Ahhh...
What a nice, long trip it's been. Sunny, warm, plush accomodations, visits with good friends, the beauty of the desert, and the mountains. All together, it's been a hell of a good vacation.
But we're starting to find that we're thinking of home and family; we spent a good half hour talking to the kids and their nanny yesterday, and talked of them today all the way down to San Xavier del Bac. I think we're starting to get ready to return to our daily lives.
No word from my boss in response to my call today about Monday's schedule, though, so I hope I still have a job to come back to! But we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
Tomorrow is an early birding morning for me, followed by dim sum and then a trip up to Mt. Lemmon to look out over the Tucson Basin; all the thrones and dominions of the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof.
And a Starbucks or three.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Suffering in La-la Land
Day Three here in the scented embrace of the Westward Look Resort.
Sleeping in, lounging by the pool, strolling the arid beauty of the desert trails. Waking not to the shrieking of the alarm and the impact of relentless little bodies (much as we love the little bodies!) but to the sound of the coyotes from the foothills of the Santa Catalinas, or the fearless calling of the tiny Verdin stealing seed from the Sonoran desert outside our patio doors...
Sweet.
And to make things even more pleasant, we've been visiting with friends who live here in the Tucson area, including the dynamite Atomic Mama and Atomic Dad and the paragon of boldly thermonuclear cuteness, manly little man Xuan, who took the time to show us the splendid scenery on Tucon's southwest side, let us share the little man's enthusiasm for birds, stones, sticks, puddles and life in general.
Sweet.
Today was the "Living History" tour of three mission sites south of Tubac: Tumacacori, Calabazas, and Guevavi. The next time some smartass lips off about "tax-fattened government employees" I'm gonna deck him - for the Park Rangers who led this trip, giving us a feel for the history and the people who came before us through this harsh and beautiful land with a passion and knowledge that spoke of their devotion to this place and the legacy of those people.
So...so far, so good. I'm enjoying the lack of demands, the gorgeous sun, the return to a desert environment I love and seeing again the desert birds I have missed for a decade; the elegance of the phainopela, the crimson fire of the vermillion flycatcher.
Hope you have been having a pleasant and profitable week, in all senses of the word, and we'll be back in a bit with more from the land of Good Oak.
Sleeping in, lounging by the pool, strolling the arid beauty of the desert trails. Waking not to the shrieking of the alarm and the impact of relentless little bodies (much as we love the little bodies!) but to the sound of the coyotes from the foothills of the Santa Catalinas, or the fearless calling of the tiny Verdin stealing seed from the Sonoran desert outside our patio doors...
Sweet.And to make things even more pleasant, we've been visiting with friends who live here in the Tucson area, including the dynamite Atomic Mama and Atomic Dad and the paragon of boldly thermonuclear cuteness, manly little man Xuan, who took the time to show us the splendid scenery on Tucon's southwest side, let us share the little man's enthusiasm for birds, stones, sticks, puddles and life in general.
Sweet.
Today was the "Living History" tour of three mission sites south of Tubac: Tumacacori, Calabazas, and Guevavi. The next time some smartass lips off about "tax-fattened government employees" I'm gonna deck him - for the Park Rangers who led this trip, giving us a feel for the history and the people who came before us through this harsh and beautiful land with a passion and knowledge that spoke of their devotion to this place and the legacy of those people.
So...so far, so good. I'm enjoying the lack of demands, the gorgeous sun, the return to a desert environment I love and seeing again the desert birds I have missed for a decade; the elegance of the phainopela, the crimson fire of the vermillion flycatcher. Hope you have been having a pleasant and profitable week, in all senses of the word, and we'll be back in a bit with more from the land of Good Oak.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Out of the Net
Well, the littlies are in bed, the bags are packed, the clocks are set ahead and the sitter is due here tomorrow at 7:00...
It's a week of sun and no agenda, startng tomorrow. So until then, may you enjoy your week and whatever and whomever you are engaged in. I'll be back here again late next Sunday, hopefully tanned, ready and rested for a whole nother three years, since that was the LAST time we had a vacation.
Not that I'm snivelling or anything.See ya!
It's a week of sun and no agenda, startng tomorrow. So until then, may you enjoy your week and whatever and whomever you are engaged in. I'll be back here again late next Sunday, hopefully tanned, ready and rested for a whole nother three years, since that was the LAST time we had a vacation.
Not that I'm snivelling or anything.See ya!
Friday, March 06, 2009
Fear Itself 1: Is it the Apocalypse?
Like all of you, I've been watching and reading the business news - which has become just "news", more or less, which says something ugly about our economic situation, when you think about it - with the sort of grim displeasure that an old Roman noncom must have received the news from the frontiers in the latter parts of the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD. The situation is not just bad, it's the kind of bad that promises to be irretrievably bad; unresponsive to remediation short of further disaster, sure to bring further woes in its train before any glimmer of hope will emerge.
And I understand, to a fair extent, how and why we got here. Which is where, so far as I can tell, I differ from about 94% of the Republican Party and 101% of the wing of the GOP who gets their "news" from Rush "I'm the boss here, bitchez!" Limbaugh - these idiots apparently still think the problem was that we didn't let the geniuses at Bear Stearns and AIG package MORE derivatives and mortgage-based securities. Normally the issue of "what shall we do now" is the most difficult place to find a place to stand in a shitstorm. This time, with a fairly clear view of the bottom of the porcelain funnel cloud and the recognizable sight of Saint Ronnie's ass centered thereon (symbolizing his stated conviction that regulation of natural monopolies and oversight of traditionally larcenous financial grifters was a pile of used food), the 27% of the American public that still believes that there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in the pool cabana out behind Saddam's place in Tikrit is unwilling to even hint that we might be in trouble because for the past twenty-nine years we treated our nation's economy like a slush fund for malefactors of great wealth and a Nigerian-oil-minister-style confidence scheme.
But the point is that we have a pretty good idea where we're going and why we're in this handbasket.
Whether or not we can do something to prevent the coming economic train wreck is, IMO, a matter of real uncertainty. The current pileup is pretty unforgiving in its indictment of the current economic paradigm that the wealthy and the well-connected have conspired with the Party of Wealth to foist on us. Turns out that basing an economy on paper profits, irrational consumer spending, the enrichment of a tiny minority while flatlining income for the rest and exporting living-wage jobs was not a good idea - whooda thunk it? But the same bunch of chipmunk pesterers and bloviating fatheads who helped get us into this mess has a vested interest in keeping us from rejecting their True Belief.
And we aren't much more help - we'd rather cling to the fantastic promise of becoming superrich than face the reality that most of us will die in debt. It's no coincidence that the rise of the Moron Economy has coincided with the insane popularity of idiotic fairy tales like "American Idol" and "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire" and the other yes-I'm-a-mouthbreather-but-I-could-still-win-the-lottery forms of entertainment. We've become a nation of fatuous fantasizers, of credulous couch-potatoes, who would do well as the slasher-fodder in a Wes Craven flick, persisting on opening the closet in the darkened hallway and stomping off into the woods when we should know enough to get in the Plymouth Fury and just drive like hell to the biggest town close by.
So by being stupid ourselves and electing people who kept telling us that stupid was the new smart and what the hell was so great about being smart, anyway, we've driven ourselves into the Hellmouth of Economic Reality, and we pretty much deserve the hiding we're gonna get. For those who tried to prevent this from happening, who kept their expenses low and the cash reserves high, well, hopefully they will ride it out. But the rest of us? Sauve qui peut, mon ami.
Thing is, you remember how this all started as the "subprime mortgage crisis"? And how we're still hearing about how the big problem is that housing starts are down, and that real estate values are dropping like a paralyzed park pigeon?
Well, the whole "housing starts" thing got me thinking as I listened to another report of gloom and doom in the construction industry on the radio the past week. And it made me start to wonder, not about the coming Great Recession which, when you really look hard at it, is just another 19th Century "panic", the sort of thing that Keyenesian economics and New Deal regulations were supposed to head off until we decided to spend our national treasury killing brown people because the hate our freedoms and that regulation was for pussies.
No, it was the notion that "housing starts" were and are a fundamental indicator of economic health.
Because my little family lives in a house built in 1922.
It's not a nice house for 1922, like some of the lovely mansions up on the West Hills, in Laurelhurst or Irvington. It's a little 1920's shitbox, slapped together to sell to a grocer or a windowdresser or a ladies' hatmaker. The construction is average, with the exception that the lovely straight-grain fir reminds us that before we cut all the damn trees down we could use good wood for common dimension lumber without a thought.
Nope, it's the 1920's equivalent of the identical little cottages in Levittown, the sort of place that exploded in the late '40s and '50s as everyone wanted their own home.
But here's the thing: it's perfectly sound. Replace the roof every twenty years, stay ahead of the dry rot and keep the footings dry and the damn thing'll last another eighty-seven years. Or more. Theoretically, my son could take over the house from us, raise HIS kids in there, and then deed it to his oldest to raise their kids in. Or not; hell, for all I know the Peeper may be a swinging batchelor until he dies, throwing Wesson Oil parties for the grannies down at the Catholic retirement home next to Roosevelt High some time in 2088...the point is, Mojo and I can happily live the rest of our lives in our little house. And one of our children can, after us.
We don't NEED a "housing start" for the next eighty years or so.
Okay, one of the kids will...assuming that his or her spouse doesn't come with a house from THEIR parents. But we could, if we tried and if we wanted to, live perfectly comfortable lives without ever needing a contractor to build us a new house. And if we did, there's half a dozen similar little houses for sale right now within ten blocks of our own.
So. It would seem that to need a "housing start" what you really need is more people. Families with four kids instead of one or two. Immigrants moving in from another country. A constant stream of people moving out of rentals into homes.
That seems insane to me and let me explain why.
Maybe it's the scientist in me, but that kind of limitless population growth - as translated into "housing starts" - seems, in the long run, unsustainable.
Let's think about it. Almost every natural system has checks and counters. Get too tall, stay too short, and Nature usually has a way of sorting you out. The slowest gazalle becomes Cheetah Chow; the fastest dies of starvation in the dry season because it needs so much more grass. Sardines have mackerel, mice have cats, lemmings have cliffs. And we see the counterexamples every day. The cougars and wolves keep the deer numbers down. We kill the cougars and wolves, the deer explode, the browse is devoured, the deer starve.
Now, it seems to me, we have built a life system - not just an economic or industrial setup but an entire way of life - that centers around living off of things that depend on having more people to make and sell and build new stuff for. I'm the same as most of the rest of you. If nobody builds that house, that shopping center, that Wal-Mart, that pornographic knicknack store, nobody hires a soils engineer to give them foundation recommendations, nobody hires me, I don't get paid and I starve.
But the notion that we just keep building houses, mining copper for wires, making clay into bricks and lime into concrete, oak into furniture, more and more, for ever and ever..? It just seems impractical, when you think of it that way. Certainly the notion that we won't overrun our petroleum supplies, when we know it takes something like ten-to-the-third years to turn biomass into keratin and then petroleum versus something like ten-to-the-minus-third years to locate, prospect, extract, refine and consume it...drill, baby, dr...hunh?
So over the next couple of weeks I want to explore this notion that, while what we're experiencing in 2009 may be just a typical swing in the business cycle, we really need to examine our entire industrial society and the economic foundation it's built on.
Because, as the lemmings would tell you, if you realize that you've exceeded your resources only on the way off the cliff, it's probably too late.
And I understand, to a fair extent, how and why we got here. Which is where, so far as I can tell, I differ from about 94% of the Republican Party and 101% of the wing of the GOP who gets their "news" from Rush "I'm the boss here, bitchez!" Limbaugh - these idiots apparently still think the problem was that we didn't let the geniuses at Bear Stearns and AIG package MORE derivatives and mortgage-based securities. Normally the issue of "what shall we do now" is the most difficult place to find a place to stand in a shitstorm. This time, with a fairly clear view of the bottom of the porcelain funnel cloud and the recognizable sight of Saint Ronnie's ass centered thereon (symbolizing his stated conviction that regulation of natural monopolies and oversight of traditionally larcenous financial grifters was a pile of used food), the 27% of the American public that still believes that there were weapons of mass destruction hidden in the pool cabana out behind Saddam's place in Tikrit is unwilling to even hint that we might be in trouble because for the past twenty-nine years we treated our nation's economy like a slush fund for malefactors of great wealth and a Nigerian-oil-minister-style confidence scheme.But the point is that we have a pretty good idea where we're going and why we're in this handbasket.
Whether or not we can do something to prevent the coming economic train wreck is, IMO, a matter of real uncertainty. The current pileup is pretty unforgiving in its indictment of the current economic paradigm that the wealthy and the well-connected have conspired with the Party of Wealth to foist on us. Turns out that basing an economy on paper profits, irrational consumer spending, the enrichment of a tiny minority while flatlining income for the rest and exporting living-wage jobs was not a good idea - whooda thunk it? But the same bunch of chipmunk pesterers and bloviating fatheads who helped get us into this mess has a vested interest in keeping us from rejecting their True Belief.
And we aren't much more help - we'd rather cling to the fantastic promise of becoming superrich than face the reality that most of us will die in debt. It's no coincidence that the rise of the Moron Economy has coincided with the insane popularity of idiotic fairy tales like "American Idol" and "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire" and the other yes-I'm-a-mouthbreather-but-I-could-still-win-the-lottery forms of entertainment. We've become a nation of fatuous fantasizers, of credulous couch-potatoes, who would do well as the slasher-fodder in a Wes Craven flick, persisting on opening the closet in the darkened hallway and stomping off into the woods when we should know enough to get in the Plymouth Fury and just drive like hell to the biggest town close by.
So by being stupid ourselves and electing people who kept telling us that stupid was the new smart and what the hell was so great about being smart, anyway, we've driven ourselves into the Hellmouth of Economic Reality, and we pretty much deserve the hiding we're gonna get. For those who tried to prevent this from happening, who kept their expenses low and the cash reserves high, well, hopefully they will ride it out. But the rest of us? Sauve qui peut, mon ami.
Thing is, you remember how this all started as the "subprime mortgage crisis"? And how we're still hearing about how the big problem is that housing starts are down, and that real estate values are dropping like a paralyzed park pigeon?
Well, the whole "housing starts" thing got me thinking as I listened to another report of gloom and doom in the construction industry on the radio the past week. And it made me start to wonder, not about the coming Great Recession which, when you really look hard at it, is just another 19th Century "panic", the sort of thing that Keyenesian economics and New Deal regulations were supposed to head off until we decided to spend our national treasury killing brown people because the hate our freedoms and that regulation was for pussies.
No, it was the notion that "housing starts" were and are a fundamental indicator of economic health.
Because my little family lives in a house built in 1922.
It's not a nice house for 1922, like some of the lovely mansions up on the West Hills, in Laurelhurst or Irvington. It's a little 1920's shitbox, slapped together to sell to a grocer or a windowdresser or a ladies' hatmaker. The construction is average, with the exception that the lovely straight-grain fir reminds us that before we cut all the damn trees down we could use good wood for common dimension lumber without a thought.
Nope, it's the 1920's equivalent of the identical little cottages in Levittown, the sort of place that exploded in the late '40s and '50s as everyone wanted their own home.
But here's the thing: it's perfectly sound. Replace the roof every twenty years, stay ahead of the dry rot and keep the footings dry and the damn thing'll last another eighty-seven years. Or more. Theoretically, my son could take over the house from us, raise HIS kids in there, and then deed it to his oldest to raise their kids in. Or not; hell, for all I know the Peeper may be a swinging batchelor until he dies, throwing Wesson Oil parties for the grannies down at the Catholic retirement home next to Roosevelt High some time in 2088...the point is, Mojo and I can happily live the rest of our lives in our little house. And one of our children can, after us.We don't NEED a "housing start" for the next eighty years or so.
Okay, one of the kids will...assuming that his or her spouse doesn't come with a house from THEIR parents. But we could, if we tried and if we wanted to, live perfectly comfortable lives without ever needing a contractor to build us a new house. And if we did, there's half a dozen similar little houses for sale right now within ten blocks of our own.
So. It would seem that to need a "housing start" what you really need is more people. Families with four kids instead of one or two. Immigrants moving in from another country. A constant stream of people moving out of rentals into homes.
That seems insane to me and let me explain why.
Maybe it's the scientist in me, but that kind of limitless population growth - as translated into "housing starts" - seems, in the long run, unsustainable.
Let's think about it. Almost every natural system has checks and counters. Get too tall, stay too short, and Nature usually has a way of sorting you out. The slowest gazalle becomes Cheetah Chow; the fastest dies of starvation in the dry season because it needs so much more grass. Sardines have mackerel, mice have cats, lemmings have cliffs. And we see the counterexamples every day. The cougars and wolves keep the deer numbers down. We kill the cougars and wolves, the deer explode, the browse is devoured, the deer starve.
Now, it seems to me, we have built a life system - not just an economic or industrial setup but an entire way of life - that centers around living off of things that depend on having more people to make and sell and build new stuff for. I'm the same as most of the rest of you. If nobody builds that house, that shopping center, that Wal-Mart, that pornographic knicknack store, nobody hires a soils engineer to give them foundation recommendations, nobody hires me, I don't get paid and I starve.
But the notion that we just keep building houses, mining copper for wires, making clay into bricks and lime into concrete, oak into furniture, more and more, for ever and ever..? It just seems impractical, when you think of it that way. Certainly the notion that we won't overrun our petroleum supplies, when we know it takes something like ten-to-the-third years to turn biomass into keratin and then petroleum versus something like ten-to-the-minus-third years to locate, prospect, extract, refine and consume it...drill, baby, dr...hunh?
So over the next couple of weeks I want to explore this notion that, while what we're experiencing in 2009 may be just a typical swing in the business cycle, we really need to examine our entire industrial society and the economic foundation it's built on.Because, as the lemmings would tell you, if you realize that you've exceeded your resources only on the way off the cliff, it's probably too late.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Red Thread
If you look at the time stamp on this post you get an idea of the kind of night it's been.
Mojo had to work at home until almost 8pm, so I took the kidlets out for dinner and a mall-crawl, to ride the carousel (which was closed Wednesday nights - who knew?) and generally stay out of Mommy's hair until she could get her work done.
Then, after everyone finally got settled in and the lunches were made and the laundry in and the toys picked up, I went to bed. Not to sleep, mind you, at least not for long, because about 1am the Peeper yacked up his dinner all over his bed friends and his new Star Wars sheets. We cleaned him and his bed up; he went to the couch, the sheets and blankets and bed friends (except Ollie the Elephant - sorry, Ollie, de vomite nil nisi bonum and all that but you fucking reek, man, and your plush will never come clean. Ave atque vale, dude.) went into the washer and I am still awake, because every so often I get freaky about the washing machine drain plugging and flooding the basement as it did in 2006.
So as I am sitting at the computer in the basement feeling that harsh, No-Doz kind of ratcheting you get from too little sleep and, frankly, a little sorry for myself, I checked Teh Facebook to find to my horror that an e-friend's little girl
had had problems post-op and had stopped breathing.
Thrice.
Now she's stable and is home with her mother and father, once again her happy, adorable self.
But I've said this before; we amble through life taking every day, every night, each breath, every sunrise and birdsong and hug and kiss, each breathless moment at the height of lovemaking, every rich explosion of flavor on the tongue...every single warm cuddle from little bodies fitted to our chests, every syllable of happy babble, every tear, the good pull and stretch of strong muscle worked hard, each and every lingering glance of greeting and farewell with the casual acceptance that we give a yawn or a passing car or a flickering light. We expect life to rise to greet us every day, every heart to just continue beating, every automobile to track smoothly, every breath to begin as the last one ends.
The fuzzy-huggy-bunny-wuffy-ladybuggery adoption folks have this thing about the "red thread" that connects you to your magical baby that God (and it is usually God) has picked out for you and how that means that everything will work out for the best; you will always be tied to your love by this mystic invisible red thread.
But if there's anything I've learned in this journey towards the grave, it's that life itself is a tenuous thread, a spindly, blood-red thread that may break or fail at any time. One minute you'll be fine, the next one of you will be gone.
On the one hand, this is terrifying. The body that feels so sturdy, the life that seems so complete...a flu germ, a layoff, an affair, a little too much anesthaesia, and it is gone as thoroughly as the dream of a dream. Nothing is certain. Nothing can be counted on. All is vanity and striving after nothingness.
And yet...tilt your glance and it isn't.
Everything we humans build and are; every house, every love, every layer of fat, bone and muscle, is ephemeral. We are all doomed from the moment we are born. And yet in those moments between darkness and darkness, what towers we can raise! What loves we can lift, what momuments to strength and caring and honor and passion!!
If we choose.
So every day a little death...and yet, every day, every day, is a gift of life. Each time we hold our children, each day we tell our lovers we love them, each day we work and laugh and cry and love and hate...each day is a goddam miracle, and we live and move through them like gods, like heroes.
Or we can. We should.
So today, take a moment to savor your life. LIVE it. Listen to the rain. Meditate. Do a kata until it's as perfect as you can make it. Make a great cup of coffee and a buttered croissant.
Hug your daughter extra tight.
The night is dark and long. But we can fear the dark, or we can bask in and savor the brilliant daylight that is all the brighter for coming between the sunrise and the sunset.
And I hope you're waking to a sunny day full of love and happiness, little Q. Live. Love. Thrive. Every day you live you are a gift of love.
Mojo had to work at home until almost 8pm, so I took the kidlets out for dinner and a mall-crawl, to ride the carousel (which was closed Wednesday nights - who knew?) and generally stay out of Mommy's hair until she could get her work done.
Then, after everyone finally got settled in and the lunches were made and the laundry in and the toys picked up, I went to bed. Not to sleep, mind you, at least not for long, because about 1am the Peeper yacked up his dinner all over his bed friends and his new Star Wars sheets. We cleaned him and his bed up; he went to the couch, the sheets and blankets and bed friends (except Ollie the Elephant - sorry, Ollie, de vomite nil nisi bonum and all that but you fucking reek, man, and your plush will never come clean. Ave atque vale, dude.) went into the washer and I am still awake, because every so often I get freaky about the washing machine drain plugging and flooding the basement as it did in 2006.
So as I am sitting at the computer in the basement feeling that harsh, No-Doz kind of ratcheting you get from too little sleep and, frankly, a little sorry for myself, I checked Teh Facebook to find to my horror that an e-friend's little girl
had had problems post-op and had stopped breathing.Thrice.
Now she's stable and is home with her mother and father, once again her happy, adorable self.
But I've said this before; we amble through life taking every day, every night, each breath, every sunrise and birdsong and hug and kiss, each breathless moment at the height of lovemaking, every rich explosion of flavor on the tongue...every single warm cuddle from little bodies fitted to our chests, every syllable of happy babble, every tear, the good pull and stretch of strong muscle worked hard, each and every lingering glance of greeting and farewell with the casual acceptance that we give a yawn or a passing car or a flickering light. We expect life to rise to greet us every day, every heart to just continue beating, every automobile to track smoothly, every breath to begin as the last one ends.
The fuzzy-huggy-bunny-wuffy-ladybuggery adoption folks have this thing about the "red thread" that connects you to your magical baby that God (and it is usually God) has picked out for you and how that means that everything will work out for the best; you will always be tied to your love by this mystic invisible red thread.
But if there's anything I've learned in this journey towards the grave, it's that life itself is a tenuous thread, a spindly, blood-red thread that may break or fail at any time. One minute you'll be fine, the next one of you will be gone.
On the one hand, this is terrifying. The body that feels so sturdy, the life that seems so complete...a flu germ, a layoff, an affair, a little too much anesthaesia, and it is gone as thoroughly as the dream of a dream. Nothing is certain. Nothing can be counted on. All is vanity and striving after nothingness.
And yet...tilt your glance and it isn't.
Everything we humans build and are; every house, every love, every layer of fat, bone and muscle, is ephemeral. We are all doomed from the moment we are born. And yet in those moments between darkness and darkness, what towers we can raise! What loves we can lift, what momuments to strength and caring and honor and passion!!
If we choose.
So every day a little death...and yet, every day, every day, is a gift of life. Each time we hold our children, each day we tell our lovers we love them, each day we work and laugh and cry and love and hate...each day is a goddam miracle, and we live and move through them like gods, like heroes.
Or we can. We should.
So today, take a moment to savor your life. LIVE it. Listen to the rain. Meditate. Do a kata until it's as perfect as you can make it. Make a great cup of coffee and a buttered croissant.
Hug your daughter extra tight.The night is dark and long. But we can fear the dark, or we can bask in and savor the brilliant daylight that is all the brighter for coming between the sunrise and the sunset.
And I hope you're waking to a sunny day full of love and happiness, little Q. Live. Love. Thrive. Every day you live you are a gift of love.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Barbie Girl
Last post I mentioned Barbie.
Odd reference, and I had to think about why I was thinking about Barbie, something I have little or no association with (other than my infamous "Barbie Girl Dance", formerly the hit of battalion dining-ins) typically. Turns out that it combines our adoption trip to Guangzhou, and Missy's new bedroom.
In the process of setting up Missy with her new digs we culled through her toys, pitching many of them into the Goodwill bag, but also finding a few new ones for baby girl. Among them was "Going Home Barbie".
Now you can't go to Toys R Us and pick up a "Going Home Barbie". You can't get one from the dolls-and-teddies store, or at a collectors show unless you're very industrious.
Because the only way to get one of these things is to go to China and adopt a little orphan.
I'm not sure if everyone gets one. But I know that if you go to China and stay at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island you will. It shows up in your room one day, like a pillow mint or fresh towels. You come in and there it is on the TV cabinet or on the desk; perky-faced, slender, blonde Barbie holding her adorable dusky Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby.
I don't know whether Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby comes with eczema, giardia and scabies or whether you have to buy them with the "Social Welfare Institute Disease Playset" sold separately.
I was frankly too stressed and overwhelmed by the mess of Baoxin's disrupted adoption and our subsequent whirlwind week with Shaomei to really think much about Going Home Barbie. I know she got thrown in the luggage because she turned up on Mojo's dresser sometime in the autumn of 2007 and hung around up there for a while. Eventually she disappeared and I can't say I regretted her much.
But this past weekend suddenly, there was Little Miss, clutching Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby. I went to look and there was Mommy Barbie, facedown on the bedroom floor, abandoned for the moment. Mojo explained that she had come across Going Home Barbie and had finally accepted that it was Just A Toy and, as such, belonged with a child. Barbie and Baby were played with for less than a day before they went back into the loose-toy bin on the bottom shelf of the armoire.
I'm not sure where I stand on Barbies in general and "fashion dolls" for my little girl in particular. We have not emphasized these dolls, or the other apparently inescapable preteen-girl accessory, the "Disney Princess", but we have not actively discouraged them, either. Little Miss seems to treat them like any other toy, no more treasured than her stuffed animals, her bike, or her puzzles, and much less than her favorite books, which she adores and will drag around to be read and re-read to her whenever possible.
If that changes, we may have to decide what to do about dolls with the physiques of stick-insects with breasts and permanently deformed feet. But not today.
But what really occurred to me as I stood contemplating prone Barbie abandoned on the woodwork was to wonder what a Chinese toy factory worker thought assembling this doll that would would seem almost a comic-book representation of the history of Western colonialism and cultural imperialism that's often linked with international adoption. Does this silly bit of commercial crap say anything about international adoption? Nothing? Nothing good? Or just nothing at all, just another damn cynical marketing ploy, a politically incorrect misfit toy, the lawn dart of dolls?
What does she know of disculturation, of assimilation? Of the loss of her child's native language and surroundings, what does she care? Does she try to get Ken to go to Mandarin class? To play Hong Kong hip-hop and wear Shanghai fashions? Does she worry that her daughter will be castigated if she wants to date nice Chinese boys as an "ABC" - "American Born Chinese"...and stereotyped by Caucasian boys as a "China Doll"?
Barbie herself says nothing. She just teeters there in her hot pink CFM pumps
and her vacant grin, unaware that her Chinese baby is mingling with the my little ponies and the Little People and Noah's animals down in the toy basket on the floor. Unconcerned about all the things waiting out there for a little Chinese girl growing up in America. She doesn't worry about race, and gender, and hope, and fear.
And Little Miss doesn't either.
Yet.
Odd reference, and I had to think about why I was thinking about Barbie, something I have little or no association with (other than my infamous "Barbie Girl Dance", formerly the hit of battalion dining-ins) typically. Turns out that it combines our adoption trip to Guangzhou, and Missy's new bedroom.
In the process of setting up Missy with her new digs we culled through her toys, pitching many of them into the Goodwill bag, but also finding a few new ones for baby girl. Among them was "Going Home Barbie".
Now you can't go to Toys R Us and pick up a "Going Home Barbie". You can't get one from the dolls-and-teddies store, or at a collectors show unless you're very industrious.
Because the only way to get one of these things is to go to China and adopt a little orphan.
I'm not sure if everyone gets one. But I know that if you go to China and stay at the White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island you will. It shows up in your room one day, like a pillow mint or fresh towels. You come in and there it is on the TV cabinet or on the desk; perky-faced, slender, blonde Barbie holding her adorable dusky Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby.
I don't know whether Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby comes with eczema, giardia and scabies or whether you have to buy them with the "Social Welfare Institute Disease Playset" sold separately.
I was frankly too stressed and overwhelmed by the mess of Baoxin's disrupted adoption and our subsequent whirlwind week with Shaomei to really think much about Going Home Barbie. I know she got thrown in the luggage because she turned up on Mojo's dresser sometime in the autumn of 2007 and hung around up there for a while. Eventually she disappeared and I can't say I regretted her much.
But this past weekend suddenly, there was Little Miss, clutching Chinese Orphan Barbie Baby. I went to look and there was Mommy Barbie, facedown on the bedroom floor, abandoned for the moment. Mojo explained that she had come across Going Home Barbie and had finally accepted that it was Just A Toy and, as such, belonged with a child. Barbie and Baby were played with for less than a day before they went back into the loose-toy bin on the bottom shelf of the armoire.
I'm not sure where I stand on Barbies in general and "fashion dolls" for my little girl in particular. We have not emphasized these dolls, or the other apparently inescapable preteen-girl accessory, the "Disney Princess", but we have not actively discouraged them, either. Little Miss seems to treat them like any other toy, no more treasured than her stuffed animals, her bike, or her puzzles, and much less than her favorite books, which she adores and will drag around to be read and re-read to her whenever possible.
If that changes, we may have to decide what to do about dolls with the physiques of stick-insects with breasts and permanently deformed feet. But not today.
But what really occurred to me as I stood contemplating prone Barbie abandoned on the woodwork was to wonder what a Chinese toy factory worker thought assembling this doll that would would seem almost a comic-book representation of the history of Western colonialism and cultural imperialism that's often linked with international adoption. Does this silly bit of commercial crap say anything about international adoption? Nothing? Nothing good? Or just nothing at all, just another damn cynical marketing ploy, a politically incorrect misfit toy, the lawn dart of dolls?
What does she know of disculturation, of assimilation? Of the loss of her child's native language and surroundings, what does she care? Does she try to get Ken to go to Mandarin class? To play Hong Kong hip-hop and wear Shanghai fashions? Does she worry that her daughter will be castigated if she wants to date nice Chinese boys as an "ABC" - "American Born Chinese"...and stereotyped by Caucasian boys as a "China Doll"?
Barbie herself says nothing. She just teeters there in her hot pink CFM pumps
and her vacant grin, unaware that her Chinese baby is mingling with the my little ponies and the Little People and Noah's animals down in the toy basket on the floor. Unconcerned about all the things waiting out there for a little Chinese girl growing up in America. She doesn't worry about race, and gender, and hope, and fear.And Little Miss doesn't either.
Yet.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Monday, Monday...
Well, we got through Bryn's birthday pretty well, all things considered. We both wanted to thank all of you for your kindness you showed Bryn's memory. That helped. That helped a lot.
And the other thing that helped was our family and our friends.
The first thing was that we finished Missy's bedroom!!!
She loves her pretty blue bedroom, and Saturday night was her first sleep there. The Peeper decided that EVERYONE had to sleep there to make sure she wasn't scared. So here they are:
As you can see, the only scared one is the mommy, who is scared she will be buried under her own progeny.
Little Miss woke up early and jumped on her brother and mom, pretending to be a kitty. She does a very respectable growl and meow. Look out, here he comes now!
The first night in the new bedroom was a complete success. And waking up buried under her kids helped lighten a mommy's grief.
Here's the Little Miss, having refused to put on her clothes, dancing sky-clad in excitement at her new room. Crazy hippie chick.
With toys and dresser and stuffed friends all about her, she's already snuggled in for the long term.
Then Sunday our friends the Ravas came to visit. Everyone enjoyed themselves, doing what they liked to do best, whether it was playing Army...
...or playing Barbies and riding scooters...
...or blowing little party horns...
...or blowing tater tots out of little party horns...
...it was ALL good. Thanks, Ravas. You are good people.
So we spent a happy weekend with our children and our friends, it rained a little and the flowers didn't bloom and we cried a bit, every now and then, and blew our noses, and went on to the next thing. That's grief after seven years. Like an old scar, it doesn't stop you from living, just tugs at you now and again. Just to remind you. And the resulting blow doesn't knock you down r stagger you, just runs over you like a shadow crossing the sun. But the sun does come out again, and so do we.
So we're ready for the coming spring, a vacation to Tucson, and I have some thoughts about the economy and military life and Barbie, but it's late. I'll talk some more tomorrow.
G'night.
And the other thing that helped was our family and our friends.
The first thing was that we finished Missy's bedroom!!!
She loves her pretty blue bedroom, and Saturday night was her first sleep there. The Peeper decided that EVERYONE had to sleep there to make sure she wasn't scared. So here they are:
As you can see, the only scared one is the mommy, who is scared she will be buried under her own progeny.
Little Miss woke up early and jumped on her brother and mom, pretending to be a kitty. She does a very respectable growl and meow. Look out, here he comes now!
The first night in the new bedroom was a complete success. And waking up buried under her kids helped lighten a mommy's grief.
Here's the Little Miss, having refused to put on her clothes, dancing sky-clad in excitement at her new room. Crazy hippie chick.
With toys and dresser and stuffed friends all about her, she's already snuggled in for the long term. Then Sunday our friends the Ravas came to visit. Everyone enjoyed themselves, doing what they liked to do best, whether it was playing Army...
...or playing Barbies and riding scooters...
...or blowing little party horns...
...or blowing tater tots out of little party horns...
...it was ALL good. Thanks, Ravas. You are good people.
So we spent a happy weekend with our children and our friends, it rained a little and the flowers didn't bloom and we cried a bit, every now and then, and blew our noses, and went on to the next thing. That's grief after seven years. Like an old scar, it doesn't stop you from living, just tugs at you now and again. Just to remind you. And the resulting blow doesn't knock you down r stagger you, just runs over you like a shadow crossing the sun. But the sun does come out again, and so do we.
So we're ready for the coming spring, a vacation to Tucson, and I have some thoughts about the economy and military life and Barbie, but it's late. I'll talk some more tomorrow.
G'night.
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