Before Luisa–and American parenting.

– My youngest daughter asked if I really wanted a 16-year-old in the house again.  “You didn’t much like me when i was 16….”  My answer, the expted:  “I loved you but I didn’t like it when you stayed out until 2:00 and I didn’t know where you were!”  “One time.”  “More than one time…”  and the discussion continues.

The great culture shock came at the host family orientation.

Do we live in a police state?  I just found out there’s a curfew in St Paul!

And that kids get long long long lists of supplies they have to buy before school begins.

And that most American parents (apparently?) want to talk first to the parents of the a high school friend their high school child will visit the home.  I cannot even imagine the looks & groans if I had suggested to my youngest daughter’s friends that I needed to talk to their parents before Arielah could go to their house.

And that American parents apparently have bedtimes for their high school teens!  I might have said, “It’s about time you went to sleep”  if they were up late, but I cannot imagine setting a bedtime.   What do you do if they don’t go to bed by the set bedtime?

I guess Luisa and I will both learn.  I only hope she isn’t disappointed at possibly not having a typical American home life, whatever that is.

 

Sound bites and smiles from Palin – she’s a fighter but she struck out (I hope)

I am infuriated. I am listening to Biden and Palen. I am not and never have been the hockey mom Palin refers to. I know that many of the female students at my university in Minnesota are not hockey moms (or dads – thank you, Biden, for reminding us that men can also be parents). My students are working one or two, sometimes three jobs, raising children and taking classes in the hopes they can get a job that pays health insurance. They do not drive SUVs and they do not have the luxury of driving their children to hockey games and waiting while they play even though their children might benefit if they were home more. For them, it is not a choice whether they take a job that forces them out of the home and away from their children: if they do not do this, their children will have no home.

I am insulted by her use of the phrase “never again” to refer to the recent financial crisis. It is a crisis. It appears I will have lost my major investment (ah, I have something in common with Biden: my major investment is my home), a condominium in Sweden, due to the sudden plummet in home prices there and, how I do not understand, the fall of the Swedish krona against the mighty dollar. I now see that I will never again own a home.

But the phrase “never again” was a direct reaction to the Holocaust and carries that connotation in many people’s minds. To use it in the situation we are facing today is nothing but an insult to the people who were tortured and killed or survived only to face the loss of their families and homes. And will never recover from that prolonged experience, nor will their children.

While I would like to blame all of the environmental problems on men, it seems that Palin is stuck several decades ago in her use of “man.” Psychology tests have indicated that use of this word, even when people say they mean both sexes, brings up a picture of a male in people’s minds. Biden as a single parent. Palin carrying a gun and blaming problems on men.

I fully endorse the view of my Alaskan friend and colleague who never thought she would say this: Keep Palin in Alaska.

I am sad that neither supports gay marriage.  Of course, if either supported a view that doesn’t have a loud voice, they would lose.  

I am tired of sound bites that have no substance but are only lexically hardened terms that no longer have meaning if they ever did. Putting together workable plans for peace takes a lot more effort than spouting out sound bites. We have had a war-mongering administration for 8 years.

I am sick of hearing “Main Street.” Do people believe that anyone who talks about a cityscape that no longer exists can be reliable? Main Street was a metaphor that has passed out of existence due to growing urban areas and the rise of big businesses that have choked the businesses on Main Street.

I need to address the conservative Jewish support of McCain and Palin. I would again direct readers to the excellent and brave editorials in the Twin Cities’ American Jewish World. I am not encouraged when someone like Palin says she “loves” Israel. “Love” is another word that is bandied around. How can she love a country where she’s never been? And could never imagine what it’s like to be a Jew in Israel? What is good for the world can also be good for Israel. A peace-loving world would not be out to destroy Israel. A war-mongering U.S. is bad for Israel and brings the danger of destruction closer every day. Okay for us to have nuclear weapons, not okay for you. I’ll hit you and then you can hit me back and then I am justified to hit you harder – and all of this to benefit multilayered multiwebbed multinational businesses that thrive on war.

We may have gone beyond the point of no return. But I do not see how a soccer mom – oops, excuse me, hockey mom – can help to bring us back.

Irading – or is that erating – villages in Afghanistan? Anyone can have a slip of the tongue, but I had the feeling Palin simply wasn’t familiar with the word she heard someone else say.

I like smiles. To again refer to my psychology colleagues, smiles and laughter can enhance health, to say nothing of human relations. But I’m glad to see that Biden does not smile when he’s discussing a serious mistake the U.S. has made. The smiles that all 4 of the debaters have made may put some people at ease. Who coaches all four to do this? It worries me that they don’t recognize the seriousness of what they are discussing. I laud Biden for his stand on Darfur. I do not laud Palin’s smiles over this. Her smile disappeared the minute she said the name of this region, but the smiles were cute before that. Neither of them mentioned the obligation that (finally) signing the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide carries. Which, tragically, indicates a lack of understanding of international law, international relations and how to use the Convention as a vehicle to stop genocide.

Palin tells us the McCain knows how to win a war. Does no one know how to prevent a war?

She smiles and says “doggone it” and, mentioning Biden’s wife, “G-d bless her,” and doggone it, she looks like the all-American girl. But so did Anne Frank in the 1950s movies. Except that Palin carries a gun and wants war, from what I understand.

But am I not comforted that a former mayor of a small town might be thought to have the experience to possibly be President of the most influential nation on earth? And that she’s from the heartland of America, a mom. Oops, did she attribute the “city on a hill” to President Reagan? Maybe I misheard.

I somehow have the feeling that Biden would understand my needs and those of my students far more than the hockey mom from the heartland of America who is eager to fight wars.

And I have yet to understand what McCain’s vested interest would be to stop greed and corruption on Wall Street.

I type fast but I cannot type fast enough to put down the string of sound bites Palin pulls up. Do you remember the buzz word game of a decade ago? A list of buzz words, any of which could be plugged into a blank on either side of the verb.

Her words, however, were fighting words. Could we start by taking the fighting metaphors out of our everyday speech? Watch ourselves and correct every time we do this?

I am not so naïve as to think this will save us from war. Building peace takes long effort and lots of hard work, apparently harder than war.

The debate (tho’ I’m not always sure whether these are really debates) is over. I’m going to bed. And ask to be excused for the probably many typos in this.

Well, we’re told that Palin did not embarrass herself as many expected. I thought she did but perhaps her gaffes were too subtle for those who listen for sound bites to have heard.

I also worry about the instant reactions that CBS is giving viewers.  Critical thinking, like peace building, takes time.  This will in turn influence others who do not think critically to make up their minds without thinking.  Please take time to think critically as Dr. Takaki exhorted us to do last week.

Dr. Ronald Takaki

I heard a highly intelligent and eloquent and entertaining man speak last night, an immigration scholar and a scholar of multiculturalism whose works I used when I was a grad student. It was an honor and a pleasure and a great deal of fun to hear him.

But there’s another man I hear often on the radio.

The man I heard last night, Dr. Ronald Takaki, told us that to write is to think, and he required his students to write and, in writing, to think critically. He posed an epistemological question: “How do we know what we know?” And he told us that the how is more important than the what. And then led us on a rhetorical journey showing us how he once knew what he knew and how his knowledge changed after time and experience.

Dr. Takaki said that if the man I often hear on the radio had conducted a critical investigation, had thought critically, we would perhaps not be in a war.

When will people hold the President of the U.S. accountable? He said weapons of mass destruction, and people believed him. The U.S. went to war and there was no evidence of such weapons, and he kept his job.

People said: not another Vietnam. It is becoming even more than Vietnam. And the President has kept his job.

The President informed us that the U.S. economy is robust. Apparently his economy is robust. The markets are crashing. My economy is not robust. Suddenly. My friend may lose her home and cannot afford to keep her home. Another friend has been unemployed for over 3 years and, at 60, has little chance of finding another job. He could lose him home and his pension.

Would it be so terrible if the people at the top of the failing money institutions had to live in a normal ranch style house with maybe three bedrooms and a bath and a half? They would still be far better off than many in the world. I imagine the homes they will probably be able to keep would house an entire village.

Dr. Takaki spoke politically last night. He talked about memory, and he said that memory is political.

He told me and my Cambodian-American colleague, whose father was present at her birth and was killed when she was only a few days old and whose mother fed her baby watered down rice gruel while she herself was starving, that memory is important, and that people like him and Obama must speak out. I would wish that more people would hear Dr. Takaki’s voice and fewer would hear President Bush’s.

Oh, yes, Dr. Takaki didn’t only tell us things, he asked us questions. And he listened. And over and over, he encouraged students at Hamline University to think, to push ahead, to write, to realize their potential.

Hello world!

Follow my comments as I post from time to time.  I am bemused and amused and disgruntled and very frightened by the world we live in.