Reflections on 2008

As we approach the end of another year our thoughts often turn to family and friends.  We feel the distance between us and we wish time and space were lesser obstacles.
 
We recall with happiness our times with Beverly’s family in the Big Little[1] and Michigan.[2]  Our daughter Daisy and son Sloopy appreciated being with their grandparents[3] and cousins.[4]  We’re glad that some of the American cousins now live closer to New England.[5]  All this reminds us of family and friends whose company we have missed.[6]  Also, some friends visited us this year.[7] 
 
Last year we wrote about our no-mow lawn.[8] Yes, the grass grows only a few inches high and requires little mowing.[9]  But it also has attracted crabgrass and wasps.[10]  In our letter last year, we used our lawn as a horticultural metaphor of dashed hopes and human disappointment.  We’re pleased to say that we’ve found the solution to lawn worries: stop thinking about it.[11]  We spent little time, money, or worry on the lawn this year.  Taking off your glasses does wonders for the appearance of the lawn.
 
We’ve both[12] kept busy with work and Beverly has had some interesting professional trips.[13]  During the 2008-09 academic year we’re participating together in a yearlong seminar here at our university called “Visions of Nature.”  It’s informing our research[14] and we’re especially enjoying that we can participate together.
 
Like so many people, much of our focus this year was on politics and the economy.  We hope for the best[15] in a world where violence, greed, and suffering are too common.  May the new administration provide us -- both as a nation[16] and as individuals[17] -- with the inspiration and opportunity to live our lives more responsibly.
 
Now that we’ve given up our lawn concerns, we’re focused on the little people who live with us.  It’s harder to describe the wonder of parenthood than the worries of lawn care. How can we convey how our wise son and beautiful daughter amaze us?  We can’t, so we’ll limit the stories to two, one with Sloopy’s commentaries on our world and one with Daisy’s.
 
Daisy[18] has her opinions on the election of Barack Obama.  In our family, we don’t identify as “black” and “white,” but as “pink” and “brown.”[19] Obama, she insisted, was not the first black president, but the first brown president.  This may silly, but it’s become a fundamental principle for Daisy.  Weeks after the election, Beverly was reading the kids a story about George Washington.  “George Washington,” she told them, “was our first president.”  Daisy stopped her:  “He was our first pink president.”  Score one forDaisy.  American history reinterpreted: Two first presidents, more than two hundred years apart. 
 
Sloopy[20] is more interested in paleontology than politics, so he has an even longer-term view.  Although he doesn’t know much about our economic meltdown, he does understand the risks of extinction.  When we were at the Natural History Museum in New York in June, he was completely taken with the exhibit on evolution.  We thought it was the special effects, but the science made an impression.  Days after we left the museum, he asked, “What comes after humans?” 
 
Maybe crabgrass and hornets.  The next few years will tell us a lot.
 
Best and warmest wishes for any holidays you choose to celebrate.
 
 
 


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[1] Beverly’s sister Mary and brother-in-law John visited from Michigan.

[2] Where Beverly is from. We went there in July for Mary’s daughter Elizabeth’s wedding to Matt.

[3] Beverly’s father Vernon (who is 82) and his wife Betty (whose privacy on age issue we will respect) are healthy and happy. 

[4] Children often have an especially intimate relationship with cousins of five or more years older or younger.  Sloopy and Daisy admire their big cousins, but they especially idolize Will and Pete, the sons of Beverly’ sister Chris, who live in Arkansas.  They are 10 and 8 years old.

[5] By this we mean Kate, Laura, and Adam, Beverly’s brother Dave and his wife Lois’s children, who each live in different boroughs of New York City.

[6] Anyone not listed in a previous footnote, especially Owen’s sister Margaret and Ray (in France) and their children (all in Britain) Hazel (spouse Silvio and newborn Amos) and Simon (spouse Marie).

[7] Okay, very few and we won’t list them for fear of forgetting anyone and losing the few friends we have; we have taken the risk of listing family because they are easier to keep track of and harder to alienate.

[8] A slightly edited version is available in a post dated November 30, 2007 .

[9] We have a human-powered mower, which we use once a summer when the grass heads develop. This year it did a number on Beverly’s back, but we won’t get into that because it’s not festive to discuss injuries in a holiday letter.

[10] The wasps live in burrows, not to be confused with the boroughs where Beverly’s nieces and nephews live in New York.

[11] Last year when we googled “Rhode Island Wasps,” we learned about the Chafee, Brown, Tillinghast, Chase, and Sharpe families.  That wasn’t so helpful for our lawn care problems.

[12] Meaning Beverly and Owen, not Sloopy or Daisy, who don’t work much.

[13] Cologne, Boston, Boise (not so interesting, actually), Leiden, Burlington, and Chicago.

[14] Beverly’s current research is on people and birds in colonial and post-colonial Africa. Owen’s is on the extinction and possible re-breeding of the quagga, a sub-species of zebra in South Africa.

[15] Second-best, actually, would be fine with us.

[16] With apologies to our international friends who are reading this.  We hope you understand that Americans are focused on themselves.

[17] Maybe not Rod Blagojevich; he’s a bit far gone for political redemption.

[18] Almost five years old, enjoying pre-kindergarten.

[19]More innocuous markers of phenotypical difference.

[20] Six and a half years old, in the first grade and loving recess.

Sciatica

Nothing like Sciatica to kill a career as a blogger. It's been going on since March. Three physical therapists, two MDs, one PA, one chiropractor, one massage therapist later and I'm noting some improvement.

Reading my old posts, I'm surprised that I was feeling such grace last May and June. Was it that Obama had the nomination in the bag? Nothing so hopeful now.

What is it about Christmas that makes me want to blog?

Race in Gilead

To continue with Gilead: Apart from fatherhood, the theme in that grabs me is race. It's the place of slavery and race in this novel that justifies saying that the book is about America itself.

It takes a while for the theme to emerge and that's what's brilliant about it; race is easily submerged in white America, and Robinson makes her treatment of race more effective by framing the white town of Gilead its own terms before introducing the realities it ignores.

Two white individuals, Grandfather Ames and Jack Boughton, made closer connections to blacks and before we understand that they recognized race as a problem, we learn to mistrust them as the people of the town did. The once-abolitionist grandfather who appreciated the preaching at the Negro church had, according to Ames, a "strenuousness in ethical matters" and a "narrow vision." Jack Boughton got into all kinds of trouble. John Ames is a sympathetic narrator, but even he takes it for granted that these two men rightfully belong on the margins of society. If they're not even respectable, what claim can they make to criticize? The trajectories of these characters normalize the racial exclusions of American society.

Robinson's depiction of race is most deft in the Des Moines baseball story. Baseball may be the only thing the fathers, sons, friends, and brothers in Gilead have in common. When John was a boy, his ancient grandfather, missing one eye, took him all the way to Des Moines to watch Bud Fowler play. The game promised to be a great treat, but it was disappointing: the game rained out in the fifth inning. The denouement is even more of a non-event. Ames's recalls about Fowler: " I followed his career in the newspaper for years, until they started up the Negro Leagues, and then I sort of lost track of him."

This image is remarkable: a half-blind radical abolitionist taking his grandson to watch a black baseball hero. The whole thing went fell flat and years later his grandson still misses the point about why his grandfather chose this hero or about why excluding the hero from the sport was wrong. Through his widowed years, radio baseball was his lifeline, but John Ames can't see the hateful swell beneath this grace. What a bittersweet effect for readers when race appears in the definitive American pastoral: Iowa baseball. Nostalgia for Iowa tastes different once Bleeding Kansas is stirred in.

But John Ames doesn't sense the tension. He isn't concerned about what he recalls as a "nuisance" fire at the Negro Church. After the fire, the town's black population moved to Chicago, but Ames doesn't question the reasons for the exodus. The Negroes left; the Lithuanians moved in. To him, it's just a rhythm of peaceful town life.

Jack Boughton always could stir Ames up. At the very end Jack Boughton's story about race strikes him, and this is the last lesson of his life. It's a big lesson for a dying man and shakes his certitudes: "I woke up this morning thinking this town might as well be standing on the absolute floor of hell for all the truth there is in it, and the fault is mine as much as anyone's...It seems to me now we never looked up from the trouble we had just getting by to put the obvious question, that is, to ask what it was the Lord was trying to make us understand."

It's too late for Ames to address the question, but the book is written as a letter for his young son and is thus oriented toward the future. Ames's late revelation restores Kansas to the story he's telling about Iowa and America. "What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the Good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again."

I'm so moved by Robinson's treatment of race that I'm going to rag on one reviewer who just didn't get it. Tessa Hadley, who wrote on Gilead in the London Review of Books, entirely missed the point. It's too bad, because hers is one of the only early reviews to comment on the place of race in the book. Unfortunately, she didn't read carefully enough to see the development within Ames.

In fact, Hadley characterizes Ames as incapable of "fresh thought." The review is odd because it conflates a criticism of Ames's self-understanding with one of Robinson's own faith and politics. It states the book postulates "a continuum between the grandfather’s activism spurred by passionate faith and Ames’s late-life celebrations of a world radiant with God’s love." The reviewer hasn't figured out how the conversation with Jack Boughton humbled Ames's satisfaction with his small world.

Most egregiously, Hadley opines that at the end Ames achieves a "mere acquiescence to the existence of Jack’s mixed-race child [that] can’t stand all by itself for a significant engagement against injustice." Well, no, of course it couldn't, but Ames achieves more than a "mere acquiescence." Acquiescence would not cause him to feel as if he were on the "floor of hell." Because Hadley can't see that Ames has grown over the course of the book, she doesn't see that his late arrival at understanding magnifies the loss created by his death. His final words to his son are: "I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray that you find a way to be useful."

It's worthwhile, I think, to clarify this point. This message from a dying man to his son, is a most poignant statement of sadness and hope for this country.

Fatherhood in Gilead

I've read nine novels in the past year. Seven were by J.K. Rowling and two, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, were about fatherhood. Both won Pulitzer Prizes, both were immensely powerful.

I may be in a minority on this point, but compared with other McCarthy novels I read I found The Road to be relatively optimistic. The burnt-over world is utter dystopia, but the father and son love each other perfectly. At the end McCarthy suggests it's possible to live sustainably in an ashy world without photosynthesis, which is more hopeful than anything current science tells us. So, the book left me feeling more "up" than I did after reading All the Pretty Horses, even if it did motivate me to start researching what Mormons recommend for a year's food supply.

I've thought about McCarthy's world a lot, but what with the cannibalism and buggery, I don't think I could bear to read it again, much less see the movie. On the other hand, I've just reread Gilead and it's haunting me. All the reviews make much of the narrator's Calvinism, but it's an atypical sort of Calvinism. His religion is of a gracious father God; he barely mentions Jesus. I guess it's possible that a Congregational minister in southwest Iowa could be so possessed by everyday grace to the exclusion of sin and atonement, but he would be a remote outlier among his preacher peers.

Still, I am captured by his voice, his story. It's a story of fathers and sons and of their relations with each other, God, and finally America. Ames is facing death and is recounting his life for the benefit of his young son. He makes much of the observation that the Bible has no bad parents. Similarly, the fathers in the book aren't absent or abusive to children (save one). For their part, the youth recognize and respect their fathers, but in every case but one, fathers and sons suffer estrangement and agony. As Ames puts it: "A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension." Robinson's fine craft produces a compelling story of generational tension mutating and reproducing itself.

John Ames came from a male line of preachers, but unity in doctrine or practice evaded them. The grandfather had been a radical abolitionist in Bleeding Kansas. When his son, Ames's father, witnessed his violence in the name of God's fury, he could not reconcile himself to it. Decades later, frustrated with the lack of urgency in his son's religion, the old man ran back to Kansas to die. In the next generation, John Ames's older brother Edward studied theology, but broke with their father over the faith itself. John became a preacher and took up his father's church in Gilead.

John's first wife and daughter died when he was young, but the pattern of estrangement continues with his namesake, the child of his best friend, the Presbyterian preacher "old Boughten." No common prodigal, Jack Boughton is a charmer with a deep mean streak. Nonetheless, Rev. Boughten loves him. John Ames, on the other hand, sees through Jack and doesn't like the view. The only unfraught father-son relationship is between the dying Ames and his adored boy, born after his second marriage when he was sixty-seven.

Ames is weak and sick. His heart is giving out and his imminent death will be a tragedy for his boy and wife, younger by probably forty years. His wife also had seen untold loss and hardship before she met him. It is all sadder because Ames never saved any money and his wife and boy will have a hard life after he goes. But no one is bitter. After seven years of unexpected love, Ames is filled with a luminous appreciation for life, God, his son, and his wife. There's nothing clap-happy about it, and he never sentimentalizes pain and poverty. Ames says, "There are a thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient." Under Robinson's hand, this makes sense.

As powerful as the story of the late-blooming, soon-withering fatherhood is, I was more rattled by Ames's revelations about himself and his own father. These are withheld until the end of the letter to his son. At the end of his preaching career, John Ames's father left poor, dusty, backwards Gilead to retire on the Gulf Coast with his rationalist older son Edward. The pretext was the climate, but move gave him the opportunity to shed his religion. (Thinking it over, this is more implausible to me than Ames's beatifics.) Having abandoned Gilead, Ames senior wanted union with both his sons, Edward the atheist philosophy professor and John the widowed small-town preacher. The father returned to Gilead to invite John to join them, to convince him that his world and God were too limited to deserve such dedication.

John couldn't abandon the town or his faith. He also couldn't tolerate his father's condescension. His enduring anger toward his father is rivaled only by that for the villainous Jack Boughton. Ames may not have found any unfaithful fathers in the Bible, but his own father turned away from him. Ames recounts for his own son: "My father threw me back on myself, and on the Lord. That's a fact, so I find little to regret. It cost me a good deal of sorrow, but I learned from it."

John Ames's comfort lies in God, the perfect father whose love had carried him through the loss of a spouse, child, and father. It's a mark of God's grace that his beloved wife first came to his church on Pentecost. In dying, he leaves his wife, his son, and himself to that mercy. The close of the book allows Ames realization of Gilead's and his own limitations, but also a reconciliation with Jack Boughton, delivered in soaring, aching language. His comfort is so deep and his hope so modest that there's no embarrassment in feeling it with him. For me, it was an honor to have known John Ames, even if I didn't always understand him, even if he never mounted a prophetic call such as his grandfather's.

"A Primer" by Bob Hicok

I hope I'm not violating too many copyright rules by reproducing this. It's from the New Yorker, May 19, 2008.  Bob Hicok seems like an interesting guy. Not sure I'd like to have a beer with him but I'm amused by what he says about Michigan. With thanks to Bob and apologies for any infractions.

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michgan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics is everywhere,
and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let use tell each other everything we can.

A Bit of Hearsay About Life's Satisfactions

This is what an East German academic told a friend of mine after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She told it to me about 15 years ago.

He said he had lost the thing that gave him the greatest sense of achievement. Living under the DDR, his greatest satisfaction was receiving a book order. Ordering academic books from the West was difficult. Merely keeping up with his field required a lot of struggle through red tape. But when it succeeded, his joy was sublime. His most satisfied moments were walking home with a new book in his arms.

When the Wall fell, he could order any books he wanted. Cost was the only limitation. Receiving new books no longer gave him the same sense of pleasure. He missed that feeling, he told my friend.

It's hard to recount a stranger's story second hand. I've tried not to embellish it. Most certainly, in communicating it to the Internet, I've misrepresented some part of it. Not only is my version hearsay, it isn’t even entirely clear. It would be better if I could ask him some questions. How did this sense of achievement compare to other joys in his life, such as being with his family and friends or even reading the books he received? Did joining the West offer him new opportunities for satisfaction? How did they compare with the one he had lost? To make sense of his loss, we need some relative understandings.

It might be possible to find the man and ask him for clarifications. Maybe I could track him down by contacting my friend. It’s possible that she’s forgotten the story, but I doubt it. One reason it made such an impact on me was her telling of it.   If she knew the man’s name, perhaps we could find him. But then there’s the possibility that this was a story that he’s stopped telling and that in order to confirm it he would have to recreate it. The new telling might have a different meaning than the one that resonated with my friend and me.

I guess it’s really my story at this point, so I’ll explain it. I appreciate the message that the process of acquisition can be sweeter than the acquired object. I like the observation of loss in victory, about nostalgia even after life has improved. I think it’s good to be reminded that people living a constrained life find joy that we might not know. All this in a little tale of a man walking home in a gray city under a gray sky, holding a book wrapped in cheap brown paper, luminous.

Ruffian

I won't repeat Ruffian's history here. You could look it up (or Google it, in the modern form).

I'll say this: that I was fourteen years old and that she was beautiful, bigger than the colts, and maybe faster. I was bigger than the boys and had some reason to think that I did some things better than they did. But this was 1975 in Middle America. The fact that she was a filly brought out things in people who discussed her. Could a filly beat a colt? More to the point, if she could, what did that say about my future?

They arranged a match-race between her and the Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. I ached to watch her win. The match was set for a Sunday afternoon. Generally, TV was off on Sunday afternoons, but my parents knew this was important to me.

Church was at 6:00. Church was an obligatory twice-on-Sundays event. Both services were a lot alike, except that in the evening they didn't repeat the ten commandments and the prayer was shorter. The race should have been over in time for church, but the start was delayed. Missing church for a sporting event was a slippery slope and avoiding slippery slopes was our speciality. The time edged closer to when we should be leaving but the race had not started! My parents agreed to my way out. Dad went to church with my sister and Mom stayed home with me to watch the race. We could go to a 7:00 service at a neighboring congregation.

So, I watched TV at 6:00 Sunday evening. The race was very close; Foolish Pleasure was the fastest horse Ruffian had ever run against. I don't remember who was ahead when she pulled up, lame. She ran her leg into a fracture and Foolish Pleasure finished alone. I had imagined many possible outcomes - mostly how the outcome would go down among the neighborhood boys and girls - but Ruffian breaking a leg had not been among them. Anyhow, Niekerk Church was starting at 7:00. We flipped off TV and left. I remember that I didn't get much out of the service. Mom was also shaken. Ruffian fought all attempts to help her and during the night they put her down. Mom woke me up the next morning by saying, "Honey, they had to put your horse down."

The race might have given me bragging rights, as a girl. If she'd run well and lost, at least I'd take pride in that she was in the race. But for the girl to die in the attempt was just dumbfounding. I put the clippings in my scrapbook and mourned her along with Amelia Earhart.

Jewish Choirs in Texas

I like to imagine Jewish choirs in Texas, one for women, one for men. The women's choir could be called the "Yellow Rose of Sharon." The men's choir could be called "The Lone Star of David." Somehow, it's sweetest to think of them as retirees -- perhaps at a senior citizens home -- singing popular songs of their younger years. In my mind I give them the hair, glasses, and clothing of middle-class senior citizens in the south. I invest them with the pride and warmth I've admired in Jewish grandmothers and grandfathers. I'd love to hear choirs of this name with these people sing "My Way" and "Summer Place."

Rice, Beans, Relish, and Entrée: A Guide to Women’s Wardrobe Decisions

In the wake of the popular clamor over my decision guide to hair, I offer companion advice about dressing in the modern world. . .

The food pyramid is a healthy, back-to-basics, and inexpensive model for eating. Briefly put: eat a lot of carbohydrates, then a good amount of vegetables, and fewer fats and proteins. In effect the USDA food pyramid is an endorsement of the staple diet the world over: a lot of rice, a good amount of beans and vegetables, then a relish. The regular consumption of a separate entrée of meat, poultry or fish is a phenomenon of privilege that has become common in the industrialized north and among post-colonial elites. Recommended USDA practice is to keep it small (sometimes stated as the size of the palm of your hand). Rich people hear this: make meat a niche at the top of your food pyramid.

I think about the pyramid when I dress. The bottom of the pyramid is the most important item. Comparable to a smothering of rice are pants. Pants are critical and simple -- a staple. There’s not much reason to get excited about pants, however. Next, appearing as the beans, is the shirt. A shirt is more interesting than pants, a bit more of an opportunity to show flair, to play with color, cut and texture. Shirts carry seasoning the way a good stew does. Together, pants and a shirt can be a hearty, satisfying, simple, yet spicy combination. Attention must be paid to the appropriateness of the pants-shirt combination just as with rice and beans. Would you eat black beans with sticky rice? Nor would you wear a broadcloth shirt with knit pants.

All around the world, people complement their rice and beans with a relish, salsa in Mexico, lasary in Madagascar, a sambal in South Asia. The condiment is the scarf. It lends additional flavor to a plate of rice and beans. A scarf, like mango pickle, punches above its weight to make a simple combination distinctive.

The entrée: a jacket. It brings the peasant rice-and-beans, working mom pants-and-blouse combination to a higher bourgeois level. This is the top of the pyramid. You spend more on jackets, but you need fewer of them and you can exercise restraint about wearing them. Once again, texture matters. No structured wool blazers with those comfy knit pants. Felt is a great choice for a jacket to justify comfortable pants!

Shoes, on the other hand, are as water to the food pyramid. Don’t get any more sentimental about your shoes than you are about your tires. They hit the road, they get you where you need to go. Ankles turn and fortunes are squandered on inappropriate footwear. Don’t buy the European imported fancy stuff. A simple choice keeps you alive and active. . .

Time is short, money is scarce, the world is crazy. In eating and dressing, think Rigoberta Menchú before Martha Stewart. Both were persecuted, but only one of them deserved it.

It Takes A Village of Black Moms

Yesterday I had two interesting encounters with mothers.

First, I was talking with a black mother, who was concerned about her younger sister. The girl had been acting up. Visiting her parents over Easter, this woman noticed a friend of the sister had been spending a lot of time at the house. Not impressed with the friend or her influence on the sister, the woman asked, "I see you around here a lot; what's your story?" Clearly, the story didn't move her, because at the end of the day, she said to the friend, "Now it's time for you to go home. You've got to get cleaned up and get ready for school tomorrow. Plus, you've got to leave here before my mother gets tired of you." She drove the girl to her own house and said to the mother (whom she knew a bit), "Your daughter is not being serious. You are her mother. She needs to spend more time at home with you."

"How did the mother take that?" I asked, a little bit nervous.

"She was fine," I was told. "She thanked me for watching out for her daughter."

Later that day, I was with a group of white mothers for a play date. One little boy whose mother was absent was being rough. He purposely stepped on fingers and kicked another boy in the face. The mothers were not sure what to do. We clucked to each other along the lines of "What should we do with him? Should we say something to his mother?" We did, of course, tell him not to hurt his playmates, but then we reevaluated, "I hope I wasn't too mean. . ." "No, you weren't too mean! You were fine!" I'm not sure if anyone did say anything to the mother. I certainly didn't.

Anyone who's not blind can see where I'm going with this. Long ago I noticed how African American mothers take charge of random children. I was really impressed once to see a woman stop her car, roll down the window, and scold a group of boys who were playing too close to traffic. This seemed like a good public service. Once I tried it when I was driving and boys were horsing around on the side of the road. I pulled over and rolled down the window, "You kids need to watch out, because if you fall in front of a car, it won't be able to stop in time." They were dumbstruck and appalled. No "Yes ma'ams." No "Sorry, ma'ams." They stared at me as if I was a big crabby grump. Mortified, I drove away. I didn't intend to be mean.

Important lesson: It may take a village, but only if you're part of it. I'm not sure I'm in a village at all.

Five Years On

Not much to say about today's anniversary. Five years ago during the shock and awe it was anguishing: "This is a lie." "Those poor people." "We're going to make even more enemies," and "We can't afford this." Now, we live with it, at a distance. It's a subject for political debate, always with caution taken with proper patriotic language. Great as they may be, this war really isn't about our troops, folks. A moment of silence on the costs our leaders have inflicted on Americans and Iraqis.

Hair and Its Costs: A Decision Guide for Women

Hair needs to be considered in terms of its drain on energy and resources from other areas of life. By this I mean hair on a woman’s head, the sort of hair that is tended to flatter the wearer and communicate something about her nature. All that is possible, but only at a cost, similar to the energy tropical birds – male in that case – channel into non-functional plumage.

But, we women of modern America are smarter than tropical male birds and we have the ability to make choices. The following guide is intended to help you make appropriate decisions about the sort of resources you are able to invest in your coiffure. The X axis represents the types of hair by length. The Y axis indicates the level of required investments in different areas. A minus sign (-) represents the absence of significant investment, an equals sign (=) represents a modest level of investment, a plus sign (+) represents that the resource requirement is significant.

A Note on chemical treatments: The chart assumes that the choice of hair length is independent of decisions about color and permanent waving, which represent a uniform increase in money, some initial investment in time, but have the potential to reduce the required level of tolerance. Risk rises significantly with chemical applications.

So, here’s the breakdown. If you’re young and have sufficient money, cut it off! Wear your own cute face without the hassle of hair! Of course, the shorter the cut, the greater the risk of complete failure. Before taking it too short, consider your tolerance for going completely bald if that’s what necessary to salvage a bad cut.

If you’re a bit older and have adequate time and financial resources, it might be wise for you to grow it out a bit to a medium length. Increase the length and go for dignity.

If you have no money and no time, whether you’re old or young, you should wear it long. (Be advised that actual styling norms for long hair are dependent on age; the young can wear wispy clips, the older might consider buns.) But, long hair requires tolerance. You have to live with it. It will just hang there, it will pull when you’re sleeping, it will require engineering to keep it out of your face when you read or exercise. It requires self control: under no condition should you play with it in public, even if you are 18 years old.

The Top Ten Things You Should Never Say To Your Professor

I finally thought of the 10th comment, inserted between the mildly clueless (6-10) and the patently rude (1-4).

10. Sometimes I sort of forget that I’m taking your class.
9. Is this going to be on the exam?
8. Are we responsible for all this detail, or just the general drift?
7. I had a busy week with my other courses. Can I have an extension?
6. I was going to ask Professor X for a recommendation, but he’s so busy.
5. Sorry my paper's late, but I think you'll like it.
4. What's new about your analysis?
3. I don’t see what good your course can do me.
2. There’s nothing you can teach me.
1. I’m really only interested in learning about myself right now.

Pencil Me In

What is it about mid-middle-age or the falling dollar that suddenly I only write in pencil? I always was a Bic Girl, with that medium-to-fine point more-royal-than-navy blue. I had no use for pencils. I didn't like the look of my scrawl, messy as it is, smudged in graphite.

But somehow, in the past six months or so, I've given up ink. I realize that pencil becomes indistinct, with thick gray letters stumbling over a dullish textured page. But I don't mind. I can sharpen my point when I think it's important. I like to erase. I don't mind so much that my writing might fade.

Every few weeks or so, Owen (who has perfect penmanship and ever-sharp points) gathers up all the pencils around our place to sharpen them. He's noticed he does it more frequently than he used to. Other than that, he hasn't noticed a change in my convictions or presentations. When I start to mutter and equivocate, we'll know empire is over and I'm past my prime. For now it's just in my notes, in books and on student papers, on grocery lists. Right now, I take satisfaction in knowing I can change what I write.

Primary Campaign Ads Hit the Big Little

Something very new and different is stirring in the Big Little - national campaign ads on tv, for a primary! All those years we've been reading about the nasty ads barraging New Hampshire and Iowa, South Carolina and California. But we never saw one. Now in preparation for our primary next week (32 delegates!), they're flooding - okay, more like sprinkling - our airwaves. Finally, we get to see what everyone else is so disgusted with! We've never felt so honored to be offended.

My sister used to live in Iowa and she spoke of the wonderful peace she felt when the caususes were over and the Roundup ads came back on tv. The rhythms of America, now including us!

Named Sets

Names are important, not just for how they reflect the individual, but for how they bind a group. Here are suggestions for those of you who might have three cats or two daughters and need the perfect set of names. I'll be updating this when inspiration strikes, or feel free to add you own thoughts.

Two girls: 1) Dierdre and Gumdrop; 2) Savanna and Veranda (recommended for southerners); 3) Maundy and Hashanah (for those of you who are concerned with sin and atonement); 4) Hilary and Mallory.

MIAA families: One girl, one boy: Hope and Calvin. Two girls, one boy: Hope, Alma, and Calvin. Three girls, one boy: Hope, Alma, Olivia, and Calvin. Three girls, two boy: Hope, Alma, Olivia, Calvin, and Albie. (With apologies to Kalamazoo, but it was a stretch too far.)

Three cats: 1) Totem, Taboo, and Fetish; 2) Race, Class, and Gender (Rather obvious, but I heard of someone who did this)

Mary Richards: Patron Saint of Single Girls

The best Saturday evenings of my life were spent with Mary Richards. From the age of about 8 though about 15 this was the pattern: my sister and I took the obligatory Saturday evening bath (cleanliness was most important on Sundays) and then settled down for an evening of TV. If we were early enough we could start with Lawrence Welk and if we were good enough we could last through Carol Burnette. But the best was the Mary Tyler Moore Show. The theme song was great, the font was groovy, the house was gorgeous, the cast was perfect, the writing was great. The best part, however, was the invitation to imagine myself as a single girl with a studio apartment and an interesting job in Minneapolis/St. Paul. I longed for a life of independence, with loyal friends, and no need for male approval. The bay window was also very appealing. I was so young I didn’t even aspire to Mary's figure.

The funny thing was that the show seemed to respect Mary’s privacy. Once she came home from a party in the morning. No explanation for her mother (Nanette Fabray, a genius of casting) or for us. What did she do in her closet? We never saw. Did her heart ever break? No idea. This all became clear to me only years later when I was a single girl with an interesting job. As an adolescent it all looked so uncomplicated.

Mary Richards, the Patron Saint of Single Girls, never despaired, never settled, and that was the last we heard of her. I noted during the last season of the show that she seemed headed for a fulfilled life with the former Donald Hollinger (of “That Girl!”) but we don’t know how it turned out. A few years after my MTM fixation, I started reading Jane Austin. Those stories also transported me, but I was frustrated that Lizzy’s married life was beyond my knowledge.

Women are suitable protaganists for familiar stories when they are searching for love. I'm not knocking that process as a narrative subject. The Mary Tyler Moore show is tops in television and Jane Austin's books are tops in novels. But what stories do we tell about mothers? Our patron saint is also a Mary, I guess, but she never did much to drive a story line.

Which brings me to Harry Potter. . .

A New Year

Four years ago on New Years Eve, Owen I and were invited to watch the bell-ringers of Wimborne Minster in Dorset as they rung in the New Year.

The Minster, a Norman jewel, dates mostly to the 12th century. Wimborne is a small town and half an hour before midnight when we entered the narrow tower, it was not hopping. We climbed a narrow sturdy wood stair 195 feet to a platform at the top. There, the assembled bell ringers, ranging in age from 7 to their 70s, stood in a circle, each at a rope threaded through a hole in the ceiling above. They tuned into the BBC. When it was midnight, GMT, they started to pull. I always imagined a mad free-for-all of exuberant tugging, but “change” ringing requires close attention, fast work, and precision pulling to swing the bell nearly upside down at the right point in the sequence. Through their attention we hear ordered ripples of sound rolling down in waves.

The belfry was cold; few people climbed there and it wasn’t worth heating. I was touched to see that the wall was painted, “Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New. Ring Out The False, Ring In The True.” Who but the bellringers would see it?

When the ringing started, I was terrified; the whole tower shook. Fearing a collapse of the floor, I curled myself in a window seat, a notch in the thick walls. During a break, I asked an elderly ringer about the shaking. With typical English disrespect for risk, he chortled: “If it didn’t shake, the whole tower would fall.” I still can’t decide if this comforted me or not.

It was January 1, 2004. We were living under a stolen presidency that had created a disastrous war. I didn’t support any candidate in particular. (This was before Howard Dean’s Scream in Iowa.) I just wanted a new direction. The assembled bellringers, at the beginning and end of their lives seemed to promise it. The ancient tower shook with the promise of a New Year. The ringing was an old tradition, established enough to cause someone to paint the walls, but what we thought about was the New Year.

I couldn't sort out the hope and the terror. Together they made exilharation. Four years later with my feet on the American ground, it's hard to remember how it felt.

Looking Over My Glasses

I just got new glasses, and when I first put them on, I gasped. The world was clear. The astigmatism and myopia were no more.

But then I tried to read. It was awful. The letters were all bunched together, arching too high and nauseating me. I fretted that the prescription was wrong, that I had waited too long to fill it, that I should have taken the bifocal leap. Only the last one was true. As I was bemoaning my bad luck and bad decisions in eyewear purchase, Owen said, “They’re far-away glasses. Take them off to read.” This had never occurred to me. We always thought it hilarious when my mother had to take off her glasses to see things. I’ve worn glasses since the age of seven because of severe near-sightedness. Glasses were all-the-time things. The first night I had them, I even slept in them. (In the morning, my mom told me people took them off to sleep.)

But then I took my glasses off to read. I’m now whipping them on and off in classes, depending whether I need to read text or facial expressions. I’ve now become one of those middle-aged people with an intimidating “over-the-glasses gaze.” This always struck me as so affected back when my vision was bad in a simple sense. It makes me feel so strict. Foucault didn’t live long enough to figure out how much more powerful The Gaze was when given over spectacles with eyebrows raised, less to be quizzical than to raise the eyes over the useless lenses. I can sense the power running through capillaries every time I slide the glasses down my nose.

Here I am, glasses on my desk, typing away. I manage, but even at this distance the computer screen is not clear. There’s a reason I wear glasses. But for what’s close, it’s better without correction.