Saturday and Sunday, December 24 and 25, 2011

Here is the photo appearing on our holiday card this year:

So, my intention here is to write about what I’m thankful for, but if that comes across as bragging, that’s because “being thankful” and “bragging” are essentially the same thing, so…just stop reading here if you’re that sensitive.

The first thing you’ll notice about the picture is the two children. If you’ve read this blog, or my wife’s, then you know it was a lot of work to bring Owen into this world and even more work to get through his first year. For a time, we weren’t sure if Owen would ever even have a sibling, but finally, after over five years, he did.

In a world with fertility issues, miscarriages, and birth complications, and coming from a religion that championed remaining childless, Jennifer and I are privileged to have two beautiful, healthy, fun, intelligent children: a boy and a girl. And they, in turn, are privileged to have a relationship with my sister and their other uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents, and even their great-grandmother.

That’s not to say that they’re perfect, of course, and we are lucky that in this society, where so many define themselves by their career, and where even those who don’t often need income from both parents to pay the bills, Jennifer has been a stay-at-home mother. Being there from day one all the way through day 2,416 has meant that she was able to nurse, not some pump in a corporate lactation room, but the children themselves. She was able to provide healthy meals, and to know them so well that she knew when it was time for Owen to receive assistance with his apraxia and to keep Isla healthy and out of germ-ridden daycares so as not to get infections due to her bladder issues. She was able to follow them, advocate for them, and to be there to notice when things were not ideal, instead of receiving a report at the end of the day from an underpaid daycare provider who was busy caring for 10 other children.

Having the children at home also meant that, come the evenings and weekends, we were not like so many other parents I’ve seen, either overcompensating for having been at work all day to pay for daycare or not knowing what to do with our kids now that we do have them – “Hey, let’s go out to eat, but I guess we better get a sitter!”

After receiving in-home care from a wonderful speech therapist, my wife advocated to get Owen enrolled in an excellent preschool that helped with his needs. Since the school’s tuition was beyond our budget, she used her time as a stay-at-home mom to secure a scholarship so that Owen was able to attend for three semesters. And now, amazingly, he is able to attend one of the best elementary schools in the city. Isla, meanwhile, continues to enjoy the all-day companionship of her mother, and mom, in turn, is good enough to continue to breastfeed. So many babies are, for whatever bizarre reasons, shifted onto formula way too quickly. I’ve even heard many men say how happy they were when their wife discontinued nursing. Me? I’m different. I think boobs are like sportscars: yeah, I like looking at them. But if they actually work: now that’s fucking awesome.

Next, notice the photo’s background. That’s our new home. After years in a small apartment, we are finally able to breath in a classy, cozy, personality-filled house. In a world where millions of people are homeless, and millions more live in squalor, or in extremely cramped and unsanitary conditions, we – of single income and limited schooling – are able to live in a gorgeous three-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a yard, heat, air conditioning, and a garage, and a gazebo, and a hot tub, and – as the photo depicts – a freakin’ fireplace. We are the 1%.

And, as I’ve alluded, purchasing the home was made possible by my job. Despite my frequent sarcasm to the contrary, I enjoy my job, I enjoy my co-workers, and I am often amazed that a former Witness like me, with no advanced degree of any kind, works day by day with chemists and engineers, and that I am able to make a difference in the medical industry, improving health care for thousands of my fellow humans. Hell, I even have my own cube.

And my job would not be possible if I had not attended college. Higher education was discouraged in my family and in my culture, yet my wife saw beyond that and, in 2000, she supported me while I began my college career. I hated college for about two weeks, and loved it ever since.

My degree afforded me the opportunity to get out of the retail doldrums and out of the rut of low-paying tasks that so many of my friends and family members still toil in. And now, during a recessed economy with rising tuition and limited employment, my employer pays for me to attend college. After attending the best community college in the Twin Cities, I am now enrolled at the highest-rated university in the state.

Oh yeah – and speaking of that state, I am lucky to have been raised in Minnesota. A clean, beautiful state in a great nation. True, there a many great nations in the world, and their are many beautiful states in the Union. But there are also a lot of places I’d never want to live for a single day. Minnesota, USA, is not one of them. Indeed, I live in the most livable city in the entire country.

And while a billion people go each day hungry and illiterate, and others believe alcohol to be evil, I am lucky enough to – in the comfort of the home you see pictured above – to start each day with a meal, and to end each evening with food (too much food, really), beer that I home-brewed, and any one of the hundreds of books in my collection. And while millions are illiterate, and so many are deaf or blind, I can – without even leaving my home – read the world’s greatest literature, listen to its finest music, and view its most beautiful films.

Then there is the tree in the picture. Healthy, and with the strength and stamina required, my family and I were able to trek out of doors and cut down our own holiday tree. As you see, our tree and the mantle above the fireplace lack any sort of reference to a divinity. Unlike so many that have come before us, we are able to look at the universe for what it is. We know a volcano is not the flaring temper of a demon, and we know the sun is not the fiery chariot of a god. As a result, in our home we do not practice – nor do we submit our children to – circumcision, spankings, groveling prayers, shunning, or lies about Santa, the Easter Bunny, or Jehovah. We live in reality. This is our testimony; this is our spirituality: that having been lucky enough to know the nature of a germ, and an atom, and a star – to know space and time, evolution and geology, gravity and relativity – we will gape in awe at the Universe of which we are citizens, and to be humbled by the very fact that, against the staggering odds of an empty galaxy, a violent planet, and the trillions of possible egg-sperm combinations, that we even exist at all.

But there’s more. So much more. It is, I suppose, fashionable to long for more, but at the risk of being passe’ I am going to admit that I revel in some of the events of my life. Growing up in a simple mobile home park, I never would have guessed that one day I would see the Black Hills, Manhattan, Trier, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Key West, Halifax, and Prince Edward Island. It is at once both humbling and empowering to think that I have been on television, have walked on stage to receive a college degree, received payment for my words, spoken before a crowd, traveled first-class, ridden in a limousine, voted, officiated, raced, stood in a sea of humans and listened to music created and performed by Paul Simon, Mason Jennings, King Crimson, and Brian Wilson. To know that I can share words and images and filmlets with my fellow humans at the touch of a button. To have been influenced and – more importantly – to have shared a kinship with Newton, Bruno, Galileo, Van Gogh, da Vinci, John Adams, Curie, Einstein, Tesla, Jocelyn Bell,  Goeppert-Mayer, and Mohandas Gandhi. And to have been entertained by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Chaplin, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Jim Henson, Alfred Hitchcock, Gene Roddenberry, and Steve Jobs. And to have even, on rarest occasion, touched greatness…having shaken hands with Paul Wellstone, Oprah Winfrey, and Lawrence Krauss, and having been friends with Rhett.

Finally, though, there’s that photo. Here I am, in St. Paul, having already lived longer than most other life ever, with my friendly cat, my two wonderful children, and my talented, intelligent, beautiful wife who, against common sense, continues to willingly have sex with me (though, truth be told, I’ve done nothing if not gotten better looking this whole century). I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Also, I taught myself how to juggle.

I hope this Solstice-Haunukka-Saturnalia-Yule-Xmas-Kwanzaa finds you likewise with health, wealth, and wisdom to be thankful for.

Thanks for reading.

Friday, 23 December 2011

Today is an appropriate day to talk about Vincent Van Gogh.

“Why is today an appropriate day to talk about Van Gogh?” you ask. “Is it his birthday?”

No, it’s not.

“Is it the anniversary of his death?”

Again, nope.

“Is it the anniversary of when he sold his first painting?”

You’re wrong again. Please, just stop guessing, for Christ’s sake, and let me get on with this blog post.

My first experience with Van Gogh was, surprisingly, through song. My Dad (who seemed to own every song to hit the pop charts between 1955 and 1980) had this one record with a song that began “Starry starry night.” I thought that was the title of the song for about 20 years. It’s not. The title of the song is “Vincent,” and here it is, coupled with images of Van Gogh’s work:

I didn’t know what the song was about back then, and it wasn’t until one day when I was seven years old, and attending 2nd Grade at Savage Elementary School (yeah, that’s really what it was called), that I connected the song to the artist.

On that day, a woman came in to our classroom. She was the curator of a local art museum, I believe, and she brought with her two paintings (or copies of painting). She set the first one up onto an easel. It was completely covered with tag board. But she had cut two holes out of the tag board and, before revealing the entire work, she uncovered one of the holes. The opening revealed a bright, swirling disk of light.

“What time of day do you think it is in this painting?” she asked the class.
Some upstart raised her hand and said it was day time.

But then the curator opened up the other cut-out, and revealed the moon, and a darker portion of the painting. There was audible murmuring in the classroom as we all tried to figure out how a painting could simultaneously depict night and day.

After letting us stew for a minute, she revealed the entire painting.

The entire painting.

I was amazed. Instantly, I gasped at its beauty and I tried reconstructing the tag board covering in my mind, trying to figure out how two such dissimilar plays of light could appear in the same work.
The woman told us the name of the painting, and this led me to raise my hand and ask a question: “Is that the painting they’re talking about in that one song ‘Starry Starry Night’?” I inquired.
Needless to say, I was rebuked for daring to couple one of the most beautiful works of art with a pop song. I guess making connections like that is bad.

For years after that, I felt a special affinity for that painting. When I was 13 years old, I convinced my parents to purchase a book of art history for me. They frowned on the idea, ’cause, you know, there was nudes in it, but I prevailed. Despite strong competition, reading the entire book led me to the conclusion that Starry Night was the most beautiful painting of all time.

Mostly, I suppose, I loved the color. It wasn’t the assaulting palette of Warhol, yet it still rose above the depressing browns and blacks of Da Vinci. I even purchased a neck tie that depicted Starry Night; it was the only tie I owned that straddled the line between fun enough for work and serious enough for the über-conservative dress code of the Watchtower Society. Though I have greatly trimmed back the ties in my collection, I still own this one and, indeed, it’s the tie my wife and I use year after year when we take a photo of Owen on his birthday.

In time, I realized many Van Gogh works were similarly striking. For a time, my wife and I displayed Van Gogh reproductions on our living room wall. And when, in 2002, I visited the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, I considered my brief moment face-to-face with Van Gogh’s Olive Trees as the highlight of the trip. More than that, it was one of those times when I felt in the company of greatness – like when I attended a Brian Wilson concert – and I was humbled to think that I am of the same species as such an amazing talent.

Van Gogh had the dual problems of mental illness and living in the 19th century. During the 19th century, mental health treatment was…let’s see, how can I put this?…shitty. Had he lived now, Van Gogh likely would have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Or depression. Or OCD. Or epilepsy. Or hypergraphia. Or maybe all of the above. He was a troubled man who took solace in his work.

One hundred and twenty-three years ago today, a deeply disturbed Van Gogh cut off part of his right ear and gave it to a prostitute. Having the wherewithal to know how sick he was, Van Gogh had the presence of mind to wrap his bleeding head in bandages and later checked himself into a clinic. Less than two years later, the 37 year-old Van Gogh was dead, probably by his own hands.

Van Gogh’s act of passion is an easy metaphor. My friend Ryan once wrote a song “My ____ is Van Gogh,” in which the protagonist continually finds severed pinnas (such as in his mailbox) and concludes that various people in his life (such as the mailman) are a disguised Van Gogh. It’s also an easy target – even Gary Larson used Van Gogh’s ear in a Far Side panel: in an uncharacteristically unfunny comic, a large sculpture of an ear is shown on display outside a school, and the caption notes that it is the Van Gogh school of art.

Unlike Film and books, I don’t consider myself a painting connoisseur. So, I’m sorry I lack the training and metrics to properly describe the beauty of Van Gogh’s work. Regardless, it’s too bad. Had Van Gogh received the help and treatment he so sorely needed, he may have lived another 70 years and created another thousand works. Or maybe he would’ve only lived another week. We don’t know. We’ll never know. We’re all worse for it. But at least we can take solace in his work.

Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Well, today is the shortest day of the year, with over 15 hours of darkness.

Our holiday festivities began in earnest today. We actually tried to begin yesterday (Ha!NookKha began at sunset last night), but we didn’t have any chocolate gelt to use for our dreydel game, and Owen went to bed early with a headache.

No problem, though. I scored some chocolate coins at Cub Foods today and, since Hannukkah lasts eight days (one day for each spelling variant), we were able to spin the dreidel this evening.

We have a wooden dreidel Jennifer bought a couple of year’s ago, and Owen was given a dreidel yesterday while on a field trip to attend a production of The Magic Dreidel at the Minnesota Jewish Theatre. Though we lack a spinagogue…

Above: A Spinogogue

…we still managed to play a bad-ass game of dreidel. The competition was a tad intense, though Owen periodically diffused it by making food and money appear as the dreidel spun (his version of recreating the Chanuka miracles he saw in yesterday’s theatrical production). I won, which my wife says is typical.

Also today, Jennifer prepared a traditional solstice dinner, complete with everything except the boar’s head. She worked very hard to prepare the delicious pot pie of potatoes and veggies, and, in the process, discovered that our smoke alarms are working fine. Very tasty! We ate while listening to the strains of Free to Be You and Me, Louis Armstrong and, of course, Fiddler on the Roof.

During dinner, and for the remainder of the evening, we kept the lights dimmed and the candles lit. The holiday lights shown in through our Boba Flakes.

Above: two of our six Boba Flakes help us observe Life Day.

Later, the kids opened their Solstice gifts. Owen received two books and a puzzle. Isla received three small baby dolls and one book about kittens.

Then Owen and I watched a video about the Earth’s tilt and how the seasons are resultant from the planet’s axis.

Finally, Owen was allowed to stay up as long as he wanted on this longest night of the year. This backfired somewhat when I realized it also meant that I would have to stay up late, too, but my wife pointed out that we could go to bed at any time, and just give Owen instructions to be quiet. At about 10:45, we went to bed. Owen laid down in his bed and reminded me that he wanted to stay up until 1:00 AM. I told him he was welcome to stay up as long as he so desired, as long as he stayed quiet. I went to bed and fell asleep. I don’t know when he finally drifted off.

In other news: INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT SHUNNING.

In still other news: INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT QUESTING FOR TRUTH.

…As always, the comments sections are more interesting than the articles themselves.

Thursday, 22 December 2011

The festivities continued today.

My department at work had a holiday celebration. We engaged in a gift exchange. Here’s what I brought:

If it looks really well wrapped, what with a bow and everything, it’s because there was free gift wrapping at Barnes and Noble.

I had this 40% off coupon for B & N, so I figured I’d go there to buy the gift. We were told to spend about $15, and I figured that with my sweet coupon, I could get something with a $20 value (or so) and still end up spending only $15.

I ended up buying Casino in a Box, which had chips, cards, a dice table, and a little roulette wheel. It retailed for $19.95, but of course I got 20% off. I then went over to the free gift wrapping table where some girl was in a ‘girls’ adventure club’ or something like that, and she was trying to get enough money for the club’s trip to Peru. So while she wrapped my gift, I tossed some money into her jar and made a witty comment about the Equator, which was my way of letting her know that even though I’m an American, I’m not a stupid idiot who doesn’t know where Peru is located.

Anyhow, today we feasted at a nearby restaurant. The boss paid the bill, and in the gift exchange I netted a set of shot glasses. Not just any shot glasses, though, I got a set where one is a boot, one’s a martini glass, one is a teeny-weenie wine glass, and one is a traditional tumbler. Pretty sweet for an amateur drunk like me, really. On the wrapping paper, a sticker read “TO: An excellent, dedicated BSC worker” and “FROM: Your equal,” which I thought was pretty funny and it made me wish I had had the thoughtfulness to include a snarky label on my gift. The boss also brought gifts for everyone, though I haven’t peaked in the bag yet so I can’t really divulge the contents to you, loyal reader, just yet.

Tomorrow’s my final day at work this calendar year. What that means is either I’ll be real conscientious about maintaining this blog for the next ten days or so, or I’m gonna totally nix it in favor or sleeping, drinking, and answering about a millinillion math questions from my son.

Tuesday, 20 December 2011

My kids love books. Owen likes to look at picture pictures, and he loves to sit next to me and read chapter books. This year, he and I have read upwards of twenty books together, including Black Beauty, Stuart Little, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Socks, and the entire Henry Huggins series. Isla also enjoys paging through books, and she often brings them to us and asks us to read them to her.

Needless to say, books are a great gift idea for our kids, and I hope they are for your kids, too.

The question is: what do you buy for kids who already own hundreds of books?

Here are some ideas…

All My Friends are Dead, by Avery Monsen and Joey John. This is a great book to show kids the ultimate comedy of life. Of course, dinosaur books are great, but let’s be honest: they’re all dead. This book shows the kinship that dinosaurs share with the dodo, neglected house plants, and old people.

Have you ever read a Laura Numeroff book? We own her book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and it’s a fun book, but it is almost certainly the only book of Numeroff’s that we will ever own. The reason is, all of her other books are exactly the same. It seems she came up with an idea and, well, that’s the only idea she ever plans to come up with. I don’t understand this – if I ever was paid to create art in any form, I would at least try to reinvent myself at every turn. Anyway, I’m off topic here. The point is, if you’re sick of Numeroff’s one-trick pony show, get your kids:

Mary Roznick’s If You Give a Kid a Cookie, Will He Shut the Fuck Up? The answer, of course, is no. But the book will still be a treasure your little ones will enjoy over and over again.

Another option for those tech-savvy tikes who have known nothing but the 21st century is…

Ann Droyd’s (come on, that’s gotta be a psudonym) Goodnight iPad. The original book, Goodnight, Moon, is such a bizarre, non-poetic headtrip, that it’s practically begging to be parodied. I’m glad to see that Ms. Droyd has done it justice. Of course, there’s also Goodnight Bush, certainly funnier for adults, but too time-sensitive for kids like mine who will never know the pure bliss that was Bush’s last day in office.

And if your children are not quite as bright as mine (i.e., grasping the concept of fractals in utero), then you might need to help them along with…

Introductory Calculus, by Orni Inouye. This is, by the way, the first book in my blog post that I’m serious about purchasing for a child. I’ve never actually held this book in my hands, but from what I can tell, it looks about as close to “fun for all ages” as a book can be.

And while I’m on the books-I-seriously-think-kids-should-own kick, here’s a book I perused while standing in line at Barnes and Noble the other day…

The Star Trek Book of Opposites, by David Borgenicht. It features opposties such as “One” (showing Uhuru holding a single tribble) and “Many” (with Kirk bombarded by the fuzzy creatures). A must have if you want your child to have any chance at living long and prospering.

Penultimately, if your kids are old enough to have other kids over for play-dates or slumber parties (or whatever you call them these days), you may want to get them:

Christie McIlor’s The Three Martini Playdate.

Finally…

If you want more real book ideas for kids, check out my friend’s blog post HERE.

Saturday, 17 December 2011

My home improvement today concerned the room we use the least: the spare room in the basement.

We use the room for the cat’s litter box, and to store shelves, boxes, and chairs that we’re not using at the moment. The annoying thing about the room is that the light fixture is (was) a fluorescent light. Actually, the previous homeowner installed fluorescent lights in three areas in the basement.He even cut out the sheetrock and recessed them in between the ceiling joists for some reason. Maybe so that they looked uglier and gave off less light.

I already replaced the fixture right at the bottom of the stairs, but this one in the spare room was a little trickier. For some bizarre reason, the fixture was installed on one side of the room, and I wanted the new fixture to be more centrally located. This required drilling through a couple of joists, then running the wire down the length of room and fishing it through a hole I punched in the ceiling. Yeah, I really punched it. Owen got a real kick out of the mess I made. I didn’t mind the mess so much, because I knew I would just assign Owen the task of cleaning it.

It took about an hour or so, but everything’s good now. A regular incandescent light near the center of the room. Unlike the fluorescent light that was there, this light turns on instantly when the switch is flipped and gives off enough light to navigate without stepping on cat surprises.

Sunday, 18 December 2011

This morning, I was once again on the radio show Atheists Talk. As you may recall, I was on the show once before, but on that occasion, I was the guest. This time, I was the interviewer. How cool is that?

With Owen joining me for moral support, I interviewed author Glenn Kleier regarding his recent novel The Knowledge of Good and Evil. Glenn wasn’t in the studio; he was tied-in via telephone. That was a little weird. I didn’t really like having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there.

Regardless, the host, Brianne Bilyeu, said that I did a great job, and the sound technician said I was one of the best interviewers yet. He also said I have an ‘awesome voice for radio,’ which, actually, I have heard before. And now that I think about it, in all the times I’ve hosted Atheists Talk TV show, no one has ever said I have an awesome face for TV. Huh. Go figure.

If you didn’t tune in to the show when it was live, GO HERE and listen via RSS feed.

Monday, 19 December 2011

So, during the mass organizing and cleaning that took place this past weekend in preparation both of my mom’s visit and our impending holiday party, we found yet more stuff left behind by the previous homeowner.

Yesterday, in fact, I found one of those little packages of Kleenex that women keep i their purses. Their was one tissue left inside, and I used it to wipe up some of the dust under the stove. Also, behind the dryer, I found a box of Dryel dryer sheets and stain remover. This was especially unexpected, because I already found a box of Snuggle dryer sheets back there two months ago when I was installing a fan. So…I’m not exactly sure how I missed a box that’s about 8 inches long on each side. Weird.

The big find, however, was on Saturday. I found a large box of toddler clothes.

“How,” you ask, “could you guys possibly have not spotted a box filled with baby clothes for three months?”

Good question.

Here’s the answer:

You know how, above, I mentioned that we never spend any time in that downstairs room? Well, while I was down there installing the new fixture, I had to move some stuff out of my way. In the corner, there was this one very heavy box filled with floor tiles. The previous homeowner left it on purpose so that we could use the tiles to finish the floor down there, if we want. Well, underneath that box was an identical box. Naturally, I assumed it was also tiles. But when I went to lift it, it didn’t weigh 50 pounds. It only weighed about 2 pounds. Then I noticed writing on it:

Mary Kay’s summer clothes 1989 to 1990 18-24 months

Curiosity piqued further, I opened it up. Sure enough, ‘vintage’ baby girl clothes from the first Bush Administration years. Also included were three banana clips:

We decided to contact the former owner to see if he or his (now adult) daughter wanted the clothes, for sentimental reasons. Of course, he’s left plenty of other things here, but everything else was either obviously left on purpose (such as the fireplace tools) or probably had no value to him anyway (such as those dryer sheets). But these were different.

He wrote back today appreciating our thoughtfulness, but said we could do whatever we wanted with them.

Our current plan is to grow Isla into a human that fits into 18-24 month old clothes, and then put them on her. She’ll look totally, like, 80s. It’ll be rad.

Finally, a co-worker sent me this most excellent music video. Take a watch: