Tough love available here

I think of myself as a fairly indulgent parent. I let my kids watch more kinds of shows on TV than most of their friends' parents do. They certainly don't lack for clothes or toys. We eat a lot of cookies around here. But from time to time, an event will make me realize I can be pretty tough.

This household runs on the premise that if you can do something, then you should be doing it yourself, and not asking someone else to do it for you. This is harder for me than it is for anyone else, because in almost any case you could think of, I personally could do it faster than [name a child] could.

Recently, I realized the 2yo could put on and take off one of his pairs of shoes. The first time he did it, he was so excited! Big cheers all around.

So this morning, that was the pair of shoes handy. I gave them to him and said, "Sit down and put these on, please."

"No."

"2yo, I need you to put your shoes on now. We're almost ready to go."

"NO! You do it."

Can I just say, there is no way to get my back up faster than to sass me. I am the queen of sass. No one is allowed to sass me!

"I am not putting your shoes on. You can do it. Remember how you did it the other day? Now we've got to go. Come on."

"I caaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnn'tttttttttttttttt."

Oh Lord. That child was on my last nerve. This is the point where I yelled at him. I am a yeller and I can own that. I do not hold grudges, but you don't want to get on that last nerve.

I can at least place this neurosis, my problem with "I can't." Two things:

• When I was in elementary school, I was on a competitive gymnastics team. That's a whole other story, but my coach was very strict on one point: You were not allowed to say, "I can't." Don Kirton was a very good teaching coach, really understood kids and got the best out of you. But more than once, I saw him kick someone out of the gym for saying, "I can't." And frankly, he was right. The kids who believed they could do it, did it. You had to have a level of physical skill. But the mental attitude divided the kids who were really great from those who were just good.
• My dad, also not a fan of "I can't." I don't remember his ever kicking anyone out of the house for saying it, though.

So, I left the room. I left the 2yo sitting there on the bed with his shoes, hollering about how he just couldn't do it. About 2 minutes later, silence.

Then: "Mama! I did it!"

I'm addicted

I have said for a long time how much I hate reality TV. Hate, hate hate it. I think it plays to our basest instincts. I think it's the networks phoning it in. And the people who go on those shows as participants....well, let's just say I don't get it.

But somehow I ran across Clean House recently. This show finds people whose homes are a wreck -- not natural disaster wrecks, but cluttered wrecks -- and forces the folks to part with possessions at a massive yard sale. Then they use the proceeds to redecorate and organize the house. It is just magic.

I should explain, I'm a reformed packrat. I used to save everything. Tickets. Programs. Corsages. Everything. Now I keep less than I should, and I'm pretty obnoxious about it. I'm quite holier than thou about not being tied to "stuff." Except for dishes. I have four full sets -- 12 place settings each -- and two sets of party plates. I can only justify by saying that I use them all. I do recognize it for the little bit of greed that it is, however.

Now -- and I know this continues to amaze my parents -- even a little clutter on the floor drives me crazy.

But Clean House. What I love most is these people live much more cluttered than I ever did. Almost anyone could feel superior watching the show. Try it.

links for 2008-04-23

• Clueless in America | New York Times
  Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. Column on the ongoing failures of our educational system.
  (tags: education)

links for 2008-04-19

• Sticker Shock in the Organic Aisles | New York Times
  Rising prices for organic groceries are prompting some consumers to question their devotion to food produced without pesticides, chemical fertilizers or antibiotics.
  (tags: organic food prices)

links for 2008-04-18

• Searching for a Savior | Nashville Scene
  This column is so damning -- rightly so -- of the Nashville school board. I have no idea why it appears to be so difficult to get this going.
  (tags: school board nashville superintendent)

The 1998 Nashville tornado -- 10 years ago today

I have so many memories of the Nashville tornado in 1998. My neighborhood was one of the epicenters of destruction 10 years ago today. Tonight, my church hosts part of the city's official commemoration, with an original choral piece we commissioned for the occasion. See The Gardener, composed by David K. Childs, conducted by Joe Lee, tonight at East End United Methodist Church at 7 p.m. I'd get there early if I were you. I'm only guaranteed a seat because I'm in the choir.

I'm going to share some scattered memories here.

• The tornado. I remember the afternoon very vividly. Back then I wasn't nearly so paranoid about the weather, so I don't remember any apprehension about the storm coming. But it was very clear as it began arriving that we were in for some truly horrible weather. It's the only time I can remember actually going to the basement of my building for weather. Seems like the alarm went off a couple times that day. I was one of the first ones back upstairs after the tornado passed by -- and it did pass directly by my building. My boss stayed upstairs to watch.
• When I got back upstairs, Rex, Will Weaver, Lewis Pennock and it seems like a couple other folks and I all piled into Will's car -- an SUV, I remember, because people were piled in the back, too -- and headed to Centennial Park. Rex had seen the storm heading that way. We arrived to see the dozens of trees destroyed by the storm, and saw the paramedics pulling Vanderbilt student Kevin Longinotti from the wreckage of the picnic shelter. He died at the hospital. I remember standing there, a decent distance back of course, but feeling like this was a movie. It just didn't seem real.
• We went back to the office. You started to hear from friends around town -- not everyone had a cell phone back then :) -- and it became obvious that East Nashville was hit badly. I saw the destroyed sanctuary of St. Ann's Episcopal Church on Woodland Street on the news, and I left work for the day. When I did, another tornado came through -- I heard it on the radio as I was driving down West End. I made a quick detour and huddled in the basement of the Towers dorms with my sister and a few dozen other Vandy students, while we wondered where the hundreds of other Towers residents were. No doubt up in their rooms 14 floors above, playing video games.
• I drove into East Nashville and it was immediately obvious that the damage was worse than anything you could have imagined. I remember having to zig-zag the blocks several times on my way to our house on the 1600 block of Fatherland Street -- trees, power poles and downed lines choked much of the neighborhood.
• Many people in Nashville have discovered this great neighborhood in the years since 1998. What you still don't see, even 10 years later, is how wooded this neighborhood was 10 years ago. The whole neighborhood was shady. Thanks to a number of neighborhood organizations, Releaf Nashville and other groups, hundreds and hundreds of trees have been planted here in the last 10 years. But I still shake my head when I drive down Stratton Ave. or Rosebank -- streets that looked so different the first time I saw them. The houses are almost all the same, but the streetscape is completely different. Basically, you can assume that any young tree you see in East Nashville is replacing a mature tree....and many of the bare yards were once shaded. You see a lot of yards like mine -- where mature, understory trees like dogwoods and redwoods still thrive, but are no doubt a little more stressed than they should be, having lost the hackberries and maples that used to shade them.
• At the time, my then-husband and I lived in a cute little house on Fatherland, with two enormous trees that were the entire front yard. I was so relieved to find that neither had crushed our home [either easily could have wiped out most of the structure]. Instead, we'd just lost one major branch, which came to rest with its leaves just brushing our neighbor's car, parked in the street. Our house ended up having about $4,000 worth of damage, as I recall -- the insurance types determined the storm had lifted the corner of the house enough to send cracks running through most of the walls, but no true structural damage.
• I had left the dogs outside, as I used to do every day. When I arrived home, the fence was blown open but they were still in the yard. Absolutely terrified. Sally [now 12 years old] to this day is petrified of rain and most especially thunderstorms. She doesn't just have to be inside, she has to be in the room you're in during a storm.
• Of course, everyone was without power and phones. I remember the phones came back first, within a couple of days. Our block was among the first to get phone service back. We were all living on the front porches, sharing news of the cleanup, drinking beer in the evenings after a hard day's cleanup effort, so when Craig and Denise's phone came back down the street, everyone else went in to check theirs. We were without power for 10 days. I don't remember, did we have a gas water heater? Did we shower at the Y? Or brave the cold?
• In the first days after the storm, there were who-knows-how many potlucks in East Nashville, big gatherings where people ate gallons of ice cream, or roasted hot dogs on the grill, or ate whatever had begun to thaw in the freezer. Cakes. Roasts. Casseroles. People with gas stoves or grills played host, and you brought whatever you had.
• I have no idea how many people from East Nashville actually worked [you know, at their jobs] in the week after the storm. Not many.
• Our friends Paige and Bob had just moved to DC in the weeks before the storm, and they had not yet closed on the sale of their Nashville house. We picked our way five blocks over trees and power lines [were they still live? who knew? who wanted to find out?] to see it Friday morning the 17th at sunrise. It was not destroyed, but close. An entire wall gone. Both enormous pines in the front were down, one crushing the porch. Their enormous hackberry in the back, through the side and the back of the house. The inside -- despite having been empty -- was still ruined, though no possession had been there to scatter.
• After seeing so much destruction, you'd think you become numb to it, like you do when you see such things on television. When it's your neighborhood, you don't get numb. Every new thing you see is another blow. When you know the houses, and the people, and the trees, you don't get numb. You wish you would, but you don't.
• Almost immediately rescue and cleanup efforts began. Our church, East End United Methodist, served as a hub for relief efforts, organized by the church, UMCOR and the Lockeland Springs Neighborhood Association. The 8yo's dad didn't show up the last two weeks of classes at Owen [where he nonetheless managed to graduate with his MBA, three weeks after the tornado], and instead spent the time getting friendly with a chainsaw. So many of my good friends were in the middle of things. Me? I'm not so good with a chainsaw, but I do remember going to bed tired every night for days and days and days. It's just astounding how much there is to do when something like this happens.
• Truckloads and vanfuls and busloads of people came to help. I don't know where they came from. From everywhere. We were so grateful for the people who just showed up, knowing there would be work to do for willing hands. There was.
• I remember later in the summer of 1998. The day I woke up and realized I didn't hear a chainsaw. And it was something you noticed, the not hearing. Because they were the pulse of East Nashville for weeks and weeks after April 16.
• The blue tarps -- all the cool roofs had one -- took longer to disappear, but they, too, finally slipped away.
• My friends finally sold their house, but not before months of insurance wrangling and legal hassles. Today, it's completely restored, and I know the people who live it in again [it's sold again in the meantime].

Creepy Veggie Burger

Today I went to lunch with my parents, who were driving through town on their way to some weekend parties in honor of Nashvegas sister and her fiancé. Assuming everyone lives this long, they're getting married in three weeks. Woo hoo!

But that is not the point of this post. The point is this: I ate the creepiest veggie burger ever today for lunch. [Follow Nashville veggie friends: Let me know if you eat on West End and I'll share more details, like where not to eat if you want to avoid the same thing.]

The weird thing: It tasted good. But I couldn't eat it. The burger was the consistency of very very rare ground beef. And there was a smoky flavor that really contributed to the meat sensation. But this was the clincher: They appeared to have used beets or beet juice in the burger, because the grains, which made up the majority of the burger, were pink. Pink, people. Like raw beef.

Seriously. You do not want your veggie burger to evoke raw beef.

I have spent a fair amount of time this spring thinking about why I'm not eating meat. I still haven't figured it out, really. But I do know that I'm less enticed than ever to go omni after that crazy veggie burger today.

links for 2008-04-10

• Pick on the Big Guys | New York Times
  Great column on re-thinking the way we handle transportation policy and costs.
  (tags: environment transportation)

links for 2008-04-09

• Mark Bechtel: Why I was born at the perfect time | Sports Illustrated
  I'm an on-again, off-again subscriber, so I just ran across the archive of columns by my friend Mark Bechtel. Gifted writer. This is a great one....of course I agree with him entirely on the best year to have been born.
  (tags: markbechtel sportsillustrated)

links for 2008-04-08

• Grains Gone Wild | New York Times
  Great column on growing food price issues, created in part by climate change and the desire for biofuels like ethanol....which don't make energy sense.
  (tags: ethanol food)