Our Side Needs Someone This Smart and This Articulate

I have admired Peggy Noonan and enjoyed her writing for years.  If you don't know her, she was the Bush I speechwriter responsible for the "1000 points of light"  speech.  Shortly after she left the White House, she wrote a book about her experiences there, and today (well, a few days ago, anyway) she's a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

I can't think of much that Ms. Noonan and I have ever agreed upon.  But I thought that her description of her boots-long-skirts-and-long-hair presence in a buttoned up Republican White House full of women employees wearing little suits, pumps, and sensibly bobbed hair was a stitch.  And I was bowled over by her descriptions of preparing speeches by first spending hours in the library pouring over the words and actions of the presidents who preceded her boss.  There's no question but that she's a dispassionate analyst and brilliant wordsmith with a passion for conservative politics. 

Peggy Noonan has just taken an unpaid leave from the Journal  to volunteer the next three months of her time working for the President's re-election. She says that "Every four years everyone says 'this is the most important election of my lifetime,' but this year I believe it is true."  I guess I have  found something that she and I agree upon, after all.  I've been thinking about this for the past few weeks and I don't think there's been an election of this importance during my lifetime, and I doubt that there will be again.  We are setting a tone for who we are at home and what our place is in a world that has spun in a completely new direction in the past 20 years.  Presidential leadership is all about setting that tone and I, for one, hear dissonance and confusion under our current Commander-in-Chief.

The Republicans have a new weapon of extraordinary intelligence and skill in Ms. Noonan.  I hope the Democrats have someone who can take her on.

OK...

Pamela did a fun entry the other day; a list of "I AMs...".  So I thought I'd just lift her idea, since I am feeling completely unoriginal today:

I AM...

wearing a Kenyon College t-shirt, a relic of one of our first college visits several years ago to what I have decided is hands down the most beautiful campus in the United States (and I've seen a lot of 'em)...

listening to Traffic's John Barleycorn  on folkalleys.com...

cleaning the house today instead of preparing for classes that start in a few weeks...

and paying the bills neglected for the last several weeks that I've been in and out of town...

frustrated by yet another set of school permission forms that I apparently overlooked, these having to do with driving, for heaven's sake...

in complete denial that my daughter (and youngest) is beginning her senior year of high school...

wondering exactly why my son in France stayed up all last night (which I know thanks to an uninformative email this morning) and what he is planning to do in Amsterdam this coming week-end (on second thought, maybe I am not wondering that)...

chuckling over last night's voice message from Son the Camp Counselor, who is spending a few days in Atlanta with other Camp Counselors and called from the Atlanta Braves game...

frustrated that I spent a lot of time planning an 8th grade history class earlier this summer and found out yesterday that the schedule has been dramatically altered...

wondering why, since I went to the store for laundry detergent and light bulbs this morning, I ran out of dishwasher soap as soon as I got home...

wondering why a trip to Walmart (which I am supposedly boycotting) for a box of detergent and some light bulbs ended up costing $94.00...

about to share this photo of the Reed College library tower in which all the senior theses (required of all students) since the 1910s are stored:

suddenly remembering that Traffic was playing nonstop during a Dartmouth Winter Carnival Week-End at which I had a perfectly awful time one year when I was in college and went with a blind date to accompany a good friend who was in the process of falling madly in love with someone we had known in high school....

listening now to a new Neil Young song, Good to See You, and thinking that there have been many many excellent Neil Young moments in my life...

also going to share this photo of some of the Reed theses:

enjoying Season Two of Six Feet Under...

going for a walk in the cemetery after lunch...

a terrible typist (but you knew that)...

reminded that the aforementioned college friend and I had a brilliant idea to drop out of school for awhile, support ourselves as secretaries in Boston, and earn enough money to go to British Columbia for several months...

reminded also that we were completely undeterred by the fact that we did not know how to type, because we were planning to exchange college for Katie Gibbs...

wondering if Katie Gibbs still exists...

trying to find the title of a book that I purchased in the Portland airport and then left in the pocket of the plane seat in front of me...

never on time for anything anymore...

relieved that my daughter's suitcase showed up yesterday (did I mention that she left it in the hotel room in Portland?)...and

on my way to pick her up from soccer practice.

Walked:  3 miles.

Walked so far this month:  30.5 miles.

On the Breastfeeding at Starbucks Controversy

For anyone who missed it, Patrick started a bit of a controversy by supporting Starbuck's right to ask a customer to refrain from nursing her baby while patronizing its establishment.  All I can say, after another day's thought, is: people need to get a grip. I am frequently waited on at coffee shops and restaurants by young ladies wearing clothing several sizes too small who have apparently given inadequate consideration to coverage of their undergarments and bulging portions of their anatomy.  It would seem that no one has suggested that their appearance renders them unacceptable for public employment.  But a mom nursing a baby sets off fireworks?

One of my friends put it best and most succinctly: the madonna/whore complex.  It's ok for women to expose themselves without a thought to modesty as long as they have no functional purpose in doing so.  But let those same women remind you that their breasts exist for a reason other than sexual enticement and people just FREAK OUT.

I admit that I don't have the whole story -- maybe the lady was flappin' 'em all over the place.  Or maybe Starbucks decided that it preferred catering to someone who protested a lady's activities, instead of the lady herself.  Their loss: I know from two decades of experience that groups of mothers can be extraordinarily loyal and extremely frequent coffee shop customers -- a lucrative market indeed. 

Well, that was kind of fun.  I haven't had that discussion in years and years.  And, in the interests of full disclosure: I would have been personally and deeply offended had someone asked me to "cover up" while breastfeeding (although I doubt that too many people were ever aware that I was). 

In fact, I've just crossed Starbucks off my list. 

Walked:  5 miles.

This is Incredible

So I was over at Patrick's Place (see tomorrow for further commentary on breastfeeding in public) and I took a look at his Favorite Sites and this is what I found, from NASA.  Good night and sleep well; it's an amazing universe out there (here).

                                                                2004 August 9

The Dark River to Antares
Credit & Copyright: Loke Kun Tan (StarryScapes)

Explanation: Connecting the Pipe Nebula to the bright star Antares is a flowing dark cloud nicknamed the Dark River. The murkiness of the Dark River is caused by absorption of background starlight by dust, although the nebula contains mostly hydrogen and molecular gas. Antares, the brightest star in the frame, is embedded in the colorful Rho Ophiuchi nebula clouds. The Dark River, pictured above across the upper left, spans over 20 times the angular diameter of the Moon and lies about 500 light years distant. Other types of nebula visible here include red emission nebula and the blue reflection nebula.

College Visits

Three days in the Pacific Northwest -- a beautiful trip that may have actually accomplished something.   First stop: Reed College in Portland, a school with a national reputation for academic excellence, a traditional and rigorous approach to education, and a student body with a generally alternative approach to life.  The campus is attractive and our guide was a tiny young lady from Michigan ready to explode with energy.  Reed is intensely scholarly, intellectual, and individualistic.  My daughter did notice that every student on campus lives in some form of a single and that only 20% spend time abroad, both aspects of life at Reed that left her with the impression that it might be more insular than she would like.  I was impressed with its rigor, thought the people we met were delightful, was taken aback by the small percentage of students who go abroad, and left unconvinced by the admissions representative's response to my questions about the Eurocentric focus of its core humanities course.  (More on that in another entry...someday.)  In philosophy and approach, it's a lot like the University of Chicago, where Son the Camp Counselor goes and is extremely happy, except that Reed is a small liberal arts college in a quiet suburb and Chicago is a big research university in the city.  

Reed College  

The next day:  Lewis & Clark College, also in a Portland suburb.  I wish I had known about this one when I was applying to college; if I could, I would enroll immediately.  The campus, originally an estate built in the earlier part of the 20th century, made me think of a Hansel and Gretel setting -- brick buildings with curving walls, towers and turrets; animal carvings and sculptures everywhere; elaborate gardens and views; contemporary buildings carefully designed to blend in with those that were more traditional without sacrificing a nod to the future.  Our guide was an enthusiastic (aren't they all?) young woman from California who told us that she'd be happy to talk endlessly about her semester in Spain -- more than half the L&C students spend time abroad and everything about the college seems to encouarge a focus outward.  The admissions counselor told us that while the vast majority of students in the U.S. attend college within 500 miles of home, at L&C the statistic is approximately reversed.  

  Lewis & Clark Window  

Our final visit was to Willamette University in Salem, the small (135,000 people) capital of Orgeon.  My daughter felt comfortable there immediately; she liked its location in the city and across the street from the capital and its feel of being part of the larger community.  Again, more than half the students study abroad -- this time our friendly and articulate guide was planning  her semester in Spain.  The interior of the campus is exquisite, with a contemporarty library and clock tower overseeing a green space through which a stream runs.  While most of Willamette's students are from the Pacific Northwest, my daughter didn't see that as an impediment, since that's not where she  is from.  She was also happy to hear that the college can arrange good internships in psychology and anthropology, two fields she thinks sound interesting.  

Willamette Clock Tower  

While we were visiting the smaller colleges, a classmate and friend of hers was visiting the University of Washington.  It will be interesting to listen to the girls compare notes with each other and their other friends as school begins.  I'm hopeful that we will see a sharpening of focus sometime in the next couple of months.

Walked:   3.5 miles.

America the Beautiful

OK,  this is great.  I gave up on walking or doing anything else today.  I think that both the reality of yesterday's funeral and the jet lag from our trip hit me simultaneously this morning, so I took one look at the magnificent day outside, curled up on the couch to watch the first episode of Season 2 of Six Feet Under, and then went upstairs and slept the rest of the afternoon.  After dinner, I went off to our semi-weekly friends' Sunday night porch gathering, thinking I'd stay maybe half an hour, but I caught my second wind about three hours ago and just got home from an evening of nonstop raucous conversation.  I am WIDE awake and I have to get up at 6:30. 

So...one entry and then I'm going to bed with a 12:15 a.m. reading deadline.  I mentioned that flying across our country when there are no clouds is an extraordinary experience.  I wish I could have hung from the bottom of the plane with a camera.  From the mountains of Idaho to the plains of Montana to the hills of the Dakotas back to the plains of the Midwest to the greenery of Minnesota eastward:  in this time of international unrest and national fear, it is truly moving to see our country from the air.  No flags or billboards or bumper stickers or campaign banners or protest signs visible from 35,000 feet up -- just an astounding expanse of natural beauty and wealth.

None of those pictures are available, so I'll just offer another of the Columbis River Gorge from our trip:

Variations on Family

Jukebox Woman has written a touching and, for me, provocative, essay on family.  Her experiences have differed so much from my own that she has given me a lot to ponder.

Reflecting on a recent visit to her family of origin, from which she now lives at a distance, she says, "Being with my family lets me breathe with ease.  It's like sitting on a beach with the breeze from the ocean filling my soul with hope.  It's like finding that important treasure you thought you'd lost forever...but only getting to hold onto it for a short time, before losing it again for a while."  

I have concluded that I am incapable of even imagining such a response to the family from whence I came, although I recognize the feelings.  They are the same ones that I had for many years about the family that my husband and I created, and that I hope will emerge again from the shards of the shattering upheavals of our children's adolescent years.  

I lost my mother at the age of seven.  As Hope Edelman writes in her book Motherless Daughters, most women who have been through such an experience look back at that event as the beginning of the end of their first family.  It would be a gross generalization, but one with some universal truth, to acknowledge that a family dependent upon a father for maintenance of the emotional glue needed to hold it together crumbles quickly, and the subsequent appearance of a stepmother on the horizon sweeps what's left of those crumbs into a dark and forgotten corner.    

I suppose I mark "being on my own" from the date I left for boarding school at the age of twelve.  Although the school was only 20 minutes from my house and most of the girls who lived that close were, in fact, day students, I seldom went home more than once a month.  Three years later I was in a new school, 800 miles away, and after that went home only two or three times a year.  I went to college just as far from home and, although my husband and I eventually returned to my home state for graduate school and careers, geographical proximity does not create or sustain a family connection.  

Most of my friends live far from family. In fact, that's probably a big reason for our close friendships -- we are accustomed to functioning in the absence of extended family, but we want and need a community on which to rely.  Among my friends and acquaintances, many parents and, this year, two husbands, have died. Three of my closest friends have lost both parents in the last several years.  Our children are beginning to spread across the map.  We are well practiced in forming deep connections beyond the bonds of family, and are trying to nurture family attachments that cross longitude and latitude.  

I don't think that it ever occurred to me that anyone beyond my husband and me would be responsible for our children.  That sounds unfair as I write it -- we have been the beneficiaries of great financial generosity and, a few years ago, when our family was plunged into crisis, my father and his then-new wife moved in with us for three weeks and managed everything that I could not.  But as far as day-to-day life is concerned -- it just never entered my head that my family would have much to do with it.  I've been sorry when they haven't been much interested in the lives of my husband, my children, or me, and I've felt envious of other mothers whom I've seen shopping for their children or planning family events with their own mothers, but I never felt particularly lonely or burdened by my responsibilities.  

However, I can see, through Jukebox Woman's writing, how my life might have been quite different, and I do envy her the sense of her own family as sustenance. Perhaps it's just a matter of not missing what you never knew in the first place.  I can't say that I've spent much time wishing I had a mother -- I barely remember mine, so life  without a mother is what I know.  And I've never lived near family as an adult, so that's not something I long for either.  I have, however, been surrounded by close female friends since I first moved into a dorm with a group of them when I was twelve, and I'm not sure I could get along without relationships like that.  And my own children -- well, my need for them is another story altogether.  But I'm getting accustomed to not requiring their geographic presence.  And, although they are at those ages between adolesence and adulthood now where it seems wise to make no predictions whatsoever, I hope that their own sense of our family is strong enough for them to cling to it as a treasure, even if they have to stretch their arms across continents and oceans to do so.