really hard to breathe through the contractions - that Lamaze breathing you've heard about. But it's so much worse when you can see the actual pain on the person's face, instead of fake-agonizing pain on an actress' face, followed by a snappy one-liner. No, that was real pain on R's face, and I did my best to support her. She concentrated on not agonizing in pain, and I sat with her, held her hand, rubbed my hand along her forearm in rhythm with her breaths. It seems silly to write it, but we did that for hours, her breathing and me moving my hand along her forearm, and I felt like I was helping as much as I could. She kept reporting her pain level to the nurses. She was getting an epidural, but she wanted to wait until the pain was up to 7, on a 1-10 scale. So she went up the scale - three, four, five. I could see her wince, and brace herself for the next one. Six. The nurses offered to run her a bath, and she gratefully accepted. I came in and kept trying to talk her through each contraction, rubbing her arm in what seemed more and more like a futile gesture. Tears were in her eyes now. Seven. She told the nurses to call the anesthesiologist or anesthestitian or the guy who gives you the bloody epidural. He came quick, said gentle comforting things to my agonizing wife, and inserted a needle and then a tube into the epidural space, right next to my beloved's spinal cord. Now, let emphasize this. He inserted a tiny stringlike tube that seemed to be twelve feet long and threaded it into her spine. I tried furiously to think good thoughts (about pain relief and blissfully easy delivery) and not bad thoughts (complications, complications, complications that I can't even write four months after the fact.) It went in smoothly, and like a passing wave, her agony subsided. Sometime around here, Mrs. B's mother - my mother-in-law, who shall hereafter be referred to as MLBS - arrived. She flew in from New Hampshire and was kind enough to take a taxi to the hospital so I wouldn't have to leave R's side. She works in health care and has for decades, and is possibly more at home in a hospital room than any of our nurses were. At one point, R needed to have a catheter inserted, and the nurse gently offered MLBS the opportunity to leave. She replied, "Oh, it doesn't bother me. I've seen hundreds of catheters." I believe that the nurse was then struck by sudden performance anxiety.  Thankfully, the catheter went in as planned.  (A catheter's just not something you want to go wrong.) Time wore on. I walked MLBS down to the hospital cafeteria so she could eat dinner. She ate pizza, and in her oddly courteous way, she heaped praise on the fine quality of the pizza slices. I drank coffee, anticipating that I would need it. As the night arrived, we decided that I would drive MLBS to our apartment for the night. It would be impossible for both of us to sleep in that room, and we wanted at least one of us to get a full night's sleep. So I drove her home, showed her where her bed and the coffee maker were, and said my good nights. She would take a taxi to the hospital in the morning. I promised to call her if Oliver arrived before she returned. I remember driving back to the hospital a little punchy and a little giddy. I could see the empty car seat through my rearview mirror. I thought, the next time I drive here, I will be bringing my wife and our child. Our baby will be coming home. The night wore on. We listened to NPR, and I tried to doze some more. The night shift nurse came on. I don't remember her name, but she was Canadian, and kind. She made us feel safe and in good hands. Our local public radio station broadcasts a Canadian news program, "As It Happens," at 11 pm. When it came on, our nurse got excited. She told us that she listened to the show on CBC all the time when she was young. The theme song made her feel like she was home. I remember the next show was Diane Rehm, interviewing Bob Dole. I must have been sleepy, but I remember being struck by how professional and friendly Diane was with Senator Dole. She was at her best, giving him the entire hour so he could tell jokes and talk with gentle hindsight about his career. I remember R's voice waking me up. I had been sleeping for a while in my little corner. It was early on Tuesday morning, and things were happening quickly. Her cervix was nearly dilated the full ten centimeters. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and took a post next to the bed. Around 3 am or so, our nurse announced that we had hit 10 cm, and we were ready to push. She gave instructions - how to push, how to breathe, and we waited for the next contraction.  She would count to ten, and R would push like the dickens until 10, and then rest.  "Okay, push!" She counted to ten, and R pushed with everything she had. The nurse praised her. It was only one push. We would do this over and over again - thirty times? Fifty times? A hundred? Our nurse praised her. She gave her tips - "Okay, you're making good progress!" (Progress pronounced Canadian-style, the first syllable rhyming with "know.") "Remember to push down. Lift your bum just a little!" I liked our Canadian nurse. Everything seemed so foreign and strange to me, and having a nurse that spoke a slightly different version of English was weirdly comforting. She kept pushing, and the nurse checked to see where Oliver was. She could feel his head. We were encouraged, and R kept at it with new resolve. I did all that a husband can do in this position. "You're doing great, honey. You're doing such good work. I'm so proud of you." I said the same words again and again, and every time I meant them more than the last. I was so proud of this woman, sweat pouring down her forehead as she struggled to move our baby out of her own body and into the world. Then a glimpse of black matted hair. His head! Thank God - his head was coming out first. No weird breach baby stuff. A couple of contractions later, R was able to reach down and feel the top of his head. She laughed, exhausted but giddy at touching her own child for the first time. The nurse touched the call button. The nurse's station responded. "Can you send the doctor in here, please? I think we're going to have a baby pretty soon." R kept pushing, and the work was starting to strain. As our nurse finished her ten-count, R would let out a gasp of complete exhaustion, and immediately she began to gird herself for the next contraction. Sweat began appearing on her forehead. The nurse hit the call button again. "Can you tell the doctor to hurry? We're going to have a baby here in the next thirty minutes." Minutes later, our doctor came in, scrubbed, gowned, and chipper. The doc said something light and gentle to relieve the pressure, and R smiled. And then she started pushing again. The head was coming out, but each time it was going back into the birth canal. Out - and back - and out - and back - like he was playing peek-a-boo with the top of his head. After a moment, the doctor realized what was wrong. The cord was wrapped around our baby's neck. She pulled his head out just enough to expose his neck, caught the cord - it wasn't tight around his throat, thankfully - and clamped and snipped it. And a moment later, out he popped. When you see the birth movies in classes, it looks completely odd to see babies springing out of women as if they're springloaded. But that's exactly what happened. His head and shoulders were bigger than anything else, and once those big obstacles cleared, there was nothing left holding him back. And so - sprroing! He popped out, wet, bloody, his limbs looking like frog's legs, all akimbo and quivering. It was 5:32 am, and we were officially parents. The doctor grabbed him and cleaned him off, and then handed him to another nurse to finish toweling him off. Two nurses had somehow joined the party - they went to measuring him and checking limbs and fingers and toes and inserting silver nitrate eyedrops. He was 7 pounds, 13 ounces. He was twenty inches long.  He was healthy. He had his fingers, his toes, his eyes, his ears. One of the first things that happens to a baby is an APGAR test, checking for proper breathing, reflexes, etc. Oliver made this easy - his color was good, his reflexes were good, and he bellowed his first cry. He also could pee and poo without trouble - he peed a full stream from his bassinet to the sink three feet away. (That talent will come in handy later in life.) The doctor woke me up from my stupor. "Hey, got a camera, Dad? This is picture time!" And I did have a camera, I snapped his squirming body on the scale, and screaming in that little Plexiglass bassinet, and then I took the first photos of him in his mother's arms. They put Oliver in her arms, and in her exhausted near-delirium, she could only say, "Baby. Oh, hi, baby." And she laughed, very light and tired laughs, but the relieved laughter of someone who's worked so hard and finally is bathed in the light at the end of the tunnel. "Hi baby." There was, of course, more to do. R's placenta was making one last attempt to scare the hell out of us. It didn't come out all the way, and R was bleeding pretty seriously. The good doctor stayed working with stainless tools that snipped and scraped, and finally they got the last bit of placenta cleared away. There was a lot of blood. R never saw it, but I saw the blood pouring out of her. After an eternity, the blood flow stopped, and the doctor stood up, still smiling despite the red-soaked sheets before her. Our doctor had nearly set a personal record that night. She had delivered seven babies that night, including two cesarean sections. She was off in two hours. It was morning on Tuesday, and the work and the fun for us had only just begun.