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?

Vanity (both kinds)

Happy Birthday, USA! Today we went to our little town's 4th of July parade. For a wee little burg it happens to boast the second-largest parade in les États-Unis.

The antique store was kind enough to deliver my new vanity over the holiday weekend

and, since I'm feeling cute, a picture of my anonymous son and me after the do today.

I'm wearing a vintage blue and white polka-dot number with new red cork-sole sandals and a bit more post-s'mores pooch than I'd like (but enough self-love to rock it anyway).

Now to wake my sleeping kid and husband to head out to a friend's little bbq. What are your plans for the day?

Happy 4th to you!

Fruit and Veg, Woeful Sprawl, White Teeth

It was a hot weekend of playing in the garden. We now have edible green beans, strawberries, arugula, mountains of chamomile for tea and skincare formulation, lemons and limes, spearmint for tea, Morrocan mint for mojitos and juleps, three kinds of lettuces, and some decorative plants. We planted zucchini and hope that will be ready to harvest in a short while. In the meantime, have a look at our chard and apples!



We returned from our little vacation on Friday. It was an unexpected delight. We had planned a week of camping in the redwoods but we got rained out after the first night. So we packed up our camping stuff and checked into a chain "inn" in Santa Cruz to ride out the rainy days. It was a lot of fun. There were hikes in the redwoods, lots of train and trolly rides in various places (because vehicles, particularly the antiquated kind, are my toddler's current obsession), and day trips to Big Sur and Monterey. Except for beautiful Big Sur, I noticed a depressing abundance of chain restos and awful tourist traps everywhere we went. It got me thinking: has the landscape of this state changed so much that there is no longer any place to go except nature, tourist places and chains? Are we lazier now that we travel with a child or is there really, as Gertrude Stein once said about my neighboring town of Oakland, California, "no there there?"

This feeling of opressive sameness was mitigated somewhat by the glorious, gritty descriptions of North London and its varied population in Zadie Smith's fantastic 2000 novel, White Teeth. I loved this book, with strong, funny characters and an epic narrative that spans WWII to 1996 or so. Smith has wit and spark as she touches on such issues as colonialism, race, class, sex, beauty, religion, ethics and coming of age. White Teeth spans generations and locales--India, Jamaica, Bangladesh and London-- to weave together seemingly disparate people into a surprising story line that I whipped through because I couldn't put it down. I believe I am the last semi-literate person on Earth to pick this book up (there was a time that everyone I ever encountered anywhere was reading it). But if there are any other latecomers out there, expecially those who love Salman Rushdie (who I would have guessed was the writer here in a blind taste-test), I recommend it most highly.

Now I'm onto a reread of Living the Savvy Life and a book of short stories by the very promising Katherine Mansfield.

What are you reading?

In Which I Get Didactic about Nature

I once read an essay by Stephen Jay Gould in which the author talked about how crucial it is for one to know his own local geography and place-- for many reasons, one of which being our civic-mindedness. Without being intimately acquainted with our own landscape and local flora and fauna, he said, we can't be educated voters. I'm a Northern California girl, born and bred. My own geography is red clay hills, a roiling ocean, blackberry brambles, oak trees and redwoods. What care do I have, beyond an academic sort of appreciation, for Great Lakes or Amber Waves of Grain? My consciousness, my voting, are rooted in my relationship to the place I live.

I fret about raising a kid in an era of technological over-saturation. So many kids are engulfed by TV, computers, hand-held electronics. Time outside is rare and it frequently means being shuttled to and from organized activities. I read about Nature Deficit Disorder and Free-range parenting and it all really resonates with me. Of course I want to avoid childhood obesity (the result of lots of screen time along with poor diet). I also want my child to grow into a passionate and engaged adult. I want him to have a connection to his place, his history, his culture.

Our reality is a fragmented, atomized suburban existence. My dream is an integrated "village" of extended family and a love of our place. So we throw dinner parties and we try to get to know our neighbors. We grow some vegetables and herbs and we hike on the weekends. Lately I am including "more nature" in my cultivation of a more intentional life.

This week we will be going camping down south in the redwoods, our first of such trips for longer than an overnight. Truthfully, I'm a bit worried we will get bored. But I hope to come back a bit tanner, a bit lighter, and a bit more grateful for my fluffy eiderdown and soft bed. Plus, I'm looking forward to the s'mores.

Bye for now!

Slow Family Weekend

This Father's Day morning began with a lovely hot cafe mocha in bed for the man of the day.

then, a walk around town

to see the neighbors' gardens

and stop for a while at the beach.

Next, a short trip over the bridge to see the streetcars and rocket ships.

Happy Father's Day to the dads out there. Next week, my belated 100-Things wrap-up and a couple of book reviews and links I love.

But I'm an Earth Mother Type (a long post, mostly about parenting)

So I had the pleasure of spending a short bit of time with a charming femme d'un certain age at an art show this weekend. She was a jewelry maker originally from France and she had great style. We chatted a lot and I took mental notes on her to report here. She wore glasses and strong eye makeup with a definite bohemian vibe. She sported her own unique jewelry and flowing clothes in neutral, subdued colors. Her hair was a long blunt cut with bangs (and the women debating Ines de la Fressange's style guide on the Yahoo French Chic group will be interested to note that this was not a gal who appeared to wash her hair on anything even closely resembling a daily basis). Mostly I noticed the forthright way she spoke- confident, vivacious and also a keen listener.

We began talking because I had my three-year-old with me and talk tends to go to those who spill the most ice cream and giggle most loudly. Mine is a spirited kid and she told me hers were too. She said that when her son was young, the teachers at his (US) schools would chide her that he didn't "respond well to social pressure."" That a teacher of small children in our educational system would find fault with that quality doesn't surprise me; it was her delight in it that suprised me greatly.

I've had German, Greek and Italian acquaintances with young children but I haven't known any French parents that I can think of. But one thing I have read repeatedly is that French parenting is all about training children to respond to social pressure.



Charming petite Parisienne in her natural habitat, 2004


An essay I read recently (yes, I'm talking about this book again - there was a lot to chew on in its pages!) looks at French parenting and its differences with "Anglo-saxon" style childrearing. The writer is Janine di Giovanni. Like part of me, she is Italian-American. Unlike any of me, she appears to be a glamorous award-winning international journalist who is married to a frenchman.

Watching a crying child exhaust himself trailing behind his chic, slender (and unrelentingly quick-stepping) mother in Luxembourg Gardens, she writes,

'Well that kid will be in therapy for the rest of his life.'

I joke about these things but it's not altogether funny, One of the toughest things I have had to get used to in an otherwise idyllic Paris is the huge gap between Anglo-Saxon (or Italian American in my case) parenting and parenting French-style. The French are certainly stricter. They shout more. They slap more. And they enforce manners.

As a result, you find beautifully brought-up children, and many of my French friends who are parents will argue endlessly that instilling discipline and setting boundaries is the way to show the utmost love.

All true. Kids need boundaries and they need to be civilized for their own good. But Di Giovanni writes that, despite the fact that French children are better behaved than their American counterparts,

the hippie earth mother part of me still wonders about originality, creativity, and freethinking. (There is no such thing as an earth mother here; it is simply not chic.)

I'm an un-chic earth mother type. I wonder a lot about these things too. And this process of parenting a young child as he moves into a sprited third year on Planet Earth is a challenge: to transmit knowledge and instill manners and social savvy while respecting the dignity and liberty of this small person -- without slaps and without shaming -- is often difficult.



Free-range American kid in his natural habitat, Sea Ranch CA 2010

How to negotiate the goal of teaching boundaries with the reality of sharing space and a life with small children? How to "train" them well without treating them like lesser beings? After trial and error I have come to a philosophy of trying to approach mine as I would someone who is as worthy of respect as I am but who lacks the life experience to navigate life without help. I see myself as a combination translator, tutor and concierge, if you will. And he is, so far, a really great kid. But it's true you never know how well you've taught your children until they are grown.

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.

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.”