Another Post on the Alaska Governor

Katha Pollitt, opining brilliantly about the Palindrome.

There is just no way Sarah Palin is equipped to be vice president, much less president. She doesn’t know enough; she lacks the necessary grasp of, and curiosity about, our complex world; her political philosophy could fit on a bumper sticker: Us versus Them. The lack of stamps in her recently acquired passport has been much noted (yes, I know, Bill Kristol, Lincoln was not a big traveler, either); it isn’t even clear she’s well acquainted with the Lower 48.

(Link and pun stolen from Michael Bérubé.)

Deciphered

One of Genevieve’s major sources of frustration with The World is that so few people in it can figure out what the hell she’s saying. Julia’s probably best at this arduous, high stakes task. Shannon is not far behind, but I lag well back. I counted it as a triumph a few weeks ago that I succeeded in getting Genevieve to repeat something more than twice before staging one of her freakouts.

Tonight came what I hope is another breakthrough. Vivi jogged up to me, jumped up and down excitedly and patted her stomach, then yelled, “Doo-doo nammy! Doo-doo nammy! Doo-doo nammy!” I had no idea what she was talking about. “Is it something you want to do?” “Nooooo.” “Is it something you want me to get?” “Nooooo!” “Is it playing?” “NOOO!” As I guessed, Shannon came upstairs, and after a few more wrong, wrong, wrong tries, she hit it: “Tickle your tummy! ‘Doo-doo nammy’ means ‘Tickle my tummy!'” Genevieve looked up at me with the same look you might give a dense dog that just figured out that you had not, in fact, thrown the ball, then threw herself down on the floor, shrieking “Yeaaaaaaaah! “Doo-doo nammy!”

She very much enjoyed the tickling.

[post edited to reflect how it all actually went down]

One More Post on the Governor of Alaska

Via an excellent piece by Rebecca Traister in Salon,

Shaking our heads and wringing our hands in sympathy with Sarah Palin is a disservice to every woman who has ever been unfairly dismissed based on her gender, because this is an utterly fair dismissal, based on an utter lack of ability and readiness.

I came across this even more excellent blog post by the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, explaining how and why it could be that McCain’s decision to pick Palin was, in fact, cruel and sexist:

Which brings me to the sexism of John McCain. He knew full well what Sarah Palin was going to face if he nominated her. He knew that reporters would go through her past, that they’d quizz her on the present, that she would need to be ready, and he shunted concern aside, and tossed her to the wolves. Think on that for a mement. For one last run at the White House, he risked a future star of the party he claims to call home. How do you do that?

Signs of the Times

Sorry for the crappy cell-phone picture, but I had to post this: a big old maroon Cadillac, parked outside the union this noon, wearing a Dominos roof sign. It looks like a way to get cheap pizza, but it’s actually a metaphor for the American economy – something about ridiculous ostentation culminating in the hollow satisfaction of pathetically simple needs.

Dominos Cadillac
Dominos Cadillac

Process of Elimination

Shannon had a rather bad experience at the park today, one which involved the Elder being rather difficult and then having an accident right there on the play structure. Thank god for UV radiation and rain.

Not willing to leave me out of the fun, the girls convened the Committee on Elimination at bathtime. First, Genevieve peed in the tub. Par for the course around here, this resulted in nothing more than a hurried bath in the water at the clean end of the tub. Yeah, I said, “the clean end of the tub.” The fundamentals of the tub were sound.

As I wound up the scrubbing, Julia announced she had to go to the bathroom. Trying not to be amused (it’s still funny to hear her use that euphemism, plus we were in the bathroom), I hauled her out of the tub and plopped her down on the potty chair, then turned back to Vivi. I toweled her off and set her free for her usual naked runabout, at exactly which time Julia asked for parental help addressing the sanitary demands created by a #2. I did my duty and told her, to her usual disappointment, that no, I wouldn’t take care of the potty chair, that it was her responsibility. (She handles it without problems all the time.)

Just then, from the other room, I heard Vivi shout, “Oh no!” I jumped up and looked down the hall, to see her standing over a large turd of her own. I yelled, “Vivi! Run to the bathroom! Run down here right now!” and turned to grab the container of diaper wipes. She started to sprint to the bathroom, jettisoning two more turds on the way. Julia, doing her level best to clean out the potty-chair bowl, was now calling, “What’s going on, Daddy! Where are you running?” as I poop-scooped in the hallway.

I had just used a healthy stack of wipes to deposit all three items in a snatched-up garbage bag when Vivi yelped delightedly from the bathroom, “Daddy! Potty!” Reversing course, I ran to the bathroom, where Vivi was sitting on the potty chair, grinning the grin of the successful potty-chair user.

Only Julia was still rinsing the bowl, which meant Vivi had gone all over the inside of the potty chair. Luckily, everything had landed in the basin that usually holds the bowl itself. This would have made for relatively easy clean-up (= a couple big wads of a toilet paper and many, many Clorox wipes), except that I had to use one hand to hold on to Vivi so she didn’t wander off to wreak more havoc.

Anyhow, I got that done, then cleaned up and diapered Vivi (for those keeping track, this is two #2s cleaned up in about two minutes); checked in on Julia, who was nearly done with her chore but still bewildered by the commotion; and went off to use most of a can of carpet cleaner on three surprisingly small spots o’ floor.

I think that post-bath naked-time is on hiatus for a while.

I just watched the infamous Couric-Palin interview, after putting it off. I lack the gene for schaedenfreude.

It was as horrible as I feared. God help us. She’s an electoral college and a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Alpaca!

On the spur of the moment, I took Julia and Genevieve to a nearby farm for “National Alpaca Farm Day” this afternoon.

I’m not kidding.

The girls had a blast, and as it happened, two of the other three playdate families were there, too, so the farm was swarming with squealing kids who loved the alpacas (so soft!)

Alpaca Brothers
Alpaca Brothers
Admiring the Alpacas
Admiring the Alpacas

the pygmy goats (they ate dry leaves!)

Julia Feeding the Goat
Julia Feeding the Goat

and even the cows.

Cows
Cows

The fauna was interesting, but the flora was nice, too.

Farm Fields
Farm Fields

Poetry Buyouts

Brilliant satire from Charles Bernstein in Harper’s:

Poetry Bailout Will Restore Confidence of Readers
Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.

Charles Bernstein’s most recent collection of poetry is Girly Man. His poem “Pompeii” appeared in the August issue of Harper’s Magazine; his essay “Wet verse at The New Yorker” appeared in the November 1989 issue._

Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.

The only trouble I can foresee is the effect on the Northfield economy of the inflow of federal funds to our local poets, like this guy or this guy.

Cashtastophe

Historically unprecedented things are happened so frequently nowadays, they almost pass unnoticed:

Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets
Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history. Washington Mutual, with $307 billion in assets, is by far the biggest bank failure in history, eclipsing the 1984 failure of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in Chicago, an event that presaged the savings and loan crisis. IndyMac, which was seized by regulators in July, was one-tenth the size of WaMu.

Lehman Files Largest Bankruptcy in U.S. History
Lehman Brothers, a major Wall Street investment bank, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection early Monday after efforts to find a buyer broke down Sunday. Potential buyers walked away after the U.S. Government signaled it would not commit taxpayers money to shoring up the firm. In its bankruptcy filing, Lehman lists debts of $613 billion.

Rescue must weigh safety vs. freedom
1792 bailout amounted to 8 percent of the nation’s $220 million gross domestic product at the time, records show. During the Great Depression, the Home Owners’ Loan Corp. was the major program designed to ease the housing crisis, but the $200 million allotment was only 0.3 percent of the nation’s economy that year. Funds laid out to address the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s ultimately reached $125 billion, or about 2.3 percent of the economy in 1989, the year the Resolution Trust Corp. was created. Today, the $700 billion taxpayer investment in fixing the housing crisis would amount to 5 percent of gross domestic product this year.

For what it’s worth, it appears – based on my (superficial) reading I’ve done in the last two days – that during the Great Depression, the U.S. government did not rescue a single bank, or other financial institution. Not one.

News Ealand

For the last week and a half, I’ve been working on a big proposal for a faculty study trip to New Zealand. In addressing the gazillion matters required by the feds for these kinds of proposals (for instance: the international airport code for Rarotonga, Cook Islands, is RAR), I’ve learned at least these seven interesting things about New Zealand:

1. The country’s native Maori people – and many white New Zealanders – use the name “Aotearoa” (“land of the long white cloud”) for the country.

2. New Zealand is about as far from Australia as Los Angeles is from Minneapolis.

3. New Zealand actually is a sort of empire, exerting some measure of political and economic influence over other South Pacific states like the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau.

4. These Pacific islands are hollowed-out countries, with the majority of their populations living not on the home islands, but in New Zealand. For instance, the Cook Islands have an on-island population of about 20,000, while 58,000 people who identify themselves as Cook Islanders live in New Zealand.

5. The country’s rugby team, the All Blacks, has been competing internationally since at least 1905, two years before the country became an “independent dominion” of Great Britain and 42 years before full independence. If an American national baseball team had been competing for 101%  as long as the country had existed, the team would have started playing in 1771.

6. Riffing on the “All Blacks” name, the New Zealand national basketball team is the “Tall Blacks.”

7. The All Blacks’ pregame “haka” dance is the very definition of intimidating, and has a fascinating history, too:

Noah, or, Another Monotheist in My House

Julia, in true big-sister form, has infected her sister with that world-historical virus, Christian myth. The two little believers will sit for extended periods of time, their Nonna-donated children’s bible on their laps, and tell each other Bible stories – or at least the thoroughly bowdlerized versions in this version of the Good Book. (David offs Goliath, but Noah’s daughters don’t fornicate with him, and the Revelation is free of holy bloodshed.)

Vivi, as you might expect, doesn’t “get” the New Testament parables and miracle stories, even though Julia likes them a lot. God help (so to speak) the next person who reads Julia the parable of the seeds from Matthew 13:3-13 – she can go on and on and on about those $@#(&% seeds. Both girls like the nativity story, of course, with Vivi – the baby – perhaps enjoying it even a little more than Julia does. This is saying something, since Julia would, like, totally friend Jesus on Facebook.

But the story that Vivi likes the very most is the story of the Deluge. Any why not! Who doesn’t like divine planetary genocide? God hitting the old cosmic reset? Noah, that old goat, on a round-the-world cruise with some goats? Actually, what Vivi likes is the animals, and the fact that she knows all the main parts of the story. This (translated from toddler-speak to something like English) is how she told the story the other night, carefully turning the pages of the children’s bible and describing the pictures and the action:

“Once upon a time, Noah! [Onnnnna dime, Noah!] Boat. Noah, boat. Animals. Rain! Rain! God [Doog], rain. RAIN! RAIN! RAIN! No more rain. Stop rain! Tweet-tweet [bird]! Animals! Rainbow.”

I can’t wait to hear how she retells the crucifixion.