The Wrong Direction

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

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

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!

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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...

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

Freddy Update

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

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

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...)