Hooray!
That is all.
I just spent an enjoyable half hour at the Kennedy School soaking pool. Usually, when I take a soak midweek, the pool is blissfully solitary and I can pretend that I do indeed own an Italianate villa. (Real story: I'm currently blocked writing-wise, the house is cold, I'm probably *getting* a cold, and I'd rather take advantage of the preheated water than run an environmentally insensitive bath).
So, a man and his daughter are there at the far end of the pool. I get in silently, and sit at the near end, head back and eyes closed. Their chatter is pleasant, non-intrusive, but eventually her curiosity gets the better of her and she walks on over to my side of the pool. She's an adorable and literal four year old (Me: "When did you turn four?" Her: "On my birthday." Him: "I think she was asking when your birthday was, sweetheart.") who really loves swimming and her daddy. He's a nursing student, his wife works downtown, and we alternate talking to each other or her, and playing catch with a pink netted bow she found at the other end of the pool.
It was such a pleasant, nondescript conversation - his studies, my research, Disneyland, his daughter's swimming lessons, what my husband does, what his wife does, how the heart works, etc. etc. A light, zero subtext, casual encounter, in the original sense of the phrase. I'll remember our interaction and especially the little girl as charming and sweet, but without regrets that it didn't continue longer. Today's connection added to the light and charm and sweetness that I already enjoy in my own life--it wasn't rain in some metaphorical desert--and I'm grateful for both, just as they are, and were.
There are new shopping carts at the local grocery store, designed specifically for parents. They're pretty cute, they've got plastic trucks on the either side, and there's space for two kids (with their own steering wheel) to face forward, and then a full-size basket in front of that. They're also huge. It's very cool that someone has gone to the trouble of designing a new type of cart for busy parents who have more than one child and still need to get the shopping done. While the carts are pretty heavy and not all that maneuverable when empty (I can't imagine how difficult they'd be to push when they're full), I'm glad that parents' needs are being taken into account. Perhaps the 2.0 version will address these shortcomings. Either way, I'm not sure I'd want to share a grocery aisle with one of these carts as they are now - perhaps new store designs are on deck?
Anyway, the very first thing that struck me was the implied expectation that a parent would have two children of about the same age (or size, at least) to take shopping with them. These carts were designed to fill a need that I hadn't previously considered, but that could have lasting reprecussions as time goes on: since women are having children later, and perhaps using IVF to do so, multiple births could be on the rise and so such accomodations are now necessary. Alternately, parents were more likely to have two children as close together as they could manage it as recently as, say, three years ago. It would be interesting to interview the shopping cart designers to know what they were thinking when they designed the new carts, if they were developed in response to demographic information or some other reasoning.
Interestingly enough, the current version of "infant-seat carts" (these have a large grey infant bucket mounted on the top bar) only have room for one kid, so either the pendulum is swinging back, or the cart designers haven't caught up yet. Currently, the situation is reminiscent of the hot dog versus hot dog bun packaging problem where there's not enough of one or an excess of the other - maybe current parents are starting earlier, so they're having fewer kids? Or the infant-seat carts are a design phase behind? Or I'm overthinking this? Anything's possible.
Edited to add: Well, I spent a few minutes trying to find an image of the truck carts, above, but instead I found the product homepage: The New Bean. The carts I'm talking about above resemble one of the Bean Doubles, but with the kids up top near mom* rather than at the front of the cart and down low. The marketer in me would bet that the new, higher up placement increases the likelihood that the kid(s) will be better situated to convey that they want mom* to purchase the more expensive items that are located on the middle shelves throughout the store, rather than playing by themselves up front (where they're safe from falling items, as the original ad copy states). In any case, the site assures grocers that the new carts will increase shoppers' purchases by 20% per trip.
*the site has a dedicated "moms & kids" section, but I guess dad never shops with his kids.
I stepped out my front door and into a Richard Scarry version of Busytown:
On the sidewalk: a kid riding his skateboard going left.
On the street: two bicyclists riding right.
In the sky: a United Airlines 757 taking off going left, from the airport 10 miles away.
It was an intense few seconds.
What's your middle name? Is there a story or history behind it?
Isabella.
I love my middle name - it's beautiful on its own, and works well with
my first and last names. My mother's mother was named Isabella, so it's
a family name as well. The story is that my parents couldn't agree on
my first name for quite a while (this was back in the days when you had
to wait until the birth to find out which sex you'd gotten). None of
the other feminine names in the immediate relative vicinity seemed to
work for some reason. My dad finally found the name Samantha in a baby
names book (just in the nick of time, or my name on the birth
certificate might have been "baby girl") and my mom liked it too. To me
their choice symbolizes the fact that I'm a product of my parents, and
also a new individual with no responsibility to anyone else's identity
or tradition. Interestingly enough, my brothers' names are very
traditional: one was named for his maternal and paternal grandfathers,
and the other is a Junior. I kept my last name when I got married, both
for myself and to keep a link to my dad and the rest of my family.
Unfortunately, it's also the name of a popular drug, so google searches
for my first and last names turn up lots of spam.
I've been ruminating for quite a
while about the adverse effects of personalization on people's ability
to live in a world that isn't always personalizable. In this age of
TiVo and cell phones and iPods and the "always on" society, as well as the nearly
infinite customizability of several different mass marketed objects
(car seats come to mind), how does this elaborate and perpetual
cosseting affect our ability to cope with adversity, much less hardship? I'd
guess that we have shorter fuses than we used to, but it's possible that the
counterintuitive answer applies: when there are fewer things that
go wrong in one's life, one is better equipped to deal with those
things that do. This is probably what's behind many people's storied
ability to deal very well with some major trauma, while getting
completely bent out of shape about waiting in line for two minutes or
burning the toast.
Anyway, last Friday, I was reading quite a lot of online writing (as well as watching Zefrank's The Show)
about the terrorist
threat that had been thwarted, and one of the things that came up was
the question of why, exactly, terrorism is so scary. Risk theorists
(and frequent flyers) are fond of quoting the statistic that you're
more likely to die in your own automobile than go down in a plane
crash. There was also the famed "a woman over 35 has more chance of
getting killed by a terrorist than receiving a proposal of marriage"
canard a few years back, although that one's been rather thoroughly
debunked. Even so, these reassurances felt a lot like whistling through
the graveyard.
A better explanation of why terrorism is so scary,
posited some, is that it feels at once random and completely personal.
Somehow, there is intent behind the act--human choice--and you, personally, are
important enough to be a target. This could be simply by virtue of being
American or en route to America (in this case), or because you made a
decision that placed you in the line of fire on a subway or in a cafe or whatever. The human element of
choice is what makes terrorism work - you have no idea when or where (or if) the next attack will come. That's the point.
It occurred to me that this could be one of the reasons that other
countries (like India, Ireland, England, Spain and Russia, as noted in
The Show, above) might be better at handling terrorist
threats--please understand that I am in no way saying that this equals
deserving or enjoying them--but rather, if
one's membership loyalty is to a group rather than oneself, there
might be less fear around being the target of a terrorist attack. Since
everybody's a target, your risk is no greater or worse than anyone
else's. And since you're more aware of all of the other poeple in your
collective, you understand that your personal likelihood of being a
target is reduced accordingly/mathemetically. In any case, if it
happens, it happens. We're pretty inventive as a species,
unfortunately. But, barring taking obvious precautions, why should that
change how you live your life?
So, when you consider the increasing societal or marketing
movement
toward Brand:
YOU
and other aspects of hyperindividualism that allow a certain class of
people in the US to live
seemingly uncontested and in control of their own little world, and
combine that with the randomness
and idea of intent that makes terrorism so frightening, it's not really
that much of a surprise that the US population in general has become
completely undone by
the
thought of a fifth* terrorist attack (in a way that is surprising
considering how little attacks one, two, and four have infiltrated
daily life). All
that focus on control and isolation magnifies ones' sense of
importance, which means that one is that much more vulnerable to the
threat of terrorism, disproportionate to the actual threat.
-----
*These are: Oklahoma City, The Unibomber, September 11, and the
Anthrax Letters. Remember those? What ever happened to trying to catch
the person who expressly targeted Democratic officeholders and members
of the "liberal media"? S/he's the only one who's still at large. Oh,
and Osama bin Laden.
BlogHer originated as a response to numerous male bloggers asking
"where are all the women bloggers?". Over 200 women bloggers showed up
last year in San Jose at the first annual BlogHer conference, coming
from as far away as Austin, TX and Durham, NC (at least). The themes
last year had to do with making women's blogs visible, getting up to
speed technically, becoming a better writer oneself, and inspiring more
women to blog. There were panels for academic bloggers, mommy bloggers,
political bloggers and more. I left the conference inspired and
heartened, committed to blogging more and looking forward to reading
the blogs of the women I met there. There was a cute litttle schwag
messenger bag (courtesy of Google), and a few trinkets inside from various tech
publishers and tech
companies such as ThirdAge (an online community for seniors).
BlogHer was much more emphatically on the radar this year, and the
most important
women of all are clearly the mommy bloggers. This year's schwag bag
(courtesy
of Six Apart) contained offerings that were quite expressly gendered,
rather than techy: an offer from a weight loss company (woman as body),
a box of
sugar substitute (woman as body), a magnetic bulletin board to organize
the busy family
schedule (emotional labor, woman as caretaker), a bib (...), a
corkscrew (yay, alcohol!), information on new cars by Saturn
and GM (Soccer Mom, anyone? I know, it's a slight stretch, and to their credit, Saturn also included a
64M thumb drive), weightloss water (again with the body), and
a few other articles that were keyed toward getting your blog in front
of more people and/or making a living from it (yay for target
marketing!). I really do appreciate the fact that sponsorship makes the
world go round, and made everyone's attendance at the conference
possible. But.
I think what was so annoying to many BlogHer attendees is the
fact that the conference was aimed at the 51% of the population that is
tired of being marketed to about 10% of our identity (and only about 5%
of our
conference-specific goals/specialties)--see the flack about "The Janes"
pitch for the worst scripting ever. Women flew across the country
for this tech conference, but our desirability as a target market
revolved almost exclusively around biology (and, to be fair,
sociology), rather than our brains. A smart company would've done more
of what Saturn did: Brand a conference-specific item, rather than a
gender-specific one. Do men get such gender-targeted schwag at their
tech conferences? Didn't think so.
Today I'm at BlogHer - I've run into someone I haven't seen in 20
years, who's every bit as rocking cool as she was back in high school.
Off to another panel, but want to at least begin the conversation here.
Interesting post on spanglemonkey about yesterday's session, and
badgerblog in comments talking about someone talking and talking and
talking -I suppose this is a common issue for bloggers, yes?
This is a microdeveloped post, because it's late, but while I was
ambling around the vox site, I noticed young girl's picture that looks
really familiar to me. The girl is lovely, kind of pensive, dark hair
and eyes, and I could swear that I've seen her before. The name Mad or
Madeline popped in my head. Maybe I've met her offline, seen her face
in stock art, someone's flickr account (is it ok to talk about flickr
here?), or through a friend of a friend -I have no idea. But I feel
connected to her, because I've seen her face in a way that, although it
has been made available to the web-world at large, is also very
personal and intimate (and non-commercial).
Obviously, the access to personal narrative has been one of the
amazing things that have propelled blog readership and publishing to
the popularity it now enjoys. But the effect of visual intimacy
vis-a-vis (sorry for the pun) photos and video is something I haven't
yet seen explored. Specifically, the thought occurred to me that the
more people there are who we "think" we know, the more compassionate
we'll be about the strangers they are, and to the strangers who look
like them in our own lives. Once again, technology brings us closer to
each other.
