Empty Nest

My youngest graduates from high school in a month and is set to go to college in New Jersey. This weekend I ran into a friend whose older daughter is the same age and stage as mine, and who will still have one at home.

"What are you going to do with that empty nest?" she asked.

"You mean, what am I going to do FIRST?!" I replied, smiling.

Don't get me wrong; I will miss her, a lot I am sure. But as I said to my friend - she will still be the same wonderful person. Somewhere else, with tons of her peers, learning great new skills and knowledge and eating all her meals in a dining hall.

Visits will be lovely!

Our Smart Phones Are Making Us Stupid

It must be an indicator of SOMETHING that I have had this headline in my head for months and only now am getting around to writing it.

The final straw was a few hours ago, standing in the book racks of my local library and ticking through my mental list of writers I wanted to peruse. I've recently finished a binge read of a fabulous crime/mystery writer; devoured everything in this very library -- compared the books to the movies and went so far as to google the author (and found out, with no surprise, that he was also a writer for my a;l=time favorite show, The Wire.)

I was picturing his face. I was recalling the complexity and subtlety of his writing, his characters,his settings and tone. I walked through the lower third of the alphabetical listing of authors, hoping it would come to me. And I could not for the life of me think of his name. So you know what happened.

So I took out my iPhone, googled Shutter Island, and three, results down ...Ah. Dennis Lehane.

Big head slap.

This isn't the only time that I've resorted to my device instead of thinking, though, and voice recognition is making it much worse. More often than not it's too much trouble to type out a text, and so we press the button and say, Text so and so, and dictate the message. Think about that -- too much trouble to type a text!

An appalling amount of calling people from the car, same strategy. Driving directions - so simple to look up on your phone; how often to we unfold a map, see where we are in relation to other places on the planet?

Smart phone saturation seems to be nearing 100%. What person over the age of 15 does not have one? And how can we be expected to resist the power of the Internet on a small glossy slab in our pocket? (Made of Kryptonite, by the way, and likely killing the planet.)

I came home tonight with a nice stack of books - including a brand-new Dennis Lehane! I did pass on one one that purported to prove how technology is making our brains smarter. I just didn't see it. But maybe I needed to get this cranky rant out of my system before giving it a chance.

Quote of the Day

"I wonder if I can burp and play the pennywhistle at the same time."
~K. Diehl

I hate it when John Rosemond is right

Conservative parenting columnist John Rosemond, who openly longs for the days when all moms stayed home to better welcome dads home from work with a martini and home-cooked meal, is right about one thing. Parents today over-parent, subsuming their own identity to that of their kids and parent-hood, giving their kids too much power in the family and too much responsibility that should rest with the parents.

This AlterNet story explores the emerging trend and how the workplace effects it:

Now, more people wait to have kids because they don't feel ready in light of it being so important and difficult. And being a parent is harder than ever due to "structural problems," says Lepore. "Most jobs are made for people who aren't taking care of children. The sharper the division between parenthood and adulthood, the worse those jobs fit, and the less well people who aren't rearing children understand the hardships of people who are. Employers are seldom asked to accommodate family life in any meaningful way; employees do all the accommodating, which mainly involves, especially for women, pretending that we don't actually have families."

And all of that also means parenthood has become a kind of magical ideal, a role impossible to actually fulfill due to time, personality or financial constraints -- think June Cleaver, or her modern equivalent, Angelina Jolie. Parenthood is not only supposed to take over our schedules and bank accounts, but transform our identities. When you have a kid, you're no longer an adult or an individual, you're a parent.

Add the Disney marketing juggernaut and you've got a recipe for the crazies.

Driving my kid and her two friends to a weeklong overnight camp last week, winding my way through the remote and badly marked back roads of northeastern Connecticut, I could not help but think that most of us in the car have been programmed to view the situation as a Disney show - a situation comedy. The parent would be predictably inept and hapless, the kids would figure out the way there. I almost complied, getting quite seriously lost by thinking I could outsmart google directions with my own old map that SEEMED to show such a shortcut. The kids, however, seemed uninterested in double checking any map, content to trade gum and camp stories.

What pisses me off about Rosemond is that he's sexist and disingenuous. I too would advocate for a society and economy where one parent has the option to remain home and parent - and, say, get that MBA or law degree, or volunteer to improve the community. But let's recognize the bad things about the good old days, when women's careers ended with childbirth and their career options were limited to teacher and nurse in the first place.

But even while we need time to parent, we need to lighten up about it. I cringe when I hear parents ask their tetchy toddlers, Do you want to take a nap? Do you want to eat your vegetables? Wrong question, I want to scream. THAT is too much power for a kid, and the wrong kind. These kids are like a dog who's stared at all the time. They'd much benefit from being left to their own devices, with firm rules and a good understanding of their own abilities and the consequences of their actions.

40 - 40 - 6: Too bad it's not a locker combination

This is the % of black, Latino, and white students in the US - respectively - attending schools with poverty rates of 70 to 100%.

Too bad it's not a locker combination.

The full report is here at the Sheff Movement web site: Why Sheff Matters

MPAA Bans Teens from Twilight, Harry Potter

AP - Movie fans around the country were stunned today by the announcement of a new movie ratings system that will ban thousands of young fans from seeing their favorite films in theaters.

Under the new guidelines, released today by the Motion Picture Association Picture of America, ratings of PG-13 and above will be strictly enforced by requiring not only parental consent but photo IDs. As a result, many fans will not be admitted to the latest Twilight and Harry Potter films, expected out this year, and many others.

"It's high time our young people got some wholesome entertainment, not this mystical, sleazy warlock and vampire junk," said Sen. Joseph I . Lieberman, D-CT, a leading advocate of the changes.

Young fans reacted with dismay. Protests were planned in most major cities and studios were said to be laying plans to combat pirated films and screenings.

"I just can't believe it," said 12-year-old Julia Montgomery, of Hartford, CT, who has read every Twilight novel and seen the first film five times. "This is so unfair and I can't believe we are seeing this kind of censorship right here in the US."

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Quote of the Day

"The best one was the free one."

~V. Diehl, after visiting the Newseum and Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"Go, Mommy!"

~K. Diehl, to me, after watching a Newseum video about reporters covering 9/11.

The piece was a stirring testimonial to the role of the press in being there to cover disasters, emergencies, etc. She was referring to the fact that I used to be a reporter. I quickly explained that the East Hartford school board and police logs involved little such risk.

She and her sister also had to listen to my rant that corporate layoffs have so decimated the press corps that such reporting capacity is sadly much diminished.