Apt. 11D

Imposters Intrude!

I'm takin' off for the biannual pilgramage to Cleveland. I know. Stop the excitement.

To keep you amused, I booked two guest bloggers, my brother Chris and his lovely wife Tammy. I have no clue what they'll blog about. Since they're new parents, it will probably be a combination of politics and poop stories. They should fit right in.

Their only instructions were not to publish any pictures of me, because of all the internet wack-jobs. (Present company excluded.) However, I have recently noticed that other guest blogger often go on at great length discussing the wisdom and beauty of their host. Feel free to do that, guys. You can also lie and tell the readers that I am built like Pam Anderson. Because nothing boosts readership like rumors of a great rack.

Back on Tuesday.

Arms Race

Jonah raced out of the house on Saturday armed with a bright blue water gun. Water dripped down his elbow. It was the traditional handgun model suitable for blowing away one's spouse in a jealous rage or knocking coke cans off a stump. A gift from Grandma. Thank you, Grandma.

The Poison Vaccine

When it became obvious that my son Ian couldn't talk, my husband and I spent a lot of time googling disabilities and taking the kid to professionals to find out the root of his problem. Did he have autism, apraxia, or was he just a pain in the ass? After much research, we learned that he has apraxia AND he's a pain in the ass.

The next stage was to examine every member of our squirrelly family looking for some genetic source of Ian's neurological disorder. Cousin Jeffrey has a PhD in music and is a professional cellist. Ding. Ding. Ding. Music talent is a warning sign for speech problems. Another cousin was shy. Could she be on the spectrum. Another scored in the 99th percentile for IQ. Was she hyperlexic?

At family get togethers, aunts and uncles would stay clear of me as I probed past history and diagnosed the children with rare brain tumors. The life of the party.

When things don't go right, you look for answers. Why are so many children being diagnosed not only with Ian's malady, but also with autism? Our local school district doesn't have the capacity to keep up with demands for special education services.

All week, my e-mail inbox has been filled with a discussion of the connection between Thimerosal and autism. Friends with children with autism have been weighing in on both sides of this debate. For the most compelling arguments, please read this series of posts on the topic by Dr. Manhattan.

Why Rove is Wrong

To celebrate my kid's last day of Kindergarten, we rode the bus into NYC and took the train back to New Jersey. While waiting for our transfer in Secaucus, I picked up a castoff Post. One of the best thing about public transportation is free reading material. The Opinion section had an excerpt of Rove's speech to the New York State Conservative Party Dinner on Wednesday. The liberal bloggers have probably run this topic into the ground, but I don't have time to search around.

Rove:
Let me know say a few words about the state of liberalism. Perhaps the place to begin is with this stinging indictment:

"Liberalism is at greater risk now than at any time in recent American history. The risk is of political marginality, even irrelevance... [L]iberalism risks getting defined, as conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms."

These are not the words of William F. Buckley, Jr. or Sean Hannity; they are the words of Paul Starr, co-editor of The American Prospect, a leading liberal publication.

There is much merit in what Mr. Starr writes -- though he and I fundamentally disagree as to why liberalism is edging toward irrelevance. I believe the reason can be seen when comparing conservatism with liberalism.

Conservatives believe in lower taxes; liberals believe in higher taxes. We want few regulations: they want more. Conservatives measure the effectiveness of government programs by results; liberals measure the effectiveness of government programs by inputs. We believe in cutting the size of government; they believe in expanding the size of government. Conservatives believe in making America a less litigious society; liberals believe in making America a more litigious society. We believe in accountability and parental choice in education; they don't....

Well, no. That's not what liberalism is about, at least my brand of liberalism. Yes, liberalism is in jeopardy, and I have been a critic of how the left is advancing its cause, but liberalism is not how Rove paints it.

The goals of liberalism are to live in a more equitable society, with most citizens living in the middle class, to live in a fair society where hard work and pluck are rewarded regardless of connections or class or gender, and to live in a free society where everyone can choose how best to reach happiness.

These goals are essential to the American democracy and imagination. We are Americans because we don't have a class system and a college dropout can found Microsoft in a garage. Since the 1980s, there are signs that class structure is becoming more rigid and the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. This doesn't bode well for the vitality of American democracy.

Liberalism is NOT about more taxes or government intervention or added bureaucracy. Good liberals don't give a crap about how services are provided, just that the goals are achieved.

1.6 billion dollars were raised by Americans to aid the Tsunami victims. Hell, if we could raise money for homelessness, housing, and hunger through voluntary means rather than taxes, that would be FINE BY ME. We could have weekly televised relief efforts aimed at one particular need. Elton John could come out every week with some new version of Yellow Brick Road.

Many liberals are in favor of vouchers, not simply because the market knows all, but because they think it can be the means to help urban children.

We have nothing invested in large or small government, big or small taxes, regulation or free. What I care about is the goals of equity, fairness, and freedom.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are too caught up in the means and seem to have no goals. What is their end plan? Okay, so you're in favor of flat taxes or small government, tell me why. What do you have to offer me?

Their unwavering belief in the free market and religious fervor in economics system rivals the Marxists.

I don't have enough confidence that without some human control, capitalism will float all boats. I don't believe that after a country endures a period of human slavery, it move to the next historical stage of exploitation in a Nike factory, and then it will graduate to the final historical stage of pure capitalism with flat screen TVs and Skechers for all.

Capitalism is fine and good, but we have to have some control over events. We can't sit back and let wrongs occur and just assume that progress will improve things.

Any attempt to put some control over inequities and conservatives accuse you of being a communist. Putting economics ahead of social and political goals is leading to a revival of Social Darwinism. The poor are poor for a reason, now leave me alone to enjoy the fruits of my labor without a guilt trip, please.

Republicans claim to be helpless as the invisible hand does its work, they ignore greater goals of humanity in their promotion of an economic principle, they dismiss the needs of the poor as part of natural order of things.

Now tell me, which party is the most negative?

Question of the Day

What was the name of your Kindergarten teacher?

Different Worlds

I just sent off Jonah to his Last Day of Kindergarten with a bag of fancy tea and cookies for his teacher. I also included a sappy note:

Dear Miss E.--

Thank you so much for taking such good care of Jonah. Every morning, he looked forward to coming to school and showed me his work proudly at the end of every day. Our children are so important to us that everyone who touches them becomes part of our extended family. Thanks again. LM

We at 11D wear our cornball badges proudly. The corn began yesterday as I thought about Jonah finishing Kindergarten and how fast it went for me.

Getting two kids dressed and fed every morning is no mean trick. This morning, I left Jonah with instructions to get himself dressed, while I was drying my hair. We were running behind but if Jonah took care of his own clothes, then we just might make it to the bus stop on time. After two minutes of bad hair drying, I came downstairs to find Jonah buck naked singing and twirling his shorts over his head, Ian's banana had fallen onto the good carpet, and Ian was shoving a play shopping cart around the livingroom aiming for the fallen banana. Ugh! Late again.

So, this year has mostly been about corralling children, cooking the increasingly small subset of foods that will both eat, teaching them new tricks, keeping them out of the street, and preventing that banana from getting ground into the good carpet. It went by fast.

The corn started went I realized that this year was something entirely different for Jonah. We're so alike that I sometimes forget that he's a different being. That he has a life when I'm not around. For him, this year took a very long time. He can barely remember life before his first day at Blanche Smith elementary school. He spent more waking hours at school than he did with me. At that time, his friends and his teacher were the center of his life. All the playground alliances and phonics lessons were huge for him.

Everybody remembers their Kindergarten teacher, even if they can't remember the names of their college professors.

Jonah's teacher didn't start off high in my regard, because I didn't think she challenged the boy enough. I am not a big proponent of boring kids as a way to toughen them up for the boring business of adulthood. But she grew on me as the school year went on. I set up a couple of meetings with her to learn more about what was happening at school. Jonah didn't reveal much. She won me over in those meetings because she had Jonah's number.

Not did she have the basics like Jonah was especially good at math, but she also got the subtle stuff, like he still cries when he gets in trouble. Jonah is torn by his desire to make the kids laugh by making loud farting noises in class and by his desire to always get everything right and to be top in the class. Despite being very active, he prefers to sit with the quiet, good kids and made great strides this year in getting control over his body.

She got him right and won my respect.

So, a very different school year ends today for Jonah and me. Different challenges, different successes, different pace. I might be quite dense, but this realization has come slow to me.

I have a couple of hours to think up something really cool to do with the boys as a celebration, because the Last Day of Kindergarten is a big deal for small fry. I think we might go into NYC and ride the A train from one end of Manhattan to the other. Boy paradise. That much I understand.

Fat Bastard Strikes Again

As I got my head together this morning with a pot of Starbuck's finest, Fat Bastard sat in the middle of our backyard nibbling on clover flowers. FB had nibbled my heirloom lettuce down to the nubs yesterday, and he had to settle for clover flowers until the brave little lettuces revived themselves.

While Ian was at school, I read a bit about the thimerosal connection with autism.

The kids had a half day from school today. The school year always ends with a whimper, not a bang. Day long assemblies. Slim pickins in the cafeteria with the food from the bottom of the freezers. The kids fart around for the last week as the teachers make their vacation plans and clean out the desks. The entire month of June should be written off. For Jonah, a few wasted weeks at school isn't a bad thing, but for Ian who just started his special ed school, this wasted month is a disaster.

He'll have three weeks of summer school in July and then off again for August. By the time that school gets going again after the Jewish holidays in mid September, he'll have been without serious attention from a speech professional for 6 months. I have a strong urge to wring someone's neck. FB better waddle away from the lettuce at a sharp clip.

We spent the afternoon inside listening to Philadelphia Chickens and testing Ian's ability to keep his Mr. Incredible underwear dry. The kids amused themselves assembling engine pileups, while I read the Travel section of the Times with its cover peice on hikes through Europe. For the first time in my life, I thought I might want to visit Norway.

Norwegians, as I discovered during a four-day hiking expedition to the wind-swept Hardangervidda National Park a few summers ago, embrace the outdoors with an almost reverential fervor. During a trek with a hiking companion, Tim Goldsmid, I met Norwegian hikers of all shapes - from a family with a pair of blond-haired children in tow, bobbing as they tried to keep up with their parents, to an older couple sharing sips of tea out of a stainless steel thermos on a rocky outcrop along the trail. While we were on vacation thousands of miles from home, many Norwegians often escape for a one- or two-day wilderness trips. Outdoor recreation is a way of life there.

"Hiking is a very special tradition here, because so many people live close to nature in Norway," said Anne Marie Hjelle, the director of the Mountain Touring Association, known as DNT. "Starting in kindergarten, children spend time in parks and the forest. Nature is all around us here, and it's something Norwegians feel very special about."

But while Norwegians fan out into the national parks in the summer, the country escapes much of the tourist crush that deluges Europe's more populous mountain regions. The well-traveled destinations in the Alps - among them, Chamonix, France, and Zermatt, Switzerland - bubble over with vacationers ogling the snow-crowned peaks. Norway offers the perfect antidote: a remote and ragged landscape carved by majestic fjords into vertiginous peaks and verdant valleys that remain largely out of the path of the tourist stampede.

Sounds good, doesn't it. This weekend, we'll have to settle for Bear Mountain.

House and Hillary

I got sucked into watching House rather late in the season and am busy catching up on old episodes. House is a cantankerous, middle aged doctor who pops vicodin and growls at nice people. He is surrounded by singularly boring people, played by bad actors, which makes him look especially good. While pretending to solve a medical mystery, the characters spend stalk up and down the hospital corridors, rather like the West Wing people. Hollywood believes that professionals must put in a good mile or two in a hallway to earn a paycheck.

Anyway, I'm sucked in and am not really sure why. Could be the sarcastic and wounded thing. As I learned from all those romance novels, chicks dig that shit.

This is the first time getting to the computer since my rude post this morning. Wanted to point you all to this article about Edward Klein and his new book about Hillary, since we're on the topic.

This review in Salon says that this book is trash. Klein regurgitates old info (ie, she must have had some clue about Clinton's other women) and gives too much info about the sexual proclivities of her friends (ie, a little too butch for Klein). Even Klein says that the whole Clinton raping Hillary story was taken totally out of context by Drudge.

A few months ago, there was a review of a Michael Medved book in the Times that discusses Medved relationship with his Yale classmates, Bill and Hillary. Surprisingly, Medved had Bill's number right away. He was a bit slimy. But Medved really liked Hillary. He found her honest and smart and religious and good hearted. Medved, who spent the rest of his book bashing liberals, had a soft spot for Hillary.

As much as all the past history and gossip stuff is fun, I am most interested in what comes next. I am fascinated about how a public figure, like Hillary, changes her image over time and how that image can play well in one part of the country and not another. Why does Bill continue to be so popular even in the Red Zone, while Hillary is a slogan on a bumper sticker on a pickup? What kind of woman candidate will America accept? Oh, there are so many angles to this story.

Our Commander in Chief Does Some Thinkin'

At a press conference yesterday, Bush announced, "I think about Iraq every day. Every day."

Whoa, buddy. Don't overwork yourself there. There are all sorts of other things that you have to spend time thinking about in a given day.

Readers are invited to offer up some ideas of the other things that Bush thinks about.

I'm It.

I was tagged by Dan Drezner to answer the latest book meme making the rounds. John Cole got the ball moving by asking:

Do you ever read those stuffy book lists you see circulating, like 'List your five most important books,' and think to yourself- no wonder these people are so damned boring. Some of the titles give me a damned headache, they are so dull. Knowing things is great, but fiction makes life bigger and better and in color.

So, in the proud spirit of anti-intellectualism (just kidding), I am going to offer... the five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult.

Five? Only five? I read a lot back then. Mostly because my fascist parents had imposed strict regulations on TV viewing. Biding my time until college when my time would be better spent at the pub, I read widely and indiscriminately. A promiscuous reader was I. From beach trash to sci fi to comic books to philosophy.

Five books that I read as a teenager that I have reread as an adult (or would like to reread):

1. I often talk about my love of the Brontes and Austin, so something new. I was also a big fan of Louisa May Alcott. Not only the famous Little Women, but also Little Men, Jo's Boys, and Rose in Bloom. Alcott is an American original. Her characters are full of energy and strength and imagination. They're not weighed down with money/class baggage that burden the heroines of Bronte and Austin.

2. Junior year of high school, one group of my friends and I went through a romance novel binge. We traded boxes of paperbacks. On every cover, a dashing pirate/union captain/Scottish laird embraced a swooning maiden with heaving bosoms. Hey, don't laugh. One friend, who holds an MBA from Harvard, has spent years writing her own romance novel. One romance novel that was a big favorite in high school was Shanna. The writing is unpretentious, the plot fast paced, and the hero... well, let's just say he has many talents.

3. I've skimmed some of the answers in this meme. Lots of people mention the Lord of the Rings series, Narnia series, the Foundation series, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Gallaxy series. Read them all. Required reading for geeky bloggers. After reading the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I spent a lot of time wondering what Turkish Delight was. I suspected it was chicken.

4. I read No Exit and Three Other Plays in my high school lunch room; it explained a lot to me, but I was entering my misunderstood artist phase of high school.

5. And, like Dan, I think that there are wonderful, non-fiction narratives that also inspire. So, I'm breaking the rules to include a work of nonfiction. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.

I pass the meme to: Russell Arben Fox, Tim Burke, Jay Allen, Allison Kaplan Sommer, and Elizabeth.