We buried Levity this morning.

Ahmis made blueberry muffins from the blueberries she was picking just before Levity died and brought them up for us to have breakfast together. Then she called our neighbor, Joe, who graciously agreed to bring his tractor to dig Levity’s grave.

We brought Levity out, still in the wheelbarrow that Ken used last night to bring her down from the ridge. We eased her down into the hole, leaving her wrapped in her blanket, and put her favorite, saliva-saturated stuffed animal with her next to her head. I said a few inadequate words at Ahmis’ request. Before we had a chance to start burying Levity, Ahmis’ mom and partner arrived with flowers. There were more tears and comforting Mom hugs.

After a little bit of time, Ahmis put the few shovel fulls of dirt on Levity, and with a few more tears we started in on the work. It was a big hole and hot work as the sun broke through for a while.

It made me think of the countless beings that have been buried by hand – such hard, tiring work to make sure that the dead are properly honored and interred. Graves that are dug by hand wound and re-heal the earth in a way that never leaves it the same as it was before. It leaves a scar that marks the passing of something too important or precious to be left above-ground at the mercy of the elements. It was a good and fitting way to close Levity’s chapter in this world.

We positioned her under the cherry tree with her head pointed toward the pond so that she can keep watch over this property that she loved so much and felt so protective of, including a great view of the dock where her nemesis – the blue heron – would always come and sit and mock her.

Tova said his goodbyes. He’s been really subdued all day and not his usual smiling self. It’s clear he’s missing her and feeling that his beloved pack has been irretrievably altered.

Amira handled it so well. She watched intently every step, and kept saying “We’re going to miss Levity” (which she’s also repeated her and there throughout the day). She used a little scoop to help us cover Levity’s “outside body” and brought some dandelions of her own to lay on the grave with the flowers that Ahmis’ mom brought with her. I’m so glad we included her in everything and walked her through it. She was really tuned into our sadness and laughter, and seemed satisfied when it was all over that she knew where Levity was.

We’ve been feeling all day like we should see Levity moving in the reeds at the pond’s edge or peering in through the window in our door asking to come in and sniff around. She was such a presence here, always walking the property and poking in its nooks and crannies, possessively keeping its space clear for her pack. It’s strange how the property feels altered, empty, unfamiliar.

One final note. One of Ahmis’ girlfriends said that she wondered if Levity was killed by a stag. We’ve seen a young stag around here this summer, and Ahmis said she heard thrashing and a few strange barks from Levity before her final howl. When she walked the spot where Levity died this morning, she couldn’t find any broken branches or sticks that looked like they caused the wound to her throat. I don’t know if that was the cause or not, but it would also be fitting.

Levity, Ahmis’ “St. Dane”(part Great Dane, part St. Bernard), a sweet and loyal companion to Ahmis and an honorary member of our little Moment family, died tonight. Ahmis isn’t quite sure about the details of it, but it appears she was running full-tilt through the woods and accidentally impaled herself on a branch which killed her almost immediately and before Ahmis could reach her. We weren’t home, but our very kind neighbors – Ken and Cindy – came over to help retrieve her formidable body from the woods and be with Ahmis until we got home. She was five days shy of her fifth birthday. We are all grieving her tonight.

We first met Levity when we came to see the property as a potential place to rent. She escorted our old Volvo wagon up the gravel road on the driver’s side of the car. I was driving, and her head was level with mine through the window which was impressive and kinda startling. She gave us her prompt seal of approval and hit it off immediately with Tova.

We’ve watched her for Ahmis numerous times now. She came in the house with us while Ahmis was at work and we’ve cared for her while Ahmis was out of town. She was a regular part of our family pretty quickly. She’d spend the afternoons curled up on our bed in the sun or sprawled out on our carpet in the living room while Amira played around, and often on, her. We’ve all come to love her goofy head tuck and rolls, her ridiculous talky rumbles when she wanted to be noticed or go outside, her incessant nibble/nursing fetish on her toys that left them soaked with saliva, and her insistent attempts to be a lap dog despite being the size of a small horse and weighing about 100 lbs.

She and Tova formed a strong pack early on. They’ve had all kinds of adventures – diving in and out of bushes, chasing away the local wildlife, getting phenomenally filthy wading around in the dark mud at the edge of the pond, playing tug of war with their stuffed animals and rope toys. We’d let Tova outside and he would go sit down next to her kennel companionably and wait for us to let out his “long-legged supermodel girlfriend” as we dubbed her. He’s been subdued and close to us tonight after getting a chance to sniff over her body down in the shed. He’s going to miss his playmate.

Amira loved, and I mean, loved Levity. When we first moved here, she was so taken with this enormous sleek black horse of a dog that stood head and shoulders over her. She loved playing with her, and we caught her more than once reclining against Levity’s curled up side on the living room carpet, watching TV. Just yesterday, she was using Levity as a kind of canine aircraft carrier, running her airplane toy up and down her body preparing for take-off. Levity loved her, too. She would take that downward-dog play stance with Amira and they would tug of war with her stuffed animals or dance around the yard in gales of giggles while Amira tried to get the toy back. In some ways, she’s been emotionally closer to Levity than to Tova.

It was hard to break the news to her tonight. This is the first furry family member she’s lost. We didn’t really know what to tell her. We’d thought we might have to time to prepare her for Freeni dying since he seems to be somewhat in decline, and we had no clue that it would be Levity who was so young and vital.

She didn’t fully understand why Mama and Ahmis and Daddy were so sad, and she kept saying “I’m sorry” like she was trying to make up for something she’d done wrong, even though we kept reassuring her it was OK and she was being totally awesome. I took her down to see Janece and Ahmis and Levity’s body. She said, “She’s not blinking, Mama.” And then later, “Her legs aren’t moving.” She petted Levity’s head a little bit and tried to push it to get her to respond. I could tell it was a bit overwhelming because she asked to go back up to the house.

Tonight, before bed, we said goodnight to her star balloon in the brilliant night sky, and she picked a new star for Levity. After we’d put her to bed, she knocked on the door again and wanted to get an extra long hug and an extra big kiss. When I went in, she said, “Levity is dead?” I said, “Yes, sweetheart.” She asked, “Why did Levity die?” I said, “I don’t know, baby. Sometimes accidents like this just happen. Did you know that we have outside bodies that look like us and inside bodies that shine like stars? Well, Levity’s outside body died, but her inside body is shining like a star and went up to be with your star balloon in the sky.” After some more cuddling and reassuring hugs and kisses, I left her to go to sleep. She didn’t make any more sounds, but I noticed later that she turned her light on to help herself go to sleep.

We held a wake for Levity tonight. We sat around Ahmis’ table and cried and laughed and hugged together. Tomorrow we bury Levity under her favorite cherry tree in front of the house, facing the pond where she can be eternally vigilant to keep the herons from landing on the dock.

I’m feeling whiplash. We got the call from Ahmis in the parking lot of the grocery store, not even an hour and a half after talking with her and laughing at the dogs’ antics in the yard. It’s almost too much to take in, how one day can be filled with so much joy and sadness. You can’t prepare for life – you can only experience it full tilt.

Full tilt. That’s how Levity played, relaxed, ran. Watching her stretch out in that astounding long-legged gallop across the field always gave me that same sense of exhilaration as watching fireworks or hearing Amira in full-on gales of laughter – joy at the speed of life. It’s fitting that she died at the same speed she lived. I hope I’m not too much of an old dog to learn how to live at least some of my life that way.

Rest in peace, Levy-girl. We were lucky to have shared nine months with you, and we miss you.

When my brother Stephen was here, we chatted some about Obama and politics and he expressed some concern that I was a bit too in the tank for the guy, perhaps a bit too starstruck to notice that he’s just a politician. I admit I’m a big fan – that’s easy. What I tried to point out to him was that while I am starstruck, that doesn’t necessarily mean I have blinders on about the guy, his limits, his ambition, his shortcomings. I fully expect that he will let me and America down as President from time to time.

But what I felt lay behind Stephen’s critique was a bit of institutionalized cynicism that has calcified onto American politics. The increased glare of the media has both exposed important abuses of our national trust (Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Keating 5 scandal, Iraq) and at the same time encouraged politicians to muddle, dumb-down and play TV personalities instead of focusing on their governance. So, I can understand where the cynicism can come from and how a candidate like Obama, who plays so well in person and on TV, can feel vacuous, a little too made-to-order / too-good-to-be-true, and his enthusiastic supporters can feel like a mob of overly-excitable sycophants.

But a glance at history that I got tonight gives weight to the idea that the public CAN be a little star-struck and emotionally connected to politicians who merit it, and that maybe they SHOULD be.

Janece and I watched “Amazing Grace“, a movie about William Wilberforce – an English politician in the early 1800s who is responsible for that country abolishing slavery and also championing a host of wonderful progressive policies like alleviating poverty, prison reform, founding the Society for the Prevention Of Cruelty to Animals, and other great efforts as well as being personally extremely charitable and generous. And yet, according to his bio, he was very much a man of his time and took political positions that we would call misguided today. He was at one point in favor of a temporary suspension of habeas corpus, he was excessively worried about sedition and voted for the supression of free speech on a few occasions, he disliked unions, and didn’t think much of activist women in politics.

However, his tireless efforts were responsible for increasing the well-being and dignity of countless lives and he moved England forward in a big way toward being a better society. By any standard he would be considered the kind of person anyone would adopt as a hero.

There are interesting parallels between him and Obama. He was very charismatic, very connected to the dignity of ordinary and lower-class people, was influential in politics quite young, was unwaveringly progressive in his approach, was devoutly and publicly Christian, and above all wasn’t afraid to use the system to achieve the values he held so personally and deeply.

Here’s an example of that last point: Apparently, slavery in the 1800s was a major economic lubricant to English society. It was the engine that was at the foundation of large parts of the economy. According to the director of the film, abolishing slavery in England would have been like us abolishing oil with that kind of economic impact.

The way that Wilberforce and his allies finally undercut this massive economic foundation of institutionalized slavery was two-fold. First, he partnered with Thomas Clarkson, a man extremely skilled in public mobilization, to educate and change the public mindset from indifference to indignation about slavery’s cruelty. Second, he engineered a tactic that equated slaver ships with privateers, which gave the Royal Navy the right to intercept and board the ships as illegal traders. Together with a neutral stance by the Crown, this action gutted the profitability of slave trading enough to dislodge pro-slavery MPs in the Parliament and bring in enough new blood with anti-slavery sentiment to pass an abolition and emancipation policy.

As a master politician, it’s clear he used political tactics and backroom deals to patiently maneuver around his opponents in pursuit of his progressive ideals. Obama also has this capacity. I thought about that when reading this fascinating little tidbit about how Obama and the Dems politically boxed in McCain during these bailout negotiations. From the article:

Obama then jumped in to turn the question on his rival: “What do you think of the [insurance] plan, John?” he asked repeatedly. McCain did not answer.

One Republican in the room said it was clear that the Democrats came into the meeting with a “game plan” aimed at forcing McCain to choose between the administration and House Republicans. “They had taken McCain’s request for a meeting and trumped it,” said this source.

Congressional aides from both parties were standing in the lobby of the West Wing, unaware of the discord inside the Cabinet room, when McCain emerged alone, shook the hands of the Marines at the door and left. The aides were baffled. The plan had been for a bipartisan appearance before the media, featuring McCain, Obama and at least a firm statement in favor of intervention. Now, one of the leading men was gone.

~ “How McCain Stirred A Simmering Pot” by Jonathan Wiseman, Washington Post

(Which kind of explains why McCain came off as so pissed at Obama during the debates.)

To my point: Politicians and goodness are not incompatible. They and the work they do are imperfect. Their ambition, high self-regard, sometimes regrettable associations, and bad decisions are all messily mixed in with the wonderful long-lasting and necessary policies they are elected to craft. They are not saints, but as history shows, even those we revere as saints were not always saintly and were often lambasted by the press/public, and yet left a shining legacy.

Like William Wilberforce, there really ARE political heroes, people who carry in their DNA a sense of service and a generous vision for our society, and sometimes we are lucky enough to see them coming. I believe that, for all his flaws, Obama is just such a person — a good, spiritual, thoughtful, highly intelligent, highly decent man who can transcend mere executive competence and restore our faith in ourselves and the world’s faith in our ideals and leadership.

So, why not get a little enthusiastic?

Frankly, there’s lots of better stuff to ponder by actual smart people elsewhere in the blogosphere and pundits with fancy pants insta-reaction-o-meters. Here’s some good stuff to browse: Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan, Daily Kos, Ambinder.

My raw impression afterwards was that it was a debate between equals. Obama definitely didn’t win the gold star, but he was tough and substantive and serious. (And, obviously, recent history has shown him to be right with former statesman/ambassadors declaring his no-precondition talks with our enemies to be the correct approach, Iraqi leaders telling us his plan for withdrawal is correct, and Bush now adopting very similar stances on everything from Pakistan to Iraq to talks with world leaders.)

Going in, the polls I follow said that Obama had to lay to rest any doubts that he could be a decisive and thoughtful Commander In Chief. He clearly succeeded tonight by pulling the chair out from under McCain’s claim that he’s better on foreign policy. His presidential behavior over this last week in the middle of all of McCain’s drag-queen level histrionics really set the stage well for his competent demeanor tonight and resulted in some well-deserved big kudos from independent and undecided voters who overwhelmingly declared him the winner.

In the middle of our national drama, it struck me again tonight how much we need a capable, drama-less President (with a capital P) like him right now.

Quietly, tirelessly, doggedly, without hysterics or outrageous stunts, he has fought his way up in less than two years from essentially complete political obscurity to being our next President (it’s gonna happen) — someone that voters feel is really and truly up to the job.

He has taken enormous hits from the press, from fellow Dems like the Clintons, from the GOP, and he’s simply put his head down, learned more, performed better, made good choices with the unexpected circumstances he’s been handed, and in his own words “worked twice as hard”. He’s taken all of it to come back and defeat enormously popular opponents with many millions more dollars and power than himself in large part by helping ordinary people believe in their own political influence again. And he’s done it without any serious loss of equanimity and poise. It’s astonishing.

And isn’t that the leadership style America needs right now? The shitpile we’re buried in right now is so deep as a country that the only way out will be in taking small, focused, well-executed, thoughtful, tireless steps — one at a time — until we can look back and see the worst is over. And who better to lead us in that than a man with both the savvy and relentless vision to have pulled it off over and over in his career and this crazy high-profile race?

One more thought. I really liked these pictures of him with Michelle after the debate.

There’s an interesting shift in his being when he is with her, a more relaxed and centered vibe that comes out in these cool moments like tonight or when they did the fist bump at his primary victory speech. He knows she’s super capable, 150% reliable, and that she’s got his back – both for critique and support. This article by a marriage counselor couple talks about how great it will be to have them as the first couple because of the great example they’ll be for married couples and families all over the US. I have to agree.

McCain’s weird little campaign suspension ploy

Sarah Palin’s Couric interview

I tried to watch this interview, but I was so embarrassed for Sarah Palin that I had to turn it off after she “answered” the first question. Her Alaskan political maneuvering show her to be plenty Machiavellian and hard-core about how she deals with political enemies, so I know I shouldn’t feel sorry for her. But, geez…. What were they thinking?

Since the McCain campaign has utterly tried to shut themselves away from the media, and de facto, the American people, by cutting off any serious and sustained press Q&A, let’s hear it for the TV hosts (The View, Letterman), interviewers (Couric) and guests who have taken it upon themselves to give this Palin nonsense the peeling it deserves. Without getting personally nasty, they’ve starkly exposed McCain’s pick and Palin’s floundering for what it is. Take it away, Sharon Osbourne:

Janece on why Evangelicals like Sarah Palin

I just read this post tonight and I think it’s really good. Janece gets at the confusion I feel about why in the heck so many Evangelicals are so excited about Palin when she falls so short of Evangelical ideals as a political leader.

McDonalds Hamburgers

Think you know how a McDonald’s hamburger looks after 12 long years on a shelf? Think again. Creepy.

I heard a fascinating podcast from the Diane Rehm show today while I was working. It was an interview with Laurence Tribe,  widely-respected Professor Of Constitutional Law at Havard Law School whose students have included Barack Obama, Kathleen Sullivan and John G. Roberts (currently Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court).  Tribe argued for Gore before the Supreme Court in “Bush v. Gore” case in the 2000 election and he’s currently serving as legal advisor to the Obama campaign. (His assessment of Obama: “..he’s the best student I ever had.”)

He was talking about his new book “The Invisible Constitution” in which he discusses the notion that many of the important Constitutional debates we are having today – abortion, torture, the limits of executive power – are not even in the Constitution. He says that the writers of the Constitution purposefully did not try to make the document an exhaustive guide that covered every conceivable circumstance, first because that was impossible (what could they have known about Internet privacy?) and second because they wanted the document to be a living and vital part of the American conversation as the nation grew.

And indeed it has been. Amendments have been added and revoked, arguments have swirled and been contextualized over and over again as our national and cultural landscape has shifted. Some of these conclusions have become actual Amendments, and some have merely guided future decisions.

What struck me about this was the mentioned the continual argument he has with Justice Scalia, one of the most conservative Justices on the Court. Scalia is a conservative and constructionist — that is, he seeks to apply the text of the Constitution as written when considering a ruling. He feels that it’s dangerous to apply interpretive methods to the Constitution and seeks to be more literal about his interpretation. And yet, as Tribe says, he and any other Justice readily admits that there are a vast amount of Constitutional rulings that are based on precedents guided by the Constitution but not in it, even though Scalia and other conservatives castigate more interpretive decisions as “activist”.

I found this fascinating because this same struggle completely overlays the tug-of-war in the Christian church. There are literalists who call the Bible an “instructional manual for life” with the expectation that every word of it is equally valid and true and that it is a complete rulebook for Christians on everything from culture to science to daily behavior. They view more interpretive approaches as morally suspect, as potentially dangerous, as not rigorous with or committed to “absolute truth”.

And yet even the most vocal literalists take their own liberties with Scripture – elevating the importance of certain books above others, contextualizing away certain passages that have awkward or no longer relevant cultural meanings even if they are written as a direct command from God, and so on. Even the act of trying to definitively say “this IS what the Bible says” is an interpretive act because it is impossible to overlay our cultural background onto a book that was written in cultures and understandings too ancient to understand, whether or not we understand the language.

As someone with a liberal political and spiritual outlook, it seems like good common sense to me to not try and contort reality to fit some literal interpretation of these important documents — the Constitution, the Bible — especially since trying to pin down consensus on what a “literal” translation would be is nigh impossible. I’m OK with the idea that these important truths that we build our spiritual and social lives on are sometimes unclear or not black and white. I have more faith in people’s commitment to seriously wrestle with these issues than any single conclusion they might draw.

But I know that many Christians and conservatives do not. They feel the need for absolutes, for clear divisions, for unassailable conclusions that must be adopted by everyone. Open-ended, unanswerable dilemmas and questions leave them feeling uncomfortable. The black and white answers that make them feel protected make me feel claustrophobic and trapped.

Where does that hardwiring in us come from that draws us to look at life from one or the other end of this spectrum?

And not in a happy “thanks for the shout-out” kinda way.

Courtesy of The Stranger’s blog.

Our king bed, that is. We sold it Sunday to a lovely Christian couple who live down by Olympia so that we could round up some money for some dental work we both need. The bed is a pillow-top Tempurpedic memory foam bed, and weighs a frickin’ ton. We helped them get it onto their trailer since the guy recently had back surgery (which is why they were buying the bed) and couldn’t help.

Anyway, the point of the rambling intro is to say that as they drove away, Amira cried about the bed going away and she mentioned it again today when she saw the big empty space where it used to be. Janece and I hadn’t even considered that Amira might be affected by it leaving. We weren’t all that attached to it, and just figured it wouldn’t be a big deal to her either until we started thinking about it from her point of view.

We got that bed in the last few months of Janece’s pregnancy. It was a lifesaver in helping her rest and easing her back and pelvic strain. So, it’s the only bed Amira’s ever known us to sleep on and I’m sure it has a lot of conscious and unconscious associations for her.

When she was a baby, she slept between us. We set up a little co-sleeping bed in the center surrounded by pillows to keep us away from her and her from rolling out. We had to whisper to keep from waking her up and we didn’t really get all that much sleep because it was a tad awkward. It was also when we first became aware that she was tuned into us.

One night as Janece was whispering to me, I heard Amira’s head turn toward Janece, making that hair-on-pillow sound. Scrch. I whispered back, and Amira’s head turned to me. Scrch. Then back for Janece’s reply. Scrch. Seeing our opportunity for some fun at her expense, we started purposely trading loud nonsense whispers back and forth. Scrch. Scrch. Scrch. Scrch. We were dying with laughter.

There have been a lot of great moments on that bed with Amira. When I was working nights, we’d have regular pillow fights in the morning once Janece woke up a bit. It’s where Amira first met Neh-neh-neh, a little contrarian hand-puppet I worked up one morning while we were playing. She and I have played jungle vines and flying girl where I’d lift her up or she’d climb my legs.

It made me think of my own parent’s bed. I’m one of eight kids, so as a way to carve out some kind of private sanctuary in a house saturated with kids, my parents made their bedroom largely off limits.  However, I do remember as a young kid getting up on the bed with them if I’d had a bad dream or felt sick. I remember how big their bed (probably a queen) looked and how my head barely came up over the top of it. I remember the glossy black nylon double sleeping bag they used as a bedspread that had vignettes of grizzly bears printed on the flannel fabric liner inside.

Their bed did, and does, have it’s own vivid place in my early memories, so I can get Amira’s consternation at seeing it leave. Not only that, but she’s at the age now where every inanimate object has it’s own personality and story to tell. It’s a big deal to have a familiar friend leave like that without any warning.

So, goodbye, King Bed. Thanks for being a comforter for Janece, a place of rest and important conversation for she and I, and a stage where Amira grew into being herself and we grew into being a family. Carry our good memories in your memory foam and add their sweetness to the new memories created by the family of good folk that you’ve ended up with. Provide them with a safe place of whispers, cuddles, hugs, giggles, tears, and joy, just like you did for us.

Here’s the short version of what you’re about to read: The party was satisfying and wonderful in every way I can think of — family and friends, food, fun. I can’t think of a way I would have rather spent my time marking the milestones of Amira’s 4th (and arguably most important) birthday to date, and our 15th wedding anniversary.

I was dog tired after getting everything ready and already being significantly short on sleep. But I told Janece to be sure to get me up when Amira got up so I could see her reaction. And it was the best “Christmas In September” response we could have hoped for. She was blown away by the streamers and balloons and banners and bounced around all morning asking “can we start the party now can we start the party now please please can we can we?!?!?” She had to make do with playing with her lion balloon, who replaced the legendary star balloon…

We had about 4 hrs to prep for everyone’s arrival, so we dashed around doing the final cleaning and prep we weren’t able to get to prior to the event. I made a last minute run to the local dollar store (GREAT recommendation – thanks, Ahmis!) to get some prizes and party favors (and a speeding ticket!), and I saw a few things for Amira that I couldn’t resist – a fairy hat and a set of fairy wings. She totally dug them both, although, not being much of a hat person, that soon got ditched in favor of the wings.

But I did get a pic of her just before everyone started arriving.

We were pretty proud of our decorating job. We strung streamers, balloon clusters and a “Happy Birthday” banner over the bar, and decorated up the side of the stair case with some lackluster streamer wrapping and more balloon clusters. We used 40 large balloons all told, but we still have 144 left that we were going to use for a “build a balloon animal” game that we didn’t end up doing in all the hustle and bustle. Probably just as well – the balloon “jellyfish” we made that’s sitting behind Amira in the pic above was huge and it was only 8 balloon. 144 balloons probably would have movement impossible.

The first people arrived. Nana and Papa came over from Lynnwood, Ahmis (we’ve now dubbed her our “friend-lord” instead of “landlord”) brought some delicious Thai stir-fry, and in a cool surprise, our neighbor Robert who walks through the property on his way to hike the ridge behind us every day dropped by for a half-hour “hello” and Ahmis’ mom and partner – Jody and Jay – came to the party bearing gifts and some deliciously spicy enchiladas. It was super great to have them there.

We didn’t get any great pics of them, sadly, but some new friends we made through Ahmis were able to make it — Ann and her tween-aged daughter Zoe. Amira immediately adopted Zoe as the resident rock star and Zoe graciously entertained Amira upstairs whilst the rest of us chatted and noshed. Best of all, our long-time friends Sky and Anne showed up with their kids Ave and Isaiah as well as our long-time friend Scott. They braved a 3 hr trip (driving, ferry ride and waiting for ferry) to get here. It was phenomenal that they were able to come and Amira and Ave had a great time together.

After a round of intros and delicious food and lots of great conversation, we got down to serious party business, starting with “Pin The Tail On The Dollar Store Donkey”. Here’s me helping Ave get started toward the donkey (even though it kinda looks like a Guantanamo Youth Corps interrogation training session):

It turns out that Anne won. Sky nailed the tail placement, but Anne did a Robin-Hood-split-the-arrow move and put her tail right on top of his. We took a vote, and Anne won unanimously. (Sky’s response: “If I’d known this was going to be a popularity contest, I would have worked the room a bit more, made some campaign promises…” ). Anne got the “Cool Kid Of The Day” hat and sunglasses prize which was immediate co-opted by the girls:

Then, on Ann’s wise advice, it was time for presents before the sugar cake-ice-cream-punch trifecta, because “you don’t want to try and focus a kid on opening presents with all that sugar in her system”. True dat. Amira showed some great paper-tearing technique. The haul included two large animal lounging rugs (bear and lion), a My Pretty Pony rock band bus, a toy necklace, and some great books. In the hubbub, we missed getting photos but we’ll try and get some pics of the loot with Amira, especially the cool animal rugs. Here she is wearing her necklace (thx Ann and Zoe!). Note the Dollar Store Donkey in the background:

Nana and Papa getting a kick out of watching their favorite (ok, only) granddaughter open their gift (thx for the lovely books!):

After the presents we all donned party hats and got ready for the Entrance O’ The Cake. Side note: Neil never wears anything that will make him stick out. But did he don a smiley face party hat to show his grandparental love in action? You’d better believe miracles can come true:

We didn’t get a pic of the cake, but luckily someone caught Amira’s reaction to it and us singing her the birthday song:

Amira was immediately so comfortable with Scott that she was climbing all over him and showing off all her cool stuff. Scott and Sky confirmed that he’s a kid magnet – pretty much any kid treats him the same way whether they know him or not. Here he is showing some party favor love after singing the birthday song:

Tova got his own hat too, but he wasn’t feeling all celebratory about it for some reason:

“I don’t have to endure this senseless humiliation for another whole year, right….? Right….?”

Amira’s hasn’t really worked out the kinks in her for-the-camera smile quite yet. Here she is with her Nosferatu impression:

And here she is in a temporary post-present low:

A background theme to all the four year old glee and hoopla is that Janece and I are celebrating our 15th anniversary this year with all the accompanying lows and highs that has entailed. 15 years. It’s hard to put into any kind of words what that journey has meant and the places it’s taken us. Our actual anniversary date is on the 25th and I’ll write more about it then, but suffice it to say that I can hardly wait for the next fifteen. Here’s all the Moments (minus Freeni) checking out the anniversary cake, which said, simply, “Yay Us! 15 years”:

Here I am playing Sugar Daddy Dope Dealer. Don’t mess with me in the middle of a drug transaction:

Some of the early arrivals started trickling out of the party, but we had a great time finishing out the evening with Sky, Anne, Scott and the kiddos. Here’s Anne and Isai:

Amira with the Ghost Of Birthdays Past:

A word about dollar store pinatas – who knew that they were built of military-grade cardboard? The kids whacked at the thing for a good solid 15 minutes, as did Isai (via Sky), and it wasn’t given an inch. Sky finally cut loose on it but all he could do was break the hook that connected it to the rope. He had to end up harpooning it on ground shouting “Die! Die!” and then flinging it about by hand to shake out the candy for the youngsters. I guess that’s what you get from a dollar store — stuff that’s either too cheap to hold together for very long, or stuff that’s supposed to break immediately but that you can’t get into without a hacksaw and welding torch.

Ahmis came by after a bit and we played some serious Chinese yo-yo wars. Sky and Scott got pretty good with their aim. I got the hang of it after a bit, but my Floating Crane technique was no match for Sky’s Drunken Fly style. A bit of trivia: Scott said that he used to get so good at shooting bugs with rubber bands that he could lie in his bed and pick them off on the ceiling. That’s ninja level skill in my book.

After they all left, we ended up the night sitting at the table with Ahmis fooling around with party beads and chatting until 11pm or something. It was a perfect low-key way to end a happy day.

It felt really fitting to end the evening with long-time and new friends. This is a year of big changes for us, and in the uncharted path that’s ahead of us it’s comforting to feel a continuity of love and connection going back with people that have known us from before we were married and to feel the future we’re building together both as friends and parents – to see our kids being able to share in those treasured and new streams of life and relatiopnship. I count myself very fortunate to have enjoyed the company of those who came, to have felt the love from those who couldn’t be with us but who wanted to be, and to have a foretaste of the milestones we’ll share together in the future.

Today’s the big day. We’ve never thrown a party for Amira or any of our anniversaries, so we’re trying our hand at it today. We ran around for 5 hrs or somesuch, looking for all kinds of party goods that wouldn’t break our oh-so-slim budget. Thanks to Ahmis, we found a great dollar store that had a good toy selection to keep Amira entertained whilst we purchased our streamer/balloon paraphernalia. She ended up with some type of dinosaur figurine we couldn’t identify who she gave the rather genteel name of “Chloe”, and some stickers and a little book for the car, and we got a lot of cheap party stuff for under $40 – win/win.

Janece and I are super excited. After Amira hit the hay, we spent the next hours baking cakes, cleaning up, blowing up balloons and hanging streamers and banners. The party corner looks HOT. We’ll post some pics up later today or something after the party-goers head home. We even put together a big balloon jellyfish kinda thing with 9 large balloons and a streamer tail that’s pretty sweet. It feels a little like Christmas in September. I can hardly wait to get her reaction in the morning.

Tiring day, and I’ve only had two 2-hour spells of sleep in the last 36 hrs so I’m running on fumes. But it feels kinda worth it right now and I know it will in the morning when I see the Person light up…

Too tired to think or write much. I’ve been up all night with a new design for a client and I’m beat.

I lost money on this. A lot. Again. I have a pathological aversion to dumbing down my work, even when the client has tighter budgets. I hate the thought of a design out there with my name on it that looks less than interesting. It’s cost me a lot of money over the years. Maybe when I finally get back to work, I’ll have some relief from my own taskmaster instincts.

Kinda like the design, tho. Makes me want to redo my own blog.

On top of the fiscal collapse of the last few days, Janece found out today that our bank, Washington Mutual, is for sale for pennies on the dollar. It looks like Wells Fargo and Citigroup are the interested parties on the purchasing end.  Lovely. Both companies were featured in Maxed Out as predatory lenders. And it turns out that WaMu is in deep because of that ol’ reliable – Greed. WaMu was a part of the questionable home loan frenzy of the last few years. If WaMu doesn’t get bought out, then it may need to get bailed out by the FDIC’s rapidly dwindling rainy day fund.

Did I mention the article in the New York Times today about the US Supreme Court no longer having the same influence on world justice that it once had? (From the article: “…in cases concerning equality, liberty and prohibitions against cruel treatment…’they [foreign courts] tend not to look to the rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.’”)

Did I mention that Russia is making noises about taking back parts of the Ukraine – a NATO country that we are sworn to protect as allies – and that they could, in theory, do that because we have NO military leverage any more, mostly from our military being broken by two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and our European NATO allies being addicted to their oil?

I know that public figures have to speak very carefully about slides in our financial system to avoid sparking panic and runs on banks. I know that to say the words “torture” would mean we’d face the embarrassing spector of war crimes trials for a former US President (Bush, for violating Geneva Convention treaties). I know that govt leaders have to be circumspect about our standing in the world in order to continue appearing tough.

But you know, it’s not really a secret anymore. We’re deeply in debt and oil addiction to countries we like to preach at like China and Saudi Arabia. We have no moral standing since the rest of the world now knows we’re OK letting torture and secret prison camps get implemented in our names. We have a broken military that is toothless, and an administration that has been provoking and strengthening formerly negligible powers like Russia and Iran.

We’re not going anywhere anytime soon, and our collapse would be too disastrous for the rest of the world – for their own survival they have to prop us up somewhat until we can get on our feet again. But will our slide be enough for us, this election, this next 8 years, and beyond for the next decades, to come to our senses?  Like an alcoholic that’s hit bottom, do we have enough left standing to pick ourselves up, regain our fiscal and moral and communal sanity, and build a nation that is wiser and more vital? Or are we destined to slump down in a boozy haze of ennui and self-pity and consumer addiction and fake patriotism and watch as more trial-hardened and determined nations rise to take our place?

I’m happy to say that we and Sabu dodged a bullet today. Janece and I sat with him while he lay soaking up the sun and deliberated about what to do. We ran down the list of what we’d seen since yesterday — he’s been grooming, he’s eaten some, he’s kept hydrated, he’s able to negotiate stairs (going up) pretty well. Something about him gave us enough pause to decide to wait a bit.

I’m glad we did. Tonight, he’s doing much better. He’s still walking like a drunk sailor in a typhoon, but he’s mobile and able to get to some of his favorite places in the house. His eyes look way more focused and tonight he came over to me with his tail up – the first we’ve seen that in 48 hours.

I don’t think that he’ll be back to “normal’ in any sense of the word and there’s still a high risk of further strokes, but we’ll do what we can to get him strong again on our limited budget. In the meantime, it’s enough that he’s still around and we’re both glad that we were able to suss out that he wasn’t quite ready to go yet this morning. After my grim prognosis last night, it’s a relief to be wrong and to have him with us.

Natalie, Amy and all – thx so much for your support and solicitousness…

Speaking of back from the dead, it looks like the government had to rescue AIG to the tune of $85 billion dollars. Burns me up.

We watched “Maxed Out” tonight. It was heartbreaking how the predatory practices of these disgusting companies has torn apart people’s lives – leading literally to people’s deaths from despair at not being able to afford their bills. It’s astoundingly grotesque that the CEOs and other idiots that fomented and are responsible for these mortgage lending practices have walked away with enormous Enron-style payouts in their pockets and literally left our government (ie. US!) holding the bill. We, the taxpayers, are getting screwed on both ends.

McCain MUST NOT be allowed to take office. With his record and the pressure coming from his party to continue to de-regulate the financial activities of these hoods and pirates, we are going to be bled dry as a country beyond all repair. It’s still astounding to me how much damage unrestrained free-market capitalists have done to this country under Bush in the last eight years.

Life. It just doesn’t all fit together neatly.

We had a great great time tonight at Amira’s private birthday celebration. We’d thought we might take her to Chuck E. Cheese, but I had to slave away at a lame-o client problem that took me all day to fix and it got too late. Instead, we whipped up a last minute excursion to Central Market and it just so happened that our awesome friend-lord (that’s my new term since “landlord” sounds so impersonal) Ahmis was able to come with us. We had dinner, we lit candles, we sang (the birthday song happened to land just about the actual time she popped out!), we ate an insanely rich and delicious gluten-free torte, we opened presents, we looked at the huge full moon and stars on our way home. It was just perfect – couldn’t have been better. My heart is filled up with love and joy from my wonderful brand-new 4 year old who has given us so much more than it feels like we’ve given her.

And…

We’re going to be taking Sabu in today (Tues) to ease him into his final sleep. He just hasn’t gotten better. He’s laid around all day in an unfocused daze. Whenever he tries to walk, his body is so initially uncontrolled that he just spins around. A couple of times he’s completely flipped over just standing up. He’s clearly uncomfortable in any position but fully supported and resting. His breathing accelerates and his tail poofs up.

He doesn’t like this new state of affairs and it’s not looking like it will get better. We think he’s actually had multiple strokes and there’s a high possibility he’ll have more, and in his weakened state they’ll probably be more severe. He’s not eating or drinking much at all, although he’s still grooming. Not two days ago, he was bouncing around on top of the world and tonight I had to physically hold him upright in his box while he peed.

We sat with him tonight and petted him and cuddled him. He loves the attention and the body warmth and purred up a storm. I know he trusts us to do the right thing, and we both believe we’re doing the right thing for him by putting him to sleep even though it feels so abortive and fucked up. We just don’t see anything but a long, debilitating, disorienting decline for him ahead.

We’re taking him in at 4:30pm today. We both have to get through a full day’s work before we go. We’ll have to explain to Amira what’s going on, and then bury him here on the property. I’ll be pulling together our last photos of him tonight for my eulogy post. I’m not looking forward to any it.

It’s amazing that a heart can feel loaded with joy and gratitude and dread and sadness — all in seemingly equal measure. What a strange day.

Sad news to tell today. Our last remaining cat — Sabu — looks like he suffered a stroke. We think it may have happened sometime today while we were gone. He can barely stand and his walking can be more accurately described as “drifting”. His eyes look hunted, and he can barely negotiate stairs without flopping. He’s fallen pretty hard twice today trying to jump down on his own from places he had absolutely no problem with this morning. We discussed taking him to be put to sleep tomorrow, but I think we’re going to give him a few days to see how he does. He’s still grooming and using the litter box and seems calm when he’s not moving around, although he hasn’t eaten or drunk much. If he keeps getting weaker and worse, we’ll have to take him in. Right now, we’re not hopeful, and it feels like today could be the start of a long goodbye…

Also, I’m going to be leaving politics alone this week, although I’ll work on finishing my “Junk Food” series (read one and two here). I’ve turned into a serious political blog junkie, and it’s detracting time away from important things, real life things like getting important work done and prepping for our joint 15th anniversary/Amira’s 4th birthday party this coming Saturday. I figure that will give me a sense of what low info voters are hearing about things, and I’ll have some fresh perspective about it when I jump back in.

I’ve felt kind of convicted about sitting back and pontificating about Obama’s campaign when the real work of this race is up to me (and YOU!) by REGISTERING VOTERS. It’s the only way we can turn politics from “Yes, they can” into “Yes, WE can”…

I’ve been following politics in a more serious way now for the last 8 years. I was appalled that Bush was elected and horrified at the events that followed. During that time, I’ve been trying to gauge my own political radar to get a sense of a) whether my sources are diverse and informative enough, b) if I’m picking the most valuable information up from those sources, and c) if I’m drawing the right conclusions based on those sources.

I’ve been trying to intuit my way through what’s been happening the last few weeks with Palin and Obama and the discouraging poll slippage, and here’s what I’ve come up with so far. We’ll see how accurate it is.

The tipping point elections has been, and always will be, the individual voter making a largely emotional decision. I got a renewed sense of this the other day talking to Janece’s dad. He’s a traditional Republican, a pro-life Evangelical, a low to medium information voter, and not inclined in any way to buy into hype-fests like the Will.I.Am “Hope” song video. He is very disappointed with Bush and has some issues that are important to him like the environment that land squarely in the moderate camp. He’s not necessarily Obama – not sure why – but he’s not decided. And my sense is at the end of the day when his pencil is hovering over his absentee ballot, he’ll place his vote almost entirely on gut instinct. And, to boot, his vote is worth two votes since Janece’s mom is not into politics and will vote how he votes.

The thing is, my (limited) intuition is that the bulk of non-activist/partisan voters are really looking for steadiness, consistency, someone they feel will take all this political stuff that they don’t want to think too much about and “do a good job with it”.

In 2000, the country was feeling flush, fat and happy. There weren’t any terrorists on our horizon and we didn’t feel like there were any pressing problems. So we picked the swaggeringly righteous cowboy instead of the triangulating policy wonk who’s boss had sexed up an intern. In 2004, we were still wounded from a vicious, completely unexpected (from a public point of view) attack, knee-deep in a war and things not settled. So we went with the cowboy again because he promised he was going to finish the job, and it didn’t help that the other guy let himself be labeled as wishy-washy and unreliable.

2008 is not a happy year. We’ve been through a rocky 8 years in foreign and domestic terms, and people are fed up with the Bush/Cheney results. They feel the country is sliding and their personal situations are unsteady at best. Our country is fundamentally changing at it’s core with more minorities than ever poised to become the voting majority. They want to feel like there’s a firm, reliable hand at the rudder to take us into the uncertain future.

The McCain camp understands this. Hence the choice of Palin. Pre-Palin, McCain was sliding pretty badly from having no emotional connection from his base and no reason for a second look from swing voters. Palin is an appeal to the emotions, pure and simple. The same voters that “felt” that Bush was “homespun straight-shooter” and Kerry was “elitist flip-flopper” are still in play this year, and they like Palin. At least for the moment… Also, McCain’s campaign has been injecting horrendous accusations into the race via a string of sleazy ads, all designed to provoke raw emotional reactions. And the Swift Boaters are gearing up millions for a late season hit on Obama linking him with inflammatory left-wing assholes like William Ayers.

The Palin pick was a brilliant short term choice to throw a massive curveball at the race, but for as much emotional euphoria as she’s brought to the race and for all the slime that McCain is attempting to stick on Obama, there’s a danger of several big downsides emerging here.

1) As the Gibson interview points out, she is completely unprepared for anything. Serious Republicans understand this and they don’t like the implications for the party. The more serious GOP, soft-decided, undecided and swing voters (Swingers) see Palin stumbling, the more uneasy they’re going to feel — not just about her, but about the man who picked her and is in charge of this ticket. The McCain camp has done a bang-up job of keeping her out of the media, but that can’t last forever. Sooner or later, she’ll have to explain herself, and by default McCain’s decision making process, to the American people. If she’s not adequately prepped, she’ll be revealed for the lightweight she is. If they wait too long, the buzz will die down beyond rebuilding and she’ll look like she’s hiding from something. In any event, this sense of hiding isn’t going to help the Swingers with their unease. Not only that, she may being to not feel “safe”, which people need to feel, and that won’t play well on McCain.

2) The media narrative is shifting. There are, and will be, more and more stories with the words “Palin” or “McCain” and “lie” in the title as time goes on. McCain’s one and only card to save him from being irrevocably linked with the losers in the White House is the “straight-talking, independant maverick” card. That’s an identity Swingers can trust, that will help them push their pencil down onto McCain’s name come voting time. He’s in serious danger of losing that position as the drumbeat of “untrustworthy” gets a head of steam under it.

3) McCain can’t seem to hold his own without Palin. He’s shaky, uninspiring, lackluster and has no draw without her on the stump. The base is voting for a Palin/McCain ticket. If this creakiness makes its way past the media cloud around Palin, I think it might be problematic in such a turbulent year. I’m not sure how ready voters are to vote for a VP instead of a president.

Here’s the risk: The tidal wave of Palin frenzy has made this election squarely about McCain at this point. Prior to both conventions, Bob Novak wrote:

I asked one of the Republican Party’s smartest, most candid heavy hitters last week whether John McCain really has a chance to defeat Barack Obama in this season of Republican discontent. “No, if the campaign is about McCain,” he replied. “Yes, if it’s about Obama.”

I think this provides a major opening for Obama, but he’s also swimming upstream as he’s done for his entire campaign.

1) If Obama’s campaign stays cool and keeps on message about the daily fears and uncertainties that people are facing in their own lives, and doesn’t get dragged down all these distracting rabbit trails the McCain camp is throwing out, that will build a single unified message behind him and a sense of undistracted focus and steadiness that will be appealing for Swingers. He’s already done a masterful job at laying the groundwork for people feeling that, despite his “inexperience”, he’s tempermentally and intellectually prepared for the job, much as Reagan was in the face of accusations that he was too lightweight. I thought it was telling how much more respect Bill O’Reilly had for Obama after he’d slugged it out with him. A great, relaxed performance in the national debates will do a lot for him in this regard as well.

2) His campaign continues to stay focused on new voter registration and getting out the vote. If more people that vote for you in the right states, you’ll win the electoral vote and the election. Period. Nothing else to say. There are thousands of Obama volunteers on the ground talking to ordinary voters, easing their fears, talking about sensible alternatives. That face time counts.

3) People seem to think that Obama should get indignant, fiery, incensed. I disagree. I think Obama HAS to feel safe and comfortable to voters, not boring or rote but calm, clear, un-dramatic, and even. We’ve had a lot of drama for eight years, and we’re tired and want someone safe to take over this ship. The Obama campaign understands this and has been laying this groundwork for months now, most masterfully at the convention. No extreme rhetoric, no sharp edges, but no softening on staking out ground that’s different from McCain and a sense of can-do and inspiration.

Also, one important point here: Obama is black. We’ve never elected a black president before, and this guy is young and an urban fella to boot. Psychologically speaking, America is being asked to choose between the all-white, all-American, backdoor neighbor ticket as symbolized by Palin, and the world-conscious, mixed-race, powerful minorities future that Obama represents. Unconsciously, voters are being asked to vote for the future this year. That’s a big leap of faith and a 180 degree backlash from the last 8 years, and progressives need to recognize how difficult that is going to be for voters. The minute that Obama comes off with even a hint of “angry”, he’s done. I used to think that race was a small point, but emotionally speaking it’s huge and although the Dem party solved it for themselves, the nation hasn’t yet done so.

After the Dem convention, the race was Obama’s. Now, it’s a real race with a lot up in the air and a lot of fluid movement in the middle between the partisans — people like Janece’s dad. I’m going to make the case to him as best I can without pressure that Obama is the safest choice this year on all fronts. Thousands of Obama volunteers will be doing the same all across the country in swing states.

There are three debates and a VP debate still to come. With only about 45 days to go, this will be a whirlwind with no clear resolution until Election Day and a major test of Obama’s presidential skill and leadership. If he can lead us all past this turbulent time, then the Presidency he will have won (with our aid!) will be a sweet and fitting reward.

Writing over 1400 words last night/this morning while deathly tired took it out of me. I need to get some sleep and get a lot done tomorrow, so I’m going to keep this one short and get back to my massive screeds tomorrow.

We finally let Amira in on the fact that she’ll be having a birthday a few days from now – the 15th – and she was appropriately overjoyed.  She got a cool card from her Aunt Anne and Uncle Chris today that she loved. We’ll probably do something fun that night for her – maybe a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, which I loathe but she will find pretty fun. A week from tomorrow (Sat Sept 20) we’re planning to host a potluck get-together to celebrate our 15th anniversary and her 4th birthday.

We haven’t celebrated any anniversaries or birthdays for several years now due to lack of money and some lame work crunch around those times, but she’s old enough and our 15th is enough of a milestone that we’re taking it on this year. I have this recurring fantasy about us being the super-celebrators — you know, those fun people that have a crap load of decorations that are hauled out for every holiday no matter how small and have many parties — but we’ve never made that happen. There’s always been some excuse to bag it when the time rolls around.

But I don’t want Amira growing up thinking that these holidays and special days are nothing and not worth celebrating. Having special days to look forward to, finding creative ways to create your own family rituals, celebrating milestones as punctuation points in lives worth living — those are all things I want to have in our family culture. A culture of celebration, I guess. That can’t be bad for you, right?

Don’t forget to read part one for a refresher on my levels of junk food before diving in.

THE NEWS MEDIA

Everyone likes to bag on the media. It’s so easy to take potshots at the media that it almost feels embarrassing to include it. But you know, this election cycle it’s really come home to me how badly our “serious” news media corrodes our national health.

I told Janece last night that our national conversation about who we are and want to be as Americans largely takes place in the media (although the Net is changing that a bit with person-to-person interaction). The problem, I argued, is that the media has the attention span and maturity level of a 3 year old, easily distracted by embarrassing situations and loud noises. So, here we are in national crisis mode trying to have an important conversation using a 3 year old as our go-between like a bad game of “Telephone”. It’s a problem because the 3-year-old only wants to tell you the stuff that they find interesting, namely, well… embarrassing situations and loud noises.

On top of that, the media’s relationship with profit is also problematic, to say the least. We just got done with season 5, the final season, of The Wire — one of the most heartwrenching, grownup shows to hit the silver screen. This season covered the complex relationship that the press has with the institutions it’s trying to penetrate and hold accountable, and how the profit motive has driven serious journalists and serious stories further and further into the fringes. The role of owners in the dumbing down of the news in the battle to continue to make profit isn’t a left-wing fever dream – it’s a simple equation that I think every American can easily understand, and a topic that’s been covered by much smarter people than myself.

So, junk food.

The Level 1 junk here is pretty easy – pretty much any “reporting” on Fox News, baldly partisan outlets willing to spread the most outlandish material. It’s the kind of ridiculous, entertaining farce that ends up with a Fox reporter shouting “do you not believe in freedom?!” to a group of irritated demonstrators at the Dem convention in Denver:

Level 2 would probably include much of the commentariat and punditry and weekly columnists — people we seem to feel should have something to say since they’re on the national stage when in fact their primary purpose seems to be to pull a paycheck for filling column space or airtime. Like a group of squabbling monkeys throwing feces, they mindless repeat each other’s tired cliches and cannibalized memes (“Obama threw him under the bus”, etc.) and they endlessly pick over the latest artificial controversies (anything with “-gate” in it like “Bittergate” or the current “lipstick on a pig” tizzy) without any seeming irony.

The insatiable need to fill the 24 hour news pipeline has news shows trucking in these yahoos by the dozens to kick up so much dust that we forget what we were supposed to be talking about, and why it was important. It’s poisonous, and it’s dangerous.

Poison – These hired guns reduce our essential civic philosophical differences and need for solutions to mere shouting, pettiness, inconsequentiality, posturing and bad behavior. They aren’t there to argue for our betterment. They’re there to win an argument and look good enough to be invited back. The net effect is the loss of our communal confidence in the ability of our conversation to make a difference and take us somewhere.

Dangerous – This system is wide open for easy abuse. These “experts” are presented to the public with no qualification besides the fact that they must know what they’re talking about because they’re on TV and the viewer is not. They are not asked about their personal agendas — they only have to offer their opinion on the topic du jour. This led to the scandal that was revealed a few months ago that the Pentagon used a selected cadre of retired military brass to push its talking points about the invasion of Iraq. These military “experts” were all briefed on the Pentagon’s objectives and made the rounds to show after show to help the Bush administration sell a senseless and costly war, and not one – not ONE – was ever held to account on these shows for their points of view or had their loyalties investigated prior to their appearances.

The bankrupt nature of the commentariat was laid bare in a beautiful “Emperor Has No Clothes” moment by Jon Stewart when he appeared on Crossfire and in all seriousness begged the talking monkeys to please give Americans something real. The way they squirm when suddenly confronted on live TV with a serious American citizen asking serious questions is something to see:

Level 3 are the professional journalists and news anchors. I listen to the Diane Rehm podcast pretty religiously. It’s instructive and the non-shouting format allows for more in-depth analysis of both the news and the news analyzers — the way they select and frame the issues they report. These people are as serious as anyone about the job they do, and I’ve learned a lot by listening to them, especially the international reporters. But, a subtle weakness and lack of substance persists.

First, I’ve noticed a lack of self-critique and introspection. It’s been instructive to hear how these professional reporters who pride themselves on “journalistic integrity” and “objective reporting” talk about their role in reporting the Iraq war.

In our rush to war there was no concerted effort by any major journalist or outlet to resist the relentless propaganda and persist in giving the American public a clear-eyed look at what the adventure could cost and what grounds the war was to be waged upon. From today’s perspective, I think the general agreement is that the drums of war were beating so loud that to speak out would have been journalistic suicide. There is no cost today to acknowledge how badly the press let down the American public — a simple “We screwed up badly and let down the American public” would go a long way. So, it’s instructive that in all the post-mortems on the press and Iraq that I’ve heard, there’s been almost NO serious apologies.

This reluctance to take the self-reflective aspect of their job seriously, to admit that their vaunted journalistic independence and integrity has been compromised has hobbled the more serious press over time as the public becomes more cynical about the press’ lack of courage. How else can we as humans become more honest without acknowledging our dishonesty? How can the press be trusted if there is no self-examination when they get it so wrong? Who can we trust to actually ask the hard questions?

Second, there is too much tolerance for sloppiness and lazy reporting. It concerns me that major reporters and publications/outlets can get so many basic facts wrong — facts that any blogger can track down with a few hours persistence on Google. Even on a serious venue like Diane Rehm’s show, I’m aghast at how often her guests, who supposedly cover their topics full time and probably consume much more media than me can get basic facts, figures, dates, and circumstances that I know from casual browsing so wrong. The blogs I read break stories generally pretty quickly and accurately, and yet they are constantly being derided on the show as “fringe”. No wonder market share is declining so bad for print newspapers and why the pressure from the always-on Net has made cable news into such a farce. Sloppy reporting, a lack of a basic grasp of the factual context of an issue, makes for junk food reporting.

And third, there is too much deference to public figures and colleagues. Our national image of the reporter is the bulldog — pugnacious and tenacious, someone that won’t stop until the story hits the street. But in reality, reporters can get corrupted by the same star power, the same insular protection of colleagues, the same access to the wealthy and powerful that anyone can. I’ve listened to reporters on the Diane Rehm show give her and each other too much leeway, too much deference, and not near enough pushback on each other’s assumptions and preconceptions. Over time, this diplomatic treatment can dull the instinct to track a story as far as it needs to go and robs the public of the full picture – the perpetrators, the victims.

Tomorrow, I’ll tackle politics – hopefully in a shorter article and more coherently. (I was literally falling asleep while finishing this, so my pardon if it petered out.)

I read political blogs incessantly, as you can tell from my posts. Tonight’s swing through my blog roundup left me feeling the same way I feel after eating too many M&Ms or drinking too much diet soda (which I did today, sadly – I should really stay away from the stuff). I felt jarred loose, dissatisfied, a bit nauseous, restless and not focused enough to concentrate on or enjoy my work tasks. Reading what I wrote last night and meditating on the wonderful photos that Janece took of Amira’s experience helped stabilize me a bit with some real human connection — like a diabetic bringing down the blood sugar.

We all know what junk food is. It’s stuff you eat that doesn’t give you the healthy raw material your body needs. In fact, it can be edibles that actively work against your digestion and bodily health — material that saps your body’s energy and hampers the smooth operation of its interwoven, complex processes.

The trouble with junk food is that it isn’t always easy to identify.

There’s your Pixie Stix and your chocolate candy and your Cheetos: straight up, easy-to-spot junk that’s not pretending to be something else. We’ll call it Level 1 junk food. Eating that stuff feels honest – you know it’s crap, you know that it will make you feel like crap, and you eat it precisely because it tastes good going down. No surprise, no dashed expectations.

It gets a bit more murky when you get to things like Big Macs, microwave chimichangas, french fries, and “fortified” breakfast cereal with candy colored animals on the front: Level 2 junk food. I mean, yeah, everyone knows that it’s bad for you, right? But then why do we feel like it’s OK to make a whole meal out of those things as though it were real food, when in fact trying to actually subsist on the stuff could kill you? Eating that kind of junk food feels more dishonest — everyone knows it’s crap but we all behave like it’s actual food because it’s quick, it fills us up and feels good going down.

And then there’s the real undercover stuff, Level 3 junk food – fruit smoothies, the food pyramid, meals with 6 different kinds of starches masquerading as “vegetables”, meat from animals raised on corn that’s not technically even fit for their digestion, flawless-looking vegetables grown at hyper-speed using pesticides and other non-nutritive methods, Spam. If you take the long view, that kind of food doesn’t really benefit you, even though it does sustain in a sort of day to day sense and has somewhat more nutritive content than the other two types. For many people, they don’t even know that they’re eating a kind of long-term filler food that has more drawbacks than benefits years down the line.

All junk food is detrimental to having a full robust body, but to me Level 2 and Level 3 junk food are in some ways worse for you because they are less obvious and more easy to miss, often more systemically pervasive, and require more intentional scrutiny and change of habit than people are often willing or able to give.

In a physical sense, we humans need as close to undiluted, nutritive material as we can get for the optimal sustenance of our bodies. In a communal and spiritual sense, we humans need as close to undiluted, substantive relational encounters as we can get for the optimal sense of connection and aliveness. And that’s where the cultural junk food comes in.

News media, politics, church. Among other things, we depend on these transactional social institutions to provide us with a communal context and framework that can help us determine how to democratically co-govern our nation. But there’s hidden junk food spreading throughout these common institutions masquerading as something necessary for our national conversation while instead corroding our national health. Like my experience tonight, I can feel the negative effects of it, and I think I’m not the only one. Many of us are taking in more and more of what is less and less able to communally feed us.

I’ll post more on this tomorrow, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about the ways you’ve felt any cultural malnourishment in these three areas, especially from your point of view as an American.

“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.”
~ Thomas Merton

Amira has been making more strides in her emotional IQ. She’s able to control her moods much more emphatically — not so much with the stormy tantrums of the early threes and more subversive acting up in its place (not sure if that’s an improvement, really), learning to frame her emotions with words instead of physical reactions. As with anything in life, this new understanding comes with it’s own bitter side.

There were two memorable moments this weekend with her.

On Sunday, Janece’s parents came to visit and they brought their Llasa Apso puppy, Kiki. We sat out in the lovely sunshine eating our picnic lunch on a grassy area near the Kingston ferry landing. Amira got to take Kiki’s leash and run around the grass with her. Kiki is still enough of a puppy that she’s not all that responsive to voice commands yet, so Amira’s instructions were specific: since we were near a parking lot, her job was to hold onto Kiki’s leash so that she would stay safe.

They had a grand old time sprinting full tilt around the grass — the little Ewok-looking bundle of fur and the curly-haired ball of thunder. Three or four times, the leash slipped out of Amira’s hands but with a dive onto the grass that would be the envy of a MLB player coming home from third, she managed to grab it.

But the last, time the leash got away, and Kiki went loping over to meet a group of people walking by. Amira’s distress was palpable. She knew she was responsible for getting the leash and she didn’t want to let her Nana, Papa, Mommy, Daddy and Uncle Stephen down, but she’s been feeling shy around strangers again and she was really nervous about getting too close. She chased Kiki as far as she dared toward the strangers, and then came running back to us, panic starting to turn into tears. “Papa, Papa, you take the leash! Kiki is not my dog!” she sobbed.

We consoled her, told her that it wasn’t her fault and she did the best she could, but she wouldn’t touch the leash again until it was time to go, and then she wanted reassurance all the way to the van that everything was OK.

(Corrections: Kiki is a Shih Tzu. And Janece gets this story way more right than me. So read her version here.)

Monday, we took Stephen back to the airport. As we said goodbye in the terminal, Amira was playing with a cluster of enormous balloons by the Delta/Sun Country counter: round rubber ballons with a few foil balloons mixed in. She was so absorbed with them that she forgot to be sad when Uncle Stephen left to get on the plane. The woman shepherding the ticket line was obviously really taken with her and asked her if she wanted to take one home. Gee, ya think?

We chose the silver balloon with the glossy blue ribbon. Amira was ecstatic. I tied the ribbon around her wrist, telling her that I was doing it so that the balloon wouldn’t blow away and reminding her to be careful so that the balloon didn’t pop against the low ceiling sprinklers on the way out to the parking garage. She was super solicitous all the way to lunch, and was getting a bit nervous about the funny sounds it made against the roof of the car because she didn’t want it to pop. She only relaxed when I bopped the balloon a few times to show her that the roof was soft and the balloon would be just fine.

After lunch, Neil dropped us off at the ferry where we waited by the beach and then boarded when the Spokane sailed in.

As the ferry prepared to sail, she ran around the deck, thrilled with the way the balloon bounced on the light breeze.

She took a short pause with me to look over the rail, talk to the water and the seagulls and the ferry boat (who all chatted with her using me as a translator, of course).

The ferry pulled out and Mr. Wind (as Amira dubbed the draft) started pushing his way pretty hard across the deck. She asked to go down into boat out of the wind, and we set out with a few stops to test out Mr. Wind’s abilities.

What we didn’t know was that the either foil tab the ribbon was tied onto or the knot itself was loose, and with one sharp gust, the big beautiful silver balloon tore away and sailed on the backdraft of the ferry and the breeze towards the shore.

Amira watched it sail away from her, flickering and glittering in the sun as it got smaller and smaller, and didn’t react – maybe thinking it was going to spin around and float back to us.

Then it sunk in. The silver balloon was dancing away, free of its satiny leash, never to return.

We all were subdued the rest of the trip home. Janece and I cuddled her, told her we were sorry, waved our sad goodbyes to the now invisible balloon, and sat a tearful vigil with Amira as she finished working her way through these big feelings, saying over and over “I miss my big star balloon”…

Amira got over the sadness, of course, about a half hour later as we looked for jellyfish off the Kingston docks. We told her that the star balloon had traveled up to be with the other star friends in the sky and that we’d find it and wave goodbye when it got dark — a promise we kept before we put her to bed.

But the feeling of melancholy stayed with Janece and I. We both teared up again looking at the pictures later, reliving those moments this weekend with her when the cold door to the empty place cracked open a little bit and she understood what we all come to understand: For us human beings, things don’t always work out and no sunny moment, no shiny star can stay forever.

A little dramatic? After all, it was just a little puppy on a leash and a silver balloon that got away.

But it felt like more to me after a weekend with my dear brother, sensing and appreciating the wisdom that comes from the new pain-smoothed edges of his heart, talking about grief and loss and our American inability to endure them, talking about our families and their imperfect and painful legacies, talking about our dear ones who have pulled away from their own silky tethers and have gone on — dancing and shining — beyond our view.

It felt like more because, dramatic or not, I live in the constant awareness that my delightful days of being with Amira are being buffeted and tugged at by time, and that one day, all too soon and after many longer and longer flights, she’ll pull away from my hand for good and make her way out into the open sky where she will begin her own constellation — a glittering thing of wonder but never as close to Janece and I as she is now.

It’s the way of things. And for this moment, her tears are our tears.