The recent case of Xiao Xu Wu, the mother accused of leaving her 5-year-old alone in a casino hotel room while she casually gambled away a Tuesday afternoon has stoked the great fires of parenting wrath. Almost simultaneously, newspapers and the blogosphere have been banging on about a new book, ‘Bringing up Bébé: One American Woman Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting’ and the head-turning pronouncement, at least in its Wall Street Journal adaptation, that French parents are superior and their little Jacques and Amélies altogether more polite, compliant, and well-mannered. To be fair, the book’s premise actually focuses on the expectations of French parenting, not the superiority of French parents themselves, (surely every society produces its fair share of deadbeat parents, even la belle France), but it probably didn’t sound as catchy. It’s been a little less than a year since Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother sent jaws dropping, lips flapping, and online forums into overdrive both for and against hypercompetitive helicopter parenting. We must be due for round two.
The case of Xiao Xu Wu caught my attention because we had a similar experience at a friend’s wedding in Providence, Rhode Island. After the rehearsal dinner, which included several young children, most of the group settled in at the hotel bar. While our baby zonked out at our feet in an infant car seat, another couple retired upstairs with their two young children, only to return empty-handed having left their offspring alone in the room. They didn’t have a baby monitor but, as they pointed out, the children were asleep upstairs just as they would be at home, and couldn’t exactly leave. Perhaps they needn’t have worried about attempts to escape. In Xiao Xu Wu’s case, it was her clever little five year old that telephoned the police to let them know he was all alone watching television in a casino hotel room.
My admission of bringing our baby into a bar, (albeit the open-plan hotel variety and not a dodgy, testosterone-soaked sports bar), could, by itself drive some to frothing apoplexy. Those three words - “baby in bar” - have a startlingly polarizing effect. I’ve seen heated Facebook threads pouring contempt on the glossy Brooklyn mums who show up for happy hour, attempt to park strollers between bar stools and juggle babies and bottles while nursing their solitary glass of Zin. And now The New York Times is reporting on the trend for some apartment dwelling city parents to have drinks at their neighbours' or head downstairs to a bar or restaurant below, baby monitor in hand.
Back to the French and their superior parenting, Pamela Druckerman, an ex-pat American, does make a good point. While American families are packing into “family-friendly” restaurants at 5pm, frenetically ordering off children’s menus (where, incidentally, all food options, except ketchup, are yellow) and entertaining their charges with crayons and iPad apps, French families are dining out leisurely and often at an adult-friendly hour. From pleasant dinners to hassle-free bedtimes, the French simply expect their children to be part of their world rather than begging, cajoling, and shoehorning them in.
I hoped the online remixes of Druckerman’s French parenting observations would reveal critical clues that I could employ to preset our children with an instinctive desire to sit patiently at the table and listen intently to our adult conversations without asking on a loop whether they can pee/have ice cream/go home. The trouble is Ms. Druckerman’s epiphany over the serenity of French mothers and the expert power of “Non!” doesn’t come with advice on what to do when your two year old hasn’t napped and is alternately sobbing and falling asleep in his dinner plate at 5:30pm. Nor does it offer a blue print for handling a child who burns her hand on a roasting hot plate, cries hysterically, spies the restaurant’s pet cat, and spends the rest of the evening under the table.
The reality is every book of parenting advice offers the promise of the golden ticket. And for those of us muddling through the parenting minefield and its ever-evolving ages and stages, we’re willing to hang up our hats, clasp our hands, and look for the Holy Grail of parenting perfection. Huffington Post blogger, Josette Crosby Plank, puts her tongue firmly in cheek in her take on the parenting inferiority complex and manages to brainstorm a list of 104 parent types that are unequivocally doing a better job of parenting than we are. Because, after all, whatever method we’ve been cobbling together couldn’t possibly be just fine. Could it?
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
S.W.A.L.K.
At the end of a grubby day emptying the basement, Brodart-covering close to sixty books for the school library, making birdseed pretzels with our two year old, and handling a minor flood emergency with the Department of Public Works after our plumber cracked the mains pipe, I hit the hay. Mostly I thudded into bed grateful to be spared any angst or expectations over the bulk production of Valentine’s cards for pre-school classmates. While other mothers were busily assisting in the glittery creation of thirty personalized love messages for their child to ‘deliver’ at school, I had already put the kabosh on any such notion. Valentine’s Day, I promised my children – Hallmark be damned – is exclusively Cupid’s game.
In the US, Valentine’s Day is fundamentally different. It’s for just about everyone, except perhaps bosses and staff. In the UK, it’s still exclusively the showpiece for amorous love, mutual, unrequited or simply hopeful. Not to mention the eminent domain of really strung out crushes played out by hormonally tormented teens. (Remember the painful, undying pangs of love you felt in high school?) The best part is that Valentine’s Day cards, whether store bought or painstakingly crafted, are sent anonymously, fueling the fires of Valentine love with secrecy and intrigue.
In fact, the hallmark of the day (not Hallmark’s re-interpretation) hinges on this notion of a secret admirer, a throwback to the tradition’s chaste Victorian origins. Whether you know perfectly well who’s behind the heartfelt declaration of love, or are left deciphering fluffy statements of romantic interest – “I think you’re cute!” “I have a crush on you!” -- the cards are left unsigned, save only for a cryptic question mark, a desirous (or less desirably illiterate) “X”, or a pouty lip print to prove it was S.W.A.L.K. (sealed with a loving kiss). Your name may be pieced together out of hastily snipped newspaper letters leaving you to guess whether you now have a serial killer or a lovelorn suitor. Or both.
Envelopes may be written shakily with the sender’s non-writing hand or foot, letting you ponder whether your admirer is a gummy ninety-year-old looking for a nursemaid. Cleverer and cleverer, the romantic games play on. And for those determined to truly snow their love object, the card is then carted off to be posted, no doubt with a good deal of effort, from some random town to really throw them off the scent. After all, having gone to all that trouble, what could be more mortifying than being exposed?
In the states, the lucrative greetings card market has been filling the card aisles with pink and red hues and bubblegum love hearts before the sparkle was off the New Year bubbly. You can buy Valentine’s cards in boxes of twelve or twenty-four like Christmas cards, and most of the shops have had them on sale for half-price for two weeks or more, giving value for money and new meaning to cheap date. Not content with encouraging impressionable progeny to send insincere declarations of love to everyone they know, (even that weird kid who constantly picks his nose and the girl that won’t let my daughter sit next to her at lunch), our children are also supposed to send Valentine’s cards to their parents, siblings, even Nan and Gramps. Worse yet, we’re all supposed to jump onboard and send some back like a postal love scrum.
Unfortunately, if your family is from another country, the chances are they will not be sending love letters to your children. Or so one can only hope. With this conviction firmly in hand, I instead decided we would make Valentine’s crafts with no particular recipient in mind, just for the pleasure of creating and sharing art.
Believing, presumably like some real-life Fancy Nancy, that all things sound better in French, my five year old asked if she might decorate her Valentine craft with French letters. After ten minutes I was able to regain my composure and create curly letters that looked remarkably frothy and French. I am fairly certain the yummy mummies at school would not have been impressed had she turned up with a doily heart beautifully decorated with prophylactics.
Finally, with everyone tucked up in bed and my feet on the stairs ready to turn in, I had a tiny pang of guilt. Two glitter and crayon Valentine’s cards later, I set up a little breakfast table for the children complete with a single red rose and chocolate ladybirds on heart shaped plates. In for a penny, in for a pound: I even signed the cards.
In the US, Valentine’s Day is fundamentally different. It’s for just about everyone, except perhaps bosses and staff. In the UK, it’s still exclusively the showpiece for amorous love, mutual, unrequited or simply hopeful. Not to mention the eminent domain of really strung out crushes played out by hormonally tormented teens. (Remember the painful, undying pangs of love you felt in high school?) The best part is that Valentine’s Day cards, whether store bought or painstakingly crafted, are sent anonymously, fueling the fires of Valentine love with secrecy and intrigue.
In fact, the hallmark of the day (not Hallmark’s re-interpretation) hinges on this notion of a secret admirer, a throwback to the tradition’s chaste Victorian origins. Whether you know perfectly well who’s behind the heartfelt declaration of love, or are left deciphering fluffy statements of romantic interest – “I think you’re cute!” “I have a crush on you!” -- the cards are left unsigned, save only for a cryptic question mark, a desirous (or less desirably illiterate) “X”, or a pouty lip print to prove it was S.W.A.L.K. (sealed with a loving kiss). Your name may be pieced together out of hastily snipped newspaper letters leaving you to guess whether you now have a serial killer or a lovelorn suitor. Or both.
Envelopes may be written shakily with the sender’s non-writing hand or foot, letting you ponder whether your admirer is a gummy ninety-year-old looking for a nursemaid. Cleverer and cleverer, the romantic games play on. And for those determined to truly snow their love object, the card is then carted off to be posted, no doubt with a good deal of effort, from some random town to really throw them off the scent. After all, having gone to all that trouble, what could be more mortifying than being exposed?
In the states, the lucrative greetings card market has been filling the card aisles with pink and red hues and bubblegum love hearts before the sparkle was off the New Year bubbly. You can buy Valentine’s cards in boxes of twelve or twenty-four like Christmas cards, and most of the shops have had them on sale for half-price for two weeks or more, giving value for money and new meaning to cheap date. Not content with encouraging impressionable progeny to send insincere declarations of love to everyone they know, (even that weird kid who constantly picks his nose and the girl that won’t let my daughter sit next to her at lunch), our children are also supposed to send Valentine’s cards to their parents, siblings, even Nan and Gramps. Worse yet, we’re all supposed to jump onboard and send some back like a postal love scrum.
Unfortunately, if your family is from another country, the chances are they will not be sending love letters to your children. Or so one can only hope. With this conviction firmly in hand, I instead decided we would make Valentine’s crafts with no particular recipient in mind, just for the pleasure of creating and sharing art.
Believing, presumably like some real-life Fancy Nancy, that all things sound better in French, my five year old asked if she might decorate her Valentine craft with French letters. After ten minutes I was able to regain my composure and create curly letters that looked remarkably frothy and French. I am fairly certain the yummy mummies at school would not have been impressed had she turned up with a doily heart beautifully decorated with prophylactics.
Finally, with everyone tucked up in bed and my feet on the stairs ready to turn in, I had a tiny pang of guilt. Two glitter and crayon Valentine’s cards later, I set up a little breakfast table for the children complete with a single red rose and chocolate ladybirds on heart shaped plates. In for a penny, in for a pound: I even signed the cards.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Supercheesebowl
It’s not too late to talk about the Superbowl, is it? Where should we start? Perhaps with Gisele Bundchen’s fierce Tiger-Mother support of her man, Tom Brady, while throwing his teammates under the bus? Or the commercials that gave us every inch of David Beckham’s body to flog his new range of underwear and the steamy Teleflora ad assuring men that Valentine’s flowers are a sure-fire way to score?
After fifteen years in New York, I can get pretty excited about baseball but the whole American football thing still goes over my head. From what I see, a team of men in body-hugging Lycra, huddle, charge, body slam and fall down. My ignorance of the finer points of the game may be of my own doing, but let’s not quibble over the obvious similarities with sumo wrestling which, strangely enough, hasn’t spawned a national following.
This year, with the Giants in the Superbowl, instead of my perfectly planned Sunday evening idyll, (read: wine, sofa and Downtown Abbey), I was thrust into a real Superbowl party, my first since January 1996 when the Steelers played the Cowboys. And there it was, flutterings in my chest, the first stirrings of pride as the NY Giants emerged victorious. I may be rehabilitated yet.
When Beckham was purchased to spice up LA-Galaxy, an American sports commentator bravely explained the American apathy towards soccer. ‘The beautiful game’, football by any other name, couldn’t hold American audiences because of the low scores. Since soccer games can end nil-nil or be won with a single goal, it doesn’t ignite the fires of a North American audience, even while it drives the rest of the world into passionate histrionics.
I have another theory. It seems the breaks in American football are as important as the game itself. Not only do they provide the outrageously expensive commercial spots designed to keep the audience glued to the box, they provide ample opportunity to graze. Nothing says time to grab another beer like a first down at the fifty-yard line. And at the end of the day, what would the Superbowl be without cold beer and buffalo wings?
Coccadotts, a local bakery in Colonie, NY obviously worried that cakes might not be an automatic go-to item when attending a Superbowl party. Inspired by the game and the national obsession with abundantly iced cupcakes, (who is buying these anyway?) they came up with six packs of cornbread cupcakes, iced with blue cheese frosting, and jauntily topped off with a saucy chicken wing. Heaven save us all. Cakes merged with chicken limbs? Sacré bleu!
Half time brings the other great sideline sport, the half-time show. A delicacy we love to pick apart with the same care given to those lip smacking wings. After the oldies cried foul over Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate, and the youngsters cried, “Who?” to The Who, the powers-that-be came up with a cross-generation act. No, not Lady Gaga, but Madonna. Madonna’s entrance bedecked in Givenchy Couture and Bulgari jewels had about as much pomp and circumstance as the royal wedding, something Madonna and her faux-British accent no doubt enjoyed. The medley of eighties and nineties hits was a fun little reminder that the writhing woman before us is actually in her mid-fifties. Alas, the stiffness in her dance moves suggested all the Botox may have migrated from her face to the rest of her moving parts.
Luckily for the censors, Madonna pulled off a near-perfect Madonna and Child performance without even kissing sassy Nicki Minaj, even if the other enfant terrible, M.I.A., did raise eyebrows by flipping the bird. No doubt she’ll be suitably chastised. In case you think the only scandal was in the post-game potty-mouthed tirade of Ms. Bundchen, we can thank some New England Patriots fans for bringing a little old school hooliganism to the streets of UMass Amherst. And lastly, a website named Hollywoodilluminati.com claims Madonna managed to disguise a Satanic ritual in her NFL half-time show. If she did, I have to believe the utterly sinful Coccodotts Bakery was in on the act.
After fifteen years in New York, I can get pretty excited about baseball but the whole American football thing still goes over my head. From what I see, a team of men in body-hugging Lycra, huddle, charge, body slam and fall down. My ignorance of the finer points of the game may be of my own doing, but let’s not quibble over the obvious similarities with sumo wrestling which, strangely enough, hasn’t spawned a national following.
This year, with the Giants in the Superbowl, instead of my perfectly planned Sunday evening idyll, (read: wine, sofa and Downtown Abbey), I was thrust into a real Superbowl party, my first since January 1996 when the Steelers played the Cowboys. And there it was, flutterings in my chest, the first stirrings of pride as the NY Giants emerged victorious. I may be rehabilitated yet.
When Beckham was purchased to spice up LA-Galaxy, an American sports commentator bravely explained the American apathy towards soccer. ‘The beautiful game’, football by any other name, couldn’t hold American audiences because of the low scores. Since soccer games can end nil-nil or be won with a single goal, it doesn’t ignite the fires of a North American audience, even while it drives the rest of the world into passionate histrionics.
I have another theory. It seems the breaks in American football are as important as the game itself. Not only do they provide the outrageously expensive commercial spots designed to keep the audience glued to the box, they provide ample opportunity to graze. Nothing says time to grab another beer like a first down at the fifty-yard line. And at the end of the day, what would the Superbowl be without cold beer and buffalo wings?
Coccadotts, a local bakery in Colonie, NY obviously worried that cakes might not be an automatic go-to item when attending a Superbowl party. Inspired by the game and the national obsession with abundantly iced cupcakes, (who is buying these anyway?) they came up with six packs of cornbread cupcakes, iced with blue cheese frosting, and jauntily topped off with a saucy chicken wing. Heaven save us all. Cakes merged with chicken limbs? Sacré bleu!
Half time brings the other great sideline sport, the half-time show. A delicacy we love to pick apart with the same care given to those lip smacking wings. After the oldies cried foul over Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate, and the youngsters cried, “Who?” to The Who, the powers-that-be came up with a cross-generation act. No, not Lady Gaga, but Madonna. Madonna’s entrance bedecked in Givenchy Couture and Bulgari jewels had about as much pomp and circumstance as the royal wedding, something Madonna and her faux-British accent no doubt enjoyed. The medley of eighties and nineties hits was a fun little reminder that the writhing woman before us is actually in her mid-fifties. Alas, the stiffness in her dance moves suggested all the Botox may have migrated from her face to the rest of her moving parts.
Luckily for the censors, Madonna pulled off a near-perfect Madonna and Child performance without even kissing sassy Nicki Minaj, even if the other enfant terrible, M.I.A., did raise eyebrows by flipping the bird. No doubt she’ll be suitably chastised. In case you think the only scandal was in the post-game potty-mouthed tirade of Ms. Bundchen, we can thank some New England Patriots fans for bringing a little old school hooliganism to the streets of UMass Amherst. And lastly, a website named Hollywoodilluminati.com claims Madonna managed to disguise a Satanic ritual in her NFL half-time show. If she did, I have to believe the utterly sinful Coccodotts Bakery was in on the act.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Lost in Transit
After a restorative solo visit to Miami, I was scandalized to find my knickers missing from my luggage. Not exactly my undies, but my bikini bottoms nonetheless. And not only missing, but stolen.
I didn't leave them at my dear friend's house nor did I find them sometime later crumpled in the side pocket of my carry-on. My very last act in sunny FLA had been a few laps of the kidney-shaped pool soaking up the last drops of golden sunshine (his jammy, impossibly glamorous South Beach condominium, a topic for the future). I had only time to change, wring out my bikini and stash it inside a large sunhat neatly compressed as the top layer in my suitcase before he dragged me kicking and screaming back to the airport and the chilly real world.
By the time I arrived home in New York, my luggage had been rifled through with the expertise of a trained TSA agent, an art I believe requires hours of specialized training, so they can poke and prod neatly folded clothes with a technique akin to salad tossing. It ensures maximum disturbance of any master plan to limit creases and spills. Perversely, like a serial killer, they will leave you a complimentary calling card letting know you’ve just been had by the TSA. In the confines of my perfectly innocent case, the hairdryer and oversized bottle of conditioner were left alone, but the striped bikini bottoms vanished.
Luggage handlers have been getting a pretty bad rap recently. Justifiably so, it seems. An entire racket was operating within the belly of American Airlines, with a posse of enterprising baggage handlers only pilfering Rolexes, cameras, and designer clothes as a side habit to their cocaine import business cleverly concealed in the walls of the plane fuselage. When Homeland Security scheduled luggage searches, the clever baggage pit bosses would simply leave the contraband in the walls and send the plane on its way until the next inspection-free landing. Any YouTube search turns up reams of CCTV airport footage from Luton to Joahnnesburg with baggage handlers rampantly plundering carousel-bound bags.
It's true, the Missoni label may have caught someone’s eye and been mistaken for something fancy, but that would overlook the magical week when a Missoni ready-to-wear line for Target was ever so briefly in stock. Anyone with sticky fingers only had to read the small print on the label. Even so, it doesn't explain theft of the bottoms, leaving the rather cute flower-embellished top behind.
I still rely on the post-9/11 directive that forbade travelers to lock checked luggage. My parents, on the other hand, arrived stateside with nifty TSA-approved locks that can only be opened by agents armed with a universal key. Unfortunately, the locks they traveled with were not the same locks placed back on their bags on either the outbound or return legs. How difficult can it be to procure a spare universal key when you are an airport employee? Or perhaps there’s a lucrative trade in luggage locks.
Flying is so devoid of any niceties these days we’re conditioned to practically stripping at security screenings and staring at the ceiling during pat downs with the sort of ho-hum ambivalence normally reserved for annual health check-ups. We could probably pass ourselves off as skilled extras in a remake of The Wall.
Dogged fastidiousness among security personnel seems greatest in small hubs, Albany (nearly-) International among them. In the safe hands of Albany's TSA I have been required to break the seal, taste, and submit for fume testing, three unopened bottles of Pediasure while traveling with a toddler. Liquid medicine has gone through without a hitch, but I've nearly come to fisticuffs when the freezer pack keeping it cold was about to be confiscated. Nail clippers, razors, and lipgloss have all met their maker, though a friend once made it through with a full-size hammer. My laptop has been swabbed for traces of explosives too many times to mention. And breaking all laws of probability, I’m invariably on the extra-screening list. If only my luck was as good at the craps table.
On this trip I caused great excitement by blowing up the body scanner. Albany, rather surprisingly, has one of the high-tech full-body scanners, something like a 360 degree changing room with mirrors designed to give you body dysmorphic disorder. Despite the 6am hour, a flight without car seats, snack bags and pooping children drastically increased my chances for a frequent flier upgrade so on went the heels and a sequin-speckled top. Unfortunately, the sequins dazzle and confuse these body scanners – in my mind it’s like an x-ray machine encountering a disco ball – so alarms sound and the next thing you’re having the most thorough pat down of your adult life.
I’d like to thank the TSA’s finest for keeping us safe (except when my friends travel with hammers) but if we’re going to get meticulous treatment when it comes to security operations, please take better care of my swimwear or I’m really going to get my knickers in a twist.
I didn't leave them at my dear friend's house nor did I find them sometime later crumpled in the side pocket of my carry-on. My very last act in sunny FLA had been a few laps of the kidney-shaped pool soaking up the last drops of golden sunshine (his jammy, impossibly glamorous South Beach condominium, a topic for the future). I had only time to change, wring out my bikini and stash it inside a large sunhat neatly compressed as the top layer in my suitcase before he dragged me kicking and screaming back to the airport and the chilly real world.
By the time I arrived home in New York, my luggage had been rifled through with the expertise of a trained TSA agent, an art I believe requires hours of specialized training, so they can poke and prod neatly folded clothes with a technique akin to salad tossing. It ensures maximum disturbance of any master plan to limit creases and spills. Perversely, like a serial killer, they will leave you a complimentary calling card letting know you’ve just been had by the TSA. In the confines of my perfectly innocent case, the hairdryer and oversized bottle of conditioner were left alone, but the striped bikini bottoms vanished.
Luggage handlers have been getting a pretty bad rap recently. Justifiably so, it seems. An entire racket was operating within the belly of American Airlines, with a posse of enterprising baggage handlers only pilfering Rolexes, cameras, and designer clothes as a side habit to their cocaine import business cleverly concealed in the walls of the plane fuselage. When Homeland Security scheduled luggage searches, the clever baggage pit bosses would simply leave the contraband in the walls and send the plane on its way until the next inspection-free landing. Any YouTube search turns up reams of CCTV airport footage from Luton to Joahnnesburg with baggage handlers rampantly plundering carousel-bound bags.
It's true, the Missoni label may have caught someone’s eye and been mistaken for something fancy, but that would overlook the magical week when a Missoni ready-to-wear line for Target was ever so briefly in stock. Anyone with sticky fingers only had to read the small print on the label. Even so, it doesn't explain theft of the bottoms, leaving the rather cute flower-embellished top behind.
I still rely on the post-9/11 directive that forbade travelers to lock checked luggage. My parents, on the other hand, arrived stateside with nifty TSA-approved locks that can only be opened by agents armed with a universal key. Unfortunately, the locks they traveled with were not the same locks placed back on their bags on either the outbound or return legs. How difficult can it be to procure a spare universal key when you are an airport employee? Or perhaps there’s a lucrative trade in luggage locks.
Flying is so devoid of any niceties these days we’re conditioned to practically stripping at security screenings and staring at the ceiling during pat downs with the sort of ho-hum ambivalence normally reserved for annual health check-ups. We could probably pass ourselves off as skilled extras in a remake of The Wall.
Dogged fastidiousness among security personnel seems greatest in small hubs, Albany (nearly-) International among them. In the safe hands of Albany's TSA I have been required to break the seal, taste, and submit for fume testing, three unopened bottles of Pediasure while traveling with a toddler. Liquid medicine has gone through without a hitch, but I've nearly come to fisticuffs when the freezer pack keeping it cold was about to be confiscated. Nail clippers, razors, and lipgloss have all met their maker, though a friend once made it through with a full-size hammer. My laptop has been swabbed for traces of explosives too many times to mention. And breaking all laws of probability, I’m invariably on the extra-screening list. If only my luck was as good at the craps table.
On this trip I caused great excitement by blowing up the body scanner. Albany, rather surprisingly, has one of the high-tech full-body scanners, something like a 360 degree changing room with mirrors designed to give you body dysmorphic disorder. Despite the 6am hour, a flight without car seats, snack bags and pooping children drastically increased my chances for a frequent flier upgrade so on went the heels and a sequin-speckled top. Unfortunately, the sequins dazzle and confuse these body scanners – in my mind it’s like an x-ray machine encountering a disco ball – so alarms sound and the next thing you’re having the most thorough pat down of your adult life.
I’d like to thank the TSA’s finest for keeping us safe (except when my friends travel with hammers) but if we’re going to get meticulous treatment when it comes to security operations, please take better care of my swimwear or I’m really going to get my knickers in a twist.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Leap of Faith
I shocked my husband with the suggestion that we look into the Catholic school at the top of our road. Having married a Welsh-Irish-Catholic American who attended a parochial Catholic school as a child, it wasn’t surprising that he’d consider it for his own progeny, but from the mouth of his dyed-in-the-wool atheist wife, it must have sounded like conversion.
Sending your children off to school, even at the tender age of Pre-K and kindergarten, can inspire all sorts of personal quandries about setting them off on the right track, nurturing their fledgling independent selves, and providing fertile ground for learning. By fertile, I don’t mean teachers who throw chalk at you – or sometimes the blackboard eraser - for not paying attention, a tactic favoured by the math teacher at my first primary school. (Could any child’s mind be faulted for straying from fractions to marvel at how his trousers stayed up, belted as they were under a hugely distended stomach like string slicing into a ball of dough?) Nor do I mean the cruel English nuns who used to rap my husband’s fingers with a ruler, although the fact that he ended up marrying an Englishwoman, (note, not a nun), is not lost on me.
Having gone the route of a very liberal, creative-learning type of school for Pre-K, it turns out our Catholic and Church of England backgrounds have influenced us more than we knew. The current school’s teaching philosophy and marvelously caring teachers cannot be bettered, but the whole first-name basis between students and teachers, and casual attitude to middle-schoolers snacking, listening to iPods and interrupting teachers leaves me gob-smacked.
It seems reasonable we’d gravitate toward a school that is culturally familiar, though that’s a tall order for me in the states. My primary school had us sporting straw hats in the summer, blue berets in the winter (eat your heart out, Monica Lewinsky), and courtseying to teachers at the end of each day. We also had marvelously archaic responsibilities such as flag duty (running the flag up and down the flagpole) and bell duty (chiming a large brass hand-bell in the hallways to announce the end of class). And let’s not forget the host of throwbacks to yesteryear with highly subjective awards for deportment, character, and musical accomplishment. Perhaps they were preparing us for courtship war, sending out a battalion of Little Women.
I’ll admit this recent school envy started when my UK friends began posting Facebook pictures of little Charlie and Jemma in brand-spanking new kindergarten school uniforms. Knobbly knees sticking out from shorts and pinafore dresses; large satchels hanging off tiny woollen blazers; eyes peeking out from under crested school hats. The longing only grew when video clips and pictures arrived in my December inbox with an adorable Ben and Elsie dressed as a wise king and a glittery star in their school nativity play. Our school has a moratorium on any holiday celebrations at all. You read that right. No Easter or Easter bunny, no secular Hallowe’en, no Channukkah, and definitely no Christmas. Not even a school tree or hand-made ornament. Considering our own Christmas tree still features a small glittery egg-box creature made in kindergarten by my husband, aged four, you catch my drift.
Frankly, I’d have been perfectly content with a little secular winter play along the lines of Rudolph and the Snowman, but no such luck. When the librarian fretted aloud over a prominent display of December holiday and winter solstice books at the Scholastic book fair, I rolled my eyes. Why should we be worried, I asked? There are parents, she ventured, who prefer no mention – whatsoever – of any holiday celebration. I wondered how they coped in the supermarket or mall.
In America, there are three school picks: public-run, independent private, and private faith-based, most commonly Catholic. The public schools are uniform-free, except for the students’ self-imposed fashion rules. Private independent schools are typically anti-establishment and go without; while Catholic schools, bless their cotton socks, go whole hog for uniforms, in red and white, plaid, and navy blue. Looking at the array is like manna from heaven. All I can think is how easy school mornings would be and how many home clothes could be saved from the ravages of paint time.
No doubt the tyranny of chalk and nuns and the welcoming environment of a secular democracy both work, but neither approach seems quite right, and the quest to find the right school turns out to be as much about satisfying us, as our children. I sat my husband down to brainstorm. Besides nurturing teachers and academic records, suddenly respect, good manners, and a school uniform topped my ideal school list. The idea that I, of all people, might be in the market for a little old school structure and civility was an epiphany.
Still unsure about enrolling in the Catholic school, I met with the head. She offered her take on their school as imparting a moral framework and instilling students with Christian values: a system of cooperation, understanding, and enrichment. Now this was my mind of mantra. After all, drilled down, most religions provide a handbook to stave off anarchy.
In turns out, I’m not alone. In the UK, although active worship has been in precipitous decline over the last 50 years, religious schools have been growing in popularity, in part for their willingness to teach core values and respect.
The head stressed their students include Jewish, Muslim, and the non-practicing (though I half expected her to call the latter ‘infidels’). They’ve won the New York State science fair with a team that was mostly girls. They teach Spanish from kindergarten up. And they have a pretty spiffy uniform. I’m pretty much hooked. It’s just going to take a leap of faith.
Sending your children off to school, even at the tender age of Pre-K and kindergarten, can inspire all sorts of personal quandries about setting them off on the right track, nurturing their fledgling independent selves, and providing fertile ground for learning. By fertile, I don’t mean teachers who throw chalk at you – or sometimes the blackboard eraser - for not paying attention, a tactic favoured by the math teacher at my first primary school. (Could any child’s mind be faulted for straying from fractions to marvel at how his trousers stayed up, belted as they were under a hugely distended stomach like string slicing into a ball of dough?) Nor do I mean the cruel English nuns who used to rap my husband’s fingers with a ruler, although the fact that he ended up marrying an Englishwoman, (note, not a nun), is not lost on me.
Having gone the route of a very liberal, creative-learning type of school for Pre-K, it turns out our Catholic and Church of England backgrounds have influenced us more than we knew. The current school’s teaching philosophy and marvelously caring teachers cannot be bettered, but the whole first-name basis between students and teachers, and casual attitude to middle-schoolers snacking, listening to iPods and interrupting teachers leaves me gob-smacked.
It seems reasonable we’d gravitate toward a school that is culturally familiar, though that’s a tall order for me in the states. My primary school had us sporting straw hats in the summer, blue berets in the winter (eat your heart out, Monica Lewinsky), and courtseying to teachers at the end of each day. We also had marvelously archaic responsibilities such as flag duty (running the flag up and down the flagpole) and bell duty (chiming a large brass hand-bell in the hallways to announce the end of class). And let’s not forget the host of throwbacks to yesteryear with highly subjective awards for deportment, character, and musical accomplishment. Perhaps they were preparing us for courtship war, sending out a battalion of Little Women.
I’ll admit this recent school envy started when my UK friends began posting Facebook pictures of little Charlie and Jemma in brand-spanking new kindergarten school uniforms. Knobbly knees sticking out from shorts and pinafore dresses; large satchels hanging off tiny woollen blazers; eyes peeking out from under crested school hats. The longing only grew when video clips and pictures arrived in my December inbox with an adorable Ben and Elsie dressed as a wise king and a glittery star in their school nativity play. Our school has a moratorium on any holiday celebrations at all. You read that right. No Easter or Easter bunny, no secular Hallowe’en, no Channukkah, and definitely no Christmas. Not even a school tree or hand-made ornament. Considering our own Christmas tree still features a small glittery egg-box creature made in kindergarten by my husband, aged four, you catch my drift.
Frankly, I’d have been perfectly content with a little secular winter play along the lines of Rudolph and the Snowman, but no such luck. When the librarian fretted aloud over a prominent display of December holiday and winter solstice books at the Scholastic book fair, I rolled my eyes. Why should we be worried, I asked? There are parents, she ventured, who prefer no mention – whatsoever – of any holiday celebration. I wondered how they coped in the supermarket or mall.
In America, there are three school picks: public-run, independent private, and private faith-based, most commonly Catholic. The public schools are uniform-free, except for the students’ self-imposed fashion rules. Private independent schools are typically anti-establishment and go without; while Catholic schools, bless their cotton socks, go whole hog for uniforms, in red and white, plaid, and navy blue. Looking at the array is like manna from heaven. All I can think is how easy school mornings would be and how many home clothes could be saved from the ravages of paint time.
No doubt the tyranny of chalk and nuns and the welcoming environment of a secular democracy both work, but neither approach seems quite right, and the quest to find the right school turns out to be as much about satisfying us, as our children. I sat my husband down to brainstorm. Besides nurturing teachers and academic records, suddenly respect, good manners, and a school uniform topped my ideal school list. The idea that I, of all people, might be in the market for a little old school structure and civility was an epiphany.
Still unsure about enrolling in the Catholic school, I met with the head. She offered her take on their school as imparting a moral framework and instilling students with Christian values: a system of cooperation, understanding, and enrichment. Now this was my mind of mantra. After all, drilled down, most religions provide a handbook to stave off anarchy.
In turns out, I’m not alone. In the UK, although active worship has been in precipitous decline over the last 50 years, religious schools have been growing in popularity, in part for their willingness to teach core values and respect.
The head stressed their students include Jewish, Muslim, and the non-practicing (though I half expected her to call the latter ‘infidels’). They’ve won the New York State science fair with a team that was mostly girls. They teach Spanish from kindergarten up. And they have a pretty spiffy uniform. I’m pretty much hooked. It’s just going to take a leap of faith.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Tipping Point
Guess what? I have a great idea! Forget cow tipping, let’s work on our resumes, write cover letters, apply for jobs, schedule interviews and then – wait for it, here’s the fun part – not show up! Doesn’t that sound like fun? Just imagine the look on the face of the employer, or perhaps that work-from-home mum looking for some hands-on help. Better yet, perhaps they’ll have worked hard to juggle around schedules so we can really waste some time.
The applicant described herself as, “reliable, dependable, and caring.” She studied art during a year abroad in Italy, had been a beloved nanny for umpteen families, and was hoping to teach art to at-risk youth. “Trust me,” her profile read, “I treat every child as if it were my own.” Trust me, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Despite the number of emails we’d exchanged confirming times and directions, perhaps I should not have been surprised when she left me holding the baby instead of showing up for the interview.
A few weeks back, my husband’s firm placed an ad for an office manager. He whittled the applicants down to half a dozen good ones and scheduled interviews around his crazed schedule. And then three of them failed to show up. So what’s the story? In a climate where every newspaper and media outlet is reporting endlessly on record unemployment rates and the every sneeze and move of Occupy Any-City, it’s hard to imagine applicants wasting their time ofor kicks and giggles. You can’t help but wonder what’s going through people’s minds.
I’d exchanged several emails with my potential art-student-cum-babysitter, so when she failed to appear I thought I’d better check in to see if the no-show was perhaps due to getting lost, a misunderstanding, or a plain old rescinding of interest. We’d been fortunate with a bumper crop responding to our Care.com ad, but I confess this applicant had seemed particularly promising, a good fit. The daft part here is that online hiring sites equip you with an array of marvelous tools, among them the ability to see when people have logged in to view their messages. Our candidate may have thought better of showing up, but I was able to see that she had checked my message less than an hour after I’d sent it. So much for hiding; her guilt was transparent.
To be fair, the dismal slide in basic hiring courtesy goes two ways. In recent years, job applications have become a tough, impersonal business. Companies rely increasingly on the kind of online submissions that strip every last shred of personality from your resume and leave you neatly boxed within a few dates and lines about your academic and career experience. They might as well provide you with a virtual pink ribbon with which to wrap yourself up. You might be given a small chance to shine with a box that mimics a short cover letter but, even then, the character limit will probably keep things to a superficial please-and-thank you sound bite.
However impersonal the 21st century job application process may be, my beef lies with the companies that fail to respond to potential recruits. What could it possibly take out of anyone’s day to send a boilerplate “thank you but no” rejection letter? Several years back, I was incredulous to receive a phone call inviting me to come in for an interview a full three months after I had submitted the application. Not that they had ever actually acknowledged receiving it.
And so it seems the worm has turned. Perhaps applicants are trying their hand as a some sort of virtual jail bait, hedging their bets to come off as the peach perfect applicant right up until potential employers take a shine to them. Whatever the ploy, let me tell you firsthand it’s a royal pain in the proverbial derriere.
I’m hoping my remaining interviewees show up and present their A-game. With our sitters graduating and applying for jobs in new careers, I feel my own share of embarrassment as their applications go unanswered and follow-up calls unreturned. It surely doesn’t take much to make courtesy part of the plan. Unless, that is, you find it as entertaining as cow tipping.
The applicant described herself as, “reliable, dependable, and caring.” She studied art during a year abroad in Italy, had been a beloved nanny for umpteen families, and was hoping to teach art to at-risk youth. “Trust me,” her profile read, “I treat every child as if it were my own.” Trust me, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Despite the number of emails we’d exchanged confirming times and directions, perhaps I should not have been surprised when she left me holding the baby instead of showing up for the interview.
A few weeks back, my husband’s firm placed an ad for an office manager. He whittled the applicants down to half a dozen good ones and scheduled interviews around his crazed schedule. And then three of them failed to show up. So what’s the story? In a climate where every newspaper and media outlet is reporting endlessly on record unemployment rates and the every sneeze and move of Occupy Any-City, it’s hard to imagine applicants wasting their time ofor kicks and giggles. You can’t help but wonder what’s going through people’s minds.
I’d exchanged several emails with my potential art-student-cum-babysitter, so when she failed to appear I thought I’d better check in to see if the no-show was perhaps due to getting lost, a misunderstanding, or a plain old rescinding of interest. We’d been fortunate with a bumper crop responding to our Care.com ad, but I confess this applicant had seemed particularly promising, a good fit. The daft part here is that online hiring sites equip you with an array of marvelous tools, among them the ability to see when people have logged in to view their messages. Our candidate may have thought better of showing up, but I was able to see that she had checked my message less than an hour after I’d sent it. So much for hiding; her guilt was transparent.
To be fair, the dismal slide in basic hiring courtesy goes two ways. In recent years, job applications have become a tough, impersonal business. Companies rely increasingly on the kind of online submissions that strip every last shred of personality from your resume and leave you neatly boxed within a few dates and lines about your academic and career experience. They might as well provide you with a virtual pink ribbon with which to wrap yourself up. You might be given a small chance to shine with a box that mimics a short cover letter but, even then, the character limit will probably keep things to a superficial please-and-thank you sound bite.
However impersonal the 21st century job application process may be, my beef lies with the companies that fail to respond to potential recruits. What could it possibly take out of anyone’s day to send a boilerplate “thank you but no” rejection letter? Several years back, I was incredulous to receive a phone call inviting me to come in for an interview a full three months after I had submitted the application. Not that they had ever actually acknowledged receiving it.
And so it seems the worm has turned. Perhaps applicants are trying their hand as a some sort of virtual jail bait, hedging their bets to come off as the peach perfect applicant right up until potential employers take a shine to them. Whatever the ploy, let me tell you firsthand it’s a royal pain in the proverbial derriere.
I’m hoping my remaining interviewees show up and present their A-game. With our sitters graduating and applying for jobs in new careers, I feel my own share of embarrassment as their applications go unanswered and follow-up calls unreturned. It surely doesn’t take much to make courtesy part of the plan. Unless, that is, you find it as entertaining as cow tipping.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Olympic Agony
Friday morning, nine o’clock. I was pouring my post-school run coffee when I received a text from my father: ‘The Olympic ticket website has opened!’ I nearly choked, abandoned the myriad urgent things on my to do list (bills, work and returned phone calls could wait) and plunked myself squarely in front of the laptop. The task would need undivided attention. The kind that involves breaking a cardinal rule (one involving a small child and a television set) so I could bash away feverishly at the keyboard like a maestro possessed.
The Olympics London 2012 has been plagued with controversy and frustration ever since the ill-conceived national ticket lottery made winners of a few, and losers of more than two thirds of applicants. The newspapers have been all over it and my fellow countrymen range, somewhat narrowly, from utterly frustrated to simply unimpressed. It’s been twenty-one months since I signed up for the critical updates from the official Olympic website. I watched it crash and fumble during the lottery submission period. I waited on tenterhooks as deadlines passed or were rescheduled. And just when the ticket resale period was about to open in December, Locog, the London Olympic Committee, psyched us out by saying it wouldn’t open ticket resales until April 2012. April, with the games starting in July? Surely someone was havin’ a larf.
I pounced on tickets and scoured the website for 90 minutes straight, madly texting my husband at work in the OR to get his thumbs up for picks in men’s diving, beach volleyball, athletics and gymnastics. It was unbelievable – tickets were available for almost every event, some in higher price brackets than I’d originally chosen, others available in almost every price tier. There were even tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies. Everything looked peachy until checkout. No tickets were protected in your Ticketmaster cart until you actually clicked through to checkout and with every attempt to buy my screen only flashed up, “No tickets matching your requested items can be found.”
I was flipping out. Back I went to the available dates and tickets and picked one event, two tickets and went to Checkout. Not available. Over and over again. Every event that showed available tickets would come up as none available before the entire site seemingly crashed. The little Olympic icon – (I can’t decide if it more closely resembles a shattered Union flag or the glow-in-the-dark numberless Quartz watch face I owned when I was about twelve) -- that spins while it processes your request, wound around endlessly until it had the decency to time out with an unhelpful message. To paraphrase, the ticket resale site had been suspended until Ticketmaster could sort out the mess.
So where exactly did the problem lie? People attempting to offload tickets found they were taken from their accounts but did not appear online until several hours later. Tickets that were actually showing up continued to be listed as available sometimes up to three hours after they had been sold. Without any protection over the tickets in a buyer’s cart – something that’s typically managed at theatre ticket sites with a two or three minute hold while you decide whether to finalize your purchase – others were able to purchase the very tickets that were ostensibly safely stashed in your cart. The issues go on and on. The site was overwhelmed by the massive crush of people that hit the site the second doors metaphorically opened at 9am on Friday morning, Greenwich Mean Time. Given all the hype and hoopla over the lottery system, and the millions of Brits hoping to score tickets, it doesn’t seem possible Ticketmaster could have envisioned anything other than a web-based version of the Running of the Bulls. Did they really think people would be casually taking a look-see intermittently until the site closes on February 3rd or patiently waiting to get their hot little mitts on, well, just about anything they could?
As of Tuesday this week, the official site is still down and the media is blowing up with a mixture of howling guffaws and vicious lambasts. If the little matter of ticket issuance has been this much of a fiasco, can we expect the London transport plans to go any more smoothly? Meanwhile, the wait is brewing the perfect Molotov cocktail with equal parts of anticipation, trepidation and desperation. Whatever Ticketmaster is doing to fix the mess, they’d better be prepared for the onslaught -- or they’ll be the ones for the high jump.
The Olympics London 2012 has been plagued with controversy and frustration ever since the ill-conceived national ticket lottery made winners of a few, and losers of more than two thirds of applicants. The newspapers have been all over it and my fellow countrymen range, somewhat narrowly, from utterly frustrated to simply unimpressed. It’s been twenty-one months since I signed up for the critical updates from the official Olympic website. I watched it crash and fumble during the lottery submission period. I waited on tenterhooks as deadlines passed or were rescheduled. And just when the ticket resale period was about to open in December, Locog, the London Olympic Committee, psyched us out by saying it wouldn’t open ticket resales until April 2012. April, with the games starting in July? Surely someone was havin’ a larf.
I pounced on tickets and scoured the website for 90 minutes straight, madly texting my husband at work in the OR to get his thumbs up for picks in men’s diving, beach volleyball, athletics and gymnastics. It was unbelievable – tickets were available for almost every event, some in higher price brackets than I’d originally chosen, others available in almost every price tier. There were even tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies. Everything looked peachy until checkout. No tickets were protected in your Ticketmaster cart until you actually clicked through to checkout and with every attempt to buy my screen only flashed up, “No tickets matching your requested items can be found.”
I was flipping out. Back I went to the available dates and tickets and picked one event, two tickets and went to Checkout. Not available. Over and over again. Every event that showed available tickets would come up as none available before the entire site seemingly crashed. The little Olympic icon – (I can’t decide if it more closely resembles a shattered Union flag or the glow-in-the-dark numberless Quartz watch face I owned when I was about twelve) -- that spins while it processes your request, wound around endlessly until it had the decency to time out with an unhelpful message. To paraphrase, the ticket resale site had been suspended until Ticketmaster could sort out the mess.
So where exactly did the problem lie? People attempting to offload tickets found they were taken from their accounts but did not appear online until several hours later. Tickets that were actually showing up continued to be listed as available sometimes up to three hours after they had been sold. Without any protection over the tickets in a buyer’s cart – something that’s typically managed at theatre ticket sites with a two or three minute hold while you decide whether to finalize your purchase – others were able to purchase the very tickets that were ostensibly safely stashed in your cart. The issues go on and on. The site was overwhelmed by the massive crush of people that hit the site the second doors metaphorically opened at 9am on Friday morning, Greenwich Mean Time. Given all the hype and hoopla over the lottery system, and the millions of Brits hoping to score tickets, it doesn’t seem possible Ticketmaster could have envisioned anything other than a web-based version of the Running of the Bulls. Did they really think people would be casually taking a look-see intermittently until the site closes on February 3rd or patiently waiting to get their hot little mitts on, well, just about anything they could?
As of Tuesday this week, the official site is still down and the media is blowing up with a mixture of howling guffaws and vicious lambasts. If the little matter of ticket issuance has been this much of a fiasco, can we expect the London transport plans to go any more smoothly? Meanwhile, the wait is brewing the perfect Molotov cocktail with equal parts of anticipation, trepidation and desperation. Whatever Ticketmaster is doing to fix the mess, they’d better be prepared for the onslaught -- or they’ll be the ones for the high jump.
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