Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Required Reading

Despite the fact that I theoretically have no time whatsoever to be reading non-syllabus literature, I ended up buying Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals. Boy, oh boy. I've read Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I've read Not on the Label by Felicity Lawrence. I've read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (now a fictionalized movie, at a Blockbuster near you). This one still takes the cake. And I'm only on page 70.

Fast Food Nation was the book that effectively stopped me from eating at McDonald's and its brethren (except for that one relapse after a wet day/night). Not on the Label stopped me from buying prepackaged salad (plus a host of other things, but you get the gist). Pollan hammered the mantra "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" into my brain. And I heeded. His is more a scientific analysis of the diet we eat now vs. back in the day when evolution created the bodies we still inhabit, plus he brings the crucial energy/fossil fuel factor into the equation, and he has no vegetarian/vegan agenda. All of these books have given me priceless knowledge that I have read, learned, and put to good use.

Safran Foer does have a vegetarian/vegan agenda, though he doesn't pull it over your head. For example, he makes an excellent case for why we should eat dogs. Though he makes an even more excellent (and urgent) case for why we shouldn't eat sushi. And basically, before I'd even reached page 30, he'd intellectually slapped me in the face at least a half a dozen times.

What particularly endeared me to Safran Foer (despite the fact that he wrote Everything is Illuminated which got made into a fabulous movie that I adore) is that the whole primus motor for his writing the book was fatherhood. He and his wife had a baby, he suddenly got propelled into the situation of having to feed another human being than himself, and he set off to find out everything he could, about the food that his kid would eat.

For those who've been reading my blog for the duration, you'll recall that not long after I gave birth to Halfdan, I entered a dark and tedious period of extreme environmental anxiety. I've later heard it's called solastalgia, but I digress. I'm sure hormones had their role, but c'mon, having a baby in the same year that the world collectively wakes up to the reality that they are cutting off the branch that they're sitting on is....unnerving. I was sad. I was angry. I felt helpless. What to do? And that's when I did a lot of reading, a lot of crying, and made some decisions that directly affect the people close to me whom I love. That's when I stopped flying, because I reasoned (and still do), that it was the single most effective thing I could do to reduce my carbon footprint. And I'm sticking to my guns, despite the fact that Safran Foer now cites the meat industry as accountable for up. to. half of the greenhouse gasses that are causing climate change.

Back on track. Safran Foer is human, and writes as such. He's had to uncover some depressingly unpleasant things to be able to write this book. It takes guts to read. It does. More importantly, it takes guts to go out and make use of the information you glean from this book. We're not vegetarians, by any means, though our meat intake is down to cold cuts for lunch and "real meat" once or twice a month for dinner. But this is getting phased out. Because learning information about the direct impact our diet is having on the planet my kids theoretically still have 80+ years on, is serious business. You don't go to school to learn things that you will effectively ignore if the situation arises where you need to use that information. Do you? Because that would be ludicrous. Wouldn't it?

An argument often heard in conversations about vegetarianism is the old "people have been eating meat since the dawn of time". Right. As Safran Foer points out, people have also been keeping other humans as slaves since forever as well, but that doesn't make it right anymore, does it? My paternal grandmother was sold into slavery over 100 yrs ago in Italy by her own parents, no wonder she fled the country, never to look back. As a society, we grow, we get smarter, we utilize our knowledge. Otherwise it's all pointless. So what if our meat eating is what gave us these huge brains to start with. Should we keep feeding them meat, in hommage to the fact that they now know better? Like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Like supporting illegal American wars in 2003, just because 60 odd years ago they prevented a chunk of the world being taking over by Nazi Germany. It's nonsensical.

Our full fledged vegetarianism won't happen overnight. But with this book in hand, I've taken another step of enlightened, rational thinking. One that will affect my life, but won't ruin it like the industry it makes its case against eventually will.

Read this book. It's too urgently important to not.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Berlin

I've been posting an inordinate amount about kids, I know.

So, heres a non-kid update. I am going to Berlin! Just for a weekend. In a few weeks. Will see an old friend from my Texas days. Actually two friends from my Texas days. No, three friends from my Texas days. I may drink alcohol and act inappropriately at some point. I'll keep you posted on that.

In other news, my new teacher this semester is a real slave driver. I will not be bored. Well, syllabus-wise maybe, but I will not be idle.

I have nothing more for now.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Amputation

This weekend we had a trial of sorts. Dante has previously spent the night at my inlaws' place, a 40 minute busride from here. That went well. Now was the time to see if both the boys could spend the night there without drama, or driving the inlaws batty. Mik and I therefore got the chance to attend a Housewarming alone for once. The Housewarming turned out to be a surprise wedding, since the bride's brother is a Justice of the Peace, and wedded the barf-inducingly happy couple right in their own living room. Much drinking and dancing ensued. My feet still hurt. As we bicycled home through the slush at 3am, it started snowing again, and we woke up this morning to a fresh 15 cm layer über alles. We came home to an empty house. No sleeping babes, no babysitter to send home. Odd. Just as odd to wake up this morning and have the bed all for ourselves (don't go there), and no one begging for pancakes. I relished the childrens' absence, but not without feeling strangely amputated. We need to practice I suppose.

Mikael set out by bus to fetch the kiddos, who, as you've all guessed by now, were perfect angels the whole time. I then set out to meet them at the busstop. Bicycling would've been futile, so I pulled the kiddie sled along to meet them. Again, it felt odd to be pulling an empty sled!



The bus with the blue stripe is the one bringing my brood home.



Halfi loved the new transportation mode. Sleds have otherwise been strictly recreational up until now.



Good place to sit and scarf snow. White snow, mind.



Later, back at the cave, I decided to amputate the spirit of Art Garfunkel, who has been inhabiting Halfdan's 'do for a few months. He's still got the curls. but now they don't have him.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Blizzard!




Wouldn't it have been nice if I could've stayed inside all day, in this weather? I love to look at it, I really really do. It's beautiful. But I had to bicycle all around town today doing errands, and my eyelashes would stick together when they got struck by a snowflake and subsequently freeze. My eyelashes got frozen together. Charming, in it's own way I suppose.

Miscellaneous Cuteness

This pic is from last year, at my in laws' place. Can you take it? Can you? Can you? Even we, the parents, are not immune to this cuteness. Seriously, this cuteness makes me almost want to be violent. You just want to kiss his little goldie locked head until he's black and blue and your lips bleed, don't you. Don't you? Or just squeeze him, forever and ever, pinching his little cheeks, and biting that little nose. I'm done.



These two are from this evening's bath time. About half of Noah's Ark was dirty, and needed a little scrubbing. Then they were lined up to air dry. If only Dante had put his hand on his hip in the first picture, his fate would be sealed.



Monday, January 25, 2010

The Empathetic Academic

So, I had the last exam of the season today! Oral, which leaves ooodles to be desired, but it is what it is. Nervous, shaky voice, you know the drill, I'm sure. But the topic I found interesting. It was a course on Lacanian psychoamalysis. Lacan was the follow up to Freud, and actually made Freud Freudian. But that's not the point. I had to do a Lacanian analysis of a topic of my own choice. Funny story. The professor had chosen to do a course on the Lacanian psychoanalysis of Pixar movies. Nemo, Toy Story, Wall-E et al, on the basis that she had watched them innumerous times with her two sons, and discovered that they were screaming at her to be analyzed. So she did. And it was a very enjoyable course. And yes, we got to watch cartoons.

So, the day when we were supposed to announce, to the whole class no less, what we had chosen to analyze for our exam, I was stumped. Luckily, I was sitting in the back. Ha. Ha ha. So I had some time to think, because there were about 40 of us to get through before it was my turn. Thinking thinking thinking. Cogwheels turning turning turning. Bingo! I chose my subject, the way she chose hers. Movies my kids like to watch. And having seen The Darjeeling Limited on our train trip to Morocco this past summer, I felt firmly this was a good choice. I enjoy the movie, I've seen it umpteen times, I know the story and the characters inside and out.

I'll break it down. Three brothers, Francis, Peter, Jack in that order. Dad died the previous year. Train trip through India to discover the unknown, visit mother who has escaped modern life to become a nun. What happens in the meantime I'll let you find out when you see it, if and when. I will say though, that the dead dad plays a big role in a lot of physical items that the brothers bicker over.

I guess you could say there were some similarities to my own life, the dead dad definitely resonated. But last night, after hours of cramming, as I lay my head on the pillow and was just about to drift blissfully off, I startled myself with a realization. As you may know, I have three siblings (half), all older than me. The oldest, has a name that is both male/female like Francis/Frances. The middle of my siblings is named....Peter. The youngest of my siblings is named John, and Jack is as most know, a derivative of John. The similarities don't stop there, but...it freaked me out dude. I suppose the movie may have resonated with me much more deeply than I thought at first glance. Psychoanalyze that. Just kidding, don't.

As for the result. I'm firmly mediocre. Not the best score, not the worst. Her commentary was that I'm not academic enough, which is okay to me. I never reckoned I'd be an academic, I just realized that I needed to go that way to be able to do what I want some day. She also said that I had become almost too close to my subjects of analysis. Which I took as a compliment. Will have to work on that academia though.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

More from the keen eye of the house photog...







Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Not So Secret



So, alluding to the previous post, a lot of people ask us: "how do we do it?". As in, how do we get our kids to sleep in so late, how we get our kids to behave so well when we take them to restaurants, how do we get our kids to entertain themselves so well, etc etc. I'm not sure exactly what the formula is, per se, but I recall Mikael and I shaking hands long ago, over the fact that we wanted to have kids because we have love to give, we firmly believe that kids can be travelled with, and finally - we just want to be happy, and have a good life. And drink wine occasionally.

I was mulling over this, which then coincided with a Skype chat I had with one of my bloggy blog friends, one who I've never met face to face in fact, and she mentioned a book about parenting called The Idle Parent, by Tom Hodgkinson. I checked it out on Amazon, and also read a few articles online by the author, and I must say, it sounds remarkably like the method we didn't even know we were using. He's also written books on other subjects, not just parenting, that can be applied to life in general, and I'm pretty sure they're right up our alley too, especially because he mentions alcohol consumption repeatedly. Will be looking more into it soon.

This has been a service announcement, now back to studying!