Parenting

So, now you’re nine.

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We hoped for a girl, and were glad when the scanner showed you were a girl.

Your head was so big (sorry for that trait) they needed a suction cup on a stick to get you out of your mother’s belly.

But it was soon clear that your head holds much brains. Enough to feed a village of zombies and still maybe, their bellies stuffed, they’d let you walk home. Though maybe math and spelling would be harder for you afterward.

We asked you to stop saying “I know” so often, and you pretty much stopped. Thank you. Will you find something else to saucily say down the line? Indubitably!

When I see your smile crammed with many teeth (sorry for that trait, we’ll get it sorted over a few years) it makes my heart happy.

And when I see you take on more grown-up gestures, like saying “Yeah.” with a wave of your hand while running off to do what you want, or you hold a pointy finger up to the sky to make the other person listen to you, it’s a look into your future. And that future looks good.

It looks like your present, full of smart, creative, caring, sassy friends. And a family who is watching you grow up, and giving you more space, and letting you help more, and listening to what you have to say because it is often very interesting.

We love you, our smart, creative, caring, sassy daughter. And are happy to see you get taller, funnier, sillier, and very very nine years old.

 

Activity, Art

Burnside Bridge balloon man

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Walking yesterday the sight of a balloon art installation tethered to a stairway off the Burnside Bridge caught my eye. Caught about 4-5 peoples’ eyes. Snapped some photos. Within an hour the balloon man was gone. Was the artist/perpetrator among the people snapping photos, taking photos of people taking photos? Didn’t much care. If so, give them their moment. This was interesting.

Poetry, Writing

Be witching.

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Darting through the sky dragging trails of coal black smoke.

Sometimes with letters, most often circles.

At times the trail is blinding magnesium crackling and sizzling with an odor that makes the teeth hurt.

Then I land, dismount the broom. Look to the skies and see other letters, other circles.

Higher in elevation from where I patrolled, less fresh.

I used to fly lower altitude, more often I tilt upwards to try the cooler air and better view.

Walking on, I see other circles, faded but over my station. For my notice?

Some a pungent bilious green, hopefully dispersed before they catch the breeze on earth. Birds and bugs dropping unconscious before then. Take shelter under a tree.

How many heartbeats do we have? Is it vain to take to the skies? Vain to scan upwards for messages and deeds? Tough to take direction (or evasion) when there are errands to do.

Beasts of the field spend all their heartbeats doing their duty, consuming, sleeping, excreting.

Beasts of the field do not look to the skies, or take to the skies, from compulsion.

Art, Music

Everybody’s got a sad song, but…

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So, are there people on the planet for whom a Hootie and the Blowfish song triggers a reminiscent sadness? The song comes on and the person’s instinct is to retreat and walk (or sit) and think big thoughts and piece the important things together? Gotta be “Yes”, right?

Politics, Pop Culture

Santorum, fecal demi-Catholic, lubey, wants to spray you

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Rick Santorum cites the Catholic Church as his source of moral guidance. Like most Catholics, he cherry picks which direct-from-god dictates to follow, no matter how much of a furrowed brow and pointed finger the Pope-of-the-day makes on the topic. He hates women having control over their bodies, contraception EVEN IN MARRIAGE, and homosexuals.

Does he follow the Catholic Church’s stance against capital punishment, the Iraq War, and unversal health care? Doubtful. I’d check that, but it would require a mouse drag all the way to the top of this browser window to use the search engine and I’m not putting that much effort into it.

Back when Santorum still held elective office, he was an asshole then, too, and columnist Dan Savage ran a contest to create a definition of “santorum” to mess with search engine results. Known as Santorum’s “Google problem”, here’s the winning reader submission:

Pronunciation: san-TOR-um, Function: noun, Etymology: Savage Love – 05/29/03

1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Former Senator Rick Santorum

Here’s a political ad by Rick Santorum in which his right-now pollitical rival, Mitt Romney, gets sprayed by a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter:

Villain! This ad uses the overture to Carmen. Fool! Fiend! Carmen belongs to meeee!

The final image is a dead ringer for the image long at Santorum.com to keep stank all over his name.

Santorum is a weirdo!

Eating, Poetry, Writing

Valentine’s Day new-timey sweetness

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In ancient Rome during middle February they feasted quite deeply during pagan Lupercalia. To slit the throats of a dog and a goat then eat them would cure what ailed ya.

Then ladies’d stand naked in line, and while blitzed on wine the fellas all’d hit them.

Later on ladies’ names were drawn by men in a game to determine who later would schtup ’em.

Couples might bond, other times not gel, in either case they’d end up sticky.

While rollicking and violent, horrid and wrong, somehow that all ended as this edible Mickey.

The Valentine’s cookie was sweet, decorated neat, and blended to smooth consistency.

Eating it made me sluggish and slow, hardly rarin’ to go, and in the wild my rivals would pass me.

Would I end up behind down the Lupercalian line slapping laggard asses that didn’t quite suit me?

I’d probably stay back, plan a selective attack based on hair, guessed-at smarts, self-esteem.

Or would I have thought “Sod it all. Ave, Venus!” and hope my card would lead to love at first sight?

All this mulling now and then while with a ravenous grin I chomped down on this corporate copyright.

Art, Poetry

Three stanzas from ‘Under Ben Bulben’ by Yeats

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“Under Ben Bulben” doesn’t quite work. Yeats tried to make it a culminating poem, even writing his eventual epitaph in the closing lines. I cracked it open tonight and rediscovered these three stanzas:

II
Many times man lives and dies
Between his two eternities,
That of race and that of soul,
And ancient Ireland knew it all.
Whether man die in his bed
Or the rifle knocks him dead,
A brief parting from those dear
Is the worst man has to fear.
Though grave-digger’s toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

III
You that Mitchel’s prayer have heard,
“Send war in our time, O Lord!”
Know that when all words are said
And a man is fighting mad,
Something drops from eyes long blind,
He completes his partial mind,
For an instant stands at ease,
Laughs aloud, his heart at peace.
Even the wisest man grows tense
With some sort of violence
Before he can accomplish fate,
Know his work or choose his mate.
 
VI
Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago; a church stands near,
By the road an ancient Cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase,
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!

Parenting, Science

Google Voice transcript and puberty training

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8 y/o daughter pushed for, and we got her, an email account. She’s been asking me, with blended despair and diplomacy, when I could help her get an Apple ID.

She left the following voice mail on my cell phone late this afternoon while I was at work:

“I was wondering when you’re coming home ’cause I’m super super super anxious to get an Apple ID really soon ’cause my friend wants to do Facetime with me, but I need a new Apple ID password you already know my phone number and, yeah. Bye.”

Google Voice transcribes my cell phone voice mail messages. It interpreted the call:

“I was wondering When You’re Going To Be home to say I’m super super super anxious tagged nap, but I do you really soon because my friend what to do face time with me. But I need a new lot like the password bloodied not bear and yeah.”

Paid bills for an hour tonight, then having never used Facetime, got to work through a Facetime/Apple ID oddity/snag/feature. Great success! As daughter got into bed I spoke with her from my laptop to her iPod Touch and it was a funny 30 seconds. Should be fun next time a family member is out of town. Though Facetime doesn’t seem to be as exciting and beloved as when it first launched with beautiful people with winning smiles engaged in touching, heart-rending chats during commercial breaks.

Moved over to my 11 y/o son’s room, where he reported today was the first of THE TOPIC in school about the birds and the bees. Whole class. Coloring pictures of genitals with crayons. Funniest terms for genitals they’ve heard: “disco stick”, “corn dog”, “hot dog bun”, “taco”, “black hole”, “where the sun don’t shine” (last one my son’s contribution). Acne. Body functions. More discussion tomorrow.

Less harrowing than in MY day. Boys and girls in separate rooms, watching animated films about amoral nature soon wreaking havoc and would completely betray our conception of ourselves and reality. “Whoah, my body will do WHAT when I’m asleep and I won’t be able to do ANYTHING about it? People are laughing about hairy palms, now I am too, but I don’t understand what they were saying about what DOESN’T cause hairy palms?”

You know, stuff that still rattles us and holds us in thrall to this day. However the report of this sex ed curriculum seemed a step forward for our species. My question: “During coloring, did anyone ask for the silver or gold crayon?” Son: “No, they gave us all the same limited selection.”

Art, Opera

I Cio-Cio-Choose ‘Madama Butterfly’

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Second opera in two months. Saw the Portland Opera’s production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly this afternoon. Fun to go to a classy event in daylight, and still have daylight outside when it’s done. The day still felt open, heart full of amusement and music!

I don’t speak Italian, and am by no means classy, but I really liked the show. There are musical discernments I am far from being sensitive to, but Opera is sure-as-heck less daunting than I once thought. Plots are simple, and take forever to develop. But rapid plots are not opera’s appeal. It’s empathy and sensory experience.

Listening to live music can be superior to decades-old recordings. You’re welcome for this free wisdom.The score to Madama Butterfly was less familiar than Carmen which I saw in late December. But while I’ve listened to Butterfly several times with good speakers and headphones, I was struck by how the music that comes across as cramped on a recording opens up with live orchestration. One thing to KNOW that, as most everyone who cares about music does, but another thing to EXPERIENCE that.

Voices were strong. The male lead character, B.F. Pinkerton, is a jerk who doesn’t stick around. We’re not supposed to like him, but I kept hoping he would break into Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird” to at least TRY to win us over.

As it was, when it was time for curtain call, the long-suffering Cio-Cio San (nicknamed Madama Butterfly) had just taken her own life before our eyes. When the performer who played Pinkerton, the man who led to Cio-Cio San’s despair, took the stage a crescendo of applause was supported by an undercurrent of playful booing. Very funny. Singer smiled. Must be part of the role.

The production was more accomplished than the Eugene Opera’s Carmen (though I liked that show, too, and like Carmen more than Butterfly). At the Eugene Opera I did not see a single illuminated cell phone screen as the lights came down. In Portland, bright rectangles were all over the place. So, point to Eugene for being classier!