Gift Recommendation: Jazz Department

I have a confession: If jazz music were men, I would be married to Dave Brubeck's album Time Out. That sounds really weird, doesn't it? Here's my thinking. I've listened to a substantial amount of jazz, working at a radio station, going to many shows featuring for-real Chicago jazz musicians when I lived there. I worked at a jazz record store for a while in college. The whole time, I only sort of liked it. Mainly, I *appreciated* it. Organ jazz was really the only stuff that caught my attention: Jimmy McGriff, Jimmy Smith, "Groove" Holmes. I would put their albums on when I worked at the record store. Never bought the records, though. 

Time Out, on the other hand, I fell in love with. I still listen to that album on repeat on a Sunday morning and just love it. I do not listen to any other jazz album. I have an Ornette Coleman album on my iPod, but I rarely listen to it. If you do not own this album, buy it now, and then buy a copy for the person you love.

In the comments, tell me the one album you adore in a genre you otherwise do not care about. Thank you!

From the Drafts Folder: "2011 New Year's Resolutions" January 2011

It's that time of the year again. But first let's revisit the 2010 resolutions:

1. Run the Oakland half-marathon March 28, 2010. Done. Ran it in 2:07. Running it again this year and would LOVE for any of my readers to join me. In fact, I ran 543 miles in 2010, and I'm going to try to beat that this year. I burned over 50,000 calories doing it, and I shudder to think how much weight I would have gained if I hadn't been running.

2. Read one new book a month. I don't think I accomplished this, largely because inherent in the resolution is an understanding that I would finish the books I started, and I left a lot of dead soldiers on the bedside table.

3. One "date" each month with each guy in this house. No idea. I probably accomplished this but didn't keep accurate data, so who knows. Some "dates" definitely entailed someone cleaning the kitchen while someone else played Legos alone in his room, and no, I don't mean my husband doing either one.

4. 100% of LMP employees in Unit Based Teams, 75% of UBTs are high-performing teams by the end of 2010. We hit 90% of LMP employees in UBTs. About 35% of our teams were deemed "high performing" using our regional assessment tool, but then a new assessment tool was adopted nationally and I don't know how are teams are doing. I feel good about all of this, even if you don't know what it means.

5. Work "slap in the face" into my vernacular. Forgot to do this. Which is such a slap in the face to the phrase "slap in the face" that I feel I really accomplished something by not using it.

Okay, 2011.

A Facebook Idea, Implemented

A few months ago, I saw a post on Facebook for these things called Blessings Bags (posted by a woman I went to high school with who is very involved now with her church). The bags were Ziploc gallon bags with hotel shampoos and soaps and a granola bar and a few other items, and they were meant to be given to panhandlers. Her church assembled them from donations. I've heard of this being done by Girl Scout troops, too.

We have a lot of panhandlers in Oakland, and there has been a huge increase since the Occupy Movement. They are typically punk white dudes who have decent bikes and a dog and they are reading paperback books while they hold up an "Anything Helps" sign. They used to annoy me but now I just figure they have deeper issues than I understand, and I accept their existence in the world. My kids, on the other hand, are always perturbed that I will not give money to panhandlers, and are not persuaded by my explanation that we donate to the county food bank and these folks can get stuff there.

After Thanksgiving, I took the kids to Target and told them to pick out some things in the Travel Size section that they thought a homeless person might need to feel cleaner and happier. They picked out toothbrushes and paste, handi-wipes, chapstick, sunscreen, moisturizer, and I picked out deoderant and non-alcoholic mouthwash. I also grabbed a package of tampons to make a woman's supply kit.

We assembled them that afternoon, but had not handed any out. All week, we have been driving past a guy near their school who has the sign I described above, and the kids have been asking to help him. The kits were in the way-back! This morning I remembered to bring them up front, and when we saw the guy, I rolled down my window. He saw me and reached over to grab the goodie bag. He yelled, "Thanks!" in a really happy-surprised way. I could not see him (I had a green light and needed to keep driving) but they kids went nuts, "Mom! He was happy! He said thanks!" They were clapping and laughing. I felt a bit giddy too. We all agreed that it felt really good to give something nice to someone.*

*A concept I have been trying to impart for 10 years without success.

Anyway, I wanted to share it, to thank Del Kramer, and hopefully to give you an idea for who to get your kids thinking about little acts of kindness and giving. I think they are now probably going to want to drive around giving out "survival bags" as they now call them. 

From the Drafts Folder: "This Almost Certainly Will Not Interest You", March 7, 2011

The public sector unions' protest in Wisconsin has, not surprisingly, given me a lot to think about. I've been working with unions since 1997, and most of those years have been depressing. Not because unions weren't making strong economic or political gains for their members, but because their market share was shriveling. Today, only 6.9% of the private sector is unionized. The public sector helps boost the unionized market density to around 13%, but the power of unions is, at this point, nostalgic and political. The Wisconsin battles are unusual in that they are focussed on the rights of unions (collective bargaining, dues collection) as opposed to individual rights or political interests. In fact, the unions in Wisconsin have largely acceded to the Republican budget cuts; they firmly recognize that the governor is trying to deal the fatal blow. If Walker can win in Wisconsin, the Republicans can win anywhere.

But what if the unions win? What then? They aren't about to regain market share at this point. At its height, the American labor movement included more than 30% of the workforce; that height is unimaginable today. We've lost those jobs completely. Good-bye, manufacturing sector. And even if they do win in WI, they are saddled with a whole set of responsibilities which inhibit their ability to deal with industrial issues in the represented workforce.

Let me back up and talk a little about the different components of what a union offers its members. Via their union, members get (1) political power, via campaign contributions, access to politicians and voter turnout machines that are top notch; (2) legal service, via the grievance and arbitration process. Individual workers who are disciplined and groups of workers deprived of contractual rights have representation for their issues. This is called representational services. Then there's (3) industrial service, where unions advocate for industrial services and standards. This springs in some part from a "craft" or "trade" mentality, where the labor market understands that union labor is superior, because of its training and safety standards. The member gets superior training and the union advocates for those individuals to get the work over non-union employees. Unions also offer (4) collective bargaining/negotiations service, wherein the union bargains for higher wages and benefits than are available elsewhere.

Each of these services is emphasized differently within each union, and each is demonized by the enemies of unions. In turn, the union may be viewed as "the machine", the reason that the jerk comes back to work, the reason people are excluded from certain jobs and budget-busters. I'm not really going to deal with those assumptions. I just raised those frameworks to ask, "If the unions in Wisconsin win, what do they offer their members, AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC?"

I have two ideas. In Ohio, public sector bargaining rights have been rolled back to a point where the unions can only negotiate about wages and benefits. However, what if the opposite were true, and unions had to negotiate about everything? Literally, what if the unions were required to bargain about all the problems faced by their employers? This is antithetical to most ideas about bargaining, but I think that *not* asking unions to think constructively about the future is one of the reasons that they have no incentive to bargain over anything but their share of the pie.

Second, I do think that the basic structure of unions is flawed in a way that inhibits their ability to effectively incorporate all four of their service orientations. Presently, most unions assign staff based on the employer, and the union representative is expected to be political organizer, legal advocate, journey level trainer and contract negotiator. This is absurd. No one can do all of these. In addition to the problem of having the right skills mix, individual staff get overly involved in a particular workplace, and become myopic. The problems of those employees become all that the union representative, and their creativity and objectivity fall into disuse.

I think that a union should staff in the following way. There should be advocates handling grievances; political organizers doing issues organizing and voter turnout; career counselors and trainers for industrial skill development; and trained negotiators. I think that there should also be healthcare and retirement benefit counselors who understand union health and retirement plans and can help workers navigate those, as well as advise negotiators about issues that need to be tackled. These folks would work as a team, providing high quality services from their area of expertise.

Why? Unions need to make the case that their battle is worth winning.

From the Drafts Folder: "Random Thoughts", June 4, 2010

I don't have the mental wherewithal to blog about anything tonight. I am hungry. I made mango sorbet but I haven't even tried it, so maybe I'll go do that. I trie

From the Drafts Folder: "Read This", October 29, 2009

Article about my uncle. Read it.



December 10, 2013 Comment: This post had a dead link on it, which is too bad, because it linked to a story about my uncle and his company Whirlwind USA, an audio interface and musicians' electrical equipment company. Whirlwind is located in Rochester, New York, which was recently "hailed" as the fifth poorest city in the country. Despite its hard times, or maybe because of it, my uncle Mike has kept the company there, including his manufacturing plant. Most of his employees have been with him since around the time I was born. In 2008, he was taking an economic hit on par with the rest of the country. But instead of closing his doors, he called his whole staff together and brainstormed ways to keep open. They decided to bring back a series of lower price guitar pedals that had been the staple of their catalog when they opened and keep them inexpensive and sell them as "classic". Mike got a federal stimulus grant that helped underwrite his medical insurance costs so he would not have to eliminate benefits. The article was written in 2009, and it hailed Whirlwind for sticking it out through the recession, saving jobs and reintroducing a lower cost but well-regarded piece of musician's equipment, in partnership with the government.

Anyway, dead link. But now you know if you did not already. That is your feel-good post-Recession story of the day.

Update on the Drafts Folder Advent-ukkah Event

Okay, I had promised you guys that I would post all of the drafts in my drafts folder, and so far, I have been working in order from the oldest to the newest. But I have a confession to make. I just skipped 3 posts which were less than one sentence in length and clearly were the result of some technical error, because they cut off mid-sentence. Two of them were the same. Those were just pointing out that Tom Frank had a column with the Washington Post. Since he is no longer a columnist with them, it did not seem like pertinent information. The other one was congratulating Amy Poehler on the birth of her first child, as an excuse to direct readers to her amazing rap performance when Sarah Palin was a guest on Saturday Night Live.

So now that you have that vital information in hand, I am going to go-ahead and delete them from the drafts folder.

Otherwise, how's it going out there? Are you guys still having fun with this? Wish I would just stop it? Hope that I am drafting more as we speak? Comments please!

From the Drafts Folder: "More Kwips" December 2008

According to L, the reasons that little boys should get a new toy every day are:

1. It's healthy for the boy
2. It's good exercise for the mommy to go get the toy

From the Drafts Folder: "Totally Not Your Fault, Steve" May 29, 2008

Sorry to step back into the Skill Crane mystery, but I think I was probably engaging in a common practice of mine at the time (when I burst into tears about the Skill Crane and the not-dead high school boy), which was pretextual crying. Pretty much no one wanted to listen to me cry about my actual problem (a not-very-good boyfriend*) so I think I might have sometimes cried for other alleged reasons, just to get someone to listen to me cry, even if I couldn't divulge the topic. I am only guessing here, since the Skill Crane commenter was one of only two people** in the world who would actually listen to me cry about that person without wanting secretly to have me put away. I married the other person who listened to all that blubbering. For all I know, both RadioBoy and Mr. Scobie both thought I was certifiable at the time, but are decent blokes, and look, they now read my blog. So it all turned out okay for everyone in the end.

*Not good as a boyfriend, that is. He's a decent human being, in his own way. However, several friends once offered me money to "dump the chump", about 3 years before we actually stayed broken up for good.


** More than two people listened to that crap, by the way. But most of my other friends let it be known pretty clearly that I was insane. (Am insane?)

Five other things to do before you are 18

I think the reason that I abandoned that blog post back in 2008 is because I could not think of five other things that must be done by the time you are 18. It sounds like a challenge an 18 year old would come up with, not knowing that basically everything is better if you do it after you are 18. The only exception that I can think of, and this is not mandatory:

2. Commit any crimes for which you would not be charged as an adult and hope that your juvenile record is sufficiently sealed.

Okay, three more to go.

3. Have the good fortune to be born into a reasonably well-off family.

This is a must do, so that you can do all the other things you should do before you are 18, like leave your town, your state or the country for non-immigration reasons, ski, visit a nice beach, go to Disneyland/world.

4. Get dumped. In fact, I think it's a good idea to get your heart broken a few times early on so you can get the hang of it.

5. cr7hjkl;

That last one was what my 7 year old typed when I asked him what he wanted to do before he was 18. Actually, he said, "I want to play Minecraft! Get off the computer!" So there you are. Youth is wasted on the young.

From the Drafts Folder: "Tryna Be Back" February 24, 2008

TK tagged me, so that seems like a good way to get back on the stick around here.TK set the bar pretty high with some really good ideas, so I won't promise any wisdom here I can't deliver. First, the rules:

1. Post these rules before presenting your list.
2. List 6 actions or achievements you think every person should accomplish before turning 18.
3. There are no conditions on what can be included on the list.
4. At the end of your blog, choose 6 people to get tagged and list their names.
5. People who are tagged write their own blog entry with their 6 suggestions.
6. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged.

1. Get kicked out of something, but not school - I was passively excluded from Girl Scouts because I wouldn't wear a uniform to my Junior Flying Up ceremony

From the Drafts Folder: "Another One Bites the Dust" September 24, 2007

Joining the ranks of Tammy Faye and Leona, Marcel Marceau passed away this weekend. My reaction?

Liam also was saddened by the news:

Commentary on Today's From the Drafts Folder

Yup, that's it, folks.

It's possible that I was going to report that Jed had a piece or two in the Whitney Biennial. But who knows? Why? Because my cousins and their spouses are so wildly awesome and interesting that it could have been like ten other interesting things that they were doing. Like what?

In addition to making an adorbs baby in 2012, my cousin Kate had a show at the Hammer Museum. I was going to post some other links about her, but frankly, you should just do the Google on Kate Costello and see her beautiful stuff for yourself.

Jed was the co-producer of the adorable baby, and had a show at the deCordova and lots of other places. Google Jedediah Caesar or check out his exhibit at the Saatchi Gallery.

Meanwhile, Kate's sister Zoe and her husband Juniper are tearing up Kickstarter with a campaign for their next performance work, a dance and visual art installation.

And those are just a couple of my awesome cousins.

From the Drafts Folder: "Other Cousins in the News", September 24, 2007

Jed, aka Uncle Jeddy, (cousin by marriage)

Intro to From the Draft Folder

The preceding blog post is the first in a 15-part series of blog posts in the month of December that I am posting as a quasi-Advent gift to my readers. To make it most Advent-ish, I will also post new content - at least nine new posts - so that it reaches the requisite number of days for Advent.

A friend recently noted that Advent has become the WASP Hanukkah, with grandparents using it as reason to give little gifts all month long, rather than just the liturgical calendar of the three weeks leading up to Christmas. He's right; Dooley noted. That said, I am going to post these drafts anyway, unedited. The first one probably does not need editing. However, you will see later in the month why some of these never saw the light of day. Happy Ad-Hanuk-vent!

From the Draft Folder: "Lame Thoughts" Sept 26, 2006

Today I was driving home from Broccoli Montessori and I saw a bumper sticker that said, "My two favorite teams are Michigan and whoever's playing against Ohio State" andit occurred to me that, to be an anti-fan, i.e. someone who hates "your" team's rival, you actually have to want the team you hate to do moderately well. Which makes you a fan of the team you hate, if you think about it. A rivalry would die if your rival were never any good. Okay, maybe in the first year of their suckdom, you'd be all schadenfreude, and then the next year you'd be like, "Ron Zuck is such an idiot." But in year three, would you give a shit* anymore? You wouldn't paint your face to watch the other team get trounced, reliably, by 11 hits or 5 touchdowns, would you?

I've been thinking a lot about sports lately because my almost-three-year-old is now infected by the football bug, or as he says in his wierd St. Louis accent, "fitbull". He loves it. The only only good thing about it is that in a few years, I can have every Sunday afternoon to myself for a few months at a time.

Finally, and this is totally unrelated, you NEED to watch The Wire, if you are not already doing so. The first two seasons are on DVD, and the third is coming soon. The fourth season is three eps in, and you can watch the first three episodes back to back on Friday night at 8 on HBO. I might watch them again just because I am addicted to this show. I may remind you to watch it every day this week, or even until all my readers cry UNCLE and say, yes, they've watched it.

And another finally: I have been occasionally updating Bay Area Hiking Mamas, for all of you who are interested, but then stopped bothering checking.

*Apologies to my mother-in-law, who thinks I swear too much on my blog, and probably in my life.

My, How Time Flies

I just checked my blog, possibly looking to see if anyone has posted anything lately, and was surprised to see that my post acknowledging the great epistolarian Nelson Marans was written on October 15. I literally cannot believe that seven weeks have passed so quickly when it feels, some days, like time just crawls forward. Some days, I am in meetings so boring that I *wish* I could discover a Marans letter. It would truly be the high point of my day.

In the time since I last posted, I have been busy though. I have concocted a legitimate business proposal for which I am courting a serious investor (serious investor = my husband). I have written a rough draft of my first novel. I have maintained a sour dough starter per my New Year's resolution for 337 days, so it seems reasonable that it will last the entire year. I'm feelin' good. I'm at the top of my game.

You want to hear about the novel? Of course you do. Let me first say that I did it under the auspices of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, an annual event where participants are expected to write 50,000 words in order to "win" the distinction of having written a novel. It's all based on an honor system, and there are no prizes. Some people, let's call them "hipsters", are skeptical of this method of creating a novel. Here are their arguments: (1) it's not "art" to do it racing against a clock; (2) there are a LOT of fan fiction scifi* jugbu** types involved (3) it's corny to participate in any activity that involves other people. At least, I think those are the arguments. Anyway, I have decided I will weigh their arguments more seriously once they provide me with 50,000 words of a rough draft of a novel.

I am actually not going to say a lot about my novel. It's "realistic fiction". (I don't know what is up with me and quotation marks today). It is not fan fiction or science fiction.  I titled it "Upstate" until I found out that there is another novel with that name, which is a so-called "urban romance" (OHMyGOD stop me from putting quotes around another thing!). My novel is nowhere near as interesting as the story about Antonio and the letters he writes his girl from prison. But whatever, mine is an okay story. You cannot read it yet, though. I am going to actually sit down and do a serious revision and probably write another 20,000 words before this baby sees the light of day. At that point, I will start tweeting it line by line. Kidding.

With 27 days left until New Year's Eve, I will go ahead and make this resolution: I will revise this novel and show it to at least some of you. Okay, how's that? Aiming high for 2014.


* science fiction
* juggling/bisexual union: a reference to the fact that in our college, there was a 100% overlapping Venn diagram of the members of the juggling club and the University of Chicago Bisexual Union, and all of them were very hirsute and very sketchy.

Still going strong

Long time readers, take heart. Nelson Marans, long a regular object of my affection in this blog, is back and still writing letters to the NY Times. I haven't seen his name since October 25, 2009, when he got a letter published in the magazine but there he is, live and writing in to the Science Times to complain about cheating. This letter is so obscure, boring and scolding, the NYT didn't even publish it online. So I'm retyping it for you here.

What Cheating Says About Us
To the Editor: Re "Cheating's Surprising Thrill" (Oct. 8): Finding a thrill and even satisfaction after cheating is a sad commentary on our present culture. While those my age (nearly 90) would consider cheating close to a criminal act, the practice, now widely prevalent, is almost accepted as normal. It would have been interesting to see the same experiments conducted on people my age. Cheating and the pleasure derived from it mark a generation that has lost its moral anchor.
Nelson Marans
Silver Springs, MD

I'm a little worried that someone has created a Nelson Marans app that allows you to generate a letter-to-the-editor on any topic, because this is almost too spot-on. Glad to have him back, though.

Crying It Out - Homework Edition

A few days ago, I posted a Facebook status update about "Ferberizing" the kids on homework and got dozens of thumbs-up. I thought I would expound a bit here.

A little background: there's a lot of drama in our house around getting homework done. The kids do it at the dining room table, and it doesn't really matter what time of day they do it, they always want lots of hand-holding and tear-drying. At Back to School Night, my older son's teacher recommended the book Ending the Homework Hassle, and a week later, I checked it out of the library.

For kids who are not actually struggling academically, or who are not truly difficult cases, you only need to read one chapter, or even this summary of the main chapter. There are three rules:

The first rule applies to the kids. They should do their homework in their rooms or in another space away from the main part of the house designated for their work. They can ask parents a question but if the answer requires more than a clarifying example or the explanation of the wording in the directions, the parents should tell the child to ask the teacher the next day.

The second rule applies to the parents.  Chillax, parents.

The last rule means that rather than giving a start time, parents should give a deadline, just like we would have at work. After 8, kids should transition to bed time or have a little family time. If they are not done, they can figure out for themselves when to finish it. Maybe the next morning or the next day. In any case, it should not be an endless battle.

These rules are intended to teach self-reliance and time management. If your kid falls behind, it's probably because they are struggling with the material, and you were masking those difficulties by doing their work for them.

So how's it going, after a week in our house? I will admit the drama has been cut dramatically. There's no more arguing or begging, threats, warnings, plea bargaining, etc. On the other hand, it's not clear that a lot of homework is getting done either. At least one set of math worksheets sits untouched, and no typing or piano practice has happened. I emailed the fourth grade teacher who recommended the book and he was totally cool with that. He said he will give Liam a completion rate next month to let him know how much he's actually doing. So I feel reassured that we are on the same page with respect to the learning skills (time management, project planning, as opposed to the actual content of the work), but it is a little hard to let go.  Just as in the early years, the tears quickly gave way to sophisticated plotting, but I do think Ferberizing the homework is making my life easier. I will try to update you again in a month....

And yes, that is an Alabama license plate.

Too Lazy to Freecycle

Rubber Bands (N. Berkeley)
-----------------------------------------------
We have quiet a bit of rubber bands accumulated from newspapers etc. Anybody needs 
them?