More on Ivy-League Educated Moms

A Yalie chimes in.

Conversation of the episode

from Arrested Development...

(probably not EXACTLY, but well, you'll get the idea).

Talking about GOB's recently discovered son...

Michael, "Could it be, GOB, that this feeling that you’re feeling is ... a feeling?"
GOB, "I don’t know what this is. It’s not pain, or even hunger."
Michael, "Could it be that it is love?"
GOB, "No, Michael, I know what an erection feels like! This is like the opposite, like my heart is getting hard."

There were also hilarious references to Andy Grifith (Ron Howard narrating), and to "meaty leading-man parts."

Thank you Dean Kamen

Is that how you spell your name? If not, I'm sorry. But thank you. I'm sure you didn't intend your really complicated, technically spectacular invention to be a tourist's mode of transportation in random cities. I'm sure you had loftier goals for this invention. And they are probably being realized elsewhere. But on Tybee Island, we had a great time on the off-road XT version. So, thank you.

Ivy-Leaguers Staying Home

Here's an interesting critique of the article I posted earlier this week.

Yay

Off to here for a couple days. It may not be the nicest hotel in the world, but it only needs to have one thing to make me happy ... a beach out front. It does. I'm set.

Thank you, Erica

I have to give a big thank you to Erica for letting me buy her Keane tickets, so she could go see the Doves tonight. What a show! There are few bands or singers who put on live shows that illustrate how woefully inadequite recorded music can be (is). Well, CDs, actually. My dad has a reel-to-reel of Madame Butterfly that is the best recording I've ever heard of anything. I digress.

Turns out, Keane is one of those bands whose CDs do them no justice whatsoever. And I like their recorded music. But live. Damn. Just damn. The lead singer's stage presence is incredible. The band's presence as a whole isn't choreographed or contrived. Even the lighting is well-done. Their stage show is on par with some of the best, but they do it in places like the Tabernacle instead of Philips Arena (for now).

"Successful" Women

It seems that many women are deciding they want to stay at home with their children, even - gasp - women graduating from Ivy League universities.

First of all, I must put aside my initial reaction about best laid plans, especially those we make in college. After that, it's very interesting to see what's happening, at least anecdotally.

Thankfully, this is a balanced article. There are a couple of folks on one side who seem to believe that the definition of success for a woman can mean many things. The president of Princeton, for instance:

For example, earlier this month, Shirley M. Tilghman, the president of Princeton University, welcomed new freshmen, saying: "The goal of a Princeton education is to prepare young men and women to take up positions of leadership in the 21st century. Of course, the word 'leadership' conjures up images of presidents and C.E.O.'s, but I want to stress that my idea of a leader is much broader than that."

She listed education, medicine and engineering as other areas where students could become leaders.

In an e-mail response to a question, Dr. Tilghman added: "There is nothing inconsistent with being a leader and a stay-at-home parent. Some women (and a handful of men) whom I have known who have done this have had a powerful impact on their communities."

But this one in particular is my favorite:

"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

"I really believed 25 years ago," Dr. Wexler added, "that this would be solved by now."

Permit me to build a straw(wo)man...
This quote says so many things about the way people with this view see the world. To them, how a woman chooses to raise her own children is not a private choice for her to make. Let's not even talk about this being a choice she would most likely make with her husband. How dare a modern woman view this as her own choice. Anyone notice something interesting here? I'm guessing that Dr. Wexler screams from the rooftops her support for a woman's right to choose many other things in her life. Once she becomes a mother, though, she no longer has a right to her own private decisions?

Or is she saying that these women are brainwashed by our patriarchal society and, therefore, incapable of making their own decisions? If so, who should overrule a woman's decision to stay at home with her children?

She also says there are "no social changes to support [working mothers]." I wonder when was the last time she worked in corporate America. Any guesses? I know of many organizations that strive to keep women onboard once they've had children. In order to do this, they build lactation rooms, and they implement teleworking and flexible scheduling policies. They offer more maternity leave than legally required. They understand that these women are contributors they don't want to lose. So companies do what they can to keep these women. I work for one of these companies. Many of the mothers that have come back to work after maternity leave haven't done so because of financial need. They love their jobs and our company, and our company makes it possible for them to be both successful mothers and salespeople, programmers, and customer support reps - to name a few.

And finally, Wexler hopes this "would have been solved by now." First, she assumes that women choosing to stay at home with their children is a) a problem and b) something that women are forced to do. I'd also be interested to know what exactly Wexler has done to create a solution for this problem that so disturbs her. Maybe she's not a very good women's studies professor if she hasn't been able to teach even the smartest women (students at Yale, for instance) that being a stay-at-home mother is clearly the wrong decision.

link via Wall Street Journal Best of the Web Today.

You got people coming at you from the front, from the back, from the side, at the condiment exchange; kids on bikes

Reality Bites is the 90s' Breakfast Club, no? It probably lines up more appropriately with St. Elmo's Fire, the whole post-college adjustment thing, but I was more into Breakfast Club than St. Elmo's Fire. So I'm feeling the Breakfast Club vibe. Can't really explain it, I guess.

Is it wrong that I want to not go back to work from lunch because it's on AMC right now. Damn, college was fun.

Feeling posty tonight

Stretchy Kitty

The Other Show

My other show started tonight. Great, bizarre humor, as usual.
George Sr. is a Blue-Man
GOB has a son
Kitty is off her post-pardum meds after 32 years

Favorite line so far...

When asked why she has stopped taking drugs for post-pardum depression 32 years after her youngest son was born, Lucille answers,
"Mood altering drugs lead to street drugs, according to a handsome doctor on the Today Show."
Michael, "Mom, that was Tom Cruise."
Lucille, "Oh, they said he was some kind of scientist."

I'm Oscar is the website Oscar started in prison to convince people that he's not his twin brother George. Anyone recongnize that inmate number?

What did I learn this weekend?

That frat boys at Clemson, Florida, Tennessee, and Auburn can buy seersucker shorts in orange (pardon me, that's melon).

Politicians Suck

Many despicable things happened before, during, and after Katrina. This is one of them.

From The Agitator, as usual.

Ahhh

He's back.

As Usual

Radley Balko says it best.

Everyone is screaming about what the government didn't do for the victims of Katrina. But the real tragedy is what the government - local, state, and federal - did do. And that is stand in the way of those willing and able to help.

In his column, he also points to a fantastic visual presentation of why exactly the government cannot possibly respond quickly or appropriately to, well, anything, actually.

Working late

To say the least, I'm working late tonight. This is not usual for me, but this is a funny situation. I have been slammed at work lately. Spinning the wheels, ggetting lots done, but not getting anywhere. Well, I'm taking tomorrow (today in three minutes) off, but there is one item I wan't able to do today before I left for a dinner engagement with family. So, here I am - typing up meeting notes. I just absolutely don't want to do any work on my day off. Well, not after I wake up in the morning, anyway. There's plenty to be done around the house, and errands to be run.

Anyway, just felt like posting.

Reading that is more than worth the time

Whether you read business books typically, or not. Whether you read philosophy books typically, or not. Whether you read ANYTHING typically, or not. It doesn't matter. Get this book.

Leadership and Self-Deception is a book I'm reading for management training at work. The last book we read was ok. So I wasn't especially geared up for this one. But last night, I was flying back from Minneapolis with a couple hours on my hands, and nothing else to read. Before we landed, I had finished the book.

I would try to explain it, but it's too easy to butcher. Basically, though, there is a philosophical theory of self-deception, which says that we often deceive ourselves into a way of thinking about and treating other people because of refusing to do what we know we should. This creates a cycle in which people push back, and we cannot resolve the relationships. It's a cycle that prevents us from focusing on results - professional and personal - because we are focusing on ourselves and how others treat us.

From an editorial review on Amazon.com:

The authors use examples from the characters' private as well as professional lives to show how self-deception skews our view of ourselves and the world and ruins our interactions with people, despite what we sincerely believe are our best intentions.

The theory (?) is told as a story, and is very easy to read. Sometimes it's pretty clear that they're simplifying the content to get across to a mass audience, but still good. It's not so easy to get the whole thing right up front though, so I'll probably read it again to get clarity on a couple of questions I still have. I'm excited for the discussion to begin at work. (what a geek)

I haven't done this book justice, though. Go out and get it. Read it. It will make a huge difference in how you think about and react to everyone around you.

Lazy today

Posting lyrics.

Artist: Barenaked Ladies
Album: Born On A Pirate Ship
Title: When I Fall


Words by Steven Page & Ed Robertson
Music by Ed Robertson

I look straight in the window, try not to look below
Pretend I'm not up here, try counting sheep
But the sheep seem to shower off this office tower
Nine-point-eight straight down I can't stop my knees.

Chorus:
I wish I could fly
From this building, from this wall
And if I should try,
would you catch me if I fall?

My hands clench the squeegee, my secular rosary
Hang on to your wallet, hang on to your rings
Can't look below me, or something might throw me
Curse at the windstorms that October brings.


I look in the boardroom; a modern pharaoh's tomb
I'd gladly swap places, if they care to dive
They're lined up at the window, peer down into limbo
They're frightened of jumping, in case they survive.

I wish I could step from this scaffold
onto soft green pastures, shopping malls, or bed
With my family and my pastor and my grandfather who's Dead

Look straight in the mirror, watch it come clearer
I look like a painter, behind all the grease
But paintings creating, and I'm just erasing
A crystal-clear canvas is my masterpiece

Chorus

Want to have kids?

My stepfather often says that there is no way he would bring children into today's world. While I don't feel as strongly, and understand that it has always been said that yesterday's world was better than today's, stories like this one do sometimes send me in that direction.

Short story ... cops launch a full-scale assault on a party, tear-gas and all. Their reasoning? The promoter didn't have the necessary permits. Some party-goers video-taped the raid. Cops then violently make efforts to confiscate the video. Some got out.

As always, thanks to The Agitator.

Wow, Mortality

So, our class (Dunwoody High School 1993) has experienced its first loss. Kelly died in a car accident in Denver and had been married less than a year.

All around, our class had been blessed. We never lost anyone while we were in school to the standard (sad as it is) suicide or car accident. And it's been 12 years now before we've lost anyone. The classes all around us have lost many people. I don't know why we'd been spared this long, but that doesn't make it any easier to hear about someone you've known since you were nine years old dying so suddenly.

I'm hit with this for selfish reasons, mainly - realizing that it can happen to anyone at any time, which means my loved ones, too. I'm so sad, though, for her family and friends. It's hard enough to think about someone you knew when, but I can't imagine if I were still close with Kelly like they all are. These things bring us all down to earth a bit, but the real tears are for her friends and family, left to be here without her, imagining everything she could have been and done had she only had more time.

One of many reasons

that my husband is wonderful ... he cooks me healthy dinners.

You see, when I get home and he's taking a nap, I have an entire can of Cheetos for dinner.