Global Suburb

Music class

2010-12-03T10:05:00.000-08:00

Michael: "Music class at school is kinda slow. In kindergarten we learned what music is. In first grade we learned about notes. This year we're learning about rests. In third grade we're going to learn about time."

Conversation with my daughter (in car)

2008-10-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

HEIDI -- Candy. Candy. Candy. Candy. Candy. Candy. Candy? Candy.

(Pause for effect). Daddy! Candy!

Dad glances at rear view mirror.

DAD -- Somebody here like candy?

HEIDI -- Candy! Candy. Candy. Candy. Candy.

Preschool -- first day, last day

2008-08-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

September 2006

August 2008

What she said...

2008-04-25T03:51:00.000-07:00

twinkle (American flag outside daycare has stars on it)

tang (means "hot" in Chinese; car seat arm is warm)

water (in sports container wedged between the two car seats)

twinkle (star stickers pasted to tricycle)

ding (bell on tricycle)

hua (means "flower" in Chinese; seedpods hanging from maple tree)

no (time to go inside for dinner)

ding-dong (doorbell)

ping-guo (means "apple" in Chinese; a Zingo game piece has a picture of an apple of it)

twinkle (a sheet of star stickers on the table)

tang (lima beans are warm)

dou-dou (means "beans" in Chinese)

water, ge-ge (Brother spilled soup on his pants)

la (food is spicy)

maiyi (means "ant" in Chinese)

no (I don't want any sweet potato)

Mama

no, no, no, no. no! (finger in nostril)

water (daddy, give me your water glass)

hua (Mom has flower designs on her dress)

mei-le (means "none" in Chinese; lima beans are gone)

down (wants to sit on one of the big people chairs)

mei-le (no soup left in Ge-ge's bowl)

hua (means "draw" in Chinese; wants me to give her a pen)

whoa (throws pen and paper on floor)

Big question

2008-04-17T07:33:00.001-07:00

Recently, Mike has started asking me about death. At four, he's old enough to have registered certain facts about nature and to draw inferences. He raised the topic one afternoon while we -- just me and him -- were at the supermarket.

I'd just finished bagging some broccoli. As we moved out of the veggie section and into the kimchi aisle (this was at Lotte), we passed an elderly, decrepit lady. Shortly afterwards, Mike asked me if people could be 200 years old.

"Not really," I told him. "That would pretty old. Some people are 100, though."

He thought about this. "Can people die?" he asked.

"Ah, well, yes," I told him. "People can die."

"How?"

"When people get very old, their bodies are all tired out." Just then I remembered that we could use some bean sprouts, so I pushed the cart back into the veggies section.

"Have you seen anyone die?" he asked, while I struggled with a plastic bag.

I thought about my grandmother, who died last spring, about half a year after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Although I wasn't there at the moment of her death, I had visited her a few weeks before. I certainly felt I had been witness to her dying.

"No, not really," I told Mike. And then we headed off in search of tomatoes.

***

Sunday, on our way to his Chinese class, he had further questions. "How old do you have to be to die?" he asked from the back seat.

"Well, usually people are very old. A hundred, say."

"You said a hundred, not one hundred. A hundred is bigger than one hundred," he began to reason. "That means it could be one hundred and fifty four million thousand."

"Hmm…"

"How do people die?" he again wanted to know.

"When people are very old, they become worn out. Their bodies are tired and they don't have energy any more." I had to brake abruptly, as a car in front of me stopped to make a turn. "Also, if there's a bad accident..."

"Like if a car drives across you?"

"Right. That's why we have to be careful around cars."

Mike told me a story he heard in school, about some guy who could lift Jeeps. The Jeep, he said, went on top of this person but he didn't even have to go to the hospital. I said he must have been pretty tough and that maybe he exercised a lot.

"Daddy, when are you going to die?"

"Ah. hopefully not for a long time!" I said. We passed a building under construction and some cranes, and went over a speed bump.

"When I am a hundred years old, I am going to have a lot of energy, and I won't be tired," Mike told me.

"Great!" I said. "So you should eat your vegetables!"

Ying Hua (樱花)

2008-04-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

Signs that spring is here

2008-03-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

1. Buds, red and sticky-looking, on the maple trees.

2. The pear trees along the interstate are starting to bloom.

3. This morning, while finishing up some work on the computer, I heard sounds from the laundry room. Puzzled (did Y. throw a load of laundry in before heading out his morning?) I got up. They were coming from the dryer exhaust duct. Something was in there -- most likely a bird seeking to nest. The same thing happened last year, around this time of the month.

4. Ants.

2008-02-28T13:13:00.001-08:00

My brother-in-law collects record players. He has a super-cool Technics turntable hooked up to the home theater, as well as other equipment located around their house. Practically every room on the ground floor is within earshot of one or more functioning turntable. He also has enough records to fill up a wall; most were obtained at the local flea market for prices ranging from $1 to $5 each.

For Christmas, he gave me a portable record player. It came in a brown carrying case and has a lid, so it can be closed up and brought along on trips. In theory, I could lug it along to the office and back. It was the most unusual Christmas gift I've received in some time, and at first I was a little skeptical. I couldn't see any practical use for a record player, and it did amount to extra clutter.

A few days later, however, when I played The White Album on it (this was part of the gift), I realized that a record player was very much needed. My brother-in-law understood me well. He knew that seventies kids like us had never really reconciled ourselves to the death of records. The music we loved then still sounds better to us on records, because that's where we heard it originally. In any case, music often sounds better on the medium it was originally recorded for. Bjork requires digital sound, but Dylan calls for vinyl.

Records are more amenable to connoisseurship. A record album feels substantial in a way that CDs do not. It may come with a poster, something you'll never find in a CD. The album cover can be framed. The record itself has to be held with care, without touching the grooves. Placing it on the turntable, turning it from A-Side to B-Side, manipulating the phonograph arm – all these require attentiveness. The owner of a record player has to take care of the needle, in the same way that an oboist maintains a reed.

I loved the gift. I played the White Album on it day after day until the kids started to complain. It was wonderful to own a record player – the only thing needed was more records.

One weekend, we decided to drive to Raleigh, NC to visit my sister and her family.. My bro-in-law took the opportunity to introduce me to the flea market. Here you could find Japanese porcelain, vintage issues of Life magazine, enough dilapidated chairs and tables to furnish a whole sad town, discounted Webkins plush toys, the entire Harry Potter series in all media several times over, and boxfuls and boxfuls of records.

My brother-in-law's finds included Steely Dan's "Katy Lied" and "Gaucho"; he does have that DJ-grade Technics. I chose stuff that I figured would sound good on the portable, mostly music that preceded my high school graduation and (more importantly) awareness of punk.

The records and their dates are as follows: Astrud Gilberto, "Gilberto with Turretine" (1971); The Kinks, "Preservation: Act 2" (1972); Wings, "London Town" (1978); Wings, "Back to The Egg" (1979); Abba, "Voulez-Vous" (1979), and Abba, "The Visitors" (1981).

2008-02-05T11:24:00.000-08:00

Maryland is not a Super Tuesday state. (We vote on February 12th).

Assuming it's still a two-person race, I'll probably vote for Obama. I think the Democratic party needs a candidate with great personal magnetism to win in November, especially since it now looks more likely that the GOP will nominate McCain.

Hillary, in my (recently revised) view, belongs to a long and venerable tradition of intelligent, experienced Democratic politicians (Kerry, Gore, Dukakis, Mondale) who lack the charisma needed in a national election. I'd love to see her win and go on to become the greatest president in my lifetime. But it doesn't seem probable.

What's more probable is that she'll go into the national election with a handicap -- too many people, for one reason or another, dislike her. She'll then have to deal with the GOP's character assassination machine -- those charming folks who brought us the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, etc. Every ugly aspect of the Clinton administration will be exhumed. We'll be reminded why, by 2000, we were kinda tired of this couple. She will lose the independent vote to McCain and won't even manage a recount or Supreme Court ruling. It will not be pretty.

2007-11-06T04:22:00.000-08:00

2007-10-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

Mei-mei is now really walking. Instead of sitting back down when she loses momentum, she just squats and then picks herself up again. She can move across a room, or indeed between rooms, with surprising speed.

When she was still just testing this capability, she would smile and clap her hands after each attempt, expecting us to praise her as well. Now she's becoming more ambitious. Mike's friend was over last week, jumping up and down on the mini-trampoline in the basement. His sister watched with interest. When the friend got off, she hauled herself up on the trampoline and carefully stood up -- then tried a little bounce.

***

Thursday soccer practice. The weather has turned abruptly cold (it was 93 degrees a couple days ago). The coach does a drill in which each kid is sent to chase a kicked ball, recover it and then guide it into the goal. Michael is having a good practice. He's able to do the drill with some ease and he shoots the ball well. However, he does better in drills -- where the ball is there for him and he has time to set up his shot -- than in live play. His approach is a little too studied.

Some of the kids, even at age four, are super-competitive. One boy, for example, erupts into angry tears because the other side won a goal. This in a practice scrimmage, mind you. The same boy is a powerful scorer. Then there are various kids who are not instinctually so competitive but whose parents want them to be. These parents are the ones pacing around on the sideline, yelling instructions or in at least one case offering monetary bribes. Ok, I have done some yelling and pacing myself. I confess to having no idea what gives a child athletic drive -- whether it's primarily something they're born with, or the result of parental influence.

I would be happy to see Michael really take to soccer, but I also have to be realistic. He's smaller than some of the other boys, less aggressive, and doesn't have a soccer coach or a sports fanatic as a dad. The main thing I want is for him to enjoy playing and develop his confidence. But this is where it gets difficult. Enjoyment of a competitive sport can't be separated from the competitive part. If the other kids are scoring goals and you aren't, it stops being fun.

Sometimes after practices he's quiet, and I wonder about it.

"How was practice?"
"Good."
"What did the coach tell you?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember? Already?"
"Ah..the coach said...the coach said...when he blows on the whistle, everyone has to freeze!"

2007-10-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

Among Chinese speakers, the number 88 is IM/SMS shorthand for "bye bye". In Mandarin the number eight is "ba". Eighty-eight = ba ba = bye bye. Cute.

Unfortunately, 88 is also used as shorthand by neo-Nazis, because "h" is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and HH means...well, you can guess.

***

About a decade ago, I lived in Korea. When I first arrived there, I was surprised to see swastikas painted on the rocks down at the cove near my apartment. What could this mean? Was there some kind of right-wing extremist group active in the neighborhood?

As it turned out, it wasn't fascist hatemongers, but Buddhist monks.

The number 88 has a special meaning in Korea, too. It is a brand of cigarettes ("Pal Pal") named after the Seoul Olympics. "Pal Pal" is the Sino-Korean version of "Ba Ba", so in theory you could also call them Bye Bye brand cigarettes. And "bye bye" is what would have happened to me if I went on smoking them.

***

Back to China, where the acronym "PK" has entered wide circulation, thanks to the Super Girl singing contest. (A contestant who gets booted off the show is "PK-ed").

The term comes from computer gaming ("player killed"). I'm not part of that world, so when I first heard it, the only thing I could think of was "penalty kick". So here is a term originating in English which is more familiar to Chinese people than to me, a native speaker of English.

2007-10-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

2007-09-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

The new article by Oliver Sacks is one of the most riveting things I've ever read. It concerns Clive Wearing, a distinguished musicologist and musician who has been left by an illness with near-total amnesia -- his brain cannot form new, conscious memories, and his past memories, up to the immediate moment, have been erased.

He lives in a kind of eternal "now", forgetting what he experiences within seconds of experiencing it. It is, apparently, like waking up from a coma every seven to thirty seconds, not realizing that you had woken up from a coma before that, and before that, and before that...

What we refer to using the general term "memory" comprises a group of functions, located in different regions of the brain. Wearing has no episodic memory function, and his semantic memory is also severely impaired. However, his procedural memory is intact. As a result, he can still play the piano with skill and feeling and conduct a choir -- although afterwards he will have no recollection of having done so. He remains a witty and charming conversationalist, can speak several languages, is able to shave, make coffee, play cards and dance, but cannot explain how he knows these things. He retains deep emotional connections, especially with his wife -- whom he greets passionately at each meeting, as though she had been gone for years.

Just as interesting as the Sacks piece is a BBC documentary about Wearing, which someone has uploaded to YouTube.

2007-09-18T12:31:00.001-07:00

First words:

Deng (she pronounces it "deh-deh"). Means "light" in Mandarin. This was also one of her brother's first words.

Baby (beh-beh).

Diao (she says "doh"). Means to drop something. She likes to drop things and then comment on the fact they have dropped.

Daddy, Mama. She also uses "mama" to mean that she wants milk.

2007-08-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

After laolao went back to China, our daughter suddenly became attached to stuffed animals. For several days, she always wanted to have one to cuddle.

Meanwhile, she has taken her first baby steps -- in the handbag section at Burlington Coat Factory. She then repeated the feat, with some extra flourishes, at my parents' house over the weekend.

She is going to the same daycare provider who cared for Michael from shortly after his first birthday to shortly after his third. In other words, Michael started with her as a baby and left as a kid. This happened in just two years. Now mei-mei is already starting to seem less baby-like. Instead of onesies, she's wearing little dresses and her Robeez, and of course she is also upright most of the time, cruising and getting ready to walk.

***

My 41st birthday came and went. I felt pretty indifferent about it -- 41, 42, who cares? However, it gave me a reason to buy something I've long wanted: a premium subscription to Chinesepod.

Lately I've finally started to get a handle on tones, one of the most difficult aspects of Mandarin. By "get a handle" I mean that my brain has started to accept tones as an element of meaning -- it is starting to feel more natural. In the beginning, I just tuned them out and sort of hoped one could be understood without them. Unfortunately...

Chinesepod had a great example of a situation where the wrong tone can lead to saying something different from what you mean. If you're at a restaurant and want your food medium-spicy, you say "zhong-la". But if you want it extremely spicy, you also say "zhong-la". The difference is in the tones:

Zhòng-là (falling tone) = mouth-burning, stomach-vaporizing spicy
Zhōng-là (high level tone) = moderately spicy

Luckily, as the podcast hosts pointed out, most Chinese restaurants assume foreigners don't really want extra spicy and will serve you the mild version no matter what tone you use.

2007-08-15T11:22:00.000-07:00

Of all airports that I know, the approach to JFK is the most interesting. Even though the traffic is routinely awful, I love crossing over the Verrazano Bridge, the way the road spirals down into Brooklyn, and then the 16 mile drive along the shores of Jamaica Bay, past scenes that often seem weirdly remote and un-urban.

I like the cosmopolitan mood at Terminal 1, which serves airlines from China, Japan, Korea, Greece, Turkey and other countries. Within a short distance I can hear my wife's language (Mandarin) spoken, as well as my mother's (Greek). Up a flight of stairs, there's a food court and big windows where you can sit and watch planes taxi-ing in and out. It reminds me of a past era when plane-watching was encouraged -- some airports even had outdoor terraces where you could study the planes through coin-op binoculars.

We've made the trip to and from JFK several times in the past four years, but we probably won't be doing it again -- there's a new direct service to Beijing from Dulles.

***

My mother-in-law has returned to China. I wonder what it's like to be there again after a year in suburban Maryland. Does she miss us or is she relieved to be back? I wouldn't characterize Yucheng, the birthplace of Mulan, as an easy place to live, but it's her town, with her friends, haunts and husband. And while suburban Maryland is comfortable, life here is in some ways absurd -- you have to drive to go anywhere. When Y. and I were at work, she was stuck in the house.

Heidi, who my mother-in-law cared for during the past year, didn't seem taken aback by her departure, or by the sudden transfer to daycare. When I arrived to pick her up, I expected a shocked child, but instead I was presented with a bubbly, excited one. Maybe it's not so surprising -- she's almost a year old, restless and impatient.

By contrast, Michael, who was frequently disrespectful to laolao and sometimes just plain mean, was very upset. He demanded that we produce his passport and buy him a plane ticket.

2007-08-01T03:02:00.000-07:00

It's time to dispose of my disposable lenses. Michael watches with interest, then retrieves one from the wastebasket. "Are these your eyeballs, Daddy?"

2007-07-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

I watched part of Sunday night's debate with Dad, who's excited about Obama. I'm more Hillary-inclined, though Obama would be just fine. An element of innovation was provided by YouTube, which enabled regular folks to field questions to the candidates via video clip. I wasn't so crazy about it. Instead of a "debate", in the sense of candidates exchanging views and arguments, it was more like a novelty quiz show. Each candidate strove to come up with the best, or least silly, answer to some impossible question posed by viewers -- e.g., "if elected president, would you agree to be paid minimum wage?"

Now there's a doozy. A "yes" sounds insincere. A "no" sounds greedy, and an evasion sounds evasive. Basically, it is a no-win question, and it's also pretty much meaningless. If you're slaving away for $5.85, how is it going to help you to know President Biden is too? He's president, while you're still mopping floors. If someone offered me the presidency for thirty cents an hour, let alone $5.85, I'd take it! Hell, I'd do it for free.

Several of the candidates play it safe and say "yes", hoping to move along to the next topic.Chris Dodd demurs, mumbles something about having two young daughters. He gets honesty points, I suppose, but the answer's also complacent and tactless -- what about all the minimum wage workers who have to raise daughters? Obama notes that "most of the folks here on this stage have a lot of money" and could afford to accept minimum wage, though he stops short of actually volunteering. Hillary isn't asked. Win here goes to Obama, for at least being clever.

Obama is so presidential-looking that they should go ahead and mint a coin with him on it, even if he doesn't win. However, he still hasn't mastered the soundbite. He's like the guy in class who keeps raising his hand while he's still trying to work out the answer. Joseph Biden looks statesmanlike and convincing; he also nicely disses some scary-ass gun freak. John Edwards is earnest but lightweight; Bill Richardson lacks charisma. Hillary is positioned commandingly in the center of it all and it's almost as if she has already been nominated. What are the others doing here? Interviewing for positions in the administration, apparently.

The mood is pretty cordial -- even when the candidates are criticizing each other's views, they couch this criticism in praise. On one thing, they all agree: any of them would be better than what we have now. Amen.

2007-06-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

Going out to retrieve something from the car, I noticed a bird on the front stoop.

It was just sitting there, its body all puffed out and its feathers bristling, its head like a miniature owl's. I think it was a thrush. The front stoop was a dangerous location -- the neighbor's gray cat likes to hang around the front of our house -- and I guessed that it must be injured. When I approached, it hopped and fluttered into the flowerbed alongside the walk.

I wondered if I should try to help it. And if so, how? It certainly wasn't going to survive out here in front of the house. I was surprised the cat hadn't noticed it yet. While I tried to come up with a plan, the screen door opened and Michael -- last seen eating vanilla ice cream at the dinner table -- came out.

"What are you doing?"
"Oh, I just went to get something from the car. Why don't you go back inside? I'll be there in a minute."
"I want to come outside with you." Then he noticed the bird. "Why is that bird staying there?"
"I think it's injured. Maybe it broke its wing."
"What happens if a bird breaks its wing?"
"Then it can't fly. It can't go where it needs to go."

Just then, I noticed the gray cat coming up the drive in our direction.

Great, I thought. My three-year-old is about to witness a gory scene. I quickly ran to shoo away the cat, who sought refuge under the minivan.

"You should be nice to the cat," my son informed me, repeating guidance I'd given him previously. "You don't need to shoo him like that."

"Michael, your ice cream is melting. We need to go back in."

I quickly ushered him inside the house, closing the door behind both of us and, I thought, abandoning the thrush to near-certain death. Well, what could I do? The mortality rate for yard birds is high. Besides, maybe it would be wrong to intervene in the predator-prey relationship, the population dynamics of my front yard. Last month I found the cat with half of a mouse in its jaws.

Rescuing the bird would mean punishing the cat -- doesn't it have a right to hunt and eat? In any case, I had to deal with Michael, his ice cream, and his bath and bedtime story. There was nothing I could do.

Later, I went to the front door. The bird was still chirping.

When I took Michael upstairs to get him ready for bed, I could hear it from the bedroom window.

I went downstairs and turned on the porch light, them turned it off again. Chirp, chirp.

***

Michael had his bath and then we read "Road Builders" and "Curious George: The Movie." The whole time I kept thinking about the terrified bird, immobile among the flowers, waiting there in the dark. My wife brought Heidi and she lay on the bed with her feet in the air, curled up like a funny animal, looking at me and giggling.

"I should go wheel the trash bin out to the curb," I informed my wife and kids.

Instead, I went and got a shoebox out of the downstairs closet, cut five holes in the lid, and lined it with paper towels. Then I went outside to try and catch the bird.

It was back on the front stoop, motionless and soundless. But when I reached for it, using an old t-shirt, it half-fluttered, half-fell into the flowerbed. It wedged itself between a plant and a corner of the house, making itself hard to reach. I tried and failed two more times, and started to get angry with myself. I was doing more harm than good. With my clumsiness, I'd end up stressing the bird to death -- it probably had a better chance of surviving without my "help".

And then, finally, I caught it. Then I went into the garage and searched for a secure place. The bird chirped from inside the box.

***

The local wildlife rehabilitator had closed up shop at 5, but the one in the next county was available until 11pm, so I called there. He listened to my account and then said, "was it a fledgling?"

"I can't say for sure," I admitted. "It looked like an adult, but I really don't know much about birds."

If it was fledgling, he explained, it would have been better to leave it where it was. Fledglings sometimes exit the nest before they really know how to fly; the parents and other birds stay close and ward off predators. If it was an adult, the best decision was to catch it and put it somewhere safe.

I hadn't heard any sounds indicating parents nearby. On the other hand, I hadn't seen any conspicious signs of injury, such as bleeding. It was very possible that the bird hadn't learned how to fly.

"Hard for me to determine over the phone. You'll have to bring it in tomorrow morning."

"Will it be OK in the garage?" I asked.

"Should be. By this time, it wouldn't be eating anymore. As long as its somewhere dark, quiet and warm, it should be fine."

***

In the morning, I spoke to people at two different wildlife centers -- the local one, and another in Gaithersburg, closer to work. Then I went to the garage. I put the box on the trunk of the Honda and opened it. Inside was a bunch of bird poop and a dead thrush. It was lying on its side, with its head tucked into one corner, its splayed legs resembling a pair of long twigs. It had gray wing feathers, a red-brown area on part of its underbelly, and a longish, slightly hooked beak.

I stood in the garage entrance for awhile, examining it -- still unable to determine if it was a fledgling or an adult. It was big enough to be an adult bird, but now that I had a better view in the daylight, it looked uninjured. Most likely it just couldn't fly yet.

If I'd just left it alone, it might have survived the night, or not. Instead, it died of shock in a cardboard box. My intervention had simultaneously failed to protect the bird and cheated the area predators.

I took the box over to the wooded area near the toolshed and dumped the bird out, then threw the box in the trash. And then I got into my car and drove to work.

2007-05-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

Heidi is nine months old. Sometimes when I see her and Michael, I almost don't see "kid and baby"; rather I see "bigger kid and smaller kid".

I also notice some differences between the two siblings. For example:

Michael as a baby was easily frightened. Things that alarmed him included: a large purple exercise ball, the reflection of dining room lights in a dark window, the AC vent on the ceiling above the bed, and the industrial-sized noise that came from the Busy Ball Popper after I installed the batteries. None of these bother Heidi. I think this may be because she is the second child. Practically since birth she has had to deal with banshee-like wails, drill sergeant-like shouts, startling gestures and so on.

Heidi isn't much of a crawler. Her brother used to putt-putt around the house at speeds I found tiring. His sister only crawls if there's something she wants to grab. In and of itself, crawling seems to bore and frustrate her. What she really likes is to cruise, or have an adult hold her up so she can "walk" around the house (with a proud look on her face).

I was a stay-at-home dad during Michael's first year. Not being particularly resourceful, I frequently ran out of ideas and had to fall back on the old standby -- reading him a story. As a result, he quickly developed an interest in stories, which continues to this day. Heidi is not interested in stories. I haven't yet succeeded in getting through "One Fish Two Fish" -- she just wants to eat the book.

Michael is more attached to his daddy; Heidi to her mama. Like her brother did, she enjoys granting and withholding permission to hold her. She has a hierarchy of preferences. If the choice is between my mother-in-law and me, she usually prefers me. If it's between me and Y., she prefers Y. I always feel a bit dismayed for my mother-in-law. She has cared for four grandchildren now, and they have all treated her the same way.

***

There's a power outage at work. We stand around commenting on the situation. One person says "screw it" and goes home. The rest of us feel helpless, irritated. At some point, it becomes clear that there's nothing to be done, so we head downstairs and outside. There are chairs and cafe tables on the side of the building that looks onto the woods. It's a great place to sit and relax, though on a normal day the only people who do this are the various smokers in the building. Today, though, a truck has crashed a power line three blocks south, and thanks to this the rest of us are being forced to sit and relax.

Conversation proceeds stiffly at first - we talk about work stuff, the new docking stations being installed in place of the old-fashioned desktops. Then, somehow, the topics shift to less utilitarian topics -- office gossip, etc. The new editor confides that she has a secret admirer, someone who makes eye contact whenever he passes her desk. She won't say who. Pretty soon we're all discussing, with great relish and ease, the best subject of all: men and women. We talk loudly, to hear ourselves above the noise of the backup generators. And then the noise suddenly falls silent, indicating that the power is back on.

***

Stopping at the mail cubbies at daycare to pick up the monthly statement, I pass another parent.

"It's just like the mailbox at home," she says. "Nothing but bills."

2007-05-01T10:53:00.000-07:00

Even though I was his primary care provider for most of his first year, I have trouble recalling our son as an infant. I'm used to him as a three-year-old (almost four) and it's hard, for instance, to think of a time when he couldn't talk.

2007-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Michael has decided to go by "Mike." At his preschool, the teacher had written on a board the names of several of the kids. There was a Michael K, and further down a "Mike".

Later, going to the car, he told me about it. He added that some of his friends were still calling him Michael.

2007-04-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

***

My thoughts have been preoccupied with the Virginia Tech killings, though I don't really have anything coherent to add to the pages of available commentary. So the perpetrator was a psychological train wreck, an isolated, uncommunicative and hostile person, possibly schizophrenic. The thing I wonder about is how he might have been helped – where, in the course of his development, did things go so badly awry? Who could have intervened, and when? Were there things that should have been done that weren't, or vice versa?

The factors that some have cited – loneliness, paranoia, immaturity, self-absorption, romantic failure, social humiliation, inability to understand consequences, indifference to the suffering of others, attraction to gun culture and violent fantasy – are present in many young people (and, frequently enough, older people). But they are usually not present to such an extreme degree. Most people also, along the way, find social support to moderate their loneliness. Or, even if socially unskilled, they are able to take refuge in an activity that sustains them – art, religion, career goals or a vocation, or just something they do particularly well.

Instead, we have a 23-year-old male who could not establish relationships or have an impact on people other than puzzling and scaring them. A person with no capacity to deal with the social environment of college, thrust into the laissez-faire environment that college happens to be. A person whose few efforts to communicate just came across as bizarre. A person who stalked women. His mom asking his roommate to "help him". And finally, a shooter trying to kill as much of the world as he could.

2007-04-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

***

(Passing the physics lab on the way home from pre-school): "Is there a Space Shuttle here?"
"Ah, no, the space shuttle isn't here. They do research here."
(Pause)
"What are those...telescopes doing?"
"They're radio telescopes. They use them to study space."
"Why?"
"Ah...well, because, this is a science lab.. (Pause) Mama works here."
"Why?"
"That's mama's job. She studies space."
"Why?"
"Well, ah...because she is interested in space. She's a scientist."
(Pause)
"I...I am interestingted in space too."

***

"When the big car is dirty, we can take it to the car wash again."
"We can."
After some thought: "Xiaoxi didn't like the car wash."
"No, she didn't, did she."
"Maybe next time, we might don't take Xiaoxi to the car wash."
"Ok, yes."
"Little babies don't like the car wash."
"Right. Because it's noisy and there's water flying around."
"But boys and girls, who are not grownups but they are big kids,
aren't scared by the car wash."
"You're not scared by the car wash."
"Yeah. Because I'm getting bigger. Next time, I will be seven."

2007-04-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

***

2007-04-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

The cherry blossom festival began yesterday. We decided to go early, since last year we were too late and missed the blossoms.

It was very crowded, yet the atmosphere was not tense or unpleasant, even with all those people. The sight of the blossoming trees -- the dark, knobby trunks contrasting so strikingly with the delicate white flowers -- is deeply moving. You almost can't help feeling tranquil and happy.

The trees circle the Tidal Basin, and many of the flowering branches lean down to the water, while pairs of ducks swim by and, farther out, families pedal around in boats. Young couples are everywhere, stopping to take photos of each other. A woman is photographing her friend, urges her to climb up into the branches. "Go on! Climb up! Like a monkey!"

There are five of us: me, my wife, my mother-in-law, almost four-year-old Michael, and Heidi, who is fast asleep.

As we're walking along, I notice a monk in orange robes is behind me, talking animatedly with another young man in plain clothes. I listen attentively, trying to figure out what language they are speaking. Maybe Vietnamese...

Then they switch to English, and I realize they are talking about Michael, who is perched on my shoulders making loud "meow meow" noises.

***

2007-03-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

It's spring. Too much to do around the house.

Lots of things are broken or out of order. A circline lamp fixture went bad in the kitchen. Naturally, we have no idea where the previous owners bought it, so we'll end up getting a different one and thus having to replace the other, still-working fixture (to avoid the mismatch).

A toilet upstairs has an object, probably some toy, stuck in its inner workings. The plumber informed us the best choice is just to get a new toilet. Since we're doing that, we might as well retile the bathroom. And if we're retiling the bathroom, might as well install a new tub. Contractors charge more, in the long run, for various small jobs than they do for one big job. So if we're hiring one, perhaps we should have them remodel the whole house?

***

Heidi is seven months old today. Her favorite activities now are grabbing things and staring at people.

I've been gradually, secretly transporting various small toys of Michael's out of the common areas into his room. He doesn't seem to have noticed yet.

2007-03-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

A bird has been trying to build a nest inside our dryer vent. We first heard it a few days ago. I disconnected the vent and, sure enough, it was full of twigs, leaves and other bric-a-brac. The next morning, we again heard sounds, and again the vent -- cleared out the previous day -- was filled up with nest material. This bird is pretty industrious.

My wife is feeling sad for it -- after all, the poor thing is putting all its energy into a nest that keeps vanishing. If the situation isn't righted, it might lose its chance to lay eggs. I'm unhappy about it too. The only thing I can think of is to block off the vent with some kind of wire screening. That way the bird will be forced to look for another location, and we can dry clothes again without fear of them catching fire.

***

Coming to work on Monday I noticed the pear trees alongside Interstate 95 had just started to bloom. Today, three days later, they are covered with white blossoms. The process happens so quickly.

Last year, around this time, I was caught in a rush-hour slowdown. With the pears in full flower on each side of the highway, and all of us inching along in low gear, it felt as though we were out on some kind of spring tour.

Happy Chinese New Year!

2007-02-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Sunday was the spring festival, first day of the lunar new year. It's now the Year of the Pig. Many people are saying it's not only the Year of the Pig, but the Year of the Golden Pig. According to my wife, though, this is not true. She read in the China Daily that it's actually the year of the Earth Pig. The Golden Pig comes around every sixty years -- the last one was in 1971, and the next one's in 2031. The animals of the Chinese zodiac have to pass through all five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal (gold) and water.

Well, that's OK. Whether golden or earthy, pigs can be considered auspicious.

Milestone

2007-02-11T20:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He is already 70 years old -- how strange. I feel as though only recently I was a young person, rebelling against my parents. Where did the time go? How did we suddenly become older?

For awhile, my dad has been preparing himself for this milestone. Last fall he decided to build a fish pond in the backyard. He finished it and stocked it with fish. When the weather permits, he plans to build a gazebo.

Summer in winter

2007-02-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

A friend who lives in Florida has decided to move back to Pennsylvania. Among other reasons, she mentioned the weather.

She doesn't like Florida's climate. "Summer in January screws me up," she says.

Where I live, it's extremely cold at the moment -- almost unbearable. So it was a little strange to hear my friend's complaint. Still, I can understand where she's coming from.

When you're used to the cycle of four seasons, it doesn't feel right for one to be missing. Even though winter may suck, we still want the opportunity to curse it.

Reverse chronology

2006-08-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

I turned 40 on Monday -- a personal milestone at a time of global anxiety. Even by post-9/11 standards, world news in the last several weeks has been grim, though the Lebanon ceasefire offers a lull of sorts. The larger storyline: heavily armed, rattled Western powers struggling to contain and defeat adversaries that elude them, with much destruction, death and anarchy caused in the process. It's a time of raised fears concerning not only present-day events but also the long-term perspective.

What did the world look like when I was 30, 20 and 10? Let's recollect...

30

I find it harder to conjure up the mood of 1996 than that of 1986 or even 1976, perhaps because the shift since has been so dramatic. I celebrated my 30th birthday at a time of prosperity in the US, thanks to the IT boom and the "Goldilocks economy." Globally, the end of the Cold War had seemed about to usher in a new epoch dominated by trade and democratization, presided over benignly by a more or less united West. The interventions in Bosnia and Kuwait lent credence to the idea of America as global peacekeeper. They also convinced many Americans that wars could be waged easily, without large numbers of US casualties. The morass of Vietnam had seemingly been left far behind. The president was intelligent, charismatic and politically skillful; centrism ruled the day. The fear level was low.

Of the global news stories that year, some would turn out to have particular long-term significance. UN inspections, and obstruction of same, took place in Iraq. Kabul fell to the Taliban. Alan Greenspan warned of "irrational exuberance". Osama bin Laden issued a "Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places".

Defying the powers of trade and democracy, the Middle East crisis remained unsolved. Israel shelled a UN compound at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing 106 civilians. Various terrorist attacks occurred during the year: a truck bombing in Sri Lanka, the Manchester City Centre bombing, the Atlanta Olympics bombing, the Ethiopian airliner hijacking.

20

Rewind to 1986, skipping right past the tectonic changes of 1989-1991. If, back then, we had somehow got access to today's maps, most of us wouldn't have believed our eyes. In 1986, there was still "the West" and "the Soviet bloc", NATO and the Warsaw Pact. There was a country named Yugoslavia, prosperous by socialist-country standards, popular with tourists and thought to have fairly bright prospects. The main development on the world stage was perestroika: a young (54), energetic reformist had taken the helm in Moscow and seemed ready to introduce something resembling "socialism with a human face". The fear level was declining, and optimism rising.

Looking over the news events of that year, though, most had little staying power. They belonged to an era which would soon end. Gorbachev, the man of the moment, did not remain
long on the scene; the changes he set into motion soon swept him into the archives. One event that does have resonance today is the Challenger disaster; the space shuttle program survived into the current decade, and so did many of the problems first noted in 1986. The Chernobyl disaster in April also had long-term effects -- on the environment, on attitudes about nuclear power, and on interest in alternative energy.

The Middle East crisis continued. A series of killings (a Palestinian girl shot in the back, an Israeli salesman stabbed to death) lit the fuse for the major uprising dubbed the First Intifada. Terrorism during the year included the hijacking of a Pan Am flight by the Abu Nidal organization and the bombing of a West Berlin disco popular among US soldiers. The US bombed Libya in retaliation.

10

In 1976, the globe was still firmly, and seemingly permanently, trifurcated: West, Iron Curtain and Third World. This was the reality taught to us in school, and what I learned from the news. The long, evolving narrative of the Cold War gave a shape to events that is less present today -- most of what happened was seen with reference to this narrative. World leaders appeared, to a ten year old, to be protagonists in a stage play -- to have that sort of gravitas. Maybe that's how things always look to a ten year old, though.

Fear levels were high, though not what they are today. The US and the Soviet Union had entered a period of "normalization", in which the two blocs left off calling for each other's extinction and spoke, instead, about co-existence. Nevertheless, kids my age worried about nuclear war, believing it was a real and even likely prospect.

The year 1976 saw many noteworthy events, most of which now qualify as ancient history. Mao died, as did Mayor Daley. The Soweto riots foreshadowed the end of apartheid. The Concorde was launched, and the Ramones released their first album. Carter beat Ford. Cambodia lurched towards atrocity. Harold Wilson resigned, and the UK began direct rule in Northern Ireland.

And look at this: Apple Corporation was founded on April 1. (Microsoft got its start the previous year).

The Middle East crisis continued. In January, the Security Council voted 11-1, with three abstentions, to admit the PLO to the United Nations. My country cast the opposing vote. Australia, Britain and Denmark abstained. Terrorist acts during the year included IRA bombings, seizure of an Air France plane by Palestinians, and bombing of a Cuban jet liner by anti-Castro Cubans.

And so...

I guess if one good thing could be said about the Middle East crisis, it's that a sense of continuity lingers across three otherwise varied decades. Terrorism is also a constant of sorts, though shifting in relation to particular conflicts. Otherwise, I can see there has been a succession of historical moments during my lifetime, each with its attendant mentalities. I missed the peak of the Cold War, when the paranoia level must have been similar to today's, and my childhood coincided with a gradual easing of fears. After that came the euphoria of 1989, followed by a decade of faith in economics. Then another catalyzing event, and a shift to militarism. The latest phase seems to have exhausted itself, but it's not yet clear what comes after.

Our VBAC saga

2006-08-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

Our first experience with childbirth did not proceed the way we expected. My wife labored for 23 hours, dilating to 8cm before things stalled. Finally, she was wheeled in for the C-section. Our son's head was in the right position, but too large to get through the pelvic canal. He wasn't going anywhere without help.

We both regretted not being able to have a natural birth. People reminded us, and we reminded each other, that delivering a healthy baby is the most important thing. And it is. But this wise thought doesn't abolish all feelings of disappointment. Plus, there was the long and difficult recovery. My wife still wishes deeply that the surgery could have been avoided.

When she became pregnant again, we were given another opportunity. And yet, 28 days from now, we will be going in for a scheduled C. How has this come about?

A number of things have influenced the decision. One was my wife's prior experience with labor. It's not unlikely that Michael's sibling will have the same trouble getting out as he did. Basically, Y. has at least a 50 per cent chance of needing a repeat C whatever choice she makes. There's a widely-circulated rumor, which our doctors were happy to repeat, that Asian-Western couples have a high rate of C-section due to mismatches between mom's pelvis and baby's genes. In any case, oversized heads can be found on both sides of the family. Why go through another protracted ordeal only to end up, once again, in surgery?

Another factor is the hospital. Doctors have been reportedly started to discourge VBACs out of fear of litigation. Some of the cases cited involve slow response time, lack of staff, or lack of proper attention. Natural birth advocates argue that, under the best conditions, a VBAC should be no less safe than a C. But what is the state of most hospitals, even the better-ranked ones? Chaotic. Bureaucratic. Getting a nurse's attention, let alone the doctor's, is like trying to get through to the phone company.

Staff may not always be competent, mixups happen, patient information can be misinterpreted. Communication problems occur, especially during shift transitions. If a uterine rupture does happen, the window of time could be crucial. But ruptures are sometimes hard to detect. The VBAC seems to call out for closer monitoring and more resources than many hospitals are able to provide.

There are two ways this issue could have been overcome. One would be to get a doula -- a person whose specific job is to be there for you throughout the process. If we were going to do that, however, we should have planned for it earlier in the pregnancy. A month before delivery is a bit late.

Another would have been to choose an outstanding hospital. Y. thinks she'd have the confidence to try the natural birth if we went to the Famous Teaching Hospital in Baltimore. The problem is, it's in Baltimore. I wasn't keen on the idea. What if we get caught in rush hour traffic? My wife's in agony, and we're stuck behind this truck on Pratt... Ugh. I advocated finding a hospital closer to home. But no local hospital meets the standards of the Famous Teaching Hospital in Baltimore. If the choice of hospital governed this decision, then the repeat C is my fault.

There were some other influencing factors. My mother-in-law, who went through a succession of vaginal births in rural China, strongly favoured the C-section. My sis-in-law also favoured it, as her own attempt at a VBAC led to a life-threatening emergency. A friend who did give birth "the way God intended" says she can't laugh without starting to pee.

In short, we might have gone for the natural birth if some or all of the following were true:

-- I hadn't argued against Baltimore.
-- My wife was firmly committed to the VBAC.
-- I was a strong advocate of the VBAC.
-- My wife wasn't so worried about the VBAC.
-- Her first C-section had been due to breech, or something other than "failure to progress"
-- Trusted relatives or friends advocated natural birth.
-- If the available studies clearly showed VBAC is the safer option.

And most importantly:

-- If the first delivery hadn't been a C.

So, there it is (I think).

Three

2006-07-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

Michael turned three on the 25th. His sense of time is developing. He knows his birthday's in June, though he may not be sure exactly what June is. He's aware there are babies, little kids, big kids and grownups, knows that he's not a baby, and likes to imagine that he's a big kid.

We encourage this thought -- it helps with toilet training, sharing toys, sleeping independently, and other issues.

Age 3 is fun for child and parents alike. A kid this age not only has language skills, but is using words to formulate propositions about the world. This makes for interesting drive-time conversations on, say, whether cars always drive on the street or sometimes on the grass.

His ideas about the world are sometimes on target, sometimes a little off, and sometimes way off. He believes that leaves grow into trees, that the robin he saw on the porch rail was about to hatch an egg (big belly!), that something bad will happen if he gets pool water in his ear, that cars sometimes park on the grass. Navigation interests him, as it did me when I was a kid; his back-seat perch gives him much opportunity to study the roads and the routes, and he'll detect any change from the normal course.

What does a 3-year-old remember about 1, 2 (or before)? I wonder about this often. I'm sure he's forgotten the trip to Beijing at 11 months, being on an airplane, meeting his Chinese grandpa, his uncle with the camera, the smiling women in the hotel...Or our stroll, just me and him, to see the ancient bells in the dusty little outdoor museum. It was a tranquil, wonderful place in the middle of the urban bustle; the attendant walked around humming a traditional song as I carried Michael around to look at the mysterious objects, which of course he would have liked to reach out and touch...

For a year, starting just after his first birthday, another couple with a baby rented our basement. He remembers that people used to live down there. A little girl and her mom and dad. Their names?

He remembers her dad's name. Antti. And his PT Cruiser.

"He has a funny car. A funny black car".

Searching for a name

2006-04-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

Americans generally aren't much concerned with the etymological meaning of their names. I had to go look mine up just now ("Bright Fame"), remembering only that it was something Nordic and warlike.

Many popular choices go back to ancient mythology or the Bible, and the distance is far enough to keep the meaning out of mind.

For Chinese people, though, the literal definition is important. A name should mean something auspicious, preferably something suggesting the values or attributes parents desire for their child.

Week before last, I thought of the perfect name. It's lively and bright. It's a little out of the current mainstream. It sounds good in combination with a clunky, consonant-heavy Germanic surname.

My wife e-mailed me back. "It means 'blind'. I don't like it."

I pressed the case. "It doesn't really mean blind. It comes from the name of an ancient Roman family."

...whose name is derived from a word meaning blind.

"And the patron saint of music!" I tried.

She's also patron saint of the blind.

There's just no getting around the inauspiciousness factor. I could just see it -- little Cecily needs glasses. Or worse, falls off her bike and injures her eye. "It's because of the name! It's your fault!"

And yet, the West has no shortage of Cecilys, Ceciles and Cecilias. How can this be?

Some friends of ours want to name their daughter "Cordelia". Is it auspicious to name a child after a murdered character in a Shakespearean tragedy?

I once knew someone named "Regan". What about that?

I think Westerners, especially Americans, place value on the social connotations of a name, rather than its denotative meaning. When people choose the name Cordelia, they are not thinking about the grimness of King Lear; they're thinking educated, literate, classy.

We tend to resist the idea that a name has a fixed value, and prefer the idea that names have meanings which we ascribe to them, as part of our efforts at self-fashioning.

And yet isn't this also a way of wanting something auspicious, "suggesting the values or attributes parents desire for their child"?

What are we aiming at when we call a child Sophie? or Madison? Maud? Georgia? Summer? Felicity? Caroline? Phoebe?

A brief conversation

2006-04-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Our son stands next to my wife, about eye-level with her belly.

"Baby, I don't want to talk to you. Maybe next time," he says, addressing the belly.

Hard to know how an almost-three-year-old registers the news of a future sibling-- whether he understands, or thinks it's a joke, or just harbors an uneasy suspicion that something's up.

He's old enough to know that families often have more than one junior member. In stories, the kid protagonist usually comes with a sis or a bro. In our case, it's (probably) the former-- we found that out Wednesday, with the ultrasound.

He's getting a little mei-mei. A shift in the universe.

A distance

2006-03-12T05:11:00.000-08:00

After graduating from college in '87, I stuck around for another year before leaving for good. Since then, I've been back to my alma mater only a few times.

Once (age 23) to see a movie -- "Room with a View," I think it was. Once (26) to visit my best friend, enrolled in graduate school there. Once (30) with my parents, who wanted to cheer me up after a divorce. And this past weekend (39) with my wife and young son.

It was a little unsettling to be there, because things seemed stuck in time. That's true at most universities, I guess, but at U.Va. the sensation is amplified because of the cult of tradition, the omnipresence of Jefferson, the historic architecture, and so on.

We toured the Rotunda and sat for awhile under the dome's skylight, talking about the added pressure doctoral students must feel, defending their dissertations in this weighty environment. Then we relaxed on the grass out front. It was a gorgeous spring day, clusters of red buds on the trees. A student tour guide was recounting the Great Rotunda Fire. A trio of young women were taking pictures of themselves -- one knelt with the camera while the others skipped arm-in-arm towards her.

Walking down the colonnade towards the statue of Homer at the other end, I had the distinctly odd sensation of possessing detailed memories that belong to another person.

After 20 years, I don't feel connected to college-age me; it's as though we're two different individuals. It's possible that shame plays a role in this sense of disconnection; I wasn't a very accomplished student. But I'm not convinced this is the main reason. The main reason, I suspect, is that "continuity of self" is not as stable as we often assume.

What is a "self", anyway? What does it consist of? If enough of the variables change, can we still speak of a continuous self?

Not only are the ideas of a 21-year-old different from those of a 39-year-old, but the way of thinking changes. The brain itself goes through alterations; thought processes are developed in some ways, curtailed in others. We feel differently when we are older -- mature emotions replace youthful ones, and we cope with them in different ways.

Add geographic displacement, career shifts, relationship drama (in my case, marriage, divorce and remarriage), friendships come and gone, becoming a parent, seeing one's parents age. On top of that, factor in changes in the geopolitical environment, in the grand story the world is telling about itself, which in turn influences how we see our place in the world.

At some point, sets A and B just don't overlap enough to make one feel...well, like "one".

Surfing the backyard

2006-03-09T08:02:00.000-08:00

Spring means more to me than it used to -- a result, I think, of getting older and leading a more settled life.

Staying in one place, I've become more aware of the calendar of phenomena, also aware of how disengaged I've been from the natural world -- not even knowing the names of flora and fauna in our own backyard, or what those birds were that assembled in a tree outside the study window just after dawn Tuesday, kicking up a racket.

Song sparrows, maybe. I turned off the music stream coming over the computer speakers and tried to memorize the call. Then compared it to audio files available on the web. I'm still not sure.

This morning, same tree, different birds.

How odd -- having to turn to the internet to learn about something that's a part of our local surroundings. But where else to ask? It's not as though one can just knock on the neighbors' doors and strike up a conversation about finches and sparrows.

They might not know anyway; we're all recent arrivals, here on this cul-de-sac named for a developer's wife. Even our houses are newcomers.

2006-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

2006-02-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

Thrills and spills

While I still like watching them, the Olympics don't inspire in me the same fanatic, glued-to-the-set devotion that they once did. That's a predictable consequence of adulthood, with its shifts in perspective and its limited leisure time.

But I wonder if there's also another reason: globalization has diminished the significance of the Games. The idea of nations coming together has lost its novelty and lustre; in the era of networks we're linked 24/7, every day out of every year. People in one part of the world are rioting over cartoons published in another part; companies located in country X are outsourcing labor to country Y; athletes train in the U.S. in order to compete for their home country, or vice versa. It's quaint to conceive of the Olympics as a "global event", when so much else fits that description.

I'm reminded of how disconnected we were, by comparison, when I was growing up. To listen to foreign media -- the BBC, for instance -- required a shortwave radio. Print media required a trip to a special bookstore or the university library. International events came to us via a half-hour network newscast, our window to the world. Half of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain. China was so remote as to seem almost lunar.

In that kind of environment, the Olympics were momentous. (They also took place less often than they do now, since Winter and Summer Games were combined). They carried the weight of the former world order, with its division into East and West, communist and capitalist. That provided a kind of overarching narrative which gave special power to the individual athletes' triumphs and disappointments. After the Wall came down, the Games quickly became demystified.

And that's a good thing, in some ways -- myths give us a filter for interpreting the world, but can stand in the way of perception. These days, I'm glad to enjoy the Olympics as simply a sporting event, rather than epic theater.

It's also interesting to look back and see how much of the world was excluded from the Olympics, especially the Winter Games. In the 1976 Winter Olympics, for instance, not a single country outside Europe, North America and the Soviet bloc won a medal. An alien studying old medal count lists might reasonably conclude that Liechtenstein was as important a country as Japan. China, home to a fifth of the world's population, didn't win a single medal at the Winter Olympics until Albertville in 1992. While the Olympics still aren't fully "global", at least they're becoming less Eurocentric.

2006-02-06T20:18:00.000-08:00

Toddler Birthday Party

Assorted small children vaulting over furniture, climbing in and out of a play tent and tube, pumping balloons, popping balloons, running around in circles, fighting over toys, fighting over the balloon pump, and just generally kicking up a storm.

And assorted adults, slumped in chairs or standing listlessly around the living room. Occasionally attempting conversations, which trail off after a few sentences.

The birthday girl cruises through, carrying about a dozen variously sized dolls.

An unusually large, kindergarten-sized toddler tries to pull her older sister off the rock-n-fold. The sister kicks punches her off -- each of them crying "Mom!" at strategic moments.

The men talk about home improvement; one guy is having an extension built. It'll be done in about a month.

We drink beers.

The birthday girl cruises through, wheeling a baby carriage in which numerous dolls have been placed.

My son, 2 years old and 7 months, wants to use the balloon pump. I hold it steady while he attempts to stomp on it.

The women are not making small talk or girl talk; they're not talking at all. They're just watching the kids, the high-speed action, with dazed looks on their faces. Occasionally nibbling on chicken nuggets.

My son sits in a chair eating dinosaur nuggets.

The birthday girl is shouting with everything she's got, which is a lot. She has an expression of supreme indignation on her face. It's her birthday, and Mom's hauling her upstairs for a diaper change.

I find myself thinking about the family dog in middle age, how she wasn't frisky and fun like a puppy but just sort of lazed around.

I grab a kid-sized carton of apple juice and sip at it.

It's time for the cake -- two candles. Chocolate with pink frosting.

2006-01-31T19:27:00.000-08:00

Actual state of the union

A candid state of the union address would probably sound something like this, writes historian Lewis L. Gould:

"The state of the union is not good. Iraq is an insoluble mess, Iran is a long-term threat, terrorism menaces us all, the Army is strained to the breaking point, the budget is out of whack, global warming threatens the existence of humanity, and there are no easy answers, quick solutions or painless sacrifices."

But of course we'd never hear this from any president. The annual ritual has little to do with candor, and everything to do with (clumsy) political theater. It's another prop in the arsenal of TV-era continuous campaigning, a tool for building rapport. What the speech really informs us about is how the White House assesses voter concerns -- what the strategists think we want to be told.

Talk of "leadership" means "yes, we realize the poll numbers are low." Suburban America's a bit rattled about the evangelical right, and that Intelligence Design stuff came a bit too close to our own schools and children, so tell us you're going to be the science president, whatever that means. We figure the urgent talk about oil addiction means you too skimmed through "Twilight in the Desert," or got briefed on it by the author. And yep, we're worried about that "massive tax hike" you're promising to protect us from -- it seems likely, given the hole we're in. So glad you care.

2006-01-30T18:51:00.000-08:00

One Yo-Yo Ma cello solo too many

We finally got around to seeing Geisha this weekend -- had already read the reviews, was hoping it would turn out to be better than rumoured. (One can always hope). What I saw was a potentially great movie undermined by lazy, cop-out choices, weird pacing, and lapses in taste. Either Rob Marshall didn't have the skill to bring it off, or the studio forced him into expedient but fatal (artistically speaking) decisions. Ocean-eyed Sayuri achieves her quest to become a geisha, and then -- wait, what's this? There's been a war going on? And it just ended? And Japan lost? And lovely ladies are being banished to remote areas to harvest rice and make like characters from The Good Earth? No way!

To be fair, parts of Geisha really did resemble a powerful, affecting, Oscar-calibre movie. That mostly happened in the first third, before Suzuka Ohgo grows up to become Zhang Ziyi. Everyone knows by now about the flap over Chinese actresses playing Japanese characters, and I have nothing to add to that discussion; I approve of culture-crossing. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the real standout performances here were by Ohgo and Koji Yakusho (as a physically disfigured, surly but soulful engineer who deeply loves Sayuri). They gave the movie just enough depth to save it, or almost save it, from being a gorgeous mess.