1158 I love my mom, but. . .

My husband is teaching Vacation Bible School this week. This is an enormous undertaking for our church--I think about 3,000 kids are enrolled for one week sessions over a two week period. There is even a special VBS class for developmentally disabled children. Anyway, yesterday at lunch he told me that in his fourth grade class he has 17 children from 15 schools, and one of those schools is about 70 miles away. I think that is amazing. When I went to VBS back in Forreston, IL, we had town kids and country kids--two, possibly three schools and probably 4 or 5 churches.

The theme is something about Africa, and one of the questions was "if you were lost in the jungle on safari, what one person would you want to have with you?" Most of the kids said their dad, a few said their mother, but one little girl said, "Well, I really love my mom, but she's always getting lost, so I'll say my dad."

Of course, I would have asked why we were lost if the dads were so great at asking directions.

1157 Words and phrases for pundits

Words mean something, unless they are overused. Then they become posters, or occasionally poetry. I'm working on a list of the typical words and phrases used by the left or right about the right or left. On this first day of Spring I'm just taking them out of my word safe, holding them up to the light and deciding if they can be strung together as an essay, a poem, a joke or an obituary for discourse. Here are some of my jewels found along the way. Step lightly.

Democrats' favorites include:
outraged
shocked
horrified
politicize
crony
rich buddies
anti-choice
anti-science
hypocrites
idiots
morons
backwater
Haliburton
coalition of the rich and religious
dismantle
high-profile fundraiser
stolen elections
red-meat-but-no-brain
Bush lied
Nazis, Hitler
Gulag, Stalin
polls show
talk-radio
right wing spin
wingnuts
fake but accurate!
Rovian
WTF?

Republicans are currently using these treasures:
MSM
pro-abortion
anti-gun ownership
freaks
baby killers
tired
socialists
communists
disinformation
anti-American
snobs
left-coast
wackos
Deaniacs
kooks
unhinged
Moore lies
snookered
spittle-flecked
high-profile fundraiser
tax and spend
radicals
Clintonesque
SF-180
Bush-wackers
tin-foil headgear
moonbats
fake but accurate?
whiners
wusses
WTF?

1156 Noonan's plan to save PBS

Peggy Noonan has a plan to save PBS that is so sensible and so good, that I just know no one will take her suggestion. Congress seems incapable of coming up with these ideas.

"Why, then, doesn't Congress continue to fund PBS at current levels but tell them they must stick to what they are good at, and stop being the TV funhouse of the Democratic Party? Nobody needs their investigative unit pieces on how Iran-contra was very, very wicked; nobody needs another Bill Moyers show; nobody needs a conservative counter to Bill Moyers's show. Our children are being raised in a culture of argument. They can get left-right-pop-pop-bang anywhere, everywhere.
PBS exists to do what the commercial networks should and won't. And just one of those things is bringing to Americans who have not and probably will not be exposed to it the great treasury of American art, from the work of Eugene O'Neill (again, ABC won't be producing "Long Day's Journey" anytime soon), outward to Western art (Shakespeare) and outward to world art.

And science. And history. But real history, meaning something that happened in the past as opposed to the recent present, with which PBS, alas, cannot be trusted.

Art and science and history. That's where PBS's programming should be. And Americans would not resent funding it."

Complete essay here.

1155 Letters from Gitmo Dick

Iowahawk has uncovered some of Dick Durbin's personal letters (D-IL).

1154 More exceptions for faculty women . . . and a few guys

OnCampus, the Ohio State Newspaper for faculty and staff, had this interesting item about the need for even more exceptions for part time female faculty, who can’t meet the expectations that promotion and tenure might involve 60 hour work weeks.

"In Ohio State’s 2003 faculty work/life survey, one-third of female assistant professors and 20 percent of male assistant professors expressed interest in reducing their work hours to have more time for family and personal needs. While the university has a provision in its faculty rules for part-time tenured and tenure-track appointments, fewer than two dozen of the nearly 3,000 regular, non-clinical faculty currently take advantage of this option and this mismatch between policy and behavior may be hampering not only retention but the recruitment of talented faculty."

"Institutional culture plays a key role in fostering acceptance of those who wish to take advantage of a part-time appointment. The work group found that most chairs, many deans and faculty governance leaders weren’t aware of the provision in Ohio State’s policies. “But the biggest issue is the cultural norm — the expectation that people must work 60-plus hours a week or they don’t get anywhere, and that unit excellence depends on 150 percent effort by each faculty. That is the cultural norm in academia, and that is the norm we have to break if we are going to embrace part-time tenured or tenure-track faculty,” Herbers said." OnCampus June 8, 2005

Call me crazy, but it would seem to me that if you are working part-time AND given more time to complete your research, you have waaaay more time at the library, lab or computer than the woman who shows up at work every day on the usual tenure clock. What am I missing here? Women who work full time and who have teen-agers in the home could teach these new mommies something about time management. I recall interviewing a faculty woman applying for research funds who had eleven children and was home schooling!

One of the ideas is to grant automatic extensions to the tenure clock for each baby (by birth or adoption) instead of making people request it. Come on. These are grown-ups! They need to read the rules and see what applies to their case. The baby rules are nothing compared to facing a panel of peer reviewers to get published. Women already get opportunity to purchase retirement credit for time off work when having or adopting a baby, although my case was a loophole because my tenuring unit (Libraries) changed retirement systems (from PERS to STRS) while I was off work in the 1960s raising my babies, and neither system would let me claim the time their own silly laws said I had coming to me.

Having been there, I have some advice for 18-19 year old women who are thinking of an academic career. Complete your education in a reasonable 6 year time table. Don’t live with your boyfriend before marriage or try to live in Europe or Asia just having fun--it really messes up the time schedule. Marry and have your babies (reversing that REALLY messes it up). Stay home, enjoy them and raise them to school age. Go back to work part-time. Ease into full time. You really do have enough time to do it all as long as you don’t extend your adolescence by 15-20 years with loans from daddy and Uncle Sam, messy relationships and out of wedlock babies. Also, without social security reform, you’ll be working until 75 anyway, so there’s plenty of time.

1153 Durbin needs to talk to this Illinois Chaplain

Kent Svendsen is a military chaplain and a pastor of a United Methodist Church in rural Illinois. This is his bio, and you’ll see he hasn’t come to his faith position lightly. According to a Google search on his name, his church is near Forreston, IL where I used to live.

Here is his advice to anyone investigating (or protesting ) the Gitmo “torture” stories, as a chaplain who has been there.

1152 The Fair that changed America

Columbian Exposition 1893
In 1992 I attended a library conference in Chicago and had the opportunity to visit a display of the photos of the Columbian Exposition held there in 1893. My grandmother was a young teen-ager and attended with her parents, probably getting on the passenger train that passed through their farm near Ashton, IL. Later they would probably follow the trial of the serial murderer who had stalked his innocent victims in the White City. I'm reading a fascinating book about it and mention it at Coffee Spills.

1151 The Dean or the Dick?

Which Democrat will drive more people way from the party? Diarrhea-of-the-mouth Dean or Tokyo-Rose-in-Drag Dick? It's been many a year since I lived in Illinois, but my recollection of those days is that about a third of Chicago was Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belorus, Slovak, Czech, Hungarian or European Jew. About half my classmates at the U. of I. were children of the escapees from Hitler or Stalin. Some had lost their accents, but they never lost their memories of starvation, forced marches, refugee camps, and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins they'd never see again. And if their memories ever did dim in the usual frivolity of the teen years of dating, music and partying, you can bet your ass mascot their parents would remind them.

Mark Steyn says he doesn't question Durbin's patriotism. Well, why not? He's insulting the children and grandchildren of first generation Illinoians, many of whom are probably in the military being demoralized and humiliated as he spews his ridiculous insults.

"Just for the record, some 15 million to 30 million Soviets died in the gulag; some 6 million Jews died in the Nazi camps; some 2 million Cambodians -- one third of the population -- died in the killing fields. Nobody's died in Gitmo, not even from having Christina Aguilera played to them excessively loudly. The comparison is deranged, and deeply insulting not just to the U.S. military but to the millions of relatives of those dead Russians, Jews and Cambodians, who, unlike Durbin, know what real atrocities are. Had Durbin said, "Why, these atrocities are so terrible you would almost believe it was an account of the activities of my distinguished colleague Robert C. Byrd's fellow Klansmen," that would have been a little closer to the ballpark but still way out." Durbin slanders his own country

The name "Durbin" doesn't have a Slavic or East European ring to it. Sounds sort of Irish. Maybe next time in the voting booth it should be NINA Dick.

1150 A brief history of UnAmerica

Eamonn Fitzgerald tells the story of the short lived nation known as UnAmerica.

"Future historians poring over the records will note that as far as longevity goes, the nation known as unAmerica was remarkably short lived. After all, it lasted a mere two years, which is all the more noteworthy given the popular support it once enjoyed and the resources available to it. But just as the great Aztec and Incan civilizations crumbled in the face of change and left puzzling ruins for coming generations to wonder at, unAmerica fell as dramatically as it had risen."

Essay here.

1149 The Father's Day Card

On May 18, 2002 I was at the Columbus Museum of Art waiting for an exhibit guide, and selected a Father's Day card for my Dad at the gift shop. When I got home that afternoon, I learned he'd died about the time I was selecting it. Here's part of the essay I wrote about that, and the pastor included it in his memorial service.

"Picking out appropriate cards for a no nonsense, tough old bird like my Dad was never easy--he didn't golf, or fish, was never gushy or lovey dovey, didn't do any of the stuff that Hallmark Dads did year after year in muted masculine colors. But this card, without giving credit, superimposed a Bible passage over a newspaper stock report, "spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge." I recognize that this passage refers to the Spirit of the Lord resting on the shoot from the stem of Jesse in Isaiah 11 because it is repeated in baptism in the Lutheran service. Still, it seemed to fit--particularly since I saw him many times pouring over the newspaper business section or working cross word puzzles. The words and art. I thought, I'll take it along to Illinois and slip it into the casket.

Most of us are "adult children" of our parents for many more years than we are "minor children," therefore it is never too late to be a good parent, or a grateful child. As a child I yearned for a dad that would give me a hug or attend my school functions or praise me for good grades (although I don't think I knew any fathers like that). Although I noticed he worked 12 hour days, visited his parents every Sunday, never missed church, and treated my mother with respect and love, it doesn't mean a whole lot when you are a typical, self-centered, moody adolescent. As an adult, it gives you strength and comfort.

It never occurred to me in the 1950s that he probably didn't enjoy driving a car-load of screaming teen-age girls to the White Pines roller rink on his only day off, or that he didn't have to let me pasture a horse in our back yard (which he personally road home from the farm where I purchased him to be sure he was safe). And having my mother be the primary parent means I still remember the occasional ice cream treats he'd bring home, or that he would drive us 40 miles to see a movie in Rockford once in awhile.

But the memory that brings the tears is Dad with my sister Carol: first, carrying her out of our quarantined house to be admitted to the hospital for polio 53 years ago, and then standing beside her hospital bed to support her own children as the life support was removed after a stroke many years later.

No, it is never too late to be a good parent or a grateful child.

1148 Funniest interview of a Christian I've ever read

Tears rolled. I choked on my coffee. Barb Nicolosi is a writer for various organizations and writes the blog, Church of the Masses. She has a paraphrase of an interview she did with a NYT reporter who was trying to sniff out links between the vast right wing conspiracy, the Christians, and Hollywood and wouldn't take "Ain't one" for an answer. It is an absolute hoot--and unfortunately, it really did happen.

Thanks to Fr. Japes.

1147 This is your brain on a political hot button

The May issue of Scientific American has an article on the brain differences between men and women, “His Brain, Her Brain.”

Before getting into differences, the male author makes the obligatory, law-suit protecting statement that . . . “no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering.” (That’s sort of a straw woman, because I don’t remember Summers saying women were incapable of achieving academic distinction, only that they were different in achievement, and it’s the Summers flap the author probably is referring to.)

Then he goes on to list all the research on brain differences, the hypothalamus, cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces and the brain's response to stress hormones, the size of cortex and amygdala, the orbitofrontal-to-amygdala ratio, differences in utero, and differences in behavior in the nursery on day one. And he also provides a lot of animal studies of differences in male and female brains.

I’m a little surprised people are allowed grants to study the differences in men and women’s brains. I hope he hasn’t ruined his career. This puts feminist hard-liners in a tough spot. If they continue to insist there is no difference, they deprive women of important research on how medications affect the brains of men and women differently and thus condemn women to treatments that work for men but not for women and vice versa.

1146 Here comes the bride. . .who?

I went to a wedding today. The groom is a friend--his wife died about two years ago. I was sitting with a guy from our church, and he didn't know the groom but knew the bride. I'd never met the bride, had never heard her name until receiving the invitation, but I'd heard our friend talk about her. Can't remember exactly the last time we talked, but apparently the situation changed some. Actually, a lot. As the bride and groom processed, following their children and grandchildren down the aisle, it was a different woman. Boy, was I surprised.

1145 Talking to Number One

Here's your chance to follow Michael follow around the number one guy on his "talk to list", the Command Sergeant Major of Coalition Forces in Iraq. Michael Yon online.

1144 Will the liberals change?

Rob Paulsson is just an ordinary guy blogging at Shiningright.com. He's finished an analysis of Paul Starr’s gloomy American Prospect article, “The Liberal Project Now.” He concludes that there is a cottage industry of liberals who disagree with Starr‘s assessment:

“The presidential election in 2008 will put this thesis [that the last two presidential elections were flukes] to the test. For the first time since 1968 the race will not include an incumbent president or vice president which should make it evenly matched. If the Democrats win the White House with a left of center candidate, Starr's obituary of American liberalism will be proved premature. If, on the other hand, Republicans win again it will be increasingly difficult for the left to sustain its belief that there really is a progressive majority in America just waiting for the chance to express itself electorally.”

Starr wrote: “The liberal project of the post–World War II era was to awaken the public to long-ignored problems, to make liberal government bolder, and to get its leaders to take political risks. In the public mind, liberalism was the innovative and outward-looking force in American politics; conservatism, the stodgy and parochial source of resistance. Under those circumstances, liberals had power to the extent that they could bring about change, while conservatives had power to the extent that they could stop it.

Now the relationships have been reversed, and liberalism risks getting defined, as conservatism once was, entirely in negative terms. Liberals certainly need to defend liberal accomplishments and oppose conservative measures, but they cannot allow themselves to become merely defensive and oppositional. That, of course, is how the right would like to cast them. The liberal challenge today is to avoid this trap, to make the case for liberalism’s first principles, and to renew the project of liberal innovation.”

Starr is a good writer, as Paulsson points out. Yes, that’s sort of how I remember the 60s and 70s and being a Democrat. Positive change. And the right isn’t just “casting them as defensive“--they are defensive and oppositional. Name one positive thing a Democrat has proposed about Social Security reform, or education, or health care, or illegal immigration? What’s their solution for Iraq--withdraw so we can have as many Iraqis murdered as Vietnamese back in the 70s when we withdrew and left our allies to be slaughtered? "Death and taxes"--could be the party‘s motto.

Other than abortion, which in a weird way reduces the problem, what comes up consistently in every election? Fewer babies = fewer old people. Even in the “old” days I was never pro-abortion--I always stepped away from the party on that one. It’s just too hard to bury two of your children and then watch other women throwing theirs into slop pails, even if it did take me 30 years to call it quits with the party. Call me Mommy One Note, but it just became the party of death, disaster and dread by making abortion a key plank in every platform.

1143 Changing the Template

If you ever visit this site and get some sort of message about not being available, or Norma is dead or something, I'm probably changing the template. This takes much more time than posting. When I've finally settled on something, deposited the correct html, previewed it and then hit "publish," it grinds through the back room of blogger.com very slowly, blinking 0%, then 2% then 10% and it may hover over 99% for awhile. So I've developed a list of tasks that can be completed (one, not all), because a watched template never loads.

1. Reheat my coffee.
2. Floss.
3. Put a load in the dryer.
4. Brush up cat hair from the couch.
5. Wipe off kitchen counter.
6. Load cereal bowls in dish washer.
7. Reposition my artificial hydrangea blooms (outside my office window on a real bush).
8. Go around and turn out lights I've left on.
9. Blow dry the kink in my hair, just above the right ear.
10. Scoop the kitty litter.

I'm sure you could add to this list. Feel free. This morning I drug a kicking and screaming (metaphorically, because I had an html problem) Jesuit to my growing list of blogging instructions. Fr. Japes I think is his name, but I've called it "Blogging Religiously."

1142 So much for "confidentiality"

The Chief and his clerks gather for a reunion, maybe their last, but a reporter is there to ease them through breaking their vows of confidentiality.

"The bond between Supreme Court justices and their law clerks is forged from shared in-chambers experiences that are as confidential as they are intense. Half a dozen sources who agreed to discuss the event with The Washington Post cited that relationship in insisting on anonymity." WaPo

1141 We knew this, didn't we?

A writer who claims to be a teacher (lecturer) at Northwestern, Bill Savage, has proudly admitted to the bias, evangelizing and missionary zeal of the left in the college classrooms of America. And they think there's a problem at the Air Force Academy?

"I don't need to have kids to create mini-me voters: I get classrooms full of other people's kids, most already of voting age. And I'm not alone. As right-wing hysterics have recently noticed, universities in America are dominated by lefties like me." Here's a link to a link, because I don't want the scrummy page on my links.

The whole article sounds like a vicious hoax to discredit leftist professors to me--especially the illustration that looks like paper doll clothes for a farm kid, complete with red meat stamped USDA, and the WWJD baseball cap. No left wing nut is that stupid. . . OK. Maybe there is a real Bill Savage, I mean, we know he's real because if you've been on any university campus or sent your kids off to college, you know he's real. But I mean really real, as in a flesh and blood human being with identification and credentials that will soon be pulled.

1140 Friday Feast 52

Appetizer
What's one word or phrase that you use a lot?
“For Pete’s sake,” (also "for pity's sake") and “by Jove,” both of which are substitutes for swearing, but I didn’t know that when I picked them up from my mother.

Soup
Name something you always seem to put off until the last minute.
I’m pretty bad about returning phone calls, or calling to make or change appointments.

Salad
What was the last great bumper sticker you saw?
I heard about one yesterday, but didn't see it. Rush had just done a stinging report on Durbin whining about Hummers slurping gasoline (the implication being it was Bush's fault, war for oil, etc.). A caller reported that he was on the free-way following a Hummer with a Kerry/Edwards bumper sticker.

Main Course
If you could be invisible for one day, how would you spend your time?
I would follow President Bush around, just to see if he is as evil as the Dems think and to learn if Karl Rove is really running the country.

Dessert
Describe your hair.
I have medium brown hair with blond highlights, short, wavy, with bangs. All of this is thanks to Melissa, my hair dresser. Only the slight waviness is natural.

1139 Do the math

"Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers." Fast Company article about pickles

Why do the anti-success people give Wal-Mart such a hard time? I'm really sick of it. Always whining about their employment practices, benefits, size and quality of merchandise. This guy from Limited/Victoria Secret quoted at CircuiTree (have no idea what this is--Google found it) has it all wrong:

"Is a $100 Victoria's Secret bra ten times better than a $10 one from WalMart? Sure it has better fabric and better stitching, but how is it that it could be ten times better? It's worth it if it makes the wearer feel special.... Remember, we are trying to get beyond mere money math. Spend $100 on giving your wife ten WalMart bras for Valentine's Day, and what have you given her? Grounds for divorce."

I would love to buy $100 of Wal-Mart bras. I have six of them, costing $2.50 each, and bought them back in the late 1990s. Eventually they will wear out, and I'll have to wear one of those God-awful things 1) lined in foam or 2) girded with metal tubing and stays, or 3) cut from stretch t-shirt fabric with the support of a butterfly's wing. The women of the mid-19th century fought a battle to get out of stays and corsets, and now the women of the 21st century meekly submit to these torture instruments. I'm guessing the designers are misogynists.

I checked at Wal-Mart the other day, and they are still there for $2.50--or it looks like the same design--at that price there is no foam and no metal. However, I tried one on and the design has changed ever so slightly--probably to compete with the $100 name-brand kind (also made off-shore). I wasn't fooled. However, if I ever decide I want everything shifted backwards and resettled under my arm pits, I know where to go for a bargain.