Category Archives: Notes of a She-Hack

This is me getting tweaked about lead paint and blog primary coverage

I just read this story over at Daily Kos, and I was really grateful that someone took the time to actually go through some of the legislative records of Clinton and Obama, particularly to see, in fact, whether Obama is the lightweight that he is made out to be. I am relieved to know more about what he’s gotten done. Especially since I still don’t know who I am voting for on Tuesday.

However, author Grassroots Mom might as well have pinched my sciatic nerve with tweezers as made her argument that Obama is more visionary because he initiated legislation against lead paint in toys, while Hillary introduced some to help give tax incentives to landlords to fund the clean-up of lead paint in older houses.

I’m not disputing or advocating for Obama’s visionary-ness, but this particular argument for it upset me, because it includes some dangerous assumptions. Plus, I just think it’s terribly important to broaden awareness about this issue, and this gives me an opportunity to do so.

Toxic toys are shocking by nature, and should absolutely be legislated out of our homes because of the dangers they pose. But they pose a fraction of the threat to children that lead paint in older homes (specifically any home built before 1978) does.

I know because I have had the unfortunate need to speak to more than one public health official in recent years about this. I can tell you that they are glad that the public is up in arms over toys with lead-based paint and that measures are being taken to do more safety screening of imported goods. But they wish that issue could be leveraged into greater awareness of the larger risks that exist all around us.

Of the children that they encounter who have elevated lead levels in their blood or lead poisoning, the overwhelming majority are still getting sick from older homes. And they aren’t just the homes in the inner city by any stretch of the imagination. Some of the worst cases exist in suburbs and historic neighborhoods with beautiful older houses where windows have never been upgraded, or proper clean-up has never been done. (Lead dust is much finer and heavier than other dust, and does not come up with an ordinary vacuum.)

Because I love you and I don’t want your, or anyone’s, children to get sick (and I don’t want to see other parents wracked with the guilt and fear the way I was because of the things I didn’t know), I wrote more about this important environmental issue here on Blog Action Day last fall. At some point, I will write more about our family’s experience.

Incidentally, like Clinton, Barack Obama does have a strong stance on lead paint and abatement standards in homes.

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Things to do on a Friday (or Saturday) night, Part One

Last summer, I briefly heralded my family’s new found normality (after lo, these many years of my husband’s reign as a local independent impresario) in a post called “What we do on a Friday night these days.” It wasn’t a very exciting read, but posting it was sort of… illuminating.

To this day, handfuls to dozens of people still visit that post every week, and it’s not because they think my Cosmic playlist is brilliant. It’s because, come Friday, a number of people from all over the world apparently go to the search engine of their choice and type “things to do on a Friday night,” hoping the bots will show them the way to a good time. Somehow, they end up here instead, tripping the light fantastic through my domestic burbles.

If you are one of those souls meandering through cyberspace, looking for weekend inspiration, I actually can help you. It just so happens that despite of the fact that I am kind of a shut-in these days, I am still something of an expert about things that people can do on a Friday or Saturday night. Over the course of my career, the two jobs I actually had to go into an office to complete involved localizing a well-known national chain of websites and writing for a local alternative weekly – both publications were deeply involved in informing people about the myriad ways they might spend their free time.

I also waited until my mid-30s to become a parent, so that I could enjoy many years of going out on Friday and Saturday nights before giving them up to drool and intergalactic renditions of “The Farmer in the Dell.” I’ve seen enough that I’m not so worried about what I might be missing these days.

My unsolicited advice
For starters, if you are one of those people who lives in a mid-sized-to-major city and scrunches up their nose in confusion or non-recognition when I mention the name of a local free alternative weekly newspaper, you probably aren’t well-enough informed about what your city has to offer to viably complain that there isn’t anything to do. Start there – look for the free rags in the foyers of restaurants, coffee shops, libraries and bookstores, or search for “free weekly + (name of your town)” online. Hunt through their calendar listings and see what you’ve been missing, then consider going someplace you’ve never heard of. If the unknown scares you, pack hand sanitizer and low expectations.

Otherwise, here is my all-purpose, non-geographically specific list of suggestions about things you can do on a Friday or Saturday night.

Part One – Going Out
Gallery openings
I weep when I consider the uneaten cheese cubes cast into garbage cans when an artist loads up a snack table, hangs his or her work for all to see and no one comes.

Actually, in my town, I’ve found that it’s rare that no one comes, even if it’s just people questing for free cheese cubes. Whatever your motivation, it would behoove you to become one of those people. Don’t think that you have to know what you’re looking at. It’s better that you come with questions.

See live, original music in a smaller venue
I obviously have my biases when it comes to this one, but I would be remiss if I didn’t evangelize a little about live music. The fact is, if you love music, and haven’t ever seen it live, in an intimate venue, your relationship with it is effectively stuck at second base.

While it’s true that if you are anywhere between 35 and 65 years old, you can probably have a fairly intimate experience with some band that specializes in covering all the music you sang in the shower when you were twelve, that is not the same as seeing an original act. Connecting with a bunch of people through drunken nostalgia can be fun, but connecting with something new and stirring can actually be transcendent. (Don’t expect that at your first show, but believe me, it happens.) It also makes you smarter and better looking.

I haven’t gone to them as often, but all the same concepts may apply to theater, dance and other live performances.

Go to the drive-in or an independent movie theater
I’ve found the cost of mainstream Hollywood movies offensive in recent years, especially given their soggy quality. I don’t know if exorbitant numbers of writers, directors or film editors are snorting bleach these days, but an awful lot of big-budget films seem to be about 20 minutes longer than they should be. This makes entertaining movies mediocre and mediocre movies excruciating.

The fact that my city still has a drive-in has made many a burdensome movie almost bearable. (I’m talking to you, Titanic.) I can sit there and groan over the scenes that ought to be deleted and only annoy my husband. Because drive-ins now send audio through your car radio signal instead of on those old window speakers, you can still be moderately awed by the actions of magical creatures and things blowing up on the screen, and also have the steering wheel conveniently handy to bang your head against during inexplicable jumps in plot and/or dialog.

And yes, supporting independent films (or at least independent theaters) is healthy for you and me. Although I’ve been disappointed in several indie movies lately because they too often seem like shallow vanity projects for award-seeking stars, when they are good, they are really good. And worth seeing on the big screen.

Do guerrilla theater
Why are you hellbent on being entertained when you could be the one doing the entertaining? You don’t have to have an agent or a cause. Join or look to these people for inspiration. (I’m especially fond of their freeze series. Another great one is Look Up More.) Going to public places in full costume when it’s nowhere near Halloween is also a good idea. Consider it an anthropological investigation.

My brother had a few of these inspired moments in his youth. Like the time he and a friend made up fake fliers in support of building a canal in the center of Broad Street here in Columbus. The kicker was the suggestion that our city’s replica of the Santa
Maria
be floated down the middle of the canal as an innovative form of public transportation.

To be continued next week, with suggestions about what to do if you’re staying in.

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The space between

One of the hardest things about working at home is the constant tug of war between the things I should be doing to secure us financially and the things I should be doing for my child.

On some days I am mindful and methodical about the way I spend each moment, I kick down deadlines, I help Declan make a new discovery, I do laundry, I write satisfying paragraphs, I am kissed by everyone in the house.

But on days like today, I end up feeling inadequate at everything. I can’t come up with enough ideas, send enough emails, make enough calls without feeling like I’m doing it all at Declan’s expense. And I can’t read books, marvel adequately at Dec’s independence or play imaginary games without feeling like I should be back at my computer, pressing forward, finding my next gig.

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The joys of local TV journalism

I used to think that the Midwest generated an inordinate amount of hysterically bad local television journalism. I was never sure whether the lack of substance (or a lack of a sense of irony) indicated that too many TV reporters grew up in sanitized pods, made the assumption that their audience did or just spent far too much time sniffing hair gel.

Then I watched a broadcast on a local Washington DC station, where the anchor stumbled through horrifying murder statistics and a puff story about zoo babies with a clock behind him that remained bizarrely crooked for the entire broadcast. And I watched some New York City-area broadcasts with their own amateur qualities. I realized we heartlanders are not alone.

Of course, John Stewart’s Daily Show has made the parody of the self-absorbed TV “journalist” obliviously reporting on a story that seemed clearly insane to the rest of us into an art form. But I’m glad to see that the real thing is still out there, alive and well (in this case, from Michigan). Although, watching this, I have to suspect that the producers have a sense of humor:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUJ4es4cYIU]

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Powdaddy

He was the father of five children, husband to my grandmother for 61 years, a highly regarded surgeon, a farm boy, an inventor, a World War II veteran and the man with a well-developed sense of humor who taught me to rhyme as soon as I began to speak. Our earliest conversations went something like this:

“How!”
“Wow?”
“Cow…”
“Now.”

And so I called him Powdaddy. He would have been 96 today.

We lost him in 1999. My grandmother followed in 2004, almost exactly a year before I had Declan. It’s hard for me to fathom that my grandparents will not know my son, and that he will only know them through story. My grandfather would have loved my boy, loved his ravenous curiosity – a characteristic they definitely share.

On New Year’s Day, my mother and I (and a sleeping Declan) went out to the small town where Powdaddy was born, and chose to be buried. Mom wanted to put lay down a grave blanket, something her mother used to do at her mother’s grave every winter. While most people consider this simply as decorative, my mom and her mom took the meaning of “grave blanket” at its symbolic face, as a way to warm their place of rest.

Afterwards, we went to see if the house where my grandfather and his brother grew up — the house built by my great grandfather, who died in the 1940s — was still standing.

It was, although it may not be much longer.

The farmhouse is a few hundred feet from Buckeye Lake. From the shore down the road you can see a place that I learned used to be called “Zollinger Island.”


My great-grandfather sold it for $500 in order to pay for Powdaddy to go to Harvard medical school. His older brother insisted that it was the place to study medicine. Both men left their mark on the world of medicine, in different ways.

If you happen to have surgery just west of Downtown, it’s possible that you may have it in the room named for my grandfather by his colleagues. The family collected there at dawn one morning in 2000 so the hospital could dedicate it, then sanitize it again before the day’s first operation.

I miss you, Powdaddy.

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Why Santa is real to me

When I was nine years old, my parents separated and my mother, brother and I moved from the east coast to Ohio. After living with cousins for one endless summer, we moved into a rented, red-brick house in a small suburban school district. A Doberman named Thor lived on one side of us, a family of five with a bespectacled patriarch who wore denim overalls and drank a six-pack of bottled Coca Cola daily on the other. Presumably, Thor didn’t live alone, but I don’t remember much about his owners.

I remember a lot of things about the year that we lived in that house. When mom signed the lease, our bedrooms were white, but by the time we moved in, mine had turned to yellow, my brother’s to blue, and my mother’s to a bright shade of lime green that she affectionately referred to as “pukey.” I remember lying in her window seat, listening to the radio news report that people had been trampled to death at a Who concert just down the interstate in Cincinnati.

Our pet German Shepherd was too big for our lives there, so she was passed on to a pair of farmers. I sobbed, standing in my roller skates as I watched the happy couple drive away with her in a boxy, powder blue pick-up truck after telling me how loved she would be in her new home, how thrilled she would be with all of that space to run.

I once got sick from eating too many mulberries from the neighbor’s yard. I met one of the only friends I still stay in touch with from childhood when her puppy, Satchmo, nearly knocked me off of the green, $12 bicycle that my mother bought me at a rummage sale in New Jersey a year before.

On Christmas eve that year – our first alone as a three person family unit – we were all winding down upstairs, getting ready for bed. My mom was in the bathtub and my brother and I were resisting sleep – bouncing around in the hallway together, too anxious to get to Christmas morning to rest.

Then we heard a rumpus of thuds and bells on the roof, followed by a man’s voice in the living room: “HO HO HO! Merry Christmas Turner family!” My mother scrambled for a robe and we all ran to the landing of the stairs together to look out the window. Santa ran up the driveway next to our house and waved at us cheerfully before disappearing into the dark. And, like any normal children raised on the threat of Santa, my brother and I sprinted to our beds and pulled the covers up over our heads, as though whatever gifts we had under the tree might disappear if we were caught awake. Mom acted concerned, even nervous. She went downstairs and found that the deadbolts were locked. She made a big deal of checking that the windows were locked too. Her only conclusion? “That must have been Santa Claus.”

In the years since, I’ve asked her several different times who that Santa really was. There were a number of uncles, neighbors, friends and co-workers who could have been candidates. Her answer usually goes something like “You tell me. If I was expecting someone to come into our house and play Santa, why would I have been naked in the tub? The whole thing scared the bejesus out of me.”

This year, like 1979, has been one of those upending, confusing periods. And this holiday season has been marked by stress, unreasonable expectations, health concerns and exhaustion. Yet somehow, I got the holiday cards out in time. I even made several of my gifts this year, and they are all wrapped and ready for the morning.

As I get ready to go to sleep tonight, I’m listening for sleigh bells.

Merry Christmas.

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Who on earth are these people?

A couple of years ago, my mother found an old roll of film in her house and developed it. She didn’t recognize any of the faces in the pictures.

Most of the guests that she and my stepfather have hosted in their home over the last 18 years have been family members. So she passed the pictures around at Christmas after she found them. Still, no one recognized the people, the flowers, the welcoming goose or the bell.

I found the pictures again today. I’ve been trying to clear a few of the stray boxes of random stuff I have around the house. My husband asked why I kept them, since no one knows who these people are.

The images are so methodical and symmetrical. They were taken with such clear intent, meant to be put in a multi-paned frame or photo album and passed through generations. It seemed callous to cast them, negatives and all, into the garbage.

I’m also fond of the weird and rosy glow that the aged film gave their earnest expressions. I like the hint of a ponytail that sits on the androgynous Hello Kitty child’s shoulder like three shoelaces.

I also love a mystery.

By the time that the fourth or fifth family member looked at these and shrugged in utter confusion, I laughed for an unreasonable amount of time. I imagined all kinds of scenarios that could land a stray roll of film at our house, by way of somebody’s purse, luggage or briefcase. I imagined family members with unknown second lives and science fiction conspiracies in which these important faces were zapped out of our memory through some unknown technology.

There’s only one image that’s incongruous with the others:

For the sake of de-cluttering my cluttered home, I thought I’d put out this last clarion call to more distant relatives and the winds of the Internet to see if I can find out their identities and deliver the photos to the appropriate hands.

Any clues? Theories? Face identification experts?

To find all posts related to this one, click here

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Thanks

I’m thankful for family, for goofy dancing and for locally-made Dutch apple pie.

I’m thankful to anyone who reads this blog.

And I’m think I’m thankful that my brother showed me this extremely silly video, but I’m afraid that Declan will now wake up one morning in 2021 with a hot hot hot desire to go to Appalachian State University.

(Caveat: there’ a risk that watching this will make you feel more hostile than thankful towards me. It’s just bad on so many levels.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVENWl8uBeg]

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Boys are from Ganymede

There are few creatures on earth that seem as alien to me these days as a teenage boy. I haven’t considered much about them, probably since I was a teenage girl.

Now that I am mother to a son, I pay more attention, particularly to interactions between parents and boys. A couple of months ago, I watched a mother smiling ear to ear as she pushed her shirtless seven- or eight-year-old around in a grocery cart. His hair was buzzed down to golden fuzz and his front teeth looked big and new to his face. The boy and his mother seemed to be enjoying each other’s company immensely and for no discernible reason. She nodded at me, I think because I had my own, considerably smaller boy in a shopping cart. Being mothers of boys connected us somehow.

I notice the awkwardness of skinny boys walking down the street with haircuts that are supposed to look like they aren’t haircuts hiding their eyes. I picture Declan becoming this kind of teenager, although it’s just as likely he’ll become a stocky athlete. With our long-haired ways, a buzz haircut could be his form of rebellion.

Yesterday, as I was scanning a clearance rack at Target, I saw a teenage boy lumbering from aisle to aisle with a silver mesh garbage can over his head like a space helmet. He stopped at the end of two or three aisles with his hands open expectantly, waiting for a response. He finally found his father, who paused a cell phone conversation just long enough to give him a quick, amused smile. I saw them in the store a couple more times before I checked out. The garbage can was still on the boy’s head as they perused products in the shampoo aisle.

I found myself thinking that if Declan has that kind of sense of humor about himself when he’s a teenager, we will have done alright as parents.

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