tuckova

in a minor key

I recently was led to the statistic that 15% of Americans self-declare as atheist or "no god" or "agnostic". FIFTEEN. That's huge. And while I realize that religion is a choice, whereas other groupings (race, sex, sexual preference) are not, still, 15% is a sizable minority. And I found myself picturing a future in which...

Atheist Eye for the Christian Guy...Five fabulous atheists, experts in the fields of logic, debate, reasoning and skepticism, are unleashed upon a Christian whose friends or loved ones believe he needs to be a bit less... righteous. The guy is trained to think for himself, gets a good set of books to read, and acquires a sense of humor! Note: He's still going to be a Christian, he's just not going to be annoying!

The Compounds is an animated situation comedy focusing on the lives of the Freethink family. Elementary-school aged atheist brothers Sartre and Atticus Freethink have been moved by their Granddad Robert from their university town in the northest to the quiet, almost completely Christian suburb of Woodcrest, Alabama. Less controversial than the comic strip that inspired it, the Compounds nevertheless raises some hackles... and some laughter!!

The A Word is a television drama series on Showtime that portrays the apathy, ambivalence, and anger of a group of atheist and agnostic people and their acquaintances in Austin.

Like any other minority group, atheists will also be given token roles on major television shows, providing comic relief for the most part, but also providing touching insights into the subtle (and not-so-subtle!) challenges faced by atheists. In one particularly memorable episode, the atheist doctor on whatever the hit medical drama is will reveal to the other doctors that in fact it is offensive to atheists when doctors talk about heaven, and maybe he'll even add that this is why he became a doctor, because seeing the poor little atheist kids grow up without the false promise of an afterlife has something something something. Still hammering out the details. In real life, the actor who portrays the atheist will have "candid" pictures of himself taken going in and out of some place of worship or another. Alternately, the atheist character will be played by an atheist, who will then be assumed to speak for all atheists everywhere whenever she opens her mouth. There will be a big fuss about how she was hired entirely for her acting ability and not to fill some "quota", which will be entirely true since there is no quota to ensure that what you see on your screen bears any relationship to the world you actually live in.

eventually: Ithaca

stately plump anne tuckova
i've been not terribly happy with myself lately and the rainy weather early this month was a factor but not a cause. it's better now, getting better, but i was ripped with conflict between a need for drastic change and an equally dramatic unwillingness to act. i gave bartleby a run for his title in my absolute disinclinations; if you could win a race by taking steps away, i would have won.

came from the stairhead
winning by distraction, by making games for myself in which getting one thing done counts as success. on advice i went hunting for wellingtons but failed and so decided to buy more socks, since my knee-high striped socks last winter were the highlight of my personal sartorial season. also you can gain and lose a lot of weight before your socks don't fit. i went to a sock store, by which i mean a store entirely devoted to socks, in which they had no knee-high striped socks, no knee-high solid-colored socks in my size, also no striped ankle socks in my size, and then i gave up asking what else wasn't behind the counter and came home and threw out all the socks that were holey, or vaguely frayed or even vaguely ugly, anyway, so that if i ever find socks i won't hesitate to buy them. then i gave away or recycled all the clothes until i had it down to two boxes. the balloon has to get off the ground first, and then you can see where you're going.

bearing a bowl of lather
i am working on being the person i want to be, a person who splashes in puddles instead of weeps into them, a person who looks for the rainbow, a person who smiles randomly. friday i was snapping my fingers in rhythm with my footsteps and i thought: as with everything, it's just a matter of continuing to pick up one foot and move it forward.

a mirror and a razor lay crossed
i got offered a job teaching the graduating class at a high school (two hours a week). i used to be a good teacher but some years ago i tanked hard and decided my mojo was gone forever. it may be, but the school needs a teacher. i don't ever want to return to teaching full-time, even part-time is too much, but i need, i think, to start scouting schools in person (on behalf of squire) and this is one way. also i always liked 12th graders. also i think being forced to put on shoes (with socks! must go hunting before next week!) once a week for two hours will probably be good for me.

summer 1984

That summer I had a job at an elementary school helping out with organizing books and cleaning classrooms for the coming year. I put things by subject and then alphabetically by author like any good librarian's daughter. I hated that you knew I worked there, that you might show up with your stupid car, with the engine throbbing and some idea of where we might go. And I would go; I went because it was easier than making up reasons why not to.

And I hated you enough to be honest. I told you I didn't like you and that I wouldn't like you and still you came around, puppy eyes and hopeful. What were you doing, panting after a teenage girl who already preferred to be alone. I hadn't had my heart broken yet but I knew what it would feel like and I wanted none of it. I went to Simon and Garfunkel to express myself and wrote the lyrics for I Am A Rock on the back of a receipt I found in your glove compartment and still you wouldn't go away. At work, I put tape around broken bindings, swept out the cobwebs, and thought everything was a metaphor.

You were polite to my parents and they liked you which didn't work the way I planned and I tore away in my anger to get into that car of yours and drive and drive, listen to the radio. You weren't even interesting enough to like music. One day I went to your house (who lives with his parents when he's over twenty?) to meet your parents. I thought I was going to meet them, I even prepared my face. And the dog stood outside the door and barked and howled. You thought I knew what I was doing. People thought I was running from something but in fact I'd been backing away ever since I learned to walk. You told me it wasn't like it was something I hadn't done before. In fact it was like nothing I'd done before. Afterwards you let me go, past the dog and its dripping saliva, and back to your damn car and back to my house where I couldn't tell them anything. Don't call me again, I said. Don't come here again ever. I said "go away" and I finally meant it.

I think it's shortly after that that I cut off all my hair, but this may be poetic license. I know there was the scene where you pulled up in front of the school and I told you to go away and the principal came out and I made like I didn't know you. You peeled out of the parking lot and the principal looked at me and I shrugged. How could I explain the things that seemed so out of my control that I couldn't even name them.

So I was back to taking the bus and walking. And then school started again, and my new job was grading papers, and some teacher told me "Go away" was a fragment, and I told her it was a complete sentence. Complete because YOU was implied. I got fired. I was right, though.

real life phone conversation

PERSON 1: Heyy..... are you drinking?
PERSON 2: Well. Yes. A glass of wine. Why?
1: I think that's more than a glass I'm hearing.
2: What, am I all slurry?
1: No, I can just tell. It's like how if I were Norwegian, I could detect your Swedish accent.
2: Ooh, am I doing that e.nun.ci.ate thing?
1: A bit. That was so not one glass of wine.
2: It was!
1: What, a water glass?
2: Well... yeah.

some photos from the cotthut last weekend are up.

2/44 = 1/22

Two weeks of school down. Squire's already lost his locker key and missed a couple homework assignments, but he seems to be holding onto the lunch card, which is impressive. And I think the school supplies thing went okay. Ah, the school supplies thing: I promised Julia I'd tell.

In June, the teachers hand out a list of supplies. This list is all the things the students will need in addition to the previous years' supplies, so you have to remember what all that stuff was (i.e.: the special little white shoes for gym class that became cottage shoes in the summer? remember you need to replace those now; they're not on the list) and also get the stuff that's on the list new this year ( i.e.: four paintbrushes: three large and round, one flat. The large and round ones have to be different sizes, which you didn't know, so Day1 you'll be back at the store getting different sizes). And you also have this stack of notebooks to buy, different sizes and different lines. And even different pens with different ink colors. And each notebook is supposed to have the kid's full information on it, AND a plastic cover. No store is going to have all the notebooks, all the right sized covers, all the pens. So the week before school starts is a mass of parents running around the stationery stores and already resenting the school for all of this, the purpose of which is as far as I can tell to rob you of the last week of summer.

This year I asked Friar to do the shopping with Squire, because last year I nearly had a nervous breakdown in the "tea egg and sugar company" trying to find 6 each of four different kinds of notebooks with the corresponding plastic covers. When facing a nervous breakdown: Delegate. They went to three different stores and still didn't get everything, but finally we got the whole list checked off.

And then in September you drop the kids off at the school, marching bravely through the doors in their new backpacks (when Squire started first grade, his backpack was full of so many supplies that he actually tipped over backwards), and 45 minutes later they pop back out. And the list has changed over the summer, it has always changed, and this year I realized that a Clever Parent would have waited til Day 1, asked for the list on the 45 minute day, and then gotten the stuff, because the first week of school is a JOKE and I feel like a PD Eastman dog: The parents are going around and around. "Go around again!"

Anyway, two weeks. We have the tutor again, so that's going well. And we're remembering this year that life exists beyond school. Last night we played Catan, and Squire and I worked to sing all staccato like Regina Spektor and we worked on dinner together, because it's fun, and because I maintain the hope that through cooking he'll come to appreciate a more balanced diet. Thursday night as Squire piled his plate with the third helping of pasta and cheese (our ironic nod to the Italian pasta strike), bypassing the homemade primavera sauce and the juicy chunks of chicken for which the pasta was supposed to be a side dish, I realized that he eats like a college student. First, there's the stunning quantities, with no parallel weight gain. Also, there's the fixation on white foods. In college, you gravitate towards white food cause it's easy to cook, but Squire genuinely loves the stuff. Toast! Awesome, my favorite! Pasta and white cheese, mmmmm. RAMEN NOODLES ALWAYS YUMMY. Maybe when he goes to college he'll have a love affair with vegetables just to continue in his bizarrosity.

We're doing well, I hope you are, too.

Bossy!

There's some bit of nonsense at the end of some of Squire's latest audiobooks that just burns me up. It says that it's important for kids to be read to... and that in today's busy world, blahblahblah, audiobooks are just as good as a parent reading to a child. In today's busy world on what planet, I'd like to know. Audiobooks are great --and I certainly appreciate Jim Dale for his ability to read Harry Potter and the Gobbledygook over and over again, because once was fine, but once was enough-- but they're not the same as reading aloud.

Now, I understand that not everyone is the fantastic reader I am. I am to reading what Jules Winnfield is to a foot massage: I don't be ticklin' or nothing! But I do not read to my son because I love the sound of my own voice (shut up!). I read to him because:

1. It's fun to do things together. It's fun to watch movies together, learn things together, go on trips together, because we can talk about it afterwards. How cool was it when Will got his wish of snow for his birthday? It wasn't what we expected at all, was it?

2. It's good to see how he thinks. I think it's important for me as a parent to observe how information gets processed, and to guide the processing when it's tangled, and sit back and relish it when it is as clear as only a child's processing can be. I get more out of a book when I read it to him because I see it in his eyes and mine at the same time.

3. It is good for me as a reader to read aloud. Words sound different, and sentences sing or they don't, and it's different than reading in my head. I would have missed some of the magic of "The Subtle Knife" if I'd read it to myself, and I'm glad I've had someone to read to.

4. If he has questions while I'm reading to him, he can ask. This might not be As True for girls as for boys, but it's been my observation that it's easier to talk about something if you stumble over it together. It's true for vocabulary definitely, and also for storytelling.

5. It is fun to experience things that are generally solitary together. So much of what we experience is solitary, even if we're all in it together-- reading together is like watching a television show where both people are watching the same show at the same moment, and both people can hit the pause button whenever they want to be witty or insightful or confused. I like the remote control in the middle of the couch, and I like reading as a companionable activity.

Please understand: I like audiobooks. Kids have the ability to listen to the same thing over and over again (CrazyFrog, I hate you so much) and it's been great for Squire to have that available to him, because I wouldn't do it. I understand that in "today's busy world" we sometimes can't take time for everything that we feel we ought to do for our kids. I really do get that and I also understand that I am privileged to have the time to read to my kid. But I think that if you don't, you're hurting... not so much the kid, because whatevs, kids are tough. But you're hurting yourself. And I'm angry that these audiobooks, in the interest of marketing audiobooks, imply that they're more able to do your job than you are. Delegate the housekeeping, delegate the lice removal. But really, why delegate the fun stuff? And reading is fun.