Category Archives: Zeitgeist

Child of the Giant Corn

Corn, tomatoes and cucumbers give all Ohioans a reason to live through the muggy muck of August. And it took Declan no time at all to learn to love the food of his ancestors (his great grandfather and great-great Uncle were once the Grand Marshalls of the Millersport Sweet Corn Festival).

He went absolutely wild at the Field of Corn in Dublin the other day, surveying the giant kernels up close, and running, running, running through the rows of ears.

Imagine this from the perspective of a 3-foot-tall person.

Ohio State has an extensive site about corn, including a monthly podcast about conditions for growing corn.

That other state that begins and ends with a vowel and is also known for corn has its own Corn Cam.

Life soundtrack: Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt, Foggy Mountain Jamboree, “Shuckin’ the Corn”
Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt - Foggy Mountain Jamboree - Shuckin' the Corn

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Good time to be a boy

I barely blinked before buying The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn & Hal Igguiden when it popped up on my recommended list at Amazon earlier this year. I hid it in a shirt drawer for at least two weeks, alongside a copy of Where’s My Jetpack? by Daniel H. Wilson. Then I proudly unveiled the tome, packed with boyhood rites, obsessions and tales, to my husband on Fathers’ Day. (It’s retro, red cloth-bound cover and 19th-century gilded font were brilliant marketing devices.)

According to last week’s Time Magazine, plenty of people joined me in buying that book, which remains a best-seller. David Von Drehle’s cover article “The Myth About Boys” makes the argument that this rekindling of the traditionally magical parts of boyhood – from tying slip knots to knowing the story of the Alamo – means that now is a very good time to be a boy. Apparently, there are (pretty pricey) summer camps devoted to creating outdoor spaces that are essentially safe, but allow lots of room for boys to play, explore and feel some sense of danger. And that’s actual danger, not Nintendo danger.

It seems as though Drehle first dismisses some of the ideas in books like Raising Cain and Real Boys – books that profoundly question, if not indict, the ways our culture raises boys – as alarmist. But he later comes to embrace some part of those notions too, because the cultural dialogue about boyhood and masculinity ultimately benefits boys. This is a conclusion that I can agree with – I am glad to have so many ideas and opinions out there to consider.

I still resist it when anyone tries to define Declan’s actions or personality as somehow definitively or traditionally “boyish.”

I’ve seen toddlers of both genders push boundaries, dig in the dirt and splash through mud puddles. Maybe it’s because we’ve been lucky enough to keep him at home (away from the competition of daycare) for these first two years – not to mention the fact that he’s an only child – but so far, his nature seems very gentle. He fearlessly approaches kids of all ages out in public, especially girls, looking them in the face and saying things like “you have blue eyes.” (Eye color has been his favorite thing to observe about people lately.) But he also cracks up and slaps his knees when he sees older boys doing playground slapstick. He obsesses about outer space and loves to throw a ball, but he’s also an awesome dancer, puzzle-doer and snuggler who often declares himself “scared of bugs” and is thrilled if he gets to teach a grown-up something new.

I worry about the expectations future teachers, friends, family and acquaintances might give him about being male, particularly if they happen to quash any part of his ravenous curiosity or chastise his sensitivity by dismissing it as feminine. Sheltering him from people and experiences wouldn’t be particularly helpful, but I hope I can help him develop the strength to face all of it with the kind of assured innocence he possesses today.

Life soundtrack: The Shirelles, The Scepter Records Story, Vol 1, “Boys”
The Shirelles - The Scepter Records Story, Vol. 1 - Boys

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This is your brain on drums

Once or twice a week, Declan and I sit down in front of an old video of Fantasia 2000, raise our arms and wildly conduct Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony together. He has a great memory for instrumental music, and can hum along with several popular classical melodies, thanks to nap-inducing car rides with WOSU FM on and Classical Baby.
A couple of weeks ago, we went out on a family day trip and stopped at one of those nondescript Max & Ruby’s Apple G. I. Friday’s places to eat on our way home. As we noshed on completely uninspired cuisine, Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” played and Declan danced in his high chair, flapping his arms and bouncing his head to one side in time with the music. Something about straightforward rock and roll really winds him up. I put on David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane for him a few nights ago and it took about 20 seconds of “Watch That Man” before he started dancing around the living room.

There are a lot of studies out there about music and the brain that look at the links between music and how we develop intellectually, cognitively and emotionally. Along those lines, there is also an interesting article published on Salon this week: Joseph LeDoux’s Heavy Mental. A neuroscientist, he has a lot of interesting things to say about our bonds to music, and the ways our brains become chemically accustomed to certain emotional reactions, based on experience and genetics.

What’s inspiring is that he is so optimistic about our capacity to change, no matter how ingrained bad habits might have become. This is a relief to me, I often wake up at night, wondering if even the things that seem so positive about the way I parent could be causing unrealistic expectations and future pain for Declan. A reminder that nothing has to be permanent – that I don’t have to be perfect – is comforting.

LeDoux has founded an “Emotional Brain Institute” at NYU to promote the study of emotion, from the scientific perspective, but also through the lens of the arts and humanities, law and business. Thank heavens for these kinds of scientists, who, in the midst of insane political times, still have the capacity to try and look at ways that we can all, as humans, be and do better.

Life soundtrack: Steve Forbert, Alive on Arrival, ” Thinkin‘ ”
Steve Forbert - Alive On Arrival - Thinkin'

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Interpret this!

Last night I dreamed that I was out at a club with the judges from American Idol, watching a band from Argentina. Everyone was raving about their performance, but particularly the title of their song: “I Am the Pope of Your Embarrassment.”

Then Declan woke me up. I tried to fall back asleep to find out what happened next, but it didn’t work out.

I think this song needs to be written.

Life soundtrack: Dinah Washington, The Complete Dinah Washington On Mercury, Vol.7, “Dream”
Dinah Washington - The Complete Dinah Washington On Mercury, Vol.7 (1961) - Dream

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Andy Wormhole

One of the great joys of the DVR is the fact that I can catch up on all of the old episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that I missed when I had a social life. (I managed to pull off watching all of The Next Generation episodes I hadn’t seen before during those first few months of napping and nursing.)

As a result Declan has two requests that he makes daily: “space show watch?” and “wormhole watch?” These are usually code for “lie down and snuggle with me after I jump up and down while looking at images of space.”

But it’s more than a TV/snuggling fixation. His vocabulary expands daily: rocketship, Earth, meteor, planet. Space toys, outside of Twilight Turtle aren’t very easy to find at his developmental level. I stapled cosmic felt onto a board for the playroom last week, threw velcro backing on some glow in the dark stars and made a few planets and spaceships for him to stick on there. I think he would prefer that the whole room was covered in felt so he could stick these things wherever he wished, but at least it’s getting a little use.

When I went to a craft store to get some things for this project the other day, I also spotted a small reproduction of Andy Warhol’s painting, “Space ship” on sale for $2.50. I snagged it and handed it to Declan as soon as I walked in the door. “Space ship!” his father trumpeted.

“Oooooh! Space ship,” Declan repeated.

“It’s Andy Warhol,” I told them.

“Andy Wormhole!” said Declan, wandering into the living room, holding it in his hands. “Space ship wormhole!”

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Sympathy for the revel

After the past couple of weeks of mockery and scorn over her endless bender, I was actually relieved to see some traces of compassion for Britney Spears in the media this week. Being a sometimes music critic, my views of her popness have not always been flattering ones. But something about having your own toddler makes you extra sensitive to the cathode crows pecking away at a new, young mother, particularly one who seems to be coming undone in front of the world.

Most moms know that the very act of living with a newborn can make you feel ferociously inadequate, even if your strongest postpartum symptom is that diet diagnosis parenting magazines and books call the “baby blues.” Whether you are a pert little jezebel or comfortably frumptastic, your relationship to your own body and the outside world fundamentally changes with a pregnancy.

Every pregnant woman and new mom, famous or no, automatically becomes a little bit of public property. People touch you, bless you, look at you in disgust and pray for you in the cracker aisle of the grocery store. If you nurse in public, some people congratulate you and others openly gag. When your child cries, you can be eyed with suspicion, scorn or sympathy, depending on your karma. And when you look to those who can be your greatest salvation – other mommies – you sometimes find exactly what you need, but other times, they can sting you more deeply than you imagined possible.

I can’t imagine living through this period of life as a sexual icon surrounded by cameras, sycophants and gossip feeders. And I really can’t imagine what the hormonal effect of consecutive births, combined with the babyweight shedding at the frenzied pace of an image-conscious celebrity could be. Blogger Heather Armstrong of Dooce may be the first person that I’ve seen publicly suggest the taboo possibility of postpartum depression, even though it’s hard for many moms I know to imagine that it doesn’t have something to do with this. Rebecca Traister of Salon has the measure of what Spears culturally represents.

And then there is this heartfelt, little soliloquy from Craig Ferguson. I’m never up late enough to watch him, but after seeing this and last week’s appearance on Bill Maher’s show, he has impressed me as a truly decent man:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bbaRyDLMvA]

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