Half Changed World

D is now halfway through his two week "k-prep" session.  He seems to be enjoying it, and has made a couple of friends.  The teachers send little notes home each day saying what he’s done that day; their only concern seems to be that he’s not eating much of the hot lunch. (what a surprise)  If they’re doing any academics, it’s with a very light touch, which is fine with me.

The Post had an article on Friday about k-prep.  It was pretty much a fluff piece about how wonderful the program is, touting how it pays for itself by reducing the number of kids who are held back.  I’m a bit dubious about that claim.  The statistic the article cites is that 85.7 percent of participants at the pilot sites were unconditionally promoted to first grade, versus just 80 percent of non-participants.  First, I was sort of startled at how low those numbers are — how many kids are being retained in general.  Second, I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t a random assignment.  While I know they did outreach to try to recruit kids who hadn’t had a preschool experience, I’m sure there’s a selection bias issue — parents who send their kids to k-prep are probably more likely to be involved with school, to monitor homework, etc.

T was out of town for a long weekend, and I didn’t want to use up vacation days just to sit around at home, so the boys and I went up the road to Baltimore overnight.  We had a good trip, including visits to Port Discovery, the Aquarium, a real submarine, and a high school friend of mine.  So when I asked the boys what their favorite parts of the trip were, D’s immediate answer was getting to go to TWO different McDonald’s.  Great.  At least N’s pick was the dolphin show.

The two McDonald’s were a study in contrasts.  One was the shiny one that’s attached to the atrium of Port Discovery, the other a somewhat rundown one in downtown Baltimore.  We got happy meals at both places, having surrendered to the cult of the cheap plastic toys. The current boxes have PollyWorld on two sides, Hummers on two.  At the shiny McDonald’s, the boys got toy Hummers in them.  I assume that there’s also a Polly toy, but we weren’t offered that option.  (Please tell me that there weren’t gendered versions of the Pirates of the Carribean and Cars toys we’ve previously received.)  At the rundown one, the boxes were the same, but the boys got a Lightning McQueen and some weird rocket-propelled dragon.  I have absolutely no idea what that’s a tie-in to.  But at the shiny one we were charged separately for the chocolate milk, while at the run-down one, they included it with the happy meals, and threw in free ice cream as a bonus.

I hate going to McDonald’s twice in two days, but I’m just not up to taking the boys to a real restaurant by myself.  I have to spend too much energy keeping them sitting and quiet, and they’re probably going to wind up ordering chicken fingers anyway.  I brought string cheese, crackers, yogurt, and muffins with us, which covered breakfast and snacks.  Away from home, on my own, just isn’t the right time to draw a line in the sand on the nutrition battlefront.  (And yes, it often feels like a battlefront.)  And I’m willing to eat their salads, which is precisely why McDonald’s sells them — it makes fast food an acceptable fallback for people for me.

The friend I visited has a 2 1/4 year old.  They’re pretty crunchy — cloth diapers, a hybrid car, and the kid has only had ice cream twice in his life.  I felt sort of bad bringing my kids with their love of sweets and Happy Meals toys into their house.   At least their son is young enough that I don’t think he quite understood what my guys were so excited about.

Someone shared this poem with me recently, and it resonated on a lot of levels.  Because of the author, the immediate connection is with the middle east, but it applies just as well to person-to-person relationships.

The Place Where We Are Right

From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

—  Yehuda Amichai

I’ve been reading Charlotte’s Web to D at bedtime, a chapter most nights.  I insisted on reading it, in spite of his only moderate interest, because when we saw Cars a month or so ago, I saw the preview for the new movie of Charlotte’s Web coming out this fall.  I really wanted his first experience of the story to be the book, not a movie.  It’s not as much of a hit with him as Captain Underpants, but he’s willing to listen, especially since it gets me sitting in his room reading for much longer than our usual picture books. 

Today we reached the penultimate chapter of the book, Last Day.  I should have realized in advance that I wouldn’t be able to make it through the last paragraph without crying.  I’m hopeless that way.

"She never moved again.  Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died.  The Fair Grounds were soon deserted.  The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn.  The infield was littered with bottles and trash.  Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all.  No one was with her when she died."

Both boys were pretty perplexed by my crying.  N (who I don’t think has really been following the story, although he likes to look at the drawings) didn’t get it even when I explained that I was sad that Charlotte died, because she was a good friend to Wilbur.  Daniel started crying a few minutes later.

Here’s some of the fun stuff I’ve been reading lately:

• Lost and Found, by Carolyn Parkhurst.  Not as wonderful as her first novel, The Dogs of Babel, but a quick read.  It’s set in the middle of an Amazing Race type reality show, which makes for some pointless absurdities (the characters spend much of the book carrying around a single ski pole and a parrot) as well as an excess of characters, but I liked the way the relationship between the mom and daughter evolved.
• The Necessary Beggar, by Susan Palwick.  This is more of a fable than a novel, with many of the characters being more roles than people.  But I liked the idea of illegal aliens who were truly aliens, and I thought the portrayal of the pressures on the oldest daughter rang true.
• His Majesty’s Dragon, by Naomi Novik.  Dragons and sailing ships in the Napoleonic wars.  A bit weak on character development, but who cares?
• An Innocent, A Broad, by Ann Leary.  What may be the most flattering book ever written about Britain’s National Health Service.  A memoir of how Leary went into preterm labor while in London, and her experiences dealing with bedrest and the NICU far from home. 

I’m #283 in the holds queue for Anne Tyler’s Digging to America.

Go over to Julia’s and read her post today.  She asks Ayun Halliday what the appeal of New York is: "… what makes it worth your while to carry six bags of groceries up three flights of stairs to an apartment that is smaller than my garage… WITH A BABY ON YOUR BACK? "  And Ayun responds with a paen to the wonders of the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.  It’s just wonderful.

As I’ve written before, if not as eloquently as Ayun, an urban childhood has its own charms.  If real estate had been slightly cheaper in the District nine years ago, we might have stayed on the other side of the Potomac.  But as it is, I live somewhere between true city and true suburbs, with a minivan and a Costco membership, but without a driveway.  My kids chase fireflies on summer evenings, and also have conversations with the mildly schizophrenic man who details cars on our block.  These days, I’m more likely to envy friends with big backyards than those who go to interesting shows, but I’m ok with that.

As previously noted, men’s labor force participation has been declining since 1949.  The NYTimes had a nice article this week about the growing population of prime working age men who are out of the labor force.

Some countries — the United Kingdom and New Zealand are the ones I know about — have explicit goals of increasing labor force participation.  The US has such a goal for single mothers — welfare recipients — but isn’t willing to talk about it for a broader population.

The argument in favor of promoting increased labor force participation as a public policy goal are:

• promotes economic growth, especially in countries with low population growth;
• reduces poverty, as wages are the primary source of income for most people;
• brings socially isolated groups into the mainstream.

The first two of these are pretty self-evident.  The third is basically a version of what Bill Clinton argued during welfare reform, that work gives "meaning to your life and shape to your days."  One of the authors of the Times article is Louis Uchitelle, who wrote The Disposable American.  He makes a convincing case that, even when laid-off workers are doing ok financially, there’s a huge emotional toll to being told that society doesn’t value your skills, that you have nothing to contribute.  There’s also an argument to be made that expanding work makes it more politically feasible to provide income support when earnings aren’t enough.

But, as I wrote in response to Hirshman last fall, I strongly believe that there are ways to contribute to society that don’t involve getting a pay check.  So, while labor force participation may be a easily measured metric, it’s important to remember that it’s not the real goal.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m not entirely sanguine about our choice to send D to the local elementary school.  It didn’t help my confidence when I got an email last week telling me that both the principal and vice-principal of the school were leaving.  This means that the school will have its 5th new principal in 6 years.  Not an encouraging sign.

I spent a couple of days freaking out a bit, emailing the local school board members and trying to figure out whether it was too late to get D into a different public school, or even a private school.  I’ve more or less calmed down now.  The article in the local paper suggests that the principal was reassigned, rather than quit.  Still worrisome, but quite so disturbing.  And I’m hearing generally good things about the new principal. 

Next week is the start of "k-prep", the city’s two-week optional kindergarten orientation program.  And just a few weeks later, school starts for real.  Wow.

Today’s book is a strange and compelling book, In The Little World (A True Story of Dwarfs, Love, and Trouble), by John Richardson.  Andrea mentioned it in passing on her blog a while back, and so when I noticed it in the buck a book racks at the Strand, I picked it up.  The book tells three overlapping stories:

• Richardson’s visit to the Little People of America conference, the highly controversial and offensive article he wrote for Esquire about it, and the repercussions it had for the couple who were prominently featured in it.
• Richardson’s on-again, off-again friendship with a dwarf woman he met at the conference, and how she forces him to reconsider his preconceptions about normality and abnormality.
• How the mother of a young woman from Australia who needed a life saving operation raised the money for the operation, developed a strong support network over the internet, and tore her marriage apart.

Richardson is a very strong writer and the book is a page turner.  He absolutely refuses to be maudlin, and admits that he’s far more interested in people who are struggling with the world than the ones who are conventional successes.  And his analysis of the odd dynamics of the LPA convention, like a full year of high school poured into a week, seems perceptive to me.  Some participants find it the only time in the year where they get to be "normal," but for others, it’s shocking to be confronted with the reminder of how they look from the outside. 

Richardson is often unlikable, but he knows it, and is as harsh on himself as he is on any of his subjects.  And, while the first pages are a shocker, with references to "the classic pushed-in dwarfy look" and "big butts and big boobs," by the end of the book, if anyone is portrayed as a freak, it’s the average-sized mother of the woman from Australia.   

***

As it happens, this weekend, we ran into a friend of mine (J) who has osteogenesis imperfecta.  After we had chatted for a while, D asked me why she is "short and fat."  I took a deep breath, and explained that she has a disease that makes her bones weak, and that’s why she looks that way.  He sort of shook off my explanation and asked his real question — is she an adult?  Yes, I said.   His reaction: "Awesome."  It clearly impressed him that she’s an adult even though she’s his height, maybe smaller. 

I mentioned this to J later, and she laughed.  She told me that the other day a kid at the swimming pool asked if he could ask a question, and when she said yes, he asked whether she looked that way because she ate too much candy.  She said no, she wished it was that simple, but he should eat healthy foods anyway.  His mother was mortified, of course. 

It’s hard to know how to respond to these sorts of questions.  J doesn’t mind direct questions, but I know some people with visible differences tire of them.    But awkward whispers and "I’ll talk about it later" seems even worse.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to have lunch with Shannon and Nat.  It’s always fun to meet the person behind the page, and Shannon was just as thoughtful and friendly as her writing.  Nat is also as charming as her pictures.  Seriously, everyone in our section of the restaurant was making googly eyes at her, and she very seriously taught us all the names of the parts of her face.  I asked Shannon how it felt to be part of an entourage, and she said "tiring."  We had the obligatory discussion of how even though we met through the internet, neither of us is an ax murderer, and wouldn’t it be nice if all of our blogfriends lived close enough that we could hang out together.

I keep getting emails about different mommy blog communities that I could join — Today’s Mama, ParentsConnect, ClubMom.  I can’t say that I’m particularly interested. For one thing, I’ve already got more blogs bookmarked than I have time to read.  For another, I feel like most of these sites are vehicles for advertising.  [Thanks to Geeky Mom for the link.]  If I were new to the whole blog thing, it might be more appealing.  Or am I missing something?

I’m more intrigued by two other sites I’ve run across that attempt to harness the power of connections for practical ends.

• Prosper.com connects borrowers and lenders, taking a much smaller middleman slice than banks.  In a world where credit cards charge 18% or more for loans, and bank accounts pay only 5%, there’s a lot of room for mutual benefit.  Interestingly, so far I don’t see much evidence that there are interactions between people who know each other (or who are friends of friends).  That’s the idea behind the groups concept on Prosper — a high tech version of the microlending circles that require groups of borrowers to mutually guarantee each other’s loans.  The idea is both that your friends know better than a credit agency whether you are trustworthy — and that you’re less likely to default if you’d screw over your friends than if you’d only be hurting a stranger.
• BorrowMe is a site for matching people with things that they want to borrow and lend — baby gear, ladders, weed whackers, books, whatever. I absolutely love the idea (the gift economy in action, with the added benefit of being easy on the environment), but it only makes sense in practice if there is a high enough density of participants that you can find what you need without paying huge shipping costs or driving all over the place.  I’m a beta test member and so far things are pretty quiet, but they’re having a promotion this week where they’re giving away an ipod and a bunch of shirts to people who recruit new members, list things to lend, and actually lend or borrow stuff.  If you’re interested in checking it out, let me know and I’ll email you an access code.  And no, it’s not because I’m trying to win the ipod, but because I genuinely think it’s cool.