Leesburg Essay 9

Alex

Alex, Shane, and Ian came to visit for a couple of days this month and a good time was had by all. The biggest hit was the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which revived a cast of small characters who were wilting in the late afternoon heat on the National Mall only a few short minutes before. Alex reports that she’s feeling pretty good at the moment, and only has real troubles for about two days following shortly after her chemo treatments. We will see them again in a week or so on our way to Maine.

Catastrophic Dog Failure

Poor Muki had become quite comfortable with the whole scheme of things in our neighborhood. I guess he got too comfortable, because he wandered a front yard or two away one Saturday afternoon in May when we were all outside and that was it for the little guy. He tried swallowing a bone so big that it is difficult to picture what he was thinking. The emergency animal hospital could not dislodge it from his esophagus without it splintering. We were quite broken up about it.

The Test Beagle

We’re going to get a new dog, but not until the end of summer at the earliest after we have returned from our trip to Maine. The dog we’re looking for should be calm and housetrained, and should be small enough not to necessitate the purchase of a new—and significantly bigger—car. Our initial look was at beagles. My childhood dog, Tish, was part beagle. The thing I didn’t expect was that many people have a really bad impression of beagles. In fact, I heard on the radio a list of the top ten “thug” dogs: the beagle came in around number seven (dachshunds occupied the top spot). The rescue organization at which (B.R.E.W.) I inquired has a list of if/then statements designed to elicit potential owners’ true desire to own one.

The adoption procedures required the visit of a very nice woman from Purcellville with a “test dog.” This (very large) beagle was meant to see what our reactions would be to the dog, but also to size up the physical environment in which the dog would be kept, particularly the ability of our fence to contain a beagle that has found a scent worth chasing. The dog was very patient—Nora gave him a huge hug, all 45 pounds of him—but had one terrible flaw: his name was “Bob.” In our neighborhood there are already way too many Bobs—there’s Cathryn’s dad Bob, there’s “sheriff Bob” (a new arrival), and there are “retired Bob” and “hotel Bob” (who owns a hotel) across the street from each other on the corner. In any case, we passed on Beagle Bob and now are free to adopt our own howling, escaping, shedding dog—named anything but Bob.

Nicole’s Babies

George’s cousin Nicole had her twin boys, William and Declan, in April. We suspect that she and Dave are very, very busy.

Felicie Too

Not to be outdone, George’s sister Felicie and her husband Greg are expecting triplets in September and they are no doubt resting up in anticipation. Now Nora won’t be the youngest cousin. If they have boys, George can continue his campaign for a child named George, as if there weren’t enough Georges in the extended family already (see my thoughts on Beagle Bob above). When I was pregnant I put in a big push for “Georgia” if the baby turned out to be a girl, but George is a purist. He also made clear that he didn’t want his child named after a state. He was, however, quite eager to name the poor girl “Cheney.”

Update on the Girl Who Could Have Been “Cheney”

For some reason (well, maybe this is easy to understand) Nora wants desperately to go to Hawaii and wear “Hawaii clothes.” She has trouble understanding when she asks “When can we go to Hawaii?” and I answer “It’s too far and expensive; probably not for a long time.” Sometimes she asks if she can go later this afternoon as if we would be popping over to the neighborhood pool. If it’s not “when can we go to Hawaii?” then it’s “when we can get a convertible?”

The upcoming election has me questioning again whether Nora could ever run for president given that she was born in a German hospital. George believes this issue is settled and the “Consular Report of Birth Abroad” is enough to guarantee smooth sailing should she have such ambitions, but it seems to me that many are still questioning McCain’s eligibility (born in the Panama Canal zone, I believe) and many would react with suspicion to a document not called simply “Certificate of Live Birth.”

One of my pet peeves is strangers’ reactions to Nora based on her short hair (she does not like having her hair combed, even with detangling spray, so we went with a short hairstyle for now). Even dressed entirely in pink with “Dora the Explorer” sneakers, people still assume she’s a boy. And people actually refer to Nora as “he” mere seconds after I speak directly to her, calling her by name. A cashier at Target actually asked me why I was buying my little boy pink sneakers, which is offensive on many levels. In an era in which little girls seem routinely to be dressed like Britney Spears, I guess a child must have long hair to be taken seriously. Forty years of feminism and this is what we’re reduced to: long hair, pink clothes, and high-heeled flip flops (good for the playground). On the subject of shoes, Nora definitely has a shoe fetish. I can’t wait to see what she’s like as a teenager.

During the school year, Nora was enrolled in a tap/ballet/tumbling combination class at a Leesburg dance studio—which required both tap and ballet shoes—and in June had her first recital. We didn’t know whether she would cry or participate; in the end she participated and didn’t appear in the slightest bit concerned about the mass of people or the stage. She was more interested in whether I would take her and Alexander to the pool later that afternoon. Alexander was complaining that he had to go to the recital, but then really enjoyed it—especially when he realized that he knew some of the other dancers from school. The older girls were quite good, but I think a group of kids smaller than Nora stole the show. One little girl in a huge pink tutu would not move at all. She stood there the whole time the others attempted to do their dance and continued to stand there when the other girls filed off the stage. One of the older girls had to come out and get her. Her parents were probably thinking “an entire year of dance, grandparents in for the recital, and this is the result.”

Update on Alexander

Alexander took a brief dip into the peanut butter pool when he discovered that he liked peanut butter and honey (he doesn’t like jam)—but only on crackers, not bread. On bread it’s apparently too sticky. This is absolutely bizarre to me because peanut butter is a big thing in my family. I still like to eat a good peanut butter and honey sandwich, and Nora asks for this particular combination almost every day. It’s much easier to make lunch for your kid to take to school when you have peanut butter as an option, although I’m sure the schools will soon ban it to prevent harm to kids with food allergies. The traditional peanut butter sandwich in a Ziplock bag will go the way of dodgeball and correct answers in math.

As Alexander has become proficient in reading he has taken up perusing the newspaper at breakfast. I leave him the “Kids Post” (a page in the Washington Post just for kids), the Sports section, and the Metro weather section with the extended forecast. He is particularly interested in the latter because the neighborhood rumor is that the Good Humor man comes on days when it’s above a certain temperature (I think his arrival is actually far more random). In addition, Nora needs Alexander to tell her when there are storms anticipated because she needs to prepare her anxiety well in advance.

And we had quite a stormy start to summer. Alexander completed his spring baseball season and enjoyed it thoroughly, but quite a number of games were called because of rain. The league would reschedule the cancelled games and the make-ups would be cancelled as well. George took the plunge and bought himself a baseball glove so that Alexander could have someone constantly on hand to throw with him (I will play catch or pitch for him but I’m not well-versed in the use of a glove).

Alexander has also managed to finish first grade. His report cards were good, although he frequently got in trouble for talking. Having met some of his friends I can imagine with whom he was getting into trouble.

It seemed as though every birthday party this spring took place at “Pump it Up” in Leesburg. Pump it Up is a huge play space that features giant inflatable slides, moon bounces, and an enthusiastic teenaged staff. It’s especially good when an outdoor party is unlikely to be a go because of unpredictable weather. Luckily for us, Alexander and Nora are still at an age when we can manage a joint party. The opportunity for exhausting play is important to us given that our attendees include a bunch of overactive young boys; this year when the kids were settled in eating pizza and cake, the girls were completely sedate and well-mannered while the boys were still all over the place. If I were the teacher of young boys I would give them a half hour of instruction and then make them get up and do 50 jumping jacks or run around the room a few times.

Other Family Members

On the subject of instruction, I have decided to enter yoga teacher training at Flow Yoga in Leesburg starting in September. The training consists of one full weekend of instruction every month, plus quite a number of books and papers. The head teacher, Maria Garre, is connected with a well-known instructor named Shiva Rea. It will be easier for me to manage the training than it will be for the students who must commute an hour or more from such places as West Virginia. Out here in the boonies it’s not simple to find teacher-training programs. I swore I’d never do anything where I had to write term papers again, but here I am.

On the subject of Indian cultural exports, George and I are thrilled that an Indian restaurant (Angeethi) has opened in Leesburg. Now we are in the process of training the kids to like Indian food so we can go often without complaints.

When we were in Tennessee visiting my parents (where the kids made great progress in the pool, Alexander even attempting some dives from the diving board), we visited Dolly Parton’s theme park in Pigeon Forge: “Dollywood.” George was particularly interested because of an article in The Economist (of all places) last year that described a slice of pie provided to the correspondent that was the size of his head. We didn’t find any human-head-sized slices of pie, but we did see some very odd sights. Probably the oddest was at the little kiddy track with 60s-style cars. In front of us in line for this ride were three middle-aged men with beer bellies, each of whom got into their own car alone and rode off for a turn around the track, not even doing the steering. We could not for the life of us figure this out. They most likely have drivers’ licenses, they probably drove to the park, and for all we know they actually own vintage Mustangs (or maybe Edsels). Yet they stood for ever in a line for the “thrill” of a five-minute ride around the kiddy track.

Despite the questionable antics of its visitors, Dollywood overall is a very nice park in the foothills of the Smokies, and it maintains encouraging standards of dress and behavior that would be unimaginable at Great Adventure in New Jersey.

I noted in my last essay that I was visiting and playing Scrabble with a 97-year old hospice patient at a nursing home. In late May I received a call from the hospice volunteer coordinator to tell me that my patient had been found in her room unresponsive and had subsequently died. This was surprising to me until I remembered that this is the point of hospice – the patients accepted into the program are dying! She never seemed like she was seriously sick, just very old.


George has been rebuilding our rapidly crumbling porch and, as usual, in the process has run into a number of unexpected annoyances, with the compensation that he’s been able to purchase a bunch of cool new tools. A job that he expected could conceivably take a weekend has stretched into a number of weekends, but there is a marked improvement in the look of the house. In addition, he has generated a lot of sawdust and wood shavings that I have been able to recycle as fine untreated mulch for my fruit and vegetable plants.


Books

I read a great “food memoir” called “Climbing the Mango Trees” by Madhur Jaffrey, who is a well-known writer of Indian cookbooks. This reminded me of another excellent food-related book that I read a couple of years ago: “Cooking for Mr. Latte” by Amanda Hesser, a food writer for the New York Times. Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” provides a disturbing description of food production in the U.S. and in the process confirmed my fears about the source of most of our protein. The really startling aspect is his discussion of corn as the basis for most U.S. agriculture. Essentially, we are drowning in a huge sea of industrial corn (try to find a loaf of bread without high fructose corn syrup as its sweetener).

The book reaffirmed my devotion to organic food and/or farmer’s markets, as well as to my own fruits and vegetables from the garden. The most amusing section in the book was the description of the animal rights activists who are so devoted to non-killing that they actually try to make their dogs and cats into vegetarians (the cats, apparently, need supplements to survive). I cannot imagine how George would react if I tried to stop our dog from eating meat as some sort of political protest. He tends to preface most sentences about some restriction on pets with the phrase “but it’s a DOG.”

I myself would have no problem going vegetarian, though not vegan. I have a protein problem—my relationship to meat is tenuous at best and I have no interest in trying out new sources of it (e.g., buffalo or ostrich). I do have a wide appreciation for the spices and for plant based foods, as well as for cheeses, used in pretty much any cuisines I have tried, so I could survive pretty well, I think. Without Brussels sprouts. Beets are also pretty bad; I remember in Australia that they tended to include them as toppings on hamburgers. I was thrilled this year to grow my own lettuce and have taken particular satisfaction in harvesting new red potatoes, which are actually white and creamy looking and thus superior to the supermarket ones which are often ruined by poor storage.

My cousin lent me “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” (Lisa See) about Chinese women in the 19th century. It was an engrossing story, in part because it provided great detail about their daily lives—particularly the process of foot binding. I was bothered by the absence of much discussion of the protagonist’s husband, the catching of whom would have been the point of the foot binding exercise.

A few years ago a friend recommended that I try James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” I finally got around to it, and I finished it, but half the time I admit I had no idea what was going on. I thought some of the passages were beautiful, but with the teenage angst, religious confusion, and conflicts concerning Irish Nationalism, I was left feeling that I had only the dimmest comprehension of the story. I think I’ll seek out a critical discussion of the book and then maybe try to read it again. Maybe there’s an online Joyceian community that could help me out.

Audiobooks

I was unable to “put down” (turn off?) an audiobook presentation of Michael Lewis’ “The Blind Side – The Evolution of a Game.” The book is partly a history of the evolution, from an afterthought to a highly-paid player, of the left tackle (the guy on the offensive line who protects a right-handed quarterback’s blind side from pass rushers). The author weaves this history in with the personal story of a poor, neglected kid from Memphis who through the intervention of a rich white family becomes a football powerhouse at left tackle (the kid, Michael Oher, is now entering his senior year at Ole Miss and is expected to be high in next year’s draft). The reader ends up pulling for the kid, hoping that he does not turn into the kind of complete jerk that so many pro athletes seem to be once the fame and money hit.

I have moved on to an audio presentation of Antonia Fraser’s biography of Marie Antoinette, which works hard to dispel the myths about the queen, such as the “let them eat cake” business. This particular phrase or variant thereof, claims the author, can be attributed to other royalty before the queen and should not have been attached to this one woman. Sofia Coppola directed a movie based on this book but once I read in the reviews that she had the queen prancing around in high-top sneakers as some sort of statement (I guess) of her contemporary high-spiritedness, I lost any interest I might otherwise have had.

Movies/Television

The director Sydney Pollack died in May and I wanted to take the opportunity to state my devotion to the movie “Tootsie,” in which he directed Dustin Hoffman as an unemployed actor who dresses as a woman to take a role in a soap opera. This movie is truly funny and sophisticated and I loved it even as a kid.

We finished the second season of “Rome” on DVD. Unfortunately, they only made two seasons (reportedly it was very expensive to produce). When I watch a show like this or “Battlestar Galactica” (also in its final—terrific—season) or even “Lost” (which has regained some of its punch), I wonder how George and I managed to become hooked on a show like the “The Biggest Loser” (which finished its most recent season in April). We would even have voted online for the finalists if we could have figured out how. We felt strongly that the guy whose crying jags increased in frequency in proportion with his decreasing weight needed to go; he was just too annoying. The sensitive-guy thing was okay for maybe fifteen minutes one episode, but after that it tipped over into total wimpiness, with George and I yelling things like “get some backbone” at the TV.

Four Stars

“WALL-E” was one of the best films I’ve seen in awhile, and the kids liked it too. Nora now walks around imitating the voices of the little robots and has asserted she wants to be one (or all) of them for Halloween.

Unlike French films, I’ve found that the German movies that make it big in the international market are usually quite good (think “Run Lola Run,” “The Downfall,” and “Goodbye, Lenin”). “The Lives of Others,” which concerns the activities of a Stasi agent and the people he was assigned to observe, continues this excellent trend.

“Ratatouille” is a great film, but it was marketed as though studio executives decided an animated movie must be for children. I watched it with my mother and my kids and my kids had no idea what was going on, despite Alexander’s protests to the contrary.

Three Stars

“Letters from Iwo Jima” was directed by Clint Eastwood as the companion movie to “Flags of our Fathers” (which I have not seen). I like the premise of portraying the same event from two points of view. This film is told from the perspective of the doomed Japanese soldiers at Iwo Jima, entirely in Japanese with English subtitles. I know very little about the Pacific campaign; mostly I guess because the activities of the Nazis added an interest to the fight against the Germans that was not part of the fight of the Japanese. I have no idea whether the two campaigns were viewed at the time as equally important by Americans. One thing that gets me, however, is the Japanese and all their annoying, pointless suicides. And they are still at it: an article recently in one of the major papers noted an increase in suicides among Japanese teenagers using some method, I forget what, that was carefully designed not to endanger others.

Another war film is “Rescue Dawn,” directed by Werner Herzog and starring Christian Bale, which tells the story of Dieter Dengler, a pilot shot down over Vietnam and held captive by the Vietcong in Laos. There are some very Herzog touches, such as the dreamy soundtrack, but Christian Bale is the real attraction.

Two Stars

Although we were very impressed by the movie about Germans made by Germans, we
were not impressed with the movie about Germans made by Americans: “The Good German” starring George Clooney. The look and feel is interesting, but otherwise the film has much drama without being dramatic, kind of the anti-Casablanca. In addition, Cate Blanchett is not usually this annoying.

“No End in Sight” is a documentary film made by a Brookings Institute analyst that tells the story of the Iraq war. It wasn’t inflammatory but was definitely one-sided, especially with regard to the early days of the occupation and how decisions were made regarding de-Baathification. For example, it might have added some balance to explain why de-Baathification was the Administration’s policy. I also laughed out loud when one interviewee from the State Department, discussing the lack of prewar planning for the postwar occupation, pointed out that analysts from State had prepared a set of briefing books (40-volumes, I believe he said—we get a brief glimpse of them onscreen as if to bolster their credibility) with recommendations on a range of topics to prepare for the occupation. The interviewee’s complaint was that no one from the Pentagon even read them. Bureaucrats always behave like bureaucrats (e.g., preparing long, dense texts for busy people) and then expect other bureaucrats not to act like bureaucrats (e.g., to actually read the texts in question).

Because George has lately been on an American history kick, I had him watch “Glory,” which stars Matthew Broderick as a Civil War officer leading a group of African-American soldiers—including Denzel Washington—on an ultimately doomed mission. It’s a good story, but the movie is very stilted (think “Gettysburg”). Whenever I watch a war movie made before “Saving Private Ryan” or “Black Hawk Down” I wonder if I am far too jaded to watch a less than over-the-top production.

I also recommended he watch “City Slickers,” which I remember finding amusing when it came out. This time I found that while it was often funny, the dramatic moments seemed very fake.

I had high comedic hopes for “Knocked Up” starring Katherine Heigl, but it was very disappointing. It was so unnecessarily crude and not at all clever. It got better as it went along, but it is far less engaging that other romantic comedies in which the side characters often make the film (such as “Notting Hill” or “Out of Sight”).

“Romper Stomper,” starring Russell Crowe, concerns the worldview and activities of a group of neo-Nazis in Melbourne, Australia. I found it at least interesting, and can see why it got some buzz when it was released, but George’s reactions consisted simply of “It’s not really a movie, is it?” and “I hate neo-Nazis.”

On the subject of Nazis, we went to see the latest (final?) installment of Indiana Jones at the theatre. It was very disappointing. The script contained many references to other Spielberg/Lucas movies and thus felt derivative rather than new and fresh, and the new young male sidekick, Shia LaBeouf, was less than inspiring despite the buzz about him.

Political Update

One note on the whole controversy regarding Obama and his less-than-savory associations. These particular relationships are not the be all and end all of the guy, but he has handled them by telling us what he doesn’t believe (e.g., “I don’t believe what Reverend Wright says about the U.S.”) while neglecting to tell us what he does believe (i.e., what he does love about the U.S.—yes, I know, this is very uncool). This is different from “questioning his patriotism,” which is scoffed at by the left. Isn’t it reasonable to expect that the person we might hire to lead our country is actually devoted to the country he will lead rather than the country he may want (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld of all people)?