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I just found My Left Footloose.com (thanks Jane!) and I am now obsessed with coming up with one (just one!) movie title mash up. I am not naturally gifted at this kind of thing—but it is so good.
Go see them: My Left Footloose
A few of my favorites:
Indiana Jones' Diary
Paris Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Cat in the Hat Tin Roof
The Empire Strikes Back to the Future
Children of a Lesser Godfather
*Sonny Calderon! I'll bet you will be really good at this game.
I am so happy that the Vatican is not wising up and ordaining female priests. The church just excommunicated a group of women trying to serve. (The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called ordaining women as priests "a crime" in a recent headline.)
As a former Catholic myself, I pray only for their extinction, as soon as possible. I know they are unimaginably wealthy from centuries of rape and pillage and can buy a lot of leverage, but if no one shows up it's not a party, right?
It would be so amazing if this bizarre cult of child abusers just went out of business! Go Benedict XVI!
So many people are bitching about the cost of gas, even Jon Stewart! I was just wondering what we should really be paying, if the costs were not massively subsidized. And it was easy to find. (I think the low-ball number here is deeply underestimated.)
A quick summary:
"A report by the International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) identifies the many costs of driving that are not directly reflected in the price we Americans pay for gasoline. (Of course, we pay for some of the cost indirectly by way of increased taxes, insurance costs, and retail prices for other goods and services.)
The report divides the external costs of gasoline usage into five primary areas: (1) Tax Subsidization of the Oil Industry; (2) Government Program Subsidies; (3) Protection Costs Involved in Oil Shipment and Motor Vehicle Services; (4) Environmental, Health, and Social Costs of Gasoline Usage; and (5) Other. Together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14."
—The Progress Report
"Twenty-two centuries later [...after Androsthenes in the fourth century B.C. observed the tamarind tree opening its leaves during the day and folding them at night...] the great Swedish taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus designed a flower clock—a circular garden whose twelve wedge-shaped flower beds; each planted with species whose petals opened at a different hour, told the time from 6:00 AM (white water lily) to 6:00 PM (evening primrose)."
Just read Jean Valentine's new book Little Boat (Wesleyan University Press) and it's lovely, of course.
I wonder how to represent her poems here, when they have so much white space in them? I hope it's not a violation to try to reproduce my favorite. Here goes—
Gray
gray
"the order of the mother"
one degree Fahrenheit
News armature:
Expect sleet or snow west coming east
You may not have wanted to be there
It may have been because of the pain
helicopter on your left side
man asleep
child on your right
Or, as non-parents would say it: we went on vacation! To Hawaii, like the Brady Bunch. One hotel room! Two kids! It was...a weird combination of torture and fun. I can't wait to go back as a non-servant.
A few pikz:
I push a stroller in the city and I think it's a fine thing to do. Strollers enable a pedestrian lifestyle: adventuring, shopping, recreating and visiting around the neighborhood by foot, instead of by car. We foster face-to-face community, have zero carbon footprint, and provide instant urban safety with our eyes-on-the-street. We also support local neighborhood businesses, and expose our kids to the city instead of just driving them through it.
But some non-parents seem to have an irrational dislike of strollers, and the Moms and Dads who push.
My progressive neighborhood group, DNA, (Dolores Neighborhood Association) recently added a joke "Bugaboo tax" to their otherwise official endorsements of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Leno and Tom Ammiano. The Bugaboo tax is where "your share of the school tax would be proportional to the price you paid for your stroller." Fine to raise taxes, but why pick only on the strollers? Strollers have less impact on the urban environment than cars, motorcycles, dogs, or, I don't know—littering. And this idea is coming from mostly non-parents who easily spend more than a fancy stroller costs on well-designed bicycles, motorcycles, cars and other conveyances.
I think taxes should be high, public schools should be swimming in dough, and strollers should be on/in every sidewalk, store, and pub in the land. Why single out parents with strollers as bad guys in a world of SUV drivers, dogs crapping all over our shared public space, and people who still think George Bush is doing a good job?
Clearly, something about the way we parents parent now (emotionally-involved; using beautifully-designed baby accessories and toys; feeding organic food; making photos and blogs about our kids) needles people. Of course, middle-class urban parents are super lucky and that's the giant caveat—strangely though, the caveat applies to the critics of stroller culture just as fittingly, maybe more so.
But my guess is that the hard feelings and irritation also have to do with jealousy. We all crave more attention, more being-fussed-over, and it's hard to feel happy for other people who are getting it. Even children. That's my first shot at figuring it out, anyway.
There's also a piece that touches on it in the NYT from yesterday:
A few choice quotes from Lynn Harris' article:
"But today, you mention Park Slope on a blog or even in conversation and, especially if the reference involves the word “stroller,” the haters lunge like sharks at chum."
"No consideration of Park Slope is complete without a discussion of stroller semiotics, of the stroller as synecdoche for the perceived evils of the neighborhood and indulgent urban child rearing in general."
"As one Sloper recently groused on Brooklynian.com: 'How come the mommies get to make all the rules around here?'"
This is my favorite analysis: “Hipsters and people who don’t have kids are terrified of becoming grown-ups and parents, which is what Park Slope has come to represent,” said Jeff Sandgrund, 30, a lifelong Park Sloper. “So you lash out against that as if it’s the worst thing in the world, when in five years, you know what? It’s going to be you.”
This little post is especially for you and me, Julia Cole.
Julia and I have been sending lines by email to each other almost all the days of 2008, though it has been harder lately. Tonight I was feeling low for not doing better, and then I picked up the May 2008 issue of Poetry magazine and read Ms. Boland on this very issue.
"And yet it seems right to ask—if the skill-based poet [by this she means the poets who "lecture, lead workshops, run classes, teach composition, write reviews, give conference talks and papers"] is a contemporary figure, then who or what is the antitheseis? Who, in other words, is losing out? Is it possible to suggest a category, a grouping, even an individual poet who might be marginalized by such an emphasis? It's a rhetorical question. But here, at least, I can think of some answers. [...]
The down-to-earth question of availability might affect women poets. For instance, a younger writer with children might well look with dread at the opportunities offered by scheduled readings, believing that she herself might just not be able to manage the fixed times or even the travel.
The shy poet, the private poet, the antisocial poet, the curmudgeon, the introvert, and the fastidious craft worker—I could see all of these, in various degrees, at various times, looking with skepticism on a world of skills."
—Islands Apart: A Notebook
And this made me remember a poem of hers that is precious to me:
IT IS STILL THE SAME
young woman who climbs the stairs,
who closes a child's door,
who goes to her table
in a room at the back of the house?
The same unlighted corridor?
The same night air
over the wheelbarrows and rain-tanks?
The same inky sky and pin-bright stars?
You can see nothing of her, but her head
bent over the page, her hand moving,
moving again, and her hair.
I wrote like that once.
But this is different:
This time, when she looks up, I will be there.
Eavan Boland
I just found my last name in Gaelic, in something I was reading: Suilleabhain. I knew Elizabeth was Eilis (AY-lish).
So my name in Gaelic would have been Eilis Suilleabhain.
My first name means "pledged to God" and Sullivan means "hawk-eyed one".
Perhaps my name means: promised to God, but seeing too clearly to stay promised.
This little site was helpful and fun: Name Nerds
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically…on children than the unlived life of the parent. — Carl Jung
*
Children are great perceivers but poor interpreters. — Rudolf Dreikurs
I feel shy writing about this, in fact, I just now had to add "Politics" as a category to my blog because after 10 months of writing, this is the first time I've ever wanted to say anything mildly political.
I am for both of them.
I have been disgusted or disappointed at different times on both sides, and also inspired and thrilled. And I am keeping ahold of my (admittedly low-expectation) excitement about Hills and about Barry. My dream is a combined ticket.
I know you have to be a diagnosable paranoid schizophrenic to be a politician, but I hope they come out of this fight with their intelligence intact. If they do, I feel like it is a strong tactical and symbolic decision to partner up. I desperately want the Democrats to beat that unscrupulous cadaver McCain. Please.
This groovy original-art poster place has a well-designed Obama/Clinton 08 poster that I am thinking about getting:
Once upon a time, a long time ago in a cabin in the woods with ten sweet friends, we played Exquisite Corpse and In the Manner of the Adverb, and so many amazing games that I thought I would never be blue again.
This morning I made a little game for Jonah, and for our family, that is kind of like In the Manner of the Adverb, a game Anastasia introduced us to, but more for kids. It's called: Emotions * Animals * Adverbs. I hope he likes it!!
Here are our starting words (basically, you draw a slip of paper from the jar and act it out) and now I notice I forgot monkeys! D'oh!
duck
pig
cat
dog
elephant
seal
owl
beaver
fox
rabbit
otter
kangaroo
turtle
chicken
spider
horse
lion
rapidly or swiftly
slowly
awkwardly
boldly
elegantly
cautiously
painfully
warily
silently
rudely
mysteriously
obediently
defiantly
cheerfully
accidentally
fiercely
gently
deiberately
angry
sad
frustrated
silly
loving
bored
crabby
amazed
shocked
calm
curious
delighted
eager
proud
grateful
hostile
worried
relaxed
cross
reluctant
Jonah: Aba! Let's do an experiment!
Gabriel: Ok! Here, we can do this project where you test what different kinds of things float...
J: No, Aba—it's not science unless there's food coloring.
*
And from Buen Dia's science table, the sweetest little nest—
When I am in finals, or when there is a terrible, punishing deadline, I often get a burst of energy for creativity. I sit down to research something, or to write a paper, and my mind presents me with an idea for how to make a little game for Jonah, or sudden inspiration about what to paint on the canvas that's been sitting on my shelf for weeks.
"Group Dynamics paper. Due Monday." I say.
"Let's draw octopuses! Or seahorses! Those are hard..." says my mind. "We could paint them on those tiny canvases you found."
I used to be irritated about this. And I still am. Why can't this happen at a calmer time? A time when I can concentrate? And yet I know—I will take the smallest hint of creativity gratefully whenever it wants to come to me.
And maybe it is a little bit about the pressure—my spirit wants to throw off the coercion and it scrambles around to find something compelling to me to distract me.
Calling it "my spirit" instead of "my mind" makes it sound a bit less crazy. Ok. Octopuses, then research paper. Ciao!
