Jiaozi

Friday roundup

I've been thinking that I might be a better blogger if I were a sloppier blogger. I work those essay-length posts to death, and that cuts into my output. I'm going to try the lazy writer's friend, the bullet list.

• October is adoption month at our house. Bess, May, and the dog all have their adoption anniversaries this month. Is it weird that the only date I'm sure of is the dog's? I don't have the other adoption dates written down except in my travel journals. We've never made a big fuss over "gotcha day," a term I don't especially like anyway. For the record, this month marks 13 years for Bess and 4 years for May. And they are both excelling in junior high. I am so proud of them. I really didn't expect for May to be doing so well academically this soon.
• Reality TV is evil. I may explore this thought at greater length later. It seems to me that reality TV capitalizes on the same urge that causes people to slow down in traffic to look at an accident. (I'm not judging -- I have that compulsion too.) It could have been humanizing, the way blogs are humanizing, by reassuring us that we all share experiences, but instead it's exploitive. And dishonest, since much of it is staged. Also, it reduces the amount of work available for screenwriters.This is a bad thing for creative people everywhere.
• That said, some good writers must be getting work, because I find that there is an embarrassment of riches on TV right now, being as how I'm a scifi and musical geek. My [only intermittently functioning] DVR is getting a workout. But the DVR's memory is almost full because I never get to watch the shows I record. A warning to those of you who have young children: When they get older, you can never watch anything adult on TV until they are, well, adults. Or at least 18. My teens stay up later now, and they want to hang out in the family room with the comfy couch, so until 10 p.m. I have to watch family-friendly programming. And I can't stay up until 11 p.m. because we're all up so early in the morning. I've given up on putting anything rated R in my Netflix queue. I don't think I'm overprotective, but there's no reason to expose them to material that they are not mature enough to understand.
• On a related note, how come every PG-13 movie has the F word in it exactly once? I believe that the rules are that if they use it more than once, or use it in certain contexts, they get an R rating. But why use it at all? Does a PG-13 rating sell more tickets than a PG rating? And is it any wonder that the girls report that kids crowding the locker bays are all "F this" and "F that"? We used to get in trouble for saying "crap." (Remember when the radio stations skipped that word when they played Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"? Of course you don't, you're too young. Take my word for it.) Am I wrong in thinking that the worst cussing should not be used casually but saved for when you're really at the end of your rope? I'm just not sure that breaking a fingernail warrants the F word. Let the profanity fit the crime.

Daily accomplishments -- a log

I have been thinking about the "100 days" posts and wondering what I do accomplish on a daily basis. If I can remember to do it, I think I'll occasionally post a daily list. I know there are days when I feel I've accomplished nothing, and I'd like to know if that's true.

Here's my list for today, in excruciating detail:

• Got kids up and fed
• Drove kids to school
• Loaded and ran the dishwasher
• Put brisket in the crockpot
• Started this blog post
• Worked on a post for another of my blogs
• Researched summer programs for May and Ella
• Scheduled two medical appointments
• Hung out on Facebook
• Agreed to be a board member for a fledgling (and tiny) nonprofit
• Swapped e-mail with family members
• Read two articles and listened to two podcasts online
• Exercised the dog
• Picked up the kids from school
• Helped kids with homework and reading (longest sustained effort of the day)
• Fed the pets
• Cleaned the litterbox (not my job -- someone owes me)
• Did a load of laundry
• Watched kids play outside
• Finished making the brisket and side dishes for dinner
• Washed the dishes
• Read half the new issue of TV Guide
• Watched The Daily Show
• Tucked kids into bed
• Finished this post
• Did a little reading

Not a bad day. I got some things done and also got to relax. Nothing earth-shaking, though. Just routine maintenance. I'm still aware of the myriad of things I didn't get done. Maybe tomorrow.

That's comedy, folks

Ella (watching me laugh at The Daily Show and trying to understand what's so funny): "Oh, I know! It's like Funniest Home Videos for adults!"

Uppity yours

On September 4, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) told reporters, "Just from what little I’ve seen of her [Mrs. Obama] and Mr. Obama, Senator Obama, they're a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they're uppity." When a bit of a fuss emerged over this comment, Westmoreland issued the following statement: "I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of 'uppity' is 'affecting an air of inflated self-esteem -- snobbish.' That’s what we meant by uppity when we used it in the mill village where I grew up."

Give me a frigging break. Rep. Westmoreland was born and raised in Georgia and grew up during Jim Crow. I grew up in the North and I'm younger than he is, and I know darn well that "uppity" was never used as a term for stuck-up white people. My mother, who was also born in Georgia, told me when I was a little girl that it was a derogatory term white people used to describe black people who the white people thought were too big for their britches. She had no patience for anyone who would say such an ignorant thing. (Later I heard the term extended to women: "uppity women" were those who wanted crazy things like equal pay and equal opportunities.)

Last spring Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) referred to Obama as "boy" -- "That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button [authorizing a nuclear attack]." When called on the carpet, he called it "a poor choice of words." Again, you don't have to be from the South to know what it means when you call a black man "boy."

And people say racism is dead. I'm sure Westmoreland and Davis would both claim they don't have a racist bone in their bodies. Right. They know the code words. They just forgot who they were talking to.

All I know is that I'm going to raise my Asian American daughters to be uppity. Let's all be uppity, shall we?

So long, Camelot

I'm feeling rather sad about Ted Kennedy. Sure, he appeared to be the ne'er-do-well member of the family a few decades ago. But he pulled himself together and grew gracefully into the role of elder statesman. And, you know, he's a Kennedy. It was sad when Jack was killed, and it was sad when Bobby was killed, it was sad when Jackie died, and it was really sad when JFK Jr. died. I'm sad for Teddy too. He's the last of the Kennedy boys. You know, the Kennedy kids turned out pretty well, most of them -- Caroline and Patrick and Kathleen and Rory and Robert Jr. and Maria. I grew up at the same time as the current generation of Kennedys and feel protective of them. I don't wish them any more trouble.

The business of summer fun

The tulips are blooming, and to me that means one thing: It's time to work on my summer activity spreadsheet. Though I know it borders on insane to set up a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to plan summer activities, the project is truly complex enough to warrant this level of detail.

I have a row set up for each child, and a column for each week of summer. (We used to have 12 weeks, but now it's down to nine.)  I enter the "must haves" like swimming lessons and soccer tournaments. Then I look for openings for dance classes and drama camp and, maybe, vacation. It takes me weeks to run through the various scenarios.

Here's the fly in the ointment: The groups hosting these activities have vastly different organizational abilities. Facilities plan months, even years in advance. Tournaments have a long lead time because the location must be booked. If you don't have lodgings reserved for your summer vacation yet, it may be too late. On the other hand, local sports groups, being run by volunteers, tend to wait until the last minute to announce their schedules. We have known since January the dates and location of a big soccer tournament that will be held in August, and motels in that town are completely booked for those dates -- but we don't yet know where or when practice will be held next Monday. Schools are even less well organized, and they are terrible at communication, so we sometimes have less than two days' notice of an evening band concert or play practice.

And everything is "subject to change without notice." More than once I have carefully built my summer schedule and then learned during the last week of school that a program has changed, knocking down my house of cards. I don't know how the people who run these programs can live this way. Don't they need to plan their own summer schedules?

And it's not as if we schedule that much during the summer. The kids have plenty of time to loll around. We go to the library and the swimming pool. But summer is a good time to learn new skills and try things there isn't time for during the school year.

It's hard to make family members understand why we can't plan very far in advance. My dad, who is retired and doesn't have enough to do, starts planning Christmas in September. He doesn't know why I can't give him a head count at that time; things weren't this complicated when we were young.

But those of you with children, you'll understand.

Stop the birthday train, I want to get off

I promised that I would, on occasion, write to the theme of Things That Used To Be Simple But Are Now Unnecessarily Complicated, and so here I go. I am a little afraid that I am going to come off as a curmudgeon, because there are people who seem to enjoy the things that I see as Unnecessarily Complicated. But what's interesting is that we used to get along very nicely before these complicating things came into existence, and we were all a little less stressed.

Case in point: Kids' birthday parties. When I was a kid, birthday parties were a rarity. I had a party with friends for my 5th and 13th birthdays, and that's it. I was invited to a handful of birthday parties for other kids over the years. It's possible that I would have been invited to more if I'd been more outgoing, but I think it was just typical for that time and place. My two best friends from elementary school through high school never had a non-family birthday party that I know of. We had another friend whose parents both worked, a real novelty in those days, and she had a slumber party every year until high school. But that was the exception.

The parties were simple affairs. A daytime party meant birthday cake and punch, and some easy games like Pin the Tail on the Donkey. And of course the birthday cakes were all made by moms, not Safeway. Gifts were small and limited to whatever we could afford with our allowances -- an all-day sucker, paper dolls, drugstore cologne. There were no treat bags. A sleepover meant pizza, ice cream, and dancing to 45s. There weren't any video players and there was nothing for kids on TV. We just hung out in somebody's rec room and amused ourselves. (I probably shouldn't have mentioned the 45s. You're going to think we were listening to Elvis and Ricky Nelson. I'm not that old! Remember, the Beatles' singles came out on 45s.)

We noted birthdays in school, but very simply: the class would sing, the teacher might make you a crown out of construction paper and glitter, and that was it.

Why did this change? I tend to blame a lot of the costly complexity in our lives on the excesses of the Reagan years. People began to aspire to a higher social position. Or, rather, merchandisers realized that they could convince people that they needed to aspire to a higher social position. I don't think the party companies came into businesses because people demanded their services; it was the other way around. They created a need. At the same time, people were having fewer children, and they tended to lavish more attention on each one. At any rate, once the birthday juggernaut got started, it was impossible to stop.

I can't even tell you how many birthday parties my children are invited to every year. There is some event at least once a month. Almost all of the children I know have had a birthday party with friends every single year of their lives.

I have to confess that I bent to peer pressure. My girls have also had birthday parties every year, starting with their 4th birthday. I have tried to keep them reasonable. For several years, we did parties outside our house because we didn't have enough space to host them: we did Build-a-Bear, the craft store, McDonald's, the skating rink, that sort of thing. I keep the guest list down to seven or eight kids (this is difficult because my children have sophisticated social lives, and they have overlapping clusters of friends from school, daycare, activities, and even their China travel group). I don't think we've ever spent more than $150 on a party; I'm sure my parents' generation would be appalled, but it doesn't sound too bad to me.

Now that we have a rec room and the girls are older, we're more apt to have slumber parties at our house. I think the formal birthday parties tend to taper off as the kids get into high school. There isn't a strong tradition of having Sweet Sixteen parties in our area, thank goodness.

For the most part, the parties the girls have attended for friends have been on the same scale as theirs. I do remember a 5th birthday party that Bess attended at a girl's home. There must have been 30 kids there. They had hired a clown and brought in a bouncy castle. There were hot dogs and hamburgers and cake and soda. These were people of limited means, but they went all out for their little girl. Bess doesn't remember this party; I wonder if the birthday girl does?

Of course, we've all heard horror stories about parents spending thousands of dollars on kids' parties, or moms having panic attacks because they are afraid some little detail might not be perfect. And I'm starting to hear about people receiving children's birthday invitations that include a link to a gift registry. Ack.

I haven't seen any really extravagant parties yet, but even the modest annual parties we have around here are not completely benign. There is a tendency for expectations to escalate -- if one girl has a Build-a-Bear party for seven, the next girl will have a Libby Lu party for 10. (Those Libby Lu parties are not cheap.) The really fancy parties, with entertainers and limousines, may be just around the corner.

And these parties are often just one of several events at which the child will be the guest of honor -- there may be a party for friends, another for relatives, and another at home on the child's actual birthday, plus most parents will also bring cupcakes to school on the child's birthday. I've even seen them bring pizza and treat bags to school -- more escalation and competition.

(I have to confess that sometimes the school party comes in handy. One year Ella did not have a birthday party because she wanted to invite her entire class of 30 kids and I could not get her to pare the list down. So we just brought cupcakes to school and called it good.)

The result is that kids begin to feel that they are entitled to a big fuss. They are feted in a manner previously reserved for the Queen of England. They don't have birthdays anymore, they have birthweeks. It tends to create an inflated sense of their own place in the world.

And it adds to the river of stuff that runs through our lives. Kids attending parties don't give the token gifts we used to give, they give really nice gifts that their parents have bought on their behalf. Nobody wants to seem cheap or ungrateful. It's no longer enough to give a basic Barbie -- you have to give a Barbie playset, with clothes and accessories. Heaven forbid that you give a book. It's not glitzy enough. (I always love it when people do give books, and I'll bet a lot of parents feel the same way even if the kids don't.)

Some years, the gift-giving has been overwhelming. My kids have a large extended family -- five grandparents, 14 aunts and uncles, nine cousins. Add gifts from friends to the gifts they receive from relatives and it's just too much. For the past few years I have given the kids the option of not receiving gifts from friends. One year Ella had a book exchange at her party instead -- each child brought a wrapped book, and each child took home a book chosen at random. For the past two years Bess has asked friends to bring donations of pet food for the animal shelter. I know some children ask for donations to Half the Sky and other charities. I don't want to force it on them; I think this needs to come from their hearts. So far they have responded.

I have mixed feelings about requesting no gifts; part of being friends with someone is learning what they like and choosing something you think they will enjoy. But the kids tend to solve this by taping a candy bar or lip gloss to a birthday card along with the bag of dog food. In effect, they have gone back to the level of gift-giving we observed when I was young. So far the gift-free parties have worked very well.

Which brings me to my personal bugaboo, the treat bag. How did this become de rigeur? Is it not enough for the guest to have a chance to make something or be entertained, to eat some cake and Cheetos and play with friends? Why must they be provided with a cellophane bag containing small plastic toys and candy? Not to sound ungrateful, but we have enough small plastic things at our house, thank you. And a kid who has just had cake and ice cream doesn't need a Tootsie Pop. But kids are so accustomed to receiving treat bags that they stand in line by the door at the end of the party, looking around for the box containing their expected goodies (which will be dumped on the floor of their bedrooms and forgotten within 30 minutes). I have been to one or two parties where there were no treat bags, and at first the kids seemed disappointed. Ten minutes later, they had forgotten about it, and they were enjoying memories of skating or swimming together.

I don't necessarily begrudge my kids their parties. Annual parties are part of the culture now. I'm glad they have a lot of friends and that they are well liked. I want them to share good times with their friends. I would like to see the expectations scaled down, however. I'd like to see a return to the cake, ice cream, and Pin the Tail on the Donkey parties. I think you'd see a lot fewer meltdowns among the preschool set. I'd like to return to the custom of limiting school parties to a paper crown. I'd like for parents who feel pinched for lack of time or money to be able to excuse themselves from the birthday treadmill without their children becoming pariahs. Birthdays Without Pressure has some great suggestions for simplifying birthdays.

And I'd sure like to see those treat bags become a thing of the past. I think the Goodwill is tired of me seeing me come in with a big box of plastic novelty items twice a year. 

In memory of the trees that gave their lives so my children could attend school

School is getting back into full swing, and now I remember why I quit my job a year ago. Every night last week I asked the kids if they had homework, and every night they replied, "No, but you do!" Ha ha ha. This must be something the teachers learned at camp this summer, because Sister Three in the next state says her boys told her the same thing.

I daydream about going into the schools and teaching a class on effective written communication, because this is a skill that appears to be lacking. They tend to dump information on us without prioritizing it or highlighting the important points. May and Ella attend the same elementary school, and each brought home a half-inch-thick packet of information. When I flipped though the packets, they appeared to be identical. On closer examination, I found that mixed in with appeals from the PTA to join/volunteer/send money, notes from the school nurse on head lice and vaccines, and invitations to join the cross-country and chess teams were forms that I was supposed to complete and send back. There was nothing to draw attention to these forms; I had to examine each packet and pull out the items that required a response from me.

This is typical. Each week throughout the year I receive, on average, 12 to 15 pieces of information from the school, and it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff. And here I thought my paperwork days were over.

I had to go over the elementary school Code of Conduct (18 pages) with May and Ella, and all of us had to sign a sheet indicating that we understood the expectations for behavior and the consequences for violating these expectations. (We had to do the same thing at my previous job -- several executives had been caught breaking the law, and the company's solution was to put the rank and file through ethics training.) Bess's junior high went a step further, and I had to sign a sheet for each of her six classes acknowledging that I had read and understood the classroom expectations and grading criteria.

I had to fill out sheets providing contact information for A and me plus one emergency contact. There was a form giving us the opportunity to opt out of having our contact information in the school directory; I had to read the form three times to understand that if we were okay with being in the directory -- which we are -- we didn't need to do anything with the form.

I had to send money, too. School lunches must be prepaid; each child has to memorize her PIN to access her lunch account. I had to send money for magazines -- we got My Weekly Reader, but now they get glossy publications like National Geographic Kids. And there are class party expenses and field trip fees to be paid.

I also received copies of the school handbook (19 pages) and disctrict discipline policy (32 pages) to read at my leisure.

We will need to attend two curriculum nights at the elementary school and an open house at the junior high. (I'll be doing this because all the meetings are on soccer nights and A does the soccer driving.) At these meetings I will be asked to sign up to volunteer in the classroom (which I will do), be a room parent (which I will not do), and accompany the class on any of the half-dozen field trips they'll take this year (I'll do a few).

In theory, I suppose all of this is intended to get the parents and children talking about school expectations and make sure everyone is on the same page. In reality, I suspect that it is a strategy devised by attorneys for the school district to keep parents from running to school to protest whenever a child is disciplined or receives a poor grade: "Nobody told us that carrying a handgun in your backpack was against the rules!" "My daughter had soccer practice the night before the test and didn't have time to study. We demand a retest!" "What do you mean, my son is ineligible for the football team because his MySpace page shows him chugging a vodka bottle?" I don't mind the paperwork too much; it's just a few hours of my time. Unfortunately, the people who really need to know this information probably won't read it.

And the sad thing is that it's all just common sense -- or should be. What a waste of paper.

But this is just the warmup. Next week the kids will begin bringing home real homework. That will be the subject of a separate post.

In the meantime, in case you're wondering: Pajamas are not appropriate attire for school. I know because I read it in the handbook.

Easy to be hard

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold....

And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend

--"Easy To Be Hard," Hair (James Rado, Gerome Ragni, and Galt MacDermot)

About 15 years ago, I began to notice something during my daily commute. On several occasions, I saw someone driving aggressively or carelessly and was about to lay on the horn when I looked inside the other car and saw that the driver was someone I knew -- a co-worker weaving in and out of traffic, a daycare teacher running a red light, a neighbor going 10 miles over the speed limit. I was glad I caught myself before I honked or gestured at the car, though I would have been justified in doing so, and it's hard to say who would have been more embarrassed, me or the offending driver.

I puzzled over this. Why would someone who was congenial and polite in person act like a maniac once they got behind the wheel? I watched myself in the car, and I could see that I was much more angry, impatient, and aggressive while driving than I was in other environments.

I decided that two factors were at play. First, being the master of a big machine gives people a false sense of power. We feel as though we ought to be able to rule the road. But instead we end up sitting on the hot asphalt, subject to the whims of traffic volumes and stoplights. It's a frustrating experience, and it just adds to the sense of powerlessness many of us feel at work and home. Put a person who has just been scolded by his boss into bumper-to-bumper traffic, and you'll have a powderkeg on your hands.

Second, we have a sense of anonymity while we are inside our cars. They act as mechanized cocoons. We know it's hard for people to see inside our vehicle, and even if they could, what are the odds that we'll encounter someone we know among the thousands of people on the road? So we feel safe behaving in ways that we never would if we thought we could be recognized and held accountable for our actions.

When I figured that out, I resolved never to flip anyone off or shout insults at another driver. I decided to cut people a little slack and understand that if they act a little crazy on the road, they are probably expressing displaced anger over some other frustration in their lives, and I just happened to get in the way. That doesn't excuse rude or aggressive driving, and it doesn't mean I won't honk if I see someone taking dangerous actions. It just gives me a way to deal with other people's behavior without becoming angry and frustrated myself.

When I started hanging around the Internet a dozen years ago, I began to recognize the same behavior online. Even on early message boards, such as the listserv that became APC, almost every post was subjected to critical scrutiny, and it was impossible for anyone to get away with so much as a misspelling without someone jumping on it. In those days, people used their real names on the boards, so they were usually polite, but violent disagreements still broke out occasionally, ending with people quitting the board in a huff.

There's a lot more traffic on the Internet now, and most people use screen names that don't reveal their true identity; usually it's to protect ourselves from stalkers, but sometimes it's to keep from getting caught doing something we might be ashamed of. At the same time, online behavior has gotten even worse. The attacks have become crueler and more personal. People seem to have abandoned their internal censors. They're giddy with the pleasure of saying naughty things out loud. There are lots of funny, family-friendly videos on YouTube, for example, but I can't let my children browse there because the comments are not screened for cruelty, racism, or obscenity. Anybody with access to a computer can leave stinging comments on message boards or personal blogs without fear that they'll be identified. Hit-and-run cruelty is commonplace on the Internet.

Sometimes it's cruelty for cruelty's sake. Trolls like to stir up trouble and then sit back and watch the sparks fly. They seem to feed on unhappy feelings (best advice when dealing with trolls: don't feed them). Trolls remind me of the creature in the "Day of the Dove" episode of Star Trek (revealing myself to be a total geek here) that fed on hate and tried to incite a fight between the Enterprise crew and some Klingons before Kirk figured out what was going on. (Best quote, from Kang the Klingon: "Out! We need no urging to hate humans! But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house.")

Sometimes the harsh words really represent displaced anger at something else. After the worker who was scolded by his boss gets home, he can log on to a message board somewhere and take it out on somebody else, anonymously. Sometimes people comment because they feel as though nobody in real life is listening, and this is their chance to vent. Sometimes it's an opportunity for people to say things they're afraid to say in real life.

Online cruelty is aided by the anonymous nature of the Internet. We're safe in our mechanized cocoons, knowing that even our ISP address will be difficult to track. We feel powerful, knowing that with a click of the "Send" button we can publish a message that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people will read and be affected by. Trivial stuff that we would let go if it were said to us in person by a friend or co-worker is easy to make a big deal out of. Unlike a real-time argument, the kind where you walk away and then later smack your forehead because you just thought of the perfect rejoinder and now it's too late, you can always return to an online dispute and keep it going a bit longer. It's easy to be cruel when no one can see your face.

Oddly, another trick of the Internet is that it makes us feel that we know people intimately whom we have never met. I've seen people flock to a blog where there's a dust-up and either gang up the blogger or form a posse to protect the blogger, even though they've never met any of the people involved and have little or no idea of the facts of the matter. I've seen people give a heartfelt defense of a celebrity who is down on her luck, and then turn around and savagely attack a co-worker. Sometimes we feel closer to the people who exist in our imagination than the ones who are present in flesh and blood. Most folks trust implicitly that people are who they appear to be, which shows a generosity of spirit but also a lot of naiveté.

I have a Kind Blog icon on my blog. I first came across this icon after a period when it seemed as though a lot of blogs I liked were shutting down because they were receiving an unwarranted amount of criticism. The idea of simple kindness seemed like a terrific antidote to the harshness of the environment.

I'm no Pollyanna; in fact, I constantly have to fight to keep from becoming discouraged and cynical in response to the storms of life. But I try to be positive, or at least constructive. It sounds terribly corny, but I'd like to be a force for good in the world. The Kind Blog icon seemed like a pleasant way to remind myself of that intention, and a promise to my readers that I would think before speaking.

That doesn't mean I'm a namby-pamby who never thinks a critical thought. (If you really want to know, I also curse under my breath in the car.) It doesn't mean I will hold back if I see something that's unjust or wrong. It doesn't mean I will never criticize public figures or that I will let falsehoods go uncorrected. It doesn't mean that I won't ever vent about things that annoy me. It doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a bit of celebrity snark now and again. It doesn't mean that I think I'm better than anyone else or that I won't occasionally slip up. The Kind Blog is aspirational, not prescriptive. It does mean that I hope people gain something from reading my blog, even if involves thinking about tough subjects. It's not always going to be about kittens and cute kids here.

I don't care if anyone else uses the icon. I don't choose which blogs I read based on whether they have a Kind Blog icon any more than I choose my friends based on their bumper stickers. It's not the Kindness Seal of Approval or anything.

The best advice I ever heard about online communication is never to put anything in e-mail (or on the net) that you would be embarrassed to have read aloud in a court of law. E-mail and internet postings are copyrighted material, and any written criticism that is untrue could constitute libel, so it's not a far-fetched scenario. Electronic material tends to find its way outside its intended audience, and caches mean that you can never truly take something back. The "Send" button should have yellow caution tape around it.

What I am trying to say in my long-winded way is that we've let the power of the Internet -- the power to say anything we want without fear of reprisal -- go to our heads. We behave in ways that we never would if we thought we could be recognized and held accountable for our actions. I'm no exception. My hope is that in time the novelty of saying whatever we feel like will wear off and the Internet will become a place where civilized discourse is the rule rather than the exception. That doesn't have to mean staying away from controversial subjects or avoiding disagreements or losing our sense of humor or personal style. It just means adopting the same respectful tone we use in face-to-face conversations. Otherwise, the whole place may just blow up someday, and that would be a shame.

Only a fool fights in a burning house. I don't know exactly what that means, but you'd be crazy to argue with a Klingon, right?   

Summer doldrums

This summer we have had the worst weather EVER. Seriously. It has been cloudy, cool, and rainy for weeks. I looked outside at 7:30 the other evening and it was nearly dark because of the cloud cover. I peek through the blinds in the morning and have to check the calendar to see whether it's August or November. Our new portable fire pit sits on the patio, still shiny and ash-free. All our plans for summer outings have come to nothing. Usually it's sunny and hot in August, but not this year. Mother Nature has one week left to redeem herself.

I've been working on a couple of posts about race and international adoption, but it's slow going. In the meantime, did I mention that we have kittens?! And kittens are Big! Fun! Everything they do has an exclamation mark on it. They play very hard! And then they inhale large quantities of tiny kibble! And then they crash and sleep as if they were dead to the world! I've never had a kitten before, and the way they sleep comes as a surprise to me. They don't cat-nap like our grownup cat, who keeps one eye open at all times. They are completely out of it -- you can pick up a little paw and drop it and never get a reaction.

They also love us fiercely. They snuggle up to us and purr and purr, kneading our skin with their paws (and tiny needle-like claws). When they're not tearing around the house like a pack of cheetahs.

Somewhere in there is probably some material for an "All I really need to know I learned from my kittens" piece, except I'm sure someone has already done it.

Apropos of nothing: Facebook? I don't get it. There seems to be no there there. Am I missing something? I can find only a few people I know and the people I do find don't seem to have profiles. Do I have to be friends with them to see their profiles, or are they just lazy? And where are the messages? But then, I don't get Flickr either. Perhaps some things are not meant to be understood by people over 40. That's okay, we have other skillz, like...uh...our exhaustive knowledge of Elton John lyrics.

I'm off to do the last of the back-to-school shopping with the girls. I owe you a post about their school progress too. But I'm not going to be writing much more until they are back in class. We have one precious week of summer left.

Get back, honky cat!