Girl Detective

Entertainment Weekly recommends five new shows to watch this season: Reaper, Dirty Sexy Money, Back to You, Bionic Woman and Aliens in America.

I agree about Reaper. Critics who loved the Kevin Smith pilot have been griping that it’s the same thing over and over. Each week, though, a little bit more is revealed, and I think there’s a lot to explore. (Wild guess: Andi’s dad will be a demon of the week, either during sweeps or in the season finale.)

I also agree about Dirty Sexy Money. I was skeptical at first, and didn’t think they could handle the wild changes in tone required for the soapy dramedy. But the past few episodes have shown a remarkable ability to handle the wide range of situations. Peter Krause is amused and exasperated by the Darlings while still trying to stay grounded and find out who killed his dad. The episode where Jeremy and Tripp fight, and Brian’s illegitimate son owns up to the wife, was filled with really good, emotionally authentic dialogue. One problem I have is Samaire Armstrong. Does she have a swollen tongue, or a speech impediment? Why does she speak so strangely? (Wild guesses: Nick’s half sib is either Karen or Brian, not the twins as was hinted last week. Also, Nick’s dad isn’t dead; no body was found.)

I can’t speak about Back to You. I haven’t watched it. But I haven’t even been tempted. “Old-style sitcom” is not a winning recommendation, to me.

I gave Bionic Woman three weeks. I found it badly written with a disappointing actor in the lead.

I watched Aliens in America exactly twice. The pilot was good, but the next episode I watched didn’t make me laugh in the first laugh. I think it’s being pushed by critics more for its acceptance message than for its funniness as a comedy.

Instead of the last three, I like Life, as I’ve written before. There’s a strong lead actor, and an interesting mystery as backstory, of why he was set up for a multiple murder and served twelve years of a life sentence.

My husband, G. Grod, and I recently read the Philip Pullman “His Dark Materials” trilogy. G noted, which I repeated in my review, that Pullman repeatedly used religious language and tropes, though he claimed his book was a non-religious fantasy. He and others viewed it as an atheistic answer to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.

In “What the New Atheists Don’t See” at The City Journal, (link from Arts & Letters Daily) Theodore Dalrymple points out that many of the new books on atheism make a similar move. They deploy religious frames in their arguments against religion. Rather than being at the opposite end of a continuum, they are like the flip side of a coin: inextricably tied to what they seek to eschew.

Dalrymple argues quite reasonably for a middle ground that sounds more like ethics than religion, and more like agnosticism than atheism.

I am reminded of one of Michael Pollan’s insights about eating from The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Most people are wilfully ignorant of the industrial practices of meat. If people learn what meat is and how comes to out table, one reasonable but extreme response is to go vegetarian. Pollan, though, advocates a middle ground of learning and choosing sustainably raised flora and fauna.

The middle ground. How interesting that Pollan and Dalrymple must remind us of choices of balance, because the extremes have become so widely practiced.

While many sources state that ensure and insure can be used interchangeably, I disagree. I concur with the Chicago Manual of Style, (quoted at JSU):

assure/ensure/insure – “Ensure is the general term meaning to make sure that something will (or won’t) happen. In best usage, insure is reserved for underwriting financial risk. So we ensure that we can get time off for a vacation, and insure our car against an accident on the trip. We ensure events and insure things. But we assure people that their concerns are being addressed.” (Chicago, 213)

In two recent books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Three Cups of Tea, the authors and editors have used “insure” to mean “make certain will happen.” I think ensure better captures this meaning:

I assure you, gentle reader, I wish publishers would ensure the accuracy of their text by consulting the Chicago Manual of Style, since insuring something implies that a policy has been paid for.

#49 in my 2007 book challenge was Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The blessing of the omnivore is that she can eat a great many things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of these things are safe to eat, she’s pretty much on her own.

Pollan’s thoughtful, thorough, and provoking book is one of the best I’ve read all year. In fluid prose that is neither needlessly academically esoteric, or dumbed down for the masses, Pollan examines four food systems, the meals they produce, and their hidden costs and suffering. The four are agricultural industrial, organic industrial, organic sustainable, and hunted/gathered. In the end, it’s not hard to determine where Pollan’s bias lies after all his research and experience. What makes this book so compelling, though, is that he takes effort and time to explore and explain all the alternative views. The cruelty and problems of industrial farming are clearly delineated, but Pollan’s book situates them in time and place to make them understandable, though nonetheless disturbing.

I was surprised and concerned to learn how prevalent corn byproducts are in the North American diet. Another point I especially liked was that eaters must either be ignorant of where their food comes from and how it’s processed, or choose from smaller, more challenging method of eating, like vegetarianism, or a focus on locally farmed and sourced organic food.

To visit a modern Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines–”production units”–incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else. Egg operations are the worst,

Pollan quotes Levi-Strauss about the ideal that food should be both good to think and good to eat. According to Pollan, this means that the eater knows how and where her food is produced, and feels good about. There’s another interpretation of the Levi-Strauss, phrase, though, that lends itself less well to Pollan’s text. As Pollan does, though, I find it a useful phrase that will help to guide my food choices. I’m no longer willfully ignorant of the provenance of much of my food. Already I do most of my family’s shopping at our local grocery cooperative. But after the book, I’ve resolved to seek out even more local, organic food, eschew products with high-fructose corn syrup, and cut back on the non-local, non-seasonal organic items that have hidden costs (e.g., petroleum used in transportation) in addition to their high prices.

This book has changed the way I think about food, and will change the way I shop and eat.

I broke down this year and scheduled a sitting for 4yo Drake and 21mo Guppy with a friend who’s a photographer. I can probably count on one hand the photos we’ve managed to take of both of them looking simultaneously happy. Much more typical is one of them in the foreground running away, only one or neither looking at the camera, or one of them hollering in response to some abuse visited upon him by the other one.

We had a very tense morning as I tried to get the boys dressed. Drake’s T-shirt would not stay tucked in. His hair needed lots of spritzing and combing to settle down. The photographer, C, took the boys outside, where they had a good time running around, often near one another. After about an hour, we returned inside, where I hoped to get some shots of them in front of our built-in buffet and stained-glass window. They were having none of it. They demanded snack. After a copious administration of goldfish, they were not sated. They wanted lunch. I tried to placate them by perching them on top of the furniture. Drake took this as carte blanche to climb to the ceiling. Guppy just cried; he’d spotted the post-Halloween candy dish of dark chocolate. Nothing could sway him from his misery. Eventually I just let them have chocolate, which wrung a few sequential grins from them. Naturally, during all of this I was more and more tense as it went less and less well, so I’m sure that didn’t help.

In the end, though, I feel both affirmed, and hopeful. Affirmed that it’s not just me who has trouble capturing the cuteness of my boys at the same time. And hopeful that with all the photos she took, we have a greater chance than ever before of dual cuteness.

Further, I’ve learned some lessons if there’s a next time. One, feed them up before hand. Two, don’t spend an hour outside. Three, don’t put a size 5 T under a size 4 button down and expect a 4yo to leave it tucked in. And finally, hide the chocolate, no matter what time of year it is.

Last night was one of those nights that parents of older children never told me about. It shouldn’t have been so surprising. My naive expectations of parenthood were that it would be tough at the beginning, and gradually get easier. So with perseverance and good intentions, I expected to surmount the initial difficulties, and coast from there. As I said, I was naive. Instead, raising two small children has proved to be a microcosm of life, with the difficulty upped at least two levels. Sometimes things are easy and joyful, sometimes they are difficult and challenging, even torturous, like last night.

21mo Guppy woke crying sometime after midnight, less than two hours after my husband G. Grod and I had gone to sleep. I went into comfort him and offer him water. Each time he settled down, I’d stumble back to bed, then ten to fifteen minutes later he’d cry again. G. and I took turns. I think it was on the third round that I brought in the Tylenol. This normally clears up nighttime difficulties pretty quickly. Alas, Guppy did not go back to sleep till long after two, and after several long comfort sessions.

G. and I stumbled around this morning, haunted from our hours of interrupted and jangled sleep. Another reminder that parenthood is like life–it goes in cycles. Everything passes, both good and bad. It’s a linear progression only in age.

I put off buying Halloween candy till today. Bad decision. Though the aisles of Target were stocked, the good candy was gone. There were no bags of Take 5, not even combination bags that included it. There were no more Hershey’s Special Dark bags or mixes. There were no dark-chocolate M & Ms. It was terribly hard to decide. I didn’t want to do those cheapie grab bags that have high ratio of crappy candy. I decided I wanted to avoid peanuts and peanut butter (in revenge for the Take 5, but also because so many kids have peanut issues these days). And though I really wanted to avoid milk chocolate, because I don’t believe in it, in the end I decided on M & M minis, because they’re cute and the packets are small. Next year I’m shopping early, for the good candy.

#73 in my 2007 movie challenge was Michael Clayton. In spite of hype, the fall films this year have received mostly mixed reviews. MC is one of the few I strongly wanted to see, and I wasn’t disappointed. Clooney plays the title character, and is believable as a tired, disappointed, struggling man. Tom Wilkinson tears up the screen as his manic-depressive colleague, though I think Tilda Swinton may steal the show as a falling-apart corporate lawyer. Though things are a bit confusing at the start, the movie ably fills in the details as it goes, and the end pulls it all together. The story, about subterfuge by a huge agri-corporation, has been done many times before. See Erin Brockovich and The Constant Gardener for two strong examples. But the solidity of the plot is cemented with able direction, and elevated by the strong performances of the entire cast, not just the leads. I thought this film was both enjoyable to see, and good to think about.

Some friends were recently discussing their bribe of choice–Jelly Bellies–now that their 3yo sons had started learning to use the toilet. That spurred me to offer 4yo Drake a treat if he’d stop doing something that was causing me distress. (Behavior not included, as it might someday cause embarrassment.) I was very careful. I said that if he did the thing I wanted (phrased positively rather than as “not X”) then I’d give him a small piece of chocolate (dark, which has antioxidants and iron) after he’d eaten healthy foods for breakfast.

My husband G. Grod took issue with me offering him candy for breakfast. But to Drake’s credit, the positive behavior has continued. Also, I don’t remind him of the reward in the morning. If he asks for it, I give it to him; if he doesn’t, I don’t. Is it manipulation, or savvy parenting? Bribing my child with candy to do what I want sounds terrible. Yet offering him a small reward to do a good thing and thus reinforce a positive behavior, does not. I think they’re different aspects of the same thing, and it’s how I handle it that can make it good or bad.

Greg Mortenson is fighting a personal war on terror that has an impact on all of us, and his weapon is not guns or bombs, but schools. What could be a better story than that?

–Parade editor-in-chief Lee Kravitz

#48 in my 2007 book challenge was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was not excited when a friend picked this for one of my book groups. It sounded dull and a bit sappy. Once I started to read, though, my grinch-y heart melted, and the book completely won me over. Mortenson’s story is extraordinary, and it shines through all of Relin’s overwritten prose and Penguin’s sloppy spelling and typography mistakes.

After a failed attempt to climb K2, Mortenson got lost in Pakistan, and wound up in the village of Korphe. When he learned that the children were schooling themselves outdoors in the harsh climate, he promised he’d build them a school. Not only did he keep his promise, but he discovered a calling that led him to build schools throughout Pakistan, and into war-torn Afghanistan. By educating children, particularly girls, he continues to build a legacy of peace and understanding that defies the roots of terrorism. The details of Mortenson’s adventures are astonishing, and his story provides interesting insight into America’s conflict in the east, and with the Taliban and Al-Quaeda.

Read this book. Buy it, or request it at your library. Choose it for your book group. It’s a rich, provocative narrative; the effects linger after the last page.

If you buy the book at their site, 7% goes to girls’ scholarship in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On my recent trip to NYC with friends from high school, the moms were talking about Santa Claus and their kids, and their experiences. One friend asked if I was going to encourage my kids to believe in Santa. I hadn’t thought about it much. At 3yo last Christmas, Drake didn’t really “get” it. This year, though, he would.

I’m torn. I remember loving the idea of Santa as a kid, and being excited about Christmas night. I also remember getting suspicious because my dad had clearly filled out all the “from Santa” tags. And it was a big bummer for me to learn the truth by reading an article in my mom’s Women’s Day about whether or not, and how, to tell kids about Santa and the Tooth Fairy.

My first response to my friend was that I would do Santa. But as they other moms talked, it became clear that the Santa story was a slippery slope that required fib upon fib to maintain. It brought to mind a bumper sticker I notice every time I drive to the grocery, which is usually twice a week: “Don’t Lie to Kids.” Right now, I think I’m in the “if he doesn’t ask, I’m not going to say.” But I’m definitely leaning now to talking about Santa as a story, not a reality. Perhaps only because I’m not a talented liar.

A month into the new season, and here’s how things stand in our house:

Mondays: How I Met Your Mother and Heroes
Tuesdays: Bones, House and Reaper
Wednesdays: Life, and Dirty Sexy Money
Thursdays: 30 Rock and The Office

The 30-minute comedies aren’t consistently funny. The Office especially suffered from the hour-long gimmick. But all three have enough gems to make me laugh out loud several times, and that’s good enough for me.

There’s lots of non-love for the new season of Heroes. My trick is to fast forward through the story lines that irritate or bore me–Maya for the first few eps, then New Orleans for the last few. I am bothered by the fake Irish and New Orleans accents. Parkman is more of a Power Tool than ever. Wait, why am I watching, again? Oh, that’s right. I like HRG and Claire, I hope to see her new boyfriend turn out to be evil, Kristen Bell is the new naughty hot girl tracker for the company, and…well, we’ll see.

I can’t believe I was ready to drop Bones. It’s like the studio gave the writers unlimited Red Bull or something. The characters and the dialogue are often hilarious. I’m enjoying the twist of House’s new staff, and the reality-show vibe of it.

Reaper was irking me after a strong pilot by merely doing the same thing over and over. But a few reveals in the last two episodes–Sam getting his contract from the devil, and Sam’s dad behaving badly–bode well for the future plots and character development, as noted by the Onion AV Club.

Last night’s Life had some terrible lines and a lame mystery (why does this happen right after a recommend a show?), but the backstory of his history was good. I haven’t watched DS$ yet, so more on that later.

I’m thankful they’re done. Maureen Ryan of The Watcher is, too, and she captures why quite well.

We’re a few weeks into the fall 2007 television schedule. On Wednesdays, I’ve already dropped Bionic Woman; the writing was terrible and uneven, and the lead was miscast. Instead I’m watching Dirty Sexy Money and Life, the latter of which is perhaps my favorite new show of the season.

Charlie Crews (played by English actor Damian Lewis) was wrongly imprisoned for twelve years, during which time he got the crap beaten out of him and read a book on Zen. Exonerated by DNA evidence, he emerged richer, odder, and with an interesting desire to have his old police job back.

Crews wobbles between his Zen leanings and his understandable desires for revenge and to know what really happened. He’s a strong main character with a good supporting cast. This is reminiscent of House and Monk. I’m worried that it’s scheduled against the much more lauded DS$, yet it’s being re-run on USA, so check it out whenever you can; it’s worth it.

#47 in my 2007 book challenge was Elizabeth Swados’s My Depression: A Picture Book. With simple black line drawings and minimal texts, Swados sketches out her history of depression and anxiety, as well as her “little cloud” that grew into a “black hole”. She bravely admits how badly she behaves when she’s depressed, both towards herself and others. She also has amusing lists, such as things people have told her to try to get out of the depression on her own. In the end, though, a combination of medicine and therapy are what worked for her, and her story is of hope and self-acceptance. Her illustrations, reminiscent of Shel Silverstein’s, are deliberately messy, conveying the frazzled ugliness of depression, as well as the silly joy in well-being. I recommend this book for those who have gone through a depression, who are in a depression, or who have known someone who’s been depressed. That should pretty much cover us all, I think.

#46 in my 2007 book challenge was The Amber Spyglass, the final book of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The third book felt a bit bloated compared to the first two, and the action slowed in places. But Pullman’s skill at multiple-world building continued as a strength, and the details, of the land of the dead, especially, were very satisfying. The polar bears are back, as are the fascinating daemons, but they’re both given short shrift compared to angels and heaven. The adults switch allegiances so often I lost track–who’s good and who’s bad, now?

Pullman’s narrative became much more anti-religion, as he expounded on in an interview with Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair when TAS was published. Interestingly, though, the absence of religion created voids that Pullman filled in the narrative with very similar things. Religion was a giant mistake, and there was no creator. But Dust was sentient, and had “gifted” humanity with consciousness, so it was a common, creative, animating spirit. The character of Will symbolizes free will, yet so much of the story is driven by fate, related to Lyra by the alethiometer, the witches from prophecies, and Mary Malone by the I Ching. I think Pullman worked hard to have an atheistic fantasy, but the end result was an agnostic one, which is a much richer, more complex result, I thought.

I liked the series a lot; I didn’t love it. Lyra never felt fully realized to me, though Will did. Some aspects of Dust were overexplained, while others were given less time. For example, why did the Dust stop rushing out of the world only because of humans–why hadn’t it done that before with the mulefa? But I was engaged with it from beginning to end, I cared about the characters, though some of them didn’t ring completely true with me, and the plot drew me through. It was fun, it was mostly well-written, and it had some big ideas that are interesting to discuss. It was well worth my time, even if I didn’t connect so completely as to love it.

Is it just me, or?

Perma-wash: Items to be laundered that sit perpetually in the bottom of the laundry basket, since newer items pile so high on top. AKA LIFO (Last In, First Out) laundry management.

Perma-snot: The dark, hard crust that forms under a child’s nose during winter cold season. Unsightly, but not a breathing hindrance. Attempts at removal will be met with screams of anguish, flailing limbs, accusing glares, and dramatic prostrations.

Pre-school started last month. 4yo Drake got a fever, sleep troubles, and a bad cough week before last. 20mo Guppy had a fever followed by a lingering case of croup.

Virus season in Minnesota lasts from October to April. I think we’re in for a long, snotty winter.

I’m sure I can’t come up with a title about handbags that hasn’t been done before, and to death. I admit, though, I love bags. I just took several to the charity shop yesterday in order to make space for the two new ones I have for fall, one black, one brown. On my recent jaunt to NYC, my friend LA needed a new bag, so we shopped on Canal St. I advised her to buy a dark-olive suede one for fall, because the olive would be more interesting than black and brown, yet still go with almost everything. She rocked that bag for the rest of the weekend.

This piece on the handbag from The Smart Set (link from Arts & Letters Daily) didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, but it was still fun to read. My current bag strategy is to get an idea from the fashion mags of what’s in, find a reasonable facsimile at Target on the clearance rack, use it for the season, then give it away. I did it this summer, and will try to stick to it this fall/winter, too.

Oh, I do rather miss the childish phrase, “No, duh!” I read a few things recently that brought it to mind.

1. Children need sleep.
2. Boy children shorten their mothers lives. (What? Only 34 weeks? I swear it feels like more than that already.) (Links from Arts and Letters Daily)

And, finally, one not-so-obvious thing that wasn’t at all surprising. I felt chagrined that I hadn’t intuited it between the lines:

3. Dumbledore was gay.

I am enchanted at how J.K. Rowling has the entire complicated backstory of her universe rattling around in her head. She could probably just do Q & A events for the rest of her life.