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?
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
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.
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?
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?
Monday, September 11, 2006
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.”
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.”
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