Fresh Fall Leaves

The weather is crisp and life is a blitz as usual. We've been trying to slow down, establish rituals, and enjoy the season. As a family, we're in a phase of being more politically active. I'm really excited by all the potential change that it looks like may start happening in the world right now. At home, as I've gotten into the swing of living in this small town for a year now, I want to really build community-- or at least get to know a few more of my neighbors. So the plan for this week looks like this, stapled to the telephone poles and taped to the big sycamores on our street:

Come one, come all. (I hope people come!)

Lately I've been inspired by the Playborhood web site. I was reminded of it when I read this article on the "Trick-or-Treater Index." An urban theorist named Richard Florida came up with this index to rate the child-friendliness (basically, the health and safety) of a given community. It basically says that if you count the number of trick-or-treaters you get on Halloween night you get a good indication of how safe and friendly your neighborhood is all year.

(There are exceptions. I lived in a very safe San Francisco neighborhood for years. Every year I would dress up and ready my huge bowl of candy. Every year I would watch as the neighborhood kids made their way to the Halloween party at the martial arts school across the street. Not one trick-or-treater ever graced my door, and every year my downstairs neighbor and her grand-daughters would get our big bowl of candy [or what was left of it] on November 1st. My neighborhood was safe but it wasn't a community. People didn't congregate and kids didn't play outside.)

The beginnings of our Halloween and Dia de los Muertos decor. Ghost tree and blood-sucking spiders not shown.

My current neighborhood is a Halloween heaven. Parents from the big (and very unsafe, if news reports are to be believed) city to the east of us drive their kids in for trick-or-treating, and the neighborhood is full of our own local kids anyway. So we expect a big turnout for the happiest night of the year.

Before that, though, I'm hosting my mother's 70th birthday dinner this weekend. I'll be busy planning and cleaning this week, and I'll post pictures if it turns out lovely. What would you do to make an intimate family party special?

Take That, McDo!

I stumbled on this brilliant piece (with admittedly annoying narration) that looks at French public school cuisine. Oh la la, regret la difference. I love the high school lunch room chef who says, "Just because they don't have the right to vote. . . we can't just throw anything in their face."

Is anyone here from San Francisco?

If so. . .

One of my favorite book stores is hosting this tomorrow. I'm working on childcare and hope I can make it myself.

CAROLYN BURKE will discuss
No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf
Thursday, May 5 at 7 PM at Bookshop West Portal, San Francisco

Join us for a fascinating evening with Carolyn Burke, who has written an enthralling and empathetic biography about the beloved French chanteuse, Edith Piaf. Burke, who has chronicled the lives of photographer Lee Miller and poet Mina Loy, captures Piaf's charismatic appeal, along with the time and place that gave rise to her remarkable international career.

As a child, Piaf grew up in a Normandy brothel run by her grandmother, then led a vagabond life, touring as a singer with her father's acrobatic performances. Burke had access to previously untapped Piaf documents, and highlights aspects of the artist that are rarely mentioned, such as Piaf's aiding Jews during World War II. The author demonstrates how, with her courage, her incomparable art, and her universal appeal, "the little sparrow" endures as a symbol of France and a source of inspiration to entertainers worldwide.
"Burke's terrific biography of Edith Piaf shucks the simplistic arc of self-destructive urchin to a more complex portrait that includes the singer's heroics in the French Resistance and roles as mentor, lyricist, and enduring icon." — Kimberly Cutter, Marie Claire  

Slow Toys

Today my family and I visited my dad and his wife at an arts show they were working. My dad is an artisan who hand-crafts beautiful wooden toys. It's a post for another day, but I'll say that I'm proud of his work and we are incredibly lucky that my son is kept in a ridiculous wealth of beautiful toys in a world that is otherwise full of the cheapest disposable garbage at the lowest price. It's hard to sit at craft shows and see kids fall in love with his toys and then watch their parents balk at the idea of spending a bit more than they would on something toxic and plastic, assembled by a child in a developing nation. I know we are living in a tough economy but so much of it is our unrealistic expectation of what it costs to make things. We expect things to be cheap and disposable, and anything else seems too dear.

This girl was too cute to not photograph.  My son has this same rocking horse,
only his is 35 years old. It used to be mine when I was his age!



It's an interesting time in the culture, though. There is a movement growing in which people are seeking quality over quantity, and not a minute too soon. (Think par example of the prevalence of cheap fast food and the growth of an appreciative culture around more delicious, healthful and fairly priced "slow" food.) I think we live in an exciting moment. I'm proud of my dad that he and his work are a part of that.

So it looks like the post for another day found its expression today. Anyway, in the booth next to my dad was a charming an attractive femme d'un certain age, and I took mental notes on her that I am eager to share. But let's let her be the subject of a different post and spare my two readers' eyes from weariness on too long an entry.

Balance in Everything

The husband is out of town for a bachelor party weekend that would depress me and annoy me if I thought too much about it. Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon with two gorgeous girlfriends; one is a teacher on spring break and the other is a lucky lady of leisure. We had lunch and spent hours laughing and talking. There were cocktails and tarot cards, and if either of those things are to be believed the future looks excellent for all of us.

After school was out, my son and I came home to some relaxing and household tasks before heading out for a special evening together. I wrote last week about saying no to ice cream. Tonight was a break from my usual paleoh-la-la. I had a sweet dinner with my kid, followed by yes to ice cream, followed by a trip to the book store.

When we arrived there was a reading in progress by a journalist who has documented the history of Burning Man and its current transitioning from for-profit company to non-profit entity. The reading itself was fascinating enough but what struck me about the evening was the odd convergence of parts of my life: me in the children's section, reading Curious George on the one hand and, on the other, half listening to this journalist relay the story of the politics affecting this sometimes cooler-than-thou scene I've not been a part of in a long time. We ran into our neighbors there. They are also parents (as is everyone on this island, it seems) and also former burners. And while I won't likely go back to the Gerlach desert for large-scale art and dancing all night (at least not for a very long time), it was nice to be there and to feel a small part of the intersection between family and culture, just by virtue of participating in discussion at the reading.

As I was falling asleep I was thinking that I don't feel a conflict between being a woman and a mother. But I do believe that negotiating that balance takes work. Salad and ice cream, Curious George and Burning Man. Balance, balance in everything.

On Jolie Laide



While looking for the lyrics to the Serge Gainsbourg song whose lyric lent the title of this blog, I came across an exceptional NYT piece by Daphne Merkin. It was published in 2005 and you can read the full text here.

. . .there have always been those who question the dictates of conventional beauty, whose views of what constitutes a ravishing face range further than either the classical ideal or the ordained images of the cultural moment and who see our reverence for certain types over others as a form of aesthetic provincialism. . . (One) was my Belgian-born grandmother, who looked irritated whenever I, an insecure girl loitering on the edges of adolescence, asked her whether she thought I was pretty. "Pretty?" she'd ask. "Who wants to be pretty?" Her blazing blue eyes lit up her wrinkled face with the preposterousness of the wish. "Pretty is silly." I later discovered that no less an authority than F. Scott Fitzgerald, who studied the laws of female comeliness the way others study the laws of physics, agreed with my grandmother regarding the inherent banality of the merely pretty: "After a certain degree of prettiness," he wrote, "one pretty girl is as pretty as another."

I think Proust put it well too. He wrote, "Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination."

Conflict: The Woman and the Mother

This summer will come the English translation of Elisabeth Badlinter's Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, a bestseller in France since its publication last year. The book is described this way:


Elisabeth Badinter has for decades been in the vanguard of the European fight for women's equality. Now, in an explosive new book, she points her finger at a most unlikely force undermining the status of women: liberal motherhood, in thrall to all that is "natural." Attachment parenting, co-sleeping, baby-wearing, and especially breast-feeding—these hallmarks of contemporary motherhood have succeeded in tethering women to the home and family to an extent not seen since the 1950s. Badinter argues that the taboos now surrounding epidurals, formula, disposable diapers, cribs—and anything that distracts a mother's attention from her offspring—have turned childrearing into a singularly regressive force.

A bestseller in Europe, The Conflict is a scathing indictment of a stealthy zealotry that cheats women of their full potential. 

I will agree that having a baby tethered me to my family. That's kind of what having a baby does, no? It's true I can no longer comfortably work 11-hour days six days a week. Nor can I jet to New York, meet friends for frequent cocktails, or take all the night classes I want to take without hiring someone to see my kid more than I do. And that was my choice. I chose to give birth and restructure my life and my priorities to care for the offspring I chose to create. Is that regressive? I don't think so. Did it rob me of my full potential? No - I offered that willingly. Life is about choices and compromise. And while I'd be lying if I said I always like it, I can at least acknowledge that it happened of my own volition and that the benefits, for me, outweigh the frustrations. Should that change, I might change how I choose to parent. For now it works. For me.

I support any woman's right to choose whatever works for her and I'm not at all keen to jump into the fray. But as for "taboos" surrounding epidurals, Ms. Badinter ought to check out the excellent, evidence-based work of Michel Odent (on whom I admit I have a bit of a crush).

Incidentally, a NYT review of Badinter's book quoted one one mother who says much more succinctly what I tried to about feminism and capitalism in my last post:


Amandine Panhard, 29. . . thinks the Badinter thesis is a false one. “It’s not about disposable diapers or plastic baby bottles but each woman’s personal development, financial independence and the relations between husband and wife,” she said. “The real conflict is not between the woman and the mother, but between the woman and the company.”

Late to the Party: Erica Jong vs. Dr. Sears

This past November Erica Jong wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing the philosophies of Attachment Parenting and its advocates William and Martha Sears. She questioned whether attachment parenting is a prison for mothers. How I missed it when it first came out I do not know; the argument between attachment- and other styles of parents always means an amount of back-and-forth commentary on the Internet that is prolific to say the least.

In her essay, Jong writes, As long as women remain the gender most responsible for children, we are the ones who have the most to lose by accepting the "noble savage" view of parenting, with its ideals of attachment and naturalness. We need to be released from guilt about our children, not further bound by it.

First off, what is so "savage" about raising our own children in a style that children have evolved being raised? Yes of course we should lose the guilt, to which mothers are too often subject no matter what we do. But should we lose the ideal of strong attachment with our children?

Jong writes that our media display "an orgy of motherphilia" that romanticizes parenthood." Nannies are rarely photographed, giving the impression that motherhood is easy and cheap. What she fails to account for is that childcare is expensive. For me to go to work, I must pay someone to look after my child. For me to stay home, I forgo the paycheck to which I as one half of a dynamic DINK duo took wholly for granted. Either way, there is a high price to be paid. Considering that reality I would prefer to raise my own child. And I did, for many months, before I finally missed the work I love so much that I returned to a short week. We hired my brother to manny for us three short days a week and he made money (because childcare is expensive) but my son was in the care of family. It worked for us and I realize we were lucky that family was around and available. But for the amount of money I make doing the work I love, it would have been cheaper for me to stay home.

Jong writes,

Indeed, although attachment parenting comes with an exquisite progressive pedigree, it is a perfect tool for the political right. It certainly serves to keep mothers and fathers out of the political process. If you are busy raising children without societal help and trying to earn a living during a recession, you don't have much time to question and change the world that you and your children inhabit. What exhausted, overworked parent has time to protest under such conditions?

This is a faulty argument. It is true that most people are working too hard to look up and participate in politics. But that isn't the fault of choosing an attached style of parenting. It is because we set our lives up within a capitalist framework, all nuclear family, atomized, isolated, and most importantly, overly materialistic. 

Besides, working outside the home means paying for childcare so we can work outside the home. Most women have to work a lot to make that financially worth doing. Why Jong assumes the "working" mother has more energy and inclination to participate in politics after the outside workday than she would as a stay-at-home mom, I have no idea. Nor does she account for the great many women and men who become actively engaged in local politics after becoming parents.

Jong continues, Attachment parenting, especially when combined with environmental correctness, has encouraged female victimization. Women feel not only that they must be ever-present for their children but also that they must breast-feed, make their own baby food and eschew disposable diapers. It's a prison for mothers, and it represents as much of a backlash against women's freedom as the right-to-life movement. . .Our obsession with parenting is an avoidance strategy. It allows us to substitute our own small world for the world as a whole. But the entire planet is a child's home, and other adults are also mothers and fathers. We cannot separate our children from the ills that affect everyone, however hard we try. Aspiring to be perfect parents seems like a pathetic attempt to control what we can while ignoring problems that seem beyond our reach.

But the "environmental correctness"  Jong disparages is in itself an active a form of political  progressiveness. In our political climate, environmental concerns are of paramount importance. To enact practices at home that support environmental sustainability and social justice is far from an avoidance strategy: it is one way of actively engaging with the world as a responsible citizen. I have no desire to be a "perfect parent." I want to live as a responsible world citizen. My choices in what I buy, what I boycott, how I use natural resources in my parenting are only one manifestation of my personal politics.

At the end of the day, attachment parenting is only anti-feminist if you define feminism as a woman's ability to participate in the work force in exactly the same ways that men do. I would say I expect more from Erica Jong but that isn't true. As a second-wave feminist in the United States she is only saying what I would expect her to say. American feminism has forgotten that equality in the workplace isn't the only right worth having. American feminism has done wonderful work with regard to reproductive rights, but it has forgotten that mothers are women too.

We forget to work for decent maternity leave, perinatal health care, support for families - particularly for single mothers, but for all families. Instead, we denigrate those who choose to work, or who choose to stay home.  We forget that for many people there simply isn't a choice, and that for others the choice is made from a place of blind immersion in a capitalist construct. We don't acknowledge (or we fail to realize) that our problem isn't how we choose to balance home and work, but that by equating freedom and success with paid work we allow work to take precedence over nearly every other concern. Family, children, and planet included. We forget there may be other, more sustainable (and dare I say, more fun) ways to live.

This is why, as crunchy granola Lefty as I tend to be, I always hesitate to call myself a feminist. It seems to me that feminism aims too low; it seeks only to have equal access to everything that men have. I'm not satisfied with what men have, and I don't think men should be either. We need to stop infighting (men vs. women; "working" vs. stay-at-home-moms; attachment- vs. other parents) and turn our attention to places where we can affect change that benefits everyone. "Environmental correctness," far from an imprisonment for mothers, is good for everyone and seems as good a place as any to start.

'Life's too short to be living with regrets'

Last week my son was in his first school play. The three of us walked across our small town to the high school's "Little Theater" and watched a good half of the environmentalism-meets-Frankenstein-themed parade of cute. My son, part of the youngest class, was one of about 20 little ones (aged 2 to 3) who opened the play with a little dance number set to a song about "raining like magic." They wore their raincoats and boots on a sweltering early evening and set the scene for the older kids' story about a green misfit Frank N. Stein. Pastiche for days, the play follows Stein's journey to the Emerald City, an enviro Shangri-La, with his three little multicultural human friends. Flying monkeys and Tesla coils! Musical numbers were lifted from other, major musicals. You don't know surreal until you've seen a mess of 4-year-olds perform kid-washed selections from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let's do the Earth Warp again!

Anyway, during intermission I wandered the high school's halls and took this:

The week before, we took the kiddo to the local science museum in San Francisco. Well worth visiting; I've been a few times for corporate holiday parties but I hadn't been there during open hours since I was a child. My favorite exhibit was a little room full of postcards written by museum visitors asked to answer,

This was by far my favorite:

I agree with these writings on the wall.

Elegance is as Elegance Does

I love reading others report on "chic sightings" in their cities. In fact I spotting a truly glamorous femme d'un certain age this morning on my walk to work. She had forty years on me but she lacked in line-free skin she more than made up for in posture, comportment, understated accessorizing, and general easy style. I wish I had asked for her photo to post here. I didn't, so I will offer this:

. . .which came from this article.

On the other hand I generally don't enjoy reading other bloggers' assessments of the un-chic behavior of others. I figure, it's all a process. Some people prioritize looking good and being turned out well. Others don't. As long as no one is hurting anyone else I fail to see why it matters if someone is overweight, uses the wrong fork, or wears jeans inappropriately. We are all doing our best to whatever extent we can. I'm working on feeling better in my own skin, and while I wouldn't wear jeans to have cocktails at Maxfield's I have better things to worry about than if you do.

Politeness, on the other hand, counts. Politeness always counts. It dawned on me many years ago that though I am female I endeavor always to act the part of a gentleman. It's just ingrained in me: In conversation I position whomever I am talking to in his or her best light (by asking questions that lead them to speak well about themselves);  I say "good morning," and "please" and "thank you." I show up when I say I will. I give up my seat on the train to anyone who is older, more pregnant, more infirm than I am. This just isn't done where I live. A man in his 30's will sit with nose deep in his Blackberry avoiding the gaze of an older woman or a man on crutches. But if you are lovely and 20 and wearing heels too high for comfort there is a good chance his seat will be yours. 

I also hold doors open for people. Not so for Mr. Tweed Suit Older Man in my building. MTSOM let the door slam in my face this morning as I entered the lobby. With my self esteem issues, I of course chalked it up to my not being pretty enough. Ridiculous, right? But that's where I go. Someone's sheer oblivious rudeness translates to my somehow not being good enough.

I ask you, would Argentée (yes, I like silver, so lets name my IFG, shall we?) allow herself to feel less-than in the face of someone else's bad behavior? No, she would not. But it just goes to show how living in a culture in which men and women so completely disregard each other unless there is something to be gained from the exchange. . . well, it isn't a nice way to live, is it? It isn't fun and it may even encourage a fair bit of neurosis. Perhaps a bit more politeness, even a bit more regard for each other as women and men, might make everyone feel better all around. I have read (was it Jamie Cat Callan again?) that not flirting is considered disrespectful in France. Such an interesting idea to me, coming up as I did in radical politics and gender-neutral Northern California.

So I don't live in Paris. And I am surely not going to confront the man for behaving poorly (talk about pas chic). So I did what anyone would do: as we walked into the elevator (him first, of course!) I made sure to hold the door and wait for two others who were coming far behind us. They lagged with their bursting morning bags and briefcases, and as luck would have it they both chose lower floors than us. Let him wait. In my opinion Monsieur Tweed needs to learn to slow down a bit.

A Little Bit of Life Cultivation

Yesterday, Day 2 of my experiment in self-cultivation, was a success. I dressed in grey lace camisol with an interesting cut, a cute black cardigan and a nice pair of dark wash jeans that are rapidly becoming too roomy for me. I put on sunblock, spent time on my makeup, styled my hair (the bangs I just cut myself based on Frederic Fekkai's advice in his lovely Year of Style), and I wore more "statement" jewelry than is usual for me. I spent the morning having (above-average) brow waxing and (more-painful-than-average) body waxing.

Brunch in my favorite, very old-style Euro cafe with my book of essays on Paris and another book, the light but sweet Bonjour Happiness, by Jamie Cat Callan. (That book, like so many blogs I enjoy, is the same idea as this blog project I am doing here. Again, cultivate the imaginary best inner self and then begin acting like her. Boom! C'est facile, non?)

So after prettifying, after lunch, the museum. I saw the Eadweard Muybridge exhibition at the MOMA. It was a quiet and strangely lonely way to spend an afternoon. Here are two of my favorite images from the exhibition. I am struck by how timeless is the one of the mother and child in particular. It's amazing to me how indistinguishable from our recent ancestors we human beings are when you take away our clothes.

After the museum I walked down Market Street to my dance class. On the way I stopped at a coffee stand I hadn't noticed before. I had a short, nice conversation with a Tunisian cafe owner who has set up shop near a place I go every week. I told him I was glad he was saving me from patronizing Starbucks and we talked about Turkish baths, massage, and why my coffee choice (black, no sugar) made me "healthy, like a French person." Why, merci beaucoup, monsieur. You do go on.

Next was my dance class, followed by dinner at a knock-out alleyway restaurant, Gitane on Claude Lane. Basically a perfect, slow, elegant day into night. I catch myself thinking, If only I were in love. I balance that with, Gratitude, always gratitude. So much to think about, always.

More on Heartbreak a la Francaise

I'm reading a fabulous book of essays on living in Paris from writers of all disciplines. The book, Paris Was Ours, is curated by Penelope Rowlands and features a piece by a writer named Caroline Weber on love in the City of Light. She writes,

. . .the confusion that attends most affairs of the heart is generally, in Paris, taken to be as inexplicable and incontravertable as the weather. Indeed, it has always surprised me that the American TV series Sex and the City should enjoy such popularity among parisiennes, who are not given to the kind of anguished relationship dissection in which the show's lead female characters endlessly indulge. In real life, as in Sex and the City, a New Yorker asking, "Why hasn't he called me?" or, "How could he leave me?" is entitled to at least a few solid hours of thoughtful analysis (of the relationship's ups and downs), soothing complements (for herself), and righteous indignation (against the man in question) from her girlfriend. In Paris, such a response is as hard to come by as, well, fat people or fake butter. There, a woman's interlocutor will merely offer her a blasé   "C'est comme ça" -- accompanied by a slight shrug that says, "In the face of such existential absurdity, cherie, calm acceptance in the only way. Now let's hit the thalasso spa and see what we can do about your cellulite."

Let me tell you, this passage hit me like a ton of bricks. I have been going over the minutiae, the nuances, the astrological implications of my- and a girlfriend's borderline imaginary relationships not for a mere couple of hours but literally for months now. Every day, via text, via phone, via email. And for what? Something about this passage brought the message home to me: he loves you or he doesn't. What can you do about it? Not a lot. But you can and you should love yourself.

And that really is the basis of this month-long project I'm doing here.