Both Sides of the Fence

Pursuing happiness

2008-07-05T01:29:00Z

Happy Independence Day—whatever that means to you. Because when it comes to history, there’s what we know to be true, what we think to be true, and what we or someone else has invented to support what we wish to be true.

Nobody really knows what Thomas Jefferson and his pals meant when they changed the text of the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress from “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence.

In 1884, the Supreme Court declared it meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment.

That’ll satisfy the conservatives among us. But it’s not good enough for me. I like to think there’s another level of emotional fulfillment involved, one that comes with following the leadings of your own particular spirit, with being compassionate and practicing "the habit of small kindness."

For my grandmother, pursuing happiness meant fleeing unhappiness. Not outrunning pogroms or famine, but leaving behind a life that nearly buried her in misery.

The details, a mystery before this, fell out of a small booklet in my mother’s files yesterday.

“Her classmates wondered why Miss Violet Dooley was not in class, having no excused absence,” the tiny, undated newspaper clipping gossiped. “When she returned to school the next day, it was learned that she had been joined in matrimony in Sioux Falls to Mr. Selmer Nelson of Canton.”

That’s not the happy part. That’s the start of the misery part.

Four months pregnant at 17 or 18 in 1921, Violet did what other girls did when they were “caught.” She married my grandfather, a handsome, taciturn farmer. I’ve changed the names, not from shame but to evade identity pirates.

For a couple months, she tried. Her Bride’s Diary has empty pages for gifts and parties, but there are budget entries: $12 for groceries that first month, $1.38 for clothing, $.55 for “investment,” $.45 for entertainment. After May, no more entries.

The family legend is that Selmer’s mother, my great-grandmother, made Violet’s life miserable. Hid her violin, set her to sewing curtains. The curled recipes cut from packages that Violet stuck in the diary are recipes no one with any domestic notions would ever have saved. She was an artist and a dreamer.

In August, a few isolated entries start in my mother’s baby book. Like the marriage, they began in Sioux Falls. “Baby weighed 8 pounds; 25 inches.” That can’t be right, but it’s what’s there.

“Baby is real good. Sleeps through the night.”

Then this, under Baby’s First Trip, apparently in November or December: “She is enjoying her journey to the coast with the Dooleys: Jimmy Schaeffer drove the car for Papa.”

Violet’s mother, father, and sisters rescued her, I think. They pulled up roots and drove her far away to start a new life, settling in Portland. In that same compressed single year was a divorce and another marriage, this time to Jimmy. The couple moved to California to live happily ever after, which turned out to be all of a year. Then my grandmother, who I hope was happy now, died suddenly. Jimmy drove the tow-headed baby girl, now walking, north. With her grandparents and aunts and neighbors raising her, she was a wild and happy child.

It’s hard to imagine the kind of unhappiness that would lead to such radical acts. But I do understand the love of family that allowed Violet’s kin to wrap themselves around her in a time of great need and do what they believed necessary to help her.

One of America’s great gifts to us is the freedom to follow through on our inspirations to acts of compassion. To go where our hearts lead us--in pursuit of property, in pursuit of vocation, in pursuit of what it takes to do more than just survive. Even if no one understands.

Becoming a Badger: some things get better

2008-06-28T01:49:00Z

Once upon a time, my high school friend Vicki, who'd gone to Brigham Young for college because it was the cheapest school with great skiing, called me and asked, "What are you doing next year?" I didn't have any good ideas, so when she said, "Let's go to Madison," I answered "Sure. Why not?"

I can't remember if we drove there in her brother's VW Beetle or took the Badger Bus. But we got there, enrolled, and wandered around until we saw an apartment building on Francis Street with a for-rent sign. The manager gave us the names of two girls who were looking for roommates, we talked to one (Mary Hill of Wauwatosa, it turns out), and we signed the lease. A month later we came back, big brother Jack and a U-haul in tow, and moved into The Surf.

Next step: stand in line for what seemed like a couple of days in the stock pavillion or some such place to sign up for the few classes left after everyone had gotten first dibs.

The message was a subliminal one: Well, you're here. Good luck. Sink or swim; it's up to you.

We thought it was pretty great.

Now Geo's going, but what a different world. There's a sophisticated 2-day orientation, Student Orientation Advising and Registration (SOAR). At the end, you walk away with a schedule and maybe, like Geo, a sweet deal on a Mac laptop. They even let you bring your parents--mainly because parents have changed more than the students. While the kids are off with troops of cheerful guides and advisors in red shirts, the parents are being gently deconditioned by warm and experienced professors. "When your student calls to ask you about their schedule," the charmingly crusty retired bursar tells you, "DON'T answer."

The whole room shifts as people try on a new idea; let the kids float with a different flotation device. The school isn't going to let them sink unless they really want to.

Some of it felt like alternate reality. There are no rotary blades on this single parent's back, and I was not the extremely involved parent for whom much of this excellent program was designed. My kids have been managing themselves for some time, and there was no way Geo would even think of calling me to check on his class choices. For one thing, I don't have a cell phone. I was pretty impressed, though, with the parents who seemed to be ready to learn Korean to help their daughter's new roommate.

But what fun. We met great people from places like Little Chute and Edina. All stayed in Liz Waters, where Geo will be living in fall. Slacker and zealous moms alike were throughly worn out with good will and information by 9 pm. The kids lasted a little longer.

I figure if I stumbled through Madison, Geo will do great. The road is much better prepared for him. And in spite of -- or maybe because of -- my limitations, he's ready to roll.

An inconvenient truth: authenticity is rare

2008-06-20T17:46:00Z

Although the major news media are ignoring it, a recent news release on Al Gore’s energy consumption is propagating madly through smaller publications and right-wing blogs. The point of the press release, from the right-wing think tank Tennessee Center for Policy Research, is that the Gore family consumed an enormous amount of energy--more, not less, than last year. And he’s a big old hypocrite.

I don’t have a problem with pointing out the huge carbon footprint of Gore, who preaches responsible energy use and conservation. But the gleeful furor over his hypocrisy is self-indulgent and not very useful.

Authenticity is important. Being honest about who you are is the basis of trust. Unfortunately, we’re not very objective in considering claims of authenticity. And the media don’t give us the information we need even if we want to work a little at informing ourselves. Instead, they pass along a lot of junk without vetting it.

Associated Press writer Liz Sidoti calls the race between Barack Obama and John McCain an authenticity contest. Obama just lost big points for reneging on his promise to have a publicly funded campaign. Now he’s foregoing the $85 million he’d get in order to jump onto unlimited fundraising bandwagon.

That’s a concerning precedent. How should we think about changes people make in the face of new—or newly understood—reality? The ethical question here is does the need to change the path of American government for the greater good outweigh the need to follow a high-ground decision and be true to your beliefs? And the strategic question is can you win if you try something different, or do you need to stick with what seems to be proven?

I think Obama should have stuck to his guns. That would inspire people who want to send Mr. Smith to Washington, and right now there are a lot of us. But does that make him a hypocrite--or a realist?

Of course, McCain is no more authentic that Obama. He has history as a chameleon, and he’s counting on people having short memories about his views on taxes, immigration, oil, special interests, and more. What lets him get by as "the candidate with character" is the failure of the press to report as critically on the facts behind McCain's claims.

That, and our willingness to believe that being a prisoner of war improves someone's character. I know a few POWs, and I will tell you that many are terribly harmed by their experience. Nobility isn't an assured outcome here.

Wonderful and outrageous journalist Matt Taibbi indicts his own profession for cowardice in telling the truth and being authentic:

Courage is a willingness to face real risks—your neck, or at the very least, your job. The journalist with courage would have threatened to resign rather than repeat George Bush's justifications for invasion before it began. I don't remember anyone resigning last winter. The journalist with courage would threaten to quit rather than do a magazine piece about an advertiser's product, his fad diet book or his magic-bullet baldness cure. It happens every day, and nobody ever quits over it.f journalists had courage, they would form unions and refuse to work for any company that made decisions about editorial content based on the bottom line, on profit?

But even if the press did its job with courage, that would leave us responsible for thinking harder about claims, slogans, and more. The responsibility for finding the truth behind the constant repetition of inauthentic information is ours.

Here’s an example of what happens when we don't take responsibility. On June 3, Tabbi was in New Orleans covering McCain.

. . . here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy — who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans?

He interviewed someone named Ron about McCain’s assaults on Obama, which were heartily received by an adoring crowd. It makes for uncomfortable, and telling, reading.

Ron says his problem with Obama is the integrity thing. "He exaggerates too much," Ron says. "He's not honest."

"OK," I say. "What does he exaggerate about?"

"Well, like that time he was saying he had a white mother and a white grandmother," he says.

I ask him how this is an exaggeration.

"Well, he was saying . . ." he begins. "As if that qualifies him to . . ."

Despite my repeated prodding, Ron seems unable or unwilling to say aloud exactly what he means. Finally, his friend Mary, a grave-looking blonde with fierce anger lines around her eyes, jumps in, points a finger and blurts out one of the all-time man-on-the-street quotes.

"Look, you either are or you aren't," she says.

"And he aren't," Ron says, nodding with relief.

Being authentic doesn’t just mean being who we are if we are not very thoughtful or well-informed. It means being trustworthy. To accomplish that, we need to try harder to be better than those we deprecate. Thinking for ourselves requires the courage to discover that we may be wrong sometimes.

Addition: David Brooks wrote a great column about Obama's complexity today. ". . .I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life, all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside. . ."

This just in: Flood brings scams, relief

2008-06-18T21:05:00Z

June 18. Some press releases that might interest you came across my day job desk today.

Emergency food assistance for Milwaukee County flood victims. Governor Doyle announced today that emergency food assistance will be available for residents of Milwaukee and six other counties. However, they only have seven days to apply: the deadline is June 27. If you know someone who has been devastated by the consequences of flooding, let them know they can apply for FoodShare through the county's Department of Health and Human Services. More

Water utility imposters are working the city of Milwaukee. They just might be here, too. The latest scam announced today by Cecilia Gilbert, Department of Public Works, involves people who look official and claim to be investigating floodwater in homes. Usually they work in pairs.

Now's a good time to remind older adults and children in particular to beware of utility worker imposters.

When a utility worker knocks on your door, insist on seeing IDs without opening your door. The legitimate ones will have IDs and are glad to show them. In Milwaukee, call Milwaukee Water Works 414-286-2830 to verify if you are uncertain: in Tosa, you'd probably call the Water Emergency number 414-471-8480 (I called the main number and got a recording, so that seems best. If I'm wrong please let me know). Call police if you suspect an imposter.

And remember: utility personnel never visit homes to collect bills or deliver rebates, inspect plumbing fixtures, or sell products.

The best of schools, the worst of schools?

2008-06-16T06:40:00Z

I just may have shed a few tears Saturday as a bunch of lovely young women (and a few men) in green robes sang "Happy Ending" at Wauwatosa West High School. Still, commencement weekend has been a joyful time. George and I topped it off with gyros at Sts. Helen and Constantine Church tonight. We ran into a beautiful woman who was a student of mine years ago and is now a teacher herself. She says it's my fault, and if that's true I've done one good thing in my life. I bet she's a great one, full of enthusiasm and energy.

And that, plus some heated but polite discussions in the Tosa Town Square about the quality of education and administrative decisions about curriculum and classes, set me to thinking about our family's experiences with the school system here.

I want to thank the district, its teachers and administrators, crossing guard Marge at Underwood and patient Betty Marks at West, and all the rest who helped raise my pretty great kids. The school folks don't think of it that way, but that is what they have done.

There have been some stand-out teachers. Geo and Liz wore golden cords, which means they did better than okay. They also were both accepted at selective private schools, although they decided on state schools. Best of all, they are incredibly solid and well-adjusted people.

But they know they are going to have a lot to overcome in college, because they seldom were really challenged in school. For that, we all share part of the blame; me, the kids, their teachers, and the school district.

The Town Square debates focus on the teaching of reading and math, specifically algebra. Peter Hart's blog already weighed in on the cutting of half the available seats in advanced algebra at Whitman. The underlying question for both is whether a good enough education is good enough, or do we want to give our kids a better shot?

On the good enough side

Parent expectations have changed radically. My parents' generation rarely were involved in kids' school work, and tutors were rare. There wasn't a lucrative industry providing help and enrichment for hefty fees. I don't think there was a demand for it, though there may always have been the need. And yet my cohort, suburban Boomers, were solidly educated. Of course, our parents bemoaned the inferiority of our education and moral character, just as their parents did of them and we do of those who came after us.

Most of us did better in some things than others. The idea was to develop kids who were competent overall. And if they went beyond that, well, that was nice, wasn't it?

Are those who are most disgruntled by the lack of special attention, services, options and so forth suffering from the "keeping up with Joneses factor"? This is the economics notion that as others consume more, we want the same. For us, the Joneses live in Brookfield. They have more Advanced Placement courses, more it seems of just about everything, and their test scores are notably higher than ours.

On the not good enough side

Elmbrook also spends about $1,000 more per pupil each year, according to GreatSchools.net. While there are school districts that "over-perform" for their revenue, like West Allis and ~~Greenfield~~ Greendale, Wauwatosa isn't one of them. Generally, a little more money spent wisely helps.

Does the Elmbrook school district over-invest in its kids, or do we under-invest? That depends on what you believe about fostering "human capital." The magical law of compound interest tells us that investments made early pay big dividends over time. Apparently our neighbors are banking on that.

What are we banking on, if we don't offer advanced math to all the kids who are up to the challenge? Or if we put educational theories and our desire to be right over children's learning--whatever those theories are?

If I think honestly, and that's hard sometimes, I'd say the Tosa schools are 2/3 good, 1/3 not so good. The basis for that formula? Two of my kids had as good an education here as I had at infamous Nicolet. They learned some of the same lessons, including this: you can get by, even do well, with not too much effort. And if you follow the little rules, you can ignore some of the big ones. That's probably true out of school, too. Not the way to thrive, but you can survive. But my first child was almost lost because there wasn't any interest in helping kids who scraped by, even if they showed great promise.

I leave it to you to decide who we cheat if we try to just get by with our kids. But it seems to me that in the battle between the past and the future, the past is winning.

Knowing which way the wind blows

2008-06-13T05:54:00Z

A little after 2:00 this afternoon, tornado sirens went off downtown. I was in a meeting near the top of the Federal Building, and while many of us started shifting around uneasily in our seats, the meeting went on without comment. Finally, someone came in and announced "(the director) would like to remind you that we are at the top of a glass building and you need to go down to the ground floor and away from the windows."

I'm not sure what feeling was greater: relief at being told to actually abide by safety policies or annoyance at the interruption of the meeting. We could have reconvened the meeting in the hallway downstairs, but excitement makes people social. We broke into amiable clusters to chat. The Blackberry enclave was the largest group, all peering down toward their palms like soothsayers, reading the weather radar images thereon and describing the storm's movement from Franklin to the airport. Others were texting friends madly asking what was going on in the outside world.

Now, I know that if we went to our basements every time a tornado watch was announced this week, we'd never get out. But it seems a little odd to ignore the urgency of sirens at the same time we're talking ourselves into a frenzy with every bad weather announcement. My guess is that the people who set the sirens wailing have better information than friend Patty waiting it out in the Art Bar in Riverwest.

When it comes to weather, at least, more data doesn't seem to make us smarter.

Riding the floodwaters

2008-06-09T13:15:00Z

Image from Russ's Picasa web album

Instead of tea leaves, I've been reading the trailings left behind by rising floodwaters. In one species' crisis, it seems, lies another's opportunity. While people are suffering from damage to their material world, plants are getting a chance to spread their progeny into new territory.

The thin sideburns of mostly vegetative debris that mark the highwater points in my neighborhood seem to be dominated by maple leaves. Some have traveled long distances downstream. Or maybe I'm just maple-focused and noticing them more. Baby trees from last year's crop are popping up in even the most carefully tended landscaping mulch--none of which is in my own yard, I hasten to add. I've let my yard go "free," so I don't see the seedlings until they've grown eight feet tall and come tapping at the windows.

If you take a standardized test that asks you how maples transport their seeds and you pick "water" instead of "air" from the answer choices, you'll be marked wrong. But those wings can act as sails and rudders, too. Life is never a simple as multiple choice answers, and the more you observe the harder it is to pick one answer on the tests. Usually, the answer is "usually a, but sometimes b or c, you just never know."

Teaching to those tests leaves a lot out. If you've ever read Michael Pollen's Botany of Desire, you can never see plants in quite the same way. Instead of pawns without will or intention, you see them as entrepreneurs who make use of any means possible to spread their kind throughout the world. You also know that Johnny Appleseed wasn't making farmers happy with the source of apple pie; he was giving them the means to make hard cider, something the settlers appreciated even more. Apples grown from seed are weird and unpredictable, lending themselves best to fermentation.

But back to maple seeds. I wonder if kids today have history with them as some of us do. Growing up in simpler times, we spent countless hours with those little helicopters, twirling them, pasting them on our noses, making tiny dolls with dancing skirts, or just looking through the intricate fiber network of their wings. Nature was a source of delight, occasionally fear, and always wonder.

Can Tosa seize a great opportunity?

2008-05-31T16:17:47Z

I just bought my own home for more than it's worth, and I'm not too upset about it.

How did that happen? About two days after I'd closed on my mortgage refinance, the city's reassessment came through. I'd requested a new tax assessment, knowing that I couldn't possibly sell the house for what the city thought it was worth. The assessor's office responded promptly, without fuss, and the new assessment came it at just about what I'd thought it should -- some $40,000 less than the previous assessment and the real estate appraisal.

All these assessments, the tax appraiser's and the real estate assessor's, are acts of best-guessing by knowledgeable people. Essentially, they are well-researched fiction. Your house is worth what someone decides to pay for it. Right now, that's less than I want, and that's why I refinanced.

Refinancing was part necessity and part an act of faith. Wauwatosa is a great and hugely under-recognized value. Housing prices here never soared to dizzying heights, so the market "correction" won't be as severe as in other places. It's not going to get any cheaper to build houses. And as the cost of fuel -- and everything else -- keeps rising, close-in communities like Tosa that have it all already will look better and better. The far-out suburbs are fast losing their sheen.

But are we proactive enough to make the most of the great opportunities to make Tosa the first place people look to live and locate their businesses? Take a look at Shorewood's website."At the edge of the city and the heart of everything" says it all. Now look at Wauwatosa's. Ours is a good place for residents to get information. But it does nothing to "sell" the city. Nothing to engage the imagination or give people something that says "that looks like my kind of place."

I suppose what we need is a marketing campaign. We don't need to wait for new city plans to be in place before we start to show people that this is where the real center of everything between Milwaukee and Waukesha really is.

The question is, can our leaders see the opportunity to step up what needs to be stepped up (schools, green spaces, and infrastructure) and stride out to lead the parade of people and pocketbooks marching into Tosa?

Voting with your genes

2008-05-28T21:24:46Z

Maybe you thought people turned out to vote because they were passionate about a candidate. Or made rational decisions to vote regularly because their civics teachers convinced them that's what good citizens do. Or their parents trained them to vote.

Turns out your parents have something to do with it, but not because of the way they reared you.

Voting and other political participation is in your genes, it seems. A study by James Fowler and Christopher Dawes to be published in the July issue of the Journal of Politics (and already discussed in the New York Times May 27) even found the two genes that seem to account for voting behavior. And those genes do the job because they have to do with sociability and handling stress. The MAOA gene influences voting activity directly, while the 5HTT gene needs some other social activity (attending church) to make it kick into gear.

If you've got the right versions of the voting genes, you don't get so nervous when people start to bash about in the political arena, even if they are saying rude and hurtful and stupid things. In fact, you may think it's fun. Fowler and Dawes didn't say that, but it sort of follows logically from what they did say.

Bottom line is the sociability factor. When you've got the genes for having the "prosocial" neurochemical process thing going on, you're more likely to "identify as partisans" and form attachments to groups. I'm thinking it has to do with being a fan of any sort. This year church attendance: next year, the researchers might look at season ticket holding.

Both genes have something to do with serotonin absorption. The efficient metabolizer gene variants apparently are like having your own little Prozac manufacturer right in your own little brain.

The church thing is a little fuzzy to me. But the authors seem to say if you've got the right form of the genes and you actively attend church, you're likely to be influenced by political information received there. The religious right seems to have figured that out long ago.

The Times says "If certain genes make us more receptive to political messages, or more or less likely to vote, then we know the next step society must take: Keep the drugs that target the specific genes out of the hands of political consultants."

But in the meantime, if you're running for political office, attend church, hang out with sociable people, go to soccer games, and attach yourself to people who aren't afraid to get a little nasty when it comes to political talk. That's where the voters are.

And were, in Tosa, a few months ago.

Discussion ring now open. Spirited--but not mean-spirted--discussion welcome!

Memorial Day is about remembering our better nature

2008-05-27T02:15:35Z

The terribleness and grandeur of young people going off in waves to fight is the stuff myths are made of. No wonder the rhetoric of war is timeless and nonspecific. No wonder each war seems to blend into the ones before and the ones after.

Today's speech may have been President Bush's best Memorial Day speech yet. He remembered that the day was not about a particular political agenda but about something bigger.

The names of these honored are known only to the Creator who delivered them home from the anguish of war -- but their valor is known to us all. It's the same valor that endured the stinging cold of Valley Forge. It is the same valor that planted the proud colors of a great nation on a mountaintop on Iwo Jima. It is the same valor that charged fearlessly through the assault of enemy fire from the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Iraq. It is the valor that has defined the armed forces of the United States of America throughout our history.

Some of us remember that engagement in the war in Iraq bears no resemblance to the American Revolution or World War II. But we'll let that pass as we honor those who live and die with valor--or without it. It's only at a remove that we see the glory in death. Some of us don't see it even then.

On this Memorial Day, I stand before you as the Commander-in-Chief and try to tell you how proud I am at the sacrifice and service of the men and women who wear our uniform. They're an awesome bunch of people and the United States is blessed to have such citizens.

At this point, there was a standing ovation. One women even rose to shout "Whoo-hoo," so inspired was she by this stirring speech, according to the Orange County Register.

It's easy to get people going these days. One hundred and fourteen years ago, it took more. Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. took seven pages of speechifying to inspire people:

But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us. But, above all, we have learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord, and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is his to command is to bring to his work a mighty heart.

(Note the source of the title of the Mariane Pearl book/Angelina Jolie movie A Mighty Heart.)

I ask no apology of you who think it's unfair to point out the President's communication limitations. If you're the Leader of the Free World and Commander in Chief, you ought to be able to stick with the speech writer's art and rise above "awesome bunch." You might want to point out that life should be a spirited and passionate activity for all of us, not only the soldiers among us.

After the speech, Bush met with important advisors from a recent trip to the Middle East: five NCAA head football coaches. Tommy Tuberville, Auburn University, had met a soldier who'd lost part of his leg to a roadside bomb.

"I have kids their age and I'd like my kids to meet some of those people. Every one of them look you in the eye, shake your hand, tell them about their mission, what they're doing. ... Our college kids lead a pretty nice life and those kids are over there serving our country and just doing a great job," the Register reported.

Awesome, coach!

I wonder what Tuberville's kids would make of Holmes' second famous Memorial Day speech in 1895:

In this snug, over-safe corner of the world we need (the message of living life for a purpose), that we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempstuous untamed streaming of the world, and in order that we may be ready for danger. We need it in this time of individualist negations. . . revolting at discipline, loving fleshpots, and denying that anything is worthy of reverence--in order that we may remember all that buffoons forget. We need it everywhere and at all times. For high and dangerous action teaches us to believe as right beyond dispute things for which our doubting minds are slow to find words of proof. Out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism. The proof comes later, and even may never come.

Soldiers understand that. So should we all.

And not only for going to war.

Food frugality

2008-05-22T21:09:50Z

Tosan Nancy Stohs, food editor at the Journal Sentinel, recently published food shopping tips from a financial counselor. And a good idea, now that food is going the way of gasoline, price-wise.

I can't match the financial counselor's $3 dinner/day/person . (And to tell you the truth, I don't believe she does it, either). But I'm getting better. I’m experimenting with my own approach, the $1.99 rule. Don’t buy anything that costs more than $1.99 a pound at the grocery store.

If you nudge it up to $2, you can have your strawberries and eat 'em, too. Shopping at Sendiks (the closest stores to my house) and applying the rule, we’ve been putting together meals with said strawberries plus green beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, brown rice, and the like.

I had to cheat on two items. Anchovies were almost a buck for 2 ozs. But a little goes a long way. The big surprise was bread. Four water rolls, lots of air, weighing in around half a pound, set me back $2.20. I’m having to regroup on bread: flour, water, yeast, and salt are bubbling away right now at home and will become a loaf for less than a dollar by nightfall.

The most successful $1.99 a pound or less meal was soup: beets, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, red cabbage, onions, and a few assorted odds and ends from the crisper drawer. Add some honey and vinegar, a dollop of sour cream later. Heavenly color and good for you, too.

What are you doing for good eats on the cheap?

Dinner at the Mekong Cafe

2008-05-17T16:03:00Z

Friends Susan, Steph and I decided to skip McBob's fish fry during our latest Friday Night on North venture. McBob 's has been shaky in the fish quality control department since they expanded. Besides, we now have the chance to dine on "one magical river (with) three enchanted cuisines." The Mekong Cafe at 5930 W. North Avenue features food from Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. Food maven Willard Romantini always tells me not to eat at a restaurant during the first three months, but in this location, if you wait that long the business might have vanished.

This one's a keeper. Despite being new and still under redecoration, the place is pleasant, our service was charming, and the food was good even before the owners have worked out the inevitable kinks in restaurant start-up. What a great addition to the Almost-Tosa restaurant scene!

Skip the appetizer sampler unless you're really big on deep fried food. Next time I might try the Yum Nua (char broiled meat with cucumber, onions, and tomato in lime juice and Thai herbs). Better still at a restaurant with southeast Asian cuisine, start with one of the astonishing soups (or make it your whole meal). Mekong has the expected Tom Yum and Pho, but the house soup features quail eggs and sounds intriguing. There's also Kow-Laow, beef soup with "secret ingredients." Who could resist?

The standout dish at our table was the Pud Kee Mow, or Drunken Man Noodles with beef. Lovely fat noodles, lots of peapods and fresh basil leaves, and densely flavorful dark sauce based on hot chili paste. Medium hot was hot enough for us, and we all like it hot.

I had the Mussamun Curry with chicken, potato, and carrots. Lovely flavor, generous portion, and peanuts added a nice texture contrast. But next time I'd go for something with a green vegetable in it, just because I like green vegetables.

I don't remember what Susan had. Something with chicken and veggies: she pronounced it delicious and ate the whole thing. I've never seen her that do before.

This is an adventuresome menu with interesting things most of us haven't seen before. The Dumpling Stir Fry has crab, shrimp, and fish dumplings with asparagus, black mushrooms, zucchini, onion, and water chestnut. You can get a deep fried quail with papaya salad, dishes with homemade Vietnamese sausage, and Purple Sticky Rice Pudding or deep fried taro for dessert. f you've got a timid eater in the bunch, you can't go wrong with Pud Thai.

We had Thai beer and jasmine tea. There's also a short wine list. And of course you can order that delicious and caloric Thai iced coffee or tea and the more entertaining Bubble Tea in mango, taro, avocado, strawberry, pineapple, honeydew, or papaya.

Entrees (and I include soups here) run from about $7-15 at dinner time. Lunch is in the $8 range. You could do a cup of delicious soup and an appetizer for about that price.

If you're inclined toward interesting food with lots of flavor, please try the Mekong Cafe. They're open every day until 9 or 10 pm. Not only will you have a good meal, but you'll be contributing to building North Avenue as a thriving destination business district. And that's all good. (Purple sticky rice image is not from Mekong but by Stef Noble from flickr).

Deja rhubarb

2008-05-14T02:14:00Z

Last weekend I hiked a couple miles through the county grounds, stalking the rhubarb that still grows, despite all odds, behind the Eschweiler buildings. It's a lot more difficult than it was when I wrote about it here in my first blog entry in June 2006:

I pick bouquets of rhubarb from the abandoned garden plots . . . Pies, cakes, breads and muffins ensue. The world is good when there is rhubarb pie in it.

And that’s how I discovered the disappearance of the tennis courts and emergence of silt fence markers across from Hansen Golf Course.

Bottom line, in case you don’t know, is that a huge retention pond shaped like a reproducing amoeba will cover the old county nursery--one of the prettiest places in the county—behind the tennis court area. You may not have seen it because walking there has been perhaps a tad illegal. . .

How much has changed since then. The nursery is completely obliterated. I suppose traipsing is even more illegal now than it was then. Plastic fences in trash-bag black and orange mesh have been strung along the silt fence markers. And the roads have been dug out, their entries chained, to make it hard for the scavengers in SUVs to poach wild asparagus and domestic rhubarb. It all seems a little extreme.

The retention ponds are in, though still not finished. You can walk around them now and wonder if they will ever look like something other than craters left by strip mining or meteors. But walking into the landfill is even worse. The great views from almost any vantage point are gone. No matter where you stand, you can only see a short distance before your sight line is interrupted by another odd mound. It's like no terrain I've ever encountered: defensive berms everywhere, with nothing to defend.

Was this the plan? Or was the dirt just dumped anywhere? If so, it will have to be completely regraded for any use that might be made of it. And that will cost more money.

The rhubarb, though thin (it's late this year), was good and made a splendid pie. Something lives, still, on the edges of the desolation. I hope more will creep in: it will make the place less creepy.

Who's your mother?

2008-05-09T20:40:00Z

When I was 17 my dear friend Sheina Lerman yanked me aside after watching an interchange with my mother.

"Why are you doing that?" she demanded.

"Doing what?"

"Hiding who you really are from your mother. It's disrespectful not to let her know you. You think she can't handle it? You're wrong."

"What are you talking about? She doesn't want to know me: she wants to think I'm who she wants me to be. I'm not gonna ruffle her feathers. What would be the point?"

As you have figured out by now, Sheina was really wise for a 17-year-old, and also brave. I was neither.

But my mom and I were lucky. Somehow, along the way, we put aside roles and facades and became utterly honest with each other. And that honesty, painful as it sometimes was, deepened our love and added the bonus of friendship to it. She liked me even when she knew who I really was. And why, I now think, wouldn't she?

While Mom and I knew everything about each other's lives in the last decade or so, there's much I never learned about who she was before we kids came along, before she was a wife and mother. I know she was a nurse, a stepsister, an orphan. I don't know enough about what all that meant, though.

Do you know who your mother is, besides being your mother? Do you know who she was when she was your age now? In high school? What was it like growing up where she grew up? What her role in her family was--was she the smart one or the pretty one or the funny one, and did that fit? What was her search for love like? Her best and worst days in high school? Did she dream about something she didn't get to do? How does she feel about that now? What do her friends know about her that you don't?

This Mother's Day will be hard. It's the first without Mom, and in our family, Mother's Day was always about the matriarch mom, the oldest one in the line. I've moved into that slot, but my kids are too young to be willing to obligate themselves to making the day be all about me. Like most kids, they love me deeply but have very little interest in me, in who I am when I'm not being Mom.

You may be giving your mother brunch, flowers, jewelry, a cruise or spa trip. But maybe you should try this, too: have a conversation. Ask her about her life, what happened in it that shaped her, what she thinks and feels about the things you don't often talk about.

And moms: give your kids real answers, not just the ones that you think moms are supposed to give.

Watching the bad stuff

2008-05-07T21:06:00Z

Watching really bad television is one of my former guilty pleasures.

I say former not because I've stopped watching. I've stopped feeling guilty.

Last night, too lazy to get up to change the channel (the remote control batteries having escaped to perform some other task just as easily done manually), I slid directly from American Idol into Hell's Kitchen.

If you haven't watched it, Idol achieves some redeeming value.

There's the whole American Dream thing. Someone cuts through your back yard, hears you singing in the shower, and is stunned by your brilliance. Turns out he's not just your ordinary peeping Tom but a top talent agent, and presto: next thing you know, you're a star.

There's also the whole Joseph Campbell journey of the hero educational component. You start out leaving home to accomplish a big fuzzy goal, usually something macho like world domination. Along the way through the dark scary woods, you encounter monsters and dragons and have to sing songs by Neil Diamond. Someone, say Dolly Parton, comes along to help you. You finally reach your goal, which is to hear Randy Jackson say "yo, check it out. Now that's who you really are." In other words, you've come full-circle back home, only with a really lucrative recording contract.

Hell's Kitchen has no redeeming value. You watch it for the food pornography and also to see odd people, people you wouldn't want to ever know in real life, smoke cigarettes, mess up in the kitchen, and be emotionally and possibly physically abused by master chef Gordon Ramsey before heading off to be emotionally and possibly physically abused by their team mates who are plotting to vote them off the island.

You also get to see the chef apprentice hopefuls be humiliated by nasty diners. This gives you the chance to enjoy their come-uppance while feeling smugly superior to the guests, who are as icky as the apprentices only better looking.

Especially the mother of the daughter trying out Hell's Kitchen for a Sweet Sixteen party. Now there's an idea I can get behind.

Anyway, she bristles and pouts in a way you can see she imagines is fetching, and you want to slap her even though you are a Quaker and allegedly nonviolent except, apparently, in your heart. The journey to Hell's Kitchen makes you nasty, too. It's enjoyable.

The daughter is surprisingly normal, actually sweet, perhaps. You pity her not just because of the mother but because you are certain she'd prefer McDonald's, which is where she'll go as soon as she gets the keys to the Mercedes-Benz ML320 that probably awaits her, payment for putting up with posh food and camera crews.

Liz, my companion in time-wasting, was 16 two years and four days ago. I think she has opinions about all this. But she watches quietly while I prattle on.

"Desserts," I say, as the competing teams try to come up with suitable menus. "That's how I'd go. The rest of the meal doesn't matter as long as there are big honking chocolate confections tortured into fashionable shapes or served in martini glasses. It's all about ostentatious presentation of stuff they're already familiar with." More prattling ensues.

Liz ignores me. Then she offers The Look.

The apprentice chefs present a dessert, something puddingish with a large banana garnish. We smirk in unison. "That's so wrong," we say, also in unison.

I try to engage her in conversation again. "Well, you know 16 year olds better than I do."

"Not ones like that."

"What do you think rich California girls who have never tasted shrimp and get all excited when they see chicken wings would want to eat, then?"

"Ice cubes. And laxatives."

She has a point.

And somewhere in here, so do I.

Oh. I remember. Have you ever noticed how often quality shows, pumped up with good messages and important values, leave you with nothing to say at the end? Just, "Wow, that was really good!"

On the other hand, trash on Fox TV leads to an examination of the Seven Deadly Sins, culture and values, economics, mythology, eating disorders, and why it's better to live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where most of the people are. . . reasonable.

Most of the time. We all get a little exercised now and then.

The Grandmother Hypothesis

2008-04-30T01:26:00Z

What are you supposed to do you do when you’re not raising kids anymore, anyway? The easy answers to that question aren't always very satisfying, as I was reminded today listening to a Wisconsin Public Radio call-in show.

The topic was having children late in life. Author Elizabeth George had only positive things to say about the experience. The women she interviewed for her book, Why Women are Embracing the New Later Motherhood, didn't seem to be encountering any downsides, either.

One gentleman asked about children becoming caregivers to their parents at a younger age. Not a problem, George replied. We're all in the sandwich generation. Besides, older people are healthier now. And they have better financial plans.

Well. Maybe. Let's hope.

Then caller Molly from Baraboo threw both George and host Joy Cardin off balance with a question about the developmental tasks of aging. The conversation, which I’m recreating loosely from memory, went something like this:

“I had my child at age 39 and then had an early menopause. We thought about having another child but by that time, I found I wasn’t really all that interested in children. I’d heard that you change after menopause, that you are ready start to begin a new life, and I felt like that was happening to me. I was ready to do that, but I couldn’t because I had a three year old. Do other people have that experience?”

You could hear the author frowning. “What do you mean about differences after menopause and being older? Do you mean retirement?”

Host Cardin jumped in and offered some other suggestions for what women do in that “next stage” of life: traveling around the world and self-improving. Lots and lots of self-improving. (Apparently she's not old enough yet to discover that sometimes that's an exercise in futility, not to mention boredom.)

“But with only one child, you can travel around the world easily enough anyway,” said George. The awkward conversation ended with an uneasy dismissal suggesting that Molly’s case might be interesting but didn’t really apply to others: “Early menopause is an anomaly,” George concluded.

Actually, it’s not. But besides that, I was stunned by the lack of vision of what it might mean to be in the world after menopause, after children.

As an older mom, I knew exactly what Molly was talking about. My friend Kathleen, also an older mom, used to say, “I’d be standing at the refrigerator, my mind drifting off on lofty and spiritual thoughts, thinking about God and peace and ways to save the world, and when that little hand tugged my shirt and asked where the juice was, it took me a few seconds to come back to earth.”

There’s a lot more out there than recreation and holding the line against a widening waistline. Apparently George and Cardin have never heard of the Grandmother Hypothesis. This intriguing idea says that post-menopausal grandmothers (and older men, too) created culture, if not the human race, by helping younger people nurture their children. This not only meant more calories in the family pot, which meant more children surviving, but it meant that everyone had more time to do interesting things like carve spoon handles, compose songs, and create political intrigue.

Time spent lingering in the sun at a table in Turino sounds lovely. But now that my babies are heading for college, I need to add calories in the form of money to both their pot and my own retirement one.

That, and save civilization as we know it. I’m also looking forward to writing books, getting a promotion, and saving some little corner of the world. Maybe even a little light romance.

There’s so much to do, and almost all of it interesting. Even necessary. Who has time to waste on self-improvement?

A version of this blog also appeared in Aging Maven

Politics: write your own caption

2008-04-22T22:18:45Z

I love this photo of Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier's swearing in. It's so . . . lively and unconventional. And it practically cries for inventive captioning.

Judge rescues woman from attackers

Child, husband, try to stop mom

Many rush to help as woman collapses

Gang creates diversion in Tosa pickpocketing crime spree

I'm sure you can come up with better ones. Meanwhile, I'll just congratulate Jill and wish her the best as I ponder the unintended stories in this candid tableau. One, from famous Milwaukee ex-pat politician Golda Meir, seems especially apt:

At work, you think of the children you've left at home. At home, you think of the work you've left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself, your heart is rent.

Here's to doing good work anyway, rent hearts and all!

When words don't mean much

2008-04-19T13:44:00Z

Liz and I were watching the news. The story was about preemptive reduction of cruising in the streets of Milwaukee--stopping it before anything bad actually happens. A police officer intoned seriously into the off-screen microphone, "The problem with cruising is that it leads to stopping."

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. That's sort of like saying, "The problem with life is that it leads to death." It's true, I guess, but what can you do with a comment like that?

Speaking of death, an Associated Press story being widely disseminated is Soldier son of Dutch defense chief killed (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline). Lieutenant Dennis van Uhm was the victim of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende characterized this loss as "an unprecedented tragedy."

Well, no. It's a very "precedented" tragedy. Van Uhm is the 16th soldier from the Netherlands to die there. Nearly 500 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan, and the death toll for soldiers from the West there is nearly 800--and continuing to rise. In Iraq, 4,000 US soldier deaths have preceded the next one. And the one after that. In war, tragedy is the coin of the realm.

Since my mother's death a couple weeks ago, I've had a harder time than usual listening to pious rhetoric and words that sound like they mean more than they do. Maybe if I'd lost a soldier son, I'd feel differently about the inflated language used to turn a personal loss into a political lever. I'm glad not to know the truth that would come from that experience.

Wasting our time: tonight's presidential debate

2008-04-17T01:13:00Z

It's 45 minutes into the Democratic debate between Clinton and Obama, and not a single important question has been raised.

Instead, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulus have continued to grill the candidates about their ministers, their faulty recollections, and their failure to wear flag pins.

Stephanopoulus, more vigorous than Gibson, actually asked whether Obama's controversial minister was as patriotic as he was. Astonishingly, Obama spent what seemed like hours attempting to answer the question in a reasonable way.

The proper response? "What on earth are you talking about? It's ridiculous to ask anyone to speculate about anyone else's patriotism. Let me tell you about what my patriotism means in terms of how I'll lead the country."

And Clinton also spent what seemed like hours responding to the question about her blooper about ducking fire in Bosnia. She should have said "Look. I misremembered. I blew it. Let's talk about what I'll do as Commander in Chief."

Now someone's asking Obama about a Weatherman fugitive who lived in his neighborhood when he was eight years old. And again, the candidate is responding as if it's a serious and reasonable question.

There are two issues for this campaign: the war and the economy. Time for the Democrats to take control of the issues--and the conversation. And since the media won't do it, it's time for us, the electorate, to start asking better questions--and insisting on real answers.

One more thing: regardless of party, there's not a single candidate who can properly claim to be like us. They are all richer, more privileged, better educated, and well removed from the reality of everyday life. So just stop pretending, please.

What women really want (no boys allowed)

2008-04-11T21:54:08Z

Let's face it: what women really want is jeans and bras that fit. Also swimming suits, but that may be beyond the realm of the possible.

If you haven't discovered zafu yet, you're in for a treat. It just takes a few minutes of answering questions about how clothes usually fit (too loose here, too tight there) and you'll get a report ranking your best fit brands in a whole range of prices.

The answers may be surprising, but they're right on target. I'd never have guessed my top two jeans fits: Baby Phat and Lucky Brand.

No. That's not me. I'm waiting for zafu2, the version that makes you look like the model when you're

in the pants.