Declan and I ate at the dining room table tonight. He likes dinner best this way, and seemed particularly thrilled that we had exactly the same things on our plates.
Then he pointed his fork at me and made the following observation:
“You like broccoli, cauliflower and Carl Sagan.”
“And what do you like?” I asked him.
“I only like Venus.”
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
It’s been said in recent years that NASA has lost its luster with Americans, or somehow doesn’t capture or inspire the public imagination the way that it used to. The kabillion** people who showed up for the open house at Plum Brook Station this weekend suggested otherwise. It was the first time the place had been opened to the public in 10 years or so, and likely the only time it will be for another 10 years.
We went, as part of our quest to connect Declan with a scientist or two in his beloved space field this summer. (Next year, I want to find a way to go to this.)
It was overwhelming.
Here he is, in the control room of one of the test facilities. The space shuttle had just lifted off for it’s mission to take a Japanese space lab to the International Space Station and rescue its toilet. We were able to watch it soar into the heavens on NASA TV. And Declan was able to pretend to fill a test tank with cryogenic liquid on the computer. (Or something like that.)
That is the lid to a nearly 200-foot deep chamber where they’ve tested rockets. It hasn’t been in use for a while, but it’s impressive. And kind of scary. (To me, more than to Declan).
Declan wore his “Galaxies fade away, all stars merge” shirt and carried a small space book around with him. His obvious interest drew a few smiles and comments from the very friendly staff. There were so many of them, he was a bit intimidated.
Here we are, in the world’s largest space environment simulation chamber, where a bunch of the components of Orion will be tested before they head moonward.
Given his longtime adulation of the liquid nitrogen geysers on Triton, this cryogenic demonstration was a particular thrill. Purple flowers were frozen and smashed, a balloon was deflated in the bucket that re-inflated as soon as it was taken out, and Declan got to touch a ball that was smoking cold from liquid nitrogen.
He also got to look inside of a manned maneuvering unit and took his own picture of a Robonaut. I have to hand it to the folks at NASA – there are a lot of places that purport to educate and entertain people of every age, but few succeed. The staff seemed genuinely interested in answering questions and offering information to its visitors, be they 3 or 73. (And I’m a tough critic.)
The whole Plum Creek site is so big, they bused us from one part of the facility to another. I wish that we had made arrangements to stay overnight and gone to the open house on both days. I didn’t realize how vast of a place it was, and how much there was to see. If we’d had more downtime, maybe Dec would have gotten comfortable enough to chat with a staff member or two. I suppose if space is still an interest of his when he’s (gasp) thirteen, we’ll know better next time… in 2018.
**Not an official NASA estimate.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Declan scraped his leg and foot about three different times on Saturday, while trying to keep up with his turbo-cleaning parents. When he does something like bonk himself on the elbow, he’ll run to me, say “smooch it!” and go on about the day. But when blood is involved, he bites his lip and runs away, not wanting me to touch it, let alone clean or bandage it.
I struggled to get him into the bathtub that evening, a place he’s usually happy to visit. He gazed at the water lovingly, but resisted. “I don’t want a bath,” he told me repeatedly. After a while, he confessed the reason: “My foot still hurts.”
Looking at the small mix of blood and mud on his leg, I knew I had to get him into the tub.
“A bath can make your foot feel so much better,” I told him. It might sting a little bit when you get in, but in a few minutes, it won’t hurt as much.”
After more negotiation and a bit of pleading on my part, he opted to take my word for it. He stepped in, blinked his eyes a couple of times, then proceeded to enjoy his bath, as usual.
When I asked him how his scrapes felt a few minutes later, he surprised me with “you told the truth, mommy. You said it would sting a little bit and then it would feel better.”
“Is that what happened?” I asked him.
He nodded. “It feels better.”
I believe in the power of telling kids the truth. Not everyone agrees with me.
In a few days, a placebo pill for children will be available online. Named “Obecalp” (get it?), it’s apparently “designed to have the texture and taste of actual medicine so it will trick kids into thinking that they’re taking something.”
The product strikes me as insane. I know a few too many people who have looked at pills as a pat solution to ailments, and that approach only mired them in deeper problems. No matter how miraculous the cure that some pills offer may feel, pills are scientific, not magical things that you consume blindly. And outside of an infection or certain other temporary conditions, they shouldn’t be seen as a solitary answer to any condition. In my perfect world, there would be nutritional advice with every diagnosis, as well as advice on fitness, or any other relevant lifestyle habit. In my mind, a child with hypochondria probably has deeper emotional needs or problems (or is scarred by parents who choose to do things like LIE TO THEM ABOUT PILLS).
Granted, I am a person who could barely sit through the movie Life is Beautiful because the premise that the loving thing to do for a Jewish child in Nazi Germany was to lie about what’s really happening positively drove me up the wall. I don’t think lying is part and parcel of parenting. There are truths I have definitely sidestepped with Declan because I don’t think it’s necessary or wise to impart life’s harsh realities to a toddler, but I can’t imagine calculating the best way to lie to him convincingly. Besides, once they’re old enough to realize that they don’t actually disappear when they cover their own face with a blanket, children aren’t so easily duped.
What’s your take on this? Am I overlooking an instance where a placebo could be ethically used to help a child?
P.S. There was a good commentary on NPR by a doctor who is opposed to the product.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
Here’s a public radio story about my brother’s farm, featuring my lovely sister-in-law, her mother and my beautiful and whip-smart niece, Madeline: click.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
We spent a couple of days in New York’s Finger Lake region, where my youngest sibling (half-sister) graduated from college on a chilly, drizzly day.
The sky broke open as we drove home and made a quick detour into Niagara Falls, where Declan would only walk through the surprisingly lovely state park so long as we agreed to take a book on human anatomy and a little boxed solar system puzzle along with us. We clung to the road until midnight on Sunday, when our little boy officially became three years old, or, as he’s been telling me for weeks now, “not a baby anymore.”
Not wanting to spend too much of his birthday in the car, we subjected ourselves to federal inspection in Cleveland, which gave us a pass into a place that turned out to be the closest thing to heaven that Declan has experienced. (Thanks to Wendy for the tip.)
Oh, Hayden Planetarium, dear Air and Space Museum… you have no idea what you may do to my son’s mind, and I’m determined to bring him to you as soon as I can.
Sadly, we had no idea that the center had its big open house that weekend – not that we’d have been able to go – but I am disappointed that we weren’t able to connect him with any scientists – an adult who might appreciate how engaged he was in the place, with its model Hubble telescope and Mars rover and the pictures of galaxies and nebulae that he recognizes, the planets that he knows by surface, size and position. We watched a movie about the International Space station, where, he reminded me today, an astronaut mixed orange and red juice in zero-gravity drops.
We’ve arrived at a new place where his need for attention has grown immensely, and his thirst for knowledge, which has been intense, is even stronger. I try to make his life more varied than space, but space seems to help master everything else. Although he can’t read yet, he now recognizes the words “universe” and “astronomy” (and “NASA” of course). He mastered mouse skills in about an hour once I showed him the History Channel’s interactive universe, which he likes to visit daily, telling me “I need to work on the computer.” I tried to get him to play with a Trapelo puzzle with me last night, and once he decided that the designs could be like the “cracks of Europa,” he was ready to try. We’re still having issues with potty training, but when I’ve suggested that his poop will better resemble Proxima Centauri or The Pleiades in a toilet than his diaper, he seems to consider this seriously. (I am not joking at all.)
When he got overwhelmed and overtired in social situations this weekend, looking at space and human anatomy books balanced him. Once we start one, he insists on reading it thoroughly. We were able to sit through a long, rainy graduation ceremony with little incident, provided we could whisper about the billions of cells we have in our bodies, how eardrums work and what heartstrings actually are. We gave him a working stethoscope and a lion puppet for his birthday, so he pretended to tend to his furry patient in his car seat, and later checked our heartbeats.
And as intense as he can be, he’s still funny and fun, sing-song rhyming nonsense words to himself, dancing like a nut and flirting with girls.
We spend so much time in the mysteries of the micro-finite and the infinite here. I’m increasingly afraid about how little I know, how quickly I may lose the ability to engage him and increasingly impatient with people who know so little about astronomy and anatomy themselves, that they don’t know that his interests are more than a cute parlor trick.
My objective this summer is to find someone who he can talk to that loves and knows about at least one of the things that he does.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
Almost precisely eight years ago, I lugged a large canvas bag stocked with a notebook, a tape recorder and microphone up a couple of downtown escalators. My destination was a hotel lounge overlooking the statehouse, where I was able to sit down with artist Robert Rauschenberg for better than a half an hour. He was in town to accept the Wexner Prize, so the topic of conversation was broad and about his remarkable career.
One of the most affable people I’ve ever interviewed, he made me laugh a lot. And every time that I laughed, it seemed to fuel him to make me laugh more. That made editing the tape for the public radio segment I was producing about him a challenge, but it did not detract from the serious passion that he had, particularly when it came to shining a light on art’s relationship — or really art’s necessity — to politics and to science.
Beyond his obvious contributions to American art that many better informed individuals will eulogize this week, it was his philanthropic work – helping to advance humanitarian causes and education through art, as well as creating support for artists — that he expressed particular pride in during our conversation. The chance to talk to him face-to-face ranks among the most special privileges I’ve had in my career as a journalist.
He had been working on his Apogamy Pods, and explained what he was doing in a way that was profoundly (and simultaneously) scientific, spiritual, gentle and challenging. It occurs to me, thinking about him, that some of my best preparation for having a child that is so deeply interested in science has come from years of covering visual art. My son is impressed that I once spoke with one of the first and only artists in a mini-museum that was smuggled to the moon in 1969.
I was saddened to hear of Rauschenberg’s passing on Monday night. What a big life he led, what an immense personality he had, and what a legacy he has left.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
I don’t remember how old I was when I wore it, but it stayed in my shirt drawer long after it fit. My mother did work with other women that felt important. It stood for something. This shirt showed that I stood for something too:
She told me that she hoped that what she was doing would mean that I would grow up in a different kind of world than she had, one where what I had to offer would be welcomed and appreciated, not dismissed on account of my gender. Throughout my childhood, she did work in support of that dream. She even went to Mexico City in 1975 to help draft a plan of action for the women of the world.
When I was six years old, I adopted her maiden name as one of my own (Zollinger) – my first feminist act.
Our world is by no means yet a utopia. There are challenges that my mother’s 30-something self couldn’t have imagined. But this world is different, and better, because of her.
I also dream of a world different from this one for my own son. One that truly values his tenderness, compassion, kindness, generosity and patience. One that treasures his humanity so deeply that no one would dream of calling on him for violence.
Today, the Momocrats have drawn our attention to the original Mother’s Day Proclamation, penned by Julia Ward Howe after the Civil War. I can’t think of a better spirit for this holiday:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace. …
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
My solution to living under a government that doesn’t represent you, age 9 (click to enlarge & read):
While recently helping to clear out a room at my mother’s house, we unearthed a trove of my writing and artwork from grades 1 to 11 (I skipped 12). I’m having fun revisiting my pre-adult brain.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2008.
I have been slowly dragging music off my CD shelves and into my iPod for the past couple of weeks. Between my past (and future) life as a music reviewer and Dan’s history as a music promoter, this process is bound to take awhile.
As I made tall stacks of favorite CDs yesterday, I began to realize that the percentage of recordings I grabbed made by women was significantly smaller than I imagined. That’s strange because I think we listen to more music by women in this house than many families do. It’s also strange because for the years that I regularly wrote CD reviews, I was one of the only female music writers in town, and assigned a disproportionate number of albums by women. I didn’t mind this for two reasons – I felt it was important that a wider number of female musicians got some press exposure, and it just so happens that solid, worthwhile female songwriters and performers have been coming out of the woodwork for the last 15 years.
As I listen, I’m amazed that while some of these women are still thriving (or struggling) in the music game, a few have fallen off the map entirely. I’ve scraped together a few links of songs I find worthwhile by the critically acclaimed and the obscure for your listening and viewing pleasure. There are 30 second samples on iTunes, full videos on YouTube and a free little playlist with the same title as this post that I may grow as I can (although getting my first song choice isn’t always feasible). The process has made me consider podcasting, but we’ll see.
My rule as a reviewer has always been to listen to a recording three times. Sometimes I’ve fallen in love with records I hated the first time through, other times things that I liked on the first listen bored me to tears by the third. I hope you enjoy these:
Sam Phillips
One of my favorite songwriters and performers, period. Although her lighter stuff had its ultimate life on the TV show “The Gilmore Girls,” her records are dark, Gothic and gorgeous.
A Boot and a Shoe, “Reflecting Light”: 
(Or “I Need Love” on YouTube)
Amy Rigby
Known as the “Mod Housewife” with pigtail braids and striped stockings back in the when, a lot of her songs are domestic ennui personified. She’s now living in France.
Diary of a Mod Housewife, “We’re Stronger Than That”:
Angela McCluskey
I just like this woman’s voice. She has also apparently expatriated to France, where she sings with a band called Telepopmusik.
The Things We Do, “It’s Been Done”: YouTube video,
Caitlin Cary
A member of alt country band Whiskeytown, her bandmate Ryan Adams went on to bigger fame, while she’s cut a few fairly well-received records.
I’m Staying Out, “Empty Rooms”:
Rosanne Cash
I realize that she’s part of a major musical dynasty, but the emotional catharses she she shared on Rules of Travel and Black Cadillac about life, illness and death are just timeless.
Rules of Travel, “Beautiful Pain”:
(Or, from the same record, the haunting duet with her father, “September When It Comes” on YouTube.)
Iris DeMent
I didn’t like her old-timey voice at first, but it grew on me and I love her songwriting.
The Way I Should, “The Way I Should”:
(Or DeMent’s video on YouTube of Let the Mystery Be.)
And here is a woman who was in alt country band The Blood Oranges and had a solo record called “The Northeast Kingdom” that I adore, but it’s nowhere on iTunes or any playlist I can find. Sadly (for us anyway, probably happily for her)
, I understand that she’s making soap and raising flowers in New England, far from the turmoil of the music industry. Her name is Cheri Knight:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XU_ZzMMTEOI]
Here’s another woman who did some interesting things by blending music and slam poetry. She went for some easy laughs, but when I saw her live, I found her to be better than a novelty. She’s dropped of the map, but of you ever watched MTV when they actually played music, you may remember this video: Maggie Estep’s “Hey Baby“.
And here’s the playlist, with the songs I could find from these and some other artists:
What female artists do you love or feel haven’t gotten enough exposure?
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
Roman Chamomile
Not the bastardized version that every cosmetic company now synthesizes and manufactures into dish soaps and shampoos, but the real, beautiful, soothing, medicinal thing. (And not German or Wild Chamomile, either – Roman!) The name means “ground apple” because of its sweet, fruity scent, and it had been used medicinally for everything from childbirth to malaria. The true essential oil costs an arm and a leg, but a dropper’s worth can be put into a few ounces of a cheaper base oil like sweet almond or jojoba and after a week or two, the whole bottle will have the scent. I like to grow the plant in the summertime, somewhere near a doorway, and brush my hands over it as I come and go.
Lavender
If your child has the “evil eye,” and is constantly invading the thoughts of others with his or her mind, lavender can clear that affliction right up! (So say the mythology books.) Another herb that I like to grow in high traffic areas so I can touch it regularly, and to which no fabric softener version can compare, the calming properties of lavender aren’t a myth in my book. It’s also the first flower I remember, growing along the side of my childhood house.
Hyacinth
Hyacinth was a young man beloved by the Greek god Apollo, who inadvertently killed him with a poorly thrown discus. I love the flower because it grows from a bulb, and, save some the challenge of keeping critters from digging them up for lunch, bulbs are the easiest things in the world to plant. They are also among the few bulb-grown flowers that are truly fragrant. Declan and I planted about a dozen bulbs last fall, and we’ve been enjoying their scent in the kitchen this week. (I cut them and bring them in when they get tall enough to start bending over.)
Delphinium
In the garden I always think I want, I’m surrounded by blue flowers – a bit of sky on earth, or water on land. There are creeping vines of morning glory, blankets of phlox, lean irises and tall sprays of delphinium, which can have several shades of blue on a single stem. Each petal looks like a mini-horizon. The name derives from the Greek word for dolphin, because of the diving shape of the blossoms.
Dandelions
I never had much use for these beyond the fun of blowing the fluffy ones apart when I was a kid. But these days, my son likes to pick flowers for me. Because we try to be good citizens who don’t pillage the gardens of city parks or our neighbors, Dan steers him toward dandelions and other little weeds. They usually come to me in little bouquets, tied with a stem and accompanied by kisses.
But the blooms wither quickly, which upsets Declan, because he wants his gifts to last. So we’ve taken to putting them in water.
Happy Earth (“Earf“) Day.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2009.
