You can vote once a day. So I'm gonna bug you all about it.

In other "yay for voting" news, a really shitty article* in yesterday's NYT reports that the Dems intend to pass a Fair Pay Act, reinstating the understanding that victims of discrimination don't need to be mind readers that existed before SCOTUS ruled against Ledbetter.

*Ledbetter was *not* a response to Joe the idiot Plumber, chronologically or substantively. Also, the case discussed in the article is badly misrepresented--Garcia was suing the builders, who never owned the building, for having done the work. The judge's reasoning is asinine, but that part of Garcia's case was pretty weak anyway.

Labels: civics 101, feminism, metablogging, work

The chief of United Nations relief in Gaza reports over 500 residents killed in ten days of air and artillery strikes by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Palestinian agencies estimate 2500 wounded. Palestinian combatant deaths were calculated at around 75% of the total.

This is where you click and vote for BitchPhD.

Then you tell your friends about it. And send them the link.

http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-very-large-blog/

And then you bug them about it.

And then victory is ours!

(We were up 2 votes to one when I voted. Good timing, hey!)

Labels: 2008 Webby, 2008 Weblog Awards, vote

During one of the recent floggings, the subject of cookie-cutter lives came up with respect to the structure of people's families and households and domestic arrangements.

A certain amount of fright and anger, which often amount to the same thing, was expressed over the flamboyant configuration of the House of B. The apparent indifference of Dr B and Mr B and the Connoiseur to the ma-pa-kid-kid-dog-cat-cable-TV household setup seemed jarring to notions of the ideal or, at least, preferred family constellation.

I wouldn't even mention the more titillating aspects of their arrangement except that its, well, titillating. How they can sleep with more people than they have a right to and still maintain a loving relationship all around is a puzzle to a lot of us. Its not as puzzling as why so few people want to sleep with good old taddyporter but that's the subject of another post.

Anyway, it got me to thinking: There's all this uproar in defense of the cookie-cutter life and yet, how many of us actually live it? I don't doubt that the ma-pa-kid-kid model predominates in the popular imagination but how many of us live in households that are modeled that way down to the last bunkbed?

For one thing, I don't even think that model is the most common type, is it? Isn't the single person household the most common type? Just what are those people up to behind closed doors?

There are plenty of households made up of childless couples. Do they pose a threat to the social order?

Many of those childless couples are gay and lesbian. And many gay and lesbian couples have children. Do either of these arrangements hinder the lives of the ideal American family?

When I think about the households of my friends, I realize there is a wide spectrum of arrangements. My best friend lives with his wife and three small grandchildren. Several of my friends, men and women, are single parents. One of my brothers is divorced and his two boys divide their time between his house and their mother's house. One of my cousins is divorced and her boys stay in the same house all the time, the parents rotating in and out at bi-weekly intervals.

My unmarried stepdaughter lives with her adopted seven-year old boy. She has three roomates, men, who watch over her son and her with a paternal devotion that could not be greater if they were all the same blood. And no, she's not sleeping with any of them. Just so there's no misunderstanding.

My own household would not meet the criteria for the Great American Family. Talk about your jarring configurations. An aged auntie, a grouchy middle-aged (that's right, middle-aged) man, a twenty three year old niece with a six year old son and another niece, eighteen years old. And two dogs. And three cats. And cable TV.

Even among families with more conventional arrangements, I bet there are periods where they deviate from convention. Demands of work seperate the spouses for stretches of time. A relative or friend down on their luck is taken in. The family has to move across country and stays with grandma and grandpa while they get themselves settled in a new house. A house burns down and the kids are farmed out to the relatives while things are put back in order. Or the kids are sent to stay with relatives over the summer. Stuff like that.

The point is, families and households are an adaptation. The problems and demands of life are fairly uniform but their solutions, if not infinite, are pretty diverse. A practical solution for my family may be completely impractical for yours. The key is not whether our families look the same but whether our families are each happy and healthy and ready to meet the demands of the day.

So, my reader, what about you? Is your family upholding the ordinances of Providence or are you experimenting with your own arrangements? And if you are, can I come for supper?

Hey! We've been nominated for Best Very Large Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards! Starting Monday y'all can vote for us here, and the other fine nominees here.

Don't forget to vote for Black Women, Blow the Trumpet in the Small Blog category, both because she told us we'd been nominated (thanks, Black Women!) and because in the end, it's really all about the small blogs.

And you better vote, bitches. Because that "honor to be nominated" bullshit is bullshit. We wanna WIN.

And you know better than to mess with Very Large Women. We will kick your ass if you don't elevate us to the heights we deserve. I hear that winning means we get lots of 22-year old hottie groupies, because everyone knows that the kids love the internets.

Labels: cool stuff, metablogging

My jeans have a crease in them. Guess that's what I deserve for letting a 22-year old do my laundry.

Labels: funny, mememe

My boyfriend The Connoiseur is snoring with his feet on my lap, I'm listening to old TAL podcasts, and all's right in my selfish little corner of the world.

Here's hoping 2009 will be a year in which more people everywhere have the luxury of enjoying such small perfect pleasures than has been the case for many, many years.

I started to write this post as a comment in response to this one over at Post Bourgie, but it sort of ballooned into a post of its own. I want to make it clear that, despite my conclusion, I don't disagree with Jamelle at all; what started off as a "yes, as a mom, I know that kids need things to do" comment turned into a criticism of the way that "public after school programs" for "at-risk youth" are always framed as if the only reason for giving [poor] kids sports or art activities were to "keep them out of trouble." Whereas in contrast . . . well, just read what I wrote.

You know, speaking as an upper-middle class white parent, you would not BELIEVE how much shit there is for my kid and kids in our socio-economic group to do after school: sports, arts classes, drama, "play dates," music lessons, and on and on. I don't sign him up for most of this stuff, and I have guilt about the lack of music lessons and playdates in his life, but I spent freaking fall semester ferrying his ass to different sports activities six days out of seven.

And of course there's tons and tons of stuff in the media about moms like me, and how overscheduled our children are, and whether or not we "need" to work to pay for all this stuff or "need" to stay home to make sure they get ferried around, and how back in the day darn it kids just played in the street with the neighbors and they all turned out fine.

But that's really b.s. I was in 4H, and on the neighborhood swim team at the homeowner's association pool, and in school plays and band, and did some community theater. The main difference is that most of the stuff I did was free or very inexpensive community- or school-based stuff, whereas the stuff my kid does is all things I pay for. And since it's not necessarily community-based, his activities usually aren't in the nearest park or at his school like mine were.

And of course, the point I'm making here is that we as a society have pulled a lot of resources away from kids activities, not least (I suspect) because the 70s started desegregating, and people in my social class started pulling out of public schools and weren't "comfortable" letting their kids play at public playgrounds or joining community-based programs any more--so we started paying for private schools and private lessons and getting really stingy about public funding for public schools and public goods like after-school programs.

People like me, who don't approve of that white flight bullshit, can nonetheless suck it up and pay for the AYSO soccer program ($80/semester), the TaeKwonDo ($100/month), the fencing lessons ($200/6 weeks). And we can of course complain about what a pain in the ass is is to run our kids to these things, but at least I *can* provide them for him. If I were poor, I wouldn't be able to.

I don't do it to "keep him out of trouble"; I do it because it's a way of letting him do and try things that he's interested in and that aren't provided at school, and because it's not healthy for him, mentally or physically, to just sit home and play video games all afternoon. But sure, one probable side-effect of his activities is blah blah mother-son time together, blah blah increased self-esteem, blah blah it probably *will* help keep him "out of trouble" if he gets interested in hobbies and pursues them (god willing) without my help once he's old enough to get himself places on his own.

It frustrates the crap out of me when people talk about the social problems of "urban youth" without recognizing that even with all other things being equal, the fact is that *all* kids need *something* to do after school, and that public funding for this stuff shouldn't be about charity or "public safety": it should be something we do because, well, because we *do things for our kids*, even if we grumble about what a pain in the butt it is. Yes, fine, public safety is a good side effect. But when we start talking about protecting ourselves (and I mean "we" as in "society, specifically the mainstream media" not "we" as in "you [black] people," just for the record) from our ("their") kids while at the same time talking about how "our kids" are overscheduled, without realizing the deep, deep irony and ideological underpinnings of these opposing narratives about what children need, we really are demonstrating how very fucking pathetic and screwed up and racist our standards are.

Labels: kids, parenting, poverty, racism

Labels: party

Sorry for the light blogging of late. Everyone's on holiday, obviously, including me. I'm sitting in a Minneapolis* coffee shop watching the snow (!!) and supposedly drafting some thoughts about a book proposal, though mostly I'm web-surfing since this is the first I've had the laptop open since Xmas, basically. I do, however, have Many Fascinating Posts that I need to write, but you know, visiting the boyfriend,** so after him the first priority is the getting-caught-up-on-the-internets thing, then the book proposal thing, and then maybe I'll get to you guys. In the meantime there's a ton of great stuff over at Jon Swift's year-end roundup, which has been keeping me from that book proposal all morning.



*I'm here. Visiting the boyfriend. Those of you to whom this is a shock--"but I thought you were married!"--can read the relevant posts down in the "best of" sidebar.

**Confidential to my dad: Dad, are you reading this blog after all? Does that mean you know why I'm in Minneapolis? Because I've noticed your unusual dearth of questions about my trip this time. So if you are reading, and we need to have a talk, we can. I hate being closeted about this anyway. That said, if you're not reading this blog and don't know, I'm not going to bring it up myself. So, you know, if that's the case, never mind.

Labels: boyfriend, cool stuff, mememe, metablogging

Labels: holidays

Here is a thread in which one can express hopes that Sybil's interviewers recognized her obvious superiority to all other candidates, and/or demand that she post a précis of the experience.

Labels: academia