1. “If the frequency of tropical cyclones remains the same over the coming century, a greenhouse-gas induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms.”
2. Normally, in a Louisiana emergency, the governor would call out the Louisana National Guard. Too bad so many are in Iraq.
A message to our recently (or not so recently) initiated to parenthood friends: your feedback is welcome!
Clothing:
0-3 months
Onesies: 13 (need 0)
Sleepers: 8 (need 0)
Gowns: 5 (need 2 more)
Pants: 2 (need 1 more)
Jumpsuits: 2
Sweaters/Jackets: 1 (need a couple more - this baby’s due in January. In Minnesota!)
Socks: 15 pairs (I think we’re okay here!)
Warm hats: 0 (need at least 2)
Snowsuit/bunting: have 1 very cute red bunting
Mittens: have 1 pair
3-6 months
Onesies: 13
Sleepers: 1 (need 3)
Pants: 1 (need 2)
Jumpsuits: 0 (need 2)
Shirts: 0 (need 2)
Sweaters/Jackets: 0 (need 2)
6 months and up (nice to have more of all this stuff - babies grow fast!)
Onesies: 3
Sleepers: 4
Pants: 5
Jumpsuits: 0
Shirts: 3
Sweaters/Jackets: 2
Robeez shoes: 2 pair (1 6-12 month, 1 12-18 month)
Nursery:
We have a crib, crib mattress, bassinet, and dresser (thanks to generous friends and family). We also have many crib blankets and a beautiful hand-knit afghan. Many other items we need are on our registries. We have a baby monitor, sheets, diaper organizer.
PB Kids registry: Changing pad, changing pad covers, crib sheets, rug, curtains and hardware, hanging organizer
Target registry: Bassinet sheets, piggy bank lamp w/ shade, diaper pail w/ refills, hamper, baskets, mattress pads.
Other stuff not on registries yet: Glider rocker w/ ottoman (we just got a gently-used Dutailier set off of Craig’s List for less than half what it would have cost new), night light, mobile.
Diapering, grooming, and medicine cabinet:
We have: diaper backpack, infant tub, healthcare and grooming kit, burping cloths, a rubber duckie which warns you if the water is too hot, a case for carrying wipes, four washcloths, two washing mitts, 4 hooded towels, 2 non-hooded towels, bathrobe and slippers.
Other needs: diapers, wipes, diaper rash ointment, baby bath.
Feeding:
We have a reclining 4-stage feeding seat, one Boppy pillow, bottle brush, and me.
On Target registry: Medela breast pump, storage kit, storage bags, nursing pads, bottle tree, insulated bottle holder, burp cloths, extra Boppy pillow, Boppy pillow covers, dishwasher basket.
Travel:
Have: an infant carseat, a carseat entertainment center w/ mirror, a Graco Pack n’ Play, Baby Bjorn carrier, stroller.
On Target registry: sunshades.
Our registries can be found here:
Target
Pottery Barn Kids
Williamsburg DJ hosts Kill Whitey parties where white hipster kids groove to Miami bass.
Is it corrosive post-everything irony shading over into unfortunate minstrelsy?
Or is it provocative work towards the abolition of whiteness, worthy of the toaster tutor himself?
Can it be both at once?
Number one fear about having a boy: fainting at the bris. Number two fear: getting peed on while changing him.
Well, now someone has invented a cure for the latter problem.
Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) interviewing David Sedaris
Okay, so I maintain this website and this is a little self-promote-y, but you should read it. It’s fun.
Time spent getting organized is never time wasted.
But holy cow: it certainly feels that way. It’s taken me all day (and counting) to move all the books and the other junk in my office down the hall. God help me if I ever have to move all this stuff any farther (say, across the street). Meanwhile, various essays and reviews hang fire (as do some of my spring students’ poems).
On the other hand, by hanging around and moving stuff all day, I managed to see two of my many new colleagues: Ayse and Maura. Mac English majors will see some unfamiliar faces, but I think they’re going to like this year.
If you are a Mac English major, by the way– and I know that at least a few of you read this– I’m still undecided as to the topic for this spring’s senior seminar (the one I’ll teach, I mean– there may be others). I can always do a seminar on some aspect of modern and contemporary poetry, but I think there are a lot of majors who need a seminar and want to study prose fiction (or something else). So far, some smart folks have suggested a course focused on a decade (”the Seventies,” “the Eighties”): that might happen. Others want a whole course on comics and graphic novels, which I am hoping to teach, but not this year. The suggestion box is still open… just click “comments,” if you want your suggestion public.
We brought home more than we left with. Most of the new stuff is the cute, soft, mostly blue baby stuff we received at our shower the other day. Sorting through it all is an excercise in cuteness-almost-overload.
The shower had many wonderful people, some of whom I hadn’t seen in a while: Aunt Donna and her daughter Corrine (along with Corrine’s two daughters, Brianna and Sierra); Aunt Bert and her partner Mel with the New York City girl who is their Fresh Air Fund kid this summer, Daniela; Marge (and, later, her husband Dave); Margo (who brought pics of her new granddaughter, the offspring of my childhood crush and one of my best friends, Chris - the pics show that he’s still a cutie pie); my stepfather’s mother; my old roommate Catherine and her six-week-old daughter, Sarah; my grandmother; my dad and stepmom; my sisters and their kids; and Steve’s mom and my mom.
One uninvited guest: a coyote, who wandered in the backyard for a while before heading back to the woods. Yes, there are coyotes in Connecticut. I’ve decided that we should read this as some sort of sign, or at least make a note of it as something significant to share with our son. There must be coyote legends out there that are inspiring for a young, eco-conscious boy.
It’s The Washington Monthly College Guide! Research universities and liberal arts colleges ranked not by how good they might be for students and parents, but according to how much good they do for the country– by research output, contribution to social mobility, and national service, among other criteria. Macalester comes in #16 (we’re #25 in the brand-new U.S. News rankings).
Note that these criteria give research universities big boosts if they have med schools, and that they are guaranteed to ignore contributions in or to the arts.
That aside, it’s a neat experiment. Some historically black colleges do very well. Harvard does terribly. Any stats types care to comment on methodology?
We’re getting ready for a baby shower. My mom is here. Various relatives will shortly arrive in Windham.
I have been blowing up blue balloons. Or maybe they’re green: not for the first time, this morning I insisted on calling a gray-green garment blue. In the past, I’ve called garments gray or steel-blue when others agree to call them some sort of dull green. Jessie thinks I’m blue-green colorblind, a variety of colorblindness which may not exist. Obviously I have some reading to do.
Friday night between 5 and 6pm we heard a truly superb hour or so of radio on WCNI, New London, Connecticut, 90.9 FM: a set of great Fifties rockabilly, a set of neo-garage rock including the new Fleshtones, a cover of Love’s “Can’t Explain” by the Swingin’ Neckbreakers, and a group called the Charms who have the Donnas beat all hollow. Later that hour, the quiet set included some very pretty psychedelia: if you know who does a midtempo acoustic psych song whose chorus includes the line “I can no longer hear the music,” drop us a line. Is it Sufjan Stevens? The DJ– whomever he was– also recovered well from mistakes, and gave just enough information in breaks (the Charms are from Boston, “Can’t Explain” wasn’t the Who song) to sound knowledgeable, without getting in the way of the music he played. 100 points to WCNI, I guess. Good air.
This part of Connecticut is just full of green, green, green back roads. Or are they really blue?
It looks like my roundup of underrated literary magazines will not be appearing in a national newspaper after all. Shorter version: check out maisonneuve, get serious with the American Scholar, and read Black Clock, where I discovered a truly superb, racy, and disturbing excerpt from Emily White’s forthcoming novel. She lives in the Northwest, where it rains a lot.
Last night we saw another sort of shower: the New York Liberty made it rain threes.
I’m in the new Believer, writing about Angie Estes, whose new book of poems I certainly recommend.
Jessie and I are in Windham, Connecticut. You can see New England brambles and second-growth forest from three sides of the house, and grassy slopes from the fourth: it’s in between second-home pastoral and outer-suburb cute, and a calm place to spend a week or two in itself– not to mention the attractions of our extended family (neat adults, cute, energetic nieces), who are the reason we came. (No, we are not here in order to see the league-leading Connecticut Sun’s home games– that’s just a bonus. As is the extra time in which to read novels.)
If you are planning to break into our house while we are away, you should be aware that a very fierce fiction writer has been living there in our stead, and he won’t let you get away with anything. (Nor will Geno.)
Oh, and almost anyone who reads us on a regular basis will find things to like in Joe Wenderoth’s crazy new book of prose, out soon:
“For us, the moment of the roadrunner’s decisive escape– which is at the same time the moment of the coyote scheme’s backfiring– produces a return that we find we had secretly wanted all along. The decisive withdrawal of the roadrunner is understood not only as a blow to the ego of the coyote; it is understood, more significantly, as a destruction of the whole way in which the thinking animal, the ‘genius,’ meant to capture and devour ‘what must be thought about.’ A great vanity, that is, is destroyed in the coyote’s fall, and in this destruction we are allowed to see the coyote again– he comes out of the concealment and re-inhabits his true condition: a body, alone, returned to the earth he should never have hoped to transcend in the first place.”