What a political blog post is NOT supposed to be.

Some thoughts:

Somebody DO something!

So we've got a lame duck president, who continues to sign bills into law and comment that he won't follow them, who wants MORE surveillance powers and thinks lawsuits against his pals should be ex post facto taken off the books, and now I hear on NPR that he's making treaties with Iraq that he won't call treaties and building permanent bases that he won't call permanent, because if he calls them something else, apparently that makes it so the un-permanent bases are legal and the un-treaties, while binding, don't need ratification.

Take the craven Republican congress away, and his truly despotic nature came to the fore -- in the face of the craven Democratic congress.

I am furious! This administration is a blight and he STILL keeps coming up with new and worse wrongs to commit and nobody's DOING anything to stop him!

I don't want to advocate violent upheaval and active dissent and passive resistance and civil disobedience, but come on! What do I do inside the rules that ends the flagrant horror?

So, it's all waterboarding under the bridge?

Before he was confirmed, Mukasey wouldn't say whether waterboarding was torture because he didn't have the information. So now?

He won't say if waterboarding is torture because the CIA doesn't do it (or at least, it isn't policy) and they're not planning to do it. Never mind that they unquestionably DID it. And why is he not going to look into whether it WAS torture? Because if he "second-guesses" his predecessors, that sends the wrong message. It tells the interrogators that they if they get told to do it and later it "turns out" to be torture, then they might get in trouble just for following orders. And that's the wrong message because...um...

Seriously, the only way to finish that sentence is "because they won't do what they know is torture if we tell them to." Anyone care to argue that would be "the wrong message"?

Luckily for us, this isn't the only vile fume issuing from Mukasey's mouth. He also put forth the position that whether
waterboarding (or whatever) "shocks the conscience" depends on the circumstances. Like, if the information that might result from the "interrogation" would save lives, then it might not be torture.

I _had_ thought that all this absolutism about torture was just unserious. I mean, it's _only_ torture; obviously _sometimes_ it's not so bad. If it was wrong all the time, you'd call it something else, like, uh...

The snark in me assumes the Republican position would be that sentence ends in "homosexuality", but more seriously, isn't the whole friggin' point of banning TORTURE is that "even in extremis, when lives are at stake, we DON'T DO THIS?" What moral high ground are you claiming with "we don't torture, but we do exactly things that in other circumstances would be torture if it's really important"?

I'm not accusing Mukasey of dissembling and hypocrisy at orders unthinkable. I'm writing words that in other contexts could assert that he's an unthinkably hypocritical liar, but given the dire circumstances and horrific scenarios that could result if he ISN'T called an unthinkably hypocritical liar, the potential benefits of this action preclude labeling it an accusation.

Granfaloons

So, I had a touch of an epiphany during a conversation with my wife's uncle. He talked about grand jury duty, and I found that he used words to mean something I would use the antonym to mean. Kind of like "flammable" and "inflammable". For example, he said he was a conservative, so he thought you needed to have some evidence to indict someone. Or similarly, that busting someone for drug possession and drug paraphernelia possession because the weed was in a baggie, he didn't think that was right. He didn't know if I would agree, since you know, I might be liberal, but that was his opinion. A different uncle assumed I wouldn't like his thoughts about health care at all -- when he expounded those ideas, they sounded exactly like the Australian system.

The first realization is that we attribute our virtues to political designations even when they don't deserve it -- there's nothing "conservative" about "innocent until proven guilty" and rejecting sneaky end-arounds by DA's to try to rack up felony counts. But there's nothing "liberal" about that either. In many real ways, we are not politically divided at all.

The second realization, after reading Ronald Reagan's rejection of "Trust me" government and John Ashcroft's demands to preserve privacy rights (?!) (see Glenn Greenwald), was that the labels were just teams: the Republicans spend like "Liberals" when they're in power, and the Democrats serve big business when they're in power. It's very 1984ish.

Politically speaking, the party in power tries to extend and calcify the reach of government generally and their hold on the reins, and the party out of power tries to limit (executive) government control and promote opportunity -- for them to wrest control.

It would make more sense for citizens to identify as "pro-incumbent" or "pro-opposition", rather than R or D. That the politicians would switch party titles when they switch roles would be more honest hypocrisy than what we have now -- an endless redefining of liberal and conservative and neoliberal (which means conservative) and neoconservative (which means fascist, which Jonah Goldberg tells me means liberal) to fit the exigencies of the moment, resulting in a cascade of political identifications that, though more confusingly used, are in fact rather less meaningful than "Bloods" and "Crips".

I'm mostly curmudgeonly, bitter, pessimistic, etc. But there's a small silvery lining here: despite the similarly disingenuous use of the word "bipartisanship", there really are (potentially) swaths of stuff that government could do (or get out of) that "liberals" and "conservatives" alike could agree on, if they didn't vilify it by association with the other camp. I don't know that this is true of the politicians claiming to be the heads of those two groups, but the actual people on the ground are a different story.

Death in Georgia

The New Yorker has an excellent article about the prosecution of Brian Nichols for the 2005 courthouse shooting spree in Atlanta. It focuses on the challenges of defending the indigent. One of the main characters is Stephen B. Bright, the senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights.

He is my hero. I saw him on a panel at the New School's conference on punishment in the U.S. Everyone was complaining about the piling on of post-release punishments for sex offenders when someone said something like, "The problem is, who is going to take on the incredibly unpopular role of the defender of sex offenders' rights." Bright raised his hand, "I am."

Charitable Giving and Your Tax Rebate

I received an email from TrueMajority today that caught my eye. The subject line was, "Can part of your rebate save the economy?" Reading further it asked me to donate 10% of the six hundred dollar tax rebate check that is my part of the economic stimulus package to TrueMajority.
This touches on a debate I have been trying to foment among my peers about alumni giving. Specifically, if you have a limited budget for charitable giving why would you give it to, say, for example, a school with a billion dollar endowment, instead of, say, people in actual need?
It also touches on a basic problem I have with these economic band-aid refund checks. I want the troops to have proper equipment. I want poor people around the country to have access to healthy food. I want public schools to educate children about more than "be sure to fill in a bubble on every line because you're not penalized for guessing." So should I oppose the $600 rebate checks? Or should I donate my share to charity? If so, which charities? Who do you send the check to for, "properly equip our troops"? Who do you send the check to for, "teach children in public schools"? Who do you send the check to for, "save WIC and food stamps and make the application process easier"?
While you contemplate the answers to these questions, be sure to play FreeRice.

Edited 5/12/2008 to add:
Check out Brad DeLong's post, tangentially on the subject of irrational alumni giving to schools with excessively large endowments.

Prisons and Politics

If you asked me in 1988 who I would vote for in the Democratic primary in 2008 (because I knew in 1988 that I would be voting in the Democratic primary in 2008, don't all 14 year olds strongly identify with a political party?) and you told me my options, I would probably have voted for Hillary Clinton.

But then I went to law school and learned about the criminal justice system and now I cannot possibly vote for someone who opposes crack guideline retroactivity and who justifies this irrational position by citing Giuliani's apparently similar position. For those not in the sentencing know, back in the heyday of crack paranoia, the U.S. Sentencing Commission established sentencing guidelines which punished offenses related to crack 100 times longer than offenses related to powder cocaine. This has long been held up as an example of institutionalized racism in sentencing. Whether the U.S.S.C. was being racist or whether it was succumbing to the media frenzy, the result was bad law. The U.S.S.C. recently issued new guidelines which reduce this 100:1 disparity and recommended that they apply retroactively.

Clinton and the Bush Administration oppose the effort to make this change retroactive. This is the first evidence I've seen that Hillary is taking the same "tough on crime"/ irrational sentencing stance as her husband. While Bill Clinton was great for this country in many ways, he undermined the rights of the accused arguably more than any president in history. I expected better from Hillary. I am now officially disappointed. Therefore, I am not going to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Criminal justice reform is the new civil rights movement. And the Clintons are moving in the wrong direction.

Edit: It has recently been brought to my attention that in all fairness I should post all of the candidates' positions on retroactivity. Obama and Edwards support retroactivity. Clinton and Giuliani oppose retroactivity. I can't find Romney's or McCain's positions, though given Romney's attempts to be tough on crime in Massachusetts, I'd bet he's opposed. I emailed both of their campaigns to ask what their position on crack retroactivity is. I'll update if I hear anything.

Edit 2/12/2008: No, I haven't heard back from McCain, and I don't think Romney is taking this time off the campaign trail to respond to emails. But I did find another post over at Prof. Berman's blog that covers the candidates' positions on crime and punishment a little more thoroughly:"Where candidates stand on crime, death penalty".

Edit 3/25/2008: Still haven't heard back from McCain. But the ever wonderful Prof. Berman posted a link to The Sentencing Project's guide to the 2008 Presidential Candidates' Platforms on Criminal Justice that provides information on a range of key criminal justice issues, including sentencing policy, reentry, death penalty, and felony disenfranchisement.

Product Review - Seikisho Mask White

In the spirit of this blog's complete lack of a coherent theme, I would like to share my experience with
Seikisho Mask White. When you order stuff from Neiman Marcus online they make up for the tons of free stuff the people at their makeup counters normally throw into your bag by letting you choose three sample sized freebies from a relatively short list upon check out. I usually get whatever shampoo samples they have to take to the gym and then whatever isn't perfume. This time the whatever isn't perfume was Seikisho Mask White. If you follow the above link to the product you will see a picture of a white woman in the mask. Which is probably a good thing because I had no idea that this substance labeled "Mask White" would in fact be black. First, it is merely disconcerting to squish what looks like recently unearthed petroleum onto your fingers. Second, upon applying said mask I had a flashback to a very special episode of Gimme A Break in which Nell explains to Joey that wearing blackface while performing his tapdance routine to "Me and My Shadow" is horribly offensive. My next thought was, "Please don't let the house catch on fire for the next twenty minutes while this goo dries because I'm fairly sure that my merely exiting the house in this mask would violate someone's civil rights." What would possess a company to make such a mask? The company that makes Seikisho Mask White is Kose, which according to its website is a leading cosmetic company in Japan.
When I was a kid my mom had a tube of peel-off mask which smelled like lemon dish soap and probably was some misformulated batch of lemon dish soap repackaged and sold as a beauty product . . . like 3M developed the repositionable adhesive on the back of post-its from a failed foray into finding a more adhesive adhesive. Anywhoodles, Mom's lemon peel-off mask was clear, so you couldn't tell exactly where you'd already applied it to your face, nor how thickly you'd applied it. When it came to the fun part, peeling it off like a creature from the black, or in this case clear, lagoon, it was hard to see what patches you had failed to remove. This was particularly true around the hairline. So later that day, after your fantastic beauty routine made you feel 100% more pretty, oh so pretty, you'd be doing something you would otherwise not feel fit to attempt, like, say, talking to a cute boy. And at a particularly flirty moment you would attempt to flip your hair and your finger would get caught on what you might easily mistake for straw, but was in fact the dried, clear mask in your hair. There is no cool way to pull dried mask out of your hair. Think monkeys grooming one another. Then turn the monkey into a mortified preteen girl.
Flashforward to today: make the mask a color so you can see where you've applied it, see how thickly you've applied it, and see where it's still left on you . . . including your hair. But as Harry Chapin taught us, there are so many colors in the rainbow. Why black? Why not blue or purple or green?
Maybe someone thought, "Let's sell a product to rich white women (i.e. the consumer base of Neiman Marcus), which forces them to confront race." Ingenius. Or maybe it was just a placeholder color until someone tested it and enjoyed the moments when they looked like a racoon, a Guy Fawkes mask, Lenin, Groucho Marx. I know I certainly did.
Does my face look better? I dunno. Feels about the same. Maybe my pores are a bit more svelt. But that's not really the point, is it?

Things to Do

In the spirit of togetherness and sharing and progress that is M.L.K. Jr.'s legacy . . . O.K. or just because I told Bob that if he posted his list of things to do I would post mine . . . and that is SO not nagging. If you want nagging, I'll show you nagging. Bring it on, little man! Sorry, this post is getting away from me. Oh yes, things to do and togetherness and sharing.

• Finish two baby quilts and start and finish two more. These kids are going to be thirty by the time I finish their baby quilts. I am contemplating telling my friends that I need to be notified before they even start trying to conceive. Every time they have unprotected sex, I should get a reminder email to get started on that quilt.
• Make a camera obscura. This needs no explanation.
• Affix the color tabs to my New Munsell Student Color Set.
• Put finish on end table. I decoupaged an end table with postcards of Spanish advertisements and a tapas menu. But I don't think two layers of Mod Podge will protect it from the horrors that are life as an end table. So I've got this insane resin to cover it so it will look like the end table in the cabin on Cape Cod with the seashells and the sand all embedded over a yellowing map of the area. But without the seashells or the sand . . . or the map.

Nagging works. Once.

Here's some things I want to do:

• Work on database design with SQL. Databases that I ought to make: commodity prices (grab daily prices and /or daily price changes), math students (course history, success as function of background), contacts (although I might use Google for this), comic books.
• Playtest a mathy game about functions.
• build a robot.
  
• And some other devices with less electronics.

Other things as I come up with them. And, ideally, progress updates on the above.

Parenting Resources (I am not pregnant)

I know, I know, why would I compile a list of alternative parenting resources if I am not now nor in the coming year going to be a parent? Well, partly it's because the New York Times Magazine had an article Family Values in it's Consumed column that had a number of references to things that, while inapplicable now, may be applicable in the future. And when I'm wigging out about folic acid and organic everything and not sleeping and constantly nauseous, I'm thinking I won't be in the mood to ferret out cool resources like this to assuage my alternahubby's fears of impending daddiness.

• Yo, Gabba Gabba!, the Nickelodeon television show that inspired the NY Times article.
• Neal Pollack authored Alternadad.
• Kidrobot
• Salon.com's article about Kindie Rock
• Dan Zane's Music
• Laurie Berkner's Music, who Salon dubbed the Ani DiFranco of kid's music
• Offsprung
• OhDeeDoh from the people who brought you Apartment Therapy


• Stroller Reviews at New York Magazine

And just to make this clear, I am not pregnant.

Edited on 5/4/2008 to add:
There's this really disturbing article on CNN.com about ultra posh pre-natal nonsense (which I found via OhDeeDoh, which had the even more disturbing comments implying that all this ultra posh pre-natal nonsense was O.K., e.g. "The photography session and the five-star vacation sound normal to me," which sorta makes me never want to read OhDeeDoh ever again). But perhaps the most disturbing thing was not about the ultra posh at all.

Babies cost an average of $10,600 in the first year to feed, clothe and care for, according to 2007 federal statistics.

Seriously?!? And is it wrong for me to think, "I'd kinda rather have a new car"? Maybe that's just a sign that I'm not ready yet. Which is true. I am not pregnant. I am not trying to become pregnant. I will not try to become pregnant in the next year. Just in case you weren't clear on that.

Edited on 5/13/2008 to add:
If you're one of those future parents who thinks you have to unplug all modes of media in your house once the tiny tyke arrives, apparently you can relax and let them play violent video games from like birth or something and studies show it will all be O.K.

Edited on 6/2/2008 to add:
A neat Time Magazine article on green parenting which name drops three different green parenting books:

• Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Baby Care by Alan Greene, Jeanette Pavini, and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo
• Growing Up Green: Baby and Child Care: Volume 2 in the Bestselling Green This! Series (Green This!) by Deirdre Imus
• Healthy Child Healthy World: Creating a Cleaner, Greener, Safer Home by Christopher Gavigan

Edited on 9/18/2008 to add:
Inhabitots posts about cloth diapering.

A friend of mine suggested the Boston Women's Health Collective, of Our Bodies Ourselves fame, as a great resource for pregnancy and childbirth information. She also suggested that What to Expect When You're Expecting is a horrible book for expecting parents as it is entirely couched in negative terms, like pregnancy is a horrible disease and birth is the cure of this affliction. The BWHC has a very thorough critique of childbearing advice books.

Edited on 9/23/2008 to add:

AskMetafilter responses to a question about parents expressing anger in response to a child's wrongdoing. Perhaps like a lot of AskMetafilter posts, the responses provide no real answer to the question posed, but provide a number of resources that might be interesting to check out.

Edited on 9/29/2008 to add:

Alice Waters on raising kids to eat right via Serious Eats.

Edited on 12/11/2008 to add:

Whip Up's elephantine list of tutorials about how to make stuff for babies and parents.

Blue Marble's post about a study that indicates obesity is linked to grandparents' diet.

Re-Nest scavenges Etsy to find an Eco-Friendly Toddler Flatware Set.

AskMetafilter on natural birth vs. medicated birth. The key to AskMeFi is to read the comments as that's where the good stuff is.

AskMetafilter on parenting issues around two kids sharing one bedroom.

Re-Nest on how to make your own baby wipes.

Edited on 1/8/2009 to add:
Serious Eats' video interview between chefs Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain about baby food.

Edited on 1/15/2009 to add:
The Kitchn (Apartment Therapy's food-centered blog) recommends a children's book: Let's Cook! by Robert Crowther. This interactive cookbook for kids includes pop-out cardboard bacon and utensils.

Edited on 1/16/2009 to add:
The hive mind of AskMeFi seriously pondered what material possessions a new baby requires. One oft-noted book I'd never heard of: Dr. Harvey Karp's The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer.

A question that is seriously taxing my husband's mind: will our relationship with our dogs change when a new baby joins the family? The AskMeFi hive mind wisely pondered this concern. A book recommended by the hive: Childproofing Your Dog: A Complete Guide to Preparing Your Dog for the Children in Your Life by Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson.

In the fantasy world where I'm an awesome parent and my kids buy into my crazy parenting nonsense, we would totally do this resolutions thing Laura from Girl in a Swirl posted over at Whip Up.

Edited on 1/29/2009 to add:
The Write Start is a blog by a mom/pediatric occupational therapist/writer Jennifer Hallissy about getting young children ready to write. Via Whip Up.

Parents.com has a toy and kid gear recall finder. Via Consumerist.

Edited on 4/24/2009 to add:
A number of friends of mine who have recently had children have not found breastfeeding to be as easy as it's cracked up to be. From what I've heard that's a very common experience that a lot of women just don't talk about (I have this whole conspiracy theory involving La Leche League and the baby formula industry, but I'll save that for another day).

A friend of mine who just had a baby in October highly recommends The Nursing Mother's Companion: Revised Edition by Kathleen Huggins.

While she didn't agree with everything The Nursing Mother's Companion said, she found it very helpful for nursing. She also offered the caveat that reading it required her and her husband "gathering the ability to move past laughing hysterically at all the pictures of breasts in it." So if nothing else, you might get a laugh out of it.

Edited on 7/22/09 to add:
100 Geeky Places to Take Your Kids This Summer by GeekDad Doug Cornelius over at Wired (via OhDeeDoh) includes old standbys like Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village and annual events like Comic-Con and the Penny Arcade Expo.

Linked through an ad on OhDeeDoh to an online store for natural toys called ChildTrek. I totally want the Kidsonroof TOTEM Tree to play with all by myself.

The Boy's Almanac is a blog by "two mothers constantly striving to maintain a wild, self-sufficient childhood for our boys and wanting to revive the old school methods of practical scouting, bypassing the modern organization and its discriminating baggage." I like that mission statement. And they're not sexist, they just don't have girls. The blog follows their adventures as they undertake the projects in The American Boy's Handy Book: What to Do and How to Do It, Centennial Edition. Via OhDeeDoh (let's just call today's update The OhDeeDoh Digest).

Uncommon Goods sells Your Body Puzzle, which seems like a neat way to introduce a 3+ year old to their parts both external and internal. This puzzle is a little more cartoony and a little less Grey's Anatomy than the 3-D Muscle & Skeleton Puzzle (for 8+ year olds). I love the idea of anatomy toys for kids. I have to say, I spent hours looking through my dad's medical books, mostly for pictures of skin diseases to gross myself out. Again, via OhDeeDoh. Fat Brain Toys has a set of Human Anatomy Models for 7+ year olds that looks seriously anatomically correct AND lots of fun. Kids Toy Chest has a wide array of human anatomy toys as does another childhood favorite Edmond Scientific. Of course Dover has the Human Anatomy Coloring Book.

All that talk of human anatomy is making me hungry. Good thing OhDeeDoh found tempered glass Kidishes available at Zoe B Organic. In case you're not up on the major issues in child dining, here's a quick summary: plastic is evil. Even if it's BPA-free plastic or melamine, it's still evil if you put it in the microwave. That's where tempered glass dishes come in. They're harder to break than normal dishes, but they're just as safe to throw in the microwave as normal dishes.

Edited on 7/23/09 to add:
While I was assembling yet another piece of IKEA furniture, I got to thinking about The Boy's Almanac from the previous update. When I was a kid, messing around in my dad's workshop was so much fun. With shop classes eliminated from so many school curricula, covering at least basic hand tool skills has, yet again, become the parents' responsibility. There are a few books out there to help even novice parents meet this challenge. Woodshop for Kids by Jack McKee seems like a good one.

Edited on 7/28/09 to add:
All Things Considered had a great segment on the "MommyBlogger" phenomenon . . . and pretty much how they're all a bunch of sell outs. But then the accompanying web article has all these enticing articles that make me want to patronize nothing but sell outs . . . I mean MommyBlogs. One that sounded most entertaining from the article, but is unfortunately not linked to from the accompanying web article (it is linked to from the associated All Tech Considered blog post - which totally seems like trying to generate hits at multiple sites rather than actually providing content in a usable fashion) is DadLabs [READERS AT WORK BEWARE: DadLabs has some autoplay video that will start playing even before the rest of the page has finised loading, so mute].

Edited on 7/29/2009 to add:
Check out Playful Learning, a website (with a link to a blog) by Mariah Bruehl, an educator cum mommy. She adapts what she knows "about educational research and practice into simple, playful learning experiences that parents can easily share with their children." Via OhDeeDoh.

And edited again on 7/29/2009 to add:
My dear college roommate who had a baby about two months ago (not to be confused with my dear college roommate who had a baby about a month ago) suggested the following three resources.

• Let's Panic - a hilarious website dedicated to the crazy stuff people wig out about regarding pregnancy and parenthood
  
• Diary Of A Baby: What Your Child Sees, Feels, And Experiences by Daniel N. Stern
  
• The Birth Of A Mother: How The Motherhood Experience Changes You Forever also by Daniel N. Stern, which she described as speaking directly to her experience despite its heterocentricity and other flaws.
  

And edited yet again on 7/29/2009 to add:

Urban Preschool takes a fairly abstract approach to early childhood education. It's mostly links to resources for interesting stuff for/about kids. It covers everything from art and design for kids to eco-literacy.

Edited on 8/2/2009 to add:

Organic stuff for babies seems way overpriced to me. I just saw an organic onesie for over $10. That's nuts. Get thee to Dharma Trading Comapany, a store known for its tie-dyeing paraphernalia. As of today they sell organic onesies, t-shirts, hats, and bibs. All white (see they're ready for you to tie-dye, but you don't have to). Their Lap Shoulder Organic Infant Creeper comes in four sizes: newborn, 6 mos, 12 mos, 18 mos. If you buy 11 or fewer, the price is $5.85. If you buy more than that, the price per onesie goes down. If you bought 60 or more (like if you were starting a baby factory), the price would be $4.35 per onesie. Their Lap Shoulder Organic Infant T-Shirt also comes in four sizes: newborn, 6 mos, 12 mos, 18 mos, and if you buy 11 or fewer the price is $4.60. Their Organic Infant Pull-on Cap comes only in infant size and is $3.05 for purchases of up to 11 (I mean how many hats does a baby go through?). Their Organic Cotton Baby Rib Bib, also one size fits all, also for $3.05 for purchases of up to 11 (I bet they can go through bibs faster than they go through hats).

If you're not so hung up on organic, Dharma also sells a slightly wider array of baby stuff made out of bamboo fabric. Dharma has this to say about bamboo clothing, "Bamboo fabric is enjoying a popularity boom because of it's low environmental impact, absorptive and antibacterial properties, as well as it's sublime softness." Sounds pretty good as far as baby stuff goes.

If you're not hung up on organic or bamboo, Dharma has just about everything a baby trousseau requires, so long as you want it in white and cotton.

Edited on 7/4/2009 to add:

Giver's Log made a soft mailbox out of fabric for the aspiring letter writer and receiver in your household. She provides a great tutorial so you can make one too. Sounds like this would work nicely with all of the suggestions for encouraging writing over at The Write Start. Via OhDeeDoh.

Playful Learning put together a tote full of tools for the aspiring writer. Again, I think this ties in nicely with everything The Write Start has to say. Via OhDeeDoh.

On a non-writing preparedness related note, the big debate among new parents (who do not have unlimited space) seems to be whether to invest in a swing or a bouncy chair. The bouncy chair contingent seems to swear by BabyBjorn's Babysitter Balance.

Edited on 8/11/2009 to add:

Consumer Reports has a very thorough report on baby proofing your home. You don't even need a subscription to access it. You do need a stiff drink or stiff drink analog to handle the proclamations of doom. For example, if you don't put a child-proof lock on your toilet, all babies within a 10 mile radius will die. I'm exaggerating . . . a little . . . only a 5 mile radius.

Edited on 8/12/2009 to add:

Would someone please explain to me why books and such recommend pregnant women read other women's stories about their experiences in labor and birth? As a follow up question, would someone please explain to me why women share their stories, in graphic detail, with complete strangers, so frequently? O.K. Birth story rant aside, if you're going to read any birth story, you should read Dooce's birth story, not because it's a birth story, but because it is funny as all get out.

So I am REALLY not into toy buying for children. It is almost universally done to excess. It's all plastic crap made by child slave labor under dangerous conditions. And these days it is usually stamped with some corporation's branding and/or character. But then I see this giant photorealistic inflatable globe, and I must have it for my spawn. Via OhDeeDoh.

Edited on 8/13/2009 to add:

PBS has a website for parents. It's not keyed to any particular television program that I can discern (I haven't watched television in about four years except for the occasional Law & Order binge in hotels when traveling, so I could be wrong). Not only does it have a ton of information, it also has lots of ideas for activities parents can do with their kids.

Edited on 8/30/2009 to add:

Angry Chicken's post about making a poultice for her daughter's bee stings sent me down the rabbit hole of kid safe herbal remedies. First, check out the book Angry Chicken recommends: A Kid's Herb Book by Lesley Tierra. Then one of her readers recommended Walking the World in Wonder: A Children's Herbal by Ellen Evert Hopman.

Edited on 9/1/2009 to add:
While digging through eco-focused parenting blogs I stumbled across this post at Green Parenting about a little girl who always screamed like a banshee at the dentist and what the parents did about it. At the end there are links to a bunch of videos about little kids having positive experiences at the dentist.

Edited on 10/3/2009 to add:
AskMeFi had an interesting question about teaching a 9-year-old to cook, which led me to this neat website: Spatulatta. Spatulatta is primarily a series of webcasts that show two sisters, Isabella, 13, and Olivia, 11, cooking. They post the recipes used in the webcasts as well. Apparently they published a cookbook back in 2007 and won the James Beard Award. Not bad.

Edited on 11/4/2009 to add:
My mom was, among many things, a sex ed teacher. So we didn't have so much of a "talk" as an anatomically correct torso on the dining room table. Other people have distinct and often traumatic memories of the "talk" their parents had with them about sex. Time Out New York Kids has an entire issue dedicated to kids and sex including a section on how to talk to your kids about sex. One of the things I find most helpful about this article is that it starts with ages zero to three. I am pretty sure the reason I wasn't traumatized by talking about sex with my parents was that stuff like the anatomically correct names for body parts were part of the conversation from the start. Via the New York Times parenting blog Motherlode.

Political Resources

Tis the season for brushing up on your candidates. Check out these three sites for some neutral information:
FactCheck
OpenSecrects
TechPresident
Check out these sites for some less than neutral information:
The Becker/Posner Blog
The Citizens
DailyKos
edit: Bob just shared a little gem in the less than neutral category that you must read, though, I advise you as a former labor law attorney who is in no way giving you legal advice, that you might not want to read it at work because people can be sensitive about the truly funny. goodCRIMETHINK and I know reading the "About the Author" part of a blog is like the most uncool thing since global warming (sorry I've been reading a comedian's blog, so now I think I'm a comedian, and I'm really really not), you should totally read his, because it's REALLY funny. Way funnier than that crap joke I just made about global warming.
Another Bob gem this time to add to the neutral category GlassBooth

Shameless Commerce

I have a secret life as a not nearly as unsuccessful as I thought t-shirt designer. More specifically, at least 20 different people have bought a t-shirt I posted on Zazzle, my Please Don't Feed the Animals t-shirt.
Now, I must give credit where credit is due and that is to Jon Stewart. I read an article about him in some magazine, either Entertainment Weekly or Vanity Fair, since that's all I read in law school . . . I mean other than law stuff. He wore a very similar shirt in a photo in the article. It must have been VF because I was able to find that the t-shirt was from some French company. I tried to find said French company to purchase said t-shirt to no avail. So I made a knock off.
But I am not just a knock-off success. Four of my Chesty Potato Chips shirts are out in the world somewhere, well technically three of them are in Galesburg, IL, and one of them is in Baltimore, MD. And two people other than me are wearing my Guinea Pig shirt.
It's kinda freakin' me out.

Listening to . . .

The soundtrack to Juno makes me want to serenade someone. I predict All I Want is You by Barry Louis Parker will be the most popular first dance song at hipster weddings in 2008. The right couple could do a mean Cajun two-step to that ditty.
Wolf Parade Apologies to Queen Mary makes me want to dance like I used to with my friend Thalia around the living room to the soundtrack to Zorba the Greek.
Spoon I don't know which albums (that damnable iPod obscures origins), possibly all of them. And I wonder where my money goes.
Jack's Mannequin Everything in Transit has very good boy-in-love songs by the vocalist/pianist Andrew McMahon of Something Corporate. He has leukemia. Though I recently discovered through the wonders of Wikipedia that this album was released only three months after his diagnosis, I had listened to it thinking he was in some sense writing about his illness. And maybe he was. Anywho, there are parts here and there that resonate with me in terms of dealing with my RA. Which is particularly embarrassing given that the lyrics are likely about twenty something angst and NOT dealing with one's body rejecting oneself.

Sign from the Slow Foods Gods

I finished reading Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma last night. And today, on the community radio station there he was giving a lecture on the cornification of food. Am I the last to know that ethanol is not nature's friend? I have also resolved that in our next destination we're going to become members of a C.S.A. - not Confederate States of America, but Community Supported Agriculture. Though I feel like that handy acronym does not clearly express what it is. Am I the last to hear about CSAs? I feel so out of the loopy. Now if only I can hunt down some grass-finished beef for dinner.

Visual Inspiration

Continuing the Top 10 2007 Roundup theme, and breaking into the world of posting images, here are ten of the images I've found inspiring. Most of these I've found through dear ada or print & pattern. I'm hoping that posting these inspiring images will coax me into taking action on that inspiration. Maybe this time next year I'll be posting the Top 10 Pieces I've Completed in 2008 Based on the Top 10 Images I Found Inspiring in 2007.


This is a picture taken by my friend Mary of an art installation by Matthew and Jonathan Stemler at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia.






This is a collage by Ian Pedigo. I have some Martha Negley fabric printed with vegetables that is waiting to be made into something inspired by this collage.









This is a painting by Sarajoe Friedan.











This is a print called Red Volcano by Dr. Atl, a Mexican artist. I saw this in an exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Mexican prints. I haven't been able to find many resources on Dr. Atl. So if there's some great book all about him with lots of images of his amazing print work, please let me know.






I found this image on the Buy Nothing Catalog site related to Buy Nothing Christmas. Which reminds me, go see What Would Jesus Buy?






This is a painting by Alice Stevenson. It is yet another sign that I need to work on my rokkaku kite battle quilt that has been aging in my brain since the kite festival in D.C. two years ago.









This is a work by Bill Renkl. I have a palm tree quilt project that is currently occupying my design wall that needs a little inspiration from this image. I swear I only bought all three seasons of Arrested Development on DVD because the sets all have palm tree images tucked all over the place.







This is a work by Friedrich Kunath. There's some polka dotted fabric that wants to break free from its matrix every time it sees this image.










This is a painting by Mark Grotjahn.











This is one of a growing collection of images I call SimpleTrees. I don't know what I was working on that made me think "I need to come up with a better way to represent tree-ness," but I started collecting images of simple trees and now I'm up to 20 of them and I don't know why. Now I just paw through print & pattern scrambling for my next tree fix. It's disturbing.

Blog Roll

I don't know what a "blog roll" is, but if it is a list of my ten most frequently read blogs in 2007, then this is it:
design*sponge
Angry Chicken
Dear Ada
Go Fug Yourself
Am I Really Going Through This?
print & pattern
Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Letters
Sentencing Law and Policy
Spirit Cloth
Wee Wonderfuls

Usurpation

I don't know if this is the manifestation of a New Year's Resolution or just a thought I've been pondering for some time, but I'm going to start blogging more and worrying about fitting in with the Gnomicon theme less. Not sure if I can sustain a post-a-day pace, but it's good to have goals and then not meet those goals and then be depressed about never meeting your goals. Well, maybe not that last part.

So the end of the year roundup that has me most freaked out: The Top Science-and-Tech Privacy Threats of 2007. The chipping I'd contemplated in the correctional context. But culling the human herd of those with the "homosexuality gene" has me totally wigged.

Now I feel compelled to round something 2007ish up. I don't watch TV in the broadcast sense. And I don't watch nearly as many movies as I should in the theater. I can't recall all the books I've read this year (maybe I should remedy that in 2008). But Netflix conveniently remembers everything I rented from them ever.

Top 10 DVDs I Netflixed in 2007
How to Draw a Bunny
Good Night and Good Luck
Heroes: Season 1
Extras: Season 2
The Departed
My linguistic background is strictly upstate New York and broadcast television. I have no reason to have any accent whatsoever. However, given immersion in any accent that truly entertains me, I will adopt it. If you want to hear my accent circa 1989, listen to Marky Mark in The Depahted.
Cold Mountain
I held off on this for a long time because it did not really seem like my cup of tea, but then I saw that Philip Seymour Hoffman was in it. And his tiny part makes it entirely worth watching.
The Devil Wears Prada
Outfoxed
Technically, I also Netflixed An Inconvenient Truth in 2007 and I did rate it 5 stars and it is a film everyone should watch. However, I was fascinated by the mode of production of Outfoxed. Watch the extras. Hear the crazy people who were assigned to watch hours and hours of Fox News and note when particular things were said. In this overly determined world, this voluntary collective process is an amazing way to filter through the noise.
Eddie Izzard: The Definite Article
Veronica Mars: Seasons 2 and 3 (I netflixed season 1 in 2006)
Arrested Development: Seasons 1 through 3

The important steppingstone that is What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy

What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee (which is accurately titled, but it's too long to type, so I'm going to abbreviate it as What Video Games... from here on) is an important book -- one of those books that I'll refer to (in all senses) time and time again. It is sure to be cited in numerous other books. (To be honest, I special ordered it because of its citation in Game Design Workshop, although maybe that's a false memory because I can't find the reference.)

However, although the seeds of many significant things are there, I think I wanted the book to be more than it is. It so whetted my appetite for a Grand Unified Fun Education Theory (my useless one-time acronym for today is GUFET, pronounced "guffit"), that when no GUFET emerged I felt let down. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Despite my disappointment that What Video Games... didn't solve my life, it resonates so much with me that I want to talk about it in several different genres: first, I feel like I ought to give it a brief review, both to summarize the main thrust and also give a useful preview to anyone else that might be interested in reading it. Secondly, I want to write a book report on it: the book makes fairly strong claims which can be argued with, extrapolated from, and so forth. Hm...that sounds more like I want to be in a discussion group or book club. Yeah, throw that in there too. And, at the moment being a math teacher, I want to translate the book's main points for people who care about teaching math but don't care about videogames at all. (As seen from the title, What Video Games... puts a space in the term "video games", but I don't.) I have questions about the applicability of some of Gee's ideas specifically to mathematics, and I'd like a specifically math-oriented book club to discuss those.

So, that should tell you I think it's a pretty good book, in the sense that it's chock full of provocative ideas.

I plan to do the "book review" part next, though all my half-baked ideas are subject to change by the time they're, uh, full-baked.

Current Book List

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. Insanely detailed. Includes in the chapter on milk a description of aurochs - the ancient predecessor to the modern cow.

I'm Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown. Sense a trend? Detailed, but about stuff that's interesting. And it has lots of pictures and recipes. I'm trying Chicksicles for dinner tonight.

Sew Subversive. It's about sewing for the painfully hip craftster. Some of its explanations are very helpful even to advanced beginners like me. The vast majority of the projects are not my taste. The writing style is quite enjoyable. I plan to follow its instructions to mend a split seam, hem pants, and add ears to a hoodie sweat shirt. So just the practical projects. :)

Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. This was a housewarming gift from my mother-in-law when I moved in with my future husband about eight years ago. I used it briefly as a reference at that time. Now I'm trying to read it from front to back. I've actually implemented, to some degree, her suggested daily and weekly housekeeping routine. I'm a big fan of marketing day, clothes laundry day, and the concept of washing non-clothes laundry on the same day you do your major housecleaning. Unfortunately, I can't get through her major housecleaning action item list and it still takes me six hours to do my abridged version. Also, the second section of the book is all about making coffee and tea. So she gets you all riled up to do this cleaning routine and then bores you to tears with how hot your water should be for the perfect coffee. If I drank coffee, I might care, but I doubt it.

Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems by Cesar Millan. This is the book by the host of the National Geographic television show The Dog Whisperer. Fun book. Most of it is his autobiography, which is a great story. Some of it is really sad stories about rescue dogs. The advice is great, but some of it is clearly something you have to see done before you can really do it right. The first DVD of The Dog Whisperer just arrived from Netflix.

Current book list

Been reading "What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy" by James Paul Gee, and it's quite good. (A bit technical with cognitive theory, or at least that's where I think the jargon is coming from, though.) Interested in education and videogames, then this is the book for you.

Also listening to Runes of the Earth by Stephen Donaldson in the car. I have to say, it's disappointing. (It's a followup to the two Thomas Covenant chronicles, btw.) Partly, it's clearly not a book that reads out loud well, and partly, the heroine is whiny and stupid and I can't stand her. Maybe if I appreciated emo angsty indecision with occasional bursts of resolve which last about a minute before despondency descends once more into the depths of her heart...that's what it reads like.

Once I'm done with that, I'll pursue other fantasy worlds: I've got Pullman's Amber Spyglass on tap, as well as Gaiman's Anansi Boys.

I also need to get back to Lisa Delpit's Other People's Children, because it offers a strong contrast, it seems, to the "active, critical, self-directed learning" notions that seem all the rage. This book concentrates on language and literacy (as does Gee's book, somewhat) -- I think that math genuinely has some issues of its own. In particular, Gee's book very much promotes the idea of real examples over broad generalizations and abstract notions. But, in a real sense, math is the science of abstract deduction. The whole POINT is it's about those ethereal abstract concepts (like number, shape, and function). Should we teach even deduction inductively? Maybe so, but I feel the case has to be made.

Disturbing Radio

The local NPR station, WAMU, broadcasts a weekly show called Homeland Security Inside and Out.

Silverdocs: Shorts 3: You and Me

Shorts 3: You and Me
http://64.13.231.35/festival/films/shorts-3-you-me/

This was a collection of three short films screened in the fabulous Theater 3. Like the other set of shorts, this set of shorts was screened earlier in the week. I’m including the information from Silverdoc’s website about each film because they’re shorts and they need all the help they can get.

I Just Wanted to be Somebody Jay Rosenblatt, USA, 2006, 10 Minutes

Orange juice ad queen Anita Bryant crusaded against gay civil rights in the 70s, but was important both to the creation of the religious right and to the gay rights movement.

News footage of an interview with Anita Bryant. Title. Orange juice television advertisement featuring Bryant. Intertitle. Anita Bryant led a campaign in Florida to repeal protections for homosexuals. Intertitle: The Homosexual. Black and white footage of an anti-gay rally. Gay rights activists led a boycott of Florida orange juice in response to Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign. A still photo shows Ronald Regan giving Bryant a bag of oranges. During a television debate, a person pushes a pie in Bryant’s face. During a photo opportunity, Bryant’s husband kisses her on the lips and says, “That’s what men do.” Eventually she was divorced and filed for bankruptcy. Over home movie footage of Bryant, a voiceover reads a letter to Bryant from a homosexual man talking about her failures and thanking her for giving a face to their enemy. You brought us into the light.

Monsieur Borges and I Jasmin Gordon, France, Switzerland, USA, 2006, 23 Minutes

A portrait of an eccentric French professor who dedicated his life to his friend and hero, the literary giant Jorge Luis Borges.

Black and white television news footage of Borges’s funeral. Contemporary color footage of a tree-lined street. Title. A man shows his office containing Borges’s documents. They were friends for ten years. He has a wall of Fez wedding belts from the 16th and 17th centuries. Black and white slow motion home movie of Borges in a library. This man used to travel from his house in the south of France to Geneva to see Borges. At the funeral people were jockeying for position to be seen by the television cameras. This is a particularly amusing anecdote given that this man is performing for the camera literally by singing and playing the piano. Maria Kordania was his traveling companion. She married Borges eight weeks before his death. Intertitle: She forbade the publication of this man’s collaborative work with Borges. Women were not in Borges’s work or life. The house is the center of the labyrinth. Voiceover of interview with Borges asking him how he would like to be remembered.

Freeheld Cynthia Wade, USA, 2007, 38 Minutes

At the center of the equal rights debate, Lt. Laurel Hester is dying of lung cancer and fighting to pass her police pension to her life partner, Stacie Andree. The city explodes with controversy; Laurel only wants to provide for her love—before it’s too late.

Hearing.Credits and intertitles. TitleLaurel and Stacie on beach. Interview of Laurel. Hearing. Officers speak on Laurel’s behalf. The retired Chief of Police speaks on Laurel’s behalf. The state of New Jersey passed a law delegating the power to grant county employees domestic partner benefits to the County Board. The County Board has the option to give benefits to domestic partners. The Board Members, freeholders, say they don’t have the power. Footage from news report. Interviews. Laurel and Stacie’s house. Stacie rakes the yard and cleans the gutters. She might lose the house without Laurel’s pension. Stacie is a mechanic. She makes $23,800 per year. Stacie calls doctors to work out billing problems. Old pictures of Laurel as a police officer. Interviews with coworkers. Stacie and Laurel have been together for five years. Stacie and Laurel attend church and the small church prays for Laurel and Stacie. Graphic shows the counties that extended benefits to domestic partners of county employees. Interview of Laurel about dying. Laurel videotapes a message to the Freeholders. Hearing. Laurel talking with hospice worker. Laurel attends an emergency meeting of the Freeholders because the Governor called one or more of the Freeholders at home. They vote to extend benefits. Stacie at Laurel’s bedside. Videotape of Laurel and Stacie swimming with dolphins. Funeral. We have gathered here to hear a story.

Q & A with Directors Jasmin Gordon (Monsieur Borges and I) and Cynthia Wade (Freeheld)

Q: For Jasmin Gordon (Monsieur Borges and I), how could Borges’s wife prohibit the publication of work this man did?
A: She has universal rights over Borges’s work. She prohibited the publication of a collection of Borges’s work in French.

Q: For Cynthia Wade (Freeheld), how did you meet Laurel and Stacie?
A: I met them at a Freeholder meeting. I lived with them for ten weeks. Then I did interviews with other people.

Q: For Jasmin Gordon (Monsieur Borges and I), whose house was that shot in?
A: That is the professor’s house, not Borges’s. It is in the south of France. Everything in the house is the professor’s collection of Borges paraphernalia.

Q: For Jasmin Gordon (Monsieur Borges and I), what was the relationship between Borges and the professor?
A: It is unclear. Probably asexual. But clearly the professor was enamored of Borges.

Q: For Cynthia Wade (Freeheld), how much time passed between the change in the policy and Laurel’s death?
A: Three weeks to the day.

Q: For Cynthia Wade (Freeheld), what were the results of the subsequent election?
A: The freeholder who most extremely opposed the extension of benefits is now the director of the Freeholders. The others were reelected by a lesser margin.

Q: For Cynthia Wade (Freeheld), why was the freeholder who most extremely opposed the extension of benefits not at the emergency meeting?
A: He claimed he was on vacation in Florida, but local news reporters found him in his basement.

Q: For Jasmin Gordon (Monsieur Borges and I), how did you find your subject?
A: I met the professor at a cocktail party and he introduced himself as the last companion of Borges.

Silverdocs: What Would Jesus Buy?

What Would Jesus Buy?
http://64.13.231.35/festival/films/wwjesus-buy/

This was the East Coast premiere of a film about Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. One of the producers is Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me fame. The intertitles in this film are of a similar style as Supersize Me. I’m a big fan of these intertitles. They resemble Monty Python animation.The film opens with something like a movie trailer voiceover saying “Five million extra tons of trash are generated by Christmas,” over images of frenzied holiday shoppers and newcasts referring to holiday shopping. It was the best opening of a film that I’ve ever seen. The crowd applauded the opening as the titles started. Intertitle: Newborn Bling. Interviewees are introduced with title cards that look like gift tags. Peter C. Whybrow, the author of American Mania (http://www.peterwhybrow.com/books/americanmania/), is interviewed. The Choir Director instructs Billy that he should let the performance emerge from a real situation. Intertitle: Shopping Addiction. Intertitle: What Would Jesus Buy? Intertitle: Eternal Debt. Robert D. Manning, author of Credit Card Nation (http://www.creditcardnation.com/books.html), is interviewed. The Stop Shopping Choir carols around a neighborhood of McMansions. They give the homeowner a flyer with the words so they can sing along. The film does a follow the bouncing ball (in this case Rev. Billy’s head) sing-a-long over images of a woman reacting to the song with her children. Judith Levine, author of Not Buying It (http://www.judithlevine.com/), is interviewed. Bill McKibben, the author of The End of Nature (http://www.billmckibben.com/books.html), is interviewed. The Choir Director explains the group’s goals to a local television news reporter over the telephone. They don’t expect people to actually buy nothing. First, they want people to buy products made in America because it is the best proxy for buying products made by workers who were treated humanely and paid a living wage. Next, they want people to try to buy from locally owned stores to keep their money in their community. Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta, is interviewed in his capacity as a spokesperson for a group called Working Families for Walmart (http://www.forwalmart.com/), [for more fascinating information about this group, especially Andrew Young’s involvement and departure go to http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Working_Families_for_Wal-Mart]The Choir stops at the headquarters of Wal-Mart. Before they arrive the Choir Director explains why they’re going there. It is an interesting way to accomplish exposition: first when she talks to the media and then when she talks to the group. After the Wal-Mart stop, Billy is self-critical of the event. He says he thought he would be teleported over the building and instead he just leaped into a bush. The Choir Director says she prefers actions that have a direct impact on people. The only audience to this event was the camera and the security guards. This is a fascinating reflection in a film that is in many ways like Michael Moore’s oeuvre. This statement differentiates this film and this group’s tactics from Moore’s films and tactics. Moore’s films are primarily structured around or prominently feature these sort of staged assaults. For example, in Bowling for Columbine Moore and a wheelchair-bound victim of a school shooting go to the headquarters of the store the sold the ammunition to the Columbine shooters and try to get someone there to respond to their concerns. Here, this group of activists say that sort of action feels hollow. They are activists first and subjects of a documentary second. Whereas Moore has made the act of making a documentary into activism itself. You have to choose to watch his film for it to have an impact, which is preaching to the choir (pun? intended).On a completely different topic, What Would Jesus Buy? is structured around the Choir’s cross-country bus trip from New York City to Disneyland in the countdown of shopping days until Christmas. Along the way one of the two buses is rear-ended by a semi. This is a horrible tragedy and lots of the people on the bus are injured and wind up in the hospital. But they charter another bus and the people get released from the hospital and the journey continues. The question this segment leaves with me is: was it necessary? Would I include any reference to the bus crash in my version of this film? Did it further the message? I don’t think it did. Maybe it demonstrated the participants’ dedication to the mission. Maybe including it honors the people involved and their suffering. Maybe it adds a bit of dramatic tension: our heroes are in peril. Will they ever make it to Disneyland? Maybe it simply explains why half the choir suddenly stops riding in an old bus miraculously appears riding in a brand new bus. I don’t know. I’d like to see how the film runs without it.The film ends with the Choir’s action in Disneyland. Billy is detained by park security. The filmmakers are asked to turn off the camera. The audio picks up the fabulous line, “Disneyland is not like America. People aren’t free to just . . . sing.”

Q & A with the director, Reverend Billy, the Choir Director, and a selection of the Stop Shopping Choir. The interview is conducted by John Ydstie of NPR.

Q: How did you come up with this subject?
A: (Dir) I was looking for a project to do in my spare time. I found the church in New York City. I joined them for their cross-country trip. Then I got invited to do the feature.

Q: How did you film inside stores?
A: (Dir) We had verbal releases from everyone we spoke to on camera, though perhaps not all the people visible in the stores. During invasions there is a grey area between private and public space.
(Rev. Billy) Starbucks dropped their sponsorship of Silverdocs when it discovered Silverdocs had accepted this film.

Q: How did you get Morgan Spurlock involved in the film?
A: (Dir) I med him when we were both shooting for MTV Spring Break in Mexico to pay the bills. He’s also neighbors with Reverend Billy and the Choir Director in New York City. Morgan saw the Stop Shopping Choir in 1999 while he attended NYU film school.

Q: How do you get a film like this distributed?
A: (Rev) Some distributors are backing away because Wal-Mart sells most of their DVDs.
(Choir Dir.) We’re also limiting our market because we decided only to sell stuff that has content we made. When Morgan made buttons for our world premiere, he had to give them away rather than sell them because there was no content that we made.

Q: What was going on in that interview with Andrew Young?
A: (Dir.) It appears to be his cry for help. He has since moved on to other things.

Q: Something about the effect of the film.
A: (Choir director) The effect we hope the film has is that we can see a positive change. Based on our actions I have seen a positive change.

Q: Something about religion.
A: We do have a spiritual relationship to this topic. Corporations have more control over what people do than the Roman Catholic church did in the 1300s. They are fundamentalists. But we are post-religious. Some of the choir members are preacher’s kids. Others aren’t Christian, but agnostic or other religions.

Silverdocs: Shorts 4: Beyond Belief

Shorts 4: Beyond Belief
http://64.13.231.35/festival/films/shorts-4-beyond-belief/

It appears that everyone who attends Silverdocs uses Netflix. As an expression of, “Oh, I would like to see that movie you’re talking about but I never got around to it,” I have heard the phrase, “I’ve got to put that in my Netflix,” everywhere I’ve been within a mile radius of the AFI Silver Theatre. I am amazed that a short form has not yet come into common parlance. In our house we’ve at least settled on a plural form, “Netflices” like “indices” (pronounced IN-di-SEEZ) is the plural of “index.” I vote for the verb, “to Netflix.” So the expression would be, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to Netflix Ingmar Bergman’s oeuvre, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

This was a collection of six short films screened in the luxurious Theater 3 at the ungodly (pun intended) hour of 11:45 a.m. on a Sunday. This set of shorts was screened earlier in the week. I’m including the information from Silverdoc’s website about each film because they’re shorts and they need all the help they can get.

The Days and the Hours by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, USA, 2006, 8 Minutes

A thin paycheck separates many Americans from homelessness. Taking daytime refuge in church, they reflect on the lives they had before they lost their shelter.

This is the short that made the biggest impression. It opened with a series of closeups of hands, feet, heads, and candles. Then it panned to the front of the sanctuary where a small worship service was taking place. A beautiful overhead shot tracked across the pews filled with homeless people sleeping. The soundtrack is natural sounds of the location, particularly snoring. Then a voiceover starts. Men describe the jobs they held, the houses they lived in, the food they prepared. People wake up the sleeping homeless people and sweep the floors and pews where they slept. The homeless people pack up their belongings and walk to the door. In the doorway the light from outside seems blindingly white. The people are silhouettes against the white light as they step outside. Credits roll.

God Provides by Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky, Canada, USA, 2007, 9 Minutes

In Katrina's aftermath, an exploration of faith and loss in Louisiana.

Church parking lot. A man in a wheelchair wheels up to a car and offers them a New Testament. A woman in an electric wheelchair moves down a street while the camera tracks along with her. It seems like the voiceover is her monologue, but the voice does not match her appearance. Insert of a lost person sign written with black marker on cardboard. A man digs through bushes looking for his belongings. A man blames the destruction on the wicked city of New Orleans. During the judgment of God, the innocent get hurt. The voiceover, presumably of the woman in the electric wheelchair, resumes. It says in the Bible you will suffer. God is not testing us. He knows the things you need. He will provide them. The destruction remains. The woman in the wheelchair arrives at the riverside and tilts herself back to lie in the sun. Credits roll. One of the credits is for a narrator. Was the voiceover “narration” and not the words of the woman in the wheelchair?

My Name is Ahmed Ahmed by Matthew Testa, USA, 2006, 9 Minutes

Ahmed, a Muslim American comedian, jokes about his name and about being brown. If his routine changes ideas about Muslims, it's a rare perk in the world of stand-up.

An emcee at a comedy club introduces Ahmed Ahmed at a live performance. The film uses the structure of a stand up routine, starting with his introduction and ending with the end of his routine and the comedy club audience applauding. In between there is a pretty standard interview of Ahmed Ahmed sitting in the comedy club with the stage in the background. Unfortunately, the lighting during the interview was really bad. It really lowered the quality of the film. And it’s a total bummer because that standard format interview really does give the filmmaker the opportunity to light properly whereas most of documentary film is stuck with whatever light is available. Ahmed Ahmed does man-on-the-street interviews. When people say what their stereotypes of Arabs are, the film cuts to inserts of Ahmed Ahmed dressed up as that stereotype. The inserts were well lit, but the costuming seemed a little Halloweeny. But maybe this was intentional, to mock the stereotype rather than fulfil the stereotype. At least, that would be my explanation if I didn’t have the budget for impressive costumes. During these man-on-the-street interviews, Ahmed Ahmed reads a number of statistics and occasionally these are intercut with people’s reactions. The editing here was a little spotty, so it seemed much more like a tool to get these facts into the film without using voiceover or intertitles. And in this case, a rather clumsily wielded tool. But the film was good about including a range of reactions to Arabs as opposed to all positive or all negative. The camera in the passenger seat watches Ahmed Ahmed drive while he tells his life story. He’s driving to a mosque. He prepares to pray and he explains about the ritual washing. He talks about his beliefs and what praying in a mosque means to him. He describes himself as an Egyptian Muslim, which I like because it recognizes both his religion and his nationality, which sort of makes the points that they shouldn’t be conflated. Sort of saying not all “Arabs” are Arab. He is changing people’s minds about Arabs. You can’t hate anybody when they’re making you laugh. The audience applauds at the end of his routine. Credits roll.

Orishas are Our Saints by John Kane, USA, 2006, 4 Minutes

A contemplative look at the modern practices of the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria. The stunning black and white film reverently shows rare images of the seaside rituals and devotions.

This looks like it was shot on black and white film. It might be video. Either way, it’s beautiful. The contrast is stunning. There is a gorgeous shot of a fishtank. A candle burning. A man goes to another man to read shells. He shakes them in his hands and throws them on a mat on a table, like rolling dice. A group of four people makes a sacrifice or an offering to the ocean. A voiceover says Santeria is a religion that came with Nigerian slaves to Cuba. The sounds are natural, but not synched to the visual. Credits.

A Son’s Sacrifice by Yoni Brook, USA, 2006, 27 Minutes

Imran quit being a Manhattan ad man to run the family Halal slaughterhouse in Queens. His faith and patience are tested during Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice.

This short won the Silverdocs Audience Award for a Short. It’s the only film I watched that won an award at Silverdocs. I’m not sure what that says about my taste in films or the criteria for awards. I was sure some of the films I saw were award-worthy. The film opens with one of the subjects tells the story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. The main titles appear. Imran, the son, is interviewed. The audio of his interview continues over images of him shaving. Traditional music is mixed perhaps a little too loudly on the soundtrack with the natural sounds synched to the image. Imran works with his father at their Halal slaughterhouse in Brooklyn. Customers pet and feed the animals. Imran’s father talks with the customers. He is then interviewed. He says he built this business from nothing and his son could destroy it in one minute. This is the funniest line of a pretty funny film. The father and son argue about how to run the business. Imran says he may not do things perfect, but don’t say he’s not Muslim. Imran’s mother at home makes tamales in the kitchen. His mother is Puerto Rican and his father is a Bangladeshi Muslim. The community rejected Imran. Imran shows off his collection of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings toys. Imran and his father speak to a police officer at the police station about an upcoming Muslim holiday. They explain it is a three-day celebration of Abraham’s sacrifice. They ask the police officer to be flexible. Flexible about what? Muslim inmates? People coming to their store? It’s not clear. Imran says he’s working hard to prove he is worthy. It is a clash of cultures, not a clash of individuals. Imran prays with others in a mosque. Imran’s dad speaks about his previous jobs and his gambling problem. He says parents have to show their children who they, the parents, are, who they are going to be, and what duty is owed to Allah. Imran and his father deal with trouble with a delivery. Imran’s mother and Imran put his bloodstained clothes into a fancy clothes washer and select a special setting for treating blood stains. Lambs are delivered to the slaughterhouse. Imran carries a lamb to a van. The man in the van asks him if he is Muslim. The van’s license plate says “ISLAM.” Don’t give up. Intertitle: Quir Ban. One person against an army. Customers are admitted one at a time to select a goat. The preparation for the slaughter is shown. Immediately after the slaughter is shown. But the act of slaughtering is not shown. Instead, the camera stays on Imran’s face as he slaughters. This is very different from the shocking images of religious sacrifices in Nepal in Living Goddess or Nigerian butchers in Workingman’s Death (http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/2006/v3i5/dclabor.aspx#worki). The focus is on Imran and the customers watching Imran and his father watching him. Imran says he wasn’t expecting to slaughter, but someone had to go home sick. He says he was surprised when customers requested him over the other butchers. Imran’s father says the Muslims trusted his son to slaughter their animal. The slaughterhouse is empty. Imran’s clothes are stained with blood. At home Imran dresses in traditional clothes. He prays in a mosque in the same room as his father. Imran cries as he prays. Credits roll intercut with shots of celebration.

Paradise Drift by Martin Hansen, Netherlands, 2006, 13 Minutes

Hikers trek to a ridge for a shared mystic event. Viewers are left to create their own interpretation of this mysterious and calm nighttime endeavor.

If you thought Orishas are Our Saints was poetic and surreal, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The numbers 1, 2, and 3 white on black appear. Then black and white images of walking feet. The credits roll including the title card: Paradise Drift. People are running into a town. People are walking with candles in the middle of the night. A person speaks over a bullhorn. His words are unintelligible and possibly not in English. People sit on rocks. People take pictures. The audio track is natural sound, but it is very quiet. People continue walking. The angle is unclear it looks like they are walking downhill. Weird music starts and then stops. The sounds of bugs rise as the image is filled with bright white bugs. There is no voice over. There are no explanatory intertitles. People pray to themselves. People cry. People look at the sky expectantly. Tiny flying bugs fill the screen. People applaud. Then the bugs disappear. Is it sunrise? People pray. Weird music rises. Praying continues but we can’t hear what they are saying. The credits roll.

Q & A with Directors Matthew Testa (My Name is Ahmed Ahmed), Yoni Brook (A Son’s Sacrifice), Kristine Samuelson (The Days and the Hours), and Brian Cassidy (God Provides).

Q: How do you feel about your films being programmed together? Do you think your film fit the theme “Beyond Belief”?
A: Matthew Testa (My Name is Ahmed Ahmed): I thought it was a good fit. I hadn’t thought about the film in terms of religion. It was originally filmed as a competition entry for a contest about tolerance. Ahmed didn’t want to force religion too much. He just presented himself.
Yoni Brook (A Son’s Sacrifice): I was trying to tell a story of life in a place built around death. I didn’t focus on religion. I was more focused on the clash between generations. The director is Jewish and the Producer is Muslim and they were both interested in exploring this world of food.
Kristine Samuelson (The Days and the Hours): The church was really the only place in San Francisco where homeless people could sleep indoors during the day. The location served as an entrance into the subject of homelessness. Watching them sleep was very intimate. The project was amazing. It was very good to be a part of this group of films.
Brian Cassidy (God Provides): We experienced a plurality of faith and religion. It was not our original intention to focus on faith. We felt very detached from the images of the destruction after Katrina so we just went down there to get closer and less abstract. We found ourselves more disoriented and understanding less. We just happened to camp out in a church parking lot. Everyone has a faith-based lens through which they coped with this event.

Q: For Yoni Brook (A Son’s Sacrifice), how did you get so much access?
A: We spent a year finding a family that felt comfortable with us filming the slaughtering. The subjects have to want to make the film more than the filmmaker.

Q: I heard My Name is Ahmed Ahmed was screened in Cairo. How was it received?
A: Matthew Testa (My Name is Ahmed Ahmed): There is a different dynamic in the states than in the Muslim world. It was a break from their usual view of Muslims in America.

Q: For Brian Cassidy (God Provides), how did you go about conveying information about the incomprehensible?
A: That’s why it’s structured as a series of vignettes capped with an open-ended narration. It’s foolish to impose too much order on chaos. We wanted to keep it about impressions. That’s why there were no titles or identification of people or places. It was a meditation on place. It could happen in the future. It has happened in the past.

Q: For Kristine Samuelson (The Days and the Hours), the stories of individuals were very moving. Who was the man playing the piano and what music was he playing?
A: He was one of the homeless people sleeping in the church. On his way out he stopped to play. We ran over and filmed. He has a credit in the film.

Q: Something about subject matter dictating style. While shooting did you have style and structure in mind?

A: Brian Cassidy (God Provides): Our documentary was less content leading form. We looked for a fresh and restored sense of imagery. What does it mean to create an image? We had a lot we didn’t want to do. We found a structure that accomplishes disparate motives. We were playing with cinematography. The ratio of film shot to film used was very small. We didn’t blanket cover to find the story in the editing.
Kristine Samuelson (The Days and the Hours): We felt that it was very important to convey the dimensions of the space through camera movement and height. The height allowed us to see people appearing filed among the pews. We worked hard to set up those tracking shots and to record audio that reflected the big space and the sounds of sleeping. It was also challenging getting permissions from the subjects. We chased them down with releases as they were leaving.
Yoni Brook (A Son’s Sacrifice): I am a photographer and a filmmaker. I wanted to the film to be very visually appealing and play down the pervasive death. That is why we focused on only one slaughter and showed that slaughter with respect.
Matthew Testa (My Name is Ahmed Ahmed): I incorporated his act into the film. But we didn’t want to use title cards so we used the man-on-the-street. This film is more directed than verite, for example the set pieces with the costumes. They were just meant to have fun. Structurally there wasn’t time to go for an arch. It was more an impression of a person.

Q: Something about distribution venues for short documentaries.
A: Matthew Testa (My Name is Ahmed Ahmed): This film was actually an entry in a Current TV contest on tolerance. Current TV picked it up.
Yoni Brook (A Son’s Sacrifice): We screened the film at the slaughterhouse and it may be shown on PBS’s Independent Lens.
Kristine Samuelson (The Days and the Hours): Our goal when making the film was to get it into local schools.
Brian Cassidy (God Provides): This is on a compilation of short films from the Journal of Short Films. We’re taking it around to festivals and trying to find television distribution.