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My American Life

April 24, 2013 by mountainmornings

My journey lasted all of 9 hours. Along the way I passed a church billboard that read,

“Never give up, remember Moses was a basket case,”

and I listened to Ira Glass on NPR’s This American Life. That’s right folks, no audiobook on this trip. Just when you’re ready to give up, the Bat Building appears around the bend on 40 West. Nashville was welcoming me back. Music to my ears, I could hear the Love Bug from the street; the front door was wide open and she was enjoying her dinner punctuated by boisterously loud “Ummmms,” and Arghhhhhs.” Hooray, I thought, she’s going to be a good eater…and a great talker!

Over the past year, The Bride had told me repeatedly how much she enjoyed listening to This American Life. The Groom also listened to their podcasts on his iPhone, so before my trip, I downloaded the App http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ and plugged my cell into my car’s auxiliary outlet. The first story was about 2 doctors with the same name, and it was a medical/murder mystery too, called “Dr Gilmer and Mr Hyde.”

“Benjamin (Gilmer) starts to get very curious about the murder Dr Vince Gilmer committed, so he begins asking questions and poking around. Soon he develops his own theories to explain the murder, that never came up at Vince’s trial.” You’ll just have to listen in, I’m not spoiling the suspense.

This should be a fun week. The Bride is off for most of the time and we’re planning to celebrate her first Mother’s Day a little early – Nashville style. Maybe some fried pickles along with our blueberries and avocado?
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What if…

April 21, 2013 by mountainmornings

One of the most insightful questions we might ask ourselves, when confronted with a big decision, is how would one feel afterwards. A year from now, ten years from now, would we regret that decision or be happy we made it, no matter the outcome?

It was simply serendipitous that I signed up for twitter this past week. And I had to stop looking at one point, because the things people say in the aftermath of a tragedy like the Boston bombings left me numb. And I wanted to feel for myself, think for myself, not be bombarded with everyone else’s thoughts, in real time. Plus, instead of spurting out the first thing that comes to mind, I’ve discovered, with age, that I need some time to reflect, to analyze my thoughts before putting pen to paper, or tongue to teeth…or fingers to keyboard for that matter. I realize that once dementia sets in, all bets will be off.

Only one tweet rang true to me. It had to do with our failure in the Senate to pass a meaningful background check bill that would help stem the tide of gun violence in our country, compared to locking down a city like Boston to look for a nineteen year old terrorist. Bob tells me that approximately 80 people a day die on our streets and in our homes because they could easily pick up a gun; about 2/3 of these people are suicides. On Monday 3 people died in Boston. I know, it was a cynical calculation, a malevolent ratio 80:3 – with a whiff of truth. I wondered how Americans would feel ten years from now. Sometimes it takes someone outside of our culture, to articulate a different point of view.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/boston-marathon-bombs-us-gun-law?CMP=twt_gu

“After all, it’s not as if this is the first time that homicidal killers have been on the loose in a major American city. In 2002, Washington DC was terrorised by two roving snipers, who randomly shot and killed 10 people. In February, a disgruntled police officer, Christopher Dorner, murdered four people over several days in Los Angeles. In neither case was LA or DC put on lockdown mode, perhaps because neither of these sprees was branded with that magically evocative and seemingly terrifying word for Americans, terrorism.”

This week the lilacs bloomed in memory of my foster mother, Nell. There were lilacs outside my bedroom window in Victory Gardens. I always had to kiss her goodbye whenever I left the house, because she said we never knew if we’d ever return. Certainly I knew accidents could happen, I was living proof, because a drunk driver had hit the Flapper’s car a few months after my father died. At the age of 10 months, about the Love Bug’s age, I left my PA home and became a Jersey girl.

But I never thought terror could happen here, until I heard about my Jersey neighbor’s husband. He left one morning to go to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald. She didn’t wake up before dawn to say goodbye to him on that beautiful morning in September for some ridiculous reason. At another wake without a body, I saw “what ifs” playing out again and again. Someone had dropped their child at school first and was running late, another friend was on a ferry that docked at Wall Street and picked up its fill of ash-covered commuters before returning to Highlands. And I knew that asking “what if” was a futile exercise in blame.
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Pretty Shameful

April 18, 2013 by mountainmornings

What happens when Gabby Giffords writes an op-ed that says it better than anything else I may think of? My post this morning is short, because it’s never a good thing to write when you are mad. The Senate chose to give the American people the finger yesterday – claiming it’s criminals who need to be controlled, not guns. Well, guess what Senators, I’d like to suggest you look for another line of work. Because your actions yesterday were criminal, and the voters will retaliate when your seat comes up for re-election.

“I am asking every reasonable American to help me tell the truth about the cowardice these senators demonstrated. I am asking for mothers to stop these lawmakers at the grocery store and tell them: You’ve lost my vote. I am asking activists to unsubscribe from these senators’ e-mail lists and to stop giving them money. I’m asking citizens to go to their offices and say: You’ve disappointed me, and there will be consequences.” Gabby said this and more.

Democratic Senators Heitkamp, Pryor, Begich, and Baucus all voted to kill universal background checks. Shame on you. Granted we still would have needed a couple more Republicans to pass this common sense bill, and I have to think not all of them thought of the Sandy Hook parents as “props.” Here are all the Senators who voted against universal background checks, whose hands are in the pockets of the NRA.
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Want to help get Washington working again? http://represent.us

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Why

April 16, 2013 by mountainmornings

Yesterday brought me to tears, unexpectedly. I was replying to a friend on Facebook who had told me that her daughter was moving to Nashville, when I noticed a new tweet from Carol Costello of CNN about the bombing in Boston. Boston, my first foray into adulthood: attending Emerson College on Beacon Street; taking the MTA to Harvard Square for a Garbo festival; watching the swan boats in the Boston Common; walking to Filene’s Basement.

When Bob and I married, he accepted an offer in the Berkshires because I felt like a New Englander at heart. I wanted to go back, our children were born in MA. Bob was running the medical tent at the Josh Billings Memorial Run (aground) when the Bride was born. He tended to the usual ailments of elite and weekend athletes. He even entered a few marathons as well back then, when his back was cooperating. Last night as we watched an interview of yet another ER doctor, he said, “I know him.”

“From the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP)?” I asked, since he was the MA chapter president. “No,” he said, “from Shock Trauma.”

This morning I am trying to make some sense of this horror. But the reporter in me gets frustrated. There are too many news organizations swarming over those historical cobblestone streets. Everybody wants a new lead to the story. It’s so close to the WACO anniversary, so maybe it’s a domestic terrorist. They are searching an apartment in Revere of a Saudi nationalist. And always the same question, why?

Does it matter if the “reason” is domestic, anti-government terror, or jihadi fundamentalism? One racist, religious group wanting to avenge a perceived danger in the US vs another racist religious group trying to dominate the Middle East? They both think God is on their side, and there is no reasoning with someone like that. Asking why makes no sense. An 8 year old boy died yesterday because?

Today is the 6th anniversary of the VA Tech shooting. It’s a reminder that violence is a thread that runs through every state, every country. Boston, our hearts are with you as you heal from this. Sandy Hook, our souls are forever yours, and Blacksburg, we are still in mourning. Yesterday I felt helpless, in the same way I felt when the planes hit the Twin Towers and I heard there was one heading for DC where the Bride had just started her new job. Tears came spontaneously, because now we are all Americans, united in every city, on every street corner. Here is the MIT green building sitting across the Charles River last night.
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The Power of Words

April 14, 2013 by mountainmornings

Remember when cell phones and blue tooth technology were new? You’d see people walking down the street talking to themselves and wonder, what the heck? Then you’d see that little light in their ear and realize they were not actively hallucinating.

There is currently a cute little PSA on TV with a woman in a grocery store. She is also ostensibly talking to herself…until you notice the baby in her cart. She’s explaining how to pick out fruit, or just passing the time in language. Not baby talk, but really talking to her infant, as if she could understand her. Which is good, because they can.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/?src=me&ref=general According to this article, children who are raised in a poor or disadvantaged family are actually exposed to less language – fewer numbers of words – than other children before the age of 3. And it is this disparity, that can predict future school achievement or failure.

“The disparity was staggering. Children whose families were on welfare heard about 600 words per hour. Working-class children heard 1,200 words per hour, and children from professional families heard 2,100 words. By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental.”

2,100 words per hour. Now I studied child psychology in college, I knew about the monkey studies, the importance of touch and bonding. I knew about Skinner and operant conditioning, to pick up your baby before they start crying, so they don’t learn to cry for attention all the time. To praise the behavior you want to continue, and ignore others or distract to avoid total tantrum meltdowns. It all seemed so simple. But no one had ever actually counted the words parents say, per hour, until now.

The lesson here is not just to increase the numbers of words you may say to your baby. Because I have a feeling, and it was not a part of this study so I’m going on instinct here, that distracted parenting may have the same effect as hearing 30 million fewer words. When I see a parent with their head in their lap, on their phone texting away, I see a baby who is adrift in the world. I see a toddler in a playground saying “Look at me,” and a parent giving a cursory nod before returning to their oh so important smart phone.

What you say, and not just the number of times you say it, matters – and it matters deeply. When people would compliment the toddler Bride on her appearance, I would always counter with “…and she’s so smart too.” Later, her Grandmother Ada would give her money for a report card that had the supposedly negative checks of “Raising your hand too much in class” or “Talking too much.” 

I will have to continue that tradition with the Love Bug. She is already saying “Mama” and “Nana.” And she is babbling up a storm. She is a lucky little lady to have very talkative parents. And also to have such a musical family. After all, I wonder how often babies are serenaded almost every night with live guitar music? Well, maybe Nashville babies?

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Back in Time

April 11, 2013 by mountainmornings

20130411-180541.jpg20130411-180504.jpg20130411-180610.jpgLast night Bob met President George Washington. Then we were seranaded at a tavern by a bawdy minstrel, who kept chastising me for showing my elbows. Where are we? Why Williamsburg VA of course!

Yes ladies. We can show as much décolletage as we like, just keep our arms covered thank you.

I am simultaneously happy and sad today. Because while learning all about our founding fathers and their heroic idea that our little colony could break away from Mother England, our current legislators are debating the benefits of a universal background check for gun purchasers. No assault weapon ban. No limits on gun clips like the kind used in Aurora and Sandy Hook.

The Brits now have no handguns, let alone assault weapons on their streets. Australia bought back all their guns years ago. I want to ask George, Mr President, was this your intent?

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Fear and Loathing

April 9, 2013 by mountainmornings

It’s not often I find myself agreeing with John McCain. But thanks to twitter, I just read his response to this filibuster certain GOP/hardright/teapartiers have got going against background checks for gun owners:

“Sen. John McCain is flabbergasted, telling CBS’s Bob Schieffer: ‘I don’t understand it. The purpose of the United States Senate is to debate and to vote and to let the people know where we stand (so you’d encourage Republicans not to filibuster?) I would not only encourage it. I don’t understand it. What are we afraid of?'”

Good question Sen McCain. What are Republicans afraid of? This is really a bipartisan issue, a public health issue and not a 2nd Amendment issue IMHO! In states where background checks are required before purchasing a gun, gun trafficking has decreased 48% – nearly been cut in half. And women killed in domestic violence by a gun? Those numbers have decreased 38%. Bob always points out that the vast majority of gun deaths in this country are the result of suicide. I would imagine that waiting for a background check to clear may give a depressed individual time to rethink his decision.

I had to submit to a background check in order to teach in a public school. I had a young policeman, a friend of the Bride’s from high school, walk me through inking my fingerprints on pads of paper. My mug shot was taken. Maybe today they do a retinal scan? Sure, I was afraid a few parking tickets from the 60s might show up, but lucky for me I had no bench warrants for illegal parking. I passed. The Bride had to gain security clearance before her first government job out of college – FBI agents were talking with our neighbors. She passed. If you have nothing to be afraid of, if you tell the truth, and you want to carry a gun, HELL I want you to pass a background check…and so does 90 of the American public!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/04/03/90-percent-of-americans-want-expanded-background-checks-on-guns-why-isnt-this-a-political-slam-dunk/

In a UC Davis study this much was clear: : “…among those purchasing handguns legally, those with criminal records were more likely than others to purchase assault-type handguns,” (and) “among those purchasing handguns legally who had criminal records, those purchasing assault-type handguns were much more likely than those purchasing other types of handguns to be arrested for violent crimes later.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/banning_assault_weapons_works/ Which only makes me wonder why you can buy a handgun in California with a criminal record? It feels to me, the more I read, that we as a nation are going down a rabbit hole.

Senators, if we can’t reinstate an assault weapons ban after Newtown, then will calmer heads please prevail and agree with the lowly background check. It’s simple, we are already set up to do them in every state, we will most likely run into a backlog and wait for several weeks if not months for our pretty fingertips to check out, thereby preventing many suicides. The only thing you have to fear, is yourselves.

Proud of another senator, our own VA Sen Tim Kaine for tweeting this morning “I’m ready to vote yes on limits on combat weapons & universal background checks. Read my op-ed in the @PilotNews http://hamptonroads.com” Oh yeah, I’m jumping on this twitter wagon!
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“Life is a Luminous Halo”

April 7, 2013 by mountainmornings

I love it when writers write about writing. I want to hear where they write, and when; is it first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee, or deep into the night with a glass of wine? Once i even bought a calendar that featured the desks of famous writers. I would scrutinize the still life each month like it was a new moon. After all, if Eudora Welty could create amid chaos, I should certainly find my muse on a white oak built-in…

And it was this morbid curiosity that led me to join the twitter-sphere. Yes, I know i said i’d never do it. Feeling like the queen of 500 words or less, what could I possibly say in 140 characters or less, including spaces? Exactly. I had an aversion that seemed nonsensical. Wasn’t I the friend who taught my friends to text so they could communicate with their newly departed college-bound children? Didn’t I have to teach my teaching peers how to incorporate technology into their lesson plans? 

Still tweeting was a non sequitur to me. I admit I wondered at the value, and not wanting anymore emails popping up in my inbox. Who would I follow, or worse yet, who would want to follow me? I heard about the American kid who was arrested in Tahir Square, and because he tweeted in real time about being stuffed into a van his family was able to free him. A tweet can transform itself into a gps-driven life raft! But that wasn’t the reason I gave in and joined.

I wanted to sign up to a writing site called “Medium.” https://medium.com Its subtext is : “Sharing ideas and experiences moves humanity forward.” So there you have it…the only way to sign up was with a twitter account, pragmatism wins in the end. The Writer House in my town was offering a class this weekend on using twitter effectively, as a writer, and I thought to myself – what writer can’t craft 140 characters? Then I thought it’s like surgery, sending out a tweet is distilling your innermost thoughts in some rational and possibly humorous way. Something that might catch someone’s attention, might make you stop amid all the noise of day to day existence, and think.

Virginia Woolf said: “Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel…Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

ImageOur minds are permeable, some more than others. Bob and I had the pleasure of witnessing 2 young children experience a Cirque du Soleil performance for the first time, and I marveled at how their imagination was captured by aerialists in silk ribbons. The purity of music and motion, without words of any kind. IF I had downloaded the twitter App to my phone, I might have said: ” Quidam makes magic reel” because a part of the show uses mime and audience members to produce a silent film. And seeing the look of wonder in the eyes of children at a circus is magical. Even digital native children!
 
And so I follow writers – here is one of my favs:

Chilling words: “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

 

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Technicolor Stars

April 4, 2013 by mountainmornings

A poet I’m not. But listening to Maya Angelou read from her latest book, Mom, and Me, and Mom, made me wish I could craft words of poetry. She writes about her “terrible wonderful” mother who shipped her off to her grandmother at the age of 3 after a divorce. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/30/maya-angelou-terrible-wonderful-mother They were reunited when she became a teen, and she learned to love and respect her mother, particularly after becoming a mother herself. I must read this book, because I can identify with being separated from my birth mother, and reuniting later in life. The Flapper let me go to live with her friends, because she was alone, widowed and finally crippled in that car accident, in our Year of Living Dangerously. It’s hard to imagine now, but a woman alone was not expected to work and raise a family in the middle of the 20th Century. There were no social safety nets at the time. If family or friends didn’t step in to help, often children would end up in an orphanage.

Still, Angelou called babies “Technicolor Stars.”

Yesterday I met the latest star in one of the sweetest young families in the Old Dominion. Born at 9 minutes after midnight, not even 24 hours old, MP’s mom asked me if I’d like to hold him. He had golden brown duck fuzz hair, his pink legs were still pulled up into his time-tested fetal position, and his umbilicus announced his newness to the world. He made little baby sounds that only angels can decipher, and his big dimple stamped his face with undeniable cuteness. I fell in love. 7 lbs, 7 oz. He’ll be going home today to meet his big brother and sister, and his grandmother and great grandmother from California. MP’s mom is an outstanding NICU nurse who is working toward her doctorate at UVA. She is a natural with a baby, and the dad is an ER doc who trained with the Bride. Lucky baby.

Between the polar opposite parenting types – the overly-attachment type vs the free ranging type – there is a happy medium. A sweet spot of consideration and caring. I’m thinking our friends could write a book, or a baby blog? How not to worry yourself sick with a newborn and prevent unnecessary food allergies! Believe me, with all the noise out there in parenthood land, a sensible, sane voice would be helpful. My friend Kath, although primarily a food blogger, does a good job with her baby blog. She has been my go-to for researching baby products and baby nutrition. Her son Maze is the same age as the Love Bug.
http://www.babykerf.com

Welcome home MP! Next stop on your technicolor journey, maybe the Saturday Morning City Market?
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Digital Natives

April 2, 2013 by mountainmornings

Walk with me down this little essay about technology and its effects on children. I just read an Atlantic article titled “The Touch-Screen Generation,” by Hanna Rosin. The subtitle was “What’s this technology doing to our toddlers’ brains?”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/

Like any good journalist, she tries not to take a side, good or bad, she presents us with the facts, the research. And just as I saw the Love Bug reaching for my iPhone, that magical thing where pictures pop up and familiar voices captivate mommy’s attention, I understood immediately how tablets like iPads, with their instant interactivity, would delight a child.

In the five years between my children’s birth, a lot happened. The Rocker was sitting on his father’s knee at the computer, he had computers in school, he was designing web pages for his buddies in middle school. For his older sister the Bride, life was different. In fact, she was the only toddler in her preschool who didn’t know who Big Bird was; our Windsor Mountain TV could only catch one Albany channel, at night, sometimes. We read Good Night Moon, we sang songs. Like “Little House on the Prairie,” it was a simple life, and one I would dream of years later. It’s where I first started writing for a newspaper…you remember those.

Still, my children didn’t grow up with a touch screen.

“Norman Rockwell never painted Boy Swiping Finger on Screen, and our own vision of a perfect childhood has never adjusted to accommodate that now-common tableau…To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter …or rust her neural circuity – the device has been out for only 3 years.”

What’s the right answer? We (meaning people age 4 and above) are called “digital immigrants,” still learning to navigate the touch-screen universe. Rosin admits to having a 4 year old who feels digitally deprived. After all, you’re out for a nice dinner, toddler in hand, and instead of toting coloring books and small animals for some creative play at the table, how much easier would it be to mollify a cranky child with a movie or game App? The Love Bug is a digital native, she watches mom carefully summoning music from the great iPad, her dad reading research papers. It won’t be long now before her long fingers will demand the latest “Talking Baby Hippo” or “Toca Tea Party.” Yes, even 18 month olds can follow patterns and pay attention to a logical sequence in an interactive media format!

I came away from the article with this little nugget – however the parents use their tablet, children will naturally follow. It’s called “modeling” and it’s not really a new concept. Some allow free and constant access to an iPad, some allow one hour on the weekend. The funny thing was that when Rosin was trying out the unlimited time-frame idea, her child gave it up to the toy heap after about 10 days! The iPad became just another toy in the box.

So, just like TV and video games, parents have a right to be scared of the latest gizmo. Nothing really can beat one to one face-time with a parent, cooking together, reading an old-fashioned book. How we approach using the iPad sends myriad signals to our children. Do we stare at it ad nauseum? Do we reach for it before the baby? Are we addicted to touching its magical screen? The Rocker once said he was happy he didn’t have cell phones in middle school. Touche!
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Practicing her pincer grasp, getting ready to swipe.

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