heroism everywhere

the dad: "tonight i went for a walk. you know how they have that wild mustang rescue?"

me: "yeah...?"

the dad: "well, i did some earthworm rescue of my own. i saved 'em from being squashed and i took 'em home for my compost bin. i'd imagine pretty soon we'll become a 501(c)(3) and start soliciting donations for our work."

summer reading: mario vargas llosa's death in the andes

the dad picked this book up for me at a sidewalk sale and sent it to me when i got back from perú. and it is excellent.

i was waiting to read it until after the semester ended, because i suspected it might be one of those books that kept me up until 4:00 in the morning, and i was correct.

death in the andes is beautiful and horrifying and confusing and fascinating. and it makes me really miss perú.

you should definitely read it.

the milagro beanfield war is an excellent book.

i remember mamacita and the dad reading it and enjoying it back in the 80's, and i found it at the best bookstore ever awhile ago. it kind of reminds me of edward abbey; the profound injustices of land and resource allocation in the american west are a centerpiece of the book, but there's a magical realism flavor to the whole operation that is reminiscent of isabel allende.

this description makes me think of a good friend:

The sheriff would have liked a mind that could deal with abstract thoughts and ideas. Instead, he possessed a mind capable of tinkering with things just enough to make them impossibly confusing and himself so dissatisfied with his own intellectual inadequacies that he would never be happy.

-from john nichols' the milagro beanfield war, p. 234

can we all just agree that tights are awesome?

although i've had pink ballet tights and other colored dressup tights for quite some time, i recently got my first pair of cycling tights. and oh man, are they fantastic. the dad and i went for a nice ride when i was there for christmas, and i got to try them out for the first time. they're kind of fleecey on the inside, but still breatheable, and they make me feel aerodynamic. and i like how spandex accentuates my leg muscles. tights! try them out!

seriously, no on 8.

today i got a yes on 8 mailer. and i'm still pissed about it. i can't really write logically about it right now because i'm too damn angry. but:

for anyone interested in helping stop prop 8:

1. donate: your money puts ads on the air. the mormon church has pumped millions of dollars into the yes campaign, and turned public opinion from 38% in favor/55% opposed in mid-september to a majority in favor today. donations are being matched dollar for dollar until midnight tonight (10/31.)

2. call voters: the yes on 8 campaign mobilized thousands of people (many from out of state) to call and knock on doors, spreading lies about prop 8. you can sign up online to call people, either at a phone bank or from your own home. for calling from home, they use a fancy calling system that means that your number doesn't show up on people's caller id, and you pay no long distance fees. i've been doing it, and although it makes me nervous, i am proud to be a part of this effort.

3. talk to your friends and family about prop 8: i've definitely got friends who support/considered supporting/used to support prop 8. there are still people who haven't really heard about prop 8, since there's so much noise about this election. others have only heard from the yes on prop 8 people, and may be convinced that without prop 8, all elementary school classes will be replaced with mandatory, non-age appropriate sex ed. (for the record, parents have always, and will always have opt-out rights in the state of california...remember those permission slips you had to return before awkward sixth grade sex ed time? still the law.)

i talked to both of my parents about it. my mom donated, and my dad's thinking about it.

for more information: http://www.noonprop8.com

happy (belated) fathers' day, part 2: a story about the dad

when i was growing up, we didn't have trash service. it was available in our neighborhood, and all of our neighbors had it, but we didn't. we recycled glass and aluminum, we sometimes burned paper in our wood stove (which was also our sole source of heat during the winter) or in the burn barrel out back, we composted food waste, we donated unwanted household items and clothes to various charitable causes and made rags out of the really unwanted clothes.

and the dad used those prepaid business reply mail envelopes to deal with a lot of the rest of our trash. we'd get tons of them: credit card offers, magazine subscription solicitations from magazines we didn't want, other random stupid mailings that happen to a family whose mailing address has become a commodity.

[i should stop for a moment before you get too confused/disgusted and say that we also had a trash bag going for things that don't recycle, burn, compost, donate, or rag up well. it just took a long time to fill it, that's all. the night before trash pickup, the dad would drive around looking for houses where people had bagged up their yard waste and put it at the curb. after prodding the bag a bit to make sure that it was something mulchable, and not just a few grass clippings on top of mixed trash, the dad would switch out our trash bags for green waste, at a ratio never exceeding 1:1. (even when we didn't have a trash bag or two to get rid of, he LOVED driving around and collecting green waste bags.)]

but the business reply envelopes! the dad considered it a personal challenge to fill them as full as possible. he would carefully fold junk mail or plastic bags into precisely-sized rectangles, and more than once i saw him cutting corn chip bags into strips, for a better fit. twisties would go into the envelopes, and pieces of hard plastic packaging would also end up there.

he never sent anything messy, dangerous, or mean. but his obvious delight at the pennies that a megacorporation would have to pay to receive an envelope full of useless material was fairly infectious. "they send me garbage all the time!" he'd say. "i'm gonna let them throw it away!"

happy fathers' day, fathers of all sorts. keep up the good work.

happy (belated) fathers' day, part 1: a website, a bookstore, and a present

happy fathers' day! i'm sorry i didn't post this on...um...fathers' day. i was hanging out with the dad, and then being stuck at the train station, and the going to school and working and things and before i knew it, it was way after fathers' day. but! fathers' day, i'm not going to forget you.

here is a blog that you might want to look at: rad dad—a zine about fathering in dangerous times. (it is also a pretty nice little zine. also, when rad dad hosted a fathers' day event at book zoo, the best bookstore ever, it was called "i love it when you call me big papa." wonderful! [but seriously, if you're ever in oakland, GO THERE. 6395 telegraph avenue at alcatraz. it is full of the books that you've been meaning to read and they are cheap. i promise. go!])

and now your (belated) fathers' day present: from rad dad, "How to Reclaim Fathers' Day from Ties and Work"

Things Fathers (or really anyone) can do to challenge Patriarchy

1. Remind yourself and others that parenting does not equal mothering.
2. Wear your baby in a sling.
3. Take your kids with you everywhere you can—grocery stores, errands, to your place of work, Sunday afternoon celebrations, meetings
4. Believe in other men’s ability to parent. Talk to other men about fathering.
5. Vocalize your support of breastfeeding moms
6. Consider being a stay at home dad.
7. Take any parent infant class you are interested in. Be proactive in your parenting.
8. Talk to your kids about gender, class, and racial privilege. Be proactive in addressing the subtle ways these things are taught to your kids.
9. Start a new dad’s group, one where you take the baby with you.
10. Volunteer to help set up child care in the organizations you are a part of.
11. Ask others, especially non-parents, to help. Be a parent ally!
12. Make a point to ask if there are changing tables in the men’s restrooms everywhere you go.
13. Fight gendered parental roles – make dinner, do the laundry, mop the floors, clean the bathroom, watch the kids.
14. Combat images of bumbling fathers in the media. Talk to your kids as you encounter these stereotypes ala “Daddy Day Care,” “Mr. Mom,” “The Pacifier,” “Big Daddy.”
15. And, of course, write for Rad Dad as well as create your own fathering/parenting projects. And invite others to participate.

can we all just agree that time with brother bear is pretty much beyond compare?

last weekend it was brother bear, sarah, and mamacita time. this weekend it's brother bear, sarah, and the dad time. in between, however, was herman@ time. so wonderful. i love you, dude.

attention everyone:

the players, the setting: brother bear, the dad, and i are hanging out at grandma's house. the super-catholic-yet-secretly-hindu grandma, who is awesome and occasionally says hilarious/baffling things.

as it so often is at this particular grandma's house, it is ice cream time. the dad, brother bear, and i have retreated to the kitchen to serve up gluttonously large bowls of ice cream (since all we've had so far has been thanksgiving leftovers and three pieces of pie each), when grandma starts talking to the dad.

grandma: "there's some cheese in there."

the dad: (rather perplexed, but not about to argue with her about what she can or can't eat [the dad's grandma-feeding philosophy is that once a person reaches a certain age {in her case, really really old,} they should be able to eat whatever they want, whenever they want it.]) "oh. you want me to melt some cheese on there?"

grandma: (sort of shocked that he would imply such a ridiculous thing.) "no, not me. the young people prefer cheese."

can we all just agree that ann patchett's bel canto is an amazing book?

the dad lent it to me the last time i saw him, and it took me awhile to start reading it, but once i began, all 318 pages went fast. the premise (which didn't particularly impress me when i read the back cover) is that terrorists take an entire dinner party of diplomats and businessmen hostage, along with a world-famous soprano, and then "Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion...and cannot be stopped," which still seems to me like a totally goofy way to describe what actually happens.

but i would definitely recommend the book. it can be a quick read, even though she has nice complex satisfying sentences in which i sometimes found myself getting lost (in a good way.)

anyway, read it.

can we all just agree that i am totally getting old?

in addition to enjoying raspberries, baby snuggles, and thomas the tank engine viewing parties, i have gotten into the habit of having a little bowl of ice cream when i babysit. i use one of the tiny kids' plastic bowls, because lately i have been pretty happy with a little bit of ice cream.

i used to eat huge bowls, and love it. the last time i had ice cream with my dad, we both ate so much that we had stomach aches (yeah, yeah, i know, total grownup superstars. be quiet.) but now, i find myself totally satisfied with a little bowl. and i'm also aware of how rich real ice cream is.

yep. totally old.

can we all just agree that new bikes are exciting!, no matter who's getting them?

yesterday i went test riding with the dad. he's been on a 40-something pound steel beast with shifters on the downtube for the last several thousand miles, but we were looking at some pretty, shiny, partly-carbon brand new bicis (for him at least; the saleswoman was kind enough to send me out too so that i wouldn't have to sit and wait, but i was on a slightly too-small commuter bike that just fit funny [but not ha ha funny] all the way around.)

so we were riding around near the bike shop, and he kept saying, "this feels way better!" "this bike is great!" and other related things. because yeah, if you go from a clunky steel frame to a 20 pound one with sweet shifters in the brake levers, of course it's going to be overwhelmingly awesome.

and i got to be there. sweet!

can we all just agree that sometimes, the dad is unreasonably cagey?

while chatting last night:

dad: "ah, yeah, i'll be gone for about three weeks in june."
me: "whoa! where are you going?"
dad: "oh, i'm going to go look at new hampshire."
me: "um, okay."
...[silence]...

can we all just agree that it's interesting to find out that your [super-catholic] grandma has secretly been a hindu all along?

my dad: "so mom, what do you think happens when you die?"
my [super-catholic] grandma: "oh, i think you just become part of the universe."

can we all just agree that canoeing is rad (though a little tricky to spell)?

i went canoeing this weekend with g and my dad and my uncle and it was great! (even though there were snakes. okay, a snake. and i didn't see it. and it was tiny. but i did see a giant gross skin that a snake had shed...bleh!)

but the river was beautiful, and we saw a bunch of fish, and ate delicious strawberries, and talked and laughed and sat in silence, and none of us got very sunburned, and it was good.

(but "canoeing" is a tricky word. "oei" is a strange letter combination, at least for english.)