Happy New Year!

A quick post before festivities get underway, to wish one and all a happy, healthy 2009.

Thanks for reading :).

(Festivities = watching The Dark Knight! Woo hoo!)

piano

So we got the family a digital piano this Christmas. We'd been thinking about a piano for a while... at least one of the girls shows strong signs of musical inclination ("talent" might be a bit braggy, but she floors me sometimes).

This morning the Peanut sat down on the bench with a flourish, in her deep rose velvet dress and matching cape, and I said "and now she's going to play you a little something she wrote herself." We went back to what we'd been doing while the Peanut noodled around on the keyboard, playing about six minutes of not-unpleasant nonsense. After she'd finished, she turned to the family and said "that was called Runaway Snail."

I think she's a genius.

Yep, this thing's still on.

On the off chance I still have readers, I thought I'd check in:

Hi there.

Things are OK. Looking up a bit, even. I always get in a foul mood before Christmas, and it always lifts eventually. Knowing it goes away doesn't stop it from coming, though. I still think that someday I'd like for my very own Christmas tradition to consist of getting the hell out of town about 15 December, and returning after the New Year. It would be nice to have this few weeks surgically removed from Real Life.

In the meantime, here I am. The Card is sent. We don't subject our loved ones to a dressed-up list of everything we've bought and accomplished over the year (honestly, I'm glad you love your new car or whatever, but doesn't a Christmas letter strike you as a peculiar place for that sort of news?), but we do subject them to a picture of the girls. As luck would have it, most of the people we love in this world live hundreds of miles away, and still more are headed that way. We don't see some of them even annually. Hence, The Christmas Picture of The Offspring. I've taken some great ones over the years, so the bar's set pretty high. And of course the photo card places keep discontinuing the template I like best, resulting in an hours-long online research project involving multiple, overlapping and largely forgotten usernames and passwords (about which rant forthcoming, if I have the energy, which is to say insert your own rant here because I'm probably not going to bother, except to say that I have HAD IT with having to have usernames and passwords for every damn thing I do). It can add up to an ordeal, albeit self-imposed and potentially bizarre to outside observers (thank you Catherine, it did help). This year Mr. S. figured out a very simple (now that it's set up) way to get it done precisely how we like it to be. He's good at that sort of thing. I think I'll keep him. Why he'd keep me, who the hell knows.

I digress.

In the other room, the Peanut is singing, to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb:

I'm grateful for my family, family, famILY
I'm grateful for my family
And for my friends at school.

Must be a preschool Thanksgiving song. Works for me.

I'm trying, really I am.

Another heavy gray day -- basically dark by 4:00 PM, again.

There are so many stupid little things I have to get done; even with no paying day job, I have not much opportunity (or motivation, frankly) to do them.

My calendar is full of one obligatory event after another. Not that any one of these is unpleasant... actually, they're mostly all fun... but they are obligatory, and they are one after another after another.

Sort of a manic treadmill o'fun. Which, you know, isn't.

Christmas cards are rolling in, and instead of delight at the greetings they represent, I feel the weight of obligation to take the Christmas photo and get my own cards ordered, written, addressed, sent.

Merry, merry, fa la la...

... this really, really isn't my favorite time of year.

I'm trying hard not to say out loud that I hate it... but I do.

(Yes, I know the real Meaning of Christmas isn't about any of the stuff that I hate. But since it seems Jesus was actually born in June, I'd happily dump all the crap that has to happen in December.)

Oooh, look!

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is especially gorgeous. I'm not posting it directly because it's not a NASA picture, so the copyright is private. Go see! Of course, that link will be to a different picture tomorrow, so if for some VERY odd reason you don't check this blog daily, go find the APOD for December 12 2008.

Nice, hm?

Tonight's full moon will be lovely too, if we can see it, which seems unlikely because it's been overcast and raining for about six months now. OK, a few days. But still.

The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems...

Recently I went to my ophthalmologist for a regular exam. It's a large, busy office, with a dozen different doctors providing everything from basic services like my contact lens prescriptions to LASIK and other surgical procedures. I go there because it's in town, I like the doctor I've been seeing, and, above all, they take my insurance.

Looking around for a place to sit in the expansive but full waiting room, I realized with sudden minor anxiety that I hadn't brought a book. I hate having nothing to read. In the same moment I remembered that though I like this doctor, it's always at least 45 minutes' wait to see him. With a book, the built in reading time is actually a bonus. Without, it can be a frustrating waste of time.

As you'd expect, ophthalmology practices are particularly busy with elderly patients. Every table in the place had multiple copies of the AARP magazine ("world's largest circulation." Really? wow) and precious little else. Sitting at one end of an empty couch, I scanned the room to see what people had in hand. I would've circled a People magazine like a buzzard, but didn’t see one. A gentleman across the room perused something I didn't recognize. I squinted (note to self: mention to eye doc that I am unable to read titles of other people's magazines from across a large waiting room). Aha! Wait that can't be right. Reminisce magazine -- really? Is that a spoof thing -- The Onion for octagenarians? Well no, actually. It's the real deal.

It’s real, and it isn't even one of a kind. The magazine I eventually got my hands on is called Good Old Days ("featuring stories, photos, illustrations of the happy days gone by"). Between its covers lies more sap than I've ever seen in a publication aimed at people over, say, 6. It is childhood tale after childhood tale, black-and-white photographs and deeply rose-colored memories. Pictures and stories of kids sledding on streets ("before 'global warming,' some of those streets stayed snow-covered for days...") and of couples embracing, reunited after World War II. Lots of wistful statements about how much simpler, happier, more loving and better tasting things were, back in the 30s and 40s. All this between advertisements with aggressive taglines such as “HAVING TROUBLE WIPING?”. I'd never seen anything like it, and for a good while, I was hooked. “Every night when Sis and I walked into our bedroom, there it was – a lid of melted skunk grease on top of that old heating stove.” Fascinating.

Eventually a woman and her elderly mother sat down with me. The mother was there for eyelid surgery. She wasn't looking forward to it, she said, but planned to have a nice big muffin in the car on the way home. I told her that sounded delicious, and that I hoped everything would go very well. She said she had some good music to listen to while recovering, and I told her about some books on tape she might like. All very pleasant. Then she leaned in and whispered "my doctor is Japanese, but really she's very good."

Now, this lady was clearly in her 80s, about to undergo surgery and anxious about it, so it wasn't the time or place for "Um, why would being Japanese interfere with her being a very good doctor?" I just agreed that it's great to have a doctor you trust. Then my name was called, and we said good-byes.

The magazine and the conversation both left me with mixed feelings.

Some of the stories in Good Old Days, including a woman’s account of visiting her old childhood home, long abandoned and about to be demolished to make way for a new subdivision, were really touching. Most of them, though, were pure deluded saccharine.

Then here’s this nice lady, bearing up for something scary, then assuming total sympathy in revealing her Good Old Days era prejudice to another white person. It would be less dispiriting if I didn’t hear versions of the same statement so often -- "s/he's [race/ethnicity], but [positive attribute]" -- from people I know much too well to make excuses for.

Good Old Days has a website. On it, a letter from the editor:

The era of the Great Depression and the war years could really teach life lessons to younger folks in these tough economic times of the 21st century. I call it the lesson of Daddy's Belt.

I'm not talking about the times Daddy's belt was applied amply to my well-deserving posterior. I assure you that I learned plenty of life lessons from that use of Daddy's belt, but I'm talking about a more abstract application...

Ah, yes. Beating children was so simple then.

Subdivisions notwithstanding, I think we've come a long way since the good old days, thank you very much.

We have Japanese eye surgeons right here on Cape Cod, for one thing.

"You wouldn't buy our shitty cars..."

Seen on boing boing, originally from buffalobeast.com.

How Dangerous a Driver Are You?

I guess the premise is that you can't be a totally safe driver, but you can be less dangerous than everyone else.

Created by The Car Connection

I think I scored "above average" instead of "excellent" because I answered honestly the "have you ever driven under the influence" question. Not in the last 20 years or so, but....ever? I'd have to guess, if I'm perfectly honest, that there was one time in my very early 20s when I maybe shouldn't have driven home.

As to speeding... not so much anymore. Before marriage and kids and the overall transformation to Boring Middle-aged Person, I did like to drive pretty fast. Even then, though, I didn't tailgate or weave in and out of lanes or pass people on the right without giving them ample opportunity to move over first. Tailgaters all suck, and the tailgaters who come up close behind you and flash their lights when it's perfectly clear to anyone paying attention that there is absolutely no opportunity to move out of their way -- they suck most of all.

It's Thursday. What Day Is It? I don't know. (!!!)

This afternoon my four year-old Peanut was sitting in the next room drawing a picture for her daddy and singing "I'm a teeenaaaaager in love." She gets it from Connie Stevens singing "Why Must I Be A Teenager In Love" on The Muppet Show, but she hasn't seen that in a long while, so the tune was coming out rather differently. Better, I think.

She really is unbearably cute sometimes.


Earlier today, I was beyond angry with her, over something really, really dumb: She knows the days of the week. She knows which of the days are her preschool days. This morning I asked her, what day is it? Dunno, she said. I told her: it's Thursday. What days do you have school? Dunno, she said. I reminded her: Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

So, do you have preschool today?

Dunno.

What day is today?

Dunno.

I tell her, again.

What days do you have preschool?

Monday, Tuesday...

Wait, do you remember what we just said?

Dunno...

Repeat, repeat, repeat, and despite an inner voice that said let it go, leave her alone, for whatever reason she can't handle this simple thing right now, I just could not. A louder voice said what the FUCK, she KNOWS this, and even if she didn't, I just TOLD HER, and she needs to PAY ATTENTION! And I got really angry. I don't know why this simple, inconsequential thing just set me off. I tell her something, and then two seconds later she's incapable of repeating it back to me? I am probably not getting across how infuriating it was in the moment, but even if I could get it across, there is no reason it should make sense. There's no getting around that my feelings were out of proportion to this stupid interaction we were having.

When I got back from bringing Bean to the bus, Peanut was happily reciting the days of the week with her Daddy, and I apologized for being too mad at her, and we forgot about it. That is, she forgot about it. I'm blogging about it. In any case, all is well.

I take small consolation from the fact that I'm still a better mommy than the one I saw dragging her little girl into the liquor store tonight (wine is 20% off on the first Thursday of the month, dontcha know) so she could get a bottle of vodka. It was 8:30; both of them were in pajamas. I guess there's fucking up, and Fucking Up.

More Words and Phrases Forbidden for 2009

In the forehead-slapping, how-could-I-forget department:

6. "maverick"
Never again. Unless in "team of mavericks," used in context of faux nostalgia.

7. "Drill, baby, drill."
It was dumb, baby, dumb, and now it can be done, baby, done.

More?

Words and Phrases Forbidden for 2009

I'm going to think of more, but it's not too soon to get started. What words or phrases should we ditch with the year 2008?

(Granted, some of these should've been banned in 2008 or earlier, but have stuck around like Owen Wilson in You, Me and Dupree.)

1. "threw up in my mouth a little"
or any of its revolting equivalents

2. "baby bump"
This has caused me to bring back the phrase "gag me," which was originally and righteously banned sometime in the late 1980s.

3. "[media, Hollywood, anything] elites"
Oh, please.

4. "purity ball"
Let's ban the phrase, the events, the pretext... the whole creepy concept, shall we?

5. "beeyotch," "biaaatch," &c.
Quit it. Just... quit it.

OK, that's my first five. More to come. Add your own!

Rest in peace, Jimmy Damour.

Early yesterday morning, a man was trampled to death by people breaking down the door at the Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart.

That's right: a young man is dead now, because a crowd of people stomped on his body as it lay between them and Big Savings.

Christmas spirit - yay!

(WTF is inside a Wal-Mart that's worth trampling over someone for? Really, what?)

Wal-Mart called it a "tragic situation," swept up the broken glass and reopened the store at 1:00 PM. Nobody from the company bothered to call the man's family to tell them he'd been killed. His father heard it from a friend, and went to identify the body.

I don't think it's being overdramatic to say there's something evil about that.

Something is very, very wrong with this culture. Buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff, buy stuff. Buy cheapest, buy most, buy first.

"Black Friday" has been perverse for a long time already. Now there's a death count.

Oh, but who doesn't love a bargain?

Thanksgivings

Dinner tonight was quick and simple: whole wheat penne with cherry tomatoes, garlic and spinach in a gorgonzola cream sauce. Both girls ate without complaint. Later, saying goodnight to the Peanut, she got a dreamy look and said "I can't wait for Thanksgiving dinner... of course we won't have tomatoes or spinach with Thanksgiving dinner."

Hm. Actually, Peanut, that can be arranged. Mwahahahaha.

Nah, I wouldn't. Those little onions in cream sauce that her Daddy loves so much -- he is peeling them as I write, and I can smell them from here -- will be surprise enough.

Those little creamed onions some people dig so much.
Photo by Lisa Scanlon, bostonist.com. Mr. S's are bound to be similar.

Anyway, I'm not cooking this Thanksgiving. We will be over the river -- that is, several rivers and a honkin' canal -- and through the woods, to spend a couple of days with family in Connecticut. My sister in law pulls off Thanksgiving like it is no big deal, which just amazes me. Even when I enjoy doing it, it always feels like a Big Deal. I admire how she makes it look effortless; truly doesn't stress, and the more family around, the better.

We have much to be thankful for, this year as always. High on the list of Important Things I hope to teach my children is to be grateful -- for family and friends, house and home, good health and good food -- and mindful, too, that so many others don't have these things to be thankful for.

Based on reports back from the Bean, the story of the First Thanksgiving appears to have been kept pretty simple in school, which is fine. Basically, she understands that the Pilgrims came to this land, met the Native Americans, and at first the groups weren't sure about each other but the Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn, and they had a turkey and corn dinner together to celebrate.

In the car tomorrow (captive audience!), we might talk a bit more about what it must have been like. I'll tell her they also ate deer, and ducks, and probably fish; that all of it was cooked over fires, and that people ate with their fingers, sitting on the ground. Oh, and they didn't have pie. Or indoor plumbing.

We'll leave it at that, even though having just read Mayflower, I've had Pilgrims on my mind lately. Says Nathaniel Philbrick:

The First Thanksgiving marked the conclusion of a remarkable year. Eleven months earlier the Pilgrims had arrived at the tip of Cape Cod, fearful and uninformed. They had spent the next month alienating and angering every Native American they happened to come across. By all rights, none of the Pilgrims should have emerged from the first winter alive. Like the French sailors before them, they all might have been either killed or taken captive by the Indians.

That it had worked out differently was a testament not only to the Pilgrims' grit, resolve and faith, but to their ability to take advantage of an extraordinary opportunity. During the winter of 1621, the survival of the English settlement had been in the balance. Massasoit's decision to offer them assistance had saved the Pilgrims' lives in the short term, but there had already been several instances in which the sachem's generosity could all have gone for naught. Placing their faith in God, the Pilgrims might have insisted on a policy of arrogant isolationism. But by becoming an active part of the diplomatic process in southern New England... they had taken charge of their own destiny in the region.

Granted, their destiny included King Philip's War just a few years after this, but hey, it was a good start.

Another thing to be thankful for this year: a change in our government, and hope that some of the world's conflicts might be better managed because of it.

Happy Thanksgiving, all, and safe travels.

Couldn't happen to a nicer person.

If this is true, then I have to do something I don't usually do as a result of someone's having been hurt:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That is all.

While we're on textiles, sort of...

I don't buy towels very often; good ones last a long time. However, with the going out of business sale at Linens & Things, it seemed like time to get the next set. It takes many, many wash/dry cycles to get towels in their best shape. The towels I got a few years ago are at their peak now... they've retained their thickness, but lost that horrid slippery soft feel that new towels all have. Why must this be? What the hell substance are towels treated with to make them soft as blankets, but completely inabsorbent? And why do people like that?

I got two different brands, both 100% cotton, same price range and thickness. Each had that mushy-soft brand new feeling, but one set seems to be shaping up after a wash, while trying to use the other is still like drying your hands on a fleece blanket: ineffective and annoying. Back in the wash they go, until they're tolerable.

I am beginning to understand why people might pinch towels from good hotels. It's not because they don't have money for new towels of their own; it's because new towels take so long to get as awesome as good quality hotel towels that are basically boiled every night and dried without fabric softener.

Soft towels, pffft. If I want a blanket, I'll get a blanket, damnit. I want my towels to DRY ME.

Sometimes you don't realize how much something was bothering you until it isn't anymore.

Isn't it cool how many things are tagless these days? Shirts, pjs, underwear... it rocks.

Why did it take so long?

Thumbs up, thumbs down, and a question for ya.

Saw the new Bond movie last weekend, and it did not disappoint. The theme music, as feared, is unpleasant (enough with the goddamn wailing already). But the movie rocked, and must be seen again ASAP. I really, really like how they've reinvigorated the Bond character. Go, see. Report back.


On the home screen (that is to say, the home wall... eventually we'll get a screen, and probably kick ourselves for not having done it sooner), we had A History of Violence (2005). Briefly, for the five Americans who haven't yet seen it: A small town family man owns a diner. When bad guys come and try to rob it, he reacts so spectacularly that it makes big news, drawing the attention of mobsters who believe him to be someone he claims he isn't. Trouble ensues.

I know a lot of people really liked this movie. I didn't. Not even a little bit. The performances were either oddly wooden (Viggo Mortensen as Our Hero) or caricatures (Ed Harris and William Hurt as the mobsters). The script was stupid. The sex was gratuitous -- these scenes were really just, ahem, stuck in there, and completely lacked the chemistry they were supposed to be showing. Yeah, we get it, they're connecting -- but how come it doesn't look like they're having any fun? Yeah, we get it, they're conflicted but still attracted -- do we have to watch them pounding it out on the stairs for five freakin' minutes? Yawn. (Can we stipulate that I'm not a prude? I guess you'll have to take my word for it, and/or I'll have to come up with a post of great sex scenes.)

Anyway. The whole thing was predictable and tiresome and, even at 1 hr. 40 min., probably a half hour too long. Better suited to cable.

It did serve one purpose: the friend who recommended it to me and I can reasonably conclude that we usually hate what the other one loves, and ignore each other's recommendations henceforth. We only see each other a couple times a year, but she'll often tell me, essentially, "that book/movie you said six months ago that you loved? was really, really bad!" and I sort of shrug and change the subject, because I can't even remember recommending whatever it was. When I hate something she loved, I usually don't bring it up; I can express opinions pretty strongly sometimes, and don't want to be misinterpreted as insulting her.

When someone tells you a book or movie is a must-read or -see, and you hate it, do you make a point of telling them so? If they do, are you insulted?

Walking the Shores of Cape Cod

Six years ago, when the Bean was new and tiny and I carried her everywhere on my chest, I thought it would be fun if we walked around Cape Cod. Literally. I thought it would be a good idea for me and the babe to hoof it around our fair peninsula's every mile of shoreline. Double distance, because we had to walk back to the car on our every excursion.

Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn't a good idea, but one thing's for sure: the Bean grew a lot faster than I had opportunity to hike. Over time, we did walk every mile of beach in Sandwich, from the northeast end of the canal out to Sandy Neck in Barnstable. And I looked out at Sandy Neck, a lovely six mile stretch of barrier beach with a parking lot at one end, and I thought, hm. Twelve miles, averaging, say, two miles an hour, is six hours walking - a long time for a baby. I knew I wasn't going to do the whole thing.

My inner purist protested. I sympathize with Appalachian Trail purists, thru-hikers who won't take side trails to cut off even a quarter mile here or there of the AT proper. The compulsion to walk only and exactly along The Path, be it marked in the physical world or just in the mind -- I get that. However, motherhood forces all kinds of compromise, and flexibility is growth, right? Right. It was time to modify the grand plan.

It made more sense to go 'round the Cape walking only as much as we felt like of every reasonably accessible beach, instead of every single inch of shoreline, be it sand or muck, public or private. Walking mucky marshes is unpleasant and potentially dangerous; people do get stuck. We'll stick to sand. Public beach access points can be hard to find along some stretches. I'm not above walking on private beaches in wintertime when nobody's there to care, but I'm not going to sneak through people's yards for the sake of not missing a hundred yards of otherwise inaccessible shoreline.

With our newly flexible guiding principles, we did an incomplete but still long walk down Sandy Neck, and have since walked the north side beaches of the rest of Barnstable, then Yarmouth, Dennis and Brewster. We don't go in summertime because of the crowds, and because I'm too cheap to pay for beach parking. These aren't issues after Labor Day, but soon enough the weather interferes. Sometimes I'll think it's a great day for a beach walk, pack a lunch, get to where we left off, get the girls out of the car, and in approximately 90 seconds they want to go home. (Grrr. Whose children are these?) Needless to say, the goal is now both flexible and long-term. I could easily be in my 60s by the time we reach Monument Beach in Bourne. At least, if I need to be wheeled along after that, there's the paved bike path along the canal that'll bring us back to the Sandwich end, where I started with the baby Bean.

The baby Bean, after one of our walks. Good for a couple hours, but not six.
Salt marsh out the window.

Sometimes when I tell people about this back-burner hobby of mine, they say, "oh, someone did that and wrote a book..." and the small part of me that ever considers writing anything for publication thinks well shit, someone did it already, but another part thinks, hm, maybe he knows how to avoid guard dogs in Osterville -- that could come in handy. So I found the book. It is Walking The Shores of Cape Cod, by Elliott Carr (1997).

Without little ones in tow, and with someone to do car shuttling, Mr. Carr was free to undertake the route of the purist, braving the muck and swimming channels when necessary. (Shoot, his wife even swam across Falmouth Harbor, in the path of incoming vessels. That's just nuts.) The book has a chapter for each segment of his walk, with helpful maps and tips about when to walk (low tide, if possible). He did Thoreau's famous hike along the outer Atlantic beaches -- a trek I imagine we will significantly abbreviate -- and concludes, essentially: eh... don't do this unless you really have to. All that walking on a sloped beach, one leg higher up than the other, eventually gets really uncomfortable.

There's a fine line between "long satisfying hike" and "pointless forced march." In my experience, you don't find the line until you've already committed to completing whichever character-building experience it turns out to be.

Carr's book is more than a hiker's log. He reflects on many of the fundamental problems facing Cape Cod, as he walks areas where they're especially evident. Development and private vs. public interests are common themes. People come here to enjoy the shore, right? Nobody vacations here because the Cape Cod Mall is a unique or wonderful shopping environment, or moves here because Yarmouth has a world-renowned school system. Yet much of our beautiful shoreline is inaccessible or not used to best advantage. Clearly we've lacked planning, where development's concerned. Beach erosion is another issue; even if counter-erosion measures were effective, and there's plenty of evidence that they're not, is this a worthwhile use of public money... particularly to protect private beaches whose owners refuse public access?

Whereas beaches in most coastal states belong to everyone, Massachusetts still operates under a 360 year-old ordinance that allows private ownership of the area between high and low tides (wading in an inch of water at low tide is fair game). Cape Cod has 427 miles of shoreline, two thirds of which are private. Here, as elsewhere, we struggle to balance public good and individual rights. Carr sees this contest manifested on many segments of his walk. His observations are at once sharp and gentle:

I never saw a new house that looked as good as the open space which it replaced. That, in a nutshell, is the Cape's dilemma. Every time another house is built, a seller realizes the value from the land, a buyer is made happy to be the latest to cross the bridge, and a realtor, a banker, a lawyer, and a builder all make a little money. But, another piece of Cape Cod is gone, particularly if the new home is on the shore and the owner chooses to close the beach.

As to guard dogs, I didn't get any practical advice. However, to their almost-amusement, Carr and his wife were physically removed from a Nantucket Sound beach by local police, who arrived in two cruisers, having been summoned by neighborhood security guards in their two cruisers. Nice, huh? I suppose a middle-aged couple taking a walk represents a huge threat to the quality of life of the mansion set. Four cars and flashing lights required, pronto.

I'm almost looking forward to that part, myself. By then the Bean might be a teenager, prone to total embarrassment every time I say or do anything, and there I'll be with my feet wet and a copy of the 1641-1647 Colonial Ordinances in hand. I'll let you know how it goes.

Two and a Half Books

My book groups and I have been reading some interesting stuff.

I can't say enough good about Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower. It is, yes, the story of the Pilgrims' establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1620, and its growth and struggles in the decades that followed -- but this is a story most of us probably don't know very well, obscured as it’s been by centuries of myth and sentimental overlay. I knew that the Pilgrims arrived near wintertime, and had a tough go of it... after reading Mayflower, I'm amazed any of them lived to procreate. I had a general sense that the region's Native populations had a more complicated political structure than the traditional telling of this story has us believe, and it was fascinating to learn those details. And I had a very hazy recollection of King Philip's War from high school American History -- that is to say, I'd heard the words "King Philip's War" before -- but, wow. Now I know. And so should you -- but even though you'll feel all virtuous and wicked smaht afterwards, reading Mayflower isn't like taking medicine. Philbrick has a real gift for telling history through different, compelling points of view. It makes for a richly informative work, and a reading experience like delving into a fat, complicated novel. This is not a book to scan in short bursts, though, so give it a couple hours at a time. It's a fascinating read. Southern New England residents especially will love the maps.



The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany, is an Egyptian novel, a best seller there since its publication in 2002. It’s kind of a soap opera centered on a Cairo building, from the poorest, who crowd its roof, to the aristocrats, businessmen and politicians who occupy its spacious, elegant apartments. If you can keep the characters’ names straight, then this is a book that can be read in short sessions, though you won’t necessarily have to, as it keeps its pace, and it’s not too long. It isn’t an especially well-written novel – he’s no Khaled Hosseini -- though translation may account for some clumsiness of phrase. Still, The Yacoubian Building is engaging, and its characters’ relationships are interesting, if sort of dismal. We follow the coming of age of the doorman’s son and his sweetheart (and learn what different things that means, for a young man and a young woman), the scheming servants of an aging aristocrat, the sexual exploits of the aristocrat and others, the corruption of “elected” officials, and a homosexual romance. Most of these stories have tragic arcs, as if the author is trying to show that life in Cairo causes people to bring out the absolute worst in each other. The novel has a curiously depressing effect that isn’t entirely abated by the happy note on which it ends. I would be very curious to hear if Egyptians find it that way too.



Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation is just terrific -- also, sadly, I’m just not going to finish it. Inspired in part by the intensity of her despair during the Bush administration (almost over! almost over!), the author goes on a mission to find out as much as she can about the people who were unbalanced and dangerous enough to kill Presidents. (“Hello there!” she waves from the pages of her prologue to the FBI agents who will doubtless be assigned to read her book.) Assassination Vacation is the wacky account of her dragging people along on trips to scores of historical sites, some world famous, some bizarrely obscure, connected to the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. Vowell is funny and insightful; the perfect historical tour guide. The Lincoln stuff, which I loved, takes about half the book. For whatever reason I couldn’t get to Garfield. After many months I admitted defeat; it appears I’m just not going to get to Garfield. But I recommend you take this jaunt at least as far as I did. It’s a hoot, and you’ll learn stuff.


Phew. What's on your nightstand? The books, I mean. The books.

A 5 Things Meme (mostly different from the other 5, 2, 7, 8, n- things memes)

JLK at Pieces of Me has tagged me for this Five Things meme. I enjoyed reading her responses to it, which include that she was, among other things, a teenager a decade ago. Why, when I was a teenager +10, blogging hadn't even been invented yet. I was signing on to AOL via a sporadic dialup connection with a 2400 bps modem attached to my PowerMac 6500, for which I'm not even going to say how much I paid, but thinking about it makes my stomach turn.

Also, I had a mobile phone that weighed about 40 pounds and had to be carried around in a little suitcase. It made a handy free weight, but using it to make actual phone calls cost approximately $748/minute.

But enough reminiscing. Or maybe not! Our very first 5 things question brings me just to teenager +12.

5 Things I was Doing 10 years Ago

1. Applying to law schools. Yes.

2. Hating my job so intensely, and doing it so badly, that I was prone to periods of intense despair -- the kind of despair that makes a person think, hey, spending my 30s in law school and the rest of my life in debt might actually be fun, or at the very least, the LSAT oughtta be an ego boost. Which it was. What can I say, I test well.
3. Living in a really great little loft apartment. The longer ago it gets, the better it was.

4. Eating mostly spaghetti. I didn't exactly cook in those days.
5. Dating a handsome oceanographer fella.

5 Things On My To-Do List Today:

1. Deliver children to bus stop and preschool, and retrieve them from same at the appropriate times.

2. Make packing list for weekend trip to the leafy suburb of my misspent youth.

3. Pack for weekend trip to the leafy suburb of my misspent youth.

4. Make lasagna for family to eat while I am visiting the... yeah, that.

5. Get car inspected. I just noticed the "10" sticker on it, and I do try to get it done every 13 months. -ish.
6. Who the hell has a to-do list with only 5 things on it? Whaddya mean, you don't care anymore? Fine.

5 Snacks I Love:

1. Cereal.

2. Dark chocolate nonpareils melted onto Italian bread. Don't knock it till you try it.

3. Cheddar and Triscuits.

4. Clementines.

5. Those ridgy little chips that are green and orange and yellow to make you think they're made of Real Vegetables, but they really are just potato chips.

5 Things I Would Do If I Were A Millionaire:

1. Build a substantial addition to the house, which would include: a mud room, a large casual dining room, a guest room with bath, and my own bathroom, baby. Also solar panels, and some expansions/reconfigurations of kitchen/baths. Why not just move? Meh. I hate moving.

2. Build an entire barn for Mr. S's automotive restoration and woodworking projects in progress, and where he can put a wood stove, since he loves wood stoves so much.

3. Give a bunch of money away. Get on some boards of directors of things, and start directing.

4. Never fly coach again.

5. Hire cleaning and landscaping services.


These last two are repeats from the other Five Things Meme I did a while back:

5 Places I've Lived:

1) NYC, briefly
2) northern NJ
3) southern CA
4) western MA
5) Cape Cod, MA

5 Jobs I've Had:

1) clerk in a nurses' uniform store
2) library page
3) locksmith's assistant
4) teaching assistant (oceanography)
5) environmental consultant

5 People I'll Tag That I Don't Know Enough About:

Well, here is where I breach blog etiquette. Even online, I am much too socially awkward to tag people. But I encourage you (you!) to do this and let me know where you did.