Our First Family Walk.

The sky was pink and purple. The air was warm and the breeze smelt of the sea. The street was empty. Christmas lights, abundant in our neighborhood, started to come on. My little girl, Ella, my lovely wife and I all took our first family walk last Sunday. From our door down to the corner. Ella in her faux fur coat aided by her tiny-tikes walker made pleasant, happy noises as the three strolled down the street.

It’s impossible to describe the love of a father and husband. It’s impossible to tell you how I felt watching my daughter starting to walk and stand. Seeing her laugh at the Christmas lights and smile saying, “Hi!” over and over to Persephone. Life is so hard. We spend so much time worrying or being screwed, sitting in traffic, and fighting other people. But, for one half an hour with the loves of my life the world was a peace. I know that moment will never happen again and I’m proud of myself that I knew it and just let it happen.

Inherit The Wind.

By 2020 China will be the world’s largest producer of renewable energy. “The program, begun in Feb 2005, has caught on across the country. A new law that took effect in January 2006 ensures a fixed grid price for wind power, which in turn has increased windmill production and public support for the program,” Vegetarian Times Jan ‘07

I am loath to praise a Communist country and I believe that China should be our enemy but what can I do, what can anyone do? China produces almost everything for almost everyone, and is the second largest consumer of energy on the planet. Now they want to cut the cord and be even more independent by having abundant, almost endless, non-polluting energy.

In 1962 JFK said,“ Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age..” Wha happen? (My personal feeling is that the unwanted influence of insurance companies has ruined so much of what made us America.) What? We don’t have the Rooskies to compete with anymore so we just sit back and forget about innovation and invention? Forget about the future and the needs of our nation? Sure we can find a way to make striped toothpaste and make TV that much harder to enjoy by having banners and chartrooms visible on the screen while I try and watch “Star Trek”, but is that it?

China a nation with no compunction about torturing, enslaving, and even murdering it’s own citizens has seen to it that steps are being taken to ensure that there growing energy needs will be met for the next few decades. While we here in the U.S. “founder in the backwash,” contemplating the unthinkable, burning coal and building more Chernobyls, and five will get you ten that Halliburton will get the contracts to build those plants.

Being Green aside, the power demands of the U.S. are only going to go up. We need to take measures to see to it that the United States isn’t a laughing stock holding on to outdated dogma because we fear change. Oil will run out, if not in my lifetime certainly in my daughters. Being on the Left or the Right shouldn’t matter. We all want a strong nation and if we get on the stick the U.S. could be the largest exporter of renewable energy tech and energy itself. But…we don’t want to be. We don’t want to grow hemp because of some didactic decision that hemp, “is bad,” or that, “solar is inefficient.” Granted a Pyrus doesn’t makes ones balls look as big as a 1971 black GTO but we should consider who has the bigger brains rather than balls, a nation that is ensuring it’s future or a nation that is trying to ignore change ?

(This is from Coctober 23, 2006 but it confrms what many of us already suspect.)

Not fair, not balanced: Sean Hannity shows his true colors

Last week on his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway." He asserted that Democrats should not turn out to vote "for the sake of the nation" because Democrats' votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism."
On the same program, Hannity misrepresented the Democratic Party platform, stating: "I don't think abandoning our troops on the battlefield, or closing your eyes to enemy communications or listening to enemy communications in our country, or killing the economy, or supporting illegal immigration, I don't think that's something to run on."
Comments like this demonstrate how Hannity and other right-wing media figures hope to impact the upcoming election -- regardless of their spin about being objective.

I am a Nazi Stooge.

(sigh) OK…OK…It started out like as many things do, innocently enough. I was searching Amazon. com for items relating to my new found interest in The French Foreign Legion when I came across "Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion". Wow! What a great CD to workout to. Legion songs are in a distinctive 88 beats per minute to match the slow march of the Legion. I enthusiastically ordered the CD along with a book about 2eme REP the Legion Para regiment and waited.

Not long after a small package arrived. “Look,” I said to my lovely wife,” my 'Songs and Marches of The French Foreign Legion are here'.” I tore it open and slid the CD out. I laughed with excitement as I looked at the cover image of a Legionnaire in his kepi blanc. Sticking out of the package was the companies catalogue. Eager to see what other Legion related items I could get from…wait… THIRD REICH BOOKS! I turned all the pages and every item was related to the Nazi’s and not in an “educational” way either, these folks were serious. Let’s face it anyone with, “Anti-Jewish Poems of The Third Reich,” for sale aint fooling around. A wave came over me as I handed the catalogue to my wife. My Jewish wife. I felt guilty. Third Reich Books now had $20 of my money and my address. I pictured the men in the store in a brown SA uniform dropping the CD along with the catalogue in the envelope. “Ah, bruzza Gruning. Vee hope you vill enjoy this moosic, ja?” Persephone looked it over and let out a laugh, “Don’t worry about it.” “But…I feel like a stooge. Should Amazon be selling books and stuff from a Nazi bookstore?” Quickly I logged on and looked up my order and its vender. There it was plain as day in a hyperlink, thirdreichbooks.com. I suppose the lesson here is always read your fine print.

The funny thing is that this Third Reich Books is in Lincoln Nebraska. I say funny because you don’t see pro-Nazi bookstores in Queens or other urban areas. It’s only where people claim that they are “true Americans,” does this type of think become visible. Not to say that there aren’t Nazi lovers here in Brooklyn but Brooklyn spent enough time following the Dodgers to have any more patients for losers.

As too the CD, the first 18min is excruciating, cymbal crashing, goose stepping, irritation. The second 19min actually has Legionnaires singing. The problem is, and I should have realized, that the Legion used to take everyone who showed up at their door no matter who they were. Many Waffen SS, Gestapo, and elite Wehrmacht units, fearing Allied retribution, took refuge in the Legion and many of their songs became part of the Legion tradition.

The final straw is that the CD is a copy of a record and has no tracks so I can’t even skip through zee tracks, ja.

First, Hooray! Second, We Got You There Don’t Let Us Down.

The Democrats control the House for the first time in a dozen years. And Nancy Pelosi will be the first woman Speaker of the House. Hillary – for god sake don’t run in 08 – Clinton was re-elected. By the by Hill I’m still waiting for your promised action on updating the Electoral Collage, which is a hold over from slavery, but one step at a time.

I went to the polls yesterday with Ella in tow. I hope I will be able to instill in her the same love of country and the need to participate that I have. I even believe that I can be a patriot and not like Bush. After all I didn’t vote for him so why am I unpatriotic if I won’t march lock step with his post Goldwater/Reagan “ideals?” I was optimistic yesterday as I pinned my anti- W button on my jacket and walked over to the polls. I remembered my wife and I marching off in 04 excited and confident cheering “Kerry, Kerry Kerry!” with other people with their anti-W buttons on and Kerry lost, Democracy lost, the world lost. North Korea built The Bomb, the war in Iraq went on/goes on with no direction, the security of our ports was almost handed over to a foreign nation, propaganda against Iran, Syria, and Jordan started circulating getting the U.S. ready for the next phase of this Richard Perle Think Tank War, and the Patriot Act was used to obtain abortion records.

I felt bad and still feel bad, even sympathetic, for the folks that elected W. He was elected on moral issues. People wanted and end to Rowe v. Wade, they wanted an end to Gay Marriage or civil unions granting gays their civil rights. None of this has happened. W has been Prez for six years and all the things he promised to do has not only not come to fruition but they have not even seriously been addressed by W’s White House. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, W has no balls. He reminds me of - as Teddy Roosevelt called him – “That Coward” Wilson. Woodrow Wilson ran on a platform of not extending Jim Crow Laws into the Fed Gov. His first act as Prez was to, you guessed it, segregate the Fed Gov. Wilson hated the Frst Amendment and was so-so about democracy in general. In order to drum up support for his desire to enter The Great War he arrested newspaper editors and reporters, he arrested protesters and dissenters of all stripe. He even started a newspaper all his own to tell the “truth” about the war in Europe. Granted the U.S. should have become involved after the Lusitanian was sunk but Wilson needed a moral high ground so all his bilge about “making the world safe for democracy,” and later the ludicrous, “peace without victory,” started. Men like W have had to live up to that, find a “high ground” for war

That being said I agree with Eric Alterman, (http://mediamatters.org/altercation/) When he wrote yesterday

“How bad are our media? How bad is our democracy? First off: predictions. I predict tomorrow this country will still be a mess. As for the rest, let's talk tomorrow.”

Just because Dems have more control doesn’t mean they are less fallible or have less arrogant or less greedy than the Republicans. It doesn’t mean a stable Iraq or that fewer U.S. and British shoulders, not to mention Iraqis, will be killed. Dems controlling the House won’t make a damn bit of difference to the Fundamentalist mind. They will still want to kill us.

In many ways the Dems controlling the House doesn’t really effect things. They don’t really have any better ideas, or more ideas, on how to bring out a peaceful Iraq, or how to get Americans working, or how to deal will ill-legal immigration, they are simply the other party. Hopefully it will mean less rubber stamping, Less Karl Rove, less lies, and a more responsive government. I hope it will mean that Obama Barack can be elected Prez in - please God don’t run Hillary – 08. I hope it will mean actual Homeland Security. I hope it will mean more responsible taxation. I hope it will mean a lot of things.

Personally I hope W was up all night with Dickey and they both said, “Fffffffuuuck…” when the returns started to come in.

That Aint Cute.

I was at Carroll Park yesterday enjoying the glorious weather, watching to make sure that Ella doesn’t put all the crud she picks up in her mouth, when I noticed a two year old girl running around in a long sleeve tee with a black and white graphic on it.

I turned from Ella’s crud related activity to see that the graphic was a B&W close up of a man drinking from a liquor bottle and in the top right corner it said in a scrawl, “bukowski.” That isn’t cute. A little girl should not have an image of a drunken wife beater on her shirt. More over the person who dressed her should know better.

It’s bad enough that the Boomers have forced their pop culture down the throats of every generation after them, but now we have to see kids like François running around in band t-shirts for Iggy Pop and ridiculous figures like Bukowski being commemorated on t-shirts for kids. My wife and I bought Ella a t-shirt with a caricature of The Beatles on it. It is a cute cartoony image of the Fab Four. I debated for a moment or two but figured that it was OK. People have even said, “Oh that’s cute.” They may be being nice but I don’t say, “Oh that’s cute,” to the kids in Ramones shirts.

I think it would be funny if I had Ella in a t-shirt with an image of Ian McShane as Al Swerangen shouting “Cocksucker!” But I would never, ever, actualy do it.

I’m not sure what it is parents are thinking, or not thinking. These are our kids. It is our job as parents to protect them and allow them to grow up at their pace. I don’t think it is appropriate to start our kids sucking on the “cool” teat before it’s time. I love The Who and I’m 35 and I don’t have a t-shirt why would I buy Ella one?

Hello, Social Services?

The golden haired punk who drove his trike into Ella and started this whole B’KlynDad tirade, was back in Carroll Park today. This time he had on his cunalingual Rolling Stones T-shirt. Last I saw him, wearing an Iggy Pop tee which should automatically mean a visit from Social Services, he tried to slide down the slide right into Ella who I pulled away at the last second.

Today I learned his name is – get this – François. François? This punk is named François? At least I will get my revenge on his attempts to hurt my little girl when he attends Middle School when two jocks work his kidneys and gut while the other jocks with teenage man-boobs and immature mustaches chant, “Fight, fight, fight, fight!”

I found out his name because he came over to me and anther woman at the slide as we held our children at the top and slowly lowered them down. I pulled Ells up as fast as I could when I caught sight of the blond menace. Not so for the other little one whose mum knew François, and didn’t seemed in the slight bit troubled when Ol’ Franny leaped upon her six month old like George the Animal Steel and put him in head lock.

“No, no François, be nice. Nice hugs,” said the woman in a mellifluous tone as she tried to separate the two boys. Once apart François slapped the baby on the head and stormed off grumbling, “NO!” under his breath.

I’d like to finish the entry with a joke, but honestly, I can’t think of any.

Das Boot.

For a month or so before my family and I went on vacation to Cape Cod (more on that later) I was buying books, doing research, writing character bios, and story outlines. I was getting ready to write a novel about the 20th Maine Volunteers. I even interviewed a very nice man named Tom Starr who is in Co. G 20th Maine Volunteers reenacting unit, and read, “Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine,” by Tom Desjardin on the beach in Dennis.

I was ready. I was excited. I was going to kick ass and take names. A book, I figured, with all of its thousands of words, must be easier to write than a screenplay. As Truman Capote once said, “I have written a stage play, a screenplay, and a novel. Of these the hardest is the screenplay because there is no place to hide.”

I made all these preparations because I had been accepted to the Sackett Street Writers Workshop here in Brooklyn and was looking forward to meeting other writers, adults who did not want to talk about Ferberizing

As my readers – all three of you - will recall my fist installment of B’KlynDad was about the disconnect and isolation parents can feel. I applied to the Sackett Street to get out of that rut and do something I love, write. Better to light a candle as the saying goes.

The class, which was eight people, all received an email with a few attachments, directions etc. The first class was going to “workshop” the first chapter from a book entitled, “Disgrace,” by J.M. Coetzee. As per our directions I read the chapter twice and wrote my response to it both times. It was simple, I thought it was bullshit. The chapter was drab and wordy. It told the reader everything in long expository passages rather than show the reader through dramatized events. I read a book to read a story not be told by the author what is happening.

I was ready. I was excited. I was going to kick ass and take names. Armed with my years of experience and my big mouth I was ready to engage intellectually with mature adults on the subject of writing.

On first sight I was not sure about the instructor Eric. Ever get that feeling? I did. But, hey, we just meet and I’m sure he has something to teach me. As it turns out what he wanted to “teach” me and the rest of the class was that, “Coetzee is brilliant, ‘Disgrace’ is his best work,” and that the first chapter of “Disgrace” was, “bold and automatically made the reader want to read on.” When it came time for us to speak I could see the trepidation on my classmates faces so I spoke up and the words, “I didn’t like it,” came confidently from my mouth. It was on.

Ordinarily as Eric pontificated about “Disgrace” I would have thought, “I’m fucked...” but not anymore. I don’t need others to validate my opinions and Mr. Coetzee’s Nobel Prize doesn’t make him any less esoteric or mean we all have to like him. Still no one really wanted to talk so I tried to get things going by talking about narrative style and things like that. It was a first class and I’m sure my classmates were nervous.

Down on the street, after the Coetzee stroke fest, some of the gals in the class and I started talking. They both thought Eric was “opinionated” and “pushy,” and that they felt that if they didn’t agree with him he was going to be even more so. For some reason I defended him saying it’s good to have a teacher who can challenge you. We all said see you and I walked home over the Gowanas Canal feeling good about myself and the class and the work I was going to be doping over the next few weeks.

The next day I received an email from Eric saying things like, “Tonight your tone overwhelmed the rest of your classmates, and may have even stifled them from expressing themselves,” and, “Dismissive tones can change the dynamic of a workshop, and throw everyone, including me, off.” Last but not least, “…we are willing to offer you a full refund. If you decide to continue with the class, it can only mean that you have absorbed the message of this letter and plan on adjusting yourself accordingly.”

Fuck that. I quit and told him I thought he started the negativity by demanding that we all agree with him. Fuck that.

So much for an adult forum, so, how do you feel about Ferberizing?

September 11, 2006.

On September 11, 2003 I went to Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church on Clinton Street. I lit a candle, said a few prayers, and sat in a pew for a while. People came and went but it was quiet and that was what I wanted. After a few minutes I started to cry which surprised me because I thought I was all cried out over September 11. I hadn’t lost anyone or been hurt but my home, New York City, had been attacked. Its buildings and citizens lives destroyed.

I let a few tears out then decided that I wouldn’t shed another tear over September 11. Not out of the, “then the terrorists win,” crap that people spouted to push feelings of fear and lack of control further down in there psyche, but because two of the greatest events of my life would come out of September 11, 2001. In the summer of 2001 my wife Persephone was packing her things to move to Portland Oregon. Her apartment had boxes stacked on that morning in 2001, but being a native New Yorker she decided she was going to stay. This was her home. She had been born and raised in the Bronx and leaving now was wrong. That December we went on our first date, in 2003 we were married and in 2006 our daughter was born.

When I left Saint Paul’s I walked home through our beautiful neighborhood, I felt blessed a thousand times to be with Persephone and have the life we have. My life and her life had gotten immeasurably better since we meet despite the hurt and pain of our lives prior to our meeting compounded by the anxiety and uncertainty of a post September 11 world. We now had each other and would soon have Ella. None of these things would have happened if she had moved to Portland.

I think that the good, the love, the unpredictable, that came out of September 11, 2001, has been pushed aside. Maybe because it was on a scale to small for headlines, or because or nation wanted revenge, or because we were scared and being scared is our national past time. Or because all events have two sides and we as Americans don’t like that. We want things to be one way, good, bad, right wrong, loss, gain. I say this not because I think Americans are ignorant or simplistic but because we as Americans love to be optimistic. Anything is possible. A better life a better world a new day is just around the corner. When that belief is challenged we tend to over react, over simplify, and over indulge. At our heart we as Americans want to be “good.” We want democracy and equality. We aren’t perfect but we have as system that lets us try and we get it right some of the time. After all isn’t that an American flag being raised on Iwo Jima and on the Moon?

My fear is not of another attack because there is nothing I can do about that in the same way that I may be killed by a drunk driver, or any other unforeseen event. My fear is for my daughter living in a nation that is so consumed with fear that it is forgetting the good so quickly that it is attempting to kill itself by becoming less democratic, less free, and less independent. We forget that a nation flourishes because of its opportunities and it liberties. People use the excuse, “then the terrorists win,” bilge to validate anything from squelching a national day of mourning on the first anniversary of September 11 to telling people to get out and buy a new car.

Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, “At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? All the armies of Europe, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

The terrorists win every time our government uses the Constitution as toilet paper. The terrorists win every time we as a nation, through no outside influence, decide to be just as petty, just as ignorant, just as violent, as those who attacked us. Taking away our rights won’t make our nation safer. As Ben Franklyn observed, “They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The President wants us to believe that the Terrorists hate us because of our freedoms. Under Bush’s “leadership” we have nothing to fear because if things go as they have been going the United States will be a police state controlled by fundamentalists in a few years and the terrorists will have no reason to hate us.

My heart goes out to those people who lost family and friends on United 93, or in the Pentagon, or the World Trade Center. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes or the shoes of the men and women who responded to the disaster at the WTC and are now getting sick as a consequence. The NYPD and FDNY exercised the great American virtue of optimism that day five years go. They thought someone was alive and they were going to save them. They were going to help the injured and stop as many people from dieing as they could. Now they need help and their isn’t any. But we can fix this. There is still more good in our nation than there is fear. We can be the equitable, fair, and democratic nation that Lincoln and Franklyn loved and have as Lincoln said in 1863, “a new birth of freedom.”

What a Difference a Day Makes.

I managed to shake off my stupefaction fast enough this morning to limit my exposure to the highly contagious theme song to “The Big Comfy Couch.” For those who haven’t heard it imagine a song as catchy as Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love,” or The Cardigans “Love Me,” but sung by children and you have an idea. I decided I needed a hair cut so I wouldn’t look like a dork in the photos that most certainly will be taken during Ella’s first birthday.

My local barber Illiana is from Russia and is so sweat and dear. Seeing her is like visiting a childless aunt who loves to take care of you. I guess I looked as bad as I thought I did because she offered to get me some coffee. I accepted and thanked her when she returned. I sat pushing Ella back and forth in her stroller waiting for my turn. I have had insomnia of late, or at least that is what I can figure out based on the untold hours of Lunesta ads I have watched in the past few months. As Chris Rock joked, “Do you go to bed at night and wake up in the morning? Oh Shit! I got that! I need that pill!” Not being able to sleep really sucks. It was easier when Ella took more than one nap a day but now she only sleeps for an hour or so a day which leaves me with a dilemma, eat, or nap? I usually eat.

After my hair cut and lots of love and encouragement from Illiana I decided to head up to Carroll Park for some time out with Ella. Illiana told me about having her boy when she lived in the Soviet Union. She was given a year off at full pay (not that that Rubles were worth anything) and her job back after that year. At work her child had day care on sight that cost 10 Rubles a month. This included a laundry, a kitchen, clean sheets on a bed for every child in the day care, a nurse, and a teacher. Illiana was just a working gal. Imagine what a facility like that would cost in the U.S.? She was shocked to see day care so second rate in America. Granted Illiana lives in the United States now and her son is in the Marine Corps serving in Japan, so no love lost, but, I have to say we are so worried about “family values” in the U.S. We blame Hollywood, the Liberals, the Conservatives, gangs, drugs, pornography, TV, and video games. People like Michael Medved rant about “Kill Bill” but don’t make a peep at the high cost of medical care in the U.S. How are people able to have a family with which to instill values if they can’t make ends meet? I know this seems like a liberal thing to say but I am a parent now. My wife and I are extremely lucky to live were we live and are able to live and save on one salary. How can a family stay together if both parents have to work, not chose to, have to. I know a lot goes into having a family and one shouldn’t jump to conclusions but we need to think about these things as a nation.

I reached Carroll Park smirking at a very old joke I have between my friend Larry and I. We used to make up scenes from a porno produced by a socialist Ministry of Pornography, “Eh…Alexi you blow me like tractor on glorious collective farm!”

The park was full and the day was beautiful. I got Ella to her usual place on the jungle gym in the shade. I was happy to see Nancy and her little girl Sue. I know Nancy from the dog run and we caught up since the last time we saw each other. I was satisfied to hear that she has the same feelings about Carroll Park and our hood in general. She told me that out mutual friend, my neighbor, Cathy, goes to a moms group in Park Slope, and that there is a very friendly play ground on the Promenade in the Heights. Apparently it’s true, Park Slopes is the place to be for parents in B’Klyn. I admit I haven’t been to many places and met to many people so I vow to get out more and see what B’Klyn has to offer my gal and me. Nancy said that she and Cathy and I should get together and go Prospect Park and so on. After yesterday this was just what I needed. When Nancy left I felt happy to have meet another B’Klyn parent who felt the same way I did, then you know what happened? I had a conversation, with a stranger. I had to say hello to any mother who put her child in a “It’s hard out here for a chimp” t-shirt. We chatted and I ended up giver her my dentist’s card.

I don’t think people a basically good or basically bad. People are people. I know I can find like minds if I look for them. I try and be flexable it isn’t always easy but I try. I know Yoda would say, “Do or do not. There is no try.” But Yoda was a puppet and I don’t recall him having to make friends wile pushing his daughter in her stroller with one hand and pounding a ice coffee with the other desperately trying to think of any song to block out “The Big Comfy Couch.”

The First Day of School.

Three months ago our family dog Shifty died. Even though he was old we only had him for three years. He had brain cancer. It was tough but we put him down. With that lovable, lazy, sweet Chow mix went some of my social life. I used to take Shifty to the dog run on Hicks Street twice a day. In three years time you meet a lot of people. We stood in the cold, the snow, and rain, wishing our dogs would crap so we could go home. We talked about a lot of things and got to know each other. People loved Shifty and always asked why he was so laid back. I don’t know he was a dog.

I used to take my cutie pie of a daughter Ella to the run with me. In fact Ella went to the filthy dog run when she was only 7 days old. Over the months my dog friends watched Ella grow. They would smile and laugh with her and ask about her teeth. It was nice to see people light up when they saw Shifty, Ella, and I coming through the gate.

I started taking Ella to Carroll Park on Court Street to play when she was about six months old. After Shifty died I started taking Ella their every day. In many ways it’s a lot like the dog run only less friendly. Its odd entering the world of parents, or more accurately, care givers, nannies, au pairs, cool-dads, cell phone moms, and frazzled moms. I was dumb enough to believe that the lives my wife Persephone and I lead are an example of “women’s lib” or the “liberal 60’s,” or self definition free from the confines of the Victorian or post-war view of the nuclear family. But it isn’t. While the stay at home dad is more common it isn’t as accepted as I thought it would be. Even stranger is that the post-war generation love seeing me with Ella and tell me how great it must be to be able to be a full time father a pleasure and honor denied generations of American men.

I say not accepted in a general way but more specifically by the warring clans of women formed into impenetrable “mommy” phalanxes with their piles of stuff packed into their Bugaboo Frog bitching about how, “if my husband had to do this…” Hello? Ladies? I’m right here and I do do this every day. It’s like the first day of school every day. I am sized up by the au pairs, the nannies, the cool-dads, the mommies, by my stroller, how much and which stuff I have. I mention this because I see the same people every day, like the dog run, and still haven’t made an acquaintance. Being a stay at home parent can be isolating but you might as well be in Siberia if other parents aren’t going to help break that isolation.

A little boy, in a Sex Pistols t-shirt, rammed his plastic trike into Ella today. It’s my fault thinking that a line up of parents with kids about Ella’s age would be watching them the same way I watch Ella or used to watch Shifty. I scooped my girl up and soother her. The boy kept on doing his thing and no one blinked. I looked around for the boys care giver and no one came over to ask if Ella was OK. The nannies never stopped staring off whishing there was work in Trinidad or Haiti so they wouldn’t have to come here and put their kids into shitty day care to look after the spoiled white and Asian kids of South Brooklyn. The au pairs went right on thinking everyone wants to fuck them, and the cool-dads didn’t skip a beat trying to break the phalanxes with jokes and charm that used to get them laid.

I have always had a hard time with groups of men. Women seem to think we are all on the same team but we aren’t. There is a ladder that we have to climb. The difference is that we don’t subvert each other. You’re a dad I’m a dad. Fine, you’re “cooler” than I am which shouldn’t be a concern as we are all over 30 right? So don’t talk to me if I’m still JV and your Varsity. But the women I don’t get. See that ring? I’m married. See that little blond girl? She is my daughter. I am not after you and I am not a deveated-prevert. Not all men are the dip-shit, frat boy, thick neck, rat you married because you thought he had money but as it turned out that house on the Cape was his brothers, man you married. I’m a dad, I don’t care how expensive your stroller is, or at what age your baby started solid food or started to walk. Other woem worry about that. I just want to kill some time while Ella plays and maybe make a friend or two.

Parents worry about teaching their kids to share. Me? I’m going to teach Ella to be selfish. It seems that’s how we all turn out in the end anyway. Greedy, conceited, and self important.