Culture
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Apostrophe Abuse
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but parenting doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Which makes it difficult sometimes. For example, a few years ago we went to a somewhat upscale French bistro in San Francisco for dinner. Maya wanted to wear jeans, and we told her that was inappropriate, that at nicer restaurants, people wore nicer clothes. Of course, we were the only diners that evening who were not wearing jeans. Thankfully, she learns more from us at this point than the world around her, and does pay attention to what she’s wearing and whether it’s appropriate to her surroundings. Another example of parenting not happening in a vacuum is grammar…
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Feelin’ Spendy?
(Mr. Spendy found here) I know that many people are feeling like they shouldn’t spend as much this year on Christmas/Hanukkah, because the economy is bad, people are worried about their jobs, etc. Certainly gifts will be primarily inexpensive/homemade in our household. With Ted not working, and the overall economy as it is, it just makes sense to not go out and buy a bunch of things that no one needs anyway. Besides, making something for someone you love is an investment of time, which is valuable as well, correct? I’ve heard, though, that some people who have not experienced any change in income, who can easily afford to spend…
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Paradox of Thrift
(image found here) Have you heard of the term, The Paradox of Thrift?  Simplified, it means that what is best for the individual may not be what is best for the collective. If you decide to tighten your budget during difficult times, and if you’re unwilling to spend money on unnecessary items, that’s good for your household budget. It’s smart to not let yourself spend more than you make, and it’s smart to save money and be careful with what you do spend. The overall economy, however, is based on growth, which means consumers buying more each year than they did the last year. If you spend exactly the same…
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Supply and Demand
If you drive, you’ve surely noticed that the price of gas has fallen lately. Here in the Bay Area, gas was about $4.70 or so at its highest, and now it’s closer to $3.25. (That graph there shows that the price of oil has fallen by 50%…so why hasn’t gas fallen as drastically?) (Cherry said she got gas the other day for $2.99, at Costco) The reason for falling oil prices is lower demand. It’s not that there’s suddenly any more oil out there, it’s just that with fears of a global recession, the demand has fallen. And, of course, people are conserving a lot more than they used to,…
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Kids These Days
Slide show from El Hogar de los Ninos website. One of Maya’s electives this year is a class called Teens Around the World, in which they learn a bit about geography, but mainly about the issues that face children and teenagers all around the world. Sort of like a class I took in High School, Global Studies, but also different. They study issues like immigration, hunger, child labor, and what they as children and teens can do to help. The teacher is on the board of directors for an organization called El Hogar de los Ninos, which works to help very poor children in Managua, Nicaragua. From their website: In…
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Tough Times
You know times are tough when Sunday morning doesn’t find me with my face in the funnies, but instead in the ‘newsy’ part of the paper, trying to suss out the facts between all of the opinions on the bailout. When instead of my hilarious “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” podcast, I first need to listen to “Planet Money” and see what the hell is going on. When I talk to Grandma and she starts railing about the stupid bailout, and how much money it’s going to cost. It’s not that I’m not usually political, but I’m not usually that involved in economics. There’s something about never having much money…
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HPV for Boys
We’ve all seen the commercials, right? The ones that say, “I want to be one less”, the girls who don’t want to become a statistic, to get cervical cancer. The HPV vaccine prevents a few varieties of the virus that causes cervical cancer, so while it isn’t a cure, it could be a step in the right direction. Well, Maya is 12 now, and not really acting interested in boys. We’ve been deciding whether to vaccinate her now or later. It’s not a matter of whether to vaccinate her or not…if we can protect her from the possibility of dying from cancer, wouldn’t we want to do so? And HPV…
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Back to School
The other night was ‘back to school night’ at Maya’s middle school. The evening started with speeches with the Principal, the Superintendent of the district, and the head of the PTA. They talked about how lucky we are to have such wonderful kids, how our district is in the top 95% of the state in test scores, and how parent involvement and dedicated parents help to make this the case. They talked about how raising healthy, happy children was about much more than these test scores, but still, yay test scores! Then we went and sat in each of the classrooms that our child attends for 10 minutes each, and…
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Mean People Suck
(graphic found here) My mom moved in the middle of her junior year of high school. She first lived in San Mateo, CA, and was best friends with Kate. Then she moved to Modesto, and was best friends with Jane, Robert, and my dad, Michael. Jane and Robert eventually went on to get married and have kids, and later divorced. Jane remarried and had children with her new husband, Tip. When we moved to Alaska back in ’69, my mom lost touch with both Jane and Kate, who never knew each other anyway. But on a visit to California several years ago, my mom, Kate, and Jane all got together,…
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I am my body
I wrote a post last week about yoga, and (un)relaxeddad made a comment that included this: “It never ceases to amaze me how much our bodies know about where we are and what we need (and how separate we hold ourselves from them except in situations of extremis). ” That comment really stuck with me, and it reminded me of my mom in a lot of ways. She was working pretty hard to try to come to terms with her body, to accept and love it, and to not judge herself because she was fat. She was working with a program called Overcoming Overeating, and I think she was doing…
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Immigration
(photo found here) Every so often, in the argument about illegal immigrants in America, and more specifically here in California, we hear that we need these workers to come to America, legally or illegally, because Americans aren’t willing to take these jobs. The jobs that immigrants take in America, mostly agricultural, are jobs that Americans aren’t willing to take. Well, I stopped awhile ago to think about that, the last time I heard about coal miners getting trapped underground for days, weeks, until they die…I thought, if people are willing to go into the bowels of the Earth to bring out fuel, at the risk of becoming crushed and losing…
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Why?
Why does there have to be a TV wherever you go? There’s a nice spa down the street from our house, where we sometimes go for a massage. They have a stupid TV in the changing room, set to a horrid show, talking about some guy who murdered his children. Not the news, either, some sensationalist channel. So you come out after having a wonderful massage, and you’re confronted with that crap. They also have a changing room for after you work out, and I can understand having a TV there, since some people like to watch the news in the morning, and they go to the gym in the…
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Dinner with the Atheists
The other night, for some reason, we got to talking about saying grace at the dinner table, and how it is often just saying thank you to God for the nourishment and the family, and leaving it at that. I was reminded of a post on my mom’s blog that I came across the other day. It’s a long post, and well worth reading, but the part I remembered was about hearing grace as a child, and how different it was from just, ‘thanks for the food’: At meals with my great-grandfather, he always said grace and always blessed at least the farmer and the cook. Sometimes he would list…
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“George Bailey, I’ll Love You ‘Till The Day I Die”
I was sad to read that Bob Anderson, the actor who played the young George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” died today, at the age of 75. I thought he did such a wonderful job of playing a young Jimmy Stewart, and made you care about the character from the get-go. Here’s an interesting tidbit about the filming of the scene where he gets his ear boxed by a very drunk and saddened Mr. Gower, the druggist, played by H.B. Warner: Warner took the role seriously and on the day of shooting had been drinking and was “pretty ripe,” Victoria Anderson said. The scene called for Warner’s character to…
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Go Big Brown!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoFquax2F-k[/youtube] This video is of Secretariat, who won the Belmont Stakes, and the Triple Crown, in 1973. Even if you’re not into horse racing, this is an amazing horse race to watch. Watch him make all of the other horses look like they’re standing still, as he goes on to win one of the most difficult flat races for 3 year olds in record time (still unbeaten), and make it look EASY. The Triple Crown is within reach of Big Brown, but just because he’s won the first two races does not mean he’ll win today’s Belmont. 11 horses have won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and then failed to…