Blowing & Drifting

Uteri, Mysteri

Tonight, Julia interrupted my attempt to get her into a post-bath diaper by stating, "Daddy has a uterus." (The uterus has been a big topic of conversation since we told Julia how one produced Genevieve.) I shook my head. "No, honey, daddies are men, and men don't have uteruses." Though she's heard this a zillion times, she widened her eyes and let her mouth fall open. "Julia making a worried face!" she said. "Why, honey?" I asked. She replied instantly, "Because Daddy doesn't have uterus!" 

I know, honey - it worries me a little bit, too.

Waltzing Matilda

We listen to a lot of Dan Zanes at home and in the car, and as such we hear quite a bit of his cover of "Waltzing Matilda"(a duet with Debbie Harry), Australia's national song. Friends, that song is fucked up like the Republican Party. And it's not just the 19th-century Australian slang that does the fucking-up; you can spend two seconds looking at this glossary to learn the definitions of "billabongs" and "jumbucks." To "waltz Matilda" is, in essence, to wander, as a hobo would.

No, it's the story of the song that's so fucked up. The gist of it is that a tramp captures a sheep when it comes to drink at the watering hole where he's camping. When a sheep rancher and some cops show up to confiscate the sheep, the tramp drowns himself in the watering hole, then haunts it, calling, "Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"

Class warfare? Suicide by the homeless? Overtones of unnatural interspecies affection? The supernatural? That's what a national anthem should be all about.

You can hear the song  as inline MP3 files here (sung by Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, no less) and here (sung by Australian Rolf Harris).

Bike Fan

Bike Fan

To commemorate the resumption of bike commuting (come for the chill winds, stay for the icy rain!) and because I forgot to honor someone's long-ago request (hi, Auntie V!), here is a short video (click to watch) of Julia rooting for the racers at the Northfield Criterium on July 4.

Lammmmmm-bowwwwwwww Field

Smartass sportswriter Bill Simmons  makes a pilgrimage to Lambeau Field.

Having been lucky enough to see a Bears-Packers game there two season ago, I have to agree with him that it's a transcendent experience:

Six ways to know that you're entering a transcendent stadium: (1) It's more simple than you expected -- shockingly so; (2) You feel the history everywhere you turn -- retired numbers, statues, signs that look like they've been kicking around for 60 years; (3) The ushers and vendors are positively ancient; (4) When you find your section and see the field/court/ice for the first time, you get a major rush; (5) You can't help but think, "wow, [fill in the game of a famous athlete] played here"; and (6) One unique quirk pushes everything over the top. Number six is the biggie. At Fenway, it's the Monster. At Wrigley, it's the ivy. At the Rose Bowl, it's the staggering size. At Yankee Stadium, it's the symmetry of the upper decks and how they tower over the field. And at Lambeau, the clouds hug the top of the stadium, the sky always seems to be four different colors, you can't see anything else for miles ... it's the real-life "Field of Dreams." It really is. And unlike every other professional football stadium, the first three-fourths of the stadium is filled with metal rows (the seats) and the top fourth holds the luxury boxes. So all the real fans are in the good seats. I can't think of a single negative about Lambeau. Not one.
... 

I notice only five Green Bay numbers are retired -- Don Hutson (14), Tony Canadeo (5), Bart Starr (15), Ray Nitschke (66) and Reggie White (92). Sadly, no Don Majikowski. Those numbers run underneath the bigger scoreboard. Wrapping around the stadium is the Packers Ring of Honor, which has about 20-25 more names. Everything is displayed in the least ostentatious way possible.

Now, if only the Packers could win a few games this season.

Full Circle

This evening, Julia and I were chatting about little babies, her new favorite topic (and a welcome replacement for her old favorite, the hailstorm). She said that babies are carried around in Baby Bjorns, which she pronounces as "be-ar-ens." I said that was true, whereupon she riffed magically and circularly: "Bjorns sound like Karen, like teacher Karen at baby class. Karen sound like carry! Carry what you do with Baby Bjorns!" I laughed, astounded and amused by her train of thoughts, and she smiled broadly, sighing a quiet, "Yeah," to herself.

Technoskeptophilia

This presentation from the 2006 TED conference - the big tech confab in Monterey - is enthralling and maddening. On the one hand, the computer-interface technology being demonstrated - a kind of hyper-touchscreen that works as well with text as with numbers and images - is incredible, the kind of thing that you can instantly imagine fruitfully using within ten minutes of putting it on your desk. Jeff Han, the research scientist at New York University who is demonstrating the device, is obviously a superbly innovative guy. And, reminiscent of Edward Tufte's argument that the content of presentations shouldn't be determined by the bureaucracies which created them, Han makes some excellent points about how contemporary interface technologies (especially relating to visualization of data) are a brake on the best use of computers.

On the other hand (watch the video to see why this is a pun), I find ludicrous Han's constant chatter about how this device has no interface, that it's so intuitively easy to use as to require no manual. Of course a user would require some sort of instruction: like all modern IT, it's a (figurative) black box, even if it's (actually) a clear screen. Despite Han's rhetoric, none of his gestures are really as "natural" as he claims. Such claims are common with respect to technology generally and intrinsic to IT specific. Apple's current "Mac vs. PC" advertisements are part and parcel of this, with their contention that Macs are  plain easier to use. I'd say they are, but at the same time you have to learn to use them effectively, and it'd be no different with a fantastic touchscreen. Overselling even the best technology shades on the technological messianism which only leads to disappointment and misuse - not a big deal when you're talking about Microsoft's new sure-to-flop MP3 player; a bigger deal when one of Han's posited markets for this device is the fabled $100 laptop that would supposedly bring the benighted Third World into the Information Age.

First Day Back

My first day back at the office passed quickly and uneventfully. By all accounts everyone was fine at home, although Julia asked after me, Genevieve chose not to sleep too much, and Shannon had to deal with a power outage just as everyone was "wakin' up," as Julia says. I got pretty well back into the swing of things right away, cutting my 130 emails down to just 10 or so by the end of the day, thanks to a highly-caffeinated binge of deleting, responding, and filing. In fact, apart from missing the girls terribly, the day's only glitch was forgetting my bike lock. Carleton being Carleton, I was able to just lean my bike in its usual spot on the stand and retrieve it when it was time to go home.

What's Gourds Mean?

Today is the last day of my parental leave; Thursday is my first day back in the office. It has been an unqualifiedly fantastic six weeks "off." I'm sorry to see it end, and not just for the rare days of sleeping in until 8:27 a.m., the latest I've slept since prior to June 3, 2004. I also did a lot of reading and a fair amount of blogging, drank a stupid amount of coffee, and saw the dramatic and rapid change of seasons.

But Genevieve was, of course, the reason for the leave in the first place. I'll certainly treasure having been able to spend so much time with her. In these six weeks, she has undergone the numerous inevitable, typical, and yet also surpassingly amazing changes of any newborn, especially the obvious physical ones which are so wonderful to behold, like phenomenal cheekiness. But our less-and-less little baby is also piling up the mental developments, including a giant gummy grin for me last night and a growing number of what Julia describes as "hoots and coos." It's been unexpectedly fun to attune myself to her personality: the cry that means hunger, the distinctive sigh that means she's ready to sleep, the little gurgles that mean she's enjoying herself. I sure wish I had the ability to stay home longer and absorb more of her round-the-clock changes, but I have to remind myself that I've had half again as much time off with G. as I did with her sister. 

That extra time off was good not only for me and Genevieve, but pretty helpful to Shannon, I think. I was not, in my extra fortnight, able to start nursing, as I'd hoped, but I did get back into the swing of bottle-feeding the little monster. In combination with Genevieve's easier temperament, my being home has contributed to Shannon's quicker recovery. She's already working out, testing the quality of the surgeon's sutures, and she even seems ready (in the sense of "not visibly terrified") to take on the responsibility of taking care of both girls all day - which starts in about twelve hours.

Then there's Julia, who was so much fun these past six weeks I can hardly really think about it. I teared up tonight while putting her to bed, just thinking about how much I'll miss her tomorrow. Since Gigi arrived, I've been able to spend nearly every waking hour with Julia, and I can't say I got even slightly tired of her, whether she climbing the playground ladders "all by MYself!", picking random stuff from the shelves (rice, makeup, a decorative black cat, an Elmo Christmas-tree ornament) while I tried to buy another bale of diapers at Target, scarfing down a blackberry scone at the coffee shop, looking at "all de bootiful pumpkings!", or just sitting upstairs, having one of her cracked tea parties. Over the time since Genevieve arrived (and maybe because the baby demands so much of her parents' time), Julia is engaging in quite a bit of  more-or-less independent play that is also hilariously imaginative - rounding up all her farm animals before the hailstorm never gets old. And as always, her verbal novelties are fantastic. Sometime in the past few days, she's started asking the world's cryptickest question, "What's [insert noun or verb here] mean?" A few funny exempla include, "What's Mama mean?", "What's thunder mean?", "What's lightning mean?", and my favorite, "What's gourds mean?" As funny as the questions are, she's seriously interested in the answers (and a bit disappointed in our answer to that last query ["They mean fall is coming, honey."].)

Yes, fall is coming, and with it comes the end of my time "off." I'm looking forward to getting back to work, since in addition to my wonderful coworkers, I enjoy the rhythms and habits of work in general and the tasks and accomplishments of this job in particular. But boy, I'm going to miss the girls. I hope they'll miss me too. Four o'clock on Thursday afternoon can't come soon enough!

Autumn Paintings

I came across the name of Isaac Levitan, a 19th-century Russian painter and "the greatest Russian realist," in a recent travel article in the Atlantic. Curious about his work, I looked him up, and found that his Russian landscapes are, indeed, quite beautiful. While the site with the most extensive online collection of his paintings doesn't reliably display the full-size images, other sites have a few beauties like Gold Autumn and Oak Wood.

Shorty Shorted Me Out

Genevieve had her daily squall at about eight tonight, which is a few hours earlier than usual. Much as I'd love if she didn't have a two-hour crying session every day, I was glad it was happening in prime time, not sleep time. Anyhow, she was only happy perched on my left shoulder, with her head next to and mouth turned toward my ear. Roughly halfway through the crying jag, my left hearing aid suddenly died, a couple days sooner than it should have: the device, in compensating for her hour of high-decibel wailing, had consumed the same power that it typically uses over about 20 hours of normal use. That's a lot of loudness.

Suffice to say I didn't run to put in a new battery. The deadened shrieking was easier to take.

Foiled

After seeing how aluminum foil is made, I'm loathe to throw a piece away after using it just once.

No Extraordinary Rendition Here...

Finnish prime minister Tarja Halonen thinks the U.S. Senate's mealy-mouthed "compromise" with the Bush administration on torture is pathetic.

Broccolicious

I'm not sure how it happened, but Julia has somehow acquired a more-than-healthy love of broccoli. If she could, I'm sure she'd eat as much broccoli at each meal as we'd care to serve. At lunch today, she figured out a way to compensate for eating the (8 ounces or so) cooked broccoli: she picked up the serving bowl and drank the "broccowi juice" in the bottom. Yum, yum, yum.

Ive League

I'm typing this entry on my Macintosh PowerBook, a beautiful piece of computing machinery that owes its distinct look and feel to Steve Jobs, the megalomaniacal genius who runs Apple, and to Jonathan Ive, the company's lead designer. As this profile in BusinessWeek shows, Ive is a fascinating guy who marries nearly unparalleled design prowess (as evidenced by almost all of Apple's products, from its desktop computers to the iPod) with close attention to the entire manufacturing and retailing chain which makes the products a reality for consumers.

... If Jobs is the public keeper of Apple's design zeitgeist, then Ive is the private leader of its talented design team. "Apple is a cult, and Apple's design team is an even more intense version of a cult," notes Riley. Actually, it's not a big cult -- just a dozen people or so. But they operate at an extremely high level, both individually and as a group. Ive has said that many Apple products were dreamed up while eating pizza in the small kitchen at the team's design studio. It's a team that has worked in idyllic comfort for many years. Some designers were at the company long before Ive arrived in 1992. They rarely attend industry events or awards ceremonies. It's as though they don't require outside recognition because there isn't any higher authority on design excellence than each other, and because sharing too much information only risks helping others close the gap. And they personally reflect the design sensibilities of Apple's products -- casually chic, elitist and with a definite Euro bent. 

I like that last bit a lot, but the article puts a bit too much emphasis on Ive and his tight-knit team. His products aren't merely "elitist," but fantastically popular, too. Clearly, Apple's skilled design team is merely the first (or second, after Jobs) step in a long path of adept personnel and units which cumulatively see a new product through from the designers' studio to the high-sheen counters at the local Apple Store. Somehow, unlike most companies, the "casual chic, elitism, and definite Euro bent" is not only not filtered out of the products, but accented in a phenomenally savvy and profitable way. How does Apple manage this? I'd love to find out.

Parent's Bill of Rights

This "Parent's Bill of Rights" (via the Blogfathers daddyblogging site) encapsulates some should-be-truths about the world:

1) Unsolicited parenting advice shall not be offered to parents of small children.

3) No one person, without the express written consent of a child’s parent, shall introduce that child to any or all of the following: Elmo, Barney the Purple Dinosaur or the Teletubbies.

4) All parents shall use their kids as an excuse for not doing something they don’t want to do at least one time per week but not more than five times a week for fear of sounding inept.

6) All parents with children under the age of five shall be free of riducule when caught singing “Wheels on the Bus” while at work.


I like #11, offered in the comments, too:

11) A parent who does not watch their child in a public place (ie playground, etc.) should not be surprised when another parent reprimands said child for picking on the child of the reprimanding parent.

The Dope on Landis

Last week, Floyd Landis formally requested the dismissal of the doping case against him, on the grounds that procedural irregularities marred the testing which found him to have doped at the Tour de France. Yesterday, the body overseeing doping cases in the United States rejected Landis' request; his case will now go forward, possibly with an unprecedented open hearing into the evidence against him.

Not Just a Pearl Jam Song

Shannon blogged earlier this week about our discovery that our Graco car seat is kaput, thanks to a small break in the plastic tongue which lets the handle release the main latch. Luckily, some friends of ours - the same ones who came over at one in the morning on the day Genevieve was born - lent us their unused Evenflo Portabout seat.

I just tried installing it, and found that no matter how I adjusted the LATCH strap, the damn base wouldn't stay secure; there were always at least a few (dangerous) inches of slack in the strap. After too many sweaty minutes, I came back inside to see if Evenflo publishes the manual online. A few quick Google searches turned up no manual, but a bevy of recall notices for this exact seat, right down to the date of manufacture and serial number. Turns out the LATCH strap was "improperly routed through the base at the time of manufacture," which can "allow the base of the restraint system to be properly tightened to the vehicle anchorage brackets." Death, QED.

Luckily, rerouting the strap through the base was easy to do (thanks to a PDF'ed instruction sheet), and effective: the base is now mounted securely in the back of the car. Still and all, car seat manufacturers are batting .000 with me pitching this week: the Evenflo recall is bad enough, but at least corrigible; I'm still irate about Graco's idiotic policy of mandating the return of a defective seat before replacing it with a new one, which smacks of endangering the baby in order to save it.

I Sit Corrected (Again)

As I tooled through the subdivision yesterday, I had to veer a bit to avoid a spot in the road where a bunch of contractors' vehicles had parked and double-parked, choking off the street quite effectively. Hitting the brakes, I said loudly, "Man!" Julia instantly piped up from the back seat, "No saying, 'Man," Daddy." Puzzled, I asked, "Why not, Bobo? Why can't I say, 'Man'?" With perfect acumen, she responded, "Those not mans, Daddy; those trucks."

Right-Minded - or Should It Be "Left Minded" in This Case?

From Aftenposten:

Six out of ten Norwegians are willing to pay more tax if it secures them increased quality of day care centers, schools and elderly care. The youngest in society are most open to paying more tax, with 72 percent of those between 15 and 24 saying they are completely or partly in agreement with being willing to pay higher taxes "to ensure that local government can increase the quality of day care centers, schools and elderly care."

I wonder what the rates are here in the states - are they even double-digit?

Autumn Arrives

Autumn Arrives

Temperature on the left axis; windchill plotted in purple.

Americans on Skis

Gearing up for the start of the World Cup cross-country ski circuit at the end of October, the United States Ski and Snowboard Association named fourteen skiers to the national cross-country ski team last weekThe cohort is divided into two groups, one which will initially race in the top-tier World Cup events, the other which will initially race second-tier races in North America and Europe before moving up, probably after the World Championships, to the top tier. All in all, it's a big team - the biggest since the 1998 Olympic team - and one which stands a good chance of generating some high places. I was happy to see that Midwesterners were well represented.

The World Cup team comprises six skiers, all veterans of at least the 2006 Olympics. The lone woman is Anchorage, Alaska, native Kikkan Randall, who last season placed ninth in the individual sprint at the Torino Olympics and fifth in a World Cup sprint at Borlange, Sweden - both highest-ever places for a female American cross-country skier. Joining her will be five men: three sprinters and two distance specialists. The latter, Kris Freeman (best elite-race placing: fourth in the 15km classic interval-start race at the 2003 World Championships) and Andrew Johnson (best: 21st in the 30km freestyle mass-start race at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City) are good racers who have yet to put together anything like a breakout season - or even series of races - though both appear to have the power to place well. The sprinters, on the other hand, are better-known quantities. Andy Newell placed third at the final World Cup sprint last season, the high-snow mark for American racers since 1983. His teammate Torin Koos has enjoyed top-30 places in elite races (his best being 11th in a 2006 sprint), and beyond the individual races, Koos and Newell could form a very strong duo for team sprint events. The third sprinter, Wisconsinite Chris Cook, has the thinnest elite resume (though he did finish 21st in the 2006 Olympic sprint), but will benefit from racing at the top level this winter - which as Newell and Koos have demonstrated, tautologically constitutes the best kind of training for those selfsame races. 

Compared to the elite squad, the developmental team is loaded with women, including two Minnesotans (both Olympians): Lindsay Weier (Mahtomedi) and Lindsay Williams (Hastings). The lone men, Westerners Matt Gelso and Leif Zimmerman, both distance racers, will profit from racing alongside World Cup athletes in Europe, as will the other four women: Morgan Arritola, Taz Mannix, Morgan Smyth, and Liz Stephen. All things considered, these six women (and Kikkan Randall) have the best opportunities to earn high World Cup places, as the women's fields tend to be slightly thinner than the men's and to afford unknowns the best chances to place well.

Having been salivating for two seasons now at the prospect of seeing Americans on the podiums - and having been elated to see Newell take third at Changchun this winter - I think it will be an profitable World Cup season for Americans. I won't hope for any wins, much less medals at the Worlds in Sapporo, but a raft of top-tens and a podium or five would be nice. I applaud the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association for gambling on a huge team like this one, and I wish all the coaches and athletes the best of luck. (In this, I differ from certain members of the American XC ski community, who posted some truly bizarre and utterly unhelpful comments on this FasterSkier.com blog post.)

A Rough Week

Julia's off to bed now, ending a long and often hard week for her. Proof of the last seven days' difficulties came this afternoon, when she uncorked a nap that was nearly three hours long - about twice as long as her usual 90-minutes-on-the-dot naps. Despite having an intermittently rough time of it since last Sunday, she has also been in a great mood for much of the time, which testifies to her innate good humor and inner beauty. Really, seeing her aplomb made me feel that strange sense of future loss that seems characteristic of parenthood: assuming that Julia goes off to college when she's 18, I only have sixteen more years of being around her all the time. I don't think that's enough time to get to know her well enough.  

Anyhow, the week started with Julia's test at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Since Shannon's already blogged this dismal event and its outcome, I'll just comment on how wrenching it was to see Julia on the exam table, looking up at me with not a little fear while trying trying trying to watch the Elmo video which was supposed to distract her. Sadly for her, the video seemed to be nothing but Mr. Noodle, the loose-limbed, Einstein-haired dancing fool whom she finds rather frightening. Perfect. When the exam team inserted the catheter (which looked about as wide as a freaking firehose), Julia cried, of course. But she squeezed the tears away and just said a few times, "Julia felt a pinch," as the tech had told her she would. Then she stared imploringly at me and glanced at the video screen until the test was almost over. Before she could get up - which she asked to do about a million times, with increasing desperation - she had to void her bladder, which had been filled via the catheter to zeppelin dimensions. Since she can't pee at will, she had to just wait until the subconscious trigger was tripped, flooding one diaper after another. Then it was done. By the time she was dried off and standing on the changing table, getting out her kid-sized gown ("just yike Mama's at the hopsital!"), she was already smiling and chattering away, as we knew she would, about how "Julia dident yike dat test." A nice lunch and a new Big Bird doll - and the happy surprises of encountering a near-life size Big Bird statue in the hospital entrance and a naked little boy on the men's room changing table - made everything more or less okay.

All that was enough badness for one week. Luckily, Grandma was around to entertain her and shower her with presents like a kid's baseball-and-bat set, and she had a few days before the next trial, a Thursday-night class, offered via Northfield's Early Childhood & Family Education program, intended for dads and their kids. As Shannon described, it's a "separation class," which means that the kids spend some of the time totally apart from the parents. Julia had on Wednesday successfully and tearlessly separated from Shannon at another ECFE class, but on Thursday night she bawled when I had to leave the room to join the other dads for our discussion and when I returned to the room after it. And she cried hard: juddering shakes that wracked her whole body, wheezing and hyperventilating, copious tears, wailing stab-in-the-heart questions like, "Where Daddy go?" I came close to crying, myself. I knew she'd be okay, though, when she stopped sobbing long enough to ask, in her charming way, "What Julia crying about?" As with Monday's test, she has been discussing the class, and her crying jags, at some length since. (I've also since learned that she was just fine while I was gone, playing with a friend and having fun. I'm not sure if this makes me feel better [she can do all right without me!] or worse [ditto].)

Friday's bad times were two in number. First, having recently learned to open doors, she graduated to the next class: learning what happens when you catch your fingers in the door. Again with the crying, and rightfully: it was a heavy door. After the interesting novelty of having her hand iced, she found no ill effects. In fact, within an hour we were at her favorite playground, clambering up onto her favorite slide. Unfortunately, we had to share the slide with two girls, roughly five years old, who were pretending to be jaguars and who were thus snarling and pretend-clawing at everyone who came near. As the playground curmudgeon, I had to repeatedly lift one of the jaguar girls out of the way when she tried to climb ahead of Julia, and to (less and less gently) chastise her for slamming into Julia after following down the slide too closely. I hate being That Parent, but geez - after Julia's week I thought I had the right to try to prevent further trauma.

Though not of the meteorological sort. Saturday night, we had a massive thunderstorm which of course woke Julia and kept her awake for an hour. I may be toying with the idea of starting up a cult to worship Ukko, the Finns' pre-Christian god of thunder, but he did me no favors by scaring Julia so badly last night. Luckily, Sunday saw nothing worse than an indoor picnic, a few stumbles during a long walk, and some fussing over whether we could read ten zillion or eleven zillion books before bed. That kind of trouble, I'm happy to handle. I hope your next week's a better one, Bobo!

Photos of the World

This is a quick survey of the history of photography: Life Magazine's list of the 100 most significant photographs. It's striking how many relate to war...

Patriotruck

Patriotruck
He's not letting the terrorists win.

A Cautionary Tale

Shannon and I spent more than a few minutes this week trying to figure out a little hiccuppy sound that Genevieve makes when she's sleeping. Is it really a hiccup? Asthma? Something neurological, like Tourette's (the psychologist advanced this theory, not the historian). It's subsided now, after keeping us up a few nights ago, and I'm going with the idea that it's some sort of bizarre-sounding baby hiccup, induced by being a bit too full of milk. Whether or not that's the case, our cogitations are hilariously put in their place by the Tale of the Baby with the Maple Syrup Scalp.

Necessities of the Father

In the spirit of the Snarky Squab's list of must-have items for the fourth trimester, here's a short list of requirements for making it through Gigi's first month:

Caffeine: a 16-ox double Americano (hot or cold) in the morning; a 12-oz of Coke in the afternoon; a few squares of dark chocolate anytime.

My PowerBook, open to Google Reader: catching up on the blogs is a great way to spend idle paternal time during nocturnal nursing sessions.

A hat: unwashed is the usual state of my hair nowadays.

A digital camera on the action-shot setting and loaded with charged batteries and space on its memory card: there are lots of Kodak Fujifilm moments around here right now.

Dim memories of the first time around: little of what happened during Julia's first month matters now, as they're very different babies.

The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin: an old album which I just discovered on my iPod and really, really enjoy. It takes a bit to get uses to Wayne Coyne's voice, but damn, no one else could sing "The Spiderbite Song" and make it matter (and not many other bands would dare that crazy drumming).

You Might Be Too Old

Or at least too rickety to properly rear yourself some children if rocking your newborn causes the shape of your ear canals to change just enough to create feedback in your hearing aids.

A Blog Aborning

I'm not sure if my blog qualifies as a daddyblog, but whether or not it does, this birth-story post on Baby Roadies qualifies as the epitome of the genre. My favorite bit is the author's paean to his kid:

Hank is sleeping well, letting us know when he’s crapped his pants and he’s going after that teat like a High School freshman. His head isn’t all wobbly like some inferior babies and he has actually rolled over from his back to his stomach twice now. He’s so advanced, our doctor says he is in the infinitieth percentile, which means that he is clearly the best baby that ever lived and there will be no babies better than him in the future. We modestly agree.

Roller Ski Dream

I really appreciate the fact that, due to our more or less random choice of domicile in Northfield, I can roller-ski from my garage onto 30km of smooth, lightly traveled roads that offer some good stiff uphills, a few difficult corners, and lots of good flats. Just the same, I sure wouldn't mind being within ten minutes' drive of the fantastic roller-skiing trails at Canmore, Alberta: two wide tracks, perfect asphalt, and look at all those trees!

Bans and Mandates

Nordic Nonsense

Weird goings-on in Scandinavia:

In Norway, an unknown person is dressing as a reindeer and leaving Polaroids of him/herself sitting in various people's yards. (The picture's priceless.)

In Sweden, firefighters had to rescue a sheep which had climbed into and then gotten stuck in a tree. Shouldn't it be a reindeer?

Copper Country

I commend to you this nicely written article from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on my home region, the Keweenaw Peninsula Island in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The writer effectively conveys the bittersweetness of life in the Copper Country: physical beauty, but economic stultification; a fascinating history, but a moribund present. Still, the article made me wish for a cabin somewhere north of Hancock...

9/11

My thoughts, inchoate as they must be, on today's anniversary.

No Alarms and No Surprises, Please

I have only a weak, vestigial link to the start-of-school frenzy that marked my autumns almost every year between ages 5 and 30, but I still appreciate this: "Top Ten No Sympathy Lines (Plus a Few Extra)," by UW-Green Bay prof Steven Dutch. The full list if eminently worthwhile, but here's a sample:

This Course Covered Too Much Material...

Great! You got your money's worth! At over $100 a credit, you should complain about not getting a lot of information. If you take a three credit course and get $200 worth of information, you have a right to complain. If you get $500 worth, you got a bargain.

I Know The Material - I Just Don't Do Well on Exams

Leprechauns, unicorns, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, hobbits, orcs - and students who know the material but don't do well on exams. Mythical creatures. I've met students who claim to know the material but not do well on exams, but when you press them, it turns out they don't know the material after all. If you can't answer questions about the material or apply the knowledge in an unfamiliar context, you don't know it. You might have vague impressions of specific ideas, but if you can't describe them in detail and relate them to other ideas, you don't know the material.

In addition to content, every type of exam used in college requires specific, vital intellectual skills. Essay exams require you to organize material and present it in your own words. Short-answer exams require you to frame precise, concise answers to questions. Multiple choice exams require you to define criteria for weeding out false alternatives and selecting one best answer. All of these are useful skills in themselves. If you can't do well on some specific type of test - learn the appropriate skill.

This Course Wasn't Relevant

If something as vast as mathematics or science or history can pass through your brain without even scraping the sides on the way through, that's a pretty big hole. Are you sure it's the course that doesn't relate to anything?

Our other customers in the community want people who have a good general stock of knowledge they can call on for unexpected needs. Being able to cope with unexpected needs means learning things that may not be immediately needed. You need to stop worrying about whether you need it now and begin worrying about whether your boss might need it later.

(Cross-posted to After School Snack; link via Lifehacker.)

World Cup Skiing

Friday marked 50 days to the opening of the World Cup cross-country skiing season in Düsseldorf, Germany: on Saturday, October 28, men's and women's individual sprint races (in the freestyle technique); on Sunday, October 29, men's and women's team sprints (again, freestyle). Düsseldorf is a crazy venue: the organizers use trucked-in snow (some saved from the previous winter) to lay down a twisty kilometer-long track along the Rhine. but it attracts a good crowd, exposes a new audience to ski racing, and of course shows who might be in shape to ski in November, when the season starts in earnest at Gellivare, Sweden, or in March, at the World Championships in Sapporo, Japan.

The Düsseldorf individual men's race has been the domain of Swede Peter Larsson for the past few years, and the men's team event that of Norwegian and Swedish duos, but this year, we can legitimately hope for Americans to race well, with both Andy Newell and Torin Koos gunning for good results as they aim for World's.

Frosty Reception

Put away the tank tops and flip-flops, for summer's over: the National Weather Service has issued its first frost advisory for parts of Minnesota.

Mrs. Henderson Descends

Over the weekend, Shannon and I watched Mrs. Henderson Presents, last year's Judi Dench/Bob Hoskins flick. I was interested to see it because of the setting - Britain during the Depression and early phase of World War II - and because it's based on the true story of a upper-class widow who convinced the British government to let her continue to offer nude revue shows during the war on the grounds that the shows would improve morale. It's a promising idea, and the movie partly carries it off.

But by the halfway point, the movie settles for being droll, rather than funny, and cedes its comic potential by using some really painful cliches: the most beautiful member of the revue troupe dies in a bombing raid after she gets pregnant by a soldier who then abandons her - that's practically Friday the Thirteenth-level virgin-punishment. Even more painfully, the film's climax is a really strange speech by Mrs. Henderson in which she defends the revue on the grounds that soldiers shouldn't have to go off to fight and die without ever having seen a naked woman - a fate suffered by her son, who died in the Great War. The speech carried no water for me; I can't believe it did much for the censors and rationing officials in London during the Blitz.

Worst of all, the film omits a consideration of the really interesting question of why and how women (and specifically, their bodies) explained "why we fight." In this case, of course, not only are the naked young women literally sold and displayed to soldiers who are shortly off to war, but Mrs. Henderson goes much further, arranging the fateful liaison between her star model and the soldier who leaves her pregnant. Leaving aside my own feelings about the politics and morality of instrumentalizing women in these ways, it strikes me as bad filmmaking not to examine this problem - even comedically - in a movie that culminates with a speech which supposedly solves it.

Country Mouse

I saw this on Cool Hunting, and boy, do I want one: a computer mouse in Marimekko patterns. Now sold only through a Japanese retailer, I'd put this right at the top of my shopping (uh, Christmas) list if it were available in the states. One would look awfully nice in my office. In the meantime, maybe I'll have to make do with a Marimekko mouse pad instead.

And All through the House

Writing this, I can hear all four females sleeping: Sabine the cat is at my feet, purring; Shannon is on the sofa, breathing softly; Genevieve is in her bassinet, snuffling and snorting; and (through the baby monitor) Julia is upstairs tossing and turning in her bed. 

Harvest Moon

I've been meaning to post something about how much I'm enjoying the late-summer/early-autumn sounds and smells of our town's-edge location, which brings up all kinds of good memories of the North Shore, of my hometown, of our first apartment back in Minnesota. Maybe I'll still do that. For now, though, suffice to say that tonight I got a loud, bright dose of Fall in Northfield. Just after darkness finally fell, a massive tractor came rumbling down the road thirty feet from our patio, its white headlights illuminating everything for miles and its zillion-horsepower engine drowning out even the TV. You can pick the corn at night as well as in the day, I guess, so I expect a few loud nights when they harvest the acreage across the road.

The Crash Isn't Even Past

Over the past few weeks, Julia's ability to engage in long bouts of imaginative play has markedly improved. Since Monday, she has each day played for half an hour or more at a dramatic game which involves assuring that all her farm animals, caught outside during the "dunderstorm," can make it safely back to their barn or other shelter. The storm is clearly derived from the Great Hailstorm of Ought Aught Ought Six, two weeks ago, and her reenactment features a great deal of cliffhanger action: "Oh, no! Baby sheepy is caught outside in de rain! Which dall [stall, as in barn stall] should baby sheepy go to? Wun, baby sheepy!" The animals - sheep, cows, horses, chickens, a dog - always make it back to safety, but the tractor isn't always so lucky: "Oh, no. Twactor all beat up like our car. Take it to Burnville [Burnsville, where we took our hail-damaged car for repair] to get it all ficked up." She won't soon be forgetting the Day of Crashing Hail and Wailing Sirens.

The Gash Isn't Even Past

I had my stitches removed today. No amputation was required, thankfully. The process took at most thirty seconds of snipping by the physician, after which he congratulated me on making a great scar that will be with me for all my days. "Your grandkids will ask about it, and you can say, 'Well, I was chasing your mother on the playground...'"

Just to be safe, I asked him about two phenomena which have already disappeared: some rather frightening ankle swelling (both sets of ankle bones disappeared for several days) and ugly, crescent-shaped bruises along my inner feet. He said neither was worrisome, and that both were probably caused by fluid in the swollen shins draining into my ankles and feet. Gravity, in other words. Gravity is definitely my least favorite fundamental physical force now, since that bastard caused this trouble in the first place by refusing to let me jump those three feet up into the air.

Mac Football

It's no secret that Macalester College, the old alma mater, is no football powerhouse, but still, today's email was a bit underwhelming:

Football at Macalester - It's a new season!
Coach Caruso has got 50 football players ready to play Principia College on September 9th, at Macalester. Kick-off at 1:00 p.m. Come back to Mac!

That Old Blankety-Blank

Over the couple weeks since her sister arrived, Julia has assembled an ever-larger collection of blankets and pillows in her bed. Matters came to a head today.

Some, of these blankets, she rediscovered after we had to shuffle the contents of her closet to accommodate the baby clothing and equipment; one, she received as a wonderful present. Every night, we had to arrange the blankets just so: some went on her, some went in her arms, some went to the end of the bed just in case. After I made my departure each evening, she often requested blanket-disaster assistance: "Daddeeeee! Get Stawbewwy Shortcake banket for Joooooolia!" Though I lately stopped meeting those requests, every night we did have to sneak into her room to unravel her knot of sweaty bedclothes.

After a particularly bad episode last night, we resolved to pack the heavy winter-weight blankets away until, you know, winter. So this morning, I duly folded up "starmoon banket" and "teddybear banket," two lovely, fleecy coverings that are much more Christmas than Labor Day. We had a little ceremony in which Julia kissed each one goodbye and waved as I put them on a high shelf in her closet.

You know where this is going: naptime. Julia was snuggled down into her smaller, cooler collection of blankets, ready to shut her eyes, when she remembered the disappeared and asked in her most saccharine voice, "Daddy, get starmoon banket?" I said, "Remember, honey? We put them away this morning. We'll get them out when winter comes." Instantly, she burst into her loudest, most unrealistic wail, which was punctuated by several surreptitious glances at me, assessing whether it looked like I was going to go get the blanket or not. After a few seconds, the wail died down and she peeped, "Winter comes after naptime." I laughed inwardly and replied, "No, honey, winter will come... [thinking madly] after Daddy goes back to work," meaning after my leave ends. Instantly: "Daddy goes back to work after naptime, then winter." She wasn't wrong, per se, just a bit off on her timescale.

She went to sleep tonight with the new, limited array of blankets.

Hot Dog Man

Hot Dog Man

Behold Hot Dog Man.

Julia has a love-hate relationship with Hot Dog Man, who is installed in the doorway to Tiny's, the downtown Northfield hot-dog shop. He looks affable enough, and Tiny's serves good Vienna Beef dogs (among other tasties), but Julia is simultaneously enthralled and frightened by him. Since Tiny's is just a few doors down from the best coffeeshop in Northfield, we often end up parking fairly close to Hot Dog Man. Anytime we do - or, really, anytime we park within three blocks of him - Julia has to establish her location in reference to his ("Where Hot Dog Man?") even though by now she knows exactly where he resides. I always tell her that he's up ahead or behind us or whatever and, furthermore, that if we have to pass him, she doesn't have to look. If we do pass the doorway, she invariably sneaks a look, usually while plastered to my shoulder or walking quickly, head down, and asks a couple questions. "Who he waving at? Where are his eyes?"

In the past couple weeks, she's warmed to him. Friday, she even agreed to wave vigorously at him while I took this picture, an activity she sustained with a manic running monologue about him: "Hot Dog Man so fwiendly! 'Come in and have hot dog!' he say! Somebody painted him in dat doorway. He so fwiendly!" She drew the line at standing next to him for the photo, which I can understand. He is a six-foot tall hot dog.

email: christopher at tassava dot com