Because I'll Be Seeing Him in Nine Hours

A quick post on Prof. Michael Klarman's thought regarding Brown v. Board and Lawrence v. Texas as judicial activism/ riding the wave of popular opinion. (I only know what was reported here, so if I'm mischaracterizing, I apologize.)

Although the Lawrence decision avoided the issue of gay marriage -- just as Brown avoided interracial marriage -- Klarman predicted the Court eventually would deem classifications by sexual orientation unconstitutional, as public support for gay rights continues to increase.

The more I hear from people actively opposing same-sex marriage, the more I'm convinced that it's not classifications by sexual orientation, but classifications by gender, that will have to fall in order to perceive bans on SSM as unconstitutional.
Perhaps those agitating against the Equal Rights Amendment back in the day were right: an Amendment to the Constitution that said classifications could not be made on the basis of gender essentially would mean that classifying unions based on the gender of the participants would be unconstitutional.

Also, I'm not sure why Brown would have mentioned interracial marriage. It was about kids in elementary and secondary school, not exactly the time to talk about gettin' hitched.
Lawrence, however, centered on the important of the state's not interfering in meaningful intimate relationships, which dings the MARRIAGE bell in my mind.

Late Friday Grab-Bag

Serious stuff tomorrow or Sunday from the Brown symposium at UVA Law, but brain too mushy for any of it now.

A very bizarre song.

A female Iranian graphic novelist, publishing with Pantheon/ Random House, profiled by the NYTimes last May. Here's a snippet (Background--Satrapi is taking art classes at Tehran University):

When the class finally insisted on a male model - clothed, but at least in possession of visible limbs - an Islamic morals policeman showed up. "He said, 'Miss, why are you looking at this guy?'" Ms. Satrapi recalled. "I said, 'Should I look at the door and draw him?' And he said yes."

More "girl comics" here and here.

PG's Word of the Day:

lagniappe. la·gniappe
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called boot. See Regional Note at beignet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Louisiana French, from American Spanish la ñapa, the gift : la, the (from Latin illa, feminine of ille, that, the. See al-1 in Indo-European Roots) + ñapa(variant of yapa, gift, from Quechua, from yapay, to give more).]
Regional Note: Lagniappe derives from New World Spanish la ñapa, “the gift,” and ultimately from Quechua yapay, “to give more.” The word came into the rich Creole dialect mixture of New Orleans and there acquired a French spelling. It is still used in the Gulf states, especially southern Louisiana, to denote a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean “an extra or unexpected gift or benefit.”

Some bookish stuff I said a while back:

"Kali the Goddess Slayer meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is typical of a lot of academic work: adding pop culture + high culture = catchy yet edifying.
For example, I wrote my Chaucer seminar paper on the Wife of Bath as a "Material Girl" and put a picture of the Madonna Barbie on the title page. 'Cause I'm a dork, the paper was more about economics than Madonna, but one of the works I cited really did spend its entire time linking the Wife and Madonna.
Ditto for the Jane Austen's Guide to Dating. Jane Austen = high culture; Guide to Dating = low culture. Put 'em together and you get what they hope will be a bestseller.

Of course, just plain low culture does fine; witness the success of the American Pie movies. But educated people frequently prefer the mix, because then they feel like they're using their brains.
There's something in David Brooks's Bobos in Paradise about high vs. low vs. middlebrow culture, and other people have written about that as well, but I think I need more food before I can remember.

Keep in mind that Goddess for Hire is being described as an "Indian MBFGW," which means that all that crazy ethnic stuff will be Indian instead of Greek. Not that it makes much difference; MBFGW doesn't do much that's specific to Greeks.
I think everyone in America who feels strongly marked by ethnicity identifies with having parents who want you to marry within the group, and who are more traditionalist than the surrounding culture, and who club together in big family gatherings, and who tend to run family businesses (since that was the only way a lot of immigrants could make money), and where the women all stuff you full of food and serve your American friends stuff that looks alarming to people who aren't of your ethnic group.

Kali is the most popular Hindu goddess in America, so she fits well into the pop culture thing too. I went to a fringe theater festival in Seattle, and there was a one-woman show about a woman who is channeling Kali while she bakes stuff. I think women particularly are fascinated by a goddess who simultaneously is the goddess of wives and children, but also the Destroyer. I saw a tract once that assumed Kali-worship was the same as Satanism.

---

John Gardner is supposed to have said that the two plots are
1) a hero(ine) goes on a journey;
2) a stranger comes to town. I think "stranger comes to town" works better for most women's fiction, because then the community issues naturally come up.

I consider Huck Finn to be an example of "hero goes on a journey." The only community in that novel that is not ultimately undermined and shown to be bad is the relationship formed between Huck and Jim on the raft. Unfortunately (and this is why the book's ending seems so bad), this relationship has to end because they can't stay on the raft forever, and Huck needs to be sivilized and whatever happened to Jim's family, about whom he was so worried in the beginning? That's another problem with using Plot 1 for a book that needs a HEA ending. It's inherently unstable, because a journey has to end.

I suppose if you combine the two -- hero goes on journey, ends up being the stranger who comes to town and find his place there -- it works.
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, once it has finished establishing this BNW, kicks off with two people journeying to the colonies on a vacation. They bring back with them a Savage, who is the stranger come to town, who makes people reevaluate things. But the ending is unhappy because the Savage doesn't find the community he seeks in the BNW; the nihilistic, hedonistic community dismays him so much that he goes crazy.

Baude Group-Blog Raids

The dissolution of En Banc provides one benefit: now the talents of Crescat Sententia have been enlarged by the addition of Greg as permanent member, and Jeremy as a guest-blogger.

UPDATE: Nick is posting at Ichiblog for now.

My Older Sister Rocks

I just wish Wash U could send some of that cash my way... $32k a year in tuition!

I'm extremely happy to inform you that the Admission's Committee has decided to offer you the Wood Leadership Fellowship! The Wood Leadership Program offers up to 15 full-tuition MBA scholarships per year, which cover four semesters of full-time study during the fall and spring semesters. Fellowships are awarded based solely on merit. All applicants, domestic and international, who have demonstrated outstanding leadership skills, superb academic achievement, exceptional professional accomplishments, a strong commitment to community service, and well-defined career goals are considered. Finalists will be invited to visit Olin and interview for the fellowship. No separate application is needed to be considered for a Wood Fellowship. [...]

Official letters will be sent to you along with an Admission's Packet. In the meantime, please contact me if you have any questions. I sincerely look forward to personally greeting you here this August.

Sincerely,
Brad D. Pearson, Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid
John M. Olin School of Business, Washington University in St. Louis

In other money-saving news, I got into Washington & Lee, which is "only" $22,290. At least Lexington (pop. 7,100) should be a cheap place to live.

Even If I Can't Go To Boston, Boston Comes to Me

And I can't go to Boston because I was tempted into going to Charlottesville instead

Somehow I got on Boston Review's mailing list. I've only read one old issue of theirs, but they seem to be producing great work.

Dear friend,
Please take a look at our latest issue and tell us what you think.
Best wishes,
The Editors

Check it out, y'all; they are now online and at newsstands with BOSTON REVIEW's February/March 2004 issue on Democracy and Consent, including:

RESOLVING TO RESIST:
Local governments are refusing to comply with the Patriot Act
by Elaine Scarry
"In the two years since its passage by Congress ... the U.S.A. Patriot Act has become the locus of resistance against the unceasing injuries of the Bush-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft triumvirate, as first one community, then two, then eleven, then 27, then 238 have passed resolutions against it, as have three state legislatures. Many more councils and legislatures have draft resolutions pending.
The letters U.S.A. and the word patriot have gradually reacquired their earlier solidity and sufficiency, as local and state governments reanimate the practice of self-rule by opposing the Patriot Act's assault on the personal privacy, free flow of information, and freedom of association that lie at the heart of democracy. Each of the resolutions affirms the town's obligation to uphold the constitutional rights of all persons who live there, and many of them explicitly direct police and other residents to refrain from carrying out the provisions of the Patriot Act, even when approached by a federal officer and explicitly instructed to do so."

WE THE PEOPLE:
Who has the last word on the Constitution?
by Larry Kramer
"Certainly the men and women of our founding generation would not have accepted -- did not accept -- being told that a lawyerly elite had charge of the Constitution, and they would have been incredulous if told (as we are often told today) that the main reason to worry about who becomes president is that the winner will control judicial appointments. Giving an unelected judiciary that kind of importance and deference 'makes the Judiciary Department paramount in fact,' James Madison mused in 1788, 'which was never intended and can never be proper.'"

REVOLUTIONARY CONSENT:
What the public life of American colonists can teach us about politics
by Barbara Clark Smith
"We are less accustomed than colonial Americans were to thinking of our policymakers as better or wiser than us, or born to rule over us. Paradoxically, we may be more accustomed to doing what they tell us. The colonists, fewer of whom could vote, and all of whom were supposed to defer to the judgment of their representatives, nonetheless assumed a capacity to consent to law or withhold consent 'after the fact.'"

I think I was hinting at something like this earlier today.

* * *
ESSAYS

ENDGAME: Conservatives after the Cold War
Corey Robin writes of the conservative hope for a grand imperial project: "'The trouble with the emphasis in conservatism on the market,' [William F.] Buckley told me, 'is that it becomes rather boring. You hear it once, you master the idea. The notion of devoting your life to it is so horrifying if only because it's so repetitious. It's like sex.'"

Requisite shudder over seeing "William F. Buckley" and "sex" in such close proximity.

MUSLIMS AND CITIZENS: France's headscarf controversy
John R. Bowen asks whether Muslims can ever be fully French.

COMMON GROUND: An immigration crisis in the European Union
Michael Standaert describes new restrictions on immigration and new interest in anti-immigration nationalist groups in Belgium and elsewhere.

READING YOUR MIND: How our brains help us understand other people
Rebecca Saxe writes, "If you show a child a crayon box and ask her what she thinks is inside, all children will say that the box contains crayons. But if you open the box to show that it actually contains ribbons, re-close the box, and then ask the child what she thought was in the box before it was opened, the three-year-old children claim they thought all along that the box contained ribbons."

At which point, you call them filthy liars. Hey, spare the insult and spoil the child...

***
PLUS: Hilary Putnam on Michael Walzer et al.'s The Jewish Political Tradition, Volume II;
a short story by D.S. Sulaitis, the winner of BOSTON REVIEW's 11th annual short-story contest;
Roger Boylan on John Banville;
Elisabeth Robinson on writing The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters;
Carol Bere on Ted Hughes;
Karen Volkman on Fanny Howe;
Stephen Burt on New York poets;
Alan A. Stone on The Station Agent;
and poetry by Cynthia Cruz, Arthur Sze, Lucie Brock-Broido, Nadia Herman Colburn, Jonah Winter, Karla Kelsey, and David St. John.

aka, semi-obscure people talking about much more famous people

What's Gender Got To Do With It?

In less than 24 hours, I've gone from feeling perfectly well to hitting the "head stuffed with warm used Kleenex" stage of the cold. Normally this is accompanied by a descent into apathy. I can be mildly amused or annoyed by things, but not really enthusiastic.

However, there is one cure for this feeling: reading Maggie Gallagher on the subject of same sex marriage. No matter how much I'm thinking that nothing matters except unclogging my nose, her astounding bounds of illogic rouse me into at least a shadow of the expected response.

One of the many ways in which same- and opposite-sex couples differ is on this thing called babies. Gays and lesbians can get children only after an enormous amount of effort and deliberate thought: through adoption, buying a baby from a woman (a.k.a. "surrogate motherhood") or artificial insemination. Babies don't just suddenly appear.
By contrast, the things that men and women must do to make sure they do NOT have children outside of marriage are difficult -- abstain from sex, have a shotgun wedding, use contraception consistently or have an abortion (in descending order of moral virtue, in my opinion).

While attempts at contracted surrogacy, in which women are paid to carry the baby and are sued if they fail to give up their parental rights, do essentially constitute baby-selling, not all surrogacy takes this form. Many women -- the sisters, friends and even mothers of infertile couples -- volunteer to carry a loved one's baby if a wife is unable to do so. Lumping all surrogate motherhood into "buying a baby" typifies how narrowly and extremely Gallagher looks at any experience outside her own.

Her preference for shotgun weddings over consistent contraception is another example. Unless one's real goal is to have as many babies produced as possible, preventing pregnancy is a much better method of ensuring that all babies are born into a stable family than wedding upon discovery of pregnancy is. I don't suppose Gallagher has checked on the number of shotgun weddings that have ended in the justifiably dreaded divorce and single-parent household.

Many people have said that it is precisely because gay and lesbian couples have to put so much "effort and deliberate thought" into having children that they are likely to be, on average, better parents than the average heterosexual couple. One often values and takes better care of a child for whom one has had to do so much to be able to parent, than one who was not planned for or really wanted.

Gallagher, however, somehow manages to take the opposite view:

People won't avoid umarried childbearing in a society that says what same-sex marriage says: Children don't need mothers and fathers. Alternative family structures are just as good. Young men who are raised to believe that fathers don't matter to their children will not become dependable husbands and fathers themselves.

What is she talking about? Same-sex marriage does not say that single parenting is an ideal; instead, it affirms the need of all people, wherever they fall on the sexual orientation spectrum, to be in a loving, committed relationship.

The children in these pictures are not being taught that "fathers don't matter to their children." On the contrary, they have two dependable fathers. Kids of lesbian couples have two dependable mothers.
I was raised without the presence of a grandfather, but that doesn't mean I think grandfathers are irrelevant. Nonetheless, the support I received from my parents, aunts, uncles, grandmother, cousins and family friends was quite sufficient to keep me from feeling a great lack of grandfathering.

I just don't understand someone who would co-write a book called The Case for Marriage, in which she claims that "married people are happier, healthier & better off financially," and then campaign to keep gays and lesbians from enjoying those benefits. Presumably it's the institution of marriage itself that brings all this good stuff -- otherwise Gallagher's book falls completely flat -- so why try to prevent thousands of people from getting in on the deal?

Gallagher somehow jumps from the reasonable belief that divorce and single-parent households have a highly deleterious effect on children to the absurd idea that same sex marriage and two-parent households will do the same. Never have I seen her explain why having two parents of the same sex will lead a child to ruin. Instability is bad, not having one of your parents around is bad, but what is bad about having a stable home and two loving mothers or two loving fathers?

I am confused by the Marriage Debate blog; it's run by Eve Tushnet, whom Kaus links as "Queer, Catholic, conservative and not Andrew Sullivan!" But it is sponsored by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, of which Gallagher is president.
I suppose Tushnet's queerness is outbalanced by her conservative Catholicism. Unlike Sullivan, "Tushnet expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage on the basis that it potentially would harm children who wouldn't have the benefit of having both a mother and father."

The comparison of divorce and single-parenting to same sex marriage and two-parenting is worthless, unless one explains how gender relates to parenting. What is special about being a man, aside from the previously noted ability to pee standing up, that a woman can't provide? What is special about being a woman, other than biological capacity to breastfeed, that a man can't provide? There are mothers, single, lesbian and otherwise, who play basketball with their sons. There are fathers, single, gay and otherwise, who give their daughters Pride and Prejudice.

Even though the abrogation of rights for gays and lesbians doesn't hurt me directly, I still feel insulted by the implication that women somehow lack something invaluable that men have when it comes to parenting. I know I have areas in which I want to improve before I start raising children, but none of them are related to being female; they're just the weaknesses of selfishness, carelessness, irresponsibility that any man who had a personality like mine also would have to correct.

At this point in my life, a child being raised by me and my female roommate would probably be much better off than one raised by me and a guy just like me. The former would be getting both creative encouragement and practical needs fulfilled, while the latter likely would be allowed to fall down the stairs on a regular basis. My roommate could even cover many of the stereotypical "male" interests like sports.

Homosexuals who would make excellent fathers are the ones shut out of parenting; lesbians can be artificially inseminated, but the state has to be willing to let gay couples adopt children. There may be hundreds of children currently in foster care and other unstable situations who could be adopted by good fathers, if only the states permitted it.

UPDATE:

This just in: President Bush is "troubled" by gay marriage, and he's "watching carefully" to see what happens in San Francisco. Well, I'm "troubled" by President Bush, and I'm "watching carefully" to see him go down in November. So we're even.

And In Other Exciting News

This week's Savage Love column reports that Savage's Santorum critical website is now the number 1 Google search result.
While past Google bombs mostly have been to phrases (like "miserable failure"), or for the names of relatively obscure persons, this may be the first time that a very well-known person has had his name linked to a website with which he would prefer to have no association.

I tried Googling Santorum, but either a lot of people are determinedly linking his name to this official site, or Google has been lobbied successfully into maintaining this site as the top result.

Texas Blogger Birthday Week

Happy 38th to Charles Kuffner III. The comments to the link reveal that he is a Trinity grad (like my older sister) and got many of his fans through his Koufax-nominated coverage of the Texas re-districting mess last year.

More Plagiarizing

Hey, it's a great discussion.

On the other side, there's the woman on Amazon who said she loved Bet Me but gave it four stars because Min and Cal didn't have a baby.
My daughter Mollie called me and said, "What the hell is that?"
"That is a fantasy unfulfilled. It really is a four star book for her because of that."
Mollie said, "Well, they got a dog." Which I take to mean, "You'll never be a grandmother."

---

Yeah, I saw that review too, before I'd gotten the book, and didn't think too much about it, but when I was reading along and both the H/h indicated up front that they weren't looking for children (which, of course is the mature thing to do if they don't want kids, to prevent future issues), I realized
a) why the reviewer made an issue of it, and
b) how thrilled I was to FINALLY be reading a book in which true love is not equated with procreation!

As someone who's known since she was 12 (and raising her much-younger brothers for emotionally absent parents) that she would never have children, that she would not be a good nurturer of children, it's
refreshing to read about a heroine who is not pining for an infant. There's enough pressure in society to make babies; it's nice to have the occasional counter-balance, or at least the acknowledgement that
one can be a complete (and happy) human being while acknowledging a total lack of child-rearing skills.

On childless Min and Cal, there was a time when I'd have thought they should have had at least one kid because they're such great people; they'd make great parents. Ask any teacher--there can never be too many great parents.
But now I'm an empty nester and you know, it's okay. Of course I would never have given up my kids. Never, ever. But I like it that Bet Me shows alternative. Some reader out there who doesn't want to have children just got validated, big time.

---

*Stands up and waves hands around wildly*

It's me, it's me! I'm only 23, and already people are bugging me about getting married and having kids. I just broke up with my boyfriend of three years, because after saying forever that he didn't ever want to get married and have kids, he suddenly turned around and changed his damn mind, and then was upset that I didn't feel the same way.

Sorry, there are a lot of reasons why I feel the way I do, not the least of which is that I have six siblings, the youngest of whom is still only eight. I'm raising my kids now. Part of me thinks it would be nice to have a nice nuclear family of my own, but then I realize that that's SO not what I want. I spent my childhood being responsible for babies and little kids, and as much as I love them, I'm with Gin in the not feeling the parental thing for myself. So, thanks, Jenny, for the non-baby hungry Min and Cal.

---

I have two best girl friends who are both married and have no children. The first one didn't marry until she was 35 and she has never wanted children. A lot of men friends would agree with her but when it came down to deciding to marry it was the deciding factor. She knew she didn't want children so they would break. She finally found a great guy... with a little help from moi matchmaker... and they are perfect together. He doesn't want children either. They have a great life and three cats.

My other best gf is the same way. I don't think its as much of her not wanting children just that she hasn't had any and she is almost 35 now, she doesn't try not to have them but she doesn't try to have them either, so its ok if she doesn't. She will probably be the one that has a change of life baby at 45. Her and her husband have 2 cats and 2 dogs. I think its all the children they can handle at the moment.

I think for a long time we didn't consider a couple a family unless they had children. And it was weird to think a couple got married and didn't want children. And it was just so sad if they couldn't have children. Why get married if you didn't want children?
We forget some times people get married because they love each other and want to dedicate their lives to
one another. And I think we have realized that families are what you make them. Children or not.

---

Amen. And people don't always have to get married, either.

Dan and I are the Chandler and Monica of our circle of friends. Everyone else was engaged but it didn't go through, or had always dated serially in high school or something, and we were the nerds who no one was going to marry. Of all our friends we were the first married, and very few of our closest friends are married. (We tried to hook two of them together for convenience sake, but it didn't take.)

On a personal, purely selfish level, I adore my unmarried friends' unmarried status. They're understanding about the kid thing, love Anna, spoil her, but then when Anna goes to bed we (mostly) stop talking G- rated and giggle over dumb things on the internet or watch a show Anna is too young for and -- well, pretend we don't have kids. [...]
All this great fun that would be so hard if they had spouses who didn't get it or, worse, kids who were tearing up the house with our daughter, or kids who needed to go home to be put into bed.

What's more, they're HAPPY people. I suspect our unmarried friends wouldn't turn down a knight/ knightess in shining armor, but they're in their thirties, now, and I get this sense that they have officially hung up the "I have to get married!" hat, so they're so much more relaxed about finding someone. If it works, great! If not, well, this is working too.

I just wish our society knew enough to leave people alone when they're happy. Our goal should be to create a society where everyone is happy in a way that doesn't require animal or human sacrifice. So, if skinning cats makes you happy, you're going to have to redirect.
But if marrying someone of your same sex or staying single or wearing purple every day or never
having kids makes you happy, hang a sign around your neck that says SHUT UP, I'M HAPPY, NOW GO AWAY and maybe they can quit thinking about making dumb laws like "Only people like us can get married!" and people can stop asking when we're going to have a second child.

MAYBE NEVER, is what my sign says, UNLESS YOU VOLUNTEER TO BE THE SURROGATE, BECAUSE I HATED BEING PREGNANT. There'd be small print about custody, too. I like my one child. Maybe next week I'll want two. Maybe in three years. Maybe never. But I'll be damned if I'll have a kid to make the Wal-Mart clerk or my husband's aunt happy. And you know what? No one should.

---

In my group, we're all married, with kids, with the exception of my best friend. People used to ask her all the time when she was getting married, and after she broke up with her boyfriend of several years, someone asked her if she had ever thought of getting a sperm donor. "Because Oprah says after you turn 27, your fertility drops by thirty percent."

Hello?? My friend is gorgeous, bright, and successful. Somehow, in the 21st century, everything still hinges on whether or not she's married with children. She adores kids (spoils mine), but she just knows that she doesn't want them for herself. I think it's better to know for sure that you don't want them than to have them because everyone else thinks they're great and end up miserable later. Like a couple of the
people that constantly hound her about it.

---

I was talking to my dad about the same thing the other night. Luckily, I have a family that doesn't pressure me about getting married or having children. [Clearly, this woman isn't Indian.] I told my dad that the more I think about it, the more I think that I don't want to have kids. I work with them every day, subbing, typically at the school where I was an instructional aide a couple of years ago. I love those kids, but I don't think I want to have one of my own. My dad had the best response for me, he said maybe teaching is your way of having kids. You don't have to have any of your own to make you happy.

This might shock the people that I used to baby-sit for though. I think the mom would have willed me her two kids if anything had ever happened to her or her husband. I also love being "Aunt Sara" to my nephew. I love that kid to death, but I'm always happy to give him back to my sister too.

---

Not everyone that's a good person is guaranteed to make a wonderful parent. And there really isn't a way to find that out without making a decision you can't take back. And I also think it's great to see an alternative to "marriage = babies 4 eva" out there.

---

My brother always wanted kids and his current wife Hates Kids. This was overheard by me at my daughter's birthday party and made me think, "Then what the hell are you doing here?"
We went to dinner with them a couple of weeks ago and she said she has decided that maybe in 5 or 6 years she might like to "Try it out" and that they would adopt first to see how she liked it. I wanted to scream at her "THIS IS A HUMAN BEING - NOT A DOG FROM THE POUND!!!" Of course, I didn't as our relationship is already quite strained, but I'm sure I stared at her with a look that said "Are you fucking crazy!?!"
I'm not sure how I should have responded, but I think this is a perfect example of why people should get these things cleared up first.

---

She probably came because you are her sister in law. I do that for my sister in law. And I am definitely one of those people who do not/did not love kids. They are generally loud, kind of gross, and constantly disobedient.
Plus, I was never around kids. Ever. Never babysat. None of my friends had kids. I always joked with my husband (who loves kids) that the most effective form of birth control was to visit his sister and her three preteen boys. I came home vowing never to have children.

In any event, this past summer, despite modern birth control methods I was surprised by the fact that I had outgrown my jeans, missed several periods and realized that I may be pregnant. So now, even though I am not a big kid lover, I am going to have to be.
Left to my own devices, I would never have consciously decided to have children. In fact, before we got married, I had a talk with the DH and told him that I didn't have any desire to have children and didn't plan on it and if that was important to him, he should find someone else.

You can say a lot of things when you don't have any experience with it. And 5 years ago, I was definitely your sister in law. Proclaiming my dislike of all things small and crying. Now, I am not so much disliking all things small and crying - just terrified of them. Be patient with your crazy sister in law. She may turn out to be a huge kid lover in a few years.

---

Speaking as someone who's always wanted kids, has always known she's wanted kids, and has structured her life to have kids I have to say that sometimes I'm perplexed that other people don't. Of course, this usually occurs after I've had an exceptionally wonderful day or two with my daughters who are now old enough to dress themselves, clean up after themselves, entertain themselves....

A lot of people also worry about their future. Who's gonna take care of them when they can no longer take care of themselves? Why the kids of course. They might not like it, but more than likely they'll at least find you a decent nursing home. You hope. No one wants to be the crazy Aunt Zelda who lives with various family members until someone shoves her in a substandard nursing home and visits only on minor holidays.
Even in my own experience I look at my unmarried/unkidded friends and wonder who's going to care for them when they're drooling? It's my own insecurity. I don't fully understand their lifestyle choices because it's not something I would choose so therefore I project.

---

Just because you have kids doesn't guarantee that they'll want to take care of you. Heck, in my own family it's not great. My maternal grandparents got pregnant five times, carried three kids to full term. The oldest one died young and the youngest one (the favorite!) just cannot be arsed to care about my grandfather any more, or anyone outside of her own children. My mother, the least liked of the kids, is the one taking the burden on.
As for my paternal grandparents, my dad is handicapped and my other aunt is similarly disinclined to be a caretaker if necessary. So, well, just because you have kids doesn't mean a guaranteed source of home care and paying for the nursing home. Sad but true.

---

Honestly, sometimes that "who's going to take care of me?" thing kicks into gear for me, too. But I think the above, I think about my age (43) and I think about being brought into the world as an insurance policy...and I figure I'll deal with what's going to happen to me when it becomes an issue.

---

While it's true that not every child takes good care of their parents, I'm hoping that if I do my job right that they'll at least come visit me, make sure I'm happy, that the nurses are turning me over when they should. (I don't expect them to actually pay for my home as DH and I are prepared for that expense... but still.)
Maybe slip me caramels when the nurse isn't looking. Unless of course, a caramel would kill me - but I think that goes back to how I raised them. Like I said, these are my fears, so I'm projecting them on others who may not have these same fears.

---

I've been tossing this around with a few of my fellow students a lot recently, so I feel a need to chime in.

Another reason to decide no kids is the kid-unfriendly career. Like (to choose an example completely at random) science. If you plan to be a scientist, you'll be in grad school until late 20s, early 30s. Even if I wanted to have a child now, I can't afford it and I'm never home. My cats complain about neglect - a child would not thrive.
Then you go straight on to a post-doctoral fellowship, which is much like being a graduate student, only you make about $10,000 extra a year and have no friends. Also not an ideal atmosphere in which to have a child.

Finally, if you are successful, hard working and lucky (something like being a writer, only with more people around), you might land a tenure track position somewhere around late 30s, early 40s. Now, if you're male, this is a fine time to think about having kids. If you're female, on the other hand, not so shiny. Furthermore, new faculty members tend to work all hours that the gods send, since they pretty much have 3 years to land outside grants for funding or they'll sink without a trace. (Which means, incidentally, no tenure, no job and therefore no diapers.)

Historically, this system never bothered anyone much because the little woman at home brought up the children, kept the house, and had hot meals waiting at appropriate times. Even in the few instances where the husband and wife were both scientists, she worked in his lab, and was also the primary caregiver for the kids.

Of the senior women on our faculty, more than 3 quarters are childless, either because they are unmarried, they are in a same-sex relationship, or because they chose not to have children. Talking to one of the few exceptions about her child raising years didn't make me want to run right out and start a family - she talked about having to bring her kids to work if they were home sick from school and make them a nest of blankets on the floor of her office. (Apparently her kids had a habit of falling ill when she had a grant proposal due.)

So from my perspective, I could
(a) try to be superwoman, like the woman in the next lab over, who just took a 3 week maternity leave, and is lucky enough to have her mother as a child care provider (at least for a little while...),
(b) give up science, even though I'm good at it, it's satisfying and it's currently providing my living (I have a friend who thinks this is such an obvious choice that she finds it hard to talk to me these days) or
(c) give up the idea of kids. Or
(d), be lucky enough to marry someone who wants to stay home with the kids, which it appears I'm on the way towards. But that's pretty unusual.

And then people in the sciences wring their hands about the "leaky pipeline", wondering why all these great female graduate students never make it to the ranks of senior faculty. Geez. Of course, this all pretty much holds true for any intense career - science is just the one I know the most about.

---

Even if you don't wind up in academia after grad school, if you're in a science field, you've still got problems with pregnancy and chemicals. If your job deals with hazardous chemicals, your employer has to move you out of that position for nine months. May not apply with many positions, but there are definitely some chemicals/fumes, etc that are not good.
I can even imagine situations where a job that isn't hazardous couldn't be performed. I have a cousin who is a smeller/taster for a company that produces food flavoring. For someone whose body chemistry is changing, I can see where she might not be able to smell the same, or taste the same as she does when she's not pregnant.

My brother is currently in grad school and raising a child. It's not quite the same since he wasn't the one who had to leave work for maternity leave, but they have arranged it so that she works 6-3 and he goes into lab after she gets home. So they never see each other except on weekends, and even then they're still on opposite schedules where she's up at 8:00 ready to start the day and he just wanted to roll over since he got home at 3 am.
Grad school is hard on all relationships. When you add in a baby, it just gets harder.

---

I have a hard time with the romances that end with babies. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around baby lust. Never felt it myself. I went from never wanting kids to thinking well, it might be okay. And then well, if we're going to stay in the military and move every couple years, I don't want her to
be an only child. That was it. The baby romances leave me thinking there's something wrong with me that I don't equate romantic love with babies.
That, in fact, I think babies and pregnancy pretty much kill romance--morning sickness, discomfort, 2 a.m. feedings, diapers, sleeplessness, colic.... gee, that's romantic. Not. :)

It's tempting for me to agree unconditionally with the idea that nobody should have babies unless they really want them, but then I wouldn't have any kids, and I'd really miss them. I do agree that giving in to pressure is a horrible reason to have a baby, though.
It's a horrible reason to do anything: have a baby, get married, get a dog, cut your hair, pierce your ears, go on the Atkins diet, whatever. If you didn't want to do it in the first place, even if it turns out well, you're still going to resent it a little.

Pressuring someone is such an illogical thing to do. You've got two possible outcomes:
1) the person gives in to the pressure--yay? no. they're miserable because they weren't ready for it, and they blame you for pushing them into it.
2) the person resists the pressure and they're annoyed with you for pushing them. And they very likely NEVER do whatever it is you're pressuring them to do, because fighting the pressure has caused them to continue fighting the idea when if left alone, they might have changed their mind eventually.

OTOH, I always think it's a little short-sighted to say *never* about.... just about anything. I've had to eat my words too many times to think I'll never change again. I'm pretty sure I'll never have another baby, like rap music, get a maternal hairstyle, vote Republican, or run a marathon. But I wouldn't take bets on it. I was never going to have a baby, get married, wear my glasses in public, be a housewife, or drive a minivan or an SUV either. But hey, it keeps life interesting.

---

I have exactly the same reaction. Pregnancy? Not the most romantic period of my life. Unless you consider "Get that thing AWAY from me, it's caused more than enough trouble already..." romantic.
I have two kids. I love my kids. They spring from the love I have for my husband. (Okay, that and some other stuff, like prenatal vitamins and lots of ginger.) But they aren't the reason for that love or the
justification for it. I know some very happy married couples who are childless, and candidly they have a lot more time for romance than I do.

Furthermore, to my mind, the only thing less romantic than a pregnancy is an unplanned pregnancy. Romance heroines think "Oh, even though I didn't plan this, it's just what I wanted!" when I'd be thinking "What is the phone number for Planned Parenthood again?", or at the very least "Oh, shit!"
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes... whatever makes the two of you happy. Who has the space for a baby carriage anyway? Everybody I knew had collapsible strollers.

I Get Weepy

It's partly because I caught the roommate's and sister's cold, but mostly because I'm a terrible sentimental sucker for love and committment and these pictures are so great.
Yeah, yeah, half of all marriages end in divorce and some of these kids may end up being shuttled from one parent to the other. But at that moment, the people in those photos are so happy that I have to smile and sniffle.
As the source of the URL said, "These people are in love. These people want desperately to make that love binding and permanent. And that's what it's really about."

Also from that list:

I did an interview earlier this week with an intelligent, liberal, feminist reporter who clearly had not been transported by Bet Me. That's okay, many will not be.
About midway through the interview, she asked why I hadn't done more with Min's career, more scenes at the insurance company, etc. Why did the relationship have to be so important to Min, why couldn't her career be equally important?

Stop snorting. She's a literary reviewer. So I said, "If this had been a mystery, would you have asked about her career? She's very successful in her career, her career is not a part of this story except in the ways it affects her personality; that is, what we do often helps to define who we are. Min is about calculating and minimizing risk, so it's important that she's an actuary, but what she actually does on a day to day basis is not important. That's not this story. This story is a romance novel."

Then she said, "But this story implies that she'll only be happy if she has this man." And I said, "It's about a lot of relationships, people are about relationships, community, and probably the most important is the pair bond, and yes, that includes marriage. It's a ritual before the community that states that these two people intend to remain together forever. It's important."
And she clearly wasn't convinced, so I said, "Why do you think all those people are fighting for gay marriage? Nobody is saying they can't live together. Nobody is making them hide their choices. Why is it so important that gays have the
right to marry? That's the reason it's important for women to marry in romance novels."

Gotta love a radical feminist liberal. They're the only people who will take gay marriage for granted and question heterosexual marriage. Of course, I say that as a feminist liberal.

Other Hands

A couple of interesting comments from Michael Morgan, which I'd like to address in a tidier format than the demmed enetation rectangles.

Regarding the hypersuperior Dr. Sechrest of Alpine, TX and Liberty, Magazine --

(Kenneth, I think maybe you're being a little unfair to Texas as a whole. I believe an aversion to interracial marriage is common, well, pretty much everywhere, and not necessarily appalling at all. Wishing to date and procreate within one's ethnic group isn't necessarily racist (isn't remotely racist IMHO), if that was your implication here.)

An overt aversion to interracial marriage is not common everywhere. While such marriages are probably actually more common in the areas where they are openly disliked, to state such an aversion publicly in environments like the major universities and the educated, middle- to upper-class circles of urban and surburban neighborhoods would be social doom because it would be considered racist.

Even if one has an aesthetic preference for one's own ethnic group -- or, as is frequently the case for immigrants, one thinks that marriage within the group would be "easier" as it would avoid cultural clashes and misunderstandings -- to despise the choices of others strikes me as quite clearly racist.
I may say, "Marriage within my group is subjectively right for me," but "Marriage within the group is right for everyone, and those who do not realize it are wrong" is a bigoted statement. (After all, it's not a great mental leap from there to "Jews cannot marry and procreate with Aryans.") Personal preferences cannot really be questioned; declamations on generalized policy can.

In any event, to use this problem of poor public school standards to label pretty much an entire region of Texans (or indeed any group, anywhere) as being inherently stupid or even retarded is pretty bad intellectualism IMHO.
"Stupid" and "poorly educated" are not in any way synonomous. And as far as the residents of the area being "appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well ... just plain stupid" I would say to the good professor: Welcome to Reality! One can easily find ignorance, irrationalism, anti-intellectualism, and stupidity anywhere one chooses to look. Refer to any of the 'wards' of Houston, for example, if you doubt this.

There seems to be some confusion over terms here. This discussion is very much handicapped by the unavailability of the original article, but I will try to piece together the meanings as best I can.

Retardation is a fairly objective condition, at least insofar as it can be tested on a standardized IQ exam. It has far more to do with the child's surroundings in the years before first grade -- fetal environment, delivery, early development -- than it does with anything the public schools could do. The best K-12 education in the world wouldn't prevent a child with serious Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, whose mother drank heavily during pregnancy, from being disabled. A lot of resources and personal attention could ameliorate the effects, but there's only so much the schools can do, good or bad, after a certain age.

"Stupid" (which I distinguish from "dumb," the former meaning one who refuses to think and the latter being one who lacks the ability) is not synonymous with "poorly educated." However, a poor education can make the refusal to think an easy habit to fall into.

If one's teachers expect only a minimum of rote memorization, one can fail to develop critical thinking skills that are important not only in academics but in everyday life. If accepting everything one is told, in politics, consumption, religion, etc. is uniformly preferred to examining ideas with an eye to their weaknesses and fallacies, then there is no reason ever to think much at all. (Of course, one of the signal problems of Objectivists is the necessity of hewing to Ayn Rand's thoughts on everything; challenge to the orthodoxy subjects one to purges.)

She was afraid of what was in Dick's mind; again she felt that a plan underlay his current actions and she was afraid of his plans -- they worked well and they had an all-inclusive logic about them which Nicole was not able to command. She had somehow given over the thinking to him, and in his absences her every action seemed automatically governed by what he would like, so that now she felt inadequate to match her intentions against his.
Yet think she must; she knew at last the number on the dreadful door of fantasy, the threshold to the escape that was no escape; she knew that for her the greatest sin now and in the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learned it. Either you think -- or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

One can easily find ignorance, irrationalism, anti-intellectualism, and stupidity anywhere one chooses to look. Certainly, but I don't think the mere existence of them is Dr. Sechrest's complaint. His concern is that these qualities are so common as the be the majority's characteristics in Alpine; I suspect that he feels himself to be a lone philosopher-king among fools... clods, as he would say. The Washington Post has the story today.

Regarding the legal issue of seccession--

I imagine you're more of an expert on this than I am, but basically my thinking runs like this: Our system of government spells out clearly how a state may join the Union. There is an established procedure for this that has allowed 50 such states to join the United States. There is NO legal procedure established that allows for a state to leave the Union once it has joined. It's not allowed. when states tried, millions died.

Was there a legal procedure for the American Colonies to revolt from the British Empire? Of course not. Every argument made about how the West Coast's resources
a) were developed through the combined efforts of the entire U.S.,
b) are very valuable and should not be given up,
is even more applicable to how the American Colonies were developed by Mother England, and the immense value of their resources to the small, sea-bound nation.

Is there some way in which the Brits were right to try to hold onto the Colonies, but the Colonists were also right to want to be independent, and so the only way to determine who was correct was through a clash of forces? I don't think so; I don't believe in the Trial by Arms.

The period between the "second revolution" of the Jacksonian Era and the close of the Civil War in America saw the testings of a nation and its development by ordeal. [...] Its culminating act was the trial by arms of the opposing views in a civil war, whose conclusion certified the fact of a united nation dedicated to the concepts of industry and capitalism and philosophically committed to egalitarianism. In a sense it may be said that the three decades following the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson in 1829 put to the test his views of democracy and saw emerge from the test a secure union committed to essentially Jacksonian principles.

There is a Right Side, not just opposing views that are equally valid until one gets squashed by losing a war. If we assume that the Founders were on the Right Side, then what distinguished their case from that of the Southern separatists, who were on the Wrong?

If a Const' amendment were passed how would this be 'opressive' to homosexuals? The government tells us we can't do lots of things that we want to do.
I like smoking marijuana. I like it a lot, but the government tells me I'm not allowed to do so. Am I being a part of an oppressed minority, or am I simply being controlled? How is not allowing me to legally smoke marijuana different from not allowing homosexual couples to wed?
On a moral level: homosexuality is wrong and should not be enouraged. OR: United we stand, divided we fall.

Clearly this is an area where we disagree. A Constitutional Amendment banning marriage between two people of the same gender is as oppressive to homosexual men and women as the pre-Loving v. Virginia state laws -- which forbade marriage between two people of different races -- were to Americans of all races who loved across the color line.

Being unable to smoke marijuana legally does not make one a member of an oppressed minority, because no one can do so. Moreover, except perhaps in the cases of people who wish to use pot for medical purposes, marijuana-smoking is an essentially recreational activity with little significance. It does not dictate family life (ability to combine income, to purchase a home together, to be covered by a partner's benefits, to adopt children...). Pot is overhyped; marriage isn't.

Damn Pinkos at the New York Times

Now they're trying to convince us to eat "fillets that are bony and withered, more like fragments of prehistoric fish [...] packed row by row in flimsy tins. They come from a factory, somewhere in a Dickens novel." In my life, I have met one person who really liked anchovies. I think this may be an uphill battle for the chefs and other food snobs.

This is also a nice try, but Americans who try to eat chocolate for the health value are going to be in trouble, because we are mostly incapable of eating anything without substantial quantities of sugar and fat. I don't know a single person who consumes plain cocoa -- too bitter for our tastes.

I'm more willing to believe that boiled meat, as long as it's simmered in a flavorful broth and not simply and merely boiled, could taste good.

Reports like this always make me scratch my head at the absurd honesty plaguing entities like the Institute of Medicine. So what if it's OK to get some of your hydration from food and sugary or caffeinated beverages? It's not your job to tell us the truth; if we wanted truth, we'd read a science journal or similar useless trash. It's your job to scold us, to tell us that we don't drink enough water and that we need to stop drinking so much soda.

There is no harm in drinking more water than recommended, as long as you do not go overboard on it. Athletes who drink too much water without also replacing the salts lost in sweat, for example, can have health problems like abnormal heart rhythms.
On the other hand, drinking more water may help curb runaway obesity. Every good weight-loss program recommends drinking a glass of water (or an equivalent beverage) before and with every meal, since it both fills you up and improves digestion.

So why not let the belief in the necessary 8 glasses of water a day continue?

Flashers

One of the people discussed during the aforementioned review of my high school yearbook was the drill team captain. Being blond, pretty, friendly but apparently without deep thinking processes, she was frequently dismissed as dumb, at least until people discovered her GPA, which put her in the top ten of my graduating class (and well above my humble thank-God-for-standardized-tests self).

Her secret? Flashcards. She put every form of knowledge on index cards. Regardless of the subject -- mathematics, science, history, English -- anything that could be memorized went onto those cards. I thought this was fine and worth mimicking for chemistry, but it occasionally made me wince when she did it to Shakespeare.

Apparently flashcards can be a successful academic strategy at all levels: a UT 1L appears to make great use of them. Initially this gave me the same "mph" as the indexing of MacBeth, as I tend to think of law as a narrative form and thus somewhat like literature. But the quantities of facts that one is expected to have stuffed into one's brain for law school exams -- and I suppose the bar is even worse -- knocks me off any high horses that I might otherwise wish to look down from.

Application update: Here's the deal with envelopes. Large envelopes are acceptances (unless they're teasing you, as Harvard does, with quantities of information that will be no use unless you get into the school). Small, thin envelopes are rejections.

Small, slightly thicker envelopes are waitlist offers. It takes only one sheet of paper to reject an applicant, but at least two to inform me that I am an excellent candidate but there are so many fine applicants this year that the school must wait to hear back from those to whom they have already tendered admission before offering it to me, but would I like to remain on their list? If so, please sign the attached and return it.

From the University of Notre Dame (which I stubbornly refuse to pronounce Noter Daim) Law School,

Based on the Committee's review of your application, there is significant agreement that you possess many of the qualities we expect of the men and women wh eventually will be members of our Fall 2004 entering class. However, the Committee's decision-making has been complicated by the fact that the pool of applicants this year is especially strong. As a result of this increased competition, the Admissions Committee would like to continue to assess your candidacy through our Provisional List process.

Inquring Minds Want to Know

Actually just Michael Morgan does, but that will suffice to bring forth an excruciatingly long, dull post. And happy belated birthday to him.

PG's Texas Travelogue

Thursday early afternoon, Northern Virginia: I discover that I'm still getting paid at work. I despair of their ever realizing that my contract is over, that I will not sue them for wrongful termination, that I just want my health insurance extended and I'll be out of their way with ne'er a bad word to say (about them).

Thursday late afternoon, Dulles airport: Because my roommate is as anal and organized as I am laidback and a mess, we get to the airport nearly two hours before our flight is scheduled to leave. But we're still convinced we won't make it. The longest security line I have ever witnessed -- including during the holidays and the first Thanksgiving after 9/11 -- stretches before us. It snakes all the way around the terminal, and would probably go outside except for the cold weather.
We aren't even sure where the end is, but we start following some people and being followed by a couple of nice guys from Canada, who thoughtfully shove our baggage forward for me when my roommate is off querying the Continental desk about re-booking for a later flight. There is no later flight. We start debating how early a flight we'd be willing to take the next morning. We figure that at least then my roommate can go home and get some real identification, as she forgot her driver's license and was going to have to front with her old UVA student card.

Thursday early evening, in the air: The security line suddenly sped up once we got within the normal marked space close to the machines. By the time airport employees were looking at my driver's license and boarding pass, they were snapping at us to move it along, instead of mournfully saying they couldn't do anything about the length of the line, they just worked here, sorry. Roommate cleverly chose a security man who did not speak English as a first language, if at all, and he didn't try to debate whether a photo ID produced by a public university constituted government-issued identification.
We don't get any inflight entertainment, but we forgive this because we brought large hardcover books.

Thursday night, IAH: I noticed for the first time, listening to an airport announcement while we wait for my sister and her absurd SUV, that we talk as though we will eventually return to a pre-9/11 state of affairs. The pleasant female voice warns us not to leave baggage unattended, accept packages from strangers nor make jokes about security, and thanks us for our cooperation "while these measures are in effect."

"While these measures are in effect." Someday, will we be able to leave bags large enough to contain bombs lying around, or cheerfully take stuff on board that was given to us by people whom we don't know, or talk about committing terrorist acts while we're at the airport?
I doubt it. The current methods will stay in effect; we'll never be able to do any of the above (which is dumb), and we also won't be able to have people come greet us at the gate when we arrive (which is nice). They may come up with more efficient and practical ways to accomplish their goals -- how idiotic was the "Did you pack your bags yourself?" style of questioning? -- but the level of security concern that we have now probably will last throughout our lifetimes, at least.

Thursday night: Mexican food fix, Part I. My sister had taped the Thursday NBC primetime lineup, and then we lay around and talked about whether her new prospective suitor would pan out. The last guy turned out to be a certifiable nut, complete with harassing phone calls and e-mails, but we're optimistic on this one.

Friday: We really planned to do a lot, but the vile weather proved a deterrant. Actual itinerary included the Texas Medical Center (which is quite impressive), where we visited a family friend who'd had back surgery; Museum of Fine Arts, where we got lunch and looked at the permanent collection (I wish we could have stayed Saturday for the showing of M that would include a Mental Health and the Law panel discussion); driving around Reliant, Astrodome, Juice Box and the new basketball arena because my roommate is a sportsfan; Mexican food fix Part II plus margarita fix Part I; watching the documentary Spellbound (which is terrific); and the romantic comedy Down with Love (which is heinous).

There were a lot of possible fun activities -- many suggested by helpful H'town bloggers -- but between my roommate's cold and my sister's cough, staying at the very nice apartment seemed a wise choice. My brainstorm of riding the lightrail had already left us in the damp, chilly outdoors more than we would have wished.

Speaking of the lightrail, how are they going to make any money on this thing? Being novices, we actually bought day passes ($2 apiece, not bad), but we never got to use them in the sense of their being necessary to ride the MetroRail. There's no turnstile or anything, no place to poke your card. The train pulls up, you walk on, and when it reaches your destination, you walk off.
I may just save that one card I purchased and use it in perpetuity. (OK, probably not, that's taking "free rider" behavior a little too literally and I believe in public transportation.) The only check against doing so is the possibility that the conductor will do a random check and one will be caught without a current Metrocard and forced to pay presumably enormous fines that will make up for the puzzling lack of revenue.

And speaking of public transportation generally, how is it that the Boston T still closes around midnight? I thought the Washington Metro was the most conservative, old fogey, just-for-commuters-and-tourists system, and even they started running trains until 3am on Friday and Saturday nights.

Saturday: Beignets for breakfast (roommate had never even heard of them before), and head for the homestead. We get there in time for a late lunch, and I give the tour of our house, which is an off-white stucco monstrosity outwardly but rather nice on the inside. Mom tour-guides the town (driving very slowly through our subdivision, our old neighborhood, the "historic downtown" and the schools we attended); Dad shows off his new office; and it being Valentine's Day, we forego the two hour wait at the one good independent restaurant and take the half hour wait at Chili's. Margarita fix Part II.

Sunday am: I don't realize just how much I've missed my own bed and room at home until I wake up. The weather has cleared and there's a beautiful blue sky outside my windows, sunlight pouring through them and making the wood floor look warm and lovely. After having slept on my sister's couch Thursday and Friday nights, my roommate is also loath to leave a genuine mattress.
We're going to be meeting Chris, one of my high school friends, for lunch. The prospect of this necessitates dragging out yearbooks and explaining who's who, who dated whom, who was a major pothead but very academically successful (unfortunately, my high school socializing was mostly limited to my honors classmates, so I didn't know the academically unsuccessful potheads), etc.

Sunday pm: On the way to Chris's house, I get distracted by conversation and get us slightly off-course, but we correct and are only half an hour late, well within Indian Standard Time, as my friends have come to expect. He does the tour of that town, including his office, the building site of a planned two story parking area (this is incredible because little in East Texas rises over one story), the mall, our old high school and the new high school we never attended. My mom had told us to come back by 4pm because our senior English teacher, who is a close family friend, was supposed to be coming for dinner, so I invited Chris for the same and we headed back.

On the way home, my roommate begged to see the mall in our town, because she couldn't believe it was as dismal as I'd described. She saw the mall. Now she's a believer. At least it gave us a chance to stop at the sweet shop and get her some Blue Bell ice cream. We took our ice cream to the big park by my old elementary school, swung on the swings and then went home. Chris came over a couple hours later, and we snacked on samosas. This was the only time my roommate managed any Indian grub during the whole trip, as she doesn't like spicy food, so my mother had been grilling plain chicken with frequent queries as to whether the roommate was sure that she didn't want a little pepper or something on it.

Alas, the English teacher had to cancel on dinner, so we were left to entertain ourselves as we ate. Dad came home, and we had a long argument/ discussion about investing money, education inflation, evolution, the nature of attraction and marriage. (With Indian people, particularly parents of 25-year-old unmarried daughters, marriage inevitably enters the conversation.) We skipped politics to preserve comity.

Monday am: We roll out early, with my mother, aunt and grandmother as well as sister and roommate, so we can have a puja at the Pearland temple, which is the closest available. Roommate is interested for the first 15 minutes and understandably bored for the last 45. I realize that I won't be able to make lunch with a friend; calling to let him know, I found out that I no longer contribute to a blawg.

Monday pm: Lunch at a good Thai restaurant in Rice Village, dessert at the Chocolate Bar (I got high when I walked in and breathed the cocoa fumes) and drop-off at the airport. Bush has gotten very fancy in the last few years, with lots of restaurants as well as the elaborate tiles and artwork. We ate our Pappadeux's fries but took my po'boy and the roommate's burger on the plane.
Continental is being oddly niggardly about entertainment. Our return flight did show a movie, but one had to purchase headphones instead of being able to borrow them for free. I'm not sure if they're trying to trim costs or if they're just tired of people's stealing the headphones.

A word of advice to people who take the Metro late on a weekday and end at a station well out of D.C.: call for a cab once your train goes aboveground. I had blithely assumed that taxis would be waiting, as they always have been every other time I've been to the station. But when we walked out into the 30 degree air, nary a hired car to be found.

Come to think of it, this is the first travelogue I've put on HSM, despite having travelled quite a bit -- to Seattle, Michigan, Texas, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, New York, Prague, L.A., Philadelphia, Charlottesville, Chicago -- during the life of the blog. I suppose it's because when travel is interesting, I don't have time to write things down, and when it's dull (the norm), I don't want to inflict it on innocent readers.

Ditto

Jeremy says,

Also -- just curious and looking for input -- if any of you were En Banc readers, or read any group weblogs, and there are things you specifically liked / didn't like / would like / ideas / etc -- e-mail me and let me know your thoughts. Trying to figure out next steps, and seems reasonable to see if anyone has any interesting thoughts or ideas.

If you don't want to e-mail Jeremy, please leave a comment to this post. We're here to serve YOU!

Onion Peel

Background links for today's articles:

Specifics Of Hostile Takeover Fiercely Boring
NEW YORK -- Details of a "hostile" bid by software manufacturer Octagon Corporation are, in fact, fiercely, mind-numbingly dull, sources reported Tuesday. "Following the SoftWave International board of directors' rejection of Octagon's unsolicited offer, Octagon essentially eliminated SoftWave as an entity by purchasing 300,000 shares at $453.35 -- $134.34 more than the current market value," financial analyst Bryan Falwick said, droning on endlessly about the supposedly thrilling upset. "Everyone was shocked when Octagon swooped in and nabbed controlling interest." Falwick said he assumed that the forthcoming rollout of the XSpreadsheet software suite motivated the "raid."

Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That's three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened -- the bastards went to four blades. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five blades.

Iowa Resident Has Opinion Month Too Late
STORM LAKE, IA -- Four weeks after the Iowa Democratic caucus, livestock farmer Darryl Welch, 48, expressed an informed opinion about the candidates Monday. "I like what John Edwards says about rebuilding international alliances to fight terror, but I think some of the programs he supports would mean higher taxes," Welch said Monday. "I wish I'd have said that to all those AP reporters, instead of telling them that I didn't know who I wanted to vote for yet." Unfortunately, Welch's opinions will not be relevant for another three years and 11 months.

Kerry Makes Whistle-Stop Tour from Deck of Yacht
"George W. Bush put tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests before our economic future," Kerry told the crowd gathered below the starboard side of The Real Deal II. "I will fight to restore the three million jobs that have been lost on the president's watch. It's time America got back to work."
Kerry continued: "We're going to sail The Real Deal II right up onto the White House lawn and tell them, 'The American people have arrived to take back their government.'"

All in the Family

Yes, I got fooled by the obvious answer. When MSN asked which of three famous people, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell or the Prince of Wales, was a distant relation of President George W. Bush, I picked the white guy. Wouldn't you?

But of course it was the second-to-last person you'd expect (Oprah being the very last): Colin Powell. Apparently some of the Caucasian blood in our first African American Secretary of State's veins comes from General Sir Eyre Coote, who "contracted a liaison [with] a slave girl called Sally" while governor of Jamaica, and thus became a forebear for Powell to claim.

Even aside from this morally questionable episode -- "contracted a liaison" is a ridiculous phrase for a relationship so fraught with power differential that consent, even if it had been obtained technically, is rendered almost meaningless -- Coote doesn't appear to have been of sterling character.

In 1816 he was expelled from the Order of the Bath for alleged indiscretions with schoolboys at the Bluecoat School (Christ's Hospital). Only two people have ever been dismissed from the Order, the other being Admiral Lord Cochrane shortly before for political reasons, but the latter was reinstated. He was dismissed from the army, the official enquiry into the affair deciding that his brain had been affected by severe wounds and illness contracted during tropical service, and that he was eccentric, not mad, and his conduct unbecoming to an officer and gentleman.

Regardless of Coote's character, his family line could be traced back to King Edward I and Eleanor de Castile, as can President Bush's.

Whitewash by the NYTimes

I admit that this article initially had me on the professor's side. I sympathize with the feelings of someone who thinks his small Texas town is great, except for the ignorance and anti-intellectualism of many of its citizens, and with the frustration of seeing colleges lower their standards so far that you couldn't limbo under them.

The town's response to a criticism of its capacity for intelligence was "We Love Alpine Week, which was Feb. 6 to 14. It included a parade on Feb. 7 that drew about 100 people and a rally at the midtown Railroad Park that attracted about 65 people despite a cold snap." A parade and a rally -- not a spelling bee, nor talent show, nor anything else that might dispute Dr. Sechrest's allegation that the town "is the proud home of some of the dumbest clods on the planet."

Trying to find the disputed Liberty piece online, however, I ran across an editorial that not only showed Alpine to have some highly articulate residents, but also included a quote from Dr. Sechrest's article that was far more questionable than anything the New York Times chose to include:

The article starts out gently enough, describing the area's natural beauty, climate, low crime rate and friendly atmosphere. And then suddenly:
"The secret problem is that the students at Sul Ross, and more generally the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well ... just plain stupid."

Soon followed by:
"Here, to put it crudely but accurately, one has poor white trash and poor Mexican trash socializing with, even marrying, each other. Here the lowest common denominators get together to procreate."

Not to overlook:
"Many of the kids in the Big Bend area are only a notch above retardation. Some are below that."

The first remark is insult, overstatement and generalization, but permissible for an opinion. The third remark might be true -- only a IQ survey would disprove it -- and if mental retardation rates in the region are much higher than the national average, hopefully someone will take an interest in finding the conditions that create the problem.

I can name a few probable suspects: malnutrition, lack of prenatal care, poor obstetrical and post-natal medical work. The shortage of doctors in areas such as Alpine led to the narrow victory of Proposition 12, because people thought that capping awards in malpractice suits would keep insurance costs down and encourage doctors to specialize in high-risk areas like OB-GYN and to continue practicing in the small towns.

It's the part about "poor white trash and poor Mexican trash socializing with, even marrying, each other" that's just incredible. Calling people stupid is one thing. Some people just are. But no one should be referred to as "trash." Such a term degrades human beings into disposable objects.

So does the eugenic tone of the observation; the implication that people of different races shouldn't be socializing with, much less marrying one another, and that this "trash" shouldn't be procreating, blows my mind. Anyone who can write something so backwards and idiotic should greatly fear throwing stones about his neighbors' ignorance and irrationality. If the people of Alpine are accepting of interracial relationships and multiethnic children, they are far ahead of Dr. Sechrest on the most important measure of intelligence.

(Another significant aspect of this story that the Times missed: Sechrest falls into the Objectivist section of libertarianism. While I have seen many libertarian-leaning professors at top universities, the self-identified Rand followers frequent end up at minor institutions like Sul Ross, where they can feel superior to their hearts' content.)

I Should Get Blindsided More Often

Despite not having posted since Thursday, I got one of my highest daily hitcounts yesterday. The obvious culprit: links to Half the Sins of Mankind in the wake of En Banc's demise.

Having been in the wilds of East Texas during the long weekend, and not checking e-mail, I was one of the last to know. I found out yesterday afternoon while on the phone, when a friend who was in front of computer remarked, "I see your blog is gone."

That was an unintentional exaggeration; U-Hand has nascent plans to use enbanc.org for an alternative purpose, and has offered to help transfer the individual contributors' posts to their own blogs. While the permalinks already made to En Banc posts are now defunct, I will be putting the content I produced either here or on a re-constituted group blog with Jeremy, Nick and Chris. (No, Greg isn't being left out. More news on that later.)

Thanks to those who have expressed their disappointment at seeing En Banc end. I'm flattered to think that the last several months did produce results that so many people enjoyed -- even if it ultimately did not work out -- and that I had a part in that.

Not having been online until today, I haven't had much chance to discuss the decision to close the project nor plans for future law blogging with my former colleagues, but hopefully I can rectify that over the next few days. In the meantime, I'll be putting all new posts here or at Open Source Politics (and will note my fresh OSP articles at HSM).

Speaking of OSP, an appeal from that general direction: co-founder Kevin Hayden notes that Mary Beth of Wampum is running for state representative in Maine and could use attention and donations, with the ultimate goal of votes and election. Although the e-mail that immediately preceded this announcement makes for an amusing juxtaposition -- it was a Powell's review of The Buying of the President 2004 -- I have some sympathy for Mary Beth's decision regarding financing:

Maine does have public financing of elections, but I have chosen to opt out for the primary, namely due to my belief that the $2 million going into the "Clean Elections" fund should be used instead to prevent the devastating cuts to Early Intervention and the Katie Beckett Medicaid Waiver programs. I strongly believe in public funding of elections, but not at the expense of our children and disabled residents. When the state is flush with cash, I'll run "Clean Elections" again.

In light of the Lewis book, I'd recommend that all candidates cap contributions from all entities, whether individual or organization, to $25. Presumably no candidate can be "bought" for the list price of a new hardcover.