Republicans Against Stimulus Package Take Note

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed Barack Obama's $819 billion stimulus package without the support of a single Republican, who worried that once states got used to a temporary infusion of federal money into education and Medicaid, it would be difficult to pull back. 

I don't know enough about the bill on its merits to say one way or the other whether it's good, although on the surface it makes sense to me to put money into the economy where it's needed most, and certainly education and health care are two top candidates for that. And I certainly feel better about my tax dollars going toward Pell Grants and rebuilding decrepit schools than to John Thain (formerly of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America), say, who saw fit to use $1.2 million of our money to redesign his office (including a $1,405 waste basket). Or to Wall Street, more generally, which used it to pay out bonuses many multiples larger than my annual earnings.

On the point of an addiction to federal funds, I can say this: there's a really simple and effective tool against making the federal government's temporary expansion permanent. As a parent, I use the same tool all the time. It's the word "no." And I know all about addiction. Over the winter break when we were visiting my family in Atlanta, Sam experienced a similar expansion of TV-watching hours, and it's been a bear of a habit to break since, at home, we're stricter than the 18-hour maximum he enjoys in the face of an ailing relative at his grandparents' house (no TV on school nights and 2 hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). Sometimes we have to spell out "N-O!." Sometimes we have to resort to "No, no, no!" (The glitch in my argument, I realize, is that at home we enjoy a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy, and our two parental votes carry more weight than the Republicans' votes in Congress these days.)

Still, it goes without saying that if the country had said no sooner and more often, we wouldn't be in quite this deep of a predicament.

John Updike and Me

Much has been written about John Updike since his death yesterday, but I'm prompted to write still more to tell about an interaction I had with him when I was a New Yorker fact checker 15 years ago. As part of the magazine's special issue devoted to the movies in 1994, Updike penned a piece on dancer/actor Gene Kelly. It was my job to watch all the movies he mentioned and make sure that nothing was out of place. 

But something was. In his discussion of the 1949 movie On the Town, about three sailors on 24-hour shore-leave in New York, Updike followed Kelly (plus Frank Sinatra, Jules Munchin, and their gal pals) around the city, driving past, among other notable spots, the literary lions on the front steps of the New York Public Library. With Updike a literary lion more imposing than any statue, who was I to contradict him. But, having watched the movie a dozen times, re-winding and re-winding the scenes where they go around town in a taxi the size of your couch and had another fact checker double-check me, I finally, reluctantly, concluded that Updike had erred. Or else I was about to be made to feel really stupid.

I mustered my courage which, in those days, was pretty much lacking, called him up and said in my most polite, fact checkery voice that I hadn't been able to find the New York Public Library in the movie and that maybe he could point me toward it. 

"Oh, I'm sure you're right," Updike said, the wave of his hand almost visible over the phone. "I haven't watched that movie in years. I was just relying on memory." 

Only later did I find out that on the rare occasion a fact checker did have a quibble with the master, they were never to call him directly but were to go through his editor. 

I had the honor of writing about Updike a couple of years ago when we were featuring his 2007 reading of Terrorist on NPR's Book Tour, but I never spoke with him again. And I'd say it's a sure bet I've never again watched a movie as many times as I sat down with On the Town.

Obama's Day 4 and How I'm Feeling

Tuesday's inaugural events were just as uplifting as they promised to be. Never mind that I snagged a ticket for an honest-to-God SEAT, of all things, at 2 the morning of, what I loved best was looking not ahead of me (Obama was 2 inches tall from my vantage point) but looking behind at the shimmering sea (and I really do mean a sea) of people standing in the sunlight with flags that stretched as far as the eye would allow, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. I also loved that it was a day without cynicism. Beautiful people with really white teeth from L.A., (including Sheryl Crowe, whom I met but failed to alert that Julia wants to adopt her) were asking to have their pictures snapped with cell phones alongside overweight men from Greece and Upper Eastsiders wearing "W New York" baseball caps. 

It was also a day without irony. When Obama mentioned patriotism as one of our country's bedrock values in his inaugural speech, it's the first time I'd heard the word in seven years without some internal eye-rolling. How luxurious, I thought, to be able to feel patriotic without all the fear and ideology that has loaded it down for so long.

On Day 4 of his presidency, Obama is busy being tough with terrorists and tough-minded about the economy. On Day 4, I am busy too, but, as you might expect, my sights are set closer to home. What to do, I wondered, upon coming downstairs to fix breakfast and finding that Mavis had pooped all over the rug pad (the rug was already removed due to same last Friday)? What to do about my own economics (no money in checking account) and my own weighty issues (ate too much on inauguration day and realized today why the pedi-cab driver was peddling so slow). In short, I'm feeling overweight and overdrawn. 

It's bad when in answer to your six-year-old son's begging to go out for a fancy sushi dinner you say that it's too expensive and he offers to chip in the $20 his grandparents gave him for Christmas.

(Sam has, incidentally, hypothetically spent that $20 four times already: once on the game Apples to Apples Jr.; once on taking his mother to the movie Hotel for Dogs (with popcorn); once on a portion of a video game for him and his little sister that he vows they won't play until they're both 20; and once in the form of a donation to help prevent polar bears from becoming extinct).

It's a hard lesson to learn that you can only spend the money once. 

Friends Talking in the Night Welcomes New Friends

Friends Talking in the Night has recently gotten comments from new readers. Welcome! Blogger isn't set up for me to respond to you individually, but I'm so glad you've joined the conversation! If you ever do want a personal response, please include your email address in your comment. Thanks--and keep reading. Suggestions are appreciated, too.

Publish Post

My Inaugural "Ball" is Already Famous

Here's an update to the post I wrote a few days ago about our little inaugural party. Our so-called Blue Ball might be Pluto in the Washington solar system, but we still made Politico! We're already having fun, and the open bar's not even open yet!

 

Notes from the Field of Momdom

This morning I was driving Julia to daycare and, as usual, we were listening to The Very Best of Sheryl Crow cranked way up. 

"Mom," Julia asked, looking sheepish: "Does Sheryl Crow have any kids?" 

"Yes," I said, "she has a baby girl," astonished that I've read enough issues of People to know. I figured J. would be pleased since she loves babies, especially of the female variety. But no. J. just wanted to establish Sheryl's bona fides because next she said: 

"I want her to be my mom." Pause. "But Sam likes you."

Where does that leave me, I wondered. Still, I had to know what's so special about Sheryl. 

Julia: "She can sing."

All I have to say is: my life ain't no disco.

Princess for a Decade; Queen for Life?

Anyone who's ever spent more than nine seconds with a three-year-old girl will know that I speak the truth when I say that in her world, everything is coming up princesses. Let's use Julia as Exhibit A. She wants to grow her hair "as long as Cinderella's." She can reel off the names of all the Disney princesses with the same facility (and sometimes more accurately) than Sam can spout Bo-Sox stats. Her movie choices run the gamut from Princess Diaries I to Princess Dairies II. For Christmas, she got a Cinderella plastic paper doll set, a Playmobil Cinderella set, a rhinestone-studded princess jewelry box, a set of tiny princess story board books, a princess dress, sparkly silver princess shoes and, since everyone knows that ballerinas are princesses in training, a leotard, tights, and ballet slippers. Mainly, she plainly states that her goal is to marry a prince (by which it is assumed she means a wealthy, handsome one).

As I write this, I think, What are her parents thinking that they would allow this toddler's values to lurch so dangerously off track? Instead of the dance class that she's starting this weekend, maybe we should hustle her off to auto mechanics class.

Thus far, her sensibility has led us the other way. Because of Julia's predilection for pink (and purple, but I can't go there), I find myself gravitating toward all things rosy hued. It was a small but, to me, noticeable act when, instead of buying black (always my default color) gloves on sale at J. Crew a few weeks ago, I went for fuschia. It reminds me of a story my friend Katy once told me about an off-the-charts sparkly pair of shoes that she once bought herself and wore relentlessly simply because they delighted her small daughter so. She says she still thinks it's one of the best investments she ever made.

I understand. Perhaps I would have settled for a sensible heel yesterday when I purchased my inaugural ball shoes. Instead, I went for a pair of towering sandles that, when I brought them home, Julia could walk in far better than I. If having a son has dredged up my love of baseball and kindled a passing interest in Star Wars, it's as if having a daughter has given me permission to unleash my feminine side. It turns out it's ferocious.

I'm confident that Julia's pink period will pass just as it did for Sam (who, when we moved into our house three years ago when he was three, was disappointed that his new baby sister got the pink room and not him). But here's the but (every blog post has one, right?) After writing about Sam as a husband in training, or H.I.T., the other day, I have to set the record straight on Julia, too: I don't want to raise a princess any more than I do a prince. And I'm wondering if the ultimate expression of the sensitive man is being able to bring home the tampons for the woman in his life, what is the equivalent for raising a strong woman? Because while it's totally fun to indulge in the princess fantasy now, it would be wrong to send a daughter who still believes off to college.

Let me know what you think makes for strong, independent daughters. I'd love to hear from you.