Oh, the waiting!

On a ship floating towards Cozumel, friends of my mother-in-law's are wondering whether the twins have been born.  A message from Sydney came through the other day asking if the babies had arrived.   On Skype, another friend in France left me a message to say that I should change my profile picture to one of them when they make their appearance.  And in Capitola, California, I waddle from my bed to my chair to the supermarket and out into the garden, wondering when the contractions will begin. But still there is no action!

Every woman gets to this stage in their pregnancy...the last few days and weeks when the anticipation has already peaked and transmogrified into a baser feeling...when will this happen already?  But whereas most singleton pregnancies are expected to go to 39 or 40 weeks, some 60% of twins are born by 36 weeks, and the "average" twin pregnancy lasts 35 weeks.  I guess the positive spin as I hove towards 38 weeks of gestation (this Saturday) is that I have never liked being just average.   But I am also asking myself just how large these two bundles of joy are going to be! 

At the last count, (on July 28th), the ultrasound technician estimated that they weighed 6lb 3oz and 6lb 4oz each.  And they are supposed to gain an ounce a day, which means that they would now be a stonking 7lb 7oz and 7lb 8oz today.  This is great from a health perspective, meaning that they are far less likely to need to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit.  But it sure will be some work getting two regular weight babies out for me.

So the question arises, should I consider letting the doctor intervene in some way?  She has suggested an amniotomy (breaking the waters), which should get labor going.  But it was just her bad luck that a few days before this option was mentioned, I had read an article about the new March of Dimes campaign Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait, which makes me feel leary about sticking an oar in (or, rather more literally, an implement that resembles a crochet hook).  Plus I remember that the person who taught our childbirth classes muttered darkly about one intervention leading to another....In other words it's a short journey from an amniotomy to Pitocin to a Caesarean...On the other hand, if they get too big, it is likely that they would be delivered by Caesarean anyway! 

It's a fairly humbling lesson that, as evolved as we are, we really still don't understand what gets labor going.  Of course, there are a bundle of old wives' tales about how to help it along, including spicy foods, long walks and amorous relations as methods to start things up.  But while they might work for some, I can report that none of these has yet pushed the button for us. 

And so we wait.  In time, of course, I shall look back on this period of calm and laugh...maybe even wishing to get it back.  But in the interim, it is about time for my mid-morning snack of cherries.  I'll let you know if they happen to do the trick.

Tiger Mother?

I just finished reading Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  It caused a furor in the States, mainly due to a Wall Street Journal headline which read Why Chinese Mothers are Superior.  The article generated over 8000 comments.  But when my Mum recommended I read it also, I realized that I was missing out on a worldwide phenomenon!  And it made me start to wonder what sort of parents Eric and I will be.

The basic premise of the book is that Western parents tend to coddle their kids, go fairly easy on them, and value creating self esteem over measurable achievements.  By contrast, Chinese parents (a term which Chua defines loosely to include all sorts of high-achieving ethnicities - often immigrants) expect nothing less than A grades, in addition to excellence in other areas, such as music, and will go to fairly drastic lengths to help their kids achieve their expectations.  A tad stereotypical, sure.  But there's more than just a grain of truth in it, too.  And Chua acknowledges that so-called Chinese parenting is not foolproof, when she relates her own comeuppance at the hands of her 13 year old daughter.

I think there may be a little of the Tiger Mother in me.  Not for nothing was I called Tolerance Torres at university (with typical British irony, my so-called tolerance was just the reverse).  And I was accepted at my first job despite being told that in one of the character tests, I had "steamrollered" over the other candidates' objections. (They also told me that my logic was good, and my ideas were strong, but that perhaps I should consider an alternative management style to get my way).

As for Eric, his primary concern is to see how young he can get the twinlets whitewater rafting.  So far, for any serious sort of river, the answer seems to be 4.  I hope his patience can hold out until then, but at least he can amuse himself in the meantime by teaching them self-sufficiency, particularly with regards to how to swim!

Of course, much will depend on the personalities of the twins themselves.  For that, barring any current empirical evidence, beyond a convincing ability to kick hard, I turned to the Chinese zodiac, which tells me that they will be born under the sign of the Rabbit.  I was delighted to learn that Rabbits are "classy, sophisticated, expressive, well-mannered and stylish, [and] enjoy leaning about cultural issues and learning about people from other countries".  Now those sound like pretty neat kids.
 
It's odd that while there are classes for most things in life (like training dogs) few parents ever take any kind of educational stab at learning what they should be doing.  Like most parents, we will probably make it up as we go along, and hope for the best.


I see only one fly in the ointment with this plan.  The zodiac helpfully talks about compatibility between signs (presumably for future romantic interests).  The problem is that Rabbits apparently don't get on with Roosters or Rats.  And, Dear Reader... I'm a Rat.

Babymoon

In January this year, I was seduced by a New York Times Travel section headline: 10 Restaurants Worth a Plane Ride.  With Singapore, Sydney and Uruguay on the list, I was not hopeful that I'd be visiting any of them soon.  But the last one on the list, the Willows Inn on Lummi Island in Washington seemed feasible...

Not a month later, while browsing through the out-of-date selection of magazines as I had a pedicure, I came upon a Sunset magazine article which mentioned Lummi.  And when the restaurant came up again in something else I was reading, I was hooked.  This was where we'd go our our Babymoon.

A babymoon, in case you are not familiar with the term, is an opportunity for expectant parents to take a mini-vacation before the pandemonium of child-rearing begins. Eric was up for the vacation, but was deeply dubious about flying 700 miles to the rainy northwest to a restaurant that we might (or might not) like.

But after persistent lobbying, and the addition of Vancouver to the itinerary, the trip was booked, and last week, we headed out, on an unusually rainy weekend for California in June to see what all the fuss was about.

From the get-go, the gods smiled on us.  We touched down to a Seattle basking in sunshine (and we know that's not normal from the thrilled car rental attendant who gushed "isn't this weather great") as we left the parking lot after knocking off $170 of unnecessary charges that Thrifty had tacked on to our rock-bottom Priceline rental.  When we drove up to the line for the once an hour car ferry to Lummi, we waited only 10 minutes before being loaded on for the 6 minute trip to the island.  And then we checked into our room for the night, which had a spectacular view of the Sound, with waves lapping gently on to the beach - Hollywood style - immediately beneath our wide open windows.

It didn't hurt that our neighbors for the evening, three ladies who had escaped their daily lives for a taste of luxury, included a food writer for Seattle magazine, who promptly gave us additional foodie recommendations for the next leg of our stay in Vancouver.

But the real treat was the restaurant experience itself.  Perhaps because I had checked the "anniversary" button when I made my online reservation (babymoon, oddly, wasn't an option), Eric and I were the first to be ushered into the restaurant, and we were seated in the prime window with a perfect view of the about-to-set sun. 

We knew that for our $85 per head, we would enjoy 5 courses of dinner.  But before we even started on those, we were treated to a series of amuse bouches - six in all - which bested anything for creativity and innovation that I have ever eaten, anywhere, in my life.

[Spoiler alert! Do not read this section if you are going to go to the Willows Inn!] 

A chef (who we later realized was the rising star Blaine Wetzel himself) arrived with a small wooden box, and let us know that it contained smoked salmon.  We smiled politely and ignored him, as we were still figuring out drinks and the view.  Then we opened it, and  - ta da - it contained smoked salmon that was still smoking on tiny embers of cedar and other aromatic woods!  O.K, so I can just see the expressions on the faces of some of my foodie friends - that's not that impressive, right?  But follow it up with a basket of leaves and "dirt" (not real dirt, roasted barley that looked like the earth hadn't been shaken off the locally foraged herbs and leaves), or the brown butter toast with edible flowers, and the kale with truffles...and you can begin to see how the experience was  both cumulative and genuinely original.  In fact, when we finally got to the first course mentioned on the menu, it would have been an anticlimax (no surprises now) - except that it, too, was delicious.

We sat happily marveling at the privilege of it all, and contemplating our future (more likely to be filled with trips to Applebee's than fancy restaurants) and felt ever so slightly smug to be "in" on a place that has become a destination restaurant despite its somewhat remote location.  So strong is its pull that the Times has anointed it again in today's piece on Seattle - even though it is about 2 hours away.

I could bore you with the walks along the beach, and the bike ride round the island - or the pretty cool meals we enjoyed in Vancouver, but I'm not sure that y'all have the appetite for that.  So I'll conclude with a picture from Lynn Canyon park, about 20 minutes outside of Canada's overpriced western hub.  Most people who travel to Vancouver visit Capilano suspension bridge, which costs an outrageous $35 per person to enjoy.  We skipped that in favor of the free, ignored-by-tourists Lynn Canyon suspension bridge.  This picture is a favorite from the trip, because of the easy analogy with our lives right now.  We're caught up in the waiting - suspended between the end of our free-wheeling, white water rafting, fancy restaurant present, and the unknowable future adventure of parenting.

Why the Republicans can't win next November

Winning Presidential elections in America is a weird science.  It's not necessarily important that you be smart, (see George W. Bush), personable (Nixon), or even desperately well qualified for the job (the present incumbent).  But it sure does help to have some measure of credibility. 

And that's why I'm pretty confident that the Republicans simply can't win next November. They have yet to field anything like a credible candidate. 

Let's take a look at a few of the declared and likely candidates, starting with Newt Gingrich.  Granted, Gingrich is a darling of the right, remembered for his hardball takeover of the House in 1994, and his relentless pursuit of Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair.  But these career highlights are also the self-sown seeds of his own destruction.  He's deeply susceptible to being branded a hypocrite for his own infidelity (conducted while he was after Clinton) to his second wife, with the woman who is now the third Mrs G.  The Christian right is unlikely to be able to swallow any kind of family values pitch from a guy on his third marriage.  And there are few candidates who are more likely to galvanize the Democratic base than this particular nemesis.

Mitt Romney is deeply tainted too.  The further he distances himself from his healthcare reform as Governor of Massachusetts, the less appealing he is as a centrist alternative to Obama.  Independent voters must already be wondering how many other experiments he might be willing to conduct at the expense of the American people, and then renounce a couple of years later because they hadn't worked.

I was amazed by the amount of ink and airtime was spilled on a possible Donald Trump candidacy.  Here's a guy whose businesses have declared bankruptcy not once but several times.  Is this the dude we want in charge of our extremely fragile national economy?  His persistence in pursuing the issue of Obama's birth has also sullied him in many folks' eyes.  To my delight, however, the news broke as I was writing this that he had decided against a run.

There's a raft of others, whose national name recognition is a stumbling block that will hurt them unless and until they become the GOP's nominee, including Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Mitch Daniels.

And then there's our pinup for this post, Ms Palin, whose personal popularity did not suffer too badly even after she had Gabrielle Gifford's district in her crosshairs, but who suffers from the fact that fully 67% of those polled at the end of last year thought that she was unqualified to be President.

Plus there are important considerations about the Republicans' opponent.   Mr Obama has all the benefits of being an incumbent, plus his own credibility received a real boost after Osama bin Laden was captured and killed on his watch.  To be sure, the rose-tinted spectacles with which many viewed his candidacy last time have been replaced for many.  But if, as is likely, the economy shows signs of improvement in the next 18 months, he looks relatively secure.

That said, I'm a lousy predictor of which way the American people will jump when it comes to elections.  I've been consistently wrong over the 10 years I have lived in the States as to who would win (even when I voted for the winner).  Let's see if, for 2012, I can be fourth time lucky.  I'm calling it early for Obama, and looking forward to collecting on a bet made shortly after the 2008 election that he would be a two-term President.  There's a whole $1 riding on it.

Twinlets

Not telling anyone that I was pregnant for three months nearly killed me.  Especially after we found out we are having twins.  It made me think of the codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park in England in WWII, some of whom held on to their secret work for nearly 30 years (even from their spouses), until the1970s, when the story of Enigma was first released.  I had trouble holding my tongue for a quarter of a year.  I can't imagine the self-discipline required for a quarter century!  

I have been broody for a Very Long Time.  Probably about 12 years.  But, partly due to my age, and partly due to the risks of miscarriage in the first three months, we held off telling anyone - even close family - until we got past the first trimester.  We have just cruised past 20 weeks, however, and the vast majority of family and friends has been informed, so it was time to do some baby pontificating online...

The savviest among you may have noticed that the tagline to this blog actually changed at the beginning of the year.  It used to read, Fortune in the Valley: One Woman's Search for the Job of her Dreams.  But since a few days after the pregnancy test came back positive, it has read On Life, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  To some extent, this reflected the sorry state of my job hunt, and the fact that the blog had long since become a place for me to do a brain dump of what was on my mind.  But it was also, of course, a virtual nod to the vast change that is about to come upon the Coatney household.

Ironically, of course, I was finally offered a job just a few weeks ago by UC Santa Cruz.  But it was a fairly simple decision to turn the offer down.  The money was lousy!  And the possibilities were limited.  The positives were all around the location and the potential for something more fascinating down the road.  But even as I declined it, there was some agonizing.  I had always assumed that if I were ever fortunate enough to have kids, it would be as a working woman, and that I would be the sort who juggled a job and the cooking and the childcare (while naturally maintaining a regular gym schedule, and remembering to get pedicures).  So much for that.  Instead, I am adapting to the new reality and privilege of being a stay-at-home Mom (apologies to my English readers).  Which is actually far more scary (for me, at least) in terms of the skills required.  And the gym schedule is already up the spout.

Even though I haven't had a tricky pregnancy so far to date, I am amazed at how easy other people make it look.  My girlfriends all appeared to sail through in the manner of Hollywood film stars...looking glamorous and elegant, and producing extremely cute offspring at the end of it all.  By contrast I feel schlumpy all the time, and go to bed at 8pm regularly, since the thought of staying up until 10pm is a distant memory now associated with other illicit treats like cocktails and unpasteurized cheese.  And this isn't even the difficult part!  As all the mothers of any age I have met recently have said, with twins, we are going to be "busy".  Since when did "busy" become a euphemism for manically sleep deprived and completely unable to form coherent sentences?

Over the next few months, you will doubtless read more about the trials and tribulations of the pregnancy, before twinlet one (a girl) and twinlet two (a boy) arrive, probably sometime in late August or possibly early September.  After that, it is quite possible that this will turn into a mommy blog (Eric's hoping that I will be able to mimic the success of www.dooce.com and bring in $30,000-$50,000 a month).  In his dreams.

In the meantime, I am delighted to declare that I have found my Fortune in the Valley, and it wasn't in the place I was looking for it.  Not at all.

Green Guilt

So I confess that I switched back to Lysol.  For months, I had been struggling with an eco-friendly biodegradable toilet cleaner by Seventh Generation, but the unfortunate line of grey scum in my loo just wouldn't go away.  Enter the bleach, exit the scum.  Problem solved, apart from the agent of doom environmental guilt of course.

Generally, I consider myself to be an averagely responsible consumer where it comes to the green lifestyle.  I recycle religiously.  I compost occasionally.  I own a vast number of shopping totes and reusable water bottles, and remember to take them with me at least 75% of the time.  But I'm pretty much over what the Wall Street Journal christened the Pampered Countertop of products...the Mrs Meyers, Method Home, Seventh Generation stuff which looks pretty and smells great but does a fairly lousy job of actually cleaning anything.  I mean the hand soap is fairly harmless.  But have you tried Mrs Meyer's Lemon Verbena shower cleaner?  You need a real cleaning product at hand to wipe off the streaks and cut through the limescale deposits.  So you end up cleaning twice!

It was such a relief to discover that I was not alone in my disdain for some of these products, and that folk around the country are having a hard time adapting to the filmy deposit which new eco dishwasher detergents leave on their glasses and dishes.  As one savvy consumer put it, if you have to wash the dishes again (either before or after they've been through the dishwasher), then surely the excess water consumption is nearly as environmentally unsound as the phosphates in the old sudsy detergents were in the first place?

The problem with my argument is of course, that while my little piece of pollution is just a drop in the world's mop and bucket, if you add all the other polluters, it suddenly becomes more serious.  And if you scale up my argument to a bigger issue, it just doesn't work at all.

Take, for example, uranium mining at the Grand Canyon.  Two years ago, the Secretary of the Interior placed a moratorium on new mining claims within 1 million acres around the Canyon.  But that period is about to expire, and public comment is sought  by April 4th as to which of four proposals the Bureau of Land Management should adopt with regards to mining in the vicinity of the Canyon.  Let's make this easy.  The Colorado river supplies drinking water to some 25 million Americans.  Uranium contaminated drinking water, anyone?  I don't think it's necessary to refer to recent events in Japan to make this point any clearer. 

Should you need any further convincing on this subject, then I encourage you to visit the Grand Canyon Trust's website, which has additional cogent reasons for supporting Alternative B (which would ban all new uranium mining claims within public land watersheds that drain directly into Grand Canyon National Park), and has convenient links to the relevant reports, as well as the e-mail address where you can comment.

Here endeth the lesson.  Because I know that the above two paragraphs sounded just a tad preachy.  Which is ironic, given where I started.  I guess I'm just a conflicted green contender - eager to tell others how to clean up their act, before I have my own house in order. 

Why no Brouhaha?

Is anyone apart from me surprised at the lack of hullabaloo surrounding the Deutsche Borse acquisition of the New York Stock Exchange?  NYSE, surely, is one of America's most storied institutions - having been founded in 1792, when the fledgling Republic was not yet two decades old.  Some of you will remember the massive kerfuffle which occurred thirty years ago when the Japanese bought the Rockefeller Center in New York.  Or what about the Dubai Ports scandal back in 2006?  That was an issue of national security!

But turning over the largest stock exchange in the world by market capitalization to the Germans doesn't seem to pose any problem at all.  Even Chuck Schumer, a severe critic of the Dubai deal (which ultimately failed), has given Deutsche Borse his blessing, insisting only that the merged company have the words New York somewhere in its name.  Has America's financial capital come to this?

Time was that the stock exchange was seen as a viable measure of the strength of our economy.  Periods of strong stock market performance often coincided with low unemployment - the Eighties spring to mind.  But as Felix Salmon argues convincingly in Wall Street's Dead End, the stock market is becoming increasingly irrelevant.  Two of the most innovative American companies to launch in the last decade, Facebook and Twitter, have chosen to bypass it entirely.  They are valued at $50 billion and somewhere near $10 billion respectively, but have chosen to raise money privately, leaving them free to develop without the pesky interference of shareholders.

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I have anything particularly against the Germans.  Neither am I reflexively against foreign ownership of U.S. companies.  We buy stuff overseas.  It's only natural that strong companies abroad would be interested in owning a piece of the world's number one economy, and being able to tap into its freespending customer base.  But I guess I was under the mistaken impression that our primary stock exchange was sacrosanct.  It makes you wonder what's next.  Will the Mint start printing money in China because it's more cost effective?  Will the White House be sold to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council and leased back to the President for use? (You may mock, but that group controls 75% of the Chrysler Building).

I can't help feeling that America in 2011 is a bit like Britain in 1945. This is the beginning of the end of an empire.

The Changing Face of Friendship

In 1993, a British anthropologist called Robin Dunbar posited that there is a natural limit to the number of friends one can reasonably sustain, and put the number at approximately 150.  How could he anticipate the Facebook phenomenon, where many of the folks I know are already over 200, and one has over 1000 "friends"?

My own count is still below the so-called Dunbar number, but what strikes me more is the weird lens which social media provides into the lives of folks I don't really know that well.  There's no question that some people are status update addicts, obsessively posting something about their day to day lives, interesting or not.  Then there are the voyeurs, folks whose presence online is confirmed by their profile icon appearing on the left of my screen, but whose posts are rare (and usually, quite worthwhile).  And then, of course, are the vast swathes of souls who joined Facebook because someone pestered them to, and who have now given up, because they got bored of the drivel, or more likely, are busy living their real lives off line.

This creates a weird dichotomy.  I'm often more familiar with some random acquaintance's travel plans than I am with my best friend's pregnancy.  I discovered this week by telephone that another close friend's marriage could be disintegrating,  but that this disheartening situation had been going on over a month.  Meantime, thanks to Facebook, I am bang up-to-date on what a friend of a friend made for dinner last night.  Odd, and occasionally unsettling.

As of this month, I am back in touch with two schoolfriends who had happily lived out the 20 years since we graduated with nary a word.  Interesting to find out where life took them, yes.  On my list to visit during my trip to Britain in March - not likely.

And real world friendships seem to have changed somewhat too.  Partly, in my case, this is a function of distance.  Having settled some 6,000 miles and 8 hours behind the land where I was born throws up some barriers for the people in Blighty.  And even the east coasters have to count backwards by three to figure out what time I'm on.  But the truth is that really it's a matter of how much effort each friend puts into the relationship.  Friends in Sydney and Tajikistan have done a splendid job of staying in touch despite much greater geographical and time lag distances (perhaps because like me, they are operating in a less friend-rich local environment). 

So come on people, pick up the phone!  And if you don't already have Skype, then get with the picture (literally - the video function is really fun).   Put the coffee pot on, or pour out your cocktail (after all, it's definitely five o'clock somewhere), and get ready for a good, long, old fashioned gossip. 

Eleven for 2011

I resolve to:

1. Buy a bucket and spade
We live 7 minutes from the ocean, but I don't build enough sandcastles.  The time has come.

2. Double my income and reduce my outgoings
This one is easier than you might guess, since I made too little this year, and spent a ridiculous amount of money getting married.

3. Procrastinate only when absolutely necessary
As opposed to on a daily basis

4. Rejoin Costco
I know it's un-eco, with far too many tracksuit wearing, bling sporting chavs - but who cares?  Their roast chicken is delicious, and only $4.99, and you can buy a case of Perrier for just a few dollars.  The Veuve Clicquot is a good price too.

5. Be the Designated Driver at least half of the time
It's time for me to take the wheel more often when a party or a night on the town is at stake.  Eric did sterling work in 2010, but - much as I love my vino - it's my turn.


6. Complete one hike a month from the trail book Eric gave me for my birthday in 2009
This is "exercise more" gussied up as something more palatable

7. Eat fewer tortilla chips
This one's tough.  I mean, not as tough as "lose 10 pounds" (which I tried last year, with mixed results - lost the 10, then regained 5).  But tough, nevertheless.  Also difficult to measure, since I wasn't counting last year's tortilla chip consumption. 

8. Conquer my aversion to dusting
There have to be some upsides, right? 

9. Visit Hearst Castle
It's always been on my list, and it's only about 130 miles from where we live. 

10. Acknowledge that chewing gum will never be banned in the U.S., and I'll just have to live with that

11. Quit smoking
Made you look twice, huh?  No, I haven't started, and I'm not planning to.  But the point is that this one resolution is a surefire winner.  One resolution kept, ten to go...

Wishing you & yours a happy, healthy and extremely prosperous New Year.

The Problem with Persimmons

"Mulch!" I declared confidently, pretending that my thirty-seven years in London and New York had prepared me for overwintering a garden planted with exotics in California.  So mulch we did, hoping that our banana plants and trumpet tree and the other surprises in our inherited garden will breeze past the surprising frosts which began last week. 

As gardeners, Eric and I would win prizes more for enthusiasm than for expertise.  Fortunately for us, the landscaping that someone else decided upon before we bought the property leaves us very little to do except enjoy it.  Or so we first thought.

But as season gave way to season, it became apparent that there was more to this gardening lark than first met the eye.

The gopher appeared early on, creating irritating holes in our clover infested lawn.  Then came the squirrels, whose sense of entitlement with regards to our fig tree and blueberry bush I found deeply offensive.  Armies of ants laid waste to the grout between our patio bricks.  And in October, we developed a serious case of giant spiders, just in time for Hallowe'en. 

Eric's response was swift and decisive.  He decided to wage war on the pests. The gardening shelves of our garage are now filled with a toxic mix of Bug-B-Gon, Gopher Getter, Snail 'n Slug Killer and Weed Warrior.  Organic farming is all well and good for Wholefoods, but our garden mantra would better be described as a zero tolerance approach.

Our more immediate problem is the delightful persimmon tree in our side yard (pictured above) which is now groaning with fruit.  Now, it was a brilliant idea in theory to plant a persimmon.  The bright orange fruit looks fantastically festive at this time of year.  But what on earth to do with it all?  The tree will yield at least a gross of persimmons, yet most of the recipes I can find require just one cup of pulp. 

Short term, donations of boxes of fruit to family members have helped avoid persimmon pulp smearing our sidewalk.  It seems that December is likely to be filled with persimmon cookies, persimmon pudding, persimmon salads and persimmon chutneys.  Clementines don't stand a chance in the Christmas stocking stakes.  I'm even contemplating making jam (those of you who know me will appreciate how radical this is).  How lucky then, that persimmons are the fruit of the Gods, according to Greek mythology.  I'll need all the celestial culinary help I can get.

But, as my hairdresser said, when I was sharing my concerns of an imminent fruit downfall, "These are silk sheets problems".  In this age of uncertainty, she has a point.

On (American) Football

It took a long time for me to come round to the game that the rest of the world calls American Football.  Like many folks who grow up in Britain, I had a thorough disdain for a sport which appeared to be organized around commercial breaks, involve industrial strength padding and boast "athletes" who weighed over 300lbs.  In a bar in Brooklyn, I distinctly remember one of my girlfriends  attempting to explain the rules of the game, and my inability to comprehend the significance of a first down.

How things have changed.  Monday night football is now appointment television in our house.  As indeed is College Gameday, and most of Saturday and Sunday afternoons, if the weather is lousy.  I suspect that some of my interest in the game was developed when I realized that guacamole and chips were an integral part of the viewing process.  And that beer and wine never go amiss when shooting the Brees.  But somewhere along the way, I have come to know the successes and frailties of Moss, Ochocinco, Brady, the Brothers Manning and all the rest. 

It is ironic, then, that just as I have grown to like the game, questions are being asked about whether right minded folk should be watching it at all. 

This, after all, is a season in which a Rutgers player was paralyzed from the neck down after a tackle.  And without much thought, I can name three NFL quarterbacks with injuries right now.  The 49ers Smith is out with a shoulder injury, which prevented him from playing in London ten days ago (although I was glad to see that he got to make the trip - bet that was an uncomfortable plane ride).  Tony Romo  has a broken collarbone, and any forlorn hope that the Cowboys had of playing the Super Bowl in their fancy new stadium was crushed on Sunday after a sorry 45-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers.  And Brett Favre, the 41 year old "grandpa" of the NFL, has been hobbling on to the field with two fractures in his left foot.  As Sokolove puts it, in the NYT article above, "We wince.  Then we put it out of our minds".

Of course injury is a factor in just about any sport you care to mention.  And in the NFL, at least, the compensation for running the risk is in the millions of dollars. But throwing money at the problem doesn't resolve the ethical issues which surround it, and the increasing alarm over the number of concussions occurring on a weekly basis by kids playing in college (never mind the pros) makes me wonder.  Is this really all that different from boxing, if the potential effect is long term neurological damage?  Muhammed Ali may have been the greatest, but he also serves as a tragic example of what can happen after sustained hits to the head.

The NFL has imposed extra discipline this season, to counter the wave of negative press and the real concern of fans.  For the moment, I'm trusting that the new measures will lead to a less concussion-prone game.  And my family will be glad to hear that Thanksgiving will involve the usual doses of Cowboys and Lions games along with the turkey and cranberry sauce.  But I'm thinking about this.  And if you haven't read that article I mentioned up front, then I urge you to do so.

Election Day Musings

A few nights ago, we watched The Candidate, a movie made in 1972 with Robert Redford, about a guy who gets into politics for the right reasons, only to be overtaken by a phalanx of pollsters, media men and pundits.  What was remarkable about the movie was how fresh it seemed.  Apart from a few misplaced sideburns (and the complete absence of cellphones)  - the issues were the same, the soundbites were the same and the sorry smear tactics were - you guessed it - the same.

And on this midterm election day, you have to ask yourself, as the New York Times article did recently, Would You Run? 

At the federal level at least, it's not a very appealing proposition.  Let's face it, politicians usually place high on lists of top ten most despised professions.  Campaigning today involves massive fund raising, taking extreme partisan positions on any issue of importance ("to motivate the base") and digging up as much dirt on your opponent as you can feasibly find so that you can run attack ads aimed at destroying his or her credibility. 

Any candidate worth their salt will have a real desire to fix something very broken in our society (currently, the entire city of Washington DC is apparently deeply fractured, causing long time insiders to campaign on a platform of change).

Yet the reality is, of course, that most Congressmen and women have little or no opportunity, individually, to change much at all.  Instead, they must work collaboratively  - often across the aisle - to achieve any legislation.  Which results in legislative compromise, creating voter disgust, contributing to a whole new wave of candidates who think that they have the answers, and could do a better job.

Perhaps, given this merry-go-round of disillusionment it is not surprising that getting out the vote is such hard work.  Midterm elections typically produce a turnout of less than 40% of the voting age population.  It will be interesting to see if this one is any different. 

But the pollsters and media men and pundits are getting cleverer at manipulating those figures.  Over the weekend, I read a fascinating piece in the Times' Sunday Magazine, about how applying peer pressure can influence turnout.   And today, in the social laboratory that is Facebook, I am seeing it happening in realtime, as an online meter ticks up every time another Facebooker clicks to say that they voted.  The current tally is close to 6.5 million, and it is mesmerizing to watch how fast it is increasing.  

Whatever happens tonight, the political landscape will change.  It could be the carnage that The Onion predicts, or it could be the more measured outcome suggested by Five Thirty Eight.  Either way, by the time many of you are reading this, there will be some new sheriffs in town.

Let's hope that they have a better strategy for politics than going in with all their guns blazing.

Privacy is Dead

I smell a Pulitzer in the Wall Street Journal's recent coverage of digital media marketing techniques, "What They Know", a series on how  marketers are "scraping" data about consumers from our browsing history, our membership of social media sites and our purchasing history, and in some cases selling that data commercially or to politicians so that we can be more effectively targeted.  It should be required reading for anyone who ever opens a browser, and certainly it has interesting things to say about child safety, and tracking that takes place on sites for kids such as Club Penguin and Barbie.com (parents, click here).

The problem is, that (even if you've not read any of the articles in the series), you kinda knew this was happening anyway.

Anyone who has a Gmail account already knows that the ads they view are determined by the words they type into their e-mails.  Ditto Facebook, which spent the last ten months offering me ads for wedding dresses and bridal planners, doubtless based on my regular updates about our events.  I just checked what they are currently pushing (Volkswagen Jetta for me - although obviously, that will differ vastly for the rest of you folks) - and I'm not sure if that is because one of my friends "Liked" the Jetta, or because somewhere in the data mining they've done on me, they've found a reference to Lucky, my fabulous Volkswagen Beetle.

So what does it all mean?  The purpose of this post is not to encourage bunkerism, or suggest that a return to good old-fashioned paper and pen would be a good idea.  It's more to encourage friends and family (and the few hundred others who apparently read this blog occasionally) to get smart.  I've been dismayed recently by some of the posts from folks I respect that have appeared on Facebook or Linked In.  People I used to work with have posted pretty lurid details of running up bar tabs on work junkets that finished at 6am, only to go to work again at eight.  How can they be so reckless?  Never mind the ethics of whether that's how you should be spending your company's dollar...Do they really think that no-one connected to the company will see these posts?  Have they forgotten how many current, ex and future colleagues could be reading this?  Unfortunately for them, your online imprint is pretty much like an elephant.  It never forgets.  Earlier this year, HuffPo collated 13 incidents of folks who had gotten fired over their Facebook posts.  That's probably a drop in the bucket.  It happens.

I think part of the problem is the desire to present an interesting persona online.  But while most of us want to avoid being the boring Doreens who post such zingers as "Went to Starbucks today" or "I hate Mondays", we also need to find a healthy balance that avoids deeply racy or potentially compromising posts, just to impress our mates.  Think about that audience.  I'm friends with folks online with whom I haven't communicated in months, or in some cases, years.  There's only so much that they need to know about me.

Of course, for me, this is a particularly thorny issue, because as a marketer, I would be delighted to have access to this kind of rich data.  Targeting likely purchasers is the holy grail of marketing, and it has become ever more achievable in our new, information rich, world. But respecting customers is also a basic axiom of good marketing practice.  It's just not clear how many companies are really practicing that respect as they chase their next quarterly earnings goal.

Luxury is Back in Style

Only a few months back, I considered a post on coupon clipping, which the Wall Street Journal declared was the newest extreme sport.  But I'm here to tell you that luxury is back, with a vengeance.

It's not just that Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps debuted two years nearly to the day of Lehmann's collapse, or that on the real world Wall Street Citigroup (which is still part-owned by the Treasury) just hired a banker for $30 million.  It's more grass-roots. 

For example, my parents-in-law showed up for dinner last weekend in a brand new, sky blue Subaru.  A cousin has bought new wheels, too, and its not just my family members who are in on this.  The Washington Post reports that consumer spending is up, largely driven by new car sales.

Personally, I'm not convinced that we can yet say with perfect conviction that the economy has turned around.  But oh my, is there pent up demand.

Let's face it, coupon clipping may be a sound financial strategy, and yield some great bargains, but it simply ain't sexy is it?  (Which is why, dear reader, you escaped a longer post on that subject). But luxury, with its silk sheets, expensive shops, fabulous wines and gorgeous locations, decidedly is.

After two years of gloomy news, bank failures and tanking portfolios, it appears that Americans are in the mood to treat themselves again.  And I say, huzzah to that!

My own personal indulgence this fall combines two great pleasures, walking and wine.  In early November, as part of the Big Sur Food & Wine Festival, we will be going Hiking with Stemware.  What could be more fine than crunching through some leaves, wine glass in hand towards a delicious lunch at a winery?

Wishing you a luxurious October.  Bottoms up!

Happiness Index

"Mate acquisition" as an indicator of happiness? 

Like many people, I would struggle to point out Bhutan on a map.  But this tiny kingdom is responsible for one big idea, the measurement of Gross National Happiness.

It seems that I've been reading a lot about happiness recently.  Yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, I learned that the "magic number for happiness" - the salary that will keep most Americans happy, is $75,000.  Unless you live in New York, of course, where the number is $163,700!  The day before, in the New York Times, Lisa Belkin reported that Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (you remember, the pyramid that had food and shelter at the bottom and self-actualization at the top) has been challenged by a bunch of psychologists who argue that parenting should be the pinnacle with "mate acquisition" and "mate retention" following closely behind. (I think they will have trouble marketing that one).

And earlier this year, in an entire magazine article devoted to the issues surrounding the GDP as a measure of national progress (stick with me here), real academic credibility is being given to including happiness in a dashboard of national success indicators called the State of the USA.

Naturally, Facebook is in on the act.  They now have a Gross National Happiness Index of their own, culled from the positive and negative posts made every day, and which peaks on some predictable days in the U.S., including SuperBowl and, rather sweetly, Mother's Day.

But it seems to me that all of these efforts to track happiness may be somewhat missing the point, since the drivers for contentment are often so very personal.  It's been an incredibly happy year for me, for example, despite the fact that I quit my job, sold my house and moved cross country - all factors which normally show up on lists of stuff that will stress you out.  Of course, getting married (twice!) with scads of friends in tow helped.  And one person's multi $$$ salary may be entirely supplanted by someone else's satisfaction of doing something really worthwhile, that is not necessarily well paid.

It's with that in mind that Eric and I will soon travel down to Los Angeles  to say au revoir to good friends who have decided to pack up the good life and spend a year in Tajikistan (another place I needed to check on the atlas) working to help that country build its economy through tourism development.  I think they are hugely courageous and a bit mad.  But for them, this is just another way to find a fulfilling road...and I wish them very happy.

Garde Ta Foy

Not many brides go punting once on their wedding day, let alone twice.  But in my case, we had a wedding kickoff time of 4pm, and thus several hours to fill before the celebration began.  So the groom and best man persuaded me that I had time to give them a punting lesson before lunch.

They say that some things you never forget (riding a bicycle comes to mind), but it transpired that after 15 years of zero practice my punting was only marginally better than the beginners.  No matter.  The groom was determined to punt me along in my wedding dress later in the day (which he did, to universal acclaim), and the lesson proved invaluable in terms of avoiding major crashes.

Punting, if you've never heard of it, involves sitting in a long, narrow flat bottomed boat, and being propelled along by a  long wooden pole.  We made it a feature of the wedding, by inserting a punting party between the post-ceremony champagne and before dinner.  It was a huge hit.  In addition to being a perfect day for it, we had professionals managing the poles (much safer) - and it served as an excellent ice-breaker for the guests who did not yet know one another.

Perhaps one of the most memorable moments of the entire day came as our wedding party pulled into the quay, ready to disembark.  There were dozens of Cambridge citizens enjoying the sunshine with a glass of wine or a pint of beer sitting outside.  As we glided into the dock, and folks noticed how we were dressed, the entire quayside burst into a spontaneous round of applause.  For just a few minutes, we were celebrities, basking in the glow of flashing camera bulbs and the goodwill of complete strangers.  It was great.

Lest I lead you to believe that this was the best part - don't be fooled.  The entire wedding was magical. The weather gods smiled on us, the champagne was chilled to perfection.  The speeches were amusing, and blessedly brief.  The guests all looked glamorous, and, judging by the photos, were having just as much fun as we did.  It was perfection, and like all perfect things, exquisitely enjoyable, and impossible to convey in words that could possibly do it justice....

So I shall finish with this thought.  My college motto is "Garde Ta Foy".  It's old French, and the literal translation has long been hotly disputed.  The interesting thing is that it translates two ways, which at different points in my life, have been very relevant.  As a student, I always preferred the informal translation "Look after your liver", which seemed only too appropriate at the time, given the frequency of my presence in the college Bar.  But now, having been married in the college chapel, and walked under the crest with my husband, the other translation appeals: "Keep your faith".   It seems like good advice, at the beginning of a marriage...

Letting Go

We walked along the beach on Sunday, and saw dolphins arcing out of the water, pelicans hunting for dinner and a seal bobbing along some fifty feet from the shore.  And it struck me, this really ain't Manhattan.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but I had decided just a couple of days before that it was time to relinquish my 917 cell number.  My weary Blackberry Pearl decided about a month ago that it no longer wished to scroll left (making it difficult, although not impossible to navigate around the device).  It's been time to upgrade my phone for a while now, but this was the last straw.

No-one can accuse me of being an early adopter.  I activated my refurbished iPhone 3G on the same day that Steve Jobs announced the shiny new 4th generation version.  ("Refurbished" by the way, does not appear to mean second- hand - my phone was pristine in its box.  Instead, it seems to mean unwanted - as in a returned Christmas gift, which ATT can no longer sell as new, even though it has never been used.  Buying refurbished saved me $50).

And reader, although I know I am late to the party, I love it!  Urbanspoon was the first application I installed.  For the remaining un-Appled masses, who haven't heard about this, I should explain that this is a nifty little program that allows you to shake the phone, and be rewarded with a restaurant suggestion close to your current location.  Even more satisfyingly, given my upcoming travel plans, the shaking trick works in London, which should be very handy once the nephew and niece get fed up with the Tower or Buckingham Palace.  TripIt was second (handy to have my honeymoon plans at my fingertips), and I have spent way too much time at the app store on iTunes since the beginning of the week.

But the really big deal is that my cell number has changed, and with it, the last remnant of my New York life will expire on July 4th.  Which bizarrely, also happens to be the day after my wedding, when I'll also be letting go of my maiden name.  Not to mention the anniversary of some Independence thing.

In the meantime, I have to consider whether marrying an American means that I need to let go of some other allegiances, like my English-ness.  I guess I'll let you know, after the US - England World Cup game at the weekend.  Which reminds me, surely there's an app for that?  I better go check...

Rafting the Canyon - Part II

Only connect!  That was the message of EM Forster's novel, Howard's End, published 100 years ago.  How things have changed.  We now connect on a daily basis; to the internet to check our e-mail, to our friends on Facebook (even if connecting with them in person happens less and less) and via telephone, text and Twitter.  For me at least, it is bliss for a little to disconnect.

Being completely off the grid is part of my pleasure  when I am in the Canyon (or indeed anywhere where cell towers don't exist, or better yet, don't work).  It's an opportunity to get back to basics, restore equilibrium and have a true vacation from the stress and strain that we all shoulder on a day to day basis, whether we realize it or not.  But there are dozens of reasons to go, and I hope that my 2-part musings have at least somewhat whetted your appetite if this was at all on your agenda.

The river community in the Canyon is small,  interconnected and passionate about the place.  One of our guides was on his 130th trip and counting.  Another was married to Kristin Huisinga, one of the authors of the definitive plant guide to the area.  We were lucky enough to meet her late in our trip, when her motorboat trip (filled with Hopi Indians respecting sites in the Canyon sacred to their people) caught us up on our penultimate day.  There are dedicated geologists, wildlife and fish specialists and,  to my great pleasure, even poets.

This year, the book that everyone was talking about was by Amil Quayle .  He does a far better job than I can of conveying the immensity of the place and the intensity of the passions it evokes.  So let's finish up with his words instead of mine:

"I speak now of that Grand Canyon
which lies within each of us.  There
are pre-Cambrian rocks at the center,
the core, and talus from yesterday's fall;
marble and granite grown hard from the pressure and heat of heartbreak and
passion; crumbling sandstone, layer on layer of sediment, sentiment piled on over a lifetime's experience."

Rafting the Canyon - Part 1

I turned both ankles at about mile 2 of the seven mile hike down the Bright Angel trail into Grand Canyon.  Eric had gone ahead, bent on a mission to see Phantom Ranch, so the helping hands that got me up again were those of relative strangers.  These were some of the people with whom we would spend the next 9 days on the Colorado river.

The pain as I stood up was intense.  But I was pretty sure that neither ankle had sprained, although thoughts about how I would cope getting on and off boats in the sometimes harsh environment of the Canyon over the next few days were scudding through my head as I reassured everyone that I was fine.  At the next rest stop, I gulped down a couple of ibuprofen, again proffered by one of my walking companions. And while I set no records, I was proud to be the first woman of the group down at the beach, despite the mishap.

There's nothing like a rafting trip for getting to know folk.  You eat, camp, raft and hike together.  You bathe in the river, drink from the river (the water goes through a filtration process) and you pee in the river.  It's surprising how quickly this becomes normal - although it would be less than the truth to say it ever becomes comfortable.  Private time is a non-existent concept.  If you don't like someone, it's hard to escape them entirely, given the group dynamic.  Your only option is to watch closely to see which boat they elect to travel in each morning, and pick another.

If this sounds like a recipe for disaster (or perhaps for a new sort of no-holds-barred reality TV show), then to some extent you have the right picture.  People of all ages, from different geographies, political backgrounds and religious perspectives are thrown into five boats eighteen feet long and have to make do.  Did I mention that it costs thousands of dollars to do this?

And yet it is a self-selecting group.  Everyone traveling on the trip we just took knew that they wanted to see America's most spectacular natural wonder.  For some, it was a new variety of outdoorsy vacation.  For others, an item to be checked off  their bucket list.  For most, whatever their original motivation in going, it became the trip of a lifetime as we ran rapids through nearly a billion years of geologic history.
 
The Canyon is also a great leveler.  Money, possessions and stuff don't mean much down there.  Helping unload the boat, lending someone an arm to climb over a rock and slicing up onions for dinner become far more important.  No-one is interested in your temperature controlled wine vault in an environment where a beer chilled by the river feels like the best thing you ever drank at the end of each day. 

That first evening, as my ankles swelled up to tennis ball size, I started to benefit from the shared knowledge of our new community.  The guides recommended "icing" my ankles in the 50 degree water of the Colorado.  An energy healer worked her magic on my right foot, which proceeded to heal at a rapid pace. (The left one is still swollen 10 days later).  And I took a dubious combo of ibuprofen and boxed red wine as a sleep aid.



Each year, some five million visitors marvel at a small portion of the Grand Canyon from the rim.  We were privileged to be part of the 25,000 or so who see the Canyon from the river.
I'm not sure if the supermom from Colorado, or the businessman from Georgia or the couple from Florida will ever return to raft Grand Canyon again.  But I know we will.  One of the guides on our trip put it succinctly: "I'm an addict" she said. 

There are worse vices.

Forgive us our Trespasses

Is it trespass, I wonder, to enter land your taxes have supported without authority?  That's what we did on Sunday, when we wantonly bypassed a California sign at Butano State Park, telling us that the park was closed.

As rule-breaking goes, it was a fairly insignificant infraction.  We strolled past the unmanned Ranger hut (normal fee $6).  We would have been happy to hand over the cash, but there was nowhere to leave it.  Feeling somewhat furtive, we continued down the main road, passing a Park Service employee who was toiling away at blowing leaves.  She neither questioned our presence, nor hindered our progress.

We cut off onto a trail which had degraded significantly through six months of disuse, and (presumably) no upkeep.  The banana slugs had taken over.  The redwoods towered over us, unconcerned by the plight of California's inability to balance its books. 

In the hour or so that we spent there, we passed a few other folk who had ignored the inhospitable sign at the entrance.  Curt nods were exchanged - nothing like the normal camaraderie of fellow hikers.  Clearly, we were all worried that the others might be undercover cops or whistleblowers, ready to run us out of the park. 

We passed through Pescadero on our way home.  It's a small town, with a famous inn, Duarte's Tavern, a saloon straight out of a western (with real 19th century heritage), which happens to serve splendid straightforward American fare and fabulous pies.  A slice of ollalieberry pie to the good, we headed home.

It just happened that evening that PBS was showing a special on the life of David Brower: Monumental, in the run up to Earth Day this Thursday.  Brower is probably the most important environmentalist since John Muir, having run campaigns within and without the Sierra Club, most famously ensuring that no further dams would mar the Grand Canyon.  The scale of his achievements is extraordinary.  He was famously unwilling to compromise, which eventually meant that he ran afoul of some of the great organizations (including the Sierra Club) that  he led and served.

His passion to preserve the glorious natural beauty of the American west is the kind of legacy which we should all be lucky enough to leave.  And while I am certain that the great state of California could and should trim some bureaucratic fat, I am just as sure that cutting off access to our natural resources is a lousy way to do it.