Medley

And so begin the Toddlerisms!

TLG has a new-ish-to-us Sandra Boynton book called “One, Two, Three!” It counts up to 10 and says something about each number, like ‘one is good for a quiet walk’ and ‘eight makes a very fine class in ballet.’ For number 10 it says “Ten makes a celebration LOUD! LOUD! LOUD!” TLG loves that page in the book - probably because it’s one of the busiest illustrations and also probably due to the way I hammed it up for when I read it to him the first couple of times. He will go find the book and then quickly page through it until he finds that page and then point at it and look at us expectantly. Today, he really got into trying to say “LOUD! LOUD! LOUD!” himself. He doesn’t really have the consonants, but it was very clear what he was saying from context. And he definitely has the pipes. Only instead of three times, he might say it 6 or 7 times. He does definitely get that it’s something to be said loudly, too. It totally cracks us up. The next time he’s doing it we really need to try to get a recording. I should also mention there’s a song that riffs on “Loud Loud Loud” off of Boynton’s recent music collection, “Blue Moo” (recommended) that may also be contributing to TLG’s fascination with the phrase. Definitely going to have to warn his teachers on Monday not to be alarmed if he starts hollering “Owr! Owr! Owr!” at school.

Another favorite page of his is from another of Boynton’s counting books called “Hippos Go Berserk” - the climax happens in the middle of the book, when 45 hippos and a beast are having a big party and “All the hippos go berserk!“. He finds his way to that page quite often. It’s again one of the busiest illustrations. In each case, his favorite pages also have big (as in font-size) words in bold. I started poking around to see if Boynton sells prints of any sort, because blown-up versions of these pages would be great art for his room.

A few links, since I can’t seem to properly blog at all anymore.

Scott Rosenberg’s book on the history of blogging, Say Everything, will be released shortly. A couple of chapters are already available online. I read the chapter on journalists vs. bloggers this morning and it was excellent. Among other things it’s one window into how the traditional print media establishment has basically screwed itself. Speaking of, given that the Post in its infinite wisdom has fired Dan Froomkin (and yet keeps paying those hacks Charles Krauthammer and George Will), we’re just about ready to cancel even the Sunday delivery and be done with it.

Marion Nestle is twittering and blogging. She points out that apparently at least one company whose product was found to be contaminated with salmonella simply repackaged it and sent it out again. What a disgrace. Obama needs to add fixing our food supply and food safety system to his long list of ToDos.

Speaking of Obama, at his press conference today he called out the shrieking whiners who are moaning about the idea of a public option in a reformed healthcare system undercutting their precious free market (which, by the way, has demonstrably FAILED):

Why would it drive private insurers out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government — which they say can’t run anything — suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.

Now, I think that there’s going to be some healthy debates in Congress about the shape that this takes. I think there can be some legitimate concerns on the part of private insurers that if any public plan is simply being subsidized by taxpayers endlessly, that over time they can’t compete with the government just printing money.

So there are going to be some I think legitimate debates to be had about how this private plan takes shape. But just conceptually, the notion that all these insurance companies who say they’re giving consumers the best possible deal, that they can’t compete against a public plan as one option, with consumers making the decision what’s the best deal. That defies logic, which is why I think you’ve seen in the polling data overwhelming support for a public plan. All right?

If he does nothing but instill some real sanity into the healthcare system, he’ll have been a success in my book. How much does it grate that so many choices individuals might make - so much individual freedom - is completely hindered by either having no health insurance or having health insurance tied to their employer? I can think of half a dozen things my family might want to do in the next, say, 5 years that are simply not possible because of the way health coverage is structured. It’s a national disgrace.

I’m working on a post to give an update on TheLittleGuy and to commemorate the fact that we all seem to have survived his first year. In the meantime, feast upon his gorgeousness:

The 2009 Washington Nationals are worse than the 2008 Washington Nationals. This shouldn’t be the case. Their line-up is better. They’re not having nearly as many injuries. But the team has the worst record in baseball right now and is on course to possibly break records in terms of how many games they lose. It’s gotten so bad that we don’t even turn on the radio stream to listen in the evenings anymore. Instead, we just check in with MLB Gameday periodically to see how bad the carnage is. It is a far, far cry from the first half of the 2005 season, that’s for sure. A commenter over at Nationals Journal summed things up pretty well:

“If they go 0-6 on this road-trip there is no way Manny survives. There has got to be a point at which the Lerners stop asking the questions and StanK starts looking for solutions.”

But we’ve been saying this for WEEKS now. Nothing has changed. The team is now 13-35. The gum-chewing manager sat in the dugout and let the umpiring crew screw his team in NYC, and seemed not to care a bit about it. He refuses to run fielding practices for an incompetent defense. He says over and over again there’s no cause for alarm. As if 13-35 is no cause for alarm.

The organization doesn’t care. Why should we? Yet we do, day after day, come on here and care in a public way. We argue among ourselves about a team whose management and ownership doesn’t care as much as we do.

Could it be any more depressing? Do the Nationals have any desire to do anything with this team and its beautiful stadium? Does Acta have some kind of dirty pictures of the owners?

I am dumb. Completely bereft of any explanation for this travesty.

In my del.icio.us feed I use the tags ‘baseball’ and ‘entertainment’ for links about the Nationals. It has stopped being entertainment though, and just become infuriating. Not the losing so much. But the lifelessness on the part of the players and the apathy on the part of the front office. The ownership of this team has squandered a huge opportunity to build a competitive team and cultivate a deep fanbase. What a waste.

A few updates:

On the home front: We are having the floors on the top two floors of our townhouse completely replaced. It is a huge project trying to get ready.  Everything will have to be moved out of each room. So we’re trying to purge as much stuff as we can and move stuff we’re going to keep down into the basement for temporary storage to get ready. (We’ll replace the carpet in the basement some other time.)

We’d been planning to redo the floors for awhile. Our most recent thinking had been to wait until TLG was past the toddling and dumping all his food on the floor phase (both of which we’re still waiting for.) We’re going to replace the carpet on the main level with hardwood. But he’s allergic to the cats, and after removing the cats, the next thing to do is to rip out all the dander-filled carpet.  So we bumped up the schedule on the floors.  Now to get rid of as much crap as possible before the real mayhem begins!

On the geek front: I finally installed VMWare and Windoze and Office on my Macbook.  I know, I know, virtualization’s been around for a long time. I know what it is and roughly how it works.  But still, there’s something about finally doing it for real and seeing it actually work that makes my little geek heart go pitter-pitter-patter. Pretty cool!

On the mom front: So much going on! I need to do a proper update. I think the last one I did TLG was 7.5 months. He’s 11 months now and has got a lot going on.  I’m still pretty exhausted most of the time. As a quick snapshot, the thing that made him laugh hysterically today was me making a chirping noise when he flipped his straw on his straw cup out of his mouth. Also, he got his first haircut last weekend and looks even older than he did before! I could write about his exploits for pages, so I’ll stop there and do a proper update on him soon.

Apart from the work front (rrrrrrrrrrrrrr…and let’s just leave it at that) I don’t think there are any other fronts right now! I’m dying to get back to my quilts, but am not sure how that’s going to happen.  We canceled cable television because we literally never turn the tv on anymore.  I’m donating most of my books to the library (discussed previously).  Last summer I was pregnant and then recovering from the c-section so I didn’t get out much.  We’re really hoping to spend a bunch of time outside with TLG this summer.  The farmer’s markets have begun and I’m trying to get to one of two close to us at least once a week.  Once TLG is toddling on his own, I think we’re going to try to take him to the zoo. We have a couple of trips planned to visit family in the next couple of months. And I haven’t been to the pool in weeks (boohoo!).

TLG’s first birthday is fast approaching. He has an Amazon wishlist, of course. I’ve realized in the last few weeks that I really had no conception of when certain developmental things happen for infants.  He’s much more advanced at 11 months than I’d sort of expected, but still with much more to come.  Still stunningly good-looking!

TLG at Nearly 11 Months

One of the bigger newspapers in Maine has a Twitter feed that I follow (@pressherald.) Today, it tweeted:

Maine’s No. 1 baby names for 2008: Emma and Jacob bump Madison and Ethan. And hello, Caleb; goodbye, Logan. http://bit.ly/kUwqS

TheGuy and I spent months, of course, working on finding a name for TheLittleGuy that was not a number one name anywhere. So I IM’d the tweet to him and the following conversation ensued:

Medley: @pressherald: Maine’s No. 1 baby names for 2008: Emma and Jacob bump Madison and Ethan. And hello, Caleb; goodbye, Logan. http://bit.ly/kUwqS
barf

Nowthis: jacob’s good

Medley: I knew a Caleb when I was younger

Nowthis: emma > madison

Medley: but there are ZILLIONs.
I think Madison > Emma
but madison is from that dumb mermaid movie!

Nowthis: it is?

Medley: with the blond chick - isn’t that what she named herself? after a street sign in NYC? (Madison Ave)

Nowthis: splash?

Medley: yes
daryl hannah.

Nowthis: goodness i don’t recall that particular detail
like 20 yrs ago

Medley: lol [really, I was; I try not to type this unless I actually am laughing out loud]

Nowthis: made no impression on me whatsoever

Medley: but you remember everything about movies and I don’t!
Can I blog this conversation?

I’ve written a version of this post at least half a dozen times, but here we go again..

We need to get rid of some more books in our house. We’re having new floors put in on the main level and the upstairs in a few weeks, which means that everything will need to be removed from each room. As part of the prep for that, we’re trying to purge stuff now that we know we don’t need, so that we don’t end up moving it twice (or more) during the process of redoing the floors. And once again, I’m looking at our bookshelves and trying to find books to get rid of.

I’ve done this exercise several times in the past and donated hundreds of books to the library. This is just the latest pass. And it’s still hard every time I do it. Basically, removing books from my house forces a major shift in my thinking and, frankly, in my own self-conception. I was thinking this morning, as I did another pass and found another couple dozen books that I really don’t need to keep, that there are at least two wacky things going on in my head regarding the books.

First, when I was much younger, I always wanted to have a huge number of books - enough to have at least one room in my house be a ‘library.’ And so I meticulously made sure to keep all the books I acquired for a very long time - carting them along with me on move after move. Somehow, at a pretty early age, I just got into my head that having a big personal library was a Thing To Do.

Second, at an impressionable moment years and years ago, I heard someone disdainfully discuss someone who had no books visible in their house and what a lack of intellectualism that fact implied. So not only did it become important to have a library, but somehow I got into my head that I needed to have a lot of visible books in my house. And of course they had to be books that showed off a certain amount of intellectualism. So most of my computer science books and cheesy science fiction and Tom Clancy milporn have been tucked away on bookshelves in the basement, but the main level bookshelves contain Saramago and Rushdie and big fat tomes like “Europe: A History.”

But things have changed in the last 25 years - both for me and the wackiness in my head (haha) and for the world at large - when it comes to books.

With regard to needing to have a library, I’ve had a reversal of thinking about “stuff” and am now trying to reduce the amount of “things” around me that I need to keep track of. This is mostly inspired by GTD-style thinking. Do I really want my endless ToDos to include cleaning, maintenance, and curation of hundreds and hundreds of books that I will probably not read again? I had brief second thoughts after TLG was born - maybe he’ll want to read them! But somehow, I don’t think there’ll be any shortage of books for him to read, and keeping hundreds of books around on the off-chance that in 25 years he might want them just seems silly. There are a bunch of books I’ll keep for him, but not the whole pile.

And with regard to showing off books as some sort of evidence of intellectual heft. Bwah. Haha. Hahahahahaha! I’m old now and jaded and have hobnobbed with too many “intellectuals” to think that what books someone’s read bears at all on their capacity for critical thinking, or their basic human decency. And I really don’t care any more if someone wants to judge me based on what books they do or don’t see in my living room. So yeah, I got over that one. Mostly over it. I’m still keeping “Europe: A History” - at least for now.

Another big change, of course, has been technology. Who knew, 25 years ago, that the world of the written word would be what it is today? What with iPods and pdfs and Kindle and the promise of electronic ink on flexible plastic sheets (I’m holding out for that, rather than buying a Kindle.) Ok, ok, I know that some people have been envisioning this future for a long time. But they didn’t tell me when I was in junior high and started collecting my future library. Electronic storage is cheap, physical storage is not. We have laptops and iPods and the vast, vast intarWeb-thingie now. And the trend is for more and more to be available online. And if it’s not online, there’s the library, you know?

So I’m slowly transitioning from having to come up with criteria for what to get rid of, to having to come up with criteria for what to keep. It’s trivial in the grand scheme of things, of course, but in my own personal little headspace it’s been a real fundamental shift in my thinking and in my emotional reaction to my books.

Digby has been on the case of taser abuse for months and what it says about not only the criminal justice system and law enforcement but our society as a whole. In her latest post on the subject:

It’s not that I don’t understand that police have a thankless job and are often put in dangerous situations. I can even see the use of these things in those circumstances where a gun would otherwise be used. But the way they are deployed most often is simply to give a jolt of horrible, mind bending pain so that people will instantly turn docile and cooperative — at the sole discretion of the authority who wields it. Where does this eager subservience on the part of allegedly freedom loving Americans come from, that the population so willingly accepts that the police have right to make any of them feel “a hard punch in the stomach with the added trauma of electricity running through your body” whenever they feel the need? I can’t wrap my mind around that.

[...]this current debate has made it impossible to ignore any longer: the United States of America tortures its own children. It tortures prisoners. It tortures average citizens whom any policeman believes is failing to smartly comply with his orders and it tortures suspected terrorists. We just call it (in true Orwellian fashion) “Tough Love.”

Digby also does a useful summary of the truly revolting character assassination of Sonia Sotomayor.  Just disgraceful stuff. Greenwald and others have been on top of it as well.

Rosen irreparably harmed Sotomayor’s reputation and changed her life, all because his friends wanted to stop her career rise. The “white man’s burden” argument picked up by the more subtle parts of the Village media complex is just an recapitulation of Rosen’s story, making the snap judgment that Sotomayor isn’t “deserving” of the appointment, in the way, oh, a white man would be. I’d gather this happens far more than we all think - the Gladys Kravitz gossips in the Village whisper to one another about such-and-such, whether because of jealousy or backstabbing or whatever, then find enough anonymous sources to confirm the storyline and enough facts they can twist to back it up. And the target gets smeared in enough high places to set that storyline in concrete, and wherever he or she walks in Washington, they are subjected to disapproving stares and the shaking of heads. Somewhere in the Village, there’s a list of those on the inside and those on the outside, and the insiders guard their turf in the most zealous, vindictive way possible.

Digby is one of few independent bloggers I’ve occasionally donated to. All of her work is vital, trenchant, and insightful.  But it was the taser post that reminded me that I haven’t sent her any change this year and I immediately did so.  The taser horribleness reflects something broken in society at large and the Sotomayor smears reflect how broken Washington and the Village are.  I don’t know how or whether these broken things can be fixed, but at the very least it’s important to have voices like Digby’s documenting the atrocities.

I have not delved very deeply into the explosion in the Rails community that apparently began with some ill-considered slides in a presentation. Mike G. is on top of it and decided there was too much nonsense and denial and obnoxiousness to continue his role with the Rails Activists.   In the little bits of conversation that I skimmed, I just ended up feeling tired. Why are we still having to have these conversations about how women are real people too? Certain technology communities, in fact many tech communities, can be such fraternities, in the worst sense of the word. (Update: Martin Fowler’s commentary on the whole situation.)

Then someone in my Twitter stream pointed to this article at Politico about growing pains at Talking Points Memo. While I am really not impressed with Politico at all, this article accords with a few other things I’ve seen and observed.  Apparently there are some concerns about how the culture that’s evolving within the TPM corporate environment treats women. And JMM denies, at least in this article, that there are any issues.

Over the years I’ve lamented on and offline about how the “progressive” blog-boyz have tended to be ignorant about or downright hostile to women and women’s issues[1].  I haven’t seen much improvement, frankly. And JMM’s apparent casual dismissal — there are other possible responses beyond noting that some men have quit, too — is merely the latest predictable disappointment.

Bummer.

[1] Hate the term ‘women’s issues’ too -  way ghettoizing, but it’s a shorthand, I guess.

Recently over at Mom Spa I posted about:

• GTD after adding a kid to the mix
• Vulnerabilities in our electrical grid and other infrastructure, and
• A quick happy birthday to the World Wide Web.

Home today with a wicked sore back. Applying heat and doing some lazy web-surfing.  Filled out one of those silly memes at Facebook. Reproducing it here as a cheap journally blog entry. Whee!

A - Age: Old, and by the time I finish typing this I’ll be even older!

B - Bed size: Queen

C - Chore you hate: Cat box. Fortunately, spouse takes care of that now.

D - Dog’s name: Don’t have one, if I had one, I might name it Colby.

E - Essential start your day item(s): Grins and jibber-jabber from TheLittleGuy

F - Favorite color(s): Jewel tones, lately.

G - Gold or Silver: Both.

H - Height: 5′6″

I - I’ve come to learn: Sturgeon was right!

J - Job: Totally crazy-making.

K - Kids: One and done! Gorgeous boy.

L - Living: Northern Virginia

M - Mom’s Name: Irene

N - Nicknames: Lyn, Lynnie, Hon.

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: TLG’s birth.

P - Pet Peeve: Bureaucratic insanities.

Q - Quote from a movie: “Can’t stop the signal!”

R - Right or left handed: Write left, everything else right.

S - Siblings: One

T - Time you wake up: Frequently.

U- Underwear: A most useful invention.

V - Vegetable you dislike: None, really.

W - Ways you run late: Metro.

X - X-rays you’ve had: Routine dental x-rays.

Y - Yummy food you make: No time to cook anymore. Booo.

Z - Zoo favorite: All of them, except for the ambivalent feelings about zoos, generally.