Sunday, November 14, 2010
Rambling on Domestic Matters
First of all, you've all got wonderful six-word autobiographies, and I like hearing from you. Keep it up!
Sundays are domestic day at Casa Five, and they have their own Sunday routine. Sundays are the only day that the First Mate and I have off, so this usually begins with sleeping in until the late morning and then making a huge and delicious breakfast. Afterward comes what my grandmother used to refer to as "One Great Hour of Swearing," wherein we do all the tedious but important regular chores like vacuuming the carpet, scrubbing out the tub, and cleaning all the burners on the stovetop.
Once the apartment is clean, Sunday afternoons are adventure time with the First Mate. We try to check out places we haven't been or discover things that are interesting. Today, for example, we went to the Arboretum and took a tour of the effigy mounds. I learned that they were built in the shape of birds and something called a water panther, which shapes are fairly dimly visible from the ground, but still. The more you know. Normally I'm terrible at domesticity and even worse at routine, but it's nice to have this as an anchor to my week. The First Mate and I are generally busy and have fairly disparate interests, so it's good to have committed time for finding common ground.
It's also good, I find, to have designated cleaning time. When you cook as much as we do, work as much as we do, and don't have a dishwasher, things can get fairly horrific fast. I have, however, reached the age where I just can't let a cluttered living space slide like I did in college. All the old tricks like eating ramen noodles with a staple remover or drinking out of quickly-rinsed margarine tubs no longer seem even marginally acceptable. I used to motivate myself to clean house by watching YouTube clips about compulsive hoarding and thinking "There but for the grace of god and a few loads of laundry go I," but that's probably pretty voyeuristic and damaging. Much nicer to fill up on pancakes, blast some Cake, and tackle dishes with a partner.
I go through phases of nesting, where I like to think about establishing routines and having days in to clean and planning for eventual upgrades to the living space. In between these, I swing like a pendulum into free-spirit mode, where I am always on the verge of selling all of my possessions, buying a van, changing my name to Coyote, and driving west to Find America. (I have a sneaking suspicion it will turn out to be throwing up malt liquor behind a 24-hour Super Wal-Mart.) This, coupled with my pattern of keeping jobs for a year or two and then moving a few hundred miles, occasionally raises doubts about how well I'll ever manage to stay in one place. Does this happen to everyone my age, I wonder? Clearly not, as most of the people with whom I went to high school are married already. All pendulums eventually settle to a comfortable center, don't they? Here's hoping I do too.
Labels: rants
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
WTF Wednesday 1: Today In Politics
I'm not an angry person. Really. I prefer to believe that the world is fascinating and that people are good and that decency will prevail. Most of the time, I'm right. Sometimes, however... well, take a look for yourself.
The first news article that made me holler WTF this Wednesday concerns the recent layoffs at the Oak Brook library, but is really more about the way one lawyer is relishing making children cry. "Connie" Xinos, a homeowner's association president and Oak Brook resident, shot down an eleven-year-old girl who spoke in the library's defense at a village board meeting, telling her to "put her money where her mouth is" and that "I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and that she was nice, and that she helped you find books." After the eleven-year-old was reduced to tears, Oak Brook's answer to Henry Potter gloated about his victory. " "I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night," a grinning Xinos [said] Wednesday, as he [invited] me for a nearly two-hour interview in his Mercedes-Benz in the gated Oak Brook community where he lives." People, what is wrong with that sentence? I almost expected to hear that Xinos had to kick the reporter out of his car after those two hours because he was late for his weekly puppy-kicking session.
Since Oak Brook has no property tax, the library is funded by sales taxes at the mall and area businesses. With buying going down, the Xinos-approved solution was to fire three of the full-time librarians (including the children's and head librarian) and several part-timers. To me, the addition of a minimal property tax to keep the library staffed and funded is a priority only slightly below maintaining emergency services-- as several commenters pointed out, where do you think the firemen get study materials and where do they take their qualifying tests? No sleep lost for Xinos, though-- as he said, "Don't cry crocodile tears about people who are making $100,000 a year wiping tables and putting the books back on the shelves." And this-- this is what really bothers me.
First of all, library science is a complicated and demanding field. Libraries provide scads of services that go way beyond table-wiping and book-shelving. A librarian with education and experience meriting that salary level has, I'm sure, as much time, training, and expertise in his or her field as a lawyer like Xinos. How many lawyers in his position make less than $100k a year? Yeah, that's right, I thought so.
If it were just Ebenezer Xinos and his Leave No Child Not Crying push, that'd be one thing. This seems to be symptomatic of a much larger and more infuriating problem, though--the devaluation of education, research, and academic pursuits in our country. I'm talking about Rush Limbaugh scoffing at funding going to "study the sex lives of female college freshmen" (actually part of a study on women's health.) I'm talking about McCain belittling Obama's requested equipment for the Adler Planetarium as "a $3 million overhead projector." I'm talking about all the people who respond to linguistics, philosophy, literature majors with condescension, mockery, or pity. I'm talking about George W. Bush's attempts to insult John Kerry by making him out to be an intellectual, and about the fact that they worked.
Is this a fitting product of our cultural heritage? Is this all we can expect of the nation which put a man on the moon, whose citizens invented the telephone, the lightbulb, the Tesla coil, the airplane, the EEG, the computer, the particle accelerator? Is this the message we want to send to our eleven-year-olds, weeping or otherwise? This rejection of all things intellectual is unworthy of us as a country with a reputation for innovation and opportunity, and in my opinion it ought to bring us down in the eyes of all who value curiosity, creativity, and human dignity. Our ability to express, to speculate, to ask the hard questions and fight tirelessly for answers is what sets us apart as a species. If we start to undermine these things for the sake of profit or political gain, we are all diminished.
And that's not even mentioning how mad I am about Bob McDonnell, the repeal of the Maine gay marriage ruling, and the parental notification law. They'll have to wait until next Wednesday, I suppose. Until then, GO GO GO, Washington Ref. 71. You're my only hope.
Labels: intellectuals, rants, WTF Wednesday