this woman’s work

Mornings are exceptionally important to white people, as witnessed by their love of breakfast places. However, some white people never go out for breakfast on a Sunday Morning. The reason? The Sunday edition of the New York Times. A perfect white sunday generally works like this. Wake up at around 8:45, if the paper is delivered, then one walks to the front door, retrieves the paper and begins a pot of coffee. If the paper is not delivered, a white person will go out and usually buy the supplies needed for breakfast - bagels, orange juice, lox, cream cheese, or waffle mix. Some white people even pick up freshly brewed coffee with the paper!

Once coffee, food, and the newspaper have been procured, white people put on extra mellow music (Jazz, Classical, or for the cooler ones in the bunch, ambient trip hop or something along those lines). They then procede to read each section of the paper, stopping periodically to tell their partner about the interesting news they have just seen. “Looks like another civil war might break out in Africa,” “did you see that the Met is doing Tristan and Isolde?”

White couples usually fight over who gets to read the Sunday Magazine first. How do we know this? They will tell us repeatedly about how they always fight over the Sunday magazine.

from Stuff White People Like

(Note: White people also love to laugh about how white we are. Did you ever see that Simpsons? Where Homer is watching a black comedian going, “White people drive like this — deedle deedle dee — and black people drive like this” and here he acts really laid back and cool and Homer says, “It’s so true! We’re so lame!”)

That’s the name of a picture book Madison used to like but it’s also what I did this morning. I’ve got a lot of work to do and my head isn’t cooperating so I thought heading out into the slush would help. (I’ll find out if it did after I finish this entry.) I listened to Selected Shorts this morning. It’s on at a ridiculously early hour of the morning Sundays here but I used to listen to it when I fed Madison early early in the morning three years ago so I was happy to find the podcast.

You adoption-oriented readers, you might want to download the one titled “Shattered Peace.” I didn’t think it was going to be adoption-ish from the description but it is. It’s Hope Davis reading The Woman from Hamburg by Hanna Krall. As a memoirist, I was intrigued to hear the story because Krall fictionalizes journalism to create short stories based on truth.

Although the work of the Polish journalist Hanna Krall is billed as nonfiction, it is not surprising that the title story in her collection ”The Woman From Hamburg” appeared as fiction in a recent issue of The New Yorker. Krall’s distinctive style could be called Holocaust gonzo journalism. She reports the basic facts but adds a novelistic twist, weaving her interviews into elegant, multilayered narratives. In Madeline G. Levine’s subtle translation, Krall’s deceptively artless prose speaks of real events with the power of fiction — creating a mysterious fusion she acknowledges in her story ”Salvation”: ”My work as a reporter has taught me that logical stories, without riddles and holes in them, in which everything is obvious, tend to be untrue. And things that cannot be explained in any fashion really do happen.”

From a New York Times book review, which you can read to find out more about what the story is about and it’s adoption connections. But you really need to hear it (or read it).

I keep thinking that what ultimately will redeem (and can redeem) adoption is Truth. Tell expectant mothers the truth. Tell adoptees the truth. Tell adoptive parents the truth. Stop lying to the kids. Give them access to their birth certificates. Quit using adoption as an excuse to lie to children about where they come from. Even when the truth is hard or ugly or painful, it’s still the truth and adoptees deserve the truth. There are no white lies in adoption.

Christina Katz linked to a youtube mom-song and it reminded me of this great song from Cathy & Marcy: Orange Cocoa Cake. (You’ll have to scroll down to find it!) Seriously — if you’re a parent and have ever tried to have a conversation on the phone with the kids around, you’ll relate!!! And if you don’t have kids and have tried to talk to a friend with kids, you’ll relate, too. (Especially the line towards the end!)

Damn. It’s from Madison coughing in my face. Kids do that. They wipe their noses on you, lick your food and cough in your face. How can a person not get sick under those circumstances?

Did I tell you that Noah dyed his hair? Well, I dyed it. Well, we bleached it. He looks like he belongs to my friend K’s family — they’re all strawberry blonds only they come by it honest. No pics yet but I’ll upload some eventually.

I’m working on my chapter outline right now. I know my conclusion and I have my beginning — now how do I get from one end to the other? By taking lots of notes and staring glumly at my open word document! Actually Scrivener file but you know what I mean. I kinda wish I was working on it right now but I’m theoretically watching Pushing Daisies with Brett. (I actually like this show because I’m a showtunes geek and I love Molly Shannon who’s guesting but I can blog and watch tv at the same time because I’m magic and because my blog standards are sometimes low.)

1. I have A LOT of work and it’s all due right this second or tomorrow. I’m going to be slaving away all day. No blog time.

2. Someone I know in the blogosphere knows (in person) the brilliant young woman who wrote this brilliant essay and she and I both want to encourage you all to read it if you haven’t, although you probably have.

3. You know what’s really boring for a kid? Dialysis. You know what makes dialysis easier? Video games and television-watching! No guilt there — there really isn’t much else to do while you’re hooked up to a machine acting as your kidneys. Problem is lots of hospitals have a few broken games and a handful of outdated shows. You and your kids can help and Julia tells you how.

Bilibo indoors and outdoors, all year round…

Be sure to click the video! (Sap that I am, I actually got a lump in my throat watching all that open-ended play. No, truly I did!)

(I totally forgot I was supposed to review this yesterday — I had it on my calendar for the 26th for some reason — so this is a day late. Also, to the Blogher folks — I’m not receiving a gift certificate for this review so am not violating the Blogher ads guidelines.)

Like lots of homeschoolers, I have a small collection of books for things to do on rainy days. My favorite one is The Fun Encyclopedia, which came from a library sale like most of the activity books I have. I’ve got ‘em for science tricks, nature activities and regular every day “Mom, there’s nothing to do.” I buy them whenever the price is right and I give some away and some I keep and flip through every now and then or tell Noah to flip through every now and then. The ones I skip — sometimes reluctantly — are the gendered ones. There are an unbelievable number of old books that are “just for boys” and “just for girls” and some of them even look pretty good but I skip them because it’s a message I’m fighting a lot — there there are things just for boys or just for girls.

So I skipped the whole Dangerous Book… brouhaha, too.  I figured Iggulden was sort of cashing in on this nostalgic idea, what with the hardback cover and fancy old-fashioned script. And I thought if people want to spend $24.95 to teach boys how to build a fire instead of snagging an old boy scout manual or wait until an American Boys Handy Book shows up at a garage sale and grab it for $.50. (I’m gonna add here that three out of four grandparents were really into this book in our family and one of them is handing it over to Noah for Hanukkah.)  I haven’t read the whole thing through but I did check it out and it looks pretty much like the old activity books I leave on shelves at thrift stores only the pictures are in color.

The Daring Book for Girls, on the other hand, updates the genre. While I’m still no fan of gendered activity books I’m also not hugely against them (to each his/her own, right?) but if there are going to be gendered books, it’s nice to have one for girls that includes paper airplanes and forts and isn’t just a treatise on the home arts. But then would you expect any less from two feminist mothers of daughters?

It’s definitely an improvement on the dusty tomes dedicated to girls that I’ve found going through boxes of books at church sales and also far more likely to catch the interest of a kid, what with the pretty aqua color, terrific illustrations, and sparkly font on the front. Because, let’s face it,  The Fun Encyclopedia is awesome but it also looks like an encyclopedia and not a book that’s going to be fun as it trumpets. (It is though — it’s a totally fun book. It just has bad packaging that hasn’t improved for sitting in someone’s basement for a few decades.)

I’ve already got a little girl picked out to receive my copy of this book (no, it’s not my daughter) along with a “changing bodies” kind of book ‘cuz she’s at that age. So this year she’s getting a book that let’s her celebrate her childhood and one to celebrate her impending womanhood. I’d say that’s pretty darn good, eh?

I use gmail and my goal is to keep my inbox under 50 emails because that’s how many fit on one page. But for the past few weeks I’ve been able to keep my inbox under 20 (and sometimes 10!) thanks to this nifty email service.

Sandy is an automated system that let’s me clear my inbox out quickly. It’s buggy but it’s just come out of beta and everyone can sign up for it and give it a try. How it works is that every time you get an email that needs an action but not a right-away action you tell Sandy to remember it for you. Say, for example, that you want to follow up with an editor on Wednesday and there’s a client who asked you to get back to them next week and someone else is asking a question that you need to look up on your other computer (this happened to me a lot last week). You just email Sandy and tell “her” to remind you at such-and-such a time then you delete (or archive) your email and forget about it.

It’s been a big help to me so I’m sharing it here in case it’s a big help to you. (A shout out to Web Worker Daily for the heads-up!)

From: Day 11: Organ and Tissue Donor Sunday. : Kidneys and Eyes

In September 2001 Quinn was born and diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. She would need a kidney transplant to survive they said. We were told: “with kids like this you need to take her home and love her as long as she is with you.” Three months later, Gage was diagnosed with PKD as well and we were devastated once again.We’ve lived our lives with this congregation.

We didn’t know then he would be placed on the national list in need of a kidney transplant by age 7.

For the next few years we tried to act like a normal family. We were active in this church, our kids were in activities and school, we moved, we worked. And the kids were regularly tested and took many daily medications to control the devastating effects of PKD.

Knowing your child has a progressive disease and waiting for your child’s organs to fail until you will be able to do something in nearly unbearable.

Now go read the rest of it.

I’m reading Mary Pipher’s Writing to Change the World and I came across this:

Theologian Reinhold Niebuht wrote that to effect change, we need to practice “spiritual discipline against resentment.”

Pretty heady instructions, that. My mom used to think I ought to be a lawyer because I love to argue but the problem is that I get emotionally involved in my arguments and usually I end up crying. It feels so urgent to me, whatever it is that I’m arguing. That’s why I’ d lose on a debate team, too.

But it goes back to empathy. I’m trying hard hard hard not to be so caught up in what I’m feeling that I can’t see where someone else is coming from. Sometimes even recognizing another point of view feels like giving in, you know? Sometimes it feels scary to say, “I can see how you’d feel that way.”

When I was a young feminist taking my first women’s studies class one of my assignments was to interview a woman who worked for The Child Assault Prevention Program (”Living Safe, Strong and Free!”). I’m not positive, but I think she helped create that child abuse program, which is now used nationwide. In any case, she was a radical feminist lesbian and we were talking about activism and effecting change. She told me that she used to not shave under her arms or her legs. She used to buzz her hair crazy-short (it was still pretty short but styled) and she didn’t wear skirts or make-up. Then she started working for CAPP and part of her job was development, which is the getting of money. And she discovered that these fancy-schmancy business guys in suits were more likely to listen to her if she wore some make-up (this was the eighties after all when we all wore at least four shades of eyeshadow) and if she wore a skirt and she noticed that her unshaven legs didn’t look so hot in nylons so she started shaving her legs.

“I did this,” she told me. “Because I wanted the program to have money because I wanted to prevent child abuse.”

But some of her friends were angry. They said she was giving in. They said she was selling out. There’s no doubt that it was a sacrifice for her but it was a sacrifice she was willing to make in the interest of a cause that was more important to her than not shaving her legs.

I’ve thought about this off and on in the twenty years since that interview. I’ve thought about how powerful it can be to change things from the inside out and how compromise, used with discretion, can be a good thing. I thought of it again today in a conversation with another blogger (she knows who she is!).

Sometimes it takes more strength to work with the perceived enemy.