Livingston, I Presume

No more words

It's possible that my brain may break if I try to produce any more written text this afternoon, so I'll confine my Friday thoughts to these:

Irony=Cloth diapers accidentally winding up in a landfill.

Joy=Finding out my brother and sister-in-law are going to have a baby boy.

Frustration=Making a living in Montana.

Low expecations=Me watching TWILIGHT tonight, just to see what the fuss is about.

Days of whine and taxes

I am all for responsive lawmakers, so I want to applaud Republican Rep. Scott Reichner of Bigfork for holding a meeting with his constituents to discuss concerns about property tax re-appraisals. Good on ya, Scott! However, I get the impression--and this could be informed by my own stereotypes of northwesterly Montana, where "the government" is about as popular as Barack Obama draped in a rainbow flag--that he is having this less to talk about the issue than to attempt to stir up the pot about property taxes.

Nobody likes taxes, I get that. I know that there are plenty of other things I'd love to do with the money I spend on our property taxes, but there is this small problem that I also enjoy certain government services. Like schools. And educated workforces. And police and fire fighters. And roads. None of that happens without taxes. If you can figure out a way to run a city, state, or federal government without taxes, I'd be interested to hear it. (Also, you should make sure to pass that solution along to the governor of California, because I know he'd be interested.)

Since nobody likes taxes, it's damn sure that nobody likes higher ones. And I know that people are really angry this year that their property taxes have gone up while most people's property values have actually gone down this year. That does suck. However, I bet that not many of the people now complaining bitterly about the re-appraisal process were running off to town meetings and protests when their property values were going up without their having to pay higher taxes. "I'm mad as hell that my property taxes are too low, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" Um, yeah. That would happen.

The way I look at taxes is that you can pay them all at once, or you can be nickeled and dimed to death by your government services not being fully funded. I would rather pay more in taxes than have to use a toll road. I would rather pay more in taxes than have college students have to come out of school with crushing debt. I would rather pay more in taxes than have to buy school supplies for my son's classroom because the schools can't afford them--or have to buy shit I don't want when the schools have to hold fundraisers to support themselves. But maybe that's just me.

How now, low bow?

Apparently while I was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, our president was busily signing over our country to the Japanese emperor. Because that's what it means when one world leader shows another world figure the appropriate cultural respect, right?

I cannot honestly believe that people are trying to make this into some gesture of submission or using it as a dogwhistle for a bunch of unrepentant racists. Exhibit A, taken from a column in the conservative Washington Times:

...He established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. He stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did. No president before him so abused custom, traditions, protocol (and the country he represents).

[...]

It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

(Excuse me, but did he just say "sired"? Like a racehorse or something? And "Born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World?" I'm pretty sure that's code for her being fond of something that I can't say on this family blog, and it's not nice to talk about people's mothers, in any case.)

He was bowing. In Japan. Which is a country where people bow to greet one another and show respect. I guess President Obama was supposed to clap him on the shoulder and say, "Howdy!" instead?

Of all the disgraceful presidential acts that have taken place of late, I'm thinking this one doesn't even hit the radar. Let us remember George W. Bush surprising German Chancelor Angela Merkel with a clearly unwanted and thoroughly creepy backrub:

 

Oh, and here's a quotation I hadn't heard before, also from young Bush: "At the White House on April 15, 2008, President Bush remarked to Pope Benedict after his sermon: "Thank you, your Holiness. Awesome speech."

Awesome.

Of course, none of this comes close to George Bush, senior, who famously vomited into the lap of the Japanese prime minister:

Between bowing and vomiting, I think I know what most people would prefer.

YouTwitFace

Now that my blog posting interface looks like Twitter, and my Facebook status looks like Twitter, and I can link my LinkedIn account to Twitter, why do I need Twitter? Because I like it, that's why! I'm irritated that all of these other sites feel the need to Twittify my experience. That is all.

(Posted from the so-cute microblog interface! I feel like I should have a little heart above the "i" or something.)

Dumpkin

For the record, pumpkin bread is not supposed to have a molten core. There is a reason that Pumpkin Lava Cake is not a thing. Neither is it supposed to hew to the bottom of the pan, particularly when said pan has been lovingly buttered in preparation for the batter. Finally, pumpkin bread should not require the use of a spoon for eating. That's just wrong.

Here's what my pumpkin bread should have looked like:

 

Here's what it looked like:

 

I had planned to follow up my pumpkin bread debut with some cranberry bread, but I think I'll refrain. Two plates full of pumpkin pudding in the house is probably plenty of sweets.

Now, who wants a piece?

Snowy Sunday

If the whole winter were like this, I wouldn't complain.

 

 

 

 

 

Brothers and sisters

Nobody would ever have trouble guessing that Connery and Emerson are brother and sister:

They look a lot alike, and the fact that Emerson imitates his facial expressions and mannerisms only makes that more pronounced. But for all that surface, they sure are different kids. I don't think I was prepared for how different they would be. I thought we would get to reuse at least some of the mad parenting skillz we amassed during Connery's baby- and early childhood. Alas, no.

Connery, for all his willfulness now, was a pretty easy baby and toddler--especially where physical misadventure was concerned. He did not know how to operate the remote controls for the TV until a couple of months ago--because we once told him not to touch the remotes and he never did. Before I had Emerson, I assumed that was just because of what a great job we had done in instilling in him some intrinsic respect for us. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Turns out he's just really compliant. We say the exact same thing to Emerson in the same tone and she does whatever it is we've asked her not to with more vigor.

It's not for nothing that her Halloween costume was a little devil. Apparently the only thing you ever know about parenting is how to parent a single child a week ago--you'd think we'd get some cumulative knowledge going on. Not so much.

Put food on your family

Of the many, many trend stories that I would like to see die a rapid death, "the unstoppable demise of the American family unit" is probably highest on the list. Whether we are being threatened by TEH GAYZ or single parents or selfish, non-breeding couples, we are told constantly that "our" ideal vision of Ward and June Cleaver and their two boys is in grave peril. Except that for most of us, the Cleavers weren't and aren't the ideal. And that different kinds of families--showing their togetherness in different ways--don't represent a threat to us.

Even when the data don't support the downfall theory, reporters seem duty-bound to write as if they do. This morning's AP story on family dinners is a great example. The data show that "more than 60 percent of those who live with families said they sat down with family for dinner at least five nights in the past week...(and)...Home-cooked meals were the norm, not just takeout and the like."

So two-thirds of families have "family dinner", which should indicate the health of the institution, right? Wrong! Because sometimes we have dinner and the phone rings. Here's the lead:

"Pass the gravy — plus the phone and the remote control. It's dinnertime in America.

Between the blare of the TV, the ring of the phone and Junior texting his buddies under the table or from the couch, the modern dinner comes with a heaping helping of distracting bells and whistles, an Associated Press-iVillage Food poll found."

If you stopped reading right there, you might assume that the vast majority of American families are having sham family dinners, with everybody tuned in to the TV or too busy texting to even taste June's meatloaf. But here's what the data actually show:

• 24 percent of people "always" have the TV on during dinner but 30 percent "never" do. In fact, while 55 percent admit to having the TV on during some mealtimes, the other 45 say it's on "rarely" or "never". Hardly the kind of majority that proves all of us are just lazy, couch-eating slobs.
• 5 percent of people "always" have someone at the table texting or on a cell phone, while 73 percent say they "never" do. 
• 67 percent of people polled said that on five or more evenings in the past seven days, someone made a home-cooked meal. That's compared with just 12 percent of people who said that there were zero to two evenings a week that happened in their household.

And yet, even with the vast majority of the survey showing people having home-cooked family dinners, mostly without distractions, the headline on the table? "Most cite interruptions at dinner table." I may not be a stats whiz, but even I know you can't count all of those smaller, distracted percentages cumulatively.

Family dinners in my house are serious business. We don't have a TV in the dining room--hell, we don't even have one upstairs--and we cook and eat as a family. That's the way it was when I was growing up, and that's the way I plan for it to be for my kids. In fact, growing up in my family, we not only ate pretty much every dinner together, we also ate breakfast together. (Even on school days! Mad props, Mom and Dad! No idea how you managed that!) But I also recognize that family dinners can be hard, and to imply--as this article does, I think--that family dinner can only be one thing to be valuable is to do a disservice to the people who don't have that privilege.

It's a privilege to have your family all on a single schedule--i.e. to not have one parent working nights, which makes family dinner impossible. It's a privilege to have the time and energy to prepare (and clean up!) a home-cooked meal. It's a privilege to have been taught how to plan meals and grocery shop for them and prepare them. 

I do think that American families are in crisis, but it's not because of laziness and TV and cell phones. It's because there is no safety net for any of us. I wish the media and our public officials would focus on that and not on 1950s markers of family health.

Where everybody knows your name

Montana is a small place. I mean, it's huge--like, the size of Germany huge--but it is tiny in terms of people living here. To continue the German analogy, Germany has about 80 million people within its borders; Montana, as of the last figures available, has 967,400. Ponder that kind of open space for a moment. There's a reason that Ted Kaczynski chose Montana.

But I mention this not to evoke memories of one of the more famous Montana residents of the past couple of decades (which is not the same as his being a Montanan, because we all know he came from Harvard, and maybe Chicago). It's more to explain how things work here.

When I started to have questions about school standards for gifted kids and accommodations, I did first talk to local school officials. That just makes sense. But when I couldn't get the information I needed, I didn't have to take some intermediary step. I just called the Montana Office of Public Instruction and spoke to the head of their Gifted and Talented Education office. And that's normal. I expect to be able to talk to people in my government at all levels in Montana, because that's the way it works here. The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee? We all call him Max--and a few other things these days, as it happens.

The other thing is that the longer you live here, the more chance there is that you will end up knowing someone in the Big Important Office you're calling. I called the State Elections Office about an absentee ballot question while we were living in Prague and was routed to a guy who had been my cousin's roommate in college. The very nice and helpful woman at OPI happened to be the daughter of my godparents' neighbors, in whose yard I had camped when I was a kid. And so on. I kind of love it.

So, for old time's sake and a demonstration of Montananess, I offer up the following picture, featuring my daughter and Max, a.k.a. Montana's senior senator, enjoying a barbecue in Livingston last summer. He has clearly just told her about his healthcare plan, which is why she is smacking her forehead.

 

Close-up:

Prescient, that one.

Veterans' Day

On Veterans' Day, here's to the brave men and women who serve all over the world. Far too many of them are away from their families, friends, and other loved ones, and few of us stop to think about the effect that deployments and other separations have on the families involved. Below is an unbelievably touching newscast featuring soldiers returning home and surprising their kids at school. You'll want to have a Kleenex nearby.

I came across that after watching an amazing compilation of videos of service members being greeted by their dogs after long deployments, posted on Mental Floss. It's definitely worth checking out the dog ones--just try to watch without being amazed at how well these dogs know who it is coming in the door, sometimes after more than a year away. It's a poignant reminder of how much military servicepeople and their families sacrifice.Here's one great example:

To all U.S. military personnel--past and present--thank you for your service and your sacrifice. We remember.

Thanks to LookyDaddy for alerting the Twitterverse to Mental Floss' great post.