January 2011
13 posts
The Elephant Mother
You’ve probably heard about Amy Chua’s Book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Chua’s approach to mothering is kind of like Sarah Palin’s, only Chua wants her kids to play violin, not hockey, so they can eventually be brilliant and accomplished professionals, not All-State team captains. A Tiger Mother is unabashedly aggressive, demanding single-focused academic and musical perfection...
Poisoning Postwarning
Last night around Sam and Micah and I were sitting at the dinner table when the phone rang. The caller ID said Unknown, so I let the machine pick it up.
It was an automated call from someone who identified herself as Sarah from Stop and Shop. She wanted to let me know about a recall of Nature’s Promise Organic salad products with sell-by dates including the one I’d just...
Swearing 101
I’m not a fan of MTV so-called reality shows or rap song lyrics for a number of reasons, but one of my biggest complaints is all the profanity. Not that I have anything against swearing, though. Quite the contrary, I have a healthy respect for it, though douchebag is always going to sound dumb.
My issue with swearing has nothing to do with being a prude. You can ask my...
Memorabilia
I have a sweater that belonged to my grandmother, made of (according to its label) French silk wool, cream colored with onyx and pearl beadwork. For me, it evokes memories of my grandmother on one of our annual visits to Atlantic City, which was an elegant place before its decline into urban blight that made the casinos seem like salvation. The sweater is memorabilia in the truest...
She Drives Me Crazy
With all this snow and ice, it’s been impossible to run outdoors, so I’ve had to hit the gym. Every year some gym member annoys me more than any other human being has ever annoyed me before, and every year the previously most annoying person is eclipsed by an even more annoying person. Last year’s object of irritation was a guy with terrible gas and excellent posture who looked...
Changing (Dis)Course
I saw this caption on a recent Time magazine cover about Obama’s tax compromise: Did Obama Fight or Cave? Using combat terminology to describe politics is trite media standard, but I believe the time has come for the media to mine a new and less divisive source for analogies. They might want to follow the lead of President Obama, who is choosing his rhetoric carefully. This was...
You Don't Say
We had a guest speaker come to class yesterday, a Yale professor who happens to be a friend of mine. He spoke to the class about evolution because we’re reading Inherit the Wind, a play based on the Scopes trial of 1925, which challenged whether or not evolution could be taught in public schools in Tennessee.
I’m not sure whether it’s because I’m a vocabulary junkie or because...
Time Out
I’m sitting here thinking how odd it is, that something I abhor- snow- is the key ingredient for something I adore- a snow day. Ironic, and the logical conclusion is professionally, perhaps I should be doing something else. But snow days offer not only a reprieve from work, but a reprieve from normal life. Snow days are nature’s mandated time out, and as such, even existential musings...
First
I know it’s late, but we are just now getting around to mailing our holiday card. I was really busy before Christmas, then there was the whole blizzard/getting stranded in Texas thing.
Anyway, I was really excited about my card concept. It was based on Twitter and would be a collaborative effort, with Sam and the kids condensing their annual news into two tweets, each 140...
A Love of the Rack and the Screw
College professors aside, I don’t think you can really apply yourself to the task of writing after a day of teaching, if you’ve done your job well. If you’re anything like me, it’s all you can do to finish your lesson plans, then sit like a zombie and watch reruns of Criminal Minds while eating ice cream. On the other hand, if you’ve spent the day writing, it would be torturous to get...
Sexual Inequality, Hollywood-Style
Over my vacation, I got to watch movies. In fact, I watched more movies in the last two weeks than I’d watched over the entire preceding year. Three of them in particular stood out; they are the type of movie I generally like (small, with some humor, some pathos, and without violence) but I noticed in all a couple of disturbing trends.
These movies- Greenberg, Cyrus,...
Resolution Solution
I’m pretty sure I’ve made- and broken- my exact age in New Year’s resolutions. It’s not for lack of willpower, so I really don’t think it’s a personal flaw; the problem is with the resolutions themselves, namely, my tendency to make sweepingly unrealistic ones. Resolutions to write a Pulitzer prize-winning novel or buy a small tropical island are doomed to fail, because let’s face it: as...