Michael Lewis

When I was a kid, maybe in my early teens, I loved Roger Angell's baseball books (1975! remember 1975?! S still hasn't forgiven his brother for rooting for the Reds, just to be perverse). Since then, though, I haven't been much for sports writing. But Michael Lewis may be converting me (talk about belatedly jumping on a bandwagon). He's even got me interested in football. I might just have to read Moneyball, which S and D (along with basically everyone else--like I said, I'm late to this party) think is one of the best baseball books ever.

Or I could just keep being disappointed by novels.

The Emperor's Children

You might think, if you have read reviews, or even if you have read the book, that The Emperor's Children is about the pretensions of the boho liberal elite, New York ca. 9/11, the perils of idol worship, or Claire Messud's delectably perfect sentences. And you might be right. But I am here to tell you, right now, in this very blog, that even if The Emperor's Children is about any or all of those things, which it certainly is, its most important topic, nay, its central theme, is, I aver and assert, the power of motherhood. Yes indeed, Claire Messud has some babies, and lo and behold, the mothers shall save the earth.

I must confess that, as I read most of this novel, I was not so loving it. I was admiring the meticulous precision of the sentences, and the reach and breadth of the cultural observation, but the general...well, nastiness, was not so much my cup of tea. I don't think that Messud intended the book to be as nasty as I found it, but it just wasn't sitting right with me, the general sense of disdain for everyone.

Then I realized that the one character who was not deluded, in either her attitude to herself, or her attitude to others, really, in fact, the one character who was not, on a certain level, pathetic, was beautiful, forgiving, supportive Annabel Thwaite, loving mother and wife, dedicated public service lawyer, and hostess par excellence (can you say Mrs. Ramsay? I think you can, especially if you think of Murray Thwaite, her husband, as Mr. Ramsay with a feminist veneer, which is not, in this case, as oxymoronic as it might seem, the key word being veneer).

So I realized that, and didn't think much about it, and then I took a break from the book for maybe two days, 40 pages from the end (not a break because I didn't want to read, but because I didn't have time). And the funny thing was, I liked the last 40 pages of the book much better, or, perhaps, I felt much more comfortable in the last 40 pages, and I think, perhaps, that this is because 1) the 9/11 section is not only much better than any other 9/11 sections in recent novels I have read, but really very good; and 2) in the last 40 pages, the novel finally seems imbued with sympathy.

And really, what happens, in those last 40 pages, is that mothers take center stage. I'm going to try to do this without spoilers, so let it suffice to say that 1) Annabel is gracious, helpful, forgiving, and supportive, once again; 2) Bootie Tubb's mother is poignant, not oppressive, as she has been; 3) Randy Minkoff is a star; and 4) Danielle Minkoff, the only character besides Annabel whom the body of the novel kind of likes, and who, while she is not a mother, is quite maternal toward Bootie Tubb, becomes the novel's emotional core.

So that's the main thing I have to say about The Emperor's Children: it's not the emperor who really matters; it's his wife (other things I might say are that the Anglicisms annoyed me, especially given that Messud has spent much more of her life in America than in England; that I would compare this novel to On Beauty and The Corrections, but that would be an essay in itself; that Trollope seems like the historical comparison; that I liked The Last Life better [I thought that one was wonderful, a reaction I didn't have to this one], and that I fully agree with whoever said that the reason all the critics love this one so much is because it is about them).

Why I Can't Stand Daphne Merkin

Let us now deplore the present moment and lament all that has been lost on the way to becoming overstimulated and spiritually starved inhabitants of an imperiled social order. First we must ask: Where did we go wrong? Where did we go so terribly wrong? I know many of you would blame it on the usual suspects, on the insatiable maw of the media or on large, amorphous forces run amok — our having started up in Iraq, say, or our having ravaged the planet in the name of progress and capitalist gain — but I blame it all on lip gloss. I believe there is something irrevocably ruinous about a culture in which women are expected to go around with their lips in a permanent state of shiny readiness, a perennial Marilyn Monroe moue of glistening sexual receptivity, hinting at the possibility that they, like Monroe, sleep fetchingly in the nude. Just after this thought occurred to me on a recent Saturday night while I was waiting for the subway, I found myself sitting next to two college-age women who were discussing — I kid you not, this is either synchronicity or Sartre’s idea of hell — the merits of various glosses, Kiehl’s as compared with Lancôme’s as compared with Trish McEvoy’s, which one lasted longer and why.

Neither the irony nor the references are cute. Nor are they effective. The diction and phrasing are headache inducing. The self-satisfied naughtiness (see Merkin on sex, anywhere and everywhere) is oppressively banal. God, she just makes my skin crawl.

This piece only gets worse. Or rather, the second paragraph is worse, and then I had to stop. If anyone has made it through and wants to persuade me I should keep reading, feel free.

Daphne Merkin, you are no Susan Sontag.

This Made Me Cry

The first few paragraphs of a front page story in today's paper:

When 450 Marine reservists marched onto a grassy field yesterday morning, not a smile could be seen in the shoulder-to-shoulder formation of veterans who had just survived seven months in one of Iraq's most dangerous places.

But in a surging, curving line of loved ones who nearly encircled them, no such stoicism was seen. The boisterous crowd cheered, yelped, whooped, and shouted 450 names at the First Battalion, 25th Marines.

And when the order to "Fall out!" was given, the Marines, finally home from the insurgent cauldron of Fallujah, fell into the long, clenching embraces of tearful spouses, parents, and siblings.

Corporal Leonardo Jorge of Methuen, his arms cradling a 4-month-old son he was seeing for the first time, gently kissed the baby's head, over and over, as his wife, Teresa, pressed her head against the Marine's back. "He's beautiful," said Jorge, 27. "I've dreamed of this day every day for seven months."

It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys

For reasons I won't go into, I am reading (OK, skimming) this book, which is quite odd because it is a self-help book about getting organized and I am a highly organized person who never reads self-help books. In fact, I don't think I've ever read a single one. No, that's not quite true, if you count Kim Chernin, though I'm not sure you can, because that book is more cultural analysis than help. Even in the early 90s, when all my friends were reading The Bonds of Love, I didn't (though as I look at the description of that one, it doesn't really register as self-help either, which probably tells you something about me and my friends; indeed, if you have a certain sensibility, or remember a certain historical moment, this paragraph should tell you a lot about me and my friends).

At any rate, I am clearly proving myself a self-help-book neophyte, and, you know, it's not like I don't need help, because, really, I do, and I'm sure there are self-help books that would speak to me, but in general when I commit to a book, I want narrative, so I have tended to meet my self-help needs with magazine articles, which require less of a commitment (and I'm not even going to riff on literary commitment issues and the viability of self-help, because I really did mean this to be the kind of blog that got to the point).

Anyway, this book, which is clearly self-help (I mean, it offers a "seven-step path"), but which I clearly don't need (like I said, I am constitutionally incapable of NOT being organized), is quite fascinating. Of course, what interest me most are the narratives of unorganized people, which are kind of like travel writing, for they are bringing me into a universe of which I know not at all (15 years of unopened mail?!). But also, the method of getting organized propounded here seems eminently sensible: the author argues that you need to understand why you are unorganized, you need to think about what you want in your life that disorganization is keeping you from, you need to have a reason to get organized, you need to take small steps (I know, that's not seven, and I'm not even sure those are her steps, because, like I said, I'm skimming, and I'm more interested in the narrative, but that's kind of the gist).

My point being: if you are NOT organized, you might want to take a look at this book.

Mountain Man Dance Moves

I know, I know, McSweeney's is so turn of the millenium. But even the review of this book made me laugh. May have to get it for the bathroom. Those Schott's Miscellanies are pretty well-read by now, though M would never let me remove them.

Girls Who Grow Up to Be Writers

When I was a girl, I was amazed by the fact that I wanted to grow up to be a writer and so did all the heroines of the books I loved. Rebecca (of Sunnybrook Farm), Maggie (whose Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Laura (in the Woods and on the Prairie), Ella (the oldest of the All-of-a-Kind Family), Betsy (but not Tacy or Tib), and I'm sure there were more. Perhaps everyone wanted to be a writer?

Then, of course, I realized that all those books were written by women who had once been girls who wanted to grow up to be writers, and then grew up to be writers and wrote books about girls like themselves.

So I just wanted to let everyone know that the trend continues in contemporary girl lit, because both Abby Hayes and Lily B. (who is on the Brink of Cool) want to be writers. And there must be more, no?

The Queen

The first thing you need to know is that I got up at 5 to watch Diana's wedding and funeral.

So as a celebrity/royalty/politics/London junkie who agrees that Helen Mirren is a fabulous actress (though I can't call myself a Helen Mirren junkie), of course I liked The Queen.

And yet, I'm not quite sure why the superlative reviews. 98% positive? I've never seen such a thing.

So either I am the child who sees the naked emperor, or I'm an idiot.

I mean, this movie is seriously cheesy. And absurdly predictable. Of course we know what is going to happen, because we were there, and the movie works our knowledge with all its might, showing us those photos of Diana on the yacht with Dodi, photographers outside the Paris hotel, the queen agonizing over whether to go back to London and do the right thing, and, yes, Diana once again dies and the queen once again does the right thing, and our hearts surge along with all of it, because, well, because they did then, and they do again (yes, that's the royal we, in honor of the theme).

But it's worse than that. There's a beautiful stag out there in those Scottish hills, and Prince Philip takes the boys out stalking it (you get it, don't you? please, you have to get it). The queen's car stalls out in a river, and while she's waiting for the ghillies to rescue her, she sees the stag, tells him how beautiful he is, and, when she hears the stalkers, shoos him away. I don't need to tell you what happens to the stag, do I? And do I need to tell you that the queen sheds a tear...for the stag?

Then there's Tony coming to appreciate the queen and the queen coming to appreciate Tony, and at the beginning of the movie he goes to see her and is nervous, and at the end he goes to see her and is confident, etc. and so forth, and so on.

Cheesy, seriously cheesy.

Or, like I said, maybe I'm just an idiot.

Highlights: the actors who play Prince Philip and Alastair Campbell.

Lowlight: remembering how once Tony Blair was a beacon of hope.

Edited to add: Ooh, I just discovered Metacritic (you can heave a collective "duh" now--how could I possibly have been writing a book blog without Metacritic?!). There The Queen gets a 92.

Living With Haley

Lately I've had several reminders of the old saw (is it an old saw? if it's not, it should be) that all that really matters is your health, which is to say, if you and your loved ones are healthy (and have enough material resources to meet your basic needs), life is good. This article is another reminder. Heartbreaking.

Overheard in New York

Because, if you're anything like me, you forget about Overheard in New York for months at a time. And if you're anything like me, you could use a laugh right about now. (Be sure you make it back to the Wednesday one-liners.)

NY Times Magazine

These pictures (click on the link to the slideshow) seem like adequate proof that models are too skinny these days. Yuck.

I was just noticing, as I looked up beets the other night (yes, I know how to cook beets, but it never hurts to check), how badly our current copy of The Joy of Cooking is falling apart. Like, the tape from its initial falling apart is falling apart. So I'm glad we'll have an excuse to get a new one. According to the article, the general consensus is that the 1997 is a failure, but we use it constantly. Of course we kept our old paperback copy of some previous version, which is now in perhaps three pieces, loosely bound together with, yes, more tape, but really, we hardly refer to it. We'll have to see if the 2006 similarly supplants its predecessor.

Atul Gawande

I usually pay glancing attention to the MacArthur genius awards, noting the names I recognize, which tend to be in literature, politics, and the arts (my favorite MacArthur ever is Bob Moses, founder of the Algebra Project) (did you know that algebra is the single most important predictor of future academic success? make sure your kids take algebra! and, more importantly, support the Algebra Project and help disadvantaged kids gain access to algebra--and their futures!) (end of public service announcement).

This year's MacArthurs didn't really grab me. Now that I look over the list, I realize that I've heard of several, but when I first saw the announcement in the newspaper, I really only nodded my head at David Macaulay.

It wasn't till I read this story on childbirth from The New Yorker that I remembered Atul Gawande had won. Then I slapped myself upside the head and nodded really enthusiastically!

There's a doctor who writes features for my local newspaper who sucks (there's also a psychiatrist who writes op-eds who is really good--I'm not talking about her). I actually don't remember the guy's name, and I'm not going to try and figure it out, because I wouldn't mention it anway, but 1) he's not a very good writer, and 2) he has a hard time with the difference between objective and opinionated. I'm thinking of two pieces he wrote this year, one about some issue related to adoption (I think--or maybe it was religion? infertility? ...obviously memorable) and the other about pain relief in childbirth. In each, he set up the piece as a thoughtful exploration of the issues, when in fact he clearly had an agenda he was trying to sneak in--and in the case of the pain relief article, his agenda was "Pain is unpleasant and can be alleviated so what's wrong with these silly women who insist on natural childbirth?" Need I say more?

I mean, I'm fine with objectivity, and I'm fine with opinion, and I'm fine with subtlety and complexity, but I am totally not OK with sneaky writing, especially sneaky fact-based writing (sneaky suspense novels are a different matter altogether, but we're not talking about suspense novels here).

Anyway, doctor-writer Atul Gawande is the antithesis of that guy. He writes about science and medicine in a thoughtful, complex, careful manner that garners both fascination and respect. He upends conventional wisdom more effectively than almost any writer I know ("The Cancer-Cluster Myth" is one of the best examples of this). And he is a beautiful writer who impeccably models how to structure both the explanatory and the exploratory essay, often at the same time.

The New Yorker piece is a perfect case in point. It balances the story of a single birth with the history of childbirth and obstetrics; it acknowledges the complexities of human capability and natural processes; it shows us practical realities but also considers their metaphysical implications.

Definitely a well-deserved MacArthur.

Eat, Pray, Love

Who told me to read this book? Jenny, was it you? Postacademic, I don't think it was you, but you should read this book, if you haven't already.

Recovering from depression, divorce, and a disastrous relationship, Liz Gilbert spends a year in Italy, India, and Indonesia trying to find herself (and, yes, she does note that all those countries begin with the egotism of I). I know, sounds narcissistic, not to mention vaguely squirm-inducing when I add that the India leg is spent in an ashram under the (remote) tutelage of a guru. So if you feel like you don't want to go there on this one, well, don't.

But for me? Oh, this was such the book (though I did spend the first 100 pages feeling hideously jealous of Gilbert for the glamour of her life, and then feeling hideously guilty for being hideously jealous of a woman who spent four years crying, which of course gets to the heart of one of the book's central matters which is the question of how to accept yourself for who you are, which is such an enormous issue for me that you'll just have to take my word for it) (and as for the jealousy part, as I was reading, which I've been doing whenever I have a moment for the last week,E wanted to see what I had blogged a year ago, and this was what I blogged a year ago, suggesting that there have been moments of glamorous traveling excitement in my life, and also, of course, pointing to the relativity of everything).

So anyway, this book has food, partying, yoga, transcendence, friendship, romance, and a best friend who can cure a urinary tract infection in less than two hours. Come on, how can you go wrong? And she's funny, too. And strikes a great balance (theme of Indonesia section) between spiritual and self-deprecating (not quite sure self-deprecating is what I mean--I tried sarcastic, but that wasn't right either: it's like every time you think she's going too far, too mumbo jumbo, too narcissistic, she lets you know that she knows you think she's going too far, and she nicely punctures the moment, but without letting the air out, if that makes any sense).

Anyway, a few other things I loved, which are really all about me, or should I say I?

- At the end of her four months in Italy, she goes to Taormina. I went to Taormina! I loved Taormina (in a unseasonably warm October, so there were no tourists but it was still beachily delightful, and I was three months pregnant, so I couldn't drink, but the food, oh the food, and the Sicilyness of Sicily).

- She arrived in India on December 30. I arrived in India on December 30! Oh no, I think maybe it was December 31. Because I think I spent New Year's Eve on the train from Bombay to Delhi. Oh well, close enough.

- Her list of emotional discomforts: "jealousy, anger, fear, disappointment, loneliness, shame, boredom." Oh yeah. Not to mention her failed efforts not to talk so much. Yup, been there.

- The "American" road trip in Bali: one of the funniest things I've read in a while.

And to get uncharacteristically serious for a moment, I live in a constant struggle for self-acceptance, contentment, and compassion. Sometimes the struggle is too much for me, but this book made me feel up for it again.


[I don't know why these damn posts are all so long. I'm sorry these posts are so long. I know it's bad blog form--or rather I think it's bad blog form--but I just can't seem to help it.]

Dream Double Feature

The Queen and Marie Antoinette.

I'd settle for just one. Before the DVDs come out.

Junie B.

When M was a new reader, she had zero interest in Junie B. Jones. She didn't like Magic Treehouse either. Those were her friends' favorites, but, she would have none of them. I was trying to remember what she did read, and all I could come up with was Nate the Great, though I also remember her loving Poppleton, about whom she did her first book report in the first grade. When I asked her this evening what she liked to read back then, she mentioned something else that I've forgotten, and now she's asleep so I can't ask her again. But basically, I remember her in kindergarten reading those little stapled-together literacy books--the ones that go "The tree is green. The leaf is green. The grass is green. I am green with envy at the greening of the entire universe." (OK, that's not quite a verbatim quote)--and in second grade reading Malory Towers and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Betsy-Tacy, and I have no recollection of what happened in between.

E, on the other hand, is a huge fan of both Magic Treehouse (known in her circles as the Jack and Annie books) and Junie B. They read Magic Treehouse in her class last year, and I think maybe Junie B. too. Then I read her Junie B. at home, and now [drum roll, please] she can read Junie B. to me (E is reading about a year earlier than M did, agewise, and maybe half a year, or a year and a half, depending on how you count it, gradewise, though it's hard to compare, because being a December baby, she is in her second year of kindergarten, which apparently makes her the rock star of kindergarten: the other moms come up to me at pick-up and say, wide-eyed, "R told me that E is the only kid in the class who can open her own package of animal crackers," and "M says that E is the only one who can read AND tie her shoes!" [I had no idea about the animal crackers!]).

But as we all recall, this is no longer a cute-kid-anecdote kind of blog, and the point here today is Junie B.

When E first insisted that I read her Junie B., I was completely disgusted. Not by the grammar, which I believe is a frequent objection (and this post really should be chock-a-block with links, but I just don't feel like it, and if you don't have a five-year-old girl and you have never heard of Junie B. Jones, well, you know how to google, don't you? you just put your lips together...oops, wrong allusion). No, I was disgusted because Junie B. is just so incredibly obnoxious.

Then a friend said that Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake is one of the funniest books ever, and, friends, she was right. That is one hilarious book, and I can't say that I would pick Junie B. out of a line-up or take her to a desert island, but I came to terms with the presence of Junie B. in my life, and I accepted her.

Then my dad discovered Junie B. This weekend. Cousin L is about as enamoured of Junie B. as E is, and is also just now reading Junie B. on her own. We were all hanging out this weekend, and the girls were all about Junie B., and my dad was DISGUSTED. It was the grammar. It was everything. Well, actually, it was mainly the grammar, because he got about two pages into it, and refused to go any further (it was the flower girl one). Which made me think, once again, after I'd long ago resolved the issue for myself, in my usual pragmatic way, about the problem of Junie B., and thus feel compelled to share my (as usual, inconclusive) thoughts with you.

Scarlett Johansson

I don't know which is worse: that this article is at the top of the CNN front page, or that it's the only article I clicked on.

Saturday

It took me a long time to read Saturday.* I bought it before we went on vacation in August (with the gift card for our favorite independent bookstore that M bought me for my birthday--isn't that the sweetest thing ever?) (I also bought Veronica--I wonder if it will take me as long to read that). I think I read maybe 15 pages on vacation, then put it down and read other things, picked it up, put it down, even forgot what it was called--at some point I told a friend I was reading September, only I knew that couldn't be right, because I knew the big anti-war demonstration that forms the novel's backdrop had been in February--and then I finally got into it last week and plowed through to the end in just a couple of nights (it wasn't as unpleasurable as "plowed" might suggest, but I can't quite say I couldn't put it down, just that by that point I really did want to finish it, in a positive kind of way).

It's not that I didn't like it. In fact, I did some of that initial reading as I was reading some badly written books, and from the very first page I felt such a sense of relief to be reading good prose again. Ian McEwan is, simply, one of the most effective stylists writing today. And in Saturday, he combines exquisite sentences with erudition beyond belief, details of neuropsychology--yes, neuropsychology--that there cannot be another novelist on the planet who grasps, not to mention literature, geopolitics, geography, squash...

The novel is essentially a Ulysses of contemporary London, following wealthy neurosurgeon Henry Perowne through the Saturday just before the Iraq war started when millions of people protested in London. Perowne doesn't go to the rally--he's not sure what he thinks about the war, but is leaning in favor. Instead he plays squash (for 16 pages), buys fish, visits his senile mother, makes dinner, has three encounters with a criminal with Huntington's disease, and thinks about his life, as one does while living it. The other reference point, of course, is Nicholson Baker and The Mezzanine, though I'm not sure that one was on McEwan's mind (Joyce is pretty obvious, in the structure, in the sexual riffs, and in the last line of the novel which a bit too obviously alludes to the last line of "The Dead," though any allusion to the last line of "The Dead" makes me happy, as it's one of my favorite last lines ever.)

Anyway, it's an admirable book, a respect-worthy book, even, often, an engaging book, and it's certainly a Very Good Book, and in the end I quite liked it. But it was not a book I loved--like I loved Atonement, which I truly could not put down. I think I must read some more McEwan so I can formulate a broader position.


* Powell's is down, hence the Amazon link, and I have no real rationale for why I use Powell's--besides my general instinct to stick it to the dominant capitalist powers-that-be--I just do, except sometimes I don't, only I won't be mentioning it anymore.

Recent Movies

A few weeks ago I actually saw two movies in one weekend, and I thought about whether I could blog about movies here. Then I saw another movie last night, and I decided that I would blog about movies here. I could go all meta and talk about the nature of reading, or of culture, or of criticism, but instead we'll just go with the fallback rationale: It's my blog and I can do what I want.

Festival Express - Being an old Deadhead from way back, I wanted to see this one as soon as I heard about it, and a few weeks ago I finally remembered that I wanted to see it when I was at the video store and could actually do something about it (video store? do we still call them video stores? movie stores? certainly not DVD stores!).

In the summer of 1970, the Grateful Dead, Janis, Buddy Guy, The Band, Ian and Sylvia and a bunch of other musicians took a train across Canada to play at a bunch of music festivals. A bunch of film was shot, but nobody did anything with it till recently when they cut it into a documentary. It's about four months before Janis died, and she is totally intense. Ian and Sylvia, whom I used to pretend were my parents when I was a kid, and I know you haven't heard of them, but you can google them yourself, were quite hip and Canadian, which was interesting because I always thought they were such folksingers, but here they were doing the rock and roll thing. Someday I'm going to write something about how incredibly unsexy the Grateful Dead are, and this footage confirmed that insight once again. The Band, though? Now THAT was a sexy band. The really interesting thing, musically, was that seeing all those musicians together, jamming on the train, in the summer of 1970, you realized (again) (I mean, duh) how profoundly traditional rock and roll, of that iteration, in fact was. Blues, bluegrass, folk: that's where it all came from, and then of course we can just say alt-country. Or not.

The OH in Ohio - I knew this one would come to the second-run movie theater around the corner, and sure enough it did, and one night when S was miraculously home, I just walked myself out and saw the 9:30 show. Nothing great, just silly entertainment with lots of laughs. Parker Posey is pretty brilliant as a successful businesswoman who is dysfunctional in, shall we say, the intimate realm. So she tries to do something about it. And succeeds, somewhat predictably, but still entertainingly. The scene at the big client presentation with the cellphone? Well, you just have to go see the movie.

Fever Pitch - This is another one which I kept seeing on the shelf at that place where we rent the DVDs which these days enable us to view movies in the privacy of our own homes. Suddenly yesterday I got the urge to watch it, so I did. I think perhaps the urge had to do with catching a glimpse of the San Diego-St. Louis game at a restaurant and remembering how different things were two years ago this month.

The movie was fine, but I think particularly enjoyable for a target audience of which I am certainly a member. Being a hardcore Drew fan from way back (can you say Poison Ivy? I can), plus, you know, there's that team for which I reserve my affections: how could I not like it? Basically it's kind of a lame romantic comedy, not nearly as good as 50 First Dates (Jimmy Fallon is no Adam Sandler), but thoroughly redeemed by the Red Sox. Drew running across the field at Fenway? Priceless. And the soundtrack has the Dropkick Murphys and Jonathan? Come on, aren't you melting already? And the closing montage with the victory parade down the Charles in the duck boats?! It was, indeed, the best of times.

Oh, and E and I watched about a half hour of Annie last night. Kind of scary in that there orphanage! E huddled behind my back and peeped over my shoulder (she really did), but she insisted that we keep watching (M, I'm sure, would have fled at the first appearance of the brilliant Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, but she was away at 5th grade camp, and E is made of sterner stuff). We might watch some more tonight, or I might persuade M to watch Fever Pitch, as part of my continued campaign to expand her filmic horizons.

Collecting Myself

Oh my god, I was just going to post the most amazing thing, and tell you you must go read it, immediately, before it disappears behind the wall they put around old NY Times articles, and then I realized it is Times Select, so it is behind the wall already, and this is just a huge tragedy, because it is the most amazing piece by Maira Kalman, who asks one of my biggest questions, "How do you know who you are?" and doesn't even answer it, but instead quotes Abraham Lincoln and Goethe and talks about candy and embroidery and empty boxes and the Holocaust and collections, which are, you know, all about trying not to die, which is another one of my biggest issues, and, really, this piece is so fabulous that everyone must read it immediately, except you can't, because of the evil Times Select, and I wonder once again why I am such a slave to the NY Times which is so increasingly evil.

But someone called me a "renegade mama" today, which although I don't much like "mama," works for me, especially since I just finished writing something else in which I used just that word, "renegade," to describe myself, or rather, my household. So I have a solution, and I will let everyone I can enable read this wonderful thing, but you must email me or comment on the blog with a real email address, and then I will make it happen.

Arts & Leisure

Besides forgiving, I try to use Yom Kippur in a New Year's resolution kind of way to become a better person. This year I forgave my old boss and resolved not to get worked up about ridiculous things. So I will not be blogging about recent NY Times parenting articles, because they are so very same old same old--groveling for the affluent demographic, demonizing working mothers, irrelevant to the lives of the vast majority of Americans--and nothing is gained by me going there.

On the other hand, I--uncharacteristically--read the Arts & Leisure section cover to cover yesterday, while trying to make time pass on a fasting afternoon (I'd already done synagogue and a meaningful walk to the pond with M where we threw sticks in the water for the things we wanted to get rid of from the old year [sticks float away] and rocks for our wishes for the new year [rocks stay] [yes, I know Tashlich is supposed to be on Rosh Hashanah, but this is our own version], so I figured I deserved a little newspaper reading).

Great, if depressing, piece on indie filmmakers that referenced all the filmmakers I loved back in the day: John Sayles, Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch--I even saw Finn Taylor's first movie. Yes, I am hopelessly marooned in the aging boho demographic. Also an interesting article about David Lynch, who turns out to have been practicing TM since 1973 (my cousin was huge into TM back then--she claimed to levitate--when we went to Disneyland and got freaked out on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, she kept saying to her daughters, "say your mantras, girls, just say your mantras"). What made me write this post was that S just put on the Hold Steady which I had no idea he thought made the best album of 2005, but I liked the article and I'm loving the new album (it's reminding me of Bruce and Jonathan, and we all know how I feel about them). And, of course, I'm a sucker for anything "Chorus Line."

Another thing I'd like to be this year is more positive.