News and Updates

1. This is the 200th post for 4Q10D. I'm not sure what sort of celebration is appropriate for such a thing, but there you go.

2. About 80 pages into Pride and Prejudice now, and apparently there is to be a ball. A big ball. All the balls in this book are big, and they are always bouncing, to the left and to the right. It's my belief that these big balls should be held every night. Or not. It is not good to have heavy metal music playing through one's mind while reading Jane Austen.

3. There have been Complications in Meryton. Apparently Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham do not get along, no not at all. There has been much earnest dialogue about this situation - as about all things in this book - and the Bennett girls have agreed that there can be no rational explanation for this. At least Jane has. Elizabeth has let it slide for the moment, but no doubt it will become important later on, when something happens.

4. Our big Labor Day Weekend excursion was to go visit Kim's parents, there to partake of a Family Gathering. The kids played until they were ready to drop and the adults ate until they were ready to burst, and a good time was had by all.

5. Apparently both Newt Gingrich and Laura Bush are defending Obama's speech to the school children. How sad is it that Newt Gingrich, of all people, has to be the voice of reason among conservatives? For a man who made his reputation as a rhetorical bomb-thrower, this has to be a disappointment.

6. I am the undisputed Battleship king of this household, but not by much. Both Tabitha and Lauren came within a ship of sinking me this weekend. I know that as a parent I should be glad my children exceed me, but it is somewhat surprising to see this happening so quickly.

7. This week looks like it will be unconscionably busy. I'm looking forward to Saturday.

That is all.

At Play in the Fields of the Farm Implements

There are some things in this world you can't explain. A surprising number of them reside in Wisconsin.

We took a ride over to the Thresheree today and spent a happy day there.

For those of you who have never had this experience, well. You kind of have to be there to understand it. Otherwise, phrases like "parade of tractors" probably won't mean a whole lot to you.

The Thresheree is more flea market than the rational mind can possibly accept. Miles and miles of flea market. If it's old and discarded, you can find it at the Thresheree. That is, if you can see it behind the booths selling the sort of food that one finds at county fairs across this nation's tender midsection - burgers, dogs, mild barbecue, Fried Things On A Stick, that sort of stuff. Plus ice cream, kettle corn, and so on down the food-typology line until you get to things that straddle the line between food and flea market. That's where the border is, and only the brave go there.

Now so far this seems fairly straightforward, if rather eccentric. But none of it is the main purpose of the Thresheree, which is simply the celebration, glorification, and hero-worship of all things both motorized and agricultural. You thought I was kidding you when I said "parade of tractors," didn't you? Well where you at 3pm today, huh? Not stuck behind several hundred tractors like we were, I'll bet.

Some of those tractors go back to the Roosevelt Administration. The Theodore Roosevelt Administration, not the newer one. They are gasoline powered, diesel powered, coal fired and steam driven. Some of them are about the size of a large Doberman. Others were clearly modeled on railroad locomotives and are roughly 1:1 in scale. Some have metal tires taller than anyone currently playing in the NBA, and are steered by pulling on chains. They all idle at decibel levels approaching ship collisions. And they come in a variety of colors in much the same way that regimental flags do. Do not, under any circumstances, engage a tractor partisan on the merits of his (almost always "his") preferred tractor provider versus the other ones. There are John Deere people, International Harvester people, Allis-Chalmers people, Massey-Ferguson people, and so on, and never shall they agree on anything other than that the rest are all just wasting your time.

Naturally, we had to ride one.

This was not as exciting for Kim as it is for the rest of us, since she had to do this for real on her grandfather's farm growing up, but for me - city boy that I am - and for the girls, it was a novelty. Bales of hay were abused, but we had a good time.

Other engine-driven, smoke-belching things of note included a four-story tall coal-fired and steam-driven pile driver, which spent a good portion of the day pounding telephone poles into the earth one-eighth inch at a time, an entire warehouse full of industrial flywheels, some of them over nine tons in gross weight, and a functioning calliope that Tabitha did not get to play this year like she did last time. Lauren wanted me to play "Linus and Lucy" on it. I'm not sure if it is even possible to play Vince Guaraldi music on a calliope or what would happen to the time-space continuum if you did, but fortunately this didn't come up either.

Remember when people worried that the new particle physics machine in Europe would cause black holes and destroy the Earth last spring? Really, there are things closer to home that are much more worrisome, folks.

We spent a good part of the day cruising the flea market. The girls are old enough now to appreciate such things, and you never know what you will find. Most of it is aimed at people a lot more handy than I am - there are entire booths with nothing but automobile parts or tractor parts laid out in bins, where the only things I can identify with absolute certainty are the bins - and some of it is so entirely awful that you cannot imagine anyone ever paying for it ever, no matter how many times the universe is replayed. But clearly somebody does, since we see the same stuff every year. Who needs a Confederate-flagged tea cozy, anyway? I always check out the used book stalls and the coin dealers, though I will admit to getting a kick out of seeing toys I recognize from my childhood and glassware I recognize from my grandparents. The girls go for Teh Shiny, though there is also Teh Fuzzy and Teh Silly. All that and what a bargain.

At one end of the park you could make your own brass nametag for a buck - you got a shiny disc of 1mm-thick brass, about an inch and a half across, and they set you down by a bench with some letter punches and hammers and told you to go to it. Amazingly, nobody was hurt.

Before we left, we made our traditional pilgrimage to the coal-fired steam locomotive that pulls its two passenger cars in a grand loop around the entire Thresheree.

If you haven't tried something like this, you should - if only as a reminder of how nice it is to travel these days. You learn, for example, never to wear white clothes while doing this, since everything - everything - gets covered in black cinders. Unless you take the enclosed passenger car, in which case everything gets coated in black smoke. You pays your money, you takes your choice.

And isn't that what this country is all about?

No, don't answer that.

Pride and Prejudice Goeth Before a Fall

I'm about forty pages into Pride and Prejudice right now, which is entirely due to the zombies.

A while back Kim checked out of the library the latest and greatest parody of literature, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. She was so amused by it that she stopped reading and bought her own copy, which arrived this week in the friendly cardboard box with the Amazon logo that says "You can put your life on hold now." I was going to read it too, but when Kim found out that I had not read the actual Jane Austen novel she was just appalled and insisted that I needed to read that first.

A decent point, it must be admitted.

So I put it in the queue, right after the book on the history of the stone walls of New England. Really - I have this book. It was given to me by someone I met through the course of one of my many jobs - a fellow history nerd, it turned out - and it ended up being more interesting than you'd think. Plus, as the review on the inside cover said, if you're going to have one book on this subject, this is the one to have. This of course raises the question of just how many books on this subject there are, as well as the related question of how one would judge the literary and scholarly merits of each book against the others.

It's a complicated and cut-throat business, writing about stone walls.

I finished the book on stone walls this evening, and - being incapable of not having at least one book in progress at all times - immediately picked up Pride and Prejudice, which Kim had in a magnificent red-leather-bound and gilt-edged edition. It even has pictures of the main characters, done in the sketchbook style of the time.

I find myself in somewhat of a bind.

I have never been much of a fan of middle-class Victorian comedies of manners, mostly because the characters just make me want to smack them with a dead fish and tell them to relax. The Victorian middle class may well have been necessary for the industrial revolution, but other than that they were pretty much a disaster. A well-dressed disaster, granted, and scrupulously polite, but a disaster nonetheless.

So if I end up liking this book, I will be forced to revise my opinion (about the comedies, not necessarily about the Victorian middle class), which is always painful and will deprive me of many comedic possibilities of my own. Say this about the Victorian middle class, say that they are a target-rich environment for the satirist. I can see why people would introduce zombies into their world.

On the other hand, if I don't end up liking this book, I will stand accused of going in with a closed mind predisposed to not liking this book and why did I even bother and what a low, uncouth and hopelessly uncultured person am I.

I'm trying to keep an open mind, therefore. I have decided to blog about it as I go, in the hopes that this keeps me honest.

So far, so good, though in all honesty I cannot tell if anything has happened yet.

A rich, eligible bachelor has moved into the village. There has been much dancing, much social maneuvering, and more than an avalanche of words regarding marriage, social climbing, and the relative characteristics of young women among the Bennett family. Jane is sleeping off a cold and Mr. Darcy is being insufferably Romantic. Nothing has exploded. Indeed, other than in the minds and imaginations of the characters, nothing much has happened at all. This may be the point, however.

I will have to explore further.

Seriously, no. Just, no.

I have just about had it with the radical right wing of American politics.

I've stayed quiet through the health care "debate," which as far as I can tell has consisted of one side saying, "The health care system in this country needs reform and here is how we think it ought to be done" and the other side saying "WHAAAAARGLBLE! Death panels! Rationing! Communists! AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

I've stayed quiet through the whole "Birther" thing, mostly because it's hard to speak when laughing so hard at the obvious insanity and desperation of those people.

I stayed quiet during the recent Supreme Court nomination process, as one wingnut after another spouted bald-faced lies and contradicted their own statements from when Bush Lite nominated his justices. Odd how people who insist that the President's wishes should be respected on principle shift their principles when the President changes.

But today it hit closer to home, and I'm tired of it.

Today Lauren came home with an "opt-out" form that would allow me to have her skip watching President Obama's address to the nation's school children. They had an "alternative activity" planned instead, should I choose to send her there.

Say what?

Let me get this straight:

The President of the United States will be addressing students across the country, and attendance isn't required? There are more important "alternative activities" that take precedence over this? I am allowed to have my child remain ignorant rather than have her educated in the schools?

Honestly, it makes me want to holler.

There is no rational reason for this. All it says to me is that the Irreconcilable Right - the same idiots who cheered when the governor of Texas threatened to secede rather than accept the freely expressed will of the American people; the same six-fingered morons who think Sarah Palin is on to something with the whole "death panel" thing; the same anti-Constitutional lowlifes who applauded the use of torture and warrantless searches - is now dictating policy to my public schools.

First of all, the governor of Texas should be tried for treason, Sarah Palin should be marooned on the Island of Misfit Toys with the rest of her imaginary pals, and the Bush Administration officials who approved of those unConstitutional and disgraceful policies? Don't even get me started.

More to the point, however, I find it utterly appalling that there are people so proud of being ignorant that they would keep their children similarly ignorant and seek to do the same with mine.

Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, people, this is a historic moment. When the President - any President, even one with whom you have serious policy disagreements - speaks to you, you listen. You take it as a civics lesson. You discuss with your children what you agree with and what you don't. That's called "education." Live it. Learn it. Get used to it.

But no, we can't have that. Our schools must allow the ignorant to stay ignorant.

I. Do. NOT. Think. So.

I have my children in public schools - schools funded by State and Federal tax dollars - in part because I want them to become educated citizens of this country. I want them to rub shoulders with people who are different than they are, so they don't grow up confusing "normal" with "familiar" the way so many fools do in our country. I want them to understand how this country is supposed to work - that there is a Constitution, one that very carefully separated out church and state, one that provided a balance of powers to make sure that no one person could rule without checks. I want them to know what it means to think, to analyze, and to question, and I WANT THEM TO DO IT. I want them to respect the office of the President, no matter what they think of its occupant.

All this is over and above the curriculum.

If I wanted ignorant sheep, I'd send them to private school where they would be surrounded by people just like themselves, indoctrinated into a single black-and-white worldview, and never exposed to anything that might call that constricted view into question. As a college professor, I see a lot of students with this background. They don't last long that way - either they grow out of it, or they drop out of school and vote conservative.

Not all conservatives are like this. I've known quite a few who have well-thought-out positions, who are very good at analyzing information and who can defend their positions using reality-based arguments. I like those people. I disagree with them most of the time, but they force me to think about my own positions long and hard, and sometimes one or the other of us - follow me here - actually changes our mind on something, based on the superior evidence and arguments of the other person. That's how it's supposed to be.

But appallingly that is not how it often is.  And in my experience it has almost invariably been the right-wing rather than the left that is incapable of dealing with anything outside of their own narrow views. 

Such people should not be allowed near the educational process, which by definition involves the challenging of one's own views.

I'm sorry, but the whole notion that students should opt out of hearing the President speak directly to them is a disgrace, and the people who came up with this policy should be dipped in honey and sent on a ten-mile hike through the nearest forest. If I'm feeling charitable, I may wait up to half an hour before releasing the bottle flies.

Happy Birthday to Blog!

Great googly moogly. I've been doing this for a year.

Today marks the One Year Anniversary of this blog. I have beaten the odds, apparently - somewhere I read that the vast majority of blogs have exactly four posts, spread out over three months:

1. Here I am! I will set the online world on fire with my thoughts and incisive writing!
2. Sorry for the delays! Life is busy and I'll get back to this soon!
3. I've got some good stuff waiting and I'll post it soon, really!
4. Here is a picture of my cat.

But not me!

Well, there are cat pictures here, but that can't be helped. It is teh Intarweebs after all and such things are required. One of my favorite series of commercials was when Dennis Leary was fronting for some motor oil company and doing so with his trademark snark. In one of them he starts in on the whole "internet" thing (what did this have to do with motor oil? who knows...), complaining that after billions of dollars of investment and infrastructure, what are people doing with it? Posting pictures of their cats. And an old man sitting at his computer looks over his glasses at Leary and says, "Do you know what the margin is on cat pictures, slick?" So, yes, there are cat pictures here.

And stories! And photos of loved ones! And news, updates and opinions! No motor oil, though it could happen. You can never tell.

I'm enjoying this blog. I get to tell stories and offer opinions and generally write myself into corners and see if I can get back out - what's not to like?

So happy birthday to 4 Quarters, 10 Dimes! I think this deserves a celebration. Borders, here I come.

Breakfast from 0 to 60 in 5.8 Seconds Flat

My breakfast has that nice “new car” smell to it.

Our old toaster oven has been slowly dying over the last few weeks. Not that this should have been a surprise, since we got it in our Pre-Kids incarnations and have used it pretty much every day ever since.  It owes us nothing. 

The last straw was when the right side of the heating element went dark, so we ended up with meals where the left was well prepared but the right was mushy, formless and distasteful, much like American politics these days. That’s fine in Washington DC but it doesn’t make for good bagels.

So we went out and got a new toaster oven.

It’s snazzy. It’s sleek. It has multiple knobs, each of which has to be set to exactly the proper place before toasting can occur. And it has a feature where the toast rack pulls out a bit when you open the door, so you don’t have to reach all the way in to get your breakfast, toasting your knuckles in the process. I like this feature. It is, in fact, the one thing I insisted on when we started out toaster oven search. I’m a happy bagel-toaster these days.

Except that the whole thing smells like my local Chevy-Pontiac-Olds-Ford-Saturn-Chrysler-Dodge-Hummer-DeLorean-Tucker-REO-Nash-Lockheed-Martin dealership showroom whenever you make anything, a quality that gets imparted into my bagels and which does not really go well with poppyseeds.

Mmmmmmm, poppy seeds.

I will never pass a drug test, mostly because my bagel habit makes me look like an opium addict.

I suppose this fragrant period will pass once all the parts have baked a while, and then I can go back to my bagels in peace. Until then we just live with it and are having a very good time playing with the knobs and seeing if we can get the sunroof to open.

The highway mileage is fantastic.

The Cycle Begins Anew

School started today.

At least it did for Tabitha and Lauren. Home Campus doesn't get truly up and running until tomorrow, but Not Bad President Elementary opened its doors in earnest at 8:15 sharp this morning.

We've been getting ready for this for a while now.

We have scoured the emporia of Our Little Town for pencils, erasers, folders, paper, and other effluvia of modern primary education not provided by the grudging tax dollars of the community.

We went to NBPE last Thursday evening, along with several hundred other parents, and stood in long lines scattered all across the school in order to turn in reams of paperwork and more than a few checks for various things - milk money, lunch money, yearbook money, assignment notebook money, fees, entitlements, tithes, feudal dues and assessed liens, all of which require separate checks. And no fair combining kids on one check, either - separate fees, separate kids, separate checks.

NBPE must get some kind of kickback from the check-printing places.  I should certainly hope so, anyway, although they must not have gotten much of a deal since we had to go buy all that effluvia.  Graft is a skill, people - you have to work at it.

Kim and the girls spent most of the weekend printing off labels and affixing them to each separate item of effluvia, one after the other including individual tissues, piling the labeled bits and pieces into containers, and stacking the containers like cordwood in my office for handy reference and transportation.

I went in to NBPE on Monday to meet with Tabitha's teacher and go over basic food allergy procedures - a ritual we go through every fall. It's part of the trade that allows us to avoid homeschooling.  Mr. B seemed pretty okay with it. He brought in the mixes he uses for the cupcakes and frosting that he passes out during the year and had me check them, and he saved a grapefruit from anaphylactic shock by jabbing it with an expired Epi-pen - it helps to get the feel of a real one, as they do pack more of a punch than you'd think and you don't want them bouncing off when you're trying to administer them. Afterward, I took the opportunity to deliver all of the various bags and containers of labeled effluvia to both Tabitha and Lauren's class. Next year I'm renting a mule.

All that remained, really, was to get the girls themselves in place.

Tabitha is an experienced hand at all this by now, being a Big Fourth Grader. She calmly picked out her outfit and got her stuff ready, and she was set. For Lauren, there is still the excitement of it all. She's headed into First Grade, which is still an Exciting Grade with no small amount of Fear And Trepidation as well.

But she had her outfit picked a week ago.

Psych!  You can't really tell what their outfits were in that picture. So sorry.

It was cold here this morning - in the 40s, though it warmed up to the low 70s by the afternoon - so future generations will just have their sweatshirts and sweaters to judge things by. Trust me, though, there were cute outfits under there.

We slid right into our old routines, which were right where we left them in June, next to the back porch. Alarms. Clothes. Breakfast. Hair. Aimless milling about. Panicked rush at the last minute. Arrival just in the nick of time. Yep, nothing's changed.

Tabitha, as befits her advanced years, wanted a more dignified send off this year. So we did our goodbyes at home or on the sidewalk outside of the school and it was only purely coincidental that our path to Lauren's door took us past the fourth grade door, really it was. Lauren still wanted us to hang out with her until she went in, and we were glad to do that. Soon she will be a Big Fourth Grader too and we won't even get out of the car when we drop them both off, but for now we get hugs and waves goodbye as she marched bravely off to the wilderness of First Grade.

A whole new year of learning awaits!  For all of us.