An Epiphany about Fifth Grade Graduation

When I first became aware of candidate Obama, one thing that caught my attention was his stance that schools - especially urban schools - should stop holding eighth grade graduation ceremonies.  He said that finishing eighth grade is not a meaningful accomplishment in a country where the real baseline credential for success for almost everyone is a college degree (a subject for another post).  I agreed with this anti-eighth-grade graduation stance and - by extension - saw fifth grade graduation as simply ridiculous.  


Now that I have a fifth grader in a big urban school district, I'm starting to see that ritual a little differently.  Although I moved around a lot growing up, I always attended suburban school districts.  The feeder pattern in most small suburban districts has multiple elementary schools converging into one middle school.  So, it's a new school with new classmates in sixth grade, but the students with whom you've shared your K-5 years are still there on the bus and in classes.

When the subject of middle school came up during a recent haircut, Charlie told the barber that he wasn't that happy about leaving his elementary school.  After all, as he said, he's "spent half his life at that elementary school."  The transition to middle school in a city district like Pittsburgh's differs from the suburbs because Charlie's class at his magnet elementary school will split up for different neighborhood and magnet middle schools.  The crowd at his middle school will have lots of unfamiliar faces and maybe only 15% of his current classmates.  Some of his buds are headed off to 6-12 schools, where if all goes well, they'll stay until (real) graduation.  On the other hand, he may reunite with some of his grade school chums when he gets to high school, having not seen them through the middle school years.

All of that is a long way to say that fifth grade graduation this spring won't be about Charlie and his classmates accomplishing some serious academic milestone.  It will, however, be a chance for the kids and parents to gather in this unique community one last time before it scatters to the four winds.  It will be a chance to mark the end of a happy part of childhood in a group that will never be reconstituted.  What this transition/farewell really calls for - if it weren't creepier than a graduation - is a fifth grade prom.

Review: Kindling Quarterly

My friend Tirzah pointed out in the comment section here that there is a new publication for/by/about fathers.  Intrigued, I ponied up the fourteen dollars ($14!) to get the inaugural edition.  I've now digested it and thought I'd share some reactions.

First of all, it's a beautiful object.  Originating in the NYC DIY movement and highlighting "creative individuals whose work and lives are inseparable from their role as a parent", it's printed matte on heavy stock and features very good design and arresting images, mostly of fathers and children.  While the photo subjects are refreshingly not model-level attractive, the composition of the photos really catches the eye.

Secondly, there's definitely a gap in the parenting publications out there.  I remember being disappointed in early fatherhood that Parents magazine really should be called Mothers magazine.  It really doesn't address fathers at all.  So huzzah to KQ for stepping into the breach and making a dad mag.

Unlike a great music album that catches your attention by beginning with strong tracks, having the best song third in the lineup (check your record collection - true more often than not) burying the weak stuff in the middle and then finishing with something very satisfying, Kindling Quarterly's first issue starts off extremely weakly.  It does finish in a sublime fashion, but oh! the start.  Right inside the front cover, we find a lovely-to-look-at paragraph strong on the passive voice and weak on basic punctuation.  The opening essay that follows features similar problems that smack of an editor who is not himself a reader.  I would not have expected such laxness in the text from a publication that is so carefully crafted as an objet.  Also, it's great to look different from other magazines out there, but why eschew bylines?  Especially when the front of the book was so poorly written, I wanted to know who wrote each piece.  I couldn't tell most of the time.  The enterprise looked rotten at the core; lovely to look at but a product of our society's long slide into ignorance of the rules of language.

As I said, the quality of the writing and editing got noticeably better as the issue went along (wedding at Cana, anyone?).  So let's call that an "opportunity for improvement".  I really liked the Dan Funderburgh mash note/photo essay at the end, the interview with Joe Randazzo from Thing X (formerly of The Onion) and August Heffner's travelogue about how Turkish men love babies.>

I have no idea why it's called Kindling Quarterly, by the way.  It never says.

Finally, I do hope that the first issue's Brooklyn-centric myopia dissipates over time.  It's probably just the founders tapping their near network first.  Needless to say, there are interesting dads who do not now and never have lived in hipster ground zero.  The opening manifesto says that KQ hopes to be a place where "men's parental stories can proliferate"  and says that "Done in an inclusive manner, surely only good can come of this proliferation."  I'll take them at their word and believe that it's going to be more inclusive than Issue 1 looks.

I'm not fighting Huggies alone

Two different alert readers sent me the link to this New York Times article about how fathers - especially "daddy bloggers" - really dislike being ridiculed in advertising.  The article focuses on a daddy blogger summit (Thanks for the invite!), but my readers forwarded the link because of Chris Routly's activist response to Huggies ads.  As you know, I've railed about Huggies pejorative depictions of incapable fathers here and here.  

It was bittersweet to find out that Mr. Routly had launched a change.org petition and gotten 1300 signatures and a meeting with Huggies ad execs. On the one hand, it was good to know I was not alone in hating that whole ad campaign.  On the other hand, I'd decided to launch here on Competent Parent a mancott of Huggies.  I was inspired by the girlcott launched several years ago by Pittsburgh teenagers against Abercrombie and Fitch.  I was inspired by Peter Chin, wife of a college singing group friend, whose change.org campaign got Apple to take down the very offensive Make Me Asian app.  But now that Mr. Routly has reached Huggies brass, there's no need for my mancott.

So, let me just take this chance to announce: THE MANCOTT AGAINST HUGGIES IS OVER.  YOU CAN GO BACK TO BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS, GENTS.
       

Sunday Haiku: Tradeoffs

Poetry doesn't
pay.  Contract murder bankrupts
my soul.  What to do?*


*This poem has no basis in my reality.  It came to me fully formed as a wacky idea for, say, a movie plot.  Starring, say, Luke Wilson and Zooey Deschanel.  No need to forward this link to any authorities. 

Better living through science

Nice job, Western civilization.  It only took how many thousand years to come up with these easy open cereal bags?

This competent parent attests: they are easy to open.

Now if we could get the good people of Kellogg's to infiltrate Trader Joe's and work on the bags in their boxes of woven wheat crackers (Triscuit(tm) knockoffs).

Post Update: Mazda5 Review and more Sexism from Huggies

These two items don't go together at all, but I wanted to update each of them, and neither of them felt like a full post, so I mashed them together.

When I reviewed our then-new-to-us Mazda 5 (a year ago yesterday), we'd never driven it in snow of any import. Now that we have, I'm unhappy to report that though it goes OK in the snow, it's not an easy car to get out of a parking space in snow and ice.  The zoom-zoom of Mazda advertising fame mostly comes through in front wheel drive that all too eagerly spins the front wheels in a futile attempt to move the car.  Twice on solo drives around the city in post-Christmas snow, I found myself feeling like a solitary Ernest Shackleton piloting the micro-van version of the Endurance. OK, perhaps a little dramatic there, but when I got into these spots, I really didn't feel like I'd get out.  I managed to get out of one snow wallow by rocking back and forth in reverse and drive.  The death knell seems to be stepping on the accelerator.  In our succession of Honda Accords, I could power and slide myself out of a predicament like this.  In the Mazda, I had to just take whatever inches of movement I could achieve while idling forward or back.  The second parking space, I don't think I would have extricated myself without the help of a passerby with a shovel.  

The risk of getting stuck again inspired me to put a bucket of salt in the car and invest in a portable shovel that stores in three small pieces in the shallow tray in the back cargo area.  So far, these steps have had a prophylactic effect: no snow to worry about has fallen since I put them in the car.  It's a shame, because the shovel looks really cool, and I'd like to review its functionality.

In other update news, I found Huggies at the sexist advertising game again.

Unlike the last ad I pointed out in this space, this one doesn't have explicit text saying fatherss need extra-good leak protection.  This one just uses an image that I feel almost certainly would not be used featuring a mother by any company.  Sure, triplets are overwhelming.  Even so, moms just don't get depicted in ads this way - as overwhelmed, in-over-their-heads incompetent goobers.  In the comments section on that earlier post, we talked about the fact that if it seems like a sexist message, but we can't put our finger on exactly what it is, maybe we should live with it because at least an ad for a baby product has a father in it.  That conclusion doesn't sit right with me.  If dads are going to appear rarely in ads, I'd rather they weren't depicted as incapable to handle the job of parent.

Books of '12: recommendations

Having told you what not to read (IMHO), today I supply my recommendations from this year's reading.  It turns out, I liked a lot of books in 2012.  I don't even mention JR Moehringer's The Tender Bar below, but that one's awfully good, too.

Best of the year: memoir

Wherever I Wind Up; My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, R.A. Dickey,  2012
 

(This one made it into my post recommending baseball books earlier this year.)

I heard R.A. Dickey interviewed - where else? - on Fresh Air.  When I heard that his new autobiography, written with journalist Wayne Coffey, covered not only his development as a knuckleball pitcher but also his childhood abuse history, I was intrigued.  I've read lots of baseball books, and the first person baseball autobiography always puts me in mind of Jim Bouton's Ball Four.  The difference between that book and this one - besides, oh, 42 years - is that Bouton was a self-unaware @$$hole of the first order.  Dickey comes across as much more humble.  His relationship with Jesus forms the centerpiece of his life story.  The book could have been subtitled "Grief, Jesus and Baseball".  Those who aren't so fond of God's Only Begotten may not enjoy this book as much as I did.  Dickey appears to leave nothing on the table.  Some details are only alluded to, but he really comes out with lots of tough stuff in his background,.  The book is not always well-written, especially early.  A memorably banal sentence that starts a chapter irked me: "My favorite time of the year was Christmas."  How many millions of people could have written that sentence about themselves?  It gets better though, and the book hits its stride as Dickey turns to both honesty and the knuckleball in parallel strains of desperation.

Best of the year: science made popular

The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg, 2012

A fascinating book unlocking secrets (hidden in plain sight) about how habits work in our lives.  Unfortunately, I didn't write this review right after I finished the book (as is my habit), so I've already forgotten some details.  The key framework is that habits work via a three-step process: a cue, followed by the routine, followed by a reward.   Duhigg applies this framework to everything from an afternoon cookie habit to alcoholism and gambling addiction.  Along with negative habits, Duhigg recounts how exercise and better eating habits can be cultivated and maintained.  He also covers organizational habits and how changing habits can change the fortunes of a company.  For this material, he cites Paul O'Neill's focus on safety when he arrived at Alcoa.  He also talks about why 12-step programs seem to work even though they lack any essential scientific soundness.  The author event tries to turn the book into a self-help book by publishing a "how to use this framework" section for the reader to attack personal habits or form new ones. 

Second best of the year: science made popular

Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, 2011

I saw an Atlantic Monthly review of Willpower and was glad to find that it was easily available in the marvelous Carnegie Library system.  Baumeister and Tierney have written an unusual book.   Mostly, it compiles scholarly research on the topic for non-academic civilians.  Perhaps not surprisingly after The Power of Habit, it also converts itself into a brief (more successful) self-help manual for how the reader can increase his/her willpower.  I'd heard about some of the studies before, but they're fascinating all compiled like this.  Findings include: after making decisions, our willpower diminishes; to do lists work (if done the David Allen/Getting Things Done way); willpower is like a muscle in that it can be strengthened through practice; telling yourself you'll eat a sweet thing later can help you not eat it now; then later, you won't feel the need to eat it as much because deciding you'd have it gave you the "I got a treat" feeling in the first place.  There's also a chapter on the role of 12 step groups and other mutual-willpower-enforcing strategies. 

To summarize their prescription: know your limits, watch for symptoms of depletion, pick your battles, set goals, monitor your progress, keep track and reward yourself. 

Best of the year: manifesto

The War of Art, Steven Pressfield, 2002

I heard about this book on Marc Maron's podcast (in a somewhat dismissive context) and from our Associate Rector, Josh Miller (in a rather reverential tone).  Having read this slim volume, I can understand the latter better than the former.  Pressfield describes what he believes holds writers and other creative people back, a vague internal force he labels "resistance".   In the first third of the book, he describes that many forms resistance may take.  Wily and creeping, this malign enemy will linger and lurk and thwart.  In the second third of the book, he describes what he calls "going pro".  Pressfield believes to be a professional, a writer must write for at least four hours a day.  He doesn't go into as much detail as I would like about how one arrives at the pass wherein one can do that.  The classic question to ask an author is about his or her process.  The audience always wishes that there will be a magic formula to follow.  In describing the pro state so wanly, I believe he hopes to dispel the notion of magic.  It's work, and you do the work by doing the work.  In the final third of the book, he describes the spiritual dimension that he sees in the creative realm.  He believes in angels and muses and God and believes that if we will call on these positive forces, they will help us to overcome resistance.  The book inspires and stimulates and is difficult to describe.  An interesting note: I got excited about the book and wanted to buy it for some friends.  I expected to find used copies of a ten-year-old paperback for cheap.  No such luck.  The market holds the book in such reverence that used copies are priced the same as new.

Best of the year: fiction

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson, 2004 (Pulitzer Prize for fiction, 2005)
 
The first blurb on the back cover of the edition of Gilead that I read called it "demanding".  That's accurate.  The same blurb called it grave and lucid, which are also true.  The book simmers very gently for a long time.  One thing that makes it demanding is that - it being essentially letters written by an older father convinced he's close to death to his young son - it lacks dialog, especially in its first half.  Other books that tell a story without using dialog have shown me that this narrative tactic can indeed be quite demanding on the reader.  Add to this the fact that the narrator describes several generations of men who were all preachers of one kind or another, and it gets confusing in addition to gravely and lucidly demanding.  To my mind, the book started paying off when I realized how rarely we hear from our old men speaking frankly about their emotions.  Then, it started to pay off more by actually narrating events happening in the present, rather than just philosophy and family history.  And, in the end, the reader finds that that history matters substantively to the story that eventually plays out.  Stick with it if you dare.  It will pay off.