Ah-mazing

You know what's amazing?  Being part of a team.  I've learned more than ever these past few months how important it is to have a teammate.  Mr B and I make a good team.  He is on his a-game when I need a break.  I can step in and take over when he has had enough.  He is patient when I am at my wit's end.  I can interpret Lennon-ese when he can't understand the grunts and gestures and cadence of LJB's own language.  Teamwork is pretty amazing.

Mr B is a picture saboteur.  Every. single. picture.

We celebrated Mr B's birthday last Saturday with a date.  An honest-to-goodness-babysitter-dinner-and-a-movie date.  So what if we had to sneak our cheeseburgers into the theater in my purse to fit it all in our allotted babysitter budget for the month?  It still was a date.  We laughed and stole a few smooches in the theater and had birthday deep dish cookie pie for dessert.  It was a pretty amazing day, until the meltdown began.

These meltdowns are nothing you could ever imagine until you experience one.  I am daily amazed by my kiddo.  LJB is a pretty amazing little fella.  It is also pretty amazing how he can go from sweet, funny, little boy to full-fledged demon spawn in a matter of seconds.  I enjoy his other amazing attributes a little bit more : )

I've just realized that I have lots of pictures of LJB crying.  Not sure what this says about us.

We had an amazing therapy breakthrough this week.  LJB has learned that he can request and item (food, drink, toy) and we will give it to him.  Seems simple, right?  I'm not talking, "May I please have some more juice?" kind of request.  I mean the simple act of gesturing for an object or pointing at a picture to have his daily needs met.  Until now, when his cup was empty and he was thirsty, LJB would occasionally walk into the kitchen with his empty cup.  Sometimes, he would grab my hand and get me to follow him.  Most of the time however, he would just give up when he finally realized that there was nothing left in the cup and move on, or he would just start screaming without any indication for Mr B and I as to what he was crying about.  His new ability to request isn't full-proof.  We sometimes get the screaming with no known reason, but he has learned that a request is a powerful thing - and that's amazing.

Those baby blues are pretty amazing, too!

You know what else is amazing?  This same kid who couldn't request more juice can count to 10.  He recognizes shapes and letters and colors at 5-6 year old level.  This is the gift of autism.  It's also a way for us to glimpse at the future.  To know that he has a brain.  A powerful brain that thinks great thoughts.  A brain that can likely already outwit his mama.  I can't wait to see what ah-mazing things this little dude is going to do!

Book Club: Sarah's Key

Hey fellow readers!  This is the first entry of our Book Club.  Leanna's choice to kick off the club was Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay.

 

 Joshua:

As I read this novel I kept thinking about the twists and turns feminism has taken.  What came to my mind during Julia's decision to keep her baby at the abortion clinic was how similar in sentiment that scene was to Juno.  In both instances, the audience is asked to identify with strong female characters, one a 40-something journalist, the other a brash and witty high school student, who in a sense affirm their female empowerment through a commitment to motherhood (or quasi-motherhood, as Juno gives up her baby but retains a relationship to the child). 

          

Another observation: I imagine that when the author set down to write this story, after doing her research of the Jewish roundup in Paris and the deportation of thousands of men, women and children to the death camps, she began by working her way backwards from the ending.  That ending, of course, is that the protagonist's child will bear the same name as the Jewish child Sarah Staryzinski, who's horrific story we see unfold in the early chapters of the novel.  In making the decision to link names child to child, the author creates a subtext that suggests that humankind's collective guilt over the Holocaust can only be overcome if another "holocaust", abortion, is ended.  Perhaps it wasn’t the intent of the author to make such a comparison, but Julia’s pregnancy saga made it kind of unavoidable, at least for me.

I think the story would have been stronger if it had developed in a less formulaic way.  The negative parallelism between present and past, one child who is killed and another who is saved (or the parallelism between Sarah and Julia herself), is contrived to be highly engaging on an emotional level.  But I found that neat and tidy mirror-imaging kind of disruptive to the seriousness of the events; in the last few pages I kept waiting for the reveal of the name in much the same way as one reading a murder mystery.  The historical events described here may have been better served by a narrative structure more open ended, in which the reader is made to contend with his or her own morality a little bit.  Telling the story more through the eyes of Bertrand's family, who moved into the Staryzinski apartment and in a real sense benefited from the round up of Jews in Paris, may have been one way to accomplish that.

That is my two cents.  What say you, dear wife?

Leanna:

 

I like your summary, but I find it interesting how differently we saw this book and how differently we perceived the author's motivations.  We certainly agree that the book was written to not merely tug at the heart strings, but to rip that sucker out of your chest like something directly from the Temple of Doom.  [You know I'm not a big Indiana Jones fan and I sure as heck am not taking the time to fact check myself, so I hope I got the right movie, if not, just go with it anyway.]  The whole sub-plot about Sarah's pregnancy and the pressure from her philandering husband to end it really didn't evoke much emotion from me.  When the author takes us down the road of a possible miscarriage, quite frankly I didn't really care what happened to the baby.  Writing that makes me feel kind of heartless.  I love babies and all, but it just didn't do it for me.  That said, when Julia was in the hospital and Bertrand had rushed to her side, I was hoping for their relationship to survive.  Though he was a little rough around the edges, I don't think that Bertrand was the jerk that I think the author wanted us to perceive him as.  If he was supposed to be the villain, it didn't work for me.  I didn't hate him.  As a matter of fact, I kind of felt sorry for him.  I could imagine what it would feel like to have your life flipped upside down by an unexpected pregnancy.

 

As for the Nazis and the French police involved in the round up, I do hate them.  Of course I hate the Nazis.  I hate that women and children were murdered at the hands of the government they trusted to protect them.  I was far more wrapped up in the historical story line.  The author very successfully kept me hoping, no matter how irrational that hope was, that Sarah's little brother was going to be alive inside that apartment when Sarah and her adoptive parents arrived.  The image of her finding his dead, decaying body starts the waterworks for me.  There is something so sad about that little innocent victim who will never be memorialized.  His name will never be listed in a book of Holocaust victims.  However, maybe, thanks to his sister, he was allowed to perish while still innocent, naive.  He didn't witness the horrors she saw and he wasn't burdened with the demons she couldn't shake.  So perhaps, Sarah did successfully save her brother.

 

So dear husband, there you have it.  That's my side of the story.  :)

UP NEXT FOR THE BOOK CLUB :  Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty

From the Boomtown Rats to John Maynard Keynes

 


"I don't like Mondays."  The immortal words of Bob Geldof ring in all of our ears whether we've actually heard the song or not, or even if we know it but don't pay attention to the actual lyrics (a teenager goes berserk and then blames his actions on the day of the week).  Regardless of Mr. Geldof and the Boomtown Rats, no one likes Mondays and haven't for quite some time.  It's the day when everything important is due and the day that everything put off the previous Friday has its reckoning.  It's the day you play catch-up to keep from getting even further behind.  And you do this while sleep deprived because that catnap you took on Sunday afternoon turned into a three hour siesta and you subsequently found yourself watching House Hunters International or the latest Zumba infomercial at one in the morning.

This particular Monday got me thinking: Do we really need Mondays?  I mean, we may technically need the day so we don't lose 52 days on the calendar--can you imagine Christmas coming back around two months sooner?  "The horror!  The horror!" as Marlon Brando would say.  But we don't actually need the day to be a work day, do we?  So I thought I'd blog  about how the workweek itself was structured and where it came from.  Although there is some dispute about the origins in their totality, much of what we consider to be commonplace business practices--the 40 hour work week and the weekend--are courtesy of a century or more of labor struggle right up until the 1930s.  I seem to recall from a class I had in college that at one point in the nation's history a 4-day workweek was seriously considered.  Such a thing exists now in some municipalities, but purely for budgetary reasons, kind of like the furloughs that states have been rolling out for public employees.  The rest of us still slog through the 5-day variety, if we're lucky.

So how come, in the light of day of technological progress and the ease of living such wonderment touts as its raison d'etre (or at least it did in all those 1950s TV commercials), do we still work as many or more of our waking hours in a week as not?   Shouldn't the technological awesomeness of advanced civilizations such as ours have by now downgraded the need to ritualistically show up some place we'd rather not be and perform routinized tasks for longer than we would care?  Much to the point, workplace studies show the average American to be working far longer in an average week than he or she did 30 years ago.  At such a rate, the weekend itself might be a thing of the past by century's end (truly a horror).

An article published in the Guardian a few years ago provided a history lesson and analysis of a long dormant idea, and one positively insane to us 21st century folk: the 15 hour work week.  (What?!)  Apparently, John Maynard Keynes, the imminent economist and bane of the libertarian right, theorized in the waning moments before the Great Depression that mankind’s natural course would lead to such a superfluity of work that society itself would restructure to provide for maximal leisure time.  Coincidentally, I think Marx prognosticated a similar notion decades earlier. 

So why has this not happened? The article hypothesizes one reason may be, “that many of us actually enjoy work, despite what we say to pollsters and to each other. To be sure, work can be boring, repetitive or exhausting, but it is also an arena where people get pleasure out of their achievements and enjoy mixing with other people.”  How about no, Scott.  Even if work is a good place to chat and mingle, the mere absence of alcohol or sporting events means that most of us would much rather be doing our socializing in different environs.  The article also offers a second hypothesis: “Robert Frank's explanation is that Keynes failed to spot the importance of context. We consume more because technical progress has vastly improved the quality of goods on offer, and as we get richer we want the luxury car…”  There is always a better mouse trap to build and own, etc, etc, ad infinitum. So, in essence, we are all highly self-conscious mice, or perhaps their grotesque cousins, trying to keep pace with the pack, wanting more and more and working desperately to get it.

That’s a likely scenario for some.  But as Richard Wolff and other left economists have pointed out, Americans are essentially working harder just to try and keep their standard of living the same, not to raise it.  Real wage earnings and purchasing power have stagnated or decreased since the 1970s.  While the rich kept getting richer, the middle class found itself treading water and sinking fast.  We took on credit cards and second mortgages, leveraging ourselves to death, and the end result was a credit bubble that exploded in everyone’s face four short years ago. 

It may sound positively anti-American, but I don’t want to work this hard, or this much.  (As I wrote that, I heard my own father rolling over in his grave.)  And the ghosts of our Puritan ancestors may strike me down for my "work ethic" apostasy, but I’d rather spend time with my family than sitting behind a computer screen pretending to be nice to people and feigning concern about their problems.  For those of you who genuinely love your job and are thrilled to get out of bed each morning—even Monday morning—I wish you joy and peace.  I really do.  So, in the spirit of goodwill, I bestow all of my Mondays from now on to you.  Go forth and prosper.  Meanwhile, I’ll be kicking back with a cold one watching Zumba.

...at least on Saturdays and Sundays I will be, by gosh.

Bob Geldof, above, performing his latest wonder: Levitating Africa.

Flaming Flower Pots

I was at home from work this morning with LJB.  He had his first Occupational Therapy session and it was really great.  I really like his OT and her style.  We sat in the floor and played and played.  LJB eyed us curiously.  He doesn’t play with his toys.  He might hold on to a ball or matchbox car and he will watch his train circle around the track for ages, but he doesn’t really play with them.  He takes blocks and stacks them as high as he can reach, stands back to marvel at his work, then walks away. Satisfied. 

Today we spent a good while teaching him that it is fun to knock the blocks down and then rebuild them.  He caught on after a few times, but he was still looking at us and the new tower of blocks, not entirely sure why we would build them just to knock them down again.  I love watching his wheels turn.

By saying that LJB doesn’t play with his toys, I am not in any way saying that he doesn’t play.  It’s just a little unconventional  : )  One of his favorite games is fetch.  Not with the dog.  With Mommy.  He has me very well trained. 

Sometimes, fetch goes over our 3^rd floor balcony.  He loves to throw stuff over the balcony and then stare at it on the ground.  He usually comes to get me and Mr B and asks us to stare at his latest feat.  Often he wants me to hold him so that he can lean over the edge of the balcony and stretch as far as I will let him from 3 stories up and stare at whatever he tossed overboard.  Mr B refuses this.   Sometimes I do it just to watch the queasiness sweep over Mr B’s face, the whole time hanging on to my kiddo with a vice grip.

Step 1: Gather suitable objects for throwing.

Step 2: Wind up and let 'er rip.

Step 3: Admire the carnage below.







In the evening once LJB goes to bed, Mr B or I will go downstairs, around to the back of the building and pick up the latest free fall victims, just so they can be tossed out again tomorrow.  Secretly, I like this routine.  I like to watch him stare down below and I like to try to figure out what he is thinking about.  Sometimes I would swear that he is trying to use telekinesis to retrieve his toys.  Sometimes when the ball and water gun that he threw over yesterday are happily waiting on the couch for him when he wakes up in the morning, he is convinced that he has. 

At noon today I left the world of a 2 year old, put the blocks away, and joined the adult world.  I came into work to 7 new voicemails.  One of them has me perplexed.  An adult living in a 4^th floor condo in a busy metropolitan area tossed a flower pot over the back of their balcony onto a public sidewalk.  As if that wasn’t enough, the flower pot was engulfed in flames as it hurled towards the street below.  There was a walking tour of the city preparing to leave as the flaming flower pot hit the ground.  The condo inhabitant stared down at his latest feat in a pile of charred potting soil.  I realized the adult world and the 2 year old world may not be that different after all.

Flaming flower pots. This may be my new favorite expletive replacement ; )

Leanna

Is It Hot Enough For Ya?

In light of the latest heat wave to blanket this country of ours, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the wonder that is air conditioning.

First off, I’m old enough to remember when certain stores operated seasonally or kept different hours to avoid weather extremes.  The Dairy Queen located in the next town over was closed all winter.  Some local retailers would close up shop by one or two in the afternoon in the summertime because they didn’t have A/C.  I remember walking into stores like Ben Franklin’s and the noise from the floor fans was so loud that you could barely hold a conversation without yelling.  I’d go clogging with my grandmother out at the livestock auction barn (don’t ask) and all the dancers would be sweating like pigs in their poodle skirts and bolo ties.  I can see in my mind that little bead of sweat that would collect on my grandmother’s upper lip and her permed hair all matted down around the temples of her forehead.  It was hotter than three kinds of hell in that place, everybody waving cardboard hand fans and cackling like magpies.  Looking back, I guess nobody seemed to mind the stifling heat all that much.

But most vividly, I remember the old farmhouse I grew up in.  My bedroom was upstairs, and to make matters worse, one of my windows was painted shut, which made a good cross-breeze impossible.  Every summer my bedroom window had a box fan in it, the oscillating fan on my dresser blew nonstop, and eventually I inherited a wind machine that sat on the floor vibrating like a jet turbine; I’d usually sleep with my head at the foot of the bed for maximum air velocity.  Let’s just say it was warm up there.  And to this day I can’t really sleep well without hearing the whirring of fan blades.

When it was just too hot for me to be in my room my parents would let me unfold a sleeping bag on the floor of their bedroom.  My dad worked shift work at the aluminum factory and because he slept during the day sometimes they bought an A/C unit for their bedroom window.  Some days we’d hang out in that room all day, playing cards on top of the bedspread and eating ice cream.

It’s hard to imagine a life without A/C now.  I’d hate to be trying to raise a child in a house or apartment without it, yet I know many folks still do.  My mom still lives in West Virginia, where close to 90% of the entire state lost power over a week ago and most still don’t have it back.  I feel for them and the misery they must be experiencing.  And yet, not so long ago, this was just the way people lived all the time.  They figured out all sorts of exotic ways to stay cool, or try to at least.  In the South, people just didn’t work as hard or as long during the summer months.  And now, with global climate change upon us, we might not be long for feeling that heat more intensely than ever, and maybe overwhelming our energy resources in the process.  China, India, and other hot spots in the developing world are situating themselves in the synthetic wonderment of A/C.  Once people get a taste of coolness, it’s hard to go back.

I was reading a blog today about the air conditioning and its history.  Someone named Stan Cox has actually written a book about the invention and development of A/C and its effects on modern life.  It’s called Losing Our Cool.  The guy who effectively invented A/C was a man named Thomas Midgley.  He also, coincidentally, was the first to suggest refining gasoline with lead.  Here’s a little bit from Cox’s book:

The breakthrough CFC refrigerant, Freon, was invented in 1930 by chemist Thomas Midgley, working for General Motors' Frigidaire division. Midgley earlier had found that the problem of car engine knocking could be solved by adding lead, which wound up causing serious air pollution and health problems. On the strength of his two momentous discoveries, Midgley was credited by historian J.R. McNeill as having "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history.”

So, on this ever-warming planet, and during our latest heat wave, we should give thanks to Mr. Midgely…I guess, for keeping us cool.  Cool with ramifications we can’t yet fathom.

Now leaded gasoline, there’s something that takes me back…

50 Cent and a Crafty Saturday

Last week, 50 Cent posted some pretty ignorant and inflammatory tweets.  If you haven’t heard the story, some guy was giving 50 grief on twitter and 50 responded, “i just saw your picture fool you look autistic.”  Then he went to further say that he didn’t want any “special ed kids” on his timeline.  As you can imagine this has started quite the firestorm in the autism community.  Holly Robinson-Pete very eloquently responded to 50’s tweets on her HollyRod Foundation website {here}.  

All this made me wonder what 50 Cent (and society as a whole) thinks autism looks like and I’m not the only one.  Some other mothers created a flash blog {here} to answer this question.

  

This is what autism looks like in our house:

Saturday morning bed head

Playing on the monkey bars

Loving the doggy

Sharing with Daddy

Being silly with Mommy

Playing with cousins

At our house autism looks pretty darn cute.  Now don't get me wrong there is a far less cute side that involves 2 hour tantrums, a never ending battle to just try and understand my child's needs, juggling a full-time job outside the home with doctor's appointments, therapy sessions, and all the normal mommy stuff.  But all-in-all Lennon is a remarkable kiddo with many more abilities than disabilities.  Not that I was planning on it any way, but I won't be buying any 50 Cent on iTunes. Ever.

I took out all my 50 Cent frustration on a craft project yesterday afternoon.

I have this lamp that I love, but its kind of an awkward height.  Its really too tall to be a table lamp, but too short to be a floor lamp.

It has sat awkwardly in the corner of my great room by the dining table for almost 2 years and I finally found a solution.  I found a black pressed board corner desk at a garage sale yesterday morning for $5.  I bought 2 cans of slate gray spray paint to paint the body and top of the desk.

 

 I took the cardboard back off and cut fabric to cover it.

I had planned to staple the fabric on, but when I couldn’t find the stapler, I subbed my trusty hot glue gun.

Ta-da!

Give me a 2 hour afternoon naptime, 2 cans of spray paint, some scrap fabric, and a hot glue gun and I can turn my frown upside down ☺ .  Oh yeah, and 50 Cent is an ignorant jerk.

Leanna

Looking at Disney

The following is the first entry in a semi-regular blog post about movies, books, and whatever else may tickle my fancy.  Yes, there will be quite a lot of Disney talked about here, for reasons that will be explained.

Why Robin Hood (1973) Has to be Grover Norquist’s Favorite Movie, Even If He Doesn’t Know It

Having a two-year-old privileges (curses?) you to a different kind of day-to-day routine.  For my wife and I, that routine includes a good amount of children’s programming.  We religiously partake of Mickey and his Clubhouse pals, cringe in silence at the flamboyantly strange DJ Lance Rock and his coterie of retro-inflected monster sycophants, and call it a night with Steve, Blue, and the cutout crew.  All that cuteness is bizarrely palliating, big-eyed and squishy soft, and you find yourself sneaking adult fare in the oddest of ways in order to remind yourself that you are, in fact, a grownup.  Yes, I take the laptop into the bathroom to watch my favorite talking heads TV show.  Weird?  You bet.  And purely by happenstance, because you’ve watched selections from the Disney canon enough times that you could give recitations, certain elements that might otherwise go whirring by in the cultural slipstream suddenly land in your head and make a nest there.  Your thoughts range from the banal to the pseudo-academic.  Good God, you think, the older crop of Disney characters do a lot of drinking and smoking.  Could the Little Mermaid be the most unabashedly male-targeted movie of all time? What is really going on when the female geese turn up their nose at Thomas O’Malley because he isn’t married to the lovely feline Duchess in The Aristocats?  Why is that Asian cat so horribly caricatured, enough to make even Mickey Rooney cringe?  Is it really appropriate that a ten-year-old girl is acting like a come-hither seductress at the end of The Jungle Book?  What is there to say about the wisecracking crows in Dumbo?  When Robin Williams sings, “It’s Barbaric, But Hey, It’s Home” during the opening titles of Aladdin, how do people of Middle Eastern ethnicity feel about that?  And so on.

Which brings us to Robin Hood.  Full disclosure, as a child it was by far my favorite of the Disney brand.  And even viewing it today as a thirty-something parent, I enjoy the characters all speaking different accents (British foxes, Southern redneck vultures, Western stagecoach friars). Plus, I love the songs.  So what if the animation and backgrounds are crude by Disney standards and the characters are essentially recycled from older films (Little John/ Baloo, anyone?).  Here’s the essential plot outline for anyone recently rescued from a life trapped under something heavy: Good King Richard has left for the crusades, leaving his effete, mommy-obsessed younger brother Prince John in charge.  The Prince has proceeded to plunder the wealth of the good people of Nottingham, and, as if to reinforce the morality tale, John’s principal stooge is a serpent who is way craftier than the Prince and desirous of the job of ruler (Bush/Cheney, anyone?).  The only savior the anthropomorphized animal peasantry has is Robin Hood, the socialistic highwayman (er, fox) who robs from the rich to give to the poor.

Except that Robin Hood actually does something kind of different.  What he in fact does, with the help of Little John and the communistic collective of revolutionaries, is to storm the castle walls to loot the royal treasury and give massive tax rebates to the poor, oppressed masses. 

Yeah, yeah, this is a liberal talking, but please do me a favor.  Peek around the corner for a few minutes the next time your child has a sleepover and everyone is ensconced in sleeping bags on the living room floor eating popcorn.  What are the first words out of Prince John’s mouth as the royal caravan lumbers through the Nottingham countryside?  “Taxes, glorious taxes!” he exclaims at the bags full of gold coins.  At second glance, doesn’t this strike you as an odd exhortation?  Wouldn’t a smarmy robber baron-type like the prince be gloating over his “money” or his “gold”?  So why “taxes”?  Keep looking: Notice all those signs about businesses closed because of unpaid taxes?  How about the royal carriage’s gold-plated hubcaps?  That’s wasteful government spending if I’ve ever heard it.  And look at the Sheriff of Nottingham smugly intruding upon every home to ferret out the last farthing of tax collection for the Prince—what is he other than a merciless IRS agent gleefully executing the oppressive tax policy of the state?  

 

“So what?”, I hear you saying.  I’m overanalyzing, and besides, grafting current political values onto past events, especially mythical events, only expose my own biases.  But cultural productions such as Robin Hood are not made in a vacuum.  All culture really is at its core is a manifestation of social and political issues working themselves out indirectly, the unconscious anxieties of the body politic rupturing onto the mediated surface.  Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a perfect expression of this ruptured anxiety, as the low-budget horror film can be read in two completely different ways simultaneously: on the one hand, it’s a fable about the loss of individuality in the face of creeping collectivism (the Communist Menace); one the other hand, it’s a cautionary tale about social conformity and political groupthink, in which those who dissent from the “official” position (i.e. those who would stand up to McCarthyism) are weeded out and crushed.  Robin Hood seems to me to be an early text for the oncoming Reagan-Thatcher revolution, a preamble of sorts in the spirit of Hayek and Ayn Rand proclaiming the unmitigated evil of government itself.

 

 

Taken as such, Robin Hood must have made little Grover Norquist feel all tingly in his pajama pants (to be fair, Norquist was sixteen when this film was released in 1973 and probably into more sophisticated pastimes, like black-bagging the student body elections or holding “Students for Nixon” rallies in the high school cafeteria).  In the canid Robin, Norquist gets the superhero of his pubescent dreams, a righteous anti-tax ideologue that starves the state of revenue and “frees” the people from confiscatory tyranny, presumably so they can spend their farthings at the medieval Wal-Mart.  And, lest we think that this ideological parable is a twinge too anarchically libertarian, the film’s coda restores the proper social order: the righteous King Richard makes his return at long last to vanquish the usurper Prince John and restore the crown to its proper glory.  In the end, all is right with the world (pun intended).

What makes all of this so insidious is the way in which the movie conflates terms—“taxes” become synonymous with “oppression”—and delivers that message through a medium beyond the easy reach of cultural criticism.  I’m sure academics somewhere have published unread monographs on the subtextual class/race/gender politics of Disney movies, but those interested in such scholarship are few and far between, tucked quietly among the flotilla of Shakespeareans, Romantics, Modernists and Post-Modernists, who themselves publish largely unread monographs (If your curious, here is a collection of critical essays about Disney).  One rather obvious argument that must be countered by anyone doing such work is that children’s cultural artifacts are too simplistic and naïve to be worthy of critique.  But look past the big eyes and sing-a-long ditties.  Robin Hood is a film doing real indoctrination of a kind Leni Riefenstahl would be proud.  And what might the counter-weight be?  I imagine surreal scenes in which parents subject little Johnny and Brittany and their stuffed animals to an ad-hoc seminar on taxes as the price of civilization.  Furthermore, who knows in what direction childhood political convictions lead us long term.  I remember casting my mock-vote for Ronald Reagan at the age of nine because unlike the wimpy Walter Mondale he wouldn’t take any crap from the Russian bad guys.  How many people stay tethered to their inner nine-year-old, convinced that their political values are self-made when they are nothing but an aggregation of messages piped in through the transom of popular culture.  After all, one’s political self has to begin somewhere.

And here’s the rub to the whole fallacious world glorified in Robin Hood.  Societies such as the feudal one depicted in the story were in fact very cash poor.  The peasant folk, bound to the land and their lord, did not possess much in the way of currency.  I’m sure the merchant class—such as it was—was taxed, but who was taxed more were the aristocracy who oversaw the land.  In the completely stratified class system that Prince John ruled, the real pillaging was the richest (the king) stealing from the rich (the barons, knights, and lords). Ever hear of something called the Magna Carta?  What Prince John was up to precipitated that charter, which was more or less the king capitulating to the nobility because they were so pissed at how he was treating them. 

If Robin Hood the anti-tax crusader is Norquist’s masturbatory ideal, then surely Prince John in such a fictional pose is his bete noire, a personification of the oppressive state lording over its tax riches Howard Hughes-style in some secret antechamber far from the maddening crowd.  Robin Hood in this respect is almost the perfect entertainment for an American Tax Institute summer camp.  I say almost: If only Robin had drowned the evil Prince in a bathtub, it would be a masterpiece.

Joshua

The joy of being wrong.

I rather enjoy the all-in-good-fun banter at work between myself and my boss and co-workers.  When the talk is about marriage and relationships, the jokes are usually directed to my 25 year old single and looking co-worker.  When we want to make fun of less-than-acceptable computer skills, the fun is turned to my 50-something technologically challenged co-worker, but when it comes down to politics, I am the lone left-leaning democrat in a sea of conservative republicans and, therefore, the butt of the joke. 

One evening, my boss, myself, and another manager in my office were waiting around for 7:00 meetings and the political talk began.   I am not “into politics”.  My political views are largely based merely on what I think is right and morally acceptable as human behavior.   During this particular political discussion the conversation had turned to the, “welfare is for a bunch of lazy people who choose to sit on their butt and do nothing while I work hard to provide for them” argument.  My boss and co-worker (and most of my friends and family) have no idea that due to a reduction in hours right before the birth of my son and a medically necessary 3 month period of bed rest, I was the very gracious and thankful recipient of a medical card to pay for his birth.  Mr B and I didn’t take this as an opportunity to apply for food stamps (though we would have qualified), nor did we quit our jobs and “live off the system.”  Nope.  We kept on working, kept on paying our bills, and cut back everywhere we could; Mr B even took on a second job.  We reported all our income to the Medicaid office and after spending 8 weeks at home with LJB, I returned to work.  While waiting for case review or to report additional income in the local welfare office, I saw many more hard working, yet stuck in poverty parents as opposed to lazy, iPhone talking, freshly manicured, name-brand wearing, system cheaters that seem to get so much attention.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve seen the cheaters too, but my overall world and political views based on my own personal experience are that: People are generally good.  People are generally honest.  People are generally kind.  And the less fortunate deserve help from those more fortunate. (Do unto the least of these….)

I shared this theory with my boss and co-worker and was quickly told that I was just naïve and young. 

About one week later, my boss (Mr E – as in Mr Empathy), told me story about a recent lunch he had at a local greasy spoon.  He had gone by himself and was reading his newspaper and overheard a conversation between 2 women at the next booth.  They were talking about the recent death of a celebrity and he chimed in to give them some of the latest details that he had heard and then both parties returned to their lunches.  In a few moments, the women began discussing the Affordable Care Act.  They asked Mr E what he thought about it.  He let them know that he was quite conservative and they may not like his answers, but he thought that the mandate for coverage had gone too far.  Again, both parties returned to their lunches.  When it was time to pay his ticket, Mr E learned that the ladies at the booth beside him had paid his bill.  He came back to the office and sent us all home early, but not before telling me that maybe there were genuinely good, honest, and kind people.  I am still the lone lefty and still the brunt of all the wanna-be political stand up comedians in my office, but I think my argument, at least, has a little more merit in my office.

How the ACA will benefit my family:

With the elimination of pre-existing conditions and the expansion of coverage, we might someday be able to have a second child.  Currently our employer plan doesn’t cover maternity care until you reach a $5000 deductible and affordable (meaning less than 1/3 of our monthly income) private insurance doesn’t offer maternity coverage either.

Our employer may get a tax credit for providing medical coverage to its employees while being able to provide a more affordable option for coverage through the exchange.  Mr B and I work for the same small company.  Our current employer plan would cost nearly $800 per month for our family of 3.  This plan covers very little in emergency care or sick visits until you reach your $5000 deductible.

With the elimination of pre-existing conditions and the expansion of coverage, my son will receive better care.  Autism is currently classified as a mental health disorder by the DSM.  This means that our insurance will not cover any care or testing related to LJB’s ASD diagnosis.  There is a state program that through grants, provides 1 hour of therapy per week, however, he needs more and this will be a huge financial burden to us at $120-$200 per hour.

Leanna

Thoughts on Obamacare

I remember when the Affordable Care Act was somehow pushed through Congress a couple years ago.  Like most people, I thought the idea of forcing people to buy insurance went too far.  Like most lefties, I felt betrayed that Obama had let a conservative Democrat hijack the whole process and pull the public option off the table without any kind of fight.

Now, in the light of the recent Supreme Court ruling, I have to say I am elated that Obama's signature policy will stand--at least until November--and here's why.  The act provides coverage for the working poor by expanding Medicaid coverage--provided of course that states choose to do so (and they would be foolish not to, a fact that the hospitals and nursing home industries will be sure and communicate vociferously).  It allows children to remain on their parent's insurance until age 26.  It subsidizes employer-based plans for small businesses through the health care exchange system, and provides the self-employed the same option.  It subsidizes on a sliding scale insurance coverage for anyone making 400% of the poverty line or less (this includes yours truly).

But more than anything, and however tortured the compromise with the private health insurance industry may seem, the Affordable Care Act is a statement that we as a people are in fact capable of fulfilling promises made to one another in the opening lines of the Constitution.  It expands the notion of "providing for the general welfare" to include one's health and not just the protection of property.  It is the first step towards a dream first envisioned by Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican I might add, to ensure all Americans have equal access to health care.  It says that fundamentally, we can exercise a vision of the future through our elected officials that does not conform to short-term, market-driven goals, but insteads aims for a higher and more noble cause.  It says that we as human beings do "owe" something to one another if we are tethered together by a social contract.

I know all the arguments those on the other side have tossed out: the overreach of state power and loss of freedom, paying for those who choose not to provide for themselves, the expansion of the federal debt, etc.  But if you hold those opinions, ask yourself, at what moments in the past have those same protests been made? During the debate over Social Security and the other entitlement programs?  How many millions of elderly people and the infirm and children have benefited because of this "loss of freedom" via the payroll tax.  During the debates over Civil Rights legislation?  How many people were brought out of Jim Crow because of Congress's unconstitutional expansion of the commerce clause, and the Supreme Court's judicial activism run amok.

It is important to have principles and work from them, and I say anyone who does so is acting in good faith.  People from all viewpoints who are earnest in their convictions should be taken seriously. But it is better, however, to not tread on your principles as hallowed ground, sacred territory not to be disturbed.  All too often what poses as bedrock principles are in fact a pernicious core of received opinions about how a "proper" social order should be constructed and maintained.  To challenge those principles is to somehow unravel the essence of a person, so the challenge lays dormant and the "principles" go to work unimpeded.  This is a universal problem, and this author does not claim immunity.  Our recourse to this affliction is to simply begin with ignorance; to admit to oneself that perhaps you do not understand all the vagaries of the human condition and it is wiser to reserve judgement and proceed tentatively.

So, I started out feeling betrayed and let down about what Congress and the President enacted.  And then I learned more and decided to be wrong about what I felt intially.  Maybe some of those protesting the decision could put down the signs for a second and do the same.  Being wrong occasionally is good for the soul.