When I was unstrapping James from the car seat today I called him Jinx. One more week of babysitting ("child care" sounds more dignified) and then I head back to Indiana to get on with the work of summer. It's starting to get hot in DC, and today we got out "Sprinky" and plugged her (?) into the hose, an octopus like tower of tubes with a face painted onto it that shoots water randomly and in all directions. It was a little cold but fun. This morning James and I drove out to the horse barn in Rock Creek Park and looked at horses and took a walk through the woods. We saw some deer and took time climbing the wooden steps that eased the trail's inclines. Last Friday they took off all their clothes and played in a creek. That is to say we've been trying to get outside as much as possible before the weather gets too hot and the bugs come out. My sister pulled two ticks of James over the course of last week.I pulled a tick off my belly on Friday.

Over the weekend I went to Virginia to visit Erika and John and their daughters Elsie and Rosa. They have land and chickens, a functioning garden, and we ate well and caught up and talked about kids, about being a doula and the story of Rosa's birth. Elsie hosted a "snake party" and so we all sat on a damp bench and talked about the flowers she had gathered. It was cute and entirely wholesome. Not that my experience last week holds a candle to the endurance and commitment required of actual parents (and it's easy for the uncle to swoop in, have fun, and swoop out), but I feel like I have been getting a taste of what it's actually like to have full charge of children, which is helpful in light of the fact that about half of my old friends have kids, and I can relate just a little bit more to the experience. It's also made me think a little bit about kid's toys and books, and how empty we begin when it comes to ways to live and judgments, and how easy it is for a kid to pick up an idea or a habit just from seeing it done or hearing it said. Like how Beatrix picked up the Disney princess thing from other kids at her school, and is now nuts about all things princess, which was not something anybody in the family introduced to her. I think about all the junk that I was into as a kid, and wonder how much of that is still with me. I wonder if any of this stuff really matters in any sense other than aesthetically. Maybe the content of what we pick up doesn't matter as much as our relation to it when we grow up enough to have perspective. Or maybe feeding our kids plastic and sugar is actually a real danger. I'm not sure.

In other news, a few self-promotional items: 1) here's a link to a video that Cole made using a song of mine, as posted on his most excellent music blog Field Mic (there's a link to Field Mic proper on the right sidebar), and 2) here's a link to the Lost Roads Press blog Lines, that I had written a little piece for, about John Cage. Yup. Tomorrow I think James/Jinx and I are going to go to the Natural History Museum and to walk around and yowl.Hanging above the toilet at Erika's and John's house is a poem by Robert Creeley, "Walking"

In my head I am
walking but I am not
in my head, where

is there to walk,
not thought of, is
the road itself more

than seen. I think
it might be, feel
as my feet do, and

continue, and
at last reach, slowly,
one end of my intention.

Washington DC is lovely right now. Flowers are blooming, traffic is flowing, birds are singing and shitting on my car. Granted I haven't made it too far from my sister's house, where I'm staying and taking care of my niece and nephew while the regular baby sitter takes a vacation and gets her driver's license. This week will be a full week of 8-6ish child care and right now, as my nephew is sleeping, I have a little time to read and write and continue the work I started at Purdue to be ready for the Fall semester. He's squawking and squeaking right now and soon I will have to pick him up out of his crib and make some lunch.

Yesterday we spent the morning playing "garbage truck/man" putting pieces of torn up newspaper into a toy garbage truck, napped, made lunch and hung out at the house until 3, where we went and picked his sister up from day care and (oop. i just picked him up, started making lunch, ran around the house with an accordion.etc.(six hours later...)). Okay. Today was a long day. Had an afternoon with James drawing pictures and changing diapers then picked up Beatrix from school, had a snack, and took her to ballet. Meanwhile James and I hung out at the toy store and played with a toy garbage truck. Got Beatrix from the ballet and then went to Chipotle and fed both of them dinner. This was not fun. They would not sit down and kept flopping all over the bench and Beatrix kept getting up to get things and meanwhile I kept trying to feed James who kept laying down on the bench. After we left they both started crying, Beatrix crying over a mermaid doll that she wanted me to buy for her and I don't know why James was crying, but we made it home eventually and had a tea party / birthday party for "elephant" and waited for her mother and father to come home but both were late. It really wasn't that bad but I saw how things could turn south quickly. I made a mental note to meditate tomorrow because tonight I'm drinking beer. Overall though, it was a good day.  

Originally I was going to sit down and write an insightful and sensitive post about my first year of graduate school but I guess that will have to wait. Viva la summer!

A letter I sent to The New York Times a couple weeks ago in response to an article about disgraced public figures and their absorption into academia. I'm still annoyed about how they covered Occupy Oakland...

 

Dear Public Editor,
 

Interesting article on the trend to hire public figures who "flamed out," or however Ariel Kaminer put it. Since there were no comments, I wanted to respond in person:

 

The article seems to suggest that universities are the refuge of washed up sexual miscreants, and does a great job discussing what it's like for the school and teachers and the students who come into contact with these people. That said, many of these public figures were written about in this very newspaper, and you all did as much as anyone to ruin these people's reputations. Mr. Kaminer's article still makes them, and universities, look like fools.

Another way to put it might be that universities are willing to hire remarkable people with interesting experiences. It's a classic second chance, and an acceptance of other view points. Universities get much from them in the form of attention and celebrity status, and of course, money. I'm just saying that it's not surprising that The Times, who are just as guilty of following the heard mentality, reporting exactly what officials tell you, pick a bone with institutions that absorb people screwed over by reporters reporting on other people's reporting. As if sending a picture of your penis, or whatever, to a college girl is really that much worse than whatever we've done at some point in our lives.

While the university system is less than perfect, and headed towards changes, it's an example of a public institution that has fared reasonable well in the last twenty years....Unlike mainstream journalism, which, The Times included has, more or less, been co-opted by conglomerates of politically driven billionaires. If not directly than indirectly in the sense that its the big medias (CNN, Fox News, ABC, etc.) that drive the market for news, and how much attention you devote to each story.

In short, I'm saying you could have just as easily spun this as a good thing, rather than an implied bad thing. Or taken some responsibility for how they got there in the first place. Or better yet, provide critical analysis of things like the Moody's report on the economic state of higher education, rather than just telling us what Moody's says about it.

Maybe I'm just confused about what newspapers are supposed to do, and maybe it's in your every right to call it like you see it (or don't see it). But as a representative of academia, we do a lot of good work, and are a heck of a lot more careful than you guys about what we say and why. Who knows what the future of journalism is, but you all could stand to take some criticism yourself, beginning with owning up to how much influence you have in shaping public opinion, and how much that influence is squandered on politically driven slander.

Sincerely,