God is in the details...and the DNA

We humans hunt, gather, mate...and we instinctively reach out for something bigger than ourselves. We've evolved over zillions of years and all these behaviors seem to be wired into us, according to an absorbing (although tantalizingly short) New York Times article, "The Evolution of the God Gene."

Archaeologists in Mexico are the source for this provocative view. Their fascinating work has turned up more than worship spaces from 7,000 B.C., it has fueled the idea that our need to believe in some kind of creator figure is not just the result of learned social norms...it is part of our cells and gray matter.

As science reporter Nicholas Wade points out, this could shake up the religious and atheist alike. One side wants religion to be divine-inspired, the other regards it as superstitious voodoo. Wade goes on to assure both sides that there is no need to feel threatened, that this notion of a "God gene" doesn't refute either position.

This passage also caught my eye:

"The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago, to judge from living hunter-gatherers, would have lived in small, egalitarian groups without chiefs or headmen. Religion served them as an invisible government. It bound people together, committing them to put their community’s needs ahead of their own self-interest. For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community."

That's as cogent a description of religious community as I've ever seen. I'm going to save it in a file somewhere, like a good poem.

Here's why I like it:

Religion is more often seen as a personal and elected thing in our society, but in fact it really is still an "invisible government." Even if you do not believe that bad acts will send you to Hell, even if you never set foot in a house of worship; even if you do not believe that there is any greater force that influences the universe, you are still tethered to this government.

Most of us now have the luxury of breaking away from the openly worshiping hunter-gatherers in our tribe, but the theory that long, long histories of prescribed "religious" codes and behaviors are nestled in our DNA seems utterly convincing to me.

After reading the article, my mind wandered to a dear friend of mine who was raised as a Roman Catholic and who left the Church decades ago. When asked if he believes in God, he firmly says, "No." Yet the rules he lives by are remarkably similar to, say, the Ten Commandments.

Also, I don't want to speak for Jesus, but I'm pretty sure that if he came back, he'd give my friend a hearty high-five for all the clothing/feeding/caring for the poor, halt and lame that my buddy has done, all while politely eschewing God with a capital G. For that matter, the good this friend quietly does in his own small sphere is none other than the tikkun olam, the "repairing the world" that my rabbi endorses.

Yes, yes, I know. These things can be said to be morals or ethics, not religion. (In fact, I bet that's how my friend labels them.) True. But it makes sense to me that this God-ish DNA is behind them, whatever labels we slap on.

More than once I've rolled my eyes at said friend when he does the no-God-for-me riff. Now I have a different way to think about this.

Somewhere back in time, when flippers gave way to feet and our ancestors plodded up on land and started considering condo development, they also developed wiring that drives us to create the invisible governments we need.

I buy that.

In my opinion...

Something author John Irving said at a reading here in Portland last week stuck in my mind.

During the Q&A, Irving was asked how he handles a "poor review." The questioner could have been referencing any one of several critiques of Irving's latest novel, "Last Night in Twisted River."

Irving answered with some venom, in itself a not uncommon attitude for a prolific author exasperated by years of dealing with reviewers. In effect he said, "After 12 novels, it is possible that I am much better at what I do than a reviewer is at what he does."

It got me thinking about reviewing; what makes a good one, good. And a bad one, bad.

I've turned this question over in my mind for a long time. I started reviewing for daily and weekly newspapers back about 1990. The books are almost always assigned to me by an editor; I don't pick them. I do a fair amount of fiction, especially regional writers, but my strengths as a reviewer tend to nonfiction: religion, American history, biography.

(I've also been called on to review a lot of work on mental illness and self-help topics, which probably doesn't reflect too favorably on how editors see me, but whatever. God knows there's a lot written that falls under those headings, so you won't hear any whining from me.)

An accomplished journalist I know has been ranting to me for years about the need for reviewers to be highly critical, not just point readers to new not-to-be-missed books. Not only does that keep readers engaged, he says, it gives the reviewer more credence.

He's not wrong, but I don't fully agree. Too often book reviewers do what I call the Reviewer Waltz: Step forward with one compliment, then back. Some sideways praise, then step away briskly. They so fear being considered soft that they opt for brittle. Or worse, they bury their opinion in such dense lecturing that the reader is too exhausted to go find the actual book and see for herself.

My own rules for reviews go something like this:

1 - If it stinks, I don't review it.
One exception: If the author is someone so talented that this new-and-awful book is going to make fans feel deeply betrayed.

2 - Consumer protection is part of my job.
Literary quality aside, sometimes I need to provide a heads-up that will save a book buyer from misstep...or mortification. A novel by pop writer Eric Jerome Dickey was such a case when it veered from his usual frank treatment of sexuality to good ol' fashioned porn. Not the best gift book for a conservative mother-in-law. Likewise, a nonfiction book packaged as a feminist treatment of women's careers was really a right-wing wolf in hip-sheep's clothing -- and needed to be labeled as such.

2 - Read at least some of the author's earlier work before writing about the new book.

3 - Aim for historical, cultural and literary references that result in I-feel-smarter! for the reader, rather than that Damn, I'm smart! feeling for me.

4 - Resist the cheap one-liner for a laugh. (I fail at this one sometimes.)

5 - When the review is done, ask myself this question out loud:

"How does this serve the reader?"

If my answer sounds like waffly bullshit, it is. Start over.

Oh, and for what it's worth: Irving is right, he is better at what he does than most reviewers are at what we do.

You still working on that?

New York restaurateur Bruce Buschel is this week's hero.

His blog in The New York Times, in which he's chronicling the planning and opening of his new eatery, does every diner in America a personal favor.

Buschel posted a two-part list titled "100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do." True, by the time he gets to the last 40 or so, a reader is wondering where on earth he will find enough qualified servers. But a little overkill is fine with me.

Here's why: I live in an excellent restaurant town--lots of good places, always new cuisines to try, original interpretations of old favorites, decent prices. And terrible server etiquette.

Servers here have a high need to interrupt table conversation to ask a question, and it is almost always a question that can wait. I have yet to try this, but I am quite confident that if I staged a weeping exchange with my tablemate at almost any restaurant in Portland, the server would still butt in and ask if I needed hot sauce.

Servers also routinely try to take my plate when I'm done, despite the fact that my husband has eaten only one-third of his meal. (Why don't they just hang a sign around my neck that says SHE EATS TOO FAST?)

They touch the rim of the water glasses. They stack every plate in a towering, precarious pile instead of clearing quietly or using a tray.

There are exceptions, of course. Places with good, professional servers. Interestingly, they are often very modest establishments. (See here and here for two such places.)

I'm tempted to print out the "100 tips" and start slipping it under the other tip...the 20 percent I leave even when the service is rotten.

Proud to be an American? I am.

This respectful act is one reason.

A whole new meaning to flats and sharps

Check this out: Who wouldn't opt for these stairs over an escalator? And, as long as we're talking music...see this website. It is one of the few I've seen that offers a "SKIP INTRO" option that no one wants to use.

(Have the sound on for both of these links.)

"A (huge) jug of wine, a (giant) loaf of bread, and thou..."

Some big dogs can learn new tricks, to wit: Costco has agreed to accept food stamps at most of its locations.

This is very good news. At first the giant warehouse store (headquartered in Issaquah, Washington) said no to the idea, assuming the $50 annual fee was too much of a deterrent to people getting government aid. (Store execs were probably also wary of dealing with the government paperwork involved, and it's hard to blame them for that.)

It's true that membership fees and big-discount sizes of stuff are tricky for thinner wallets. When broke, you often spend more to get less. You buy small sizes of things because the sticker price is lower. The fact that the $3 bottle of ketchup is half the size of the bottle that sells for $4 doesn't matter. You have $3 today, not $4, and you need ketchup today, not the promise of cheaper condiments all month.

But this is not a hard-and-fast rule for poor people any more than it is for folks of means. Costco pilot programs showed a level of nuance in shopper trends that's been overlooked. It seems that people on food stamps are indeed willing and organized enough (imagine!) to plan ahead, spend more upfront, and save money. People gladly get away from the $4 ketchup behavior if it is really worth their while.

The success of the Costco food-stamp pilots may also be helped by the fact that a $50 membership can be shared with another "household member" and Costco doesn't check to see if that person with the extra card is really, truly your sister who lives in the attic. This benefit is already widely claimed by people not on food stamps, trust me.

It also helps that the visuals of giant-sized products are so enticing. There is something about the sight of 4 pounds of Rice Krispies and a half-gallon of shampoo that makes one feel somewhat more secure, as do the vats of red licorice and hunks of Tillamook cheddar cheese. If I have clean hair and snacks, all is not lost.

Given the huge amount of taxpayers' money that has been handed over to banks and automakers to little positive effect, perhaps the feds should subsidize warehouse-shopping memberships and local-transit routes that serve Costco locations. (The stores are usually a long walk from the nearest bus stop, and you still see people climbing aboard with a shrink-wrapped raft-size cargo of toilet paper.)

Costco's long check-out lines are full of well-dressed people pushing carts of fine wines, gourmet cheeses and premium meats. It's a good thing to open the doors to people who actually need cheaper food.

Hail to the chief

A delayed flight led me to a long conversation at the airport with a charming 70-ish woman, on her way home from her mother's 90th birthday party. The event had been a smash: all six children and a couple dozen grand- and great-grandkids in attendance, along with 75 guests.

With my mother-in-law coming up on a milestone birthday this spring, I recognized this valuable opportunity to get party tips from an obvious expert. After we'd covered the menu, music, centerpieces and invitations, she told me about the final touch.

Mother, it seems, had been quite firm about not wanting any presents. She plans to live to 100, she assured her children, but she has all the slippers, perfumed soap, nighties and framed photographs she needs. But would it be possible, she wondered, for the guests to get gifts to mark the occasion?

So that was how each of the attendees came to find a commemorative plate at his or her place. The back of each plate had the name and birthday of the guest of honor. The front? A handsome portrait of President Barack Obama.

"My mother, a black woman with a grade-school education raised a family of college graduates," the woman told me. "She has a picture of President Obama in every room of her house. She told the guests that the day he was elected was the best moment of her 90 years."

I wish I'd been at that party.

Terminal liturgy

I arrived at the airport very early for a red-eye flight the other night, settled into a pizza place for dinner, and opened my book. I adopted that selective deafness one needs to screen out all the background noise in a busy place.

But one of the taped announcements about security penetrated my traveler's cone of silence.
"Be always vigilant about your surroundings..." said the mechanized voice.

It reminded me of a line I always loved in the Compline service, the seventh and last service of the canonical day as written for the Episcopal/Anglican Church. I used to attend Compline on Sunday nights at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle. ("Compline" is a word born of others meaning "final" or "to complete.") This was -- and probably still is -- one of the best-attended services at a Northwest church.

People who never darkened the door of any house of worship came to hear the beautiful, eerie chant in the remarkable acoustics of that huge stone building up on Capitol Hill. It was especially dramatic to hear the service in the fall, when darkness would start to fall during the chant.

I remembered the line as starting with "Beloved: be sober, be vigilant...." but when I looked it up just now, I found I'd done some editing. It actually reads "Brethren, be sober, be vigilant..." and continues: "Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith."

As many times as I heard it, I still used to wait for the "be sober, be vigilant" phrase with an anticipatory shiver. Thinking about it in the busy airport, I felt the same sense of warning mixed with excitement. The notion that being on one's guard, being vigilant, can keep evil at bay is an idea I cling to. Not a bad thought before taking to the sky to fly all night, trusting that morning and a safe landing are at the other end.


UPDATE: After I wrote this, I found a good story on Crosscut.com regarding Compline. Click here to read it.

More to say about Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most revisited and analyzed books of our time. It turns out that there is much left to learn and say about it.

Author Francine Prose was working on a novel with a teenage character, and turned to the famous diary as background for the writing habits of a 13-year-old girl. What she found was a much more nuanced memoir that was the work of a surprisingly mature writer. The result is her book Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, the Afterlife (Harper), which examines Frank's work with a literary eye. This is about Anne Frank, author, not Anne Frank, icon.

In the years since Frank's diary first appeared, new versions have appeared, welcomed by critics as more authentic than the version first published by Otto Frank, the young author's father. In fact, as Prose explains, Anne Frank herself undertook a deliberate and careful editing of the diary while still in hiding. Otto Frank had actually reinstated portions his daughter had cut, including personal sections in which the young woman meditated on her parents' marriage and her own sexuality.

A very good interview with the author can be heard on the site of Tablet, billed accurately as "a new read on Jewish life," and created by Nextbook, a leading publisher of Jewish books.

The publication of Prose's book is bringing forth other new information about Frank--new to me, at least. A review on SFGate by Sara Houghteling answered my question about how Frank came to keep such a diary in the first place:

"On March 29, 1944, on the BBC program "Radio Oranje," Gerrit Bolkestein, a Dutch minister in the exiled government of Prime Minister Gerbrandy, called for all Dutch citizens living under the Nazi occupation to save everyday documents - in particular, letters and diaries - for eventual collection in a national wartime archive...Among those listening to the broadcast, on a contraband radio, was 14-year-old Anne Frank.

In 1942, when Anne's sister Margot received her summons for deportation to Westerbork, the family feigned flight to Switzerland and sequestered themselves, along with [four others] in the maze of rooms above Otto Frank's former Opekta fruit canning company. Anne brought along the checkered journal given to her a month earlier by her father, in which she would famously recount her life in hiding... ...The BBC broadcast awoke Anne to the possibility that her diary could be read by an audience outside of herself ..."

The passages I've read that are quoted from Prose's book are irresistible; the minute Powell's World of Books has a used copy, I'll embark on it. Stay tuned.

Kennedy book is a keeper

I just finished True Compass, Ted Kennedy's autobiography, which was hurried to print following his death last month. It's an engrossing read with good capsule histories of some of the biggest events of our time. It has one of the better concise treatments of the Vietnam war and the LBJ years that I've read in recent years.

It isn't an historian's work, although Kennedy provides a lot of new detail about his own campaigns and big moments in the Senate: civil rights debates, health care during the Clinton years, Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, to name a few.

It's personal, but not tell-all. Most of the people Kennedy remembers with detail and skill are dead, but there is little or nothing in the 500-plus pages that would cause any spinning-in-their-graves. Think about that and ask yourself how often it happens. Answer: Not often. Most "celebrity" bios and autobios exist to set the record straight...from the author's point of view, of course. The treatment of the Chappaquiddick disaster offers no new facts; it is convincing and sorrowful.

Kennedy wrote with the pride of a long-serving public servant, the gratitude of one looking back at a much-chronicled and very privileged life; and the deep regrets of a man who is taking his own measure with death just around the next corner.

A fitting tribute

I woke up thinking about some friends, who today must put their beloved dog to sleep. It is time, they all know it, but it is so hard to say goodbye to such a faithful companion.

I have a wonderful book called The Book of Eulogies: A Collection of Memorial Tributes, Poetry, Essays an Letters of Condolence, edited by essayist Phyllis Theroux. (You may remember her from Jim Lehrer's NewsHour.) If it sounds like a downer, it isn't. It has some funny, touching, wonderful and revealing bits of writing by and about people from all walks of life. There are a few eulogies for departed animals as well.

One of the pieces was published in 1931 by E.B. White, author of acres of columns for The New Yorker, as well as Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, Trumpet of the Swan and other books. (And for my money, one of the best writers to come out of America.) It was a eulogy for his beloved dog Daisy.

White begins this way:

"Daisy died December 22, 1931, when she was hit by a Yellow Cab on University Place. At the moment of her death she was smelling the front of a florist's stoop. It was a wet day, and the cab skidded up over the curb--just the sort of excitement that would have amused her had she been at a safer distance. She is survived by her mother, Jeannie; a brother, Abner; her father, whom she never knew; and two sisters, whom she never liked. She was three years old."

Anyone who has written an obituary or a eulogy has experienced the "what-will-they-say-about-me?" moment. None of us could hope for a better send-off than White's last line about Daisy:

"She died sniffing life, and enjoying it."

Who's your blogger Mama?

If you're new to Type Like The Wind, or missed these pieces the first time, please feel free to put aside your own paying work to read this stuff I do for free.

I asked my mailing list to vote on which posts (if any) they'd liked best this summer, and here's how the votes fell:

Our Heroine Uses a Magic Bed to Meet a Hells Angel
(Headline says it all)

Turf
(She saved the neighborhood)

You clicked on me at 3 a.m., don't deny it
(In the dead of night, there's Sitemeter)

Also getting a respectable number of votes:

Sisterhood is indeed powerful
(The Holy Father is afraid of nuns)

Let Us Bow Our Heads
(Hospitals and casinos: separated at birth?)

Teddy (1932-2009)
(He wasn't perfect, so we loved him)


Thanks for reading.

Publish: yes. Perish: no

There's a book titled Gus the Great that I re-read every few years. Published in 1947, the novel was written by Thomas W. Duncan, who Time magazine called "a down-and-out ex-Harvard man."

It's the very engaging tale of a likable con man who runs a circus, and it made the author a dazzling $250,000 when it sold 750,000 copies and became a Book of the Month Club selection and a movie. The first thing the down-and-out Duncan bought was a new land-yacht of a Chrysler convertible, which is reason enough to admire him.

I've owned a few copies of Gus the Great over the years--they tend to wander off--and I buy them from Powell's World of Books or search for a copy online. So far, I've been able to find a copy when I want one.

I thought of that book today when I read "A Library to Last Forever," the op-ed piece in The New York Times by Google exec Sergey Brin. He's not gloating, but Brin is clearly enjoying the fact that it looks like there will finally be an agreement between his company and the various groups of angry authors who challenged Google's book digitizing project. (For a brief news story updating the lawsuit progress, click here.)

I've been inclined to buy into the image of Google-as-Goliath. The argument that the books would otherwise remain out of print (and hard for average readers to find) wasn't quite persuading me that this monster-sized digitizing project was a good thing.

But now I'm converted. In the end, I think, readers will be the real winners. The way this has played out--helped by the noisy lawsuits by the Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers--means that authors and their heirs will get a piece of the action, and books now available only in academic or private collections will be within reach of regular folks. Even out-of-work, ex-Harvard men.

Scribe pride

Now and then I read something that makes me proud to have anything to do with writing and newspapers.

The work of United Kingdom reporter Lester Haines is a case in point. His stuff appears on the hugely enjoyable and hard-to-pigeonhole tech-ish site called The Register. (The site carries the motto: "Biting the hand that feeds IT.")

A recent Haines lede:

"Two Swansea yobs who decided, after a night on the sauce, that they'd give a couple of transvestites some stick, came off the worse for the encounter since their targets were in fact cage fighters on a stag night.

The humiliation of Jason Fender, 22, and Dean Gardener, 19, was captured on CCTV as they "singled out the two men walking along a street in wigs, short skirts and high heels", as the Daily Mail explains.

A shirtless Gardner is seen taking a pop at one of the men, who's dressed in a fetching "pink wig, black skirt and boob tube" ensemble. A bad move, since the intended targets then summarily lay out both ne'er-do-wells.

The cage fighters are shown "teetering away in their high heels, stopping only to pick up a clutch bag they dropped during the melee."

Haines (who I found thanks to Portland blogger Bojack) is also the go-to guy if you want to read about the North Face clothing company suing the young man who invented the "South Butt" brand -- complete with a logo that the humorless NF folks think is too much like their own. See "The North Face Trips Over South Butt" here.

Scheherazade would plotz

I've just returned from the Online News Association's annual conference in San Francisco, and my head is crammed full of new technology.

Any fantasy I've entertained about going off the grid has now been dashed. A pile of remarkable tools exist to track the preferences and whereabouts of we humans. A Google Map looks quaint by comparison.

The only hope we have for privacy is to live a life of such dullness that no one will look for us.

What interests me most about this rise in tech-tools that track movement and behavior is how resolutely we want to ignore them. A piece in yesterday's New York Times pondered the rise of book piracy, a trend that is closely following the Napsterizing of music not so long ago.

A Swiss site called RapidShare is singled out in the NYT piece by author and business prof Randall Stross. RapidShare offers offshore accounts where users keep all types of files safe. As it turns out, it is also the equivalent of a big, big pirate ship that sails through bookstores. Nothing stops me from loading an e-book onto the site, then sending the URL to friends so they can download the book free of charge.

A few months ago my reaction to this news story would be undiluted indignation. Thieves! Sleazeballs! While I still hate the idea of any writer or other artist getting fleeced, the conference on online journalism and a provocative book I read recently have made me sharply aware that the rules have changed. The cash-per-comma publishing model is on the way out, and the sooner we face that fact, the better.

"Free: The Future of a Radical Price" by Chris Anderson is a thoroughly fascinating book on the crumbling of old business models. Anderson is overly glib in the way of most futurists, but he still does a great job of explaining how products like Google's "free" web searching service make money. The days are over when available shelf space dictated the size of your inventory and a large number of paying customers absorbed the costs of the few who didn't pay. The limitless real estate of the web has turned the rules of the marketplace upside down.

I'll wager that as I type this someone is developing software that tracks what we're reading--in real time--and can shut off the e-book right as things get exciting. With a name like PlotKiller 2.0, it will ensure that readers pay writers their due.

Does Romeo die? What happens to that big white whale? Does the Da Vinci Code ever make sense? You'll need to hit that PayPal button to find out.



(The photo accompanying this post was taken by travel writer Davia Larson somewhere in Spain. Why doesn't America have punctuation zones?)

There's a word for this

I had no sooner finished reading the obituary for William Safire, fearless commentator, tireless writer and unparalleled language-czar, when a faint beep sounded, warning me of an incoming job opportunity in my email.

I wish I'd never signed up for all those "career feeds" in the first place, but that's what a day with a head cold and nothing good on pay-per-view cable can do to a person.

The job ad touts a community-relations position with a big international nonprofit that has an Oregon office. In the middle of its windy description of duties, this gem appears:

"The Community-Relations Officer will focus matrixed teams on matters of cross-agency benefit."

I'm sure if I had any idea what this meant I would be an excellent person to do it. Alas, I will just continue to focus my un-matrixed team-of-one on cross-room trips from desk to 'fridge.

Rest in peace, Mr. Safire.

Prayer, American Style

"The Right Way to Pray" by Zev Chafets in the New York Times Magazine this past Sunday is a not-to-be-missed article.

Chafets is a fine reporter and writer. Fueled by intelligence, humor and doubt, he writes in the first person without excessive posing. I was surprised to discover that Chafets is 61-ish. I thought he was much younger.

His opinion columns drive his detractors absolutely nuts. A 2003 piece in The New York Daily News is still being quoted far and wide, usually by someone who is furious about it. It comments on the death of Edward Said, the renowned Columbia University prof widely known for his theories and work on anti-Arab/Islam attitudes in the Western world. (Said's 1978 book "Orientalism" put him on the map.)

Chafets slammed the venerated Said, winding up with this:

"He[Said] didn't blow up Marines in Lebanon in 1983, ignite the Palestinian intifadeh or send Wahhabi missionaries to preach violence against infidels. He certainly didn't fly a plane into the World Trade Center. What he did do was jam America's intellectual radar. He wasn't the architect of 9/11, but he was the father of the 9/12 inability to comprehend it...
Ah, well, Said is in paradise now. As an Episcopalian, he's ineligible for the customary 72 virgins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's honored with a couple of female doctoral candidates. No one deserves it more."

That Chafets article caused the sort of intellectual whiplash that good and controversial writers visit on me:

--Yes! I'm a Zionist too!
--No! I don't despise Said!
--Yes! Love the one-liner about the virgins!

Anyway, back to his latest NYT Magazine piece. "The Right Way to Pray" describes the various ways Americans are approaching their theo-chats, seeking support from megachurches and prayer coaches.

Prayer is a subject usually neglected by newspapers, and very rarely written about in the first person. Selling a story on prayer to a secular publication is an uphill battle. For years I tried in vain to get whichever newspaper was employing me at the time to consider a piece on people praying in their cars. I am positive that more true prayer takes place behind the wheel than any other place in America.

Why? Because it is the one place most of us have real privacy and time for reflection. And because driving routinely puts us in situations that trigger involuntary entreaties to the Higher Power: Please don't let that cop be coming after me. Please stop that speeding dump truck coming up in back of me at this stoplight. Please get me over this very high bridge without fainting. Please don't let that rattling noise be anything expensive.

I'm sure cellphones have cut into drive-time prayer. Which is ironic, given that we should all be praying more often than ever: Please God, don't let that guy texting his girlfriend plow into my car.

Oppression 3.0

I've been thinking about division of labor lately and I realize just how dramatically the who-does-what-around-the-house process has changed for me.

Twenty years ago, the question of who emptied the dishwasher was a feminist issue. Ten years before that it was completely non-negotiable because I flatly refused to do any "traditionally female" activities. This hard-ass attitude was less impressive than it might have been, given that I had neither dishwasher nor many dishes in my household...nor, come to think of it, a man. But, hey, the principle was still valid.

I'm not less of a feminist now; in fact I may be giving off a higher reading on the Sisterhood Geiger Counter. But two things have changed, one of them positive, the other anything but.

The positive is that I'm married to a man who is a feminist, which means a load of laundry is just a pile of dirty clothes, not a teaching moment. On the downside, I'm more worried about other kinds of bigotry--that based on race and class.

I wonder what my younger self would have thought if someone had prophesied about the open-ended ransom being paid now to banks and other protected corporations, while the folks ponying up the dough are losing homes, cars, jobs. Or what I would have made of the spreading Neo-Klan mentality that's come to light during the discourse on that Congressional moron insulting the President.

It's enough to make me miss the days when my big worry was who did the vacuuming.

Try taking these with that puny little iPhone

This surely violates copyright law, but I'm going to risk it to draw attention to what has to be the most wonderful collection of photos to grace a website.

These Smithsonian magazine shots give our solar system its due: shockingly beautiful in its alternating moods of violence and calm. The pictures originated during various space-exploration missions and I don't think have been grouped this way before, displayed with such clarity.

Saturn, of course, is absolutely the best planet, just by virtue of its ever-present accessories. But the moons of Jupiter and Neptune look pretty snappy here too. Click through all the photos using the panel of dots below the description--and feel free to add appropriate background music of your choosing. (Viewers of a certain vintage might want to dig out the "Trick of the Tail" album by Genesis.)

I did experience one reality check: I was delighted when the first good photos of Mars started coming back, but these much sharper shots make it look like the site of the Burning Man gathering. Sorry, but I just can't get excited about any event involving a lot of strangers in the desert unless it takes place on a big screen with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif nearby.

The article accompanying these photos is a delight too. (Not always the case with such pieces.) Writer Laura Helmuth has a fine touch that works for the science nerd and layreader alike. She writes this about Saturn's moons:

"Titan, the largest (bigger even than Mercury), has lakes of supercool methane and slushy eruptions of a water-ammonia mix. Enceladus is riddled with geysers so powerful they feed matter into Saturn's rings. Rhea may have its own rings. Saturn is practically a solar system unto itself."

If you too once spent many happy hours constructing a shaky model of the solar system involving a lot of toothpicks and ping-pong balls, this is your chance to be transported again.

The Children's Hour

New research on how parental approval affects a child over time grabbed my attention. I've always believed that whatever self-confidence and related successes I enjoy come out of the nearly blind admiration I received from the adults in my family.

This boosterish view of me was oddly juxtaposed with other aspects of our lives together. It was a mood-altered, money-challenged, dirty-fighting environment, fueled by steady supplies of junk food, lived out in rooms and cars full of cigarette smoke. It was also a solar system that revolved around Planet Kim. My parents and older sister agreed on little, but they came together over their mutual regard for the smallest member of the household.

A therapist I knew years ago said I should be angry about this childhood. That a truly loving family would have provided a more stable, responsible home. But as my father used to say, what I got was lots better than a sharp stick in the eye.

I can count on one hand the number of times I was yelled at during my childhood. They spent what money they had on the books, summer camp, party dresses and bottles of Coca Cola I wanted. If another adult failed to see my obvious charm and talents, they were waved off in disgust. "Tell that piano teacher to go shit in her hat," my mother said.

All three brought me along wherever they went, laughed at my jokes, took all my questions seriously.

My father was particularly good at this last thing. He was the weakest link in the chain, unable to go the distance as a provider or a dad-in-residence beyond my 11th year. But he listened when I confided to him, at about age 9, that I was pretty sure my ears were loose. He took me by the hand and we dropped in to see a buddy of his, the physician who lived down the hall. Another divorced guy living it up in a one-bedroom bachelor pad apartment.

Dr. Leonard set down his glass of Scotch, found his reading glasses, and examined my ears. "They could be tighter, but you'll be fine," he said. My father nodded solemnly. "Good news," he said.

Now and then I wonder what I would have made of my life had I grown up with law-abiding married parents, regular encounters with all four food groups, better school attendance and fewer mid-day James Bond movies.

I might be more accomplished; rich and famous even. Or, I might be a fearful, lonely woman living alone in a very clean house, worrying about ear loss. I'm good with this.

I couldn't agree more

I'll be honest: There's nothing quite as gratifying as hearing or reading strong opinions that mirror my own, voiced by folks who are better informed and smarter than myself.

To wit:

Columnist Maureen Dowd is a sharp and intelligent observer of the Washington scene she covers. (Her shrill tone irritates me, but there's no denying the brainpower.) Her column on Congressman Joe Wilson's outburst, in which he called the President of the United States a liar, gives voice to something we would all like to forget:

"But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Likewise, when Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of the most accomplished historians of our time, was asked by 60 Minutes what she thought Sen. Ted Kennedy added to the historical canon with his just-released memoir, she didn't hesitate.

She noted that in his book "True Compass," Kennedy frequently cites his deep admiration for President Lyndon Johnson and his accomplishments. Kearns Goodwin seizes on those comments because they differ so from the Kennedy party line. (Both John and Robert made no secret of disliking LBJ, who energetically returned their disdain.)

To my mind, Kennedy's comments are significant because they might just nudge a younger generation of readers to give LBJ the credit he deserves, and which has so often been denied by people my age and older. Strong feelings about the American disaster in Vietnam keep many baby boomers from recognizing the huge accomplishments of the Johnson administration, including the passage of civil rights legislation that helped Barack Obama get where he is today.

Life changing

We think we remember the feeling exactly, but we don't.

The attacks on 9/11 were the sort of mind-freezing tragedies that human brains work hard to minimize. To remember it all precisely is too hard for most of us.

What comes rushing back to me is the memory of how urgently I felt pulled toward home that day. I was driving from a friend's place on Cape Cod, skirting Boston to get to New Hampshire, where we lived at the time. My partner was at a conference in Boston, and left there just ahead of the orders to shut down the many tunnels and main highways. I knew it might not be the smartest move to be driving on major arterials not far from a big airport, but I was determined to get to that small nest of ours, with an address on "Liberty Street" of all places.

We both made it. We checked on all our New York loved ones. We sat glued to the television for what seemed like days.

Commentators today are remarking on the solidarity we Americans felt on that day in 2001, and for some weeks and months afterward. They inevitably get around to bemoaning the distance that grew up later, the way many things returned to the bad-old-days as the flag stickers on our cars faded and peeled.

I want to remember other things. The remarkable heroism of so many people at the attack sites. The gratitude I felt when we both got home. The decision we made soon after to move together to the Pacific Northwest, rather than live 3,000 miles apart for a few months while I started a job in Seattle. Instead of that admittedly more prudent plan, my partner left his job and we went together. Life is short, we said. We need to stick together.

Read on!

Author Anne Lamott, whose book "Bird by Bird," is one of the most enjoyable guides to writing to come along in the past 100 years or so, penned this open letter to President Obama. It ran last week in the Los Angeles Times. It's well worth your time:

"I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding since that election in 2008, during which 66,882,230 Americans cast their votes for you. Perhaps one of your trusted advisors has given you bum information. Maybe they told you that we voted for you -- walked, marched, prayed, fund-raised and knocked on doors for you -- because we hoped you would try to reunite the country. Of the total votes cast that long-ago November day, I'm guessing that about 1,575 people wanted you to try to reconcile the toxic bipartisanship that culminated in those Sarah Palin rallies.

The other 66,880,655 of us wanted universal healthcare."

Click here for the rest.

A Labor Day reflection: Sherrie, Chuck and me

The summer I was 16 I rebelled at working for my mother's small newspaper. I was determined to be independent. Which I was, just as soon as she got through twisting a local factory owner's arm to give me a job in return for a break on the company's overdue advertising bill.

So I found myself at First-Rate Packaging Inc., housed in the basement of an old brick shoe factory. There I stood for the summer of 1973, eight hours a day, stapling bags containing clothes and accessories for a line of knock-off Barbie and Ken dolls, cleverly renamed Sherrie and Chuck.

At first glance, the plastic duo looked like their pricier counterparts. Sherrie had the same blonde ponytail and permanently arched feet; Chuck obviously worked out a lot. But on closer examination, Sherrie's nose lacked the requisite perky tilt and there was something not quite right about Chuck's neck.

The bags packed on my line held synthetic doll dresses and pants that molted like a flock of dying geese, and by day's end we'd all be hacking and rubbing our eyes. I probably ingested enough polyester that summer to weave a circus tent.

The owner was a hulking middle-aged redhead everyone called Big Jean. Her swaggering, good-looking son and his silent, heavily pregnant wife worked on the line with us. Big Jean never spoke in anything but a yell, and started or ended nearly every sentence with "for shit's sake!"

She didn't like any unnecessary talking and went apoplectic if anyone took one second over the allotted 30 minutes for lunch. We could listen to the radio, but keeping time with a foot, head or hip was forbidden. To this day, whenever I hear "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight, my feet start killing me and I have to pee.

Most of the other workers were ancient-looking Polish and Italian women who were probably in their 40s. Each woman had one hand noticeably bigger than the other from years of operating huge industrial staplers and hot-press machines that sealed package parts together.

They made the most of the lunch break, snapping open countless Tupperware containers of homemade pierogi, meatballs and cannelloni, and passing them around. When I opened my lunch bag the first day and pulled out a limp peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a shocked silence fell over the table. Then all of them began pushing food my way, insisting I eat up.

One morning in July, the woman operating the biggest hot-press machine let out a loud whoop and jumped back. We all froze, imagining the worst. Big Jean ran the length of the room to the press.

"Well, for shit's sake," she boomed. "I thought you'd cut off your goddamn finger." Big Jean stomped back to her office, glaring at us. "The rest of you get back to work!"

It turned out that the barrel of bathing-suit clad Sherries and Chucks awaiting packaging held a stunning surprise: Somehow a male doll had ended up in the female-doll plastic molder back at the toy factory. The result was a Chuck with breasts.

This was the funniest thing any of us could imagine. No amount of hollering by Big Jean could suppress us. For the rest of the day, every few minutes someone would start giggling and then we'd all start again. Even the usually mute daughter-in-law laughed, holding her huge pregnant belly.

We placed Chuck-with-breasts in the center of the lunch table, modestly draped in a paper-napkin poncho. Big Jean let us keep him there all summer.

Happy hour in the woods, that's the ticket

Why is it that every new revelation about boosting brainpower requires pursuing some pastime I've taken great pains to avoid?

The two examples that prompted this worry:

A brief piece in The New York Times claims "moderate drinking" after age 60 reduces the odds of developing dementia.

A fascinating essay that ran some months back in the Boston Globe, and was given to me by a friend yesterday. It says urban settings jumble the mind and reduce ability to concentrate, while greener, leafier surroundings have the opposite effect. ("How a city hurts your brain...and what you can do about it" by Jonah Lehrer.)

Now, with my gene pool, the likelihood of my practicing "moderate drinking" is roughly the same as indulging in "occasional invisibility." So that leaves the rural-settings-are-better issue. That sound you hear is my heart sinking. My natural habitat is pavement, and I like my big blue skies best on a large multiplex screen.

Lehrer is utterly convincing when he explains just how a walk along a crowded city sidewalk causes our memories to short-circuit, nerves to fray and our self-control to erode. This is straightforward stuff, not windy theory.

The worst part is the connection between urban chaos and splurging. The same part of the brain monitors both things, and once you've busied the prefrontal cortex by dodging skateboarders and purse-snatchers, it's hard to say no to a $3.65 cup of coffee. (At last, an answer to the question of why Starbucks locates stores so close together on city blocks.)

Embracing nature at this point in my life is unlikely. The sight of more than two trees together makes me nervous, as do chirping crickets, swooping birds, rustling grasses and large amounts of (unbottled) still water. (A fountain is fine. As long as I can hear sirens over the rushing water.)

I'm clinging to Lehrer's point that "studies have found that even a relatively paltry patch of nature can confer benefits." I hope this is true, because I'm thinking of borrowing some technology from the Seasonal Affective Disorder folks -- you know, the ones who stare into those bright indoor lights to get over the winter blues?

Instead of lightbulbs, I'll set up a small basket of potted plants and a strip of sod on the coffee table. I'll ease into the habit of sitting quietly in front of it for a few minutes a day.

I'm wondering; would it be cheating to put part of a gum wrapper and some tiny pieces of broken glass in there? You know, just until I get used to spending time in the country.

The (book)worm turns

There's a vibrant educational movement growing up around the idea that kids need more cajoling and more choices in order to turn into avid readers.

The New York Times tracks which stories get emailed the most, and a recent one headlined, "A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like," has been zooming between readers. These educators say forcing a kid to read "Huckleberry Finn" is not necessarily going to make her beg for more. In fact, it may even sour her on People magazine.

Allowing youngsters to chose reading material can work much better, which doesn't surprise those of us who spent eighth-grade with a dog-eared copy of "Valley of the Dolls" hidden inside a math book.

The NYT story got me wondering what books are being crammed down kids' throats these days in those unenlightened schools that still do things the old-fashioned way. The summer-reading lists I found online surprised me. The dustiest classics I found are Rebecca by Daphne DuMarier and Agatha Christies' Murder on the Orient Express--not easy reads, but still pretty juicy stuff. (And, let's be honest, available in film versions, which makes it possible for the non-reader to fake it quite convincingly.) Most of the other titles are contemporary, ranging from sci fi to biography and narrative viewpoints from kid-with-two-mommies to brave war orphan.

Still, some kids resist those reading lists, which worries parents and teachers. I'm all for raising more bookworms, but I can see some flaws in the new approach.

The first is the persistent myth that a precocious reader is going to be a good student, or is automatically smarter than a non-reader. As a person who read Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea while still in elementary school, but could never memorize all the multiplication tables or stay awake during science class, I'm here to tell you that a bookworm does not an egghead make.

Another faulty assumption is that a group of kids reading and talking about a book is a socializing process that will help turn them into well-adjusted adults. I'd venture that some kids will be more likely to fall in love with reading if it is promoted as a solitary activity--far away from cliques, warring parents and other annoying adults. I learned early on that I could disappear into a book like a reverse magic trick in which the rabbit ducks into the hat. It remains my drug of choice. If a martini could put me in the same place that a good novel does, I'd be flat as a haddock most days.

It is also unwise to assume that faster reading is always better. Pushing a kid (or an adult) to hurry through a book is like rushing someone through a fine meal. Some of us gobble, some like to chew that meatball more thoroughly.

All of these things aside, it is a very good thing that educators are thinking outside the box about ways to introduce kids to the joy of reading, one of the few pastimes that is completely portable, legal, inexpensive, safe and fun at any age. And, when done in a certain fashion, need not be accompanied by custom-generated ads off to the side of the text.

Personally, I think any movement that gets educators focused on reading versus multiplication tables seems like a fine thing.

Teddy (1932-2009)

We all called him by his first name, a nickname, really, and our parents never corrected us. In Massachusetts, we had the Kennedy Seat and we had an extra one for other people who wanted to run for the Senate. Teddy was a given, like four seasons and Plymouth Rock and sales tax.

He didn't have the panache of John or the drive of Robert. He was the younger brother always trying to live up to what the Old Man would have wanted. He was the sometime-fuckup who drove drunk, cheated on an exam; who married the prettiest girl and then sneaked out on her. He might wake up with a ferocious hangover, but he put on his work clothes and went to the job he'd signed on for. He was just like us. He was one of us.

We mourned his fallen brothers, but Teddy was the guy who bought the round, who came to the funerals, who took care of his own. We watched him age, just like our fathers did, just like we did. He put on weight, his hair turned white. He quit tomcatting and settled down with a good woman. Whenever one of the Kennedy clan stumbled, or fell, he was the one who stood at the front of the church and explained the unexplainable.

In the end, Senator Kennedy had done more for America than all his brothers and sisters combined. He was braver and tougher than the Old Man. Whenever we looked, he was on the job; he had our backs and we will always love him for it.

The Young and the Textless

Inspired by "They're Old Enough to Text, Now What?" in The New York Times, I slipped into a daydream about what my now-distant childhood would have been like if we'd had texting. The first few scenarios that popped into my head had to do with my parents catching me at stuff:

Mother: WRU ?
Me: TOP BG PINE TREE
Mother: GT ASS DWN !

Father: MATH TST ?
Me: C-
Father: NO TV

Sure, texting would have allowed me to head off some of the decidedly un-warm-and-fuzzy moments of family life:

Sister: DAD FIRED !
Me: HIDE BOOZ !

Dad: SCOTCH ?
Me: OUT! (LOL)

But it would also have meant getting bad news even faster:

Me: CAR ?
Mom: REPO !

I wonder, would I still have been a bookworm if I'd had a cellphone?
I like to think I'd have still spent that summer reading all the Nancy Drew mysteries and pretending to be the intrepid girl detective:

Best friend: WHUP ?
Me: SLUTHNG. U ?

At worst I would have learned to type faster, which would come in handy now. Or maybe I'd have made a zillion dollars developing an ap for my iPhone that mapped all tall pine trees within a two-mile radius that were ideal for climbing. With little red flags marking any that were out of cell range.

O Death, Where is Thy Sting?

I think of myself as a pacifist.

Yeah, sure. So, how to explain my reaction to "Inglorious Basterds," director Quentin Tarantino's intentionally misspelled film?

I didn't break into applause at the end as many in the audience did, but I was silently cheering this ultimate revenge-fantasy film even as I winced at the extremely violent treatment of Nazis at the hands of the American G.I. killers.

Maybe I can blame my tolerance on the hilarious portrayal by Brad Pitt of the unit's Tennessean commanding officer, who actually made the scalping and carving of Nazi soldiers seem, well, amusing. Or the fact that Tarantino's work is so bloody that by the end one is pretty benumbed.

It is probably closer to the truth that the legendary director has tapped into that part of me (and that part in a lot of other people, apparently) that finds solace for some atrocities only in like atrocities. That Biblical "eye for an eye" business caught on--and has hung on--for a reason, I guess.

Big hips sink ships

Finally, an intelligent movement toward containing the dangerous fat element in our society.

Surgeon Delos M. Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, bravely stepped forward and said if he had his way, his health care facility, which already has a ban on hiring smokers, would quit hiring obese people.

(See the Aug. 16 New York Times Magazine piece by David Leonhardt that quotes him, here. The predictable bleating of knee-jerk apologists-for-the-zaftig followed.)

Cosgrove's "tough love approach" as columnist Leonhardt cheerfully labels it, is a good start. But responsible hiring policies and a "fat tax," as discussed in the commentary, are just the beginning. The nattering of weak-kneed fatanistas will soon fade, and real Americans can finally get down to the real work of protecting this country.

Given the way this whole torture business is being blown out of proportion, it's no wonder that public figures are hanging back. But clear-headed people know that the fat-threat solution can be summed up in two words, and it's time to step up and say them: Internment camps.

I know, I know, it sounds like a huge undertaking. You worry that it will distract us from the important business of getting the word out about President Obama's missing birth certificate. But I respectfully suggest that the blueprint for the necessary relocation process already exists. No need to re-invent the wheel! A simple internet search will turn up all sorts of useful materials from the forward-thinking folks at the War Relocation Office of the 1940s. Simply substitute the word "obese" wherever "Japanese Americans" appears.