tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-233632962024-03-07T15:16:12.750-08:00Daddy Dialectic<b>A blog for twenty-first-century parents</b>Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.comBlogger480125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-79183271173563335452016-01-05T19:31:00.004-08:002016-01-05T19:33:21.918-08:00Letter to my son, five years gone<i>My friend Matt Mahady wrote this poem and sent it to me in 2010. Matt was born in 1972 and he died in the first week of 2016, of a heart attack.</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><i>His son Sage died in 2005.</i><br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
<span style="line-height: 14.352px;">Hey champ</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
what's the news in your dimension?
I got an invitation to write about you the other day
from an old Gainesville friend
he knew you when you were a little baby
when me you and your mom
were living in married housing
scraping by on Pell Grant money
and my part time job as a windowman
staying together because we loved you
even more than we hated each other
and that's saying something
(some day I would've told you the stories
suffice to say
we were children, so we acted like children)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
anyway
this invitation
it shook my foundations
upset my equilibrium
like stirring up an iron pot of steaming gumbo
and the liquid boils over and burns your fucking fingers
but in the process
you move what needs to be moved
from the depths to the surface
first I was disturbed
and then I just put it on the back burner
the way I put you on the back burner
to survive
not so much your memory
but rather the memory of your death
the horror
of you blowing your fucking brains out
on your mom and stepdads bed
while they were at the gym
and I was trying to call you
not that I blame you
you were in pain and
this world is bullshit
you were just a brave boy who knew too much too soon
so don't think I'm not proud of you
I always was
and this didn't change that
one iota</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Whenever I wonder why
you did what you did
I remember how
sensitive you were
a child without skin
this world
this scheme of things as they call it
the set up of this reality
would have only gotten more and more and more
excruciating and unbearable
for you
as time went on</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
and there aint no pill for that, lad
believe me, I've tried them all
this is just to say:
I know how tiresome it all seemed to you
I know how much you suffered
scratch that, mini-me
Truth is
I knew but I did not know
If I had had any real idea
little man
I would've done...
what?
I would've done something
Shit
I knew you were a moody kid
but I didn't think the fault lines ran so deep</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
your mother loved you
your father loved you
your stepfather loved you
she was responsible
I was bohemian
you got order and you got wonder</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
it was the best, I thought, of both worlds
you had grandparents, friends, cool clothes and a PS2
you had all the material things I never had
you were cool
which at your age
I never was
part of me can't figure it out
but the part of me that knows you knows
it's that same part of me that knows that
even though I was not guilty of your death
that's not quite the same as being innocent
you know I was going through some shit back then
so I wasn't there for you
in the way that I normally was
in the way that you needed me to be
I know I disappointed you more than once
over those last 6 months
and so really I blame myself
for what happened
the bottom line is:
it was my job to protect you
to keep you safe
and I failed</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
the only thing I ever cared about in life
more than my writing
was being a good father to you
was I a good father to you?
You'll have to answer that question
you're the only one who can
my opinion?
I suppose,
yes, I was
most of the time
but not when it counted</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
anyway
we've been over all this before
the point of doing it all again
is that now I'm going to put it in a public forum
and label it poetry</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
I've been wrestling with the ethics of this
ever since I realized I was going to do it
usually when I write about you
I only show it to a handful of people
and the idea behind this
is that you are sacred
and therefore exempt
from exploitation</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
every other experience in my life
from painful break-ups to career implosions to random daily catastrophe
I think to myself
"hey,
at least I can get a good poem out of this"
I never wanted you to fall into that category
you are too important
you meant too much
I didn't want to pimp your memory
in this one thing
in this one lousy fucking thing
I wanted to not be a whore</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
on the other hand
I'm compelled to share with the world how fucking special you were
You were a unique and magical lifeform
Who touched everyone you touched
I was blessed by the gift of being your father
I'd hate to let anyone forget
you were the apex of my existence
(my raison d etre
if you'll allow me to be a douchebag
about it)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
“thought of you as my mounaintop
thought of you as my peak
thought of you as everything
I had but couldn't keep”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
And no one's ever seen me weep for you
but I weep for you
for a year after you died
I'd squeeze the syringe and pray
"God please kill me....
God,
please kill me."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
The grief was water
It swamped my oars
Until I washed up on the shores
of strange and beautiful Moravia</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 14.352px; margin-top: 10px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Wish you were here, boy
We would have had a real good time</div>
<br />
<br />Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-36075714246460057722013-06-14T11:08:00.002-07:002013-06-14T11:08:25.276-07:00Help Relaunch Rad Dad for Father's Day!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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tomas, editor rad dad zinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03272773798092364303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-84931013820749884422012-12-14T14:55:00.002-08:002012-12-19T14:09:55.004-08:00I Want to Write About ViolenceI want to write about violence.
<br />
<br />
I want to write about violence but I don’t want to say anything stupid. I don’t want to say violence is bad. I don’t want to say guns are bad. I don’t want to say anything is bad. Because we all know it’s bad.
<br />
<br />
I want to write about violence because of the school shootings today in Connecticut. I guess that goes without saying.
<br />
<br />
I’m not really an emotional person. Friends don’t come to me for comfort. I don’t wear my feelings on my sleeve. I don’t cry easily. And so I surprised myself by being near the edge of tears for most of the morning; one or two of those tears might have even jumped the wall of my face. I surprised myself by walking to my son’s school and lurking outside the gates. It was a primitive, almost biological, impulse, and I gave into it. I felt ashamed as I did it. Ashamed of not being in control.
<br />
<br />
I don't think "people" are violent. Most people are not violent. We all carry the potential of violence inside of us, but most of us never realize that potential, never <i>really</i> want to, though we might fantasize about violence. I know the scientific literature, because I read the literature as part of my work; those studies are in my head right now like background static. The literature says most of us avoid violence at all costs. Most of us must be trained to take life. And people who learn to kill people must first learn to see people as targets, not people. Killing other people is unnatural.<br />
<br />
I’m talking about healthy people. I’m talking about people who love, who hurt, who worry about other people. But not all people are healthy and not all people are healthy all the time. Sometimes, I am not healthy.
<br />
<br />
In my worst moments I have forgotten that other people feel as I do, and I've forgotten that they deserve respect and dignity and understanding. I have had too many of those moments. Those are the moments when I allow the other me, the one I hide, the Mr. Hyde that everyone hides, to reveal himself. Most of the time my violence has taken the form of words. But I have, in my life, hit and shoved people. And afterward, it hasn't seemed real. I have had to struggle to own those unreal moments. And when I do, I am ashamed. Ashamed of not being in control.
<br />
<br />
Just like all of us, I have been the target of violence. Guns have been pointed at my face. I've seen people beaten and shot, and I have stood by in confusion and animal fear. I am ashamed of those moments as well. Those moments when I was helpless. When I was not in control.
<br />
<br />
There are people I know who believe in violence as an act of control. Most people believe in some form of controlled violence, believe that violence can be controlled, believe that violence can be used to bend others to our will. They believe we need police, they believe we need well-regulated militias. Some people think we should arm teachers, and then, finally, schools will be safe. That we will be in control. Some people I know believe in revolutionary violence—in rising up against our oppressors, in destroying anyone who stands in the way of the peaceful world we want to live in. They have theories, elaborate theories. They believe their theories of change will control the violence of the change.<br />
<br />
It's not my purpose to disagree with the theories. I’m not going to say we don’t need police or militias or bloody revolutions or even armed teachers. I don’t want to say that violence can’t change things for the better or that we should always turn the other cheek. I would certainly fight in defense of my child, though I would do so incompetently, incompletely, ineffectually. If a police officer stood between my child and a person with a gun, I would most certainly want the police officer to kill that person.
<br />
<br />
And yet I’ve also wished violence on my child. I have, and I think that makes me average. I am not willing to say that those parents who claim to have never wanted to strike a child in anger are liars. But I will say with some confidence that most parents have, at some point, wanted to strike a child. They've known that anger. That drive to bend our children to our will through violence. Most of us have lost control, if only for a moment. And after that, the shame. Many of us know that shame. Of having lost control.<br />
<br />
Now we’re at the root of the thing I really want to write about. My child. I want to write about violence and my child. I keep envisioning the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School. I can’t get those pictures out of my head. Again, the loss of control. Again, the shame, my shame. I couldn't do anything to protect those children. If it had been my child, I wouldn't have been able to protect him.<br />
<br />
I’m not going to disagree with your theories of violence. You can keep your theories and I’ll keep mine, for the moment.
<br />
<br />
But I want to write about violence because I want to remind myself of something horrible. Which is that our violence cannot be truly controlled, once we allow ourselves to be violent. And that violence, when we give it permission to exist, lives by its own rules. That violence doesn’t give a fuck about our theories of state and revolution and emotion. That violence, in fact, doesn’t give a fuck about us. Violence wants only to live and it lives by eating us alive. In the face of a monster like that, we are all small. We are all helpless. We are all children.
<br />
<br />
That's what I wanted to write about violence.Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-34833947401545132722012-10-22T10:40:00.001-07:002012-10-22T10:40:10.109-07:00Patchwork Family: Rad Dad 23 -- order your copy now!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
Patchwork Family</div>
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Reflections on divorce and the passing of time</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We understand the world by how we retrieve memories, re-order
information into stories to justify how we feel.</i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stephan Elliott</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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June 5<sup>th</sup> 1969</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
My story technically begins on
June 5<sup>th</sup> 1969.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The day
of my birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I used to try to recreate the
particulars of that day in my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here’s what I’ve been told: my mother in the hospital, alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My grandparents waiting in the hall beyond
the delivery room doors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My father
hundreds of miles away finishing up the last few classes of his junior year in
high school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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No matter how I tell it, it feels
like such an incomplete story, so instead I search for other beginnings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Perhaps the story begins nine
months earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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But the story of my conception is
something I have to invent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
imagine asking, ‘mom, do you recall the weather on the day you and my father
created me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What were you wearing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What time of day was it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did you feel like moments after?’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Awkward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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So instead, I tell it this way: in
northern New Mexico, mid-September, it can be hot, the final clutches of
summer, or it can be brisk, the first punches of fall knocking summer into
memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was late in the
evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sky clear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is a lake just outside of town with
picnic tables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s say, it
happened there.</div>
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Why should I ask my mother? It’s
my story after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I want to
know her answers, her version of the story of my origins?</div>
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Maybe she can’t remember details
because they were like bunnies, one hot tryst blending into another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe it was an ugly experience for
her, fraught with guilt, shame, coercion; perhaps my origin is a regret she
still bears, perhaps it was an accident. </div>
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So I rewrite and reinvent the
facts, the narrative, but no matter how I tell it, I can’t avoid certain
outcomes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was born, my father
was absent, my mother eventually left the state and his family behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Somewhere in all that, my story
starts; it’s what leads to the story of my family now: three kids, an
ex-partner, some great years together, some painful ones, some regrets, some
anger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there’s more to it than
that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I tell stories to try to make
sense of it all, to explain how we got from there to here. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
Summer 2012</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
There is a scene in the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beasts of the Southern Wild</i>, in the
midst of some revelry during the storm, the father leans back and looks at his
child sitting off to the side, watching the adults play, and he asks: ‘did I
ever tell you the story of your conception?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems clear that he has, many times, but the child looks
on waiting for the story, eager. You can see it in her eyes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
My children get that same look.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Their mother and I have been
separated for years now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
youngest child probably remembers little of us together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way we used to love each other, the
way we cared for each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
asked her recently if she did, and she shook her head no and then asked
me:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘do you?’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
It was a strange question I
thought, but then, I realized the profundity of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me at least.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do I remember?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I used to believe I told the
stories of my children’s beginnings for them, so they could know where they
came from, that though their family has changed and evolved, they were always
loved, fiercely and without question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I tell these stories for myself as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
September 1997</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Ella, you were born so quickly I
barely had time to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your
mother wanted the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cadillac Birth</i>, she
boasted months ahead of her due date.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After two natural births, she wanted to get the drugs!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d high-five each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the hell could I say; I simply
tried to be supportive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
We waited to the last minute to
prepare for your birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact,
it was on the day of our hospital tour, your mother noticed weird contractions;
she assumed it was just Braxton-Hicks or something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eight hours later we were back in the hospital, being
wheeled into the delivery room, and it was then she was told she was too far
along for drugs; you were coming. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
And you did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t until I held you and touched
your cheeks that I cried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And you
joined in as if on cue, screaming and crying with such determination and anger,
a lot like how you are today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
September 2005</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
We sit all the kids on our bed one
night in September.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
there we tell them their mother will be moving out in a few weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s then we explain our family will be
changing dramatically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life will
be changing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our son nods like he
understands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our middle daughter
just sits there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our youngest
immediately starts crying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we
all do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s the first and last
time we all cry, together, as a family.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-outline-level: 1;">
Sometime in 1980</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
After my mother found a place to
live in another state, after my brothers and I started new schools, after we
struggled to fit into our new neighborhoods and make new friends, my mother one
night handed me the phone; it was our father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hadn’t seen him in a few months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me then that he would not be
moving in with us like we were promised when we first moved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was going to remain thousands of
miles away in Hawaii but he’d come visit soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mom stood off to the side and couldn’t really look at
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I passed the phone to my
younger brothers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked to my
room trying not to cry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s all I
really remember.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
September 1990</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I have told this story many times
before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it bears
repeating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Making family is not
something that just happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
a choice; it takes intention, dedication, perseverance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sat in my car idling at the first
intersection I came to on my way to get food for my girlfriend who was back at
our house trying desperately to breastfeed our first child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was twenty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was twenty-one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somehow that is important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it explains why I sat there
wondering what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
sitting there, I thought of my father and the distance there always seemed to
be between us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps, I
remembered my mother’s face as I left her room that night, her look of anger
and shame at not telling us the true story of our family’s break-up until it
was too late, her silence her only apology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps, I thought of the look on my girlfriend’s face right
after our son slid from her body, the wide-eyed look of a person who just
discovered the answer to so many things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whatever it was I thought of, I decided then, right there, that I would
not let my fear of fucking things up prevent me from trying to make this family
work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
October 2005</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
We gathered all the kids together
in their mother’s new living room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Her face a mask of apprehension and fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I choked down my anger at feeling left behind, at the fear
that my family was breaking.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Families don’t break, I told
myself. Over and over. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I gathered them together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I put a candle in the center of
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked my partner, the mother
of my children, the woman who was now choosing to start something new, to light
her match, the long stemmed strike-anywhere kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then each of the children lit theirs, and then I did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all lit two candles, one for her
house and one for mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
By the candle light I could see
the kids’ faces, both sad and unsure, but in the orange glow, I could see they
felt safe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all looked at each
other and then blew out the matches.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
October 2012</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
This is my story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I was born on June 5<sup>th</sup>
1969.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a father of three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is more to it than that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I have a large extended family, a
network of friends and a loving girlfriend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve learned now that family is not static, not limited to
one or two or ten possibilities; family is nebulous, shifting, consensual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s difficult, can hurt, can push you
out of your comfort zone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Family
is the stories we tell to give ourselves roots, to make connections, to foster
new possibilities. It’s a patchwork quilt, a collage of hushed conversations, a
montage of fading memories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Family
continues to grow and change.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Here’s an example, a new story I
am working on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
My son decided to leave, needed, I
think, his own space from his mother and his father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lived a year in NYC and now has returned to his own
apartment in west Oakland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hang
out weekly, sometimes sharing a beer, sometimes eating a meal, generally
talking about the Oakland Raiders, but slowly we are moving towards more
personal, difficult subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
trying to close the distance between us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I want to ask him what he remembers of his youth, of the way our family
used to be, of the way it is now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What all these things mean to him? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I want to hear his stories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
Just as, someday soon, I hope to
hear my daughters' stories, who will be embarking on their own journey in a few
years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
In fact, I can’t wait to hear the
stories they tell of what family means to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And just as I have my own story, the stories they tell will
be their own.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
I’m sure their beginnings and
endings and what it all means will be so different.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
And shocking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
And surprising.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
tomas, editor rad dad zinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03272773798092364303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-5662099061813704782012-09-23T19:22:00.003-07:002012-09-24T06:57:23.790-07:00Atonement. In the Style of the Talmud<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-4NzDp_AG0M50FZIhAMPLtBCrl172C1OYGAQektM2buE2_L0uDZPRTJNpyfJ3E9qYJEPjTD8OUbjXZEtmgwjPCFDGuK3o8jPHH5PC2SUOJknJH4rGecWpNYhyKHpnANmulqeF/s1600/color_white-600x306.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-4NzDp_AG0M50FZIhAMPLtBCrl172C1OYGAQektM2buE2_L0uDZPRTJNpyfJ3E9qYJEPjTD8OUbjXZEtmgwjPCFDGuK3o8jPHH5PC2SUOJknJH4rGecWpNYhyKHpnANmulqeF/s320/color_white-600x306.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MISHNAH</i>. A MAN, ON
ASSUMING THE LEGAL STATUS OF FATHER TO AN ORPHAN GIRL, IS UNDER NO OBLIGATION
TO LOVE AND ADORE HER FROM THE VERY FIRST MOMENT SHE IS PLACED IN HIS ARMS. </div>
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On what is this mishnah based? On this, that it was told to
Moshe at Sinai, “Any widow or orphan you are not to afflict.”</div>
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Rabbi Shimi ben Ashi stated that in order to avoid
afflicting the fatherless, it would be enough merely to avoid them and to let
them be. But neither by taking an orphan girl into his household is a man
afflicting her. Both actions are therefore allowable, as neither cause
affliction. The man in this case is not in violation of a commandment.</div>
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Rabbi Simeon ben Gamiel said that it is insufficient simply
not to afflict. One must also do justice to the orphan, as it was told to Moshe
before Israel was to cross the Jordan, “for YHWH your God lifts up no face in
favor and takes no bribe, providing justice for orphan and widow.” One must do
justice, beyond mere avoidance of affliction. But can one do justice without
love? This mishnah is in contradiction with itself. It is because YHWH loved
the fathers that we must love the stranger, and not afflict the orphan. We must
therefore also love the orphan. If the man does not love her, then he is in
violation of a commandment.</div>
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But when must this affection begin? Can one understand Torah
by reading only a single line? If such knowledge is impossible to acquire, then is
it allowable not to feel affection for the daughter on the first encounter? Or is
it only requisite upon entrance to the household, for as it is written of the
five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, “whoever brings up an orphan in his
home, Scripture ascribes it to him as though he had begotten him.”</div>
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On this matter Rabbi Yosef ibn Eleazar has it on the word of
Rabbi Isaac, who heard a case in the vineyards of Jabneh, of a man and woman given
possession of an infant girl by minions of a foreign State. Also present in the
chamber were the families of four foreign daughters, all of the same nation,
who had likewise been given possession of infant girls fifteen years before.
The parents asked that they might attend the girl’s handing-over that day, so
that they might see as witnesses that which they had lived themselves but now
knew only as memories. The new parents were given the infant girl. She was
placed in their arms and wailed, and the documents of the distant state were
sealed with red ink.</div>
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The witnesses began to wail, but the father did not. “You
did not wail, as we did fifteen years ago when we received our daughters. How could this be? Your heart is hard like a turnip,” they berated
him. </div>
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Rabbi Simeon held that he failed to love her, and must atone
for this lapse through all the seasons until the day he began to love her.</div>
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Rabbi Shimi b. Ashi held that the reason he did not wail was
because prior to that moment, she had not existed as his daughter, and it is
impossible, it is idolatrous, to love that which does not exist. To do so is to
love an image in one’s head. As it is written, “for you did not see any form”.
Take care, “lest you wreak-ruin by making yourselves a carved form of any
figure, in the pattern of male or female.” Surely, this is what these families
had done before they received their own infant girls. But how could the man hear
his daughter until she called him, as she did by wailing? Only from that moment
could he begin to love her.</div>
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R. Samuel ben Nahmani asked if the man did not from that
moment maintain his daughter, as he already maintained a son? Indeed he did,
answered R. Yosef. Both he and the mother maintained her equally with the son. </div>
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R. Samuel expounded on the words of David: “Happy are they
that keep justice, that do righteousness at all times.” Is it possible to
do righteousness at all times? This, explained our Rabbis of Jabneh, refers to
a man who maintains his sons and daughters while they are young. This refers to
a man who brings up an orphan boy or orphan girl in his house.</div>
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Rab Simeon asked, but how did he treat her in the first year?
Did he lose patience with her? Did he raise his voice? Did he fail to console
her, even were she inconsolable? Did he feel in his heart as if a stranger had
lodged in his home and deserved less than his firstborn son? Did he allow his
anger to overcome him? Did he resent the added burden of care that she imposed
upon him? Was he at times rougher with her than he should have been? Did he add
to the woe of an orphan girl, offending the father of the fatherless? Rab
Yosef, who had it from Rab Isaac, stated that the man had done all of this.</div>
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Rab Simeon stated that this man has sinned. If he does not
repent he will feel the wrath of the Lord in the measure that is reserved for
those who offend him most gravely. “For they will cry, cry out to me, my anger
will flare up and I will kill you with the sword.”</div>
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But, it could also be said, could it not, that as one learns
to love in the same way as one continues to study Torah, so one learns to love
only as one studies the stranger, the orphan, the widow, the brother. It is
certainly true, as Rambam said, that in this case we must do more than obey the
negative commandment to avoid affliction. We must obey the positive commandment
to excel ourselves in our treatment of one whose “soul is very lowly and whose
spirits are down.” With her the father “should speak only gently, he
should treat her only respectfully, and he should not pain her body through
labor nor her heartss with harsh words,” no matter be she rich or the spouse
of royalty. Rambam is clear that man's deeds which we have listed are a
violation. But how does the man feel now, after the first year? If he has come
to love her, then he may excel himself in his treatment of
the girl. He may then repent, and submit his name for inclusion in the Book of
Life. Has he come to love her, such that he may say, as the Lord said to Ezra, “Thou
canst not love her more than I do?”</div>
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Rabbi Yosef ibn Eleazar affirmed that yes, as he had himself
been told by Rabbi Isaac, the man had come to love her thus.</div>
chicago pophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17055796523227869734noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-43480139742791146802012-08-16T09:36:00.000-07:002012-08-16T09:45:34.713-07:00The Summer Before Kindergarten. Loosely in the Style of Gertrude Stein<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfBJClYj4r33PlcpJsoW5FHhtEdezwLvDbVprDrmW70So1EYA5RYl7I5bDoe_meH0oxPgLq2zRHGG1hlDNQGHVk_VXWLPqTYxQMyYW9No0Go4FwimCQL9BFCF8OuR7YlYj7LIU/s1600/Gertrude+Stein.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfBJClYj4r33PlcpJsoW5FHhtEdezwLvDbVprDrmW70So1EYA5RYl7I5bDoe_meH0oxPgLq2zRHGG1hlDNQGHVk_VXWLPqTYxQMyYW9No0Go4FwimCQL9BFCF8OuR7YlYj7LIU/s400/Gertrude+Stein.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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Bus Stop </div>
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This is the big time now, we must become adults now, he and
I, less he than I for like him I have been for some time now a child again. But
this is the big time, getting up and getting going, going to someplace where
they will not wait, to the bus stop of the school bus where the system says you
shall be there and the system will not wait because that is the system’s weight.
No more waiting, you shall be there, five hundred thousand others are at the bus
stops and who are we that they should wait for us when we have failed to get
there? Not like preschool these morning times that are coming, not
like yarn shops, no napping Irish Setters no ladies counting skeins when you
come on rainy days to browse and think of lovely colors. I forgot your inside
shoes once and went home to get them, I forgot your lunch bag once and went
home to get it, and in minutes I swung along this happy link between your
bright room and ours.</div>
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Driving to Camp</div>
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Driving to camp, not your first camp but your second camp,
not the close by one but the far away camp. At one end of this road is a house
it is our house, with some books and furniture and lamps that in the morning pull
the corners towards the middle of the house, and at the other end is another
house, a different house, with three Chinese ladies and no lamps but ceiling
lights and dirty walls like dirty walls in China but installed in this other house
which is where the road has its other end. There is a lady there and two girls
and one of them is beautiful, taller than she should be, so tall there is
nothing else besides a perfect face, a face so perfect I wonder why no one has
taken it why it is in this one single house on one single street at the road’s
other end. </div>
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Talking on the Road</div>
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The future is in this fact that because we drive we also
talk, unless we listen to Lady Gaga. Because after the driving you will be
gone, with these women or those women or any other women who are the women who
teach you, as I taught you five years running until we turned you over for the
days and pull the line in slowly only in the afternoons again, not too fast
again, too many questions makes you drop the hook again, but slowly, until you follow
the thread again and tell us of the day and drop your stories one by one into
the bucket that sits where we used to spend our time together. </div>
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South Side North Side</div>
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You ask why we are driving and why the driving is to the
North Side from the South Side and not the South Side from the North Side. The
North Side has the yarn shops and the bakeries and the Lego Store and the
Chinese camp with its beautiful girl and the mezuzah on the door of the house at
the end of the road, and the South Side does not have these. Because once upon
a time South Side people moved to the North Side is what Mama said and you ask
me why and I say because once upon a time new people moved to the South Side
and the old people didn’t want to share. Share what you say their neighborhood
I say why you say because the old people refused to live beside the new
people I say why you say because the new people were black I say. I don’t mind it, you say. I am happy to hear that for a
while but it doesn’t change the driving and it is still all very complicated.</div>
chicago pophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17055796523227869734noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-49045552417328392462012-07-05T17:21:00.000-07:002012-07-05T17:26:09.782-07:00Want it all? Try saying "thank you"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAhn93hD7bUOLWLO2-CJfO2H8p4eKvDdgwWeqWVmKDmrfCn82AYulXVa0b6QtHkfWLNBiNE2gV2_inp9fGNZE5qhtQ9PIcr1aqsmZk9qdXC8LUsuDdUde1oyzQwfEhAHIJyqXEA/s1600/628x471.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPAhn93hD7bUOLWLO2-CJfO2H8p4eKvDdgwWeqWVmKDmrfCn82AYulXVa0b6QtHkfWLNBiNE2gV2_inp9fGNZE5qhtQ9PIcr1aqsmZk9qdXC8LUsuDdUde1oyzQwfEhAHIJyqXEA/s1600/628x471.jpeg" /></a>“Having it all” has been trending for two weeks, ever since <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/socially_intelligent_superpower_interview_foreign_policy_expert_anne-marie_/">Anne-Marie Slaughter’s</a> blockbuster essay <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-can-8217-t-have-it-all/9020/?single_page=true">“Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”</a> went online at the website of <i>The Atlantic</i> magazine.<br />
<br />
“It’s time to stop fooling ourselves,” says the Princeton professor and former State Department official. “The women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed.”<br />
<br />
Feminist commentators on her essay have been quick to say that men as a group need to pick up the slack at home. “The problem isn’t that women are trying to do too much, it’s that men aren’t doing nearly enough,” <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/168612/daddy-wars#">writes author and activist Jessica Valenti in <i>The Nation</i></a>, citing a new <a href="http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm">Bureau of Labor Statistics report</a> showing that working women still do the bulk of housework and childcare.<br />
<br />
I don’t quarrel with their arguments or their facts. But what’s missing from critiques like that one is an acknowledgement of how much <a href="http://mama.imow.org/bigideas/daddy-shift">men have evolved in just three generations</a>. <br />
<br />
“Men are changing very rapidly,” <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/interview_with_family_historian_stephanie_coontz/">feminist historian Stephanie Coontz once told me</a>. “In fact, as a historian, I have to say that they are changing, in a period of thirty years, in ways that took most women 150 years of thinking and activism.” According to every single study, men today do more dishes and bring more kids to school than their fathers and grandfathers ever did.<br />
<br />
Enter the awkward concept of gratitude. It’s awkward because many women frankly <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/fathers_day_2012">resent</a> the idea that men should be thanked for doing the work they’ve always been expected to do. The resentment is personal and it’s political. It’s personal, because every woman who comments on these issues has had a man in her life that didn’t do his fair share. And it’s political, because the debate is fundamentally about the balance of power between men and women as groups. In fact, research shows that men will withhold gratitude as an expression of power over women.<br />
<br />
“We should be grateful for anything that makes our lives easier,” says my friend Suzanne (not her real name), who is now divorced. “But at the same time, I’d grit my teeth because he was a big hero for doing a sink full of dishes.” <br />
<br />
All partnerships have a division of labor, but Suzanne felt as though her specific labors had been imposed on her. Millions of women feel the way she did. This creates conflict, of course, but it also interferes with practicing fundamental relationship skills like gratitude. (Other skills like <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/fred_luskin_explains_how_to_forgive/">forgiveness</a> and <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/feeling_like_partners">empathy</a> are important, too, but here I'm just focusing on gratitude.) <br />
<br />
Why should that be a problem? Because study after study shows that gratitude is essential to marital happiness. Suzanne didn’t just resent that her husband was a big hero for doing what she did every day. The bigger problem is that her daily work was thankless, and even denigrated by her husband: “If dinner wasn’t perfect,” she added, “he’d whine about it.”<br />
<br />
The place of gratitude in marriage was explored by none other than UC Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild, who created a concept cited in Valenti’s article: “the second shift,” which suggests that working women go home to sinks full of dirty dishes to do. Hochschild came up with another catchy phrase, “economy of gratitude,” which turns up much less often in feminist commentary. Her theory says expressing gratitude for the labor of your spouse is more important to marital happiness than the precise division of labor. It’s not <i>just</i> who does the dishes; it’s also who gets thanked by whom for doing the dishes.<br />
<br />
Researchers Jess Alberts and Angela Threthewey put Hochschild's “economy of gratitude” theory to the test in a series of focus groups, interviews, and surveys of heterosexual and same-sex couples. They “found evidence that gratitude isn’t just a way to mitigate the negative effects of an unequal division of labor. Rather, a lack of gratitude may be connected to why that division of labor is so unequal to begin with," as they write in <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/love_honor_thank/">"Love, Honor, and Thank."</a><br />
<br />
So when a spouse expresses gratitude to an "under-performing" partner for picking up his socks off the floor, he's reminded that it's not fair that she's usually the one who does that. "And since people who receive gifts typically feel obligated to reciprocate, this insight can lead the under-performing partner to offer 'gifts' of his own by contributing more to household tasks. In addition, the over-performing partner is likely to experience less resentment and frustration once her efforts are recognized and appreciated."<br />
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<br />
<br />
Thus expressing gratitude does not necessarily perpetuate inequality, as some fear. Instead, it can help make relationships <i>more</i> equal. Unfortunately, the research suggests that men are worse than women when it comes to being grateful. This makes for an emotionally lethal combination: tradition imposes housework and childcare on women, and then individual men forget to be grateful for their wives’ contributions—a habit that might have a lot to do with maintaining their own social power. As psychologist Robert Emmons notes in his essay, <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/pay_it_forward/">"Pay it Forward"</a>:<br />
<blockquote>
It has been argued that males in particular may resist experiencing and expressing gratefulness insomuch as it implies dependency and indebtedness. One fascinating study in the 1980s found that American men were less likely to regard gratitude positively than were German men, and to view it as less constructive and useful than their German counterparts. Gratitude presupposes so many judgments about debt and dependency that it is easy to see why supposedly self-reliant Americans would feel queasy about even discussing it.</blockquote>
While the research evidence for this idea is scant, it personally resonates with me. Averages don't tell us much about individuals, and certainly there are <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/raising_happiness/post/Gratitude_Relationships/">men who are better at gratitude than women</a>. But I have struggled to weave gratitude into my life, and so do many men I know. So if American marriages need more gratitude, that change should start with men. Guys, I’m begging you: Go home tonight and thank your wife for everything she does. Be <i>specific</i>; the "meta-thanks" won't work, because it doesn't show that you recognize the contribution as a unique and personal thing. Here, just watch this video:<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
So, should women be grateful to men for doing the dishes? My own answer is yes and no. Yes, individual women should express gratitude to the men in their lives for what they do, for the sake of positive reinforcement and marital sustainability. But no, I don't think women should be thankful to men as a group for changing so much in recent decades. They could have and should have evolved earlier than they did, when women started taking jobs in large numbers.<br />
<br />
This brings us to questions of <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/power_paradox/%22">power</a> and how it shapes gratitude, which has been the subject of recent lab experiments.<br />
<br />
One 2011 study by Yeri Cho and Nathanael J. Fast paired two study participants and asked them to perform a task together—designating one the supervisor and the other the subordinate. The results were fascinating, and have useful implications for marriages. They found that gratitude from supervisors made subordinates happier, of course. But they also found that supervisors who had been challenged in any way by their subordinates were more likely to turn around and insult that person.<br />
<br />
This is a dynamic that defines many marriages. If a wife challenges her husband’s competency at home—“Don’t you know how to sweep a floor?!”—the research suggests he’ll end up denigrating her own contributions, a vicious cycle that might be depressingly familiar to some readers. <br />
<br />
To be fair, men aren’t the only ones who forget to be grateful. It’s commonplace for full-time caregivers—usually (but not always) women—to forget to thank breadwinning spouses—usually (but not always) men—for their efforts and sacrifices. Supporting a family is hard, especially in hard economic times, and can entail intense stress and deferred dreams. Even two-income couples, whose members are theoretically facing similar stresses, can fall into the ingratitude trap: They become too busy to see or appreciate what the other is doing.<br />
<br />
Indeed, gratitude must go both ways to be effective. It’s the role of the spouse to serve as witness to their partner’s life. Gratitude tells the spouse that they are being <i>seen</i>, that their sacrifices and struggles are visible and honored.<br />
<br />
But interpersonal power imbalances are pernicious in another way: They make us cynical about others’ motivations for expressing gratitude. In a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002210311200011X">study published in January of this year</a>, M. Ena Inesi and colleagues ran five experiments testing how power shapes gratitude. They found that people with power tended to believe others thanked them mainly to curry favor down the line, not out of authentic feeling. This cynicism, the researchers found, made power-holders less likely to express gratitude to people with less power. In marriages, this gratitude corruption also led to lower levels of marital commitment in the more powerful spouse.<br />
<br />
The bottom line from these and similar experiments is clear: Having power makes you less grateful, which just exacerbates power differences and all the resentments that go along with them. But expressing gratitude can help break that vicious cycle and change the balance of power. For me as a man, this amounts to a persuasive feminist argument. Power inequalities cut us off from genuine and necessary human feelings like gratitude—and that can push us a little further away from the possibility of happiness. It follows that it’s in our interest to act against power imbalances.<br />
<br />
We can do that through our votes and political activism, I believe—it’s policies like flextime and paid parental leave that will best help women advance in their careers. But we can also make a small, positive contribution in our own homes by just saying “thanks.” It might not be equity that we as men are striving for, though that should be a goal and might be a glorious byproduct of this struggle. Instead, our greatest rewards will come in the form of meaning, authenticity, and, yes, happiness in our homes.<br />
<br />
<i>This originally appeared on the website of the <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/">UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center</a>.</i>Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-86240982838720541662012-06-27T20:03:00.002-07:002012-06-27T21:07:00.965-07:00A Father's Thoughts One Year After Adopting his Daughter<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8OvSlhqykLM73qafeM4QUVHP59gPpL6SFNi6urqjYYQKPEBPlOyRKYi2v4chjcfZoLy84iTdMlmqZbk7g_3WdtKEz3M7y_L0_RruFGPVlbVikMwLjFhH8KndluzDTxoR7IOj-/s1600/Jinshan+Temple,+River+Min,+Joseph+Thomson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8OvSlhqykLM73qafeM4QUVHP59gPpL6SFNi6urqjYYQKPEBPlOyRKYi2v4chjcfZoLy84iTdMlmqZbk7g_3WdtKEz3M7y_L0_RruFGPVlbVikMwLjFhH8KndluzDTxoR7IOj-/s400/Jinshan+Temple,+River+Min,+Joseph+Thomson.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">'The Island Pagoda'</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">from <i>Foochow and the River Min</i> by John Thomson</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(1873) </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I knew of Fuzhou
before our daughter was born there. The city’s name hung in the air of my
father’s study when I was small, together with the smoke from his pipe that
curled around other names I heard spoken there: Tientsin, Guangzhou, Xiamen,
Shanghai, Hankou, Nanjing. Interesting names, having something to do with his
work, but also printed over the old postage stamps he collected in rows of
black binders, names spelled in different European languages – Foochow,
Futschau, Fou-Tchéou – and stamped over the images of European sovereigns who
cleared the way before everything affixed to them.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">One year after
bringing Mei Mei home from the once treaty port and now affluent modern city of
Fuzhou on China’s southern coast, memories like this take on new significance.
They are a link to my daughter, a rationale for why it is I who am her father
and not someone else, in the absence of any knowledge of who her biological parents were.
After the first traumatic months – the gorging and recovery from
undernourishment, the surgical removal of rotten teeth and the repair of a
cleft palate, the fearful howling and tentative attachment, the rotation of
various therapists through the house on a weekly basis – after all of this,
something akin to normalcy has settled upon our household. It no longer feels
like we have a boarder on the third floor, a small Queequeg coated in layers of
dust whose pointed teeth were carved by cavities rather than a Maori chisel.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I begin to consider
all the ways in which our daughter now fits ‘naturally’ into our family and its
history. I return to my philatelic memory and wonder, was it pure coincidence,
that I knew about Fuzhou and treaty ports long before I knew about other
things? Or that we would one day travel there to adopt our daughter? My
first sense is that it is coincidental, without a doubt. Families are matched
with children from across China; we could easily have been called to a place
that had not been a treaty port and that I had not heard of when I was
small. My frail effort to establish some sense of ‘deep’ paternity with
Mei Mei, something besides the legal kind that is embedded in all her
documents, is no more than a mythopoetic effort to compose a few harmonies from
a mass of moderately random experience.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps this is my attempt
to create the kind of link, the sense of connection, that is unselfconsciously
affirmed whenever a child is said to resemble a parent, or a grandparent, or to
have a certain trait that is reminiscent of how so-and-so used to tilt her
head, how she used to laugh, or how she used to notice this-but-not-that about
the world. In all of these ways we claim direct physical embodiment of our
ancestors. They are, in a sense, inside of us forever. A state of holy
communion that has long been the objective of ritual: when we consume the
divine, we are at one with it. We are not alone.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This sense of
belonging probably won't be available to Mei Mei.<br />
<br />
Then again, obviously we are surrounded by people most of the time. Why limit
oneself to the ancestors and their embodiment in our DNA? As I have learned
from my uncle, who has been slowly but steadily tracing out our ‘family tree’,
it is tempting to be selective about who we identify with among our forebears.
When for a brief moment it seems as though a great great grandfather was a
learned rabbi, a man respected by his community, or that another was a dandy, a
cosmopolite and worldly success in the constrained world of the Czars, I become
excited. I become less so before the photographs – a majority – of less distinctive
though no less closely related folk. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Not only that, but
the complexity of descent over more than a few generations quickly becomes
boggling, and the notion of ‘family’ empties of meaning as the general
promiscuity of the human race becomes evident in the ever-ramifying branches of
each single ‘tree.’ I strongly suspect that few people care much about knowing
their ancestry beyond their mother, father, and grandparents – the people they
have personally known in their lives – because to go further back makes the
arbitrariness of our kinship structures plain. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So my
philatelic connection with Fuzhou may not be so meaningless. Or, at least, no
more meaningless than my (fictional) claim to be descended from a grand rabbi
in one line, rather than a serial embezzler in another, or any number of
similar choices of identification. Perhaps I carry something that was part of
them; but I also choose among them like so many books, some of which I wish to
read, and others, not. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Mei Mei doesn’t have
quite the same selection of books to choose from. A wing of
her library was destroyed when she was orphaned. But multiple wings have
been added since, with the prospect of still more to be built in the future. There
are many volumes at her disposal. Whether she will grow to be more concerned
with the ones she has lost, or with the ones she has gained, I can't predict.</span></div>chicago pophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17055796523227869734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-83155359565427345362012-05-05T09:59:00.001-07:002012-05-05T09:59:23.186-07:00On The 20th Anniversary of Riot Grrrl<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Then: </span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It did not hit me like it did the women in the crew. For them, it
was an (albeit lily- white) explosion. It was a profound shifting in how they
publicly expressed culture. I noticed it in bits and pieces. The women who once
where the backbone of our ‘zine making and distribution empires, now could not
be found to bum a ride to Insty-Prints to make copies. They used to
emcee—introducing the bands. They now had bands of their own, and they were
playing better and with more ferocity than the dudes they once supported. It
wasn’t like it was an all out gender mutiny. It was not a split, but a forced
reckoning—we had to notice the girls. They were no longer support staff to the
indie/punk-culture male ego DIY-industrial complex. They were Riot Grrrls.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Well, not exactly Riot
Grrrls. Many of the women of the crew were waiting for a critical race element
that barely manifested. They were Riot Grrrls, but they were also young women
of color. Many of them had a difficult time reconciling the two. They were at a
crossroads between bell hooks and Bratmobile, having a difficult time
discerning which had the greater pull, and which would be a more useful
politics for their futures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Needless to say, this
played havoc with trying to hook up. Tattoos, Doc Martens, and being surly were
no longer enough. To step correctly to a woman, we had to be versed in
women-centered politics and cultural implication. We just couldn’t know about
certain bands or artists, we had to know why they were important. And if these
bands or artists had even a tangential tendril of misogyny dangling, they got
the boot. They were excised from the new cultural-canon, only to be spoken of
in whispers of disgust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This new reality forced me
to understand what a feminist-politic meant. Having grown up in a profoundly
matriarchal environment was not the education you might think. It was a given
that my aunts, mother, and the over-boss that was my grandmother were running
shit. It was just how it was. But when confronted, or asked for support, I had
no idea what I could do to back up this phoenix rising among many of the women
in my life. But I would learn. I had to learn. I had to act. It was Revolution
Girl Style Now, for real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I do not feel that I am in
any way qualified to talk about what feminism is. What I am qualified to impart
is how I learned to be an effective ally (and eventual feminist). This
consciousness transformation was not as hard as it sounds. I started with a few
simple rules:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">-<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I removed woman/girl-demeaning language from my vocabulary. This
was the most demanding piece of my transformation. Hate and disrespect is so
insidious because it colonizes your language, and reifies their negative
influences every time you speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">-<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">If anyone around spoke disrespectfully to or about women and
girls, I’d speak up. If speaking up didn’t work, I’d knuckle up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Lucida Grande";">-<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I shut up and let the women in my life be the experts on their own
existence. I followed their lead to address their needs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I still follow these rules
to this day—well, I don’t knuckle up as much as I used to because my ally
vocabulary is light-years more sophisticated than it used to be. But I will put
foot-to-ass if I need to.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In retrospect, I can
experience the effects of the Riot Grrrl explosion as advanced training in how
to be a good partner and a good father to my daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now: </span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m writing this circa twenty-years since my initial encounter
with Riot Grrrl (and three days after my daughter’s fourth birthday). I write
this with an aching nostalgia. There was an urgency that popped off back then,
a sense of kicking norms in the crotch and striking out into wholly brand new
territories. New maps of expression were being drawn, a new language being
spoken. I don’t feel that now. My daughter came home one day singing Justin
Bieber, talking about wanting to be a princess, and knowing who Nicki Minaj
was. Are you kidding me? What happened to all the Bodysnatchers, The Selecter,
Bad Brains, M.I.A. that I’ve been feeding you? I felt all of who I was, whom I
wanted my daughter to be, spill out into a murky puddle of senseless pop stool.
I know she’s only four, but still. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Warrior training starts young.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It is a very difficult
parental realization when you have to come to terms with the idea that your
children are people. People with her or his own wills, desires, and tastes in
everything from food to the culture they consume. Parents are also in constant
battle with the influences that your kid runs into when you are not around
them—when there are at school, at friend’s homes, or child care. You can expose
them to all you want, but they are in charge of whether or not they give a damn
about your recommendations. This was a bit disheartening. However, I no longer
have to worry about this, or about going overboard with trying to expose her to
all of the things that I think are vital and necessary.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The only two things
that I have to do are act and speak with respect and integrity. My only mission
is that every word I utter, every action I take, affirms her as a girl, but
does not lock her into being so. She sees and hears how I speak to her mother,
and the other women in her life, and finds comfort and solace in this. I am in
no way a saint. My latent misogyny can flare up from time to time (usually when
I’m not in love with myself or jealous of my wife’s accomplishments) but I
think I walk the feminist ally line often enough because my daughter will tell
me how different I am compared to other daddies. She says this with a smile and
a headbutt. No more validation is needed. My daughter shows me daily that what
I say and what I do matter to her. She reaffirms that I am having both an
affect and effect on her life.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">While she may have ripped my musical heart out
by singing Justin Bieber, she repaired it—instantly—by singing “Monkey
Man”...the The Specials version. Here is a different accounting of what I mean:</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Once upon a time, my
daughter wore dresses. Nothing too frilly, or pink, or taupe, just nice little
sun dresses. Then, as she got older and started to have a say in what she wore, and the great dress-rebellion of 2011-2012 began. After showing her photos of her
in dresses (and noticing the turned up nose as she perused the pictures) I
asked her, "Why don't you like dresses anymore?" With no beat missed,
she stares at me, "How am I supposed to save the world in a dress? I need
a bow and arrow and a tiger." Revolution Girl Style Now. For real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Shawn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15379961088307176928noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-90681868680498512552012-04-29T16:48:00.002-07:002012-04-29T16:52:01.151-07:00Riot Parent, Riot Kids Reflections on Teen Sexuality, Becoming a Feminist, and Riot Grrrl by Tomas Moniz from Rad Dad 22<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</style><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The other day I
found myself exclaiming to my two daughters, sixteen and fourteen respectively,
don’t have sex until you’re in your twenties, but here are some condoms. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I’m not sure if
there is a better example of sending a mixed message.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I should
explain. The other night I
discovered my oldest daughter had spent the night with her boyfriend. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now, I have
consistently brought up sex with them and with their older brother who now
lives on his own with a gaggle of twenty something young men in West
Oakland. And I have consistently
been rebuffed, scoffed at, silenced by their stares, punctuated with a rolling
of the eyes or a sigh of exhaustion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">‘Dad, please…..’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I don’t let
it stop me. I know I’m not someone
they want to confide in, and I actually cringe thinking about it if they
did. But I want to approach the
discussion of their bodies, their rights, sex in general differently than the
terse warning I received from my father to keep my dick in my pants or the
silence around the subject from my mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There is nothing
wrong with sex; it’s powerful and beautiful and a profound ritual of entering
adulthood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Clearly, it’s
also something they see all around them so to pretend they aren’t aware of it,
even that they don’t have opportunities to engage in it, would be blatant
denial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And parenting by
denial is never a good approach to raising children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">However, even
though I broach the subject any chance I get, we don’t actually talk as
directly as I’d like. And that’s
why I know I need help, from other adults in our lives to examples of people or
movements reclaiming the body, offering other ways to view sex, that might empower
young women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sadly, there’s
not a lot out there for them; besides a few adult women in their lives that
they can turn to in need, there is almost nothing in mainstream society that
speaks to young women about their growth and desires in sex positive, yet
realistic and honest ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I find myself
saying things like, I don’t think you should have sex until you’re older;
however, here are condoms <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But now I also
add every chance I get, and remember…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Remember…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Please, remember…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">…you can always
stop, you can always say no, even after you’re in the car, in the room, out of
your clothes, in the bed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No means no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Stop means stop.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In an attempt to
provide those positive examples of body ownership and empowerment, I searched
out zines about self--defense, about sexual abuse, about sex positive
experiences, things written by other young women. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then, I
rediscovered Riot Grrrl. The
ferocity, the anger, the arrogance.
There is one image of a group of young women holding hands, one without
clothes, across her chest and belly black marker declares: Every Girl is a Riot
Grrrl.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I played as
often as they’d let me Bikini Kill and other female bands as we would make
dinner or do our chores.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maybe the
mantra: ‘who needs a boyfriend, when you gotta band,’ will seep in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Let me back up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was not a part of the Riot Grrrl movement as it was born,
but I was a parent who was inspired by the relentless attention to power, to
consent, to self-empowerment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In fact, fathering made me a feminist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As a young
father with a newborn, I was served papers by the county of Santa Barbara to
officially notify me that I must “provide” for my child. I was served those papers, of course,
while I was rocking him in my arms, cleaning up the house I shared with my
girlfriend. The cop stood there,
scolding me that I should be out getting a job. At twenty-one, I said nothing back to him, afraid of his
power and authority. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Okay, I said and
shut the door.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But I was
fucking angry. I was a full time
student. So was my girlfriend. We
both had part time jobs. We took
turns doing what needed to get done; we switched it up when one of us got tired
of, say, balancing the checkbook (or more likely made too many mistakes). We argued and fought, but loved and
spent a lot of time focusing on what was important, our son. We sacrificed our autonomy or ability
to participate in things other 20 year olds were doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We were a tight,
angry fist of domesticity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We struggled
with the decision to send our six week-old child to an illegal childcare center
that clearly had way too many children for one woman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But we had no
other choice; she’s what we could afford.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ironically, even
then, when I would walk up to drop him off the sitter would tell me I was
carrying him wrong. Time went on,
but the attitudes towards men as parents never seemed to change. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">On the weekends,
I would bike around Santa Barbara with my son letting his mother sleep because
she was out till two in the morning selling roses to drinking partiers at the
bars along State Street. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of course, I
will admit that balancing him, a year old baby, on the handle bars sans helmet
may not have been the smartest move a father could make. But the number of times I was told I
couldn’t parent was infuriating. I
was told I hadn’t dressed him properly, leaving home socks and shoes, or that I
knew nothing about his well being, despite being the one to take him to many
doctor’s appointments, or that I would hurt him or drop him, which I sometimes
did, but not because I was a man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was determined
to show them all wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I took him a few
times to various classes during my first year at UCSB not because I had some
point to prove about young parents, but because I had no childcare and a number
of my teachers made no exceptions about attendance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I remember
having to change him on one teacher’s desk after class, her face full of
disdain, her body recoiling; it was one of the most awkward yet proud moments
of my life. I didn’t then see the
irony in being so unwelcome with a child in that space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Instead, at the
time, I apologized, backpedaled, afraid I was being disrespectful. I thought of my mother, doing the same
thing ten years earlier, telling me, a twelve year old, to stay in the car and
watch my brothers while she ran in to take her final test to pass some class
she was taking at the community college.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I realized then,
the strength she must have needed, a single mom, to continue her studies, to
persist despite the intense judgment society throws at parents, especially
poor, single moms on welfare like she was at the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Shit needed to
change. Even then, I wanted role
models. People unwilling to bend,
brazen, arrogant, relentless.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was becoming
more radical in my politics trying to figure out my place in the world, my
mixed race heritage, my sense of class, and perhaps most profoundly my
definitions of manhood, of fatherhood, of gender.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">How to relearn
gender?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">After all I was
parenting a boy who would grow to be a man. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">What kinda man
would he be? What kinda man was I?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The irony was I
began reading feminist theory in my classrooms and with my schoolmates, but I lived
it daily in my house with my girlfriend and my child.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">My girlfriend
was a powerful, hardworking, woman from a poor background. She had that poverty mentality: work
yourself to the bone and never ask for handouts. But what was more stunning was that she had 100 percent
trust in me as a parent, as capable of soothing, calming, protecting, loving
our son. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">She never
doubted even when I made mistakes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">No one else had
that kind of trust.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">After two years
in Santa Barbara, we were leaving, heading for the Bay Area. For my last semester in the spring of
1992, I signed up for a Feminist Studies class; one of my last assignments was
to share with the class how the ideas we addressed might impact our daily
lives. It was a good assignment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">For it, I walked
in with my son, a diaper bag, filled with bottles and food.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">This is how, I
said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I got a B.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">But another
student walked in with a bunch of zines, some 7 inches, and one bad attitude.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Riot Grrrl found
me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It has stayed
with me all these years as I meandered through graduate school, as I reexamined
gender relations in my own relationships with women, as I became a father to
two girls, and as my children have grown up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was never a riot
grrrl but because of them I was forced to think closely about what I let my son
do at ten and what I let my daughters do at the same age. Because of Riot Grrrl, I challenged
myself to address sex in positive, open ways; I encouraged my son and my
daughters to speak with other adults in their lives if they couldn’t speak to
their mother or me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Things can be
hard to discuss, but I want the courage to do it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">As I have
rediscovered Riot Grrrl while looking for things that might help my daughters
navigate their world today, I was reminded about their courage, their arrogance,
their fearlessness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because I know
that remaining silent, like Audre Lorde said, is dangerous; it’ll come back and
punch you in the mouth from the inside.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I know now what she
means by that; she means that what matters is communication, is taking those
risks to share the stories of who we are and what we believe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So I work hard
to see my daughters both as young women and as individual people, not limited
to their gender, but not disconnected from it, to respect my children’s
autonomy and privacy as young people.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am learning to let go of my kids and trust their power.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am learning to keep on talking despite feeling
uncomfortable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am learning to listen to them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I am still learning about myself through fathering.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Perhaps none of this is about sex education or being a man
in society today or about Riot Grrrl specifically; maybe it’s just the story of
one person simply learning to see himself and those around him as the complex
people they are: full of contradictions, fickle to a fault, sometimes brave,
sometimes inspired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trying to live a life worth living.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">And of course, trying to hand my daughters condoms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>tomas, editor rad dad zinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03272773798092364303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-23641927054594432022012-03-19T16:38:00.002-07:002012-03-19T16:39:31.218-07:00When Rich People have Too Much Power, Bad Things Happen<a href="http://www.accountingdegreeonline.net/rich-people-are-unethical/"><img src="http://images.accountingdegreeonline.net.s3.amazonaws.com/rich-people-are-unethical.gif" alt="Rich People Are Unethical" width="500" border="0" /></a><br />Created by: <a href="http://www.accountingdegreeonline.net/">Accounting Degree Online</a>Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-21002483281486780582012-02-22T14:51:00.004-08:002012-02-22T15:08:58.645-08:00Dad 2.0, Mindful Sex, Restorative Justice, and MoreYes, it's true, this blog has been recently neglected. Here's why:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">1.</span> I started a new job as Web Editor of the <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/">UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center</a>--and here, check out my latest article on <a href="http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/greater_good_sex_tips_for_guys/">"science-based sex tips for the emotionally intelligent gentleman."</a> Trust me: It's amusing. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">2. </span>I've been promoting my new book <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=361">Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood</a></span>, which I hope you'll check out. My coeditor Tomas and I have traveled far and wide, from Boston and New York to Los Angeles and Portland, and to points in between. Here's a <a href="http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=RadDadBitchMag">fabulous, thoughtful review </a>in <span style="font-style:italic;">Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture.</span> I've also been speaking a lot in places like the <a href="http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/women-at-pwc/womensforum.jhtml">Women's Forum in Deauville, France</a> and the upcoming <a href="http://dad2summit.com/">Dad 2.0 Summit</a>, which I hope you'll consider attending!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">3.</span> I've also been writing about <a href="http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/12/11/7581/san-francisco-lets-students-own-misdeeds-rather-face-expulsion">the efforts of the San Francisco Unified Public School District to replace punitive with restorative justice</a>, public policy that will <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/07/05/how-can-we-get-men-to-do-more-at-home/gender-equality-is-in-the-hands-of-men">encourage men to participate at home</a>, and <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/marriage-advice-for-newt-gingrich/">Newt Gingrich's messy marriages</a>. I've even published <a href="http://www.conjunctions.com/webcon/smith11.htm">a short story</a> or <a href="http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/postscripts-2425---the-new-and-perfect-man-signed-tc-edited-by-peter-crowther--nick-gevers-721-p.asp">two</a>.<br /><br />That's all for now. Stay tuned. This silence can't last forever.Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-90244295764079751722012-02-12T17:59:00.000-08:002012-02-12T18:03:11.447-08:00BetaDad Responds to PistolDad<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kLnbLbF39jc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />If you live under a rock and you're wondering what BetaDad is spoofing, read <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/north-carolina-father-shoots-daughter-laptop-complains-facebook-chores-article-1.1020684">this</a>.Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-5714741678719701202011-12-08T10:39:00.000-08:002011-12-08T10:39:08.057-08:00Writing About Not Writing: The Empty Set<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8GLu1l-P0nzfczForYO9nb3Qdfw9q5ERuPJi-FJjawQDzVMdhPy8ZCxpLiS-s3P8-hIddQmBQeKsxkVl1FxhsvVq66N0lYKKMTDWqc5mEC9r_SJAfomCR9cg7gKsdytpVJyk/s1600/Null+set.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv8GLu1l-P0nzfczForYO9nb3Qdfw9q5ERuPJi-FJjawQDzVMdhPy8ZCxpLiS-s3P8-hIddQmBQeKsxkVl1FxhsvVq66N0lYKKMTDWqc5mEC9r_SJAfomCR9cg7gKsdytpVJyk/s1600/Null+set.png" /></a></div><br />
<br />
This is a post about not writing. It is not a post about writer's block. Enough has been written about that already. It is a post about people saying to me, "Hey, you should write about this, or you should write about that," and me saying, "Meh, I really don't want to," or "Maybe later," and this happening often enough that I begin to wonder why I'm not wanting to write so much and then deciding a good way to answer that question, which is a legitimate one, is to write about it.<br />
<br />
So the basic question is, why the hell am I not writing about being a dad and stuff? I look back and see my last solid post, about Jr. and a balloon, was almost six months ago. I say solid, meaning not some kind of polemical thing intended to touch a cultural nerve and get people all pissed off and leave a million comments and maybe get the attention of the <i>New York Times</i>, or some random deposit of verbiage excreted by whatever onanistic satyr happened to frolic in my head that day, but a piece about life with children from a man's point of view that really reaches for some kind of truth.<br />
<br />
A few reasons come to mind. Practical considerations can get in the way. I've been sick. In and out of the hospital. That will sap you of the will and ability to write more completely than anything I know. A couple of times when I was on really high-end morphine to kill the pain I started having really disturbing dreams and thought, "Hey, you should write about that." Then I came out of it and thought, "I'm not Charles Bukowski or William S. Burroughs or William Blake or Thomas de Quincy, who the hell needs to know about what my brain decided to do after four days on morphine when the anesthesiologist told me I had "mild hospital psychosis" because the walls were talking to me? I went days without seeing my kids and that sucked, so what was there to write about if this is a blog about life with children from a man's point of view? Etc. etc. <br />
<br />
But if you really have something to say, as all real writers do, you overcome shit like this. You write your unfinished symphony as you expire from tuberculosis knowing that your literary and musical friends will celebrate the publication of your score or verses or novel in the blazing light of the funeral pyre upon which your corpse is cremated on the beach at Viareggio. That's just the way it is. So there has to be a deeper reason. Hospital psychosis is not sufficient.<br />
<br />
So when we get down to the deeper reasons, the emotional, existential, psychological ones, two seem most prominent. The first is the way the blogosphere, and maybe even the culture, is changing. The second is the way my family has changed. <br />
<br />
<b><i>How the blogosphere has changed</i></b>: When I started doing this, I was alone in the house with an infant feeling overwhelmed and isolated the way every new parent does. I also felt a tad self-conscious about being a father who was staying home to take care of the kids. For all these reasons, plus the fact that I just tend to write about stuff, <i>Daddy Dialectic</i> was the perfect outlet. So I started telling these little stories that are variations on themes that, in some ways, are as old as the pyramids, or the hanging gardens of Babylon.<br />
<br />
Were there other dads out there doing the same thing? Sure. You get a little community feeling from chatting with them. Some write stuff I like, some is not to my taste - no matter, let a thousand flowers bloom, I say - but I wasn't writing for other bloggers. I was writing for myself and for some unspecified lector or lectrice who kind of knew what I was talking about. Maybe this world wide web thing could bring us together in the anonymous, Platonic act of reading. That was, and still is, enough.<br />
<br />
But a little while ago I looked around and thought wow, this has become an industry. It's a niche, the way there are niches for model rocket builders and stamp collectors and mercenaries and bondage fetishists. There are a million blogs by dads about life with children from a man's point of view. There are conferences in convention hotels, there are short films and documentaries and YouTube videos and rock songs and interviews on news shows; there are websites that rank the best websites, the blogs with the most hits, the funniest ones, the most progressive or the most Christian; there are debates about how to make dad blogs as popular as mom blogs (ex.: "How can we get men to leave more comments?") or about how to sell shit on your dad blog; there are blogs that are beautifully produced and customized like glossy lifestyle magazines featuring only three or four people; there are blogs by some famous dude who happens to have a kid and then instantly begins to write famously for the <i>New Yorker</i> or <i>Rolling Stone</i> about all the things everyone else has written about in a less famous way.<br />
<br />
I look at this and think, Jesus Christ, how many times can someone write about changing diapers? Though this consideration does not seem to affect the general output of mom bloggers, which is like some kind of eternal, geological geyser, I admit that the geometric explosion of the dad-o-sphere leaves me wondering whether or not it is all rather trivial, and whether I have myself helped to perpetuate the triviality. There's a solution to that, which is to get more and more niche, to write about being a parent from more and more particular angles - black, Asian, gay, infertile, whatever - and that's all good but still at some point you run into the problems listed above, or the fact that, being none of the above, I should shut up. The world is going to hell, as you may have noticed; maybe we should start thinking more consistently about some of the reasons for why that is? Why are we spending so much time writing about being parents? Because we are not writing about Revolution? About God? About the conquest of Nature through science? Or self-liberation in the the endless play of Eros? Or because, in reality, we have control over so little else in out-of-joint world? <br />
<br />
Don't feel like you have to answer those questions. They're the same ones I've been asking myself for a while now.<i> </i><br />
<br />
<b><i>How my family has changed</i></b>: The truth of the matter is, this is probably the biggest reason for not writing, and everything above is just grumpiness. We've adopted a daughter. I <a href="http://daddy-dialectic.blogspot.com/2011/01/adopting-mei-mei-or-waiting-for-juniors.html" target="_blank">shared this impending development</a> with <i>Daddy Dialectic</i> readers a while ago, and thought at the time that I would keep readers apprised of the entire experience as it unfolded, as many adoptive parents do. What happened is just the opposite.<br />
<br />
For whatever reason, going through the adoption process has made me much more protective, much more circumspect, about the narration of my family life. When Spot was born, I wanted to talk about it, and people wanted to hear about it. When we adopted Squeaky, it became much more problematic. People still want to hear about it, but I'm not sure I want to tell them. Why not? I'm not sure. But it's a different ball game with Squeaky. She had a life before us, albeit not a terribly long one. She has biological parents out there somewhere. There are things about her situation that I feel should be disclosed at her discretion only, when she is mature enough to be aware of them, something which I feel is less of an issue for Jr. I knew Jr. when he was a zygote, I saw him come out of the womb, I helped to keep him alive from the very first hours. There is less of a blank space between us, we are more closely entwined, I exercise the right to speak for him with more confidence.<br />
<br />
Not so, with Squeaky. I don't own her experience the way I own Jr.'s. Not that I actually say much about Jr, <i>really</i>; most of it is about what I <i>think </i>about Jr.'s experience. It's all about me. So he's safe. But I have yet to figure out a way to feel that way about Squeaky and her story. It certainly is a story that deserves to be told, but the learning curve of being father to a girl, an orphan, and an institutionalized child from another country with moderate special needs - all at the same time - is rather steep. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>There, I wrote something.chicago pophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17055796523227869734noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-45908268658019299752011-10-03T16:54:00.000-07:002011-10-03T17:02:42.532-07:00Winning And Losing<div>Seesaws, rocking horses, and merry-go-rounds can be lots of fun for children. But playground chess with your father-in-law is serious business.</div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zgctvLW5wIDFo4dG1DPCx2tfOqK-GIUEE5MCYzb6I6sE-4AnuAOFj79uep-LTK58aCd8dpsxrcjRSNiFos5ToCJn1KACD0kJP3khBVGR_i2x7MqJJIaWaWuUIiAXv1-i5xD7tQ/s1600/chessboard.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 225px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4zgctvLW5wIDFo4dG1DPCx2tfOqK-GIUEE5MCYzb6I6sE-4AnuAOFj79uep-LTK58aCd8dpsxrcjRSNiFos5ToCJn1KACD0kJP3khBVGR_i2x7MqJJIaWaWuUIiAXv1-i5xD7tQ/s400/chessboard.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659419918569059522" /></a><p class="MsoNormal">At a playground in a Vacaville mall, my father-in-law Barry and I played chess with pieces the size of toddlers. Five of us were on our way back to San Francisco from Tahoe, and after four days of in-laws and three hours in the car with fourteen-month-old Sam, it was time for a break. Following six inches of snow in the mountains, the sunshine was welcome on the checkered board, but there was a chill in the air, as Barry plotted black and white revenge for a slushball in the ear.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Surrounded by wooden rocking horses and noisy children, Barry huffed and puffed around the oversized board, while I coolly repelled his black queen with white pawns. After ten moves his queen looked spent. I rocked back on my heels, surveyed Vacaville’s spacious and navigable Nut Tree Mall, and wondered whether to celebrate the victory by visiting the Gap or New Balance. His queen was pinned between my rook and his king. It looked all over. He shoveled a bishop in the middle, but I advanced another white pawn and pinned that too. I was just musing whether a quick or elegant finish would be more fitting for super-competitive Barry, when I realized that his queen and rook were lined up to checkmate me. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The sun seemed brighter, and I squinted hard at the board. Losing to my father-in-law was not an option. I wouldn’t hear the end of it in thirty years. In the distance, children looked faceless as they played on a steel seesaw. I could sacrifice a rook, but that wouldn’t shift the queen. Then my wife, Fitzsimmons, walked up.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Can you take Sam?” she said. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Sure.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I retracted my queen, blocking black’s threat and threatening a queen swap. Barry backed off, but the danger was still there, so I pushed the white queen forward again. What just happened? Two moves ago, he was dead meat, now it was me on the rack. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Have you got him?” asked Fitzsimmons. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got him.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Even if Barry traded queens, I’d still be ahead. Nothing to worry about. I posted Sam between my legs and pointed to the white knight. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“See the horse, Sam?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The knight looked like the seahorse in his <i>Fabulous Fishes</i> book, the same curved neck with the sculpted markings. But it was still parked in its starting position, like an undriven Ferrari. As my baby Bobby Fischer toddled away to play with the oversized checkers set behind us, I took Barry’s queen with mine.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Oh, you haven’t just done that,” he said. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He took my queen with his rook, then I snaffled a bishop with my pinning pawn. Ten minutes of tension, then thirty seconds of bloodbath. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Now what do I do?” he said, and he pushed forward a rueful pawn.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This was what I’d been waiting for. With no queens, it would be just the guys, king on king. And while my rook controlled the center of the board, his king was out in the open, exposed. Then I turned round and realized Sam was gone. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Where’s Sam?” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Dunno,” said Barry. “Didn’t she have him?” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No.” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">My eyes whirled round the playground. Hundred yards long. Forty yards wide. Fences with gaps. Quarter of a mile away, the thunder of the freeway. I could feel the blood pulsing behind my eyes, the heat rising in my temples. What had Sam been wearing? I couldn’t remember.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I spun around. The nearest exit was only twenty-five yards away. How long had he been gone? How long had I been thinking about beating my father-in-law? How long had I failed to notice my son’s absence? This was the kind of thing that happened to other people. Should I find a security guard? Tell an employee? Call 911? What would I say? “His name’s Sam. He’s old enough to walk, but not to run. Blue eyes, light brown hair, fat cheeks. Waves a lot.” <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I strode away from the chessboard towards the center of the playground. I didn’t know what to do, I just wanted to make sure I could see everything. The mall was designed for entrances and exits. Not escapes.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It felt like a movie. The scene where the parent turns hysterical and starts shouting for their kid. Did Sam even know his name? Yelling would frighten everyone. But would it stop someone snatching him? His walking had really progressed over the last month. Could he have got onto the road? How fast does a car need to drive to kill a fourteen-month-old boy? My mouth tasted of metal.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Then, at the end of the playground, between the fence and the golden carousel, I saw him. Walking unsteadily, his hand held by the young woman in charge of the carousel. She smiled at me, blamelessly, as if it was she who should be grateful for the chance to spend time with Sam. He was smiling–he always smiles at strangers. He looked up at me and grinned. I picked him up and felt his weight on my chest, his cheek against mine, and my heart beating like a blacksmith’s anvil. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Thank you,” I said to her.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, we will leave Vacaville, leaving behind the carousel, the playground, and the chessboard. Leaving behind a toddler-sized king penned by his own pieces into a corner and checkmated by the white knight. The car will feel quiet on the ride home to San Francisco. As we cross the marshes south of Napa, the sky will seem immense and I will wonder at how close I came to losing. After we unpack the car, I will try to recall the face of the carousel girl, and my eyes will fill with tears as I remember only her green baseball cap and red apron. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">By the golden carousel, I picked up Sam and walked back to the checkered board, carrying him over my shoulder and rubbing his back. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Is he alright?” said Barry, reaching through fear for calm. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“He’s alright.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Okay.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Now then,” I said. “Whose move is it?”<o:p></o:p></p>Simon Hodgsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09928305976933693305noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-21708193749447385872011-10-03T10:30:00.000-07:002011-10-03T10:34:11.476-07:00Piss on the Door KnobsHello readers, Ava here. I have asked Jeff to use his blogspace to insert some reflections about parenting in the post-industrial era. While Jeff’s perspective is written from the local, household influence, I’d like to write about the political economy of parenting in these post-industrial times. What I have found is that what distinguishes us from our parent’s and grandparent’s generation are the constraints that act upon us for which we have no control. <br /><br />We moved for employment a year ago. Our house didn’t sell the first week on the market, or the first month, or the first year. To sell it, we will pay an ungodly amount of money to bring our total losses to an even more ungodly amount of money. And it hurts. Polly was born there. Pip took his first steps there. There were birthdays and holidays and visits from friends. I remember the weekend that Polly learned to wave and we had pizza at the kitchen table for dinner. <br /><br />We now rent a two bedroom apartment, as described in Jeff’s post, <a href="http://postindustrialparenthood.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-wildness-and-sharing-our-space.html">On Wildness and Sharing Our Space</a>. And while the location is wonderful, we are tired of being exploited in the shameful renter/tenant environment that clouds most places in America. Our lease was inaccurate when signed, we are responsible for maintaining a property that the owner avoids responsibility at all costs, and we are at the mercy of someone else’s schedule. <br /><br />For the past two months, we have pursued purchasing another home. After signing a contract and getting it inspected, we found that the risk of potential repairs was too great. And we’re sad, because we feel we have done “everything right” and we deserve the security and stability that marked previous generations.<br /><br />And this is the chaos of post-industrial parenting: the notion of doing “everything right” as causally related to security and prosperity is a myth. I know it’s a myth, I teach hundreds of students a semester that it’s a myth, and yet I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that I can work harder and harder and it will result in a better life for my family. I want to believe that there is a “right decision” and a “right way” and that we are, indeed, doing things right. And the frustrating thing for the post-industrial parents is that we ARE doing everything right. It just doesn’t mean what it used to. <br /><br />In explaining our ups-and-downs in the post-industrial economy, a friend of ours said of our vacant house, “Piss on the door knobs. It will make you feel better.” Well, as a nation, we’d better get ready for a whole lotta piss on a whole lotta doorknobs. Because there are a whole lotta post-industrial parents doing “everything right.” And we’ve got nothing to show for it but vacant houses with pissy doorknobs and a crumbling economy.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13911644689635534904noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-6782960233758589302011-10-01T07:11:00.000-07:002011-10-01T10:22:59.020-07:00The Way of the Toddler Fist<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgJvLKN3v-P2moS9A-nGY-C33677VZe75JOT7MtRMVBe6mBhiJ4B-_0_Jx6EIBvv7wKV4j12gT0FXBYkuDaeqSvrtC-S2ph7ctoDkrhdqndwpSN5hAzlOEH7KDc2G0hkFyYwQIw/s1600/3753945-silhouette-over-white-with-clipping-path-young-girl-jumping.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 168px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUgJvLKN3v-P2moS9A-nGY-C33677VZe75JOT7MtRMVBe6mBhiJ4B-_0_Jx6EIBvv7wKV4j12gT0FXBYkuDaeqSvrtC-S2ph7ctoDkrhdqndwpSN5hAzlOEH7KDc2G0hkFyYwQIw/s320/3753945-silhouette-over-white-with-clipping-path-young-girl-jumping.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5658527327899638114" border="0" /></a>Seven months after my daughter’s second birthday, she snapped. Not the regular toddler tantrum that had become a regular occurrence in our home. Nor was it the ‘I’m going to run myself into a shelf, yank all of the boxes of cereal to the ground—and then dance on them’ whirlwind. It wasn’t even the ‘I’m going to thrash my arms and legs about on the floor, just like I’m at a Bad Brains show, and then I’m going to wail and force everyone in the grocery store to look at YOU’ type of snapping. Baby-girl elevated her game to the next-level. She snapped in that way that forces you to reexamine your parenting style and ability.<br /><br />We were at Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, in Berkeley when it all went bad. The park is kind of like a prison yard, especially during the Farmer’s Market: little pockets of the homeless in one section, families in another; skaters, folks who believe that Burning Man should never end, and people attempting to get you to sign something all dot the landscape. Tucked away, next to a fountain that has seen more piss than water, is a raggedy little park-ish play area that my daughter adores. <br /><br />The centerpiece of this spot is a little saddleback climbing structure—the primary reason that my kid chooses this place over others. It was here where my wife and I discovered that our daughter is not afraid of heights, or jumping from them. It was here that she realized that she could climb up and over something—she didn’t have to go back the way she came. Revelatory. And it was here where she had her very first violent encounter.<br /><br />It was a busy day, and the line to climb was longer than usual. I was completely impressed that the baby-monster was as patient as she was. I praised her repeatedly. In return, she gave me her smile—the one that she now uses to try and manipulate, but was fully genuine back in the day. Makes me fall in love every time she unleashes those perfect teeth and high cheekbones. In the middle of our little love-fest, it was her turn. Abruptly she mountain-goated up the wall in about two steps. Just as she was about to summit, some five or six-year-old boy grabs her hood, and yanks her backwards off the wall. When she slammed into the ground, I heard her breath forcefully escape—but she wasn’t moving. Not once, have I ever felt so fucking helpless. I froze: trauma-induced ossification. ‘She hit her head. She hit her head,’ was all I should think. Would she have a head injury? As a survivor of one, I knew how dangerous they were. Oh, God. What did I just let happen? (I always blame myself when my kid gets hurt).<br /><br />She stood up, unsteady, but standing on her own. This made me feel like the ultimate in crap fathers because I had no part in helping her get to her feet. She looked around, and she seemed okay—I felt the lower part of my body begin to defrost and I slowly made my way over to her. Before I could ask how she was, she jumped on the boy. She must have been twenty-four, twenty-five pounds at the time, but she marshaled all of it to knock this kid to the ground. She then started punching him in the face. Not little kid punches, but very well executed pistons: Left, right. Left, right. Raining down hurt on this boy. And she wouldn’t stop. <br /><br />Watching my little wisp of a daughter handle herself against this big kid made me proud. When I find out that we were having a daughter, I made it my life’s mission to ensure that she would never be a victim of violence—at the time, not acknowledging that participating in a violent act, is being a victim to violence—but I knew too many women who have had their bodies and spirits violated, and this would not happen to my baby-girl. So to see her, without fear, standing up to and retaliating against a bully, made me feel as if I was setting her on the right track. <br /><br />But something just felt wrong. I am no stranger to violence, nor am I opposed to it as vehemently as some of my more politically progressive friends are. I grew up violently, and have achieved a relative level of comfort with the act and all of the attendant spiritual mess that comes with it. I’ve been shot, stabbed; have a permanent scar in the back of my head from fighting racist skinheads—but this is my story, not my daughter’s. She (hopefully) will never have to live through one percent of the evil that I did. <br /><br />I rushed to her, lifted her off the boy, and held her. I was surprised at just how strong she was. Then she said one of the clearest sentences of her life. Eyes wild, body continuing to thrash, at the top of her lungs: I want my justice! What the hell? What kind of concept of justice have we been teaching her? Not even bothering to check and see if the boy was okay, I broke wide and ran over to my wife who was dozing in the grass. She lazily looked up at me, saw that I was shell-shocked; looked at our daughter, saw that she was going crazy, screaming about wanting her justice. The look she launched my way was purely: what the hell just happened? I cannot even take a rest without you two getting into some kind of trouble. <br /><br />I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the little boy, and whom I assumed were his parents, coming over to us. They were too close for us to make an escape that did not look obvious, so I braced myself for the eventual conversation. My default setting was “crisis, with a side of aggressive response” and this has me on edge, ready for confrontation. Always. Needless to say, it is a tiring way to live. I have been on a personal project to purge violence from my life—physical, emotional, verbal, all of it. Violence has no place for me, as a partner, or as a parent. This isn’t to say that I won’t protect my family, or myself but it is nowhere near the top 10 responses to confrontation—it used to be my first three choices. <br /><br />I figured the best course of action was to meet them halfway, adopt a neutral stance, and let them speak first. See, I told you I’ve been working on it. What happened shook me. They were nice. They were more than nice; they were apologetic. They gave me the history of their son’s behavior and how his comeuppance was long overdue. That it was delivered by a tiny little thing made it all the more poetic. While we laughed and made small talk, I couldn’t stop thinking that our laughter and easy conversation was an endorsement of violent behavior. I mentioned this, and it kind of killed the mood. They awkwardly disengaged themselves, and my wife and I were left with how to redefine and appropriately teach what justice was. Like that would be easy.<br /><br />We had to figure out a uniform way to discuss a concept that we didn’t even agree on. For so long, I confused justice with retaliation and revenge. But in my new social and psychic evolutionary state, I had absolutely no clue what to tell my daughter as my concept of justice was in flux. My wife comes from a profoundly religious background, but she was moving towards a more holistic spirituality, so her ideas around what is just were also changing. Why in the hell did we have to explain heavy-duty concepts so early in the game? As neither my wife, nor myself have parents, we’ve already had to explain death to our daughter after she asked about her grandmother and grandfather—her mother told her about heaven, and I told her about dirt and worms—can we get a break?<br /><br />Despite all of this; all of this trying to be a socially and politically responsible parent; trying to get the more negative and destructive aspects of my upbringing to scab over and sink beneath the surface, lessening their influence on my present—there was still a sliver of pride at watching my daughter handle herself in that way. She was assured, confident, and fearless, traits that girls are very rarely allowed to cultivate, without great cost. Me and her mother’s ongoing project is to somehow extract the violence as a first resort, without affecting her confidence, fearlessness, and self-assuredness. We’ve been working diligently on this, but we may have pendulum swung too far in the opposite direction.<br /><br />About a month after the park incident, we went to a birthday party. She was having a ball, until it was piñata time. We played zombies and dragons at home, so she’s used to all types of crazy stuff. But this particular piñata had an advocate that day, in the form of my daughter. The kids all took turns whacking this multi-colored fish. Whap! The last hit exploded the fish, and snacks and money spilled from the fish’s guts. My little baby-girl burst into tears. For about ten minutes she was inconsolable. When she finally calmed down, we asked her what was wrong. Through the remnants of her tears, she said: “Is the fishy okay? Kids shouldn’t hit the fish with sticks. Now all of his insides are on the ground.” <br /><br />My wife and I had two completely different reactions: My wife was so proud that our daughter could show that type of compassion, even for something inanimate. I reacted to it as if her piscine concern was a form of weakness. I felt that all her blubbering was a sign of weakness, a loss of her fighting spirit. Needless to say, this is something else I’m working on. More later.Shawn Taylorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15379961088307176928noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-36090731452302286452011-09-25T10:37:00.000-07:002011-09-27T15:25:23.178-07:00The Gun on Hampshire Street<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b>1. </b>This summer, we moved back to San Francisco's Mission district after a year-long sojourn in suburban Palo Alto. Three weeks ago we were putting my son to bed. He was finally drifting off, and so was I. The heavy curtains were pulled shut and it was very dark in the room. I heard sounds outside but they were phantasmagoric nighttime city sounds, spectral sirens and echoing shouts and groaning buses.<br /><br /><div><b>2. </b>Then I heard a string of words, blurry but filled with fear. My eyes flew open and I was awake. The next words were absolutely clear. "He has a gun! He has a gun!"</div><div><br /><b>3. </b>We've met most of our neighbors on Hampshire Street. There's the Mexican family of six above us, who share their three small rooms with another family of three, a mother and two children who are not supposed to be there, according to the lease, who slip in and out of the apartment like ninjas. Next to them, there are the five (or six, or seven, or four?) almost-certainly undocumented Mexican men, who also live as invisibly as possible, running shadowy errands at all hours of the night. There's the nice, professional, Euro-American lesbian couple in the apartment next to ours. There's the childless, biracial, heterosexual couple next door, one an architect (I think), the other a composer (I think) who listens to Satie and Debussy in their bamboo backyard garden. On the corner, there's the self-appointed Chairman of the imaginary Hampshire Street Sidewalk Gardening Society, a gray-bearded gay man who always dresses in black from head to toe and spends his weekends trimming the leaves and watering the soil of the potted plants that line our street. There's the elderly Chinese woman who butchers and plucks chickens on her stoop, streaking the sidewalk with wine-dark blood and bone-white feathers. Then there is the house directly across from ours, the one whose picture window is covered by the proud pirate banner of the Oakland Raiders. I don't know how many people live there. I see and know the two matriarchs, one Latina, the other white. There are two very young kids, one toddler and one baby. There are two (?) pre-teen girls. There are many teenage boys, boxer shorts always visible above the low line of their jeans. Only once have have I seen a grown man enter the house.<br /><br /><b>4. </b>Liko was awake and I was awake and my wife was awake. I crossed my arm over them and told them to lie still, and we waited. I waited for one minute, my eyes on the clock. I didn't hear anything else. No shots. There were noises of misery, but they were subdued. I asked Liko and my wife to stay where they were and I went to the window. I parted the curtains. I found our street carpeted with police cars from one end of the block to the other, their lights silently flashing. I could see a line of civilian cars beyond them, stalled and waiting. I was disoriented. How could I have not heard the police arrive? Why were they there? I watched. Two of the young men who lived across the street were on their stomachs, their hands cuffed behind their backs. One of the boys, the older of the two, had an officer sitting on him, knee in the small of his back. I looked for guns. The police had drawn theirs, shadows in their hands. There were no other weapons that I could see. Now I was aware of one of the mothers who lived there, whom I'll call Maria. Maria was hysterical, standing over the police and her sons, now crying. It was her voice that I had heard, shouting about the gun. "Daddy?" said my son. He had gotten off the bed and was standing next to me, his face next to mine against the window, taking in the cars, the police, the guns. I put my arm around him but I didn't tell him to go back to bed. Part of me wanted for him to witness what was happening, so that he would know these things happened. "Did the police get the bad guys?" he asked.</div><div><br /><b>5. </b>I went outside. The stepfather of the girls who live upstairs was already there on the sidewalk. He doesn't speak much English and I don't speak much Spanish, but in a roundabout sign-language and Spanglish way we shared what we knew, which was practically nothing. We watched as the boys across the street were hauled to their feet and pushed into the backs of police cars. We watched as the mother fled up her stoop and ran screaming into her house, wrapped in the arms of a man I had never seen before. One by one the police cars pulled away and the backed-up traffic trickled slowly down our street, the drivers' eyes wide, wondering if they had taken a wrong turn into the wrong neighborhood. Then everything was still and quiet and dark, and we, the other father and I, slipped inside, returned to our families, not knowing what had happened in front of our building.<br /><br /><b>6. </b>That morning I was angry at the families across the street. I assumed many things. I assumed the gun in question belonged to one of the boys and that they had been engaged in some kind of criminal activity that brought the police down on them. This hadn't been my first encounter with the neighborhood's simmering violence, and I was angry with myself for having moved there and exposed my son to these things and other things, from the trash on the street to the stink of urine that we walked through on our way to school. I pledged to move back to Palo Alto as quickly as possible.<br /><br /><b>7. </b>The following weekend one of the girls upstairs had a birthday party. They grilled and shared their steak and corn with us, and I brought up a six-pack of beer. My wife and son played a board game with the birthday girl. Then we strung up a homemade Spongebob piñata on the sidewalk and the kids took turns pounding on it with a baseball bat, enraged one minute and laughing the next. I stood there with beer in my hand. I stopped watching the kids. Instead I was looking across the street. The matriarchs were on their stoop with the youngest kids. They waved at me and I waved back. Then I crossed the street.<br /><br /><b>8. </b>I asked what had happened the other night. I wanted to know and felt I had a right to know what happens on my street. I was polite but underneath that, I was angry with them, and at myself, for exposing my son to violence. I expected to hear, I guess, that their sons had been the targets of a stealthy drug bust, which would explain why the police cars arrived silently on our street. I expected to hear that one of their sons had pulled a gun on the police. I suppose that some part of me wanted an apology. Not just for that, but for everything. All the shit we had to deal with in the Mission. I was so fucking sick of the filth and the stench and the criminality and the weapons. The night before, a father of two had been shot and killed in back of the restaurant where he worked, five blocks away from our building. He had been sitting in the alley taking a smoke break. The newspaper said he had been killed by two gang members; it seems he had been wearing the wrong colors. I wanted an apology for that. I wanted someone to be sorry. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind I was remembering how I had almost been killed on my birthday, three weeks before my book was released, by three young men from the Mission. They had beaten me over the head with a tire iron and pointed a gun in my face. I wanted an apology for that, too. Someone had to be responsible. Why not the mothers of these dangerous children? If they're not responsible, who is?<br /><br /><b>9. </b>Maria told me that her two teenage sons, the ones who had been arrested, had been in trouble with the police many times. The other mother, whom I'll call Nancy, sat with us. As Maria and I talked Nancy wove in stories of her own life on Hampshire Street. Nancy's seventeen-year-old son had been shot and killed in front of our building, I discovered. He had not been in a gang, she said. He hadn't done anything wrong, his mother claimed. He just got into a fight with the wrong guy. It was after Nancy's son had been killed that things seemed to go wrong with Maria's boys. They got angry. They were kicked out of school. They were arrested for stupid things related to fighting and vandalism. The older one became intensively, obsessively protective of his brother. I stood on their stoop, the beer can warm and tight in my hand. I held my head still and I listened, and the awareness grew in the back of my mind that I was a privileged idiot, a judgmental prick, a tourist, a gentrifier.<br /><br /><b>10. </b>The night they were arrested, the two boys had been sitting on the stoop talking, just as I was with their mother as she told me this story. A police car glided down the street, slowed, and stopped. Out jumped a police officer. The cop knew the boys. He had arrested them before. He walked up the steps, his hand resting on his gun, and demanded to know what they were doing. The cop didn't know it was their home. He didn't know about Nancy's son, probably. He didn't know anything about them, except that they were known to him. Maria's oldest went off. He yelled at the police officer, told the cop to get the fuck away from his brother and away from his house. Yes, that was not a smart thing to do. Young men often do dumb things. The cop's partner called for backup. As cars arrived, the confrontation escalated. It got physical. Maria saw the flashing lights of the police cars through her curtains--like me, she hadn't heard sirens or heard the argument outside--and she raced out of the house and saw both her boys being thrown to the sidewalk. She didn't know why. She had been talking to them not 30 minutes before, and all had been peaceful. She saw her younger son struggling as he was pushed to the cement, and as she came out of the house she saw a cop pull his gun. That's when she screamed. That's when she shouted, "He has a gun! He has a gun!"<br /><br /><b>11. </b>I don't know how much of this account to believe; my gut feeling is that Maria was telling as much of the truth as she knew. This much is certain: neither boy was armed. It was the police who had the guns on Hampshire Street, not the boys. It was police who drew weapons outside of my sleeping son's window. The brothers were booked that night, the younger for disorderly conduct, the older for resisting arrest. The older brother was taken to the hospital for minor injuries. When the boy, eighteen years old, emerged from the ER, he didn't see any police waiting for him. He asked the nurse where they cops had gone. "They left," she said, not looking at him. "Can I go?" he asked. "I guess so," said the nurse. The boy had to walk home from the hospital. He didn't have any money or a cell phone. He couldn't call his mother. His mother didn't know where he was. As Maria told me this story, I remembered my son's question. He asked me: "Did the police get the bad guys?" The bad guys.<br /><br /><b>12. </b>Palo Alto is a funny place; maybe it's just typical. A friend of mine once said, "Nothing can ever go wrong in Palo Alto." The streets are clean and they smell great. The schools are excellent and safe. There are no homeless, there's no visible misery. You can't buy a home for under a million and a half dollars. Everyone works for Google or Facebook or Stanford or one of a hundred start-ups. Everyone's angling for their IPO. Disaster is something that happens to people you don't know. It's other people's children who are shot on sidewalks, other people's fathers who are shot in back alleys. And you know what? Disasters will happen, but I don't want them to happen to my son. I don't want him anywhere near disaster. I don't want to ever see him bleeding on a sidewalk. We're going to leave the Mission, or at least this street in the Mission. We're not staying. You can judge me for that if you want. You can call it "white flight." You can call it anything you want. But we're ultimately leaving. (I say "we" but I should make it clear this is what I want; my wife, for the record, has a different take on things, seems willing to put up with the things I won't.) That's our personal solution. For some, there are always personal solutions. Some of us have options. We can, for example, run away.<br /><br /><b>13. </b>We're not going to leave because of Maria or Nancy or their sons. We're not leaving because of the families or the men upstairs, our friends and neighbors. We're leaving because of the police, or what they represent. We're fleeing the front line of a war that our society is waging against poor people. The Republicans have accused President Obama of "class warfare" for suggesting that maybe possibly we could ask America's richest people for a few pennies to help finance infrastructure, education, health care--and yes, the two wars and occupations we put on a global credit card, not to mention the militarization of the border with Mexico (where tens of thousands have died in a drug war that reaches into neighborhoods like the Mission). The rich are refusing. Places like Palo Alto are refusing. Let someone else pay, they say. They're explicit: Why, there are Americans who are supposedly too poor to pay any taxes at all! Parasites! That's not fair! Or--some, not just Democrats, whisper--let's just raise the debt ceiling. Let's put it on credit. We'll pay it off later, after our IPO, after the next election. After, later, someday. Let the children pay.</div><div><br /><b>14. </b>This morning I saw the rivulets of blood flowing across the sidewalk. There on the stoop squatted the old Chinese woman, a coffee-colored Americana headless at her feet. I said hello and she did not answer. Instead she turned her face and hunched her shoulders, as though ashamed of what she was doing. I walked more quickly and plunged my hands into my pockets, my footprints bloody on the cement behind me. I felt ashamed as well. Ashamed and angry.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>For a less personal, more political take on the same issues, see Sally Kohn's op-ed in Friday's Washington Post, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obama-shouldnt-be-afraid-of-a-little-class-warfare/2011/09/21/gIQAmsBjqK_story.html?hpid=z3">"President Obama shouldn’t be afraid of a little class warfare."</a></i></div></span></b><div><div> </div></div>Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-83197196749035962372011-09-18T11:15:00.000-07:002011-09-18T11:26:44.353-07:00Feeding Mei Mei, or, Drinking with a Russian<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zhgBjc7_trxNGs6Bi04OnJ6HfE_4c5ACoiFw5zXZZYpKVZePUAk3lR90gc1ghidquBsayAtLG92UV3p4cdSMU2IFbHMzZMMpVv081LSSx3cFLbkRSWL2xILSt4nSIjHZEUk7/s1600/Russian+Sailor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7zhgBjc7_trxNGs6Bi04OnJ6HfE_4c5ACoiFw5zXZZYpKVZePUAk3lR90gc1ghidquBsayAtLG92UV3p4cdSMU2IFbHMzZMMpVv081LSSx3cFLbkRSWL2xILSt4nSIjHZEUk7/s1600/Russian+Sailor.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Author's Introduction: </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Feeding my daughter, our second child, is an experience classifiable as something between a torture session, a séance, a joint psychotic episode, the climactic scene from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Exorcist</i>, and the nursing of an alcoholic Russian submarine officer who has lost the ability to speak. It is this last similitude that provides the title for the following theatrical interpretation, because it is my daughter’s voracious consumption of yogurt – to the point of gagging, and gorging herself such that, when subsequently laid down for a diaper change, she looks as if a dinner plate has lodged in her stomach – it is because this ravenous consumption of yogurt is repeatedly punctuated by bellows of the most profound animal satisfaction, the most contorted expressions of burning discomfort, and the most earnest mutterings for “ma-ma,” that I can think of no more perfect comparison than with a Slavic mariner. (All offended Slavic mariners please send hate-mail separately to my blogger email).</span></div><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Drinking with a Russian"</span></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">An experimental one-act play based on leaked National Security Administration transcripts of an American father’s attempt to feed his daughter as she inexplicably channels the personality of a Russian submarine officer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Act One</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/J9BzRsQh6Z0?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Curtain rises to the tune of Regina Spektor's "Sailor Song". Family kitchen. Baby Squeaky is in the high chair. Enter father in kitchen apron. Prepares food at the counter, approaches baby with a tub of yogurt.)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Vodka!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: [turning around, surprised] What?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Vodka! Don’t make me say it again!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: Slow down and start with your yogurt. Open up!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Get that French shit out of my face. You know what I want! Where are you hiding it? M-BAH! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Father closes kitchen windows, quickly spoons mouthful of yogurt to baby, who makes a sour face.)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Ma-ma! (slams fist on tray repeatedly)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Father quickly spoons another mouthful of yogurt to Squeaky.)</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: (bellowing) Yes! More! (coughs) M-Bah! (slams fists on tray again)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: I think we should slow down a little. You may gag if we go too fast.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Ah, how it burns going down. (coughs, grimaces) Another tub for everyone, all around!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: This is just yogurt, Squeaky, not vodka.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Oh, but how it kills the pain. M-Bah! More!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: OK, have some more. This is peach flavor. Remember to chew, because it has chunkies. I can’t believe your appetite.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: My appetite? Do you know what it’s like to live inside a tub at the bottom of the Arctic Sea? When all you hear is the ice slamming the hull, week after week after week? We get hungry down there, amerikanskiĭ.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: I can’t imagine. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: (bellows, then waves away the spoon, startled. Frenziedly grabs her left arm with her right hand. Holds her left hand in front of her face, moves fingers and studies them as if in a trance) The spiders!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: What spiders!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Get the fucking spiders off my arm! (coughs, projecting yogurt onto father’s apron and all over the high chair tray)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: Jesus, Squeaky, you just spit up the last ten minutes of my work. Now we have to start all over again. And there are no spiders on your arm. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: (makes a toothless grimace) Wipe off the fucking spiders before they get to my head you fascist prick. (calms herself) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I remember a song we used to sing, at times like this, when the tub would get snagged on the bottom of the Baltic (raises her arms and drops them onto the table in 2/2 rhythm):</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In the doorway there is standing a Cossack<br />
His beard snowy white upon his chest<br />
He is waiting for the lovely Natasha<br />
She costs plenty, but she is the best</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: We’re gonna have to wrap that one up before mom comes home, Squeaky. Hey, why is your face so red? Are you OK? (father stands up suddenly) Are you choking? Oh my god you are red as a tomato!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: (grunts) I’m shitting my pants. This is going to take a minute. (grunts)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: Why do you do it that way, on the seat of the chair? Wouldn’t it be easier to let me help you stand up? Gravity is your friend.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Do you think we had room to stand up in the bathtub, my friend? (grunts) Hit your skull on the bulkhead just once and the Americans will send you a torpedo for breakfast. Besides, after all those years, it feels better this way. (issues a final grunt, raises arms in expectation of being lifted) </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Time to swab the deck, mate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Dad: Just like in the submarine, right? (lifts Squeaky for diaper change)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Squeaky: Full fathom five, captain. (breaks into song again)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And there is singing, and there is dancing,<br />
And the Russian vodka is all right.<br />
Come to the Kretchma, that's where you'll ketchma,<br />
Drinking vodka every night</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Exeunt</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Fin</span></div>chicago pophttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17055796523227869734noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-91799881859485382262011-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:002011-08-17T07:00:02.853-07:00Trophy husband, one year later<div><i>[originally posted on August 10, 2011 at </i><a href="http://daddyinastrangeland.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/trophy-husband-one-year-later/"><i>daddy in a strange land</i></a><i>]</i></div><div>
<br /></div><a href="http://daddyinastrangeland.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trophysahd.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-39" title="trophysahd" src="http://daddyinastrangeland.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/trophysahd.jpg" alt="" width="333" height="156" /></a>Exactly one year ago today, <a href="http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38628278/ns/today-pare%E2%80%8Bnting/#.TkLuNHb3LjR" target="_blank">The Today Show</a> told the entire morning-news-watching nation that I, as a stay-at-home-dad married to a doctor, was an example of a new status symbol for "alpha women." I was a trophy husband.
<br />
<br />If you watch the <a href="http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/38638860#38638860" target="_blank">entire segment linked here</a> [having trouble embedding it, sorry]—which was pegged to a <a href="http://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/relationship-issues/stay-at-home-husband-status-symbol-2" target="_blank">Marie Claire article</a> for which la dra. and I had been interviewed for an hour each and in which we were reduced to a family photo and <a href="http://daddyinastrangeland.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/im-not-martha-stewart-2/" target="_blank">one quote</a> about (not by) me presented very much out of context—you'll see that the NBC videographer who shot and cut the piece ignored the magazine editor's "trophy husband" framing and that good ol' Matt Lauer actually went after her for it, closing with a reference to "the guy in the piece" who said "'it's not babysitting, it's parenting." [My new catchphrase. Heh. I need to make t-shirts.]
<br />
<br />In the intervening year, the conversation in the mainstream media and in the parentblogosphere about changing roles, especially in an uncertain economic environment, and the redefinition of fatherhood has continued. Fatherhood gets talked about in the context of <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/" target="_blank">a larger re-envisioning of modern manhood online</a>, <a href="http://dad2summit.com/" target="_blank">dadbloggers</a> plan their own testosterone-centric take on the momblogger <a href="http://manofthehouse.com/relationships/communication/mans-perspective-blogher-conference-2011" target="_blank">conferences</a> only a few of us dare to crash—and yet, things like <a href="http://www.athomedad.org/" target="_blank">SAHDs</a>, <a href="http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/15/the-fathering-gap-the-perils-of-modern-fatherhood/" target="_blank">involved fatherhood</a>, and <a href="http://equallysharedparenting.com/" target="_blank">equally shared parenting</a> continue to be treated as "trend stories," as anomalous and intriguing oddities that are newsworthy <em>because</em> they're not "normal."
<br />
<br />Just a week ago, <a href="http://angrysahd.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">AngrySAHD</a> Josh K. wrote some guidelines on <a href="http://www.nycdadsgroup.com/2011/08/comical-misandry-and-involved-father.html" target="_blank">"How Not to Screw Up the Conversation About the Modern Dad"</a> on the site of <a href="http://www.nycdadsgroup.com/" target="_blank">The NYC Dads Group</a> after watching another group member and dadblogger get set up in an adversarial moms-vs.-dads conversation about parenting skills on <a href="http://www.ivillage.com/conversation-thread/6-j-351006" target="_blank">iVillage</a>. His "list of a few things to think about when being an involved dad, and especially when discussing it, whether it's on TV or the playground":
<br /><ol>
<br /> <li>Don't be the boob.</li>
<br /> <li>Be involved in everything—not just major discipline.</li>
<br /> <li>Be on top of your stuff.</li>
<br /></ol>
<br />"For better or worse," he writes, "part of the 'job' of being an involved dad is helping to change the incorrect impressions people have of all dads. Set an example, live that example, and correct people when they are wrong."
<br />
<br />I was lucky with how my Today Show experience turned out. I had no control over how the finished article portrayed me and my family, and no control over how the video piece would use us as an example of a stay-at-home-dad/breadwinning-mom family with which to introduce the topic on the show. I totally lucked out in having Matt Lauer virtually have my back and fight against the usual mom-vs.-dad, stay-at-home-vs.-work-outside-the-home adversarial framing of much of the media coverage modern parenting gets.
<br />
<br />In a comment on the NYC Dads Group post, I wrote, "[I]n terms of how not to screw up the public conversation, a lot depends on the luck of having sympathetic allies involved in the set-up and presentation of the discussion. We can't assume folks'll have our back or be on the same page, and if they aren't and we're all by ourselves, especially if we're on their media turf, it's very easy to get steamrolled no matter our intentions."
<br />
<br />As I said earlier, this stuff still gets portrayed in the media as the funny little human interest story, "hey look, they're doing things different [read: not normal], maybe it's a trend [read: not mainstream]." But as hinted at above, we're not waiting around for the mainstream media to tell our stories or just sitting around waiting for the day that what we're doing is so non-remarkable that there <em>is</em> no story. We're telling our own diverse, not-always-agreeing-with-each-other stories, moms and dads, SAH and WAH and WOTH and full-time and part-time and everything in between, in every possible permutation of "parent" and "family. We're connecting with each other virtually and IRL and creating fluid, fluent communities of interest and support, on <a href="http://dadwagon.com/" target="_blank">new</a> <a href="http://dadwagon.com/" target="_blank">blogs</a>, on <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23DadsTalking" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, in books [like the new <a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=361">Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood</a>, to which I am a proud contributor], everywhere.
<br />
<br />And so that's how we continue to shape and "not screw up" the conversation—by having it with as many different people in as many different venues as we can. I recently had a conversation with another dadblogger about his mixed feelings on being lumped into a "trend" of redefined fatherhood when all he felt he was trying to do was raise his kid and be himself. But he was a part of it, I countered, whether he liked it or not, simply by the fact that he had chosen to talk and write publicly about who he was and how he was raising that kid, as a dadblogger. Mere presence, while not enough to make real changes, is enough to start—and I think that there are enough of us out there writing and talking about what we're doing and living to be sure that this is, indeed, the start of something.daddy in a strange landhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02838412669298860456noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-66899140821083003032011-08-15T07:00:00.000-07:002011-08-15T07:00:02.198-07:00Race is Always a Parenting Issue<i>[originally posted at </i><a href="http://goodmenproject.com/families/race-is-always-a-parenting-issue/"><i>The Good Men Project</i></a><i>]</i><div><i>
<br /></i></div><div><i>Last week, <a href="http://goodmenproject.com">The Good Men Project</a> started a conversation about race by publishing 8 articles from diverse points of view over the course of the week. However, the site launched the series last Monday with four pieces, all approaching the topic from a black/white perspective and written by black and white writers. I wrote the following response in partial reaction to the disappointing but unsurprising couching of America's continuing race problem in monochromatic terms, and it was published the next day, after, as it turns out, Daddy Dialectic's own Rad Dad Tomás Moniz' "<a href="http://goodmenproject.com/families/beautiful-on-all-sides/">Beautiful on All Sides</a>," reprinted from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=361">Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood</a></span> (buy your copy now!).
<br /></i>
<br />It seems that whenever a new conversation about race in America is started, no matter the good intentions, the starting point is always the same. The American historical experience and conception of race is grounded in the opposition of blackness and whiteness, two categories socially constructed over time in ways that have served to define “the other” as “not us” and “us” as “not them” at the same time as preserving power and privilege for one “us” over the “not us.” Thus, it’s no surprise that <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/on-race/">The Good Men Project’s call for a new conversation about race</a>, and its intersection with what it means to be “good men,” begins with four personal, deeply felt, and honest essays that nevertheless fail to acknowledge that when we talk about race in 2011, it’s no longer enough, if it ever was, to color the dialogue in only black and white.
<br />
<br />When I am called to put a racial or ethnic label on myself, I call myself, among other things at other times, a multiracial Asian American. I am also the stay-at-home father of two multiethnic Asian American daughters. Short version of the long story, three of my four paternal great-grandparents were Austrian Jews and all my maternal great-grandparents were from Japan (yes, my family was in camp), and I’m from LA, married to a woman who came from the Philippines when she was one. What does it all mean, and what does it matter? It means that I am a father of color of children of color in a United States in which multiracial by no means equals post-racial, and it matters a hell of a lot.
<br />
<br />When I was a newbie SAHD in a new town, I started blogging. But before I was a dad, I was a college activist on race and diversity issues, an ethnic studies major, and a social studies teacher at a diverse, urban LA-area public high school not unlike the one I had attended myself. Issues of race and social justice were intimately intertwined with my journey as a new father—how could they not be? And so, besides writing about the archetypal SAHD-out-of-water experiences and the daily routine of diapers and naps, I co-founded a group blog for Asian American dads and joined a nascent blog whose blunt name needed no explanation, Anti-Racist Parent, which has since been renamed Love Isn’t Enough.
<br />
<br />Countless times, I’d encounter commenters asking, “I thought this was a parenting blog! Why are you always talking about this race stuff?” For a parent of color, navigating race and racism is a parenting issue. Already, as one of the few Asian Americans at her school, my six-year-old has come home asking me why classmates insist she’s Chinese or ask her where she’s really from. And I know that it will be far too easy for my smart, personable girl who also happens to be really shy in large groups and with authority figures to get lost in the stereotype of the quiet Asian girl, and that it’s my job to monitor, teach, and intervene.
<br />
<br />Race may be a social construction, but it continues to have real consequences upon people’s lived experiences. I know that my experiences as a biracial Asian American boy growing up in the Los Angeles of the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s (I graduated from high school just a few scant months after the National Guard used our blacktop as a staging area) will be very different from my daughters’ experiences as multiethnic Asian American girls growing up in a more conservative, more homogeneous Central Valley in the early 21st century. But I know that having a biracial black man in the White House and mixed folks a Hollywood trend doesn’t equal the end of racism, and that colorblindness leaves us unable to see, and that sometimes it isn’t enough to just love our children and hope for the best but that we must equip them with the lessons of our past, the tools with which they can shape their world, and our guidance with which they can learn to do so.
<br />
<br />This conversation isn’t a new one, and it’s not one with an end in sight. And that’s okay. Because we don’t have this conversation for our own sakes. But as we move forward, we need to make sure that more and different voices telling more and different stories are heard, because in those different stories we will find the common experiences that bind us and learn what we don’t know we don’t know. Only then can the conversation include everyone, and move forward.
<br /></div>daddy in a strange landhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02838412669298860456noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-60363301915018496802011-08-05T09:59:00.000-07:002011-08-05T14:07:15.465-07:00Blogging, Privacy, Porn, and the Monetization of IntimacyToday, the Good Men Project published <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/did-i-marry-a-masturbator-pornography-and-privacy-in-marriage/">an essay of mine about the lines of privacy in marriage</a>, in which I argue that spouses have both the right to secrets and the obligation to be as honest with each other as possible, using porn as a case study. That sounds like a paradox to some, I’m sure, and here I want to offer up another paradox: That in the age of transparency, we as daddy bloggers have the obligation to speak out and tell our stories—but we also have the right to privacy.<br /><br />That’s probably not a controversial point with most readers (striking the balance is what we call a public persona), but I have been challenged many times to “tell the whole truth” about my life—or, in my journalism, to dig beneath the surface of what moms and dads tell me about their family lives, to get at “the real truth.” This often has a lascivious undercurrent, as when people want to know how many stay-at-home dads and moms have had affairs. There is a certain, growing strain of thinking in our culture that worries that anything we reveal in public must be a lie of some kind, that surely we’re hiding something, and of course we are. There’s tremendous pressure to reveal more, more, more. This pressure is social—but, as I’ll discuss in a moment, it’s also financial.<br /><br />As I write at Good Men, this mirrors a dynamic in contemporary American marriages. Today our ideal marriage tends to be totally consuming, in that we expect total transparency and involvement from our partners. But this is a pretty new, fairly unstable (as measured by the divorce rate) social experiment we’ve got going on here in college-educated twenty-first-century America. There are other ideas of marriage that allow both partners to have extensive, separate lives outside of marriage, in friendships and community involvement—and there are ideas of marriage that allow both partners to cultivate inner lives apart from their partners. In other words, they don’t expect total transparency and disclosure. Spouses are allowed to have some privacy. Many marriages are battlegrounds between these competing ideals, with spouses fighting over every intimate inch of private ground.<br /><br />A battle between transparency and privacy also rages through the public sphere, online and off. As a culture, we’ve evolved into an exhibitionistic beast in which people reveal the most intimate details of their lives through memoirs, Reality TV, social media, and blogs—and in my view, it’s no accident that this exhibitionism has grown up alongside the rise of the Christian Right in American culture and politics. Moral absolutism goes hand in hand with the assault on privacy, feeding each other. From this perspective, Mark Zuckerberg and Mike Huckabee are allies. We’re at the point where people who cultivate private lives seem suspicious: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, why hide?”<br /><br />In <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/did-i-marry-a-masturbator-pornography-and-privacy-in-marriage/">my Good Men essay</a>, I write the following:<br /><blockquote>In marriage, disclosure and transparency are important—but we must also recognize the genuine doubts and anxieties that hold our spouses back from being completely honest with us. In fact, I’d go further and argue that to make our confessions compulsory robs them of their power. It’s the struggle to reach the point of confession that defines us, not the split-second catharsis of confession all by itself. To put it another way, truth is a road we build as we travel, not a destination. We don’t have to tell everybody everything all at once.<br /></blockquote>I’d like to suggest that the same principle applies to disclosure in public life, especially for those of us who write about marriage and family on blogs, in books and magazines, through social media. In both in marriage and in the culture at large, for individuals, honesty is important—but it should not be obligatory. In the essay I mention that I had a conversation with my wife about pornography, but I don’t feel the need to share the details of that conversation with you, dear reader, though doing so would doubtless drive traffic and catalyze outrageous comments that would feed the search machine that would drive even more traffic, and thus generate advertising dollars (if we took ads here, which we don't). <div><br /></div><div>In a very real way, we now live in an economy of confession. Our intimate details can be monetized.<br /><br />It’s up to each person how monetized they want to be. No one makes any money off this blog (and no one ever will). But I’m a writer and I’ve written about my life in blogs and magazines and books, and I’ve gotten paid for it. I have <a href="https://www.facebook.com/jeremyadamsmith?ref=profile">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/jeremyadamsmith">Twitter</a> accounts, and you’re welcome to friend or follow me. But I have rules and lines I’m not willing to cross, which have been set with my wife’s input. We’re selective. I defend our right to be selective. It’s our call, not yours, and people who wants to violate the boundaries we set can go fuck themselves.<br /><br />So why talk about my private life, or write about other people’s private lives, at all? Why be a daddy blogger? Why write personal essays? Some people do indeed think I should just shut up—more than a few folks have implied that I do this for some combination of money or attention. These are often the same people who demand “the whole truth.” And let’s not pussyfoot around: money is nice, because we need it for food and shelter and books. Attention is important because in our economy attention, like intimacy, can be monetized. And vanity is also a factor in all writing.<br /><br />However, “the real truth” is that there are better ways to make a living than to write about fatherhood and family. In fact, I suspect doing so has caused some serious damage to the rest of my career as a journalist. Many potential employers worry about hiring a guy who speaks out openly about prioritizing family. Many journalistic employers simply don’t take family issues seriously—I don’t seem “serious” to them since I write about “soft” things like male caregiving. I should be covering wars, business, technology. Man things.<br /><br />So, again: Why do it? I do it because parents get a raw deal in our society and I want to do something to make it easier for us. I see my writing about fatherhood to be a form of political and cultural activism—among other things, through my work I’m campaigning for more people to recognize that today’s fathers have caregiving responsibilities that demand new public and workplace policies, stuff like paternity leave and flextime. I think a narrow, rigid definition of masculinity has caused an incredible amount of damage to our psyches, our bodies, our marriages. Redefining fatherhood and masculinity demands that we strive to be honest about our lives—to tell the truth, for example, about how we feel when we denied access to our children through divorce or workplace pressures. The more honest we can be, the more powerful our stories will be.<br /><br />But that is not the same as arguing for verbal diarrhea. As Ernest Hemingway knew and practiced so well, power can also arise from what we choose not to say, from the silences that surround the words we speak. I’ve never been sold on the idea that men and women speak separate languages, but there is certainly a hardboiled male mode of communication (not shared by all men or all cultures) that seeks an artful modulation between silence and confession, secrets and disclosure, which can create a deep pressure that turns men’s inner lives into diamonds. I try to give that tradition—the one that defined our grandfathers—the respect it deserves, and I try to learn from it, build on it, use it to redefine who we are as guys.<br /><br />I also believe that there are other priorities that can and should undermine public “honesty.” There’s the privacy of our spouses and children; there’s the pressure of our careers, which are the means of supporting our families. These things are important. There are also secrets, our own and others’, that we want or need to protect. That’s OK. Resisting the assault on privacy and the monetization of intimacy (of which porn is an example, incidentally) is a form of activism as well. </div><div><br /></div><div>I’m not sure if what I’m saying will be useful to you, dear reader—this is a meditation, not a set of guidelines. And those lines, I’d like to suggest, are something that each of us much draw for ourselves, on our own.<br /><br /><br /></div>Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-43759950388426092132011-07-22T11:13:00.001-07:002011-07-22T11:13:59.512-07:00Heads or TailsI usually give Polly and Pip a bath three times a week – on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. While they do most of the bath stuff together, there are a couple of differential moments when some kind of choice between the two of them must be made. The first moment comes at the beginning when we have to decide whether or not to use bubble bath. The second moment arrives in the middle when I have to identify who will get their scrub-down first. The third moment arises at the end when one child must get out and be dried and clothed while the other is allowed to stay in the water and play a bit longer.<br /><br />For Monday and Wednesday, these differential moments are easily handled through the taking of turns: on Monday its Pip’s turn to select the type of bath they will have, to get washed down first, and to stay in the water longer; on Wednesday its Polly’s turn to do these things. Friday, however, presents a dilemma. On Fridays I get to choose whether or not to use bubble bath (usually not, since it’s almost impossible to wash the bubble bath suds out of the kids hair), but I don’t want to have to keep track from week to week which child got to go first and stay in the bath longer. We already have too many of instances of turn taking that I have to keep straight as it is and with the time interval being relatively long, I just wind up getting confused about who did what when. So, I decided to flip a coin instead.<br /><br />Now, the coin flip is a decision-making technique with which I have an ambivalent history. My parents used it occasionally to resolve competing claims between my sister and me over who got to sit in the preferred seat in the car or who got to choose what music we would listen to. I remember the coin flip being a constantly frustrating experience for me because when it was her turn to choose heads or tails, my sister would always take the latter and win. When it was my turn, I would guess one or the other and generally lose. This sense of being beaten down by the gods of chance was only sharpened by my inability to complain or appeal to anyone. Of course, it was these very qualities that made the coin flip so appealing to my parents and why I was happy to inflict this exercise upon Polly and Pip. <br /><br />*****<br /><br />To make the whole coin flip a bit more of a production, I developed a ritual that turns the thing into a lesson in probability. To start with I tell Pip and Polly that there are two sides to the coin, heads and tails. Then I show them what each side looks like. Next I tell them that because the coin is evenly weighted, there is an equal chance that after being tossed in the air, the coin will come up heads or tails. Then I add that, as we do this week after week, the coin will come up heads and tails approximately the same number of times, meaning that over time you each will get to stay in the bath longer about the same number of times. Finally, I ask one of them to call it in the air.<br /><br />Now those of you who have some experience with probability might notice a problem with this ritual. While my description of the probability at work in the single coin flip was correct, my characterization of the long-term results was not. In order to get the long-term evenness between heads and tails that I was describing to Pip and Polly, the only thing that can be allowed to vary is the flipping of the coin. But, by letting Polly or Pip call heads or tails, I introduced a second variable. This second variable means that in any given flip there are four possible results – child selects heads, coin lands heads; child selects heads, coin lands tails; child selects tails, coin lands heads; child selects tails, coin lands tails. While within these possible results there is still an even chance between ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ for a given flip, the second variable – the child’s choice – does not possess the same evenness in probability as the flipping coin. In fact the child’s choice must be considered completely random in that there is no way to predict over a series of flips how many times the child will choose a given side of the coin. This means that the win/loss balance for this series of flips will also be completely random. The fairness that I promised to Polly and Pip was a lie.<br /><br />*****<br /><br />It took me about four weeks to realize my mistake. At that point I made the easy fix and permanently assigned heads to Pip and tails to Polly. These will be their assigned sides from now until I no longer have to arbitrate these choices for them. <br /><br />*****<br /><br />I don’t know that Polly or Pip will ultimately appreciate the amount of consideration I have given to this otherwise insignificant moment in their Friday morning routine, but it feels like a small victory to me. In my daily work with Polly and Pip I don’t often get to put aspects of my formal education to work in such recognizable ways. There was something satisfying in doing so, in taking a stab at something, sensing that there was a problem with my approach to it, and then working out from my memory what I needed to do to fix it. It was my own little internal game, one of which Polly and Pip will never be the wiser, and it made me happy that I got it right.Jeffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13911644689635534904noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-38980272049862042972011-07-16T07:16:00.000-07:002011-07-16T07:34:01.171-07:00Switch Hitting: How Women's Soaring Economic Power is Changing Men and Fatherhood<iframe width="510" height="320" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Oq4oTgtcVJI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Here's the video from a presentation I gave with my friend and collaborator Christine Larson at Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Chris outlines the nature and trajectory of women's rising economic power; I come in at the end with some opinions about how men and families should respond. Please share!<br /><br />In other news, next month PM Press will publish <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=361">Rad Dad: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Fatherhood</a></span>, which combines the best pieces from this blog and the award-winning zine Rad Dad, two kindred publications that have tried to explore parenting as political territory. As I edited the book, I kept getting choked up, and once actually cried--these are incredibly powerful and sometimes extremely funny essays about the birth experience, the challenges of parenting on an equal basis with mothers, the tests faced by transgendered and gay fathers, and parental confrontations with war, violence, racism, and incarceration. <br /><br />I'll be promoting it with coeditor Tomas Moniz at book fairs and playgrounds around the country. Here's the schedule so far:<br /><br /><blockquote>Timberland Regional Library, Olympia, WA<br />Wednesday, August 03, 2011 at 7:30 PM<br />Special Guest: Nikki McClure, Sky Cosby and others<br /><br />Richard Hugo House, Seattle, WA<br />Thursday, August 4, 2011 at 7:00pm<br />Special Guest: Corbin Lewers<br /><br />Powell's City of Books on Burnside, Portland, OR<br />Friday, August 5th, 2011 at 7:30pm<br />Special Guest: Ariel Gore<br /><br />Zephyr Books, Reno, NV<br />Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 6:00 pm<br /><br />The Avid Reader, Davis, CA<br />Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 7:30 pm<br /><br />Brooklyn Bookfair, Brooklyn, NY<br />Sunday, September 18, 2011<br /><br />Bluestockings, Manhattan, NY<br />Sunday, September 18, 2011 at 7:30pm<br />Special Guest: Ayun Halliday<br /><br />Woodenshoe Anarchist Collective, Philadelphia, PA<br />Monday, September 19, 2011 at 7:00 pm<br /><br />Baltimore Bookfair, Baltimore, MD<br />Sunday, September 24, 2011<br /><br />Reach And Teach, San Mateo, CA<br />Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 3:00 pm<br /><br />New Parents Expo, Manhattan, NY (tentative)<br />Sunday, October 16, 2011</blockquote><br /><br />In October, Tomas and I will organize "Out of the Bookstores and into the Playgrounds," a series of guerilla readings at playgrounds throughout the Bay Area. Want to help organize one or just bring one of us to your town to talk about the book? Contact me at jeremyadamsmith (at) mac.com.Jeremy Adam Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11733669114207985920noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23363296.post-33971664916072144092011-06-17T15:49:00.000-07:002011-06-17T15:51:05.319-07:00Not that I timed it but...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmuy5domCh7Wsrgcz30_Oz4d4qvxt9t3Xvswk-jLA1na-Iu3t9wAauJGclUEn4uOs9hyphenhyphenbgIyRTxsZZ9r0mAbTvkUXVxXuAP5bU6axiDSOzrE-1lGPgCZLgplbln61unuG5T6W/s1600/raddad20_lg.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 252px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOmuy5domCh7Wsrgcz30_Oz4d4qvxt9t3Xvswk-jLA1na-Iu3t9wAauJGclUEn4uOs9hyphenhyphenbgIyRTxsZZ9r0mAbTvkUXVxXuAP5bU6axiDSOzrE-1lGPgCZLgplbln61unuG5T6W/s320/raddad20_lg.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5619324873909583778" /></a><br />...available right now from <a href="http://microcosmpublishing.com/">Microcosm</a> is the latest issue of Rad Dad! Here's their review:<br /><br />Hot on the heals of Rad Dad 19, we're excited to announce the release of issue 20! This issues features articles about special needs children, traditional Japanese grandparents, queer male allies, and an interview with Brian Heagney—the author, illustrator, and publisher of the kid's book, The ABCs of Anarchism. Some of this issue is learning lessons from your children—or even them teaching you lessons—and as always, Rad Dad is a forum and a source of hope that parents and children can one day be welcomed in radical spaces. This is important reading—vital stuff for parents and nonparents alike.tomas, editor rad dad zinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03272773798092364303noreply@blogger.com1