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Family rules
Writing in the New Yorker, Joan Acocella reviews recent literature about ‘overparenting’ (The Child Trap, Nov. 17, 2008):
This used to be known as “spoiling.” Now it is called “overparenting”—or “helicopter parenting” or “hothouse parenting” or “death-grip parenting.” The term has changed because the pattern has changed. It still includes spoiling—no rules, many toys—but two other, complicating factors have been added. One is anxiety. Will the child be permanently affected by the fate of the hamster? Did he touch the corpse, and get a germ? The other new element—at odds, it seems, with such solicitude—is achievement pressure.
I’ve been noticing part of this — the way parents of young children ask the children what they want to do, where they want to go, what they want to eat. Overparenting seems actually to be an abdication of authority.
Granted, a few months ago Erin and I asked the girls what rules should go up on the wall of our dining area. The summer had left us all harried and on edge, and we decided we needed family rules to help us all settle into the routines of school and jobs. So now we have these:
- Listen.
- Wake up happy.
- Only use kind words.
- Set out clothes at night & get dressed without complaining.
- Do not whine.
- No fussing.
- No yelling.
- Make your bed.
- Stay in your seat at the table.
- Wait until the other person is done talking until you talk.
- Use nice manners.
- Sleep in your own bed.
Yesterday, my Duke Medicine colleagues gathered around our dining table — my team has accomplished so much with Inside Duke Medicine and Inside Online, and I invited them to share a Thanksgiving meal to celebrate their hard work.
The family rules were still on the wall, and I was proud to explain why we had the list, and delighted that Anna and Malia were calm and polite. Balanced parenting is what we strive for in this house.
Slow Monday
With no school for Anna today, and Erin out of town, and the sun dazzling North Carolina, the morning made for a perfect time to alight at 3CUPS in Chapel Hill for tea time with my daughter. We sat, sipped — chamomile for Anna, Keemun mao feng for me — and read. Later, 3CUPS partner and manager (and friend) Badi Bradley gave us a tour of the new shop, and introduced me to wine guru Jay Murrie.
Up the street, at Whole Foods, I picked up more pomegranates for my annual making of grenadine. On my way out of the store, I noticed the inaugural edition of a new publication, Edible Piedmont. This is great to see, because four or five years ago, when I first read about the Edible Communities newsletters in one of Saveur Magazine’s 100 roundup issues, I thought this area needed such a food publication. Edible Piedmont joins a growing list of local food blogs that reflects the exciting farm, food and dining story in the Piedmont.
Little by little, I’m putting things in place to be able to focus on food blogging (and story blogging) in 2009. More soon.
Obama wins
Thank you, my fellow Americans. We’ve chosen well. We give our country new tomorrows.
I regret I didn't vote today
I spent the entire day at my Duke Medicine desk, working diligently on projects and assignments and deadlines. Deep down, though, my excitement was building.
Still, I didn’t vote today, and I regret it. I kept thinking of voting in Hawaii in 1992, when I went down to Makiki Park and cast my vote for Clinton/Gore. Later that evening, I was down near Waikiki watching a huge screen of Clinton giving his acceptance speech. Wow.
Erin, the girls and I have come to Carrboro to spend some time with Brian and others at Carrboro Coworking watching election returns.
I want to see Obama win, naturally, since I voted for him last week in early NC voting.
Long-time shortwave
Erin and I finally got around to cleaning our spare bedroom, which serves as a home office and all-around cybercafe. Erin’s law school books and bar exam prep are boxed and archived, my piles of magazines are culled, and Anna has a desk of her own so she can do her homework.
I reached into the closet to rearrange the stuff stored there, and pulled out the Radio Shack DX-392 shortwave radio that’s been on the shelf next to the oboe I haven’t played since college. This is the radio that kept me informed all those nights on Paama when I settled into the sling chair, adjusted the small electric solar-powered fan on my face, and sipped tea or a glass of port (previously blogged here).
I’d gotten this radio from a Peace Corps Volunteer who lived on Epi, the island just south of Paama. He’d chosen to end his service early, but the Lamen Bay airstrip was flooded from cyclone rains, and so Noel (my ni-Vanuatu brother, a fisherman) and I motored over to Epi to retrieve the volunteer. He wanted to go back to the States lightly, so I bought his Teva sandals and shortwave radio.
The radio hasn’t worked since it got banged up in the shipping home from Vanuatu nearly 10 years ago, but I haven’t had the heart to discard it.
A couple of times I’ve thought about sending it off to get repaired, but didn’t think it worth the cost, considering that the World Wide Web can give me access to news from around the world. Maybe I should fix it myself, I reckoned today. So I pulled out a screwdriver, took the radio apart, tightened one loose piece, screwed it back together and plugged it in.
It works! And now it’s on the desk in between two internet-connected computers and beneath a picture of our three favorite girls from Paama.
Make history
It follows: I blog, I run, I storian, I vote
On my Facebook space, a friend asks why I’m not blogging as much these days.
Another friend, writing on his own blog, answers the same question — read Paul Jones on Twitter ate my blog!:
I thought, at first, that Twitter would be mostly me communicating with a few friends, like say group IM. But it wasn’t too long before Twitter became more of a timely way to share snips of news and information. A place to ask questions and give answers. One blog function done right there.
Find my Twitter updates at http://twitter.com/mistersugar.
And then there’s Andrew Sullivan, who gives us a convert’s testimonial to blogging, in his essay in the redesigned The Atlantic, Why I Blog:
You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary. But with this difference: a diary is almost always a private matter. Its raw honesty, its dedication to marking life as it happens and remembering life as it was, makes it a terrestrial log. A few diaries are meant to be read by others, of course, just as correspondence could be—but usually posthumously, or as a way to compile facts for a more considered autobiographical rendering. But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public.
I think about my own blogging most when I’m running on weekends now. What stories can I share? What observations tell?
On Tuesday I attended The Monti, more than 150 people filling Spice Street restaurant to hear six storytellers and their sibling-themed reminiscences. I sat with two sisters who’d grown up on a sheep ranch in eastern New Mexico. A couple of weeks ago, I met three sisters nestled on a bench at the Duke Clinic, proud of the sis who’d survived breast cancer and amused by my too-swift pace that day. My four brothers — one in Pennsylvania, one in Arkansas, two in Arizona — should come to North Carolina to share a beer with me.
Today I voted, for Barack Obama. My state is a battleground — every state should be — and I’m excited for the possibilities. In the polling station, the poll workers clapped when a first-time voter presented himself or herself. That’s democracy. That’s something to blog about.
a-c-e-t-a-l
BlogTogether gets a logo
After nearly four years of BlogTogether activities — meetups, happy hours, backyard BBQs and an annual conference — finally a logo:
The very talented and entrepreneurial Anthony DeLoso designed this for us, creatively capturing the spirit of our group — many individual voices connecting online and gathering offline.
The equally talented Beck Tench is busy coding new templates for BlogTogether.org, which we’ll unveil soon.
SCONC report
Last night, the Science Communicators of North Carolina met at the NC Biotechnology Center to hear my friend Cathy Clabby talk about her sojourn from acclaimed N&O science writer to Knight Science Fellow at MIT to associate editor at American Scientist.
Our local newspapers, like others across the country, are downsizing rapidly and drastically. (My former professor, Philip Meyer, has a take on that here.) I try not to drive by looking too long into my rear-view mirror … which is why I was so glad that Cathy mentioned the importance of science blogging these days, and how many science and health journalists are making use of online tools to tell stories about scientific exploration.
The third annual science blogging conference, dubbed ScienceOnline’09, will explore many of the issues and opportunities in science journalism and education. Check out the amazing list of sessions that Bora has organized for the conference.
Registration for ScienceOnline’09 is closed, by the way — we’ve hit our limit, and begun a waitlist. Send us a message (info at scienceonline09 dot com) if you want to get on the list.
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