Not All Who Wander Are Lost

A late start to a rainy day at the mall today, but a triumph nonetheless; after spending out the baby shower gift certificates and then some, we left the place with some nice new "twirling dresses" for the surprisingly peaceful two-year-old and, most importantly, a tandem stroller. You know you've sunk deep into the parenting thing when you find yourself putting a stroller together under the mall escalators merely in order to make it through the rest of the visit with your sanity intact.

On the other hand, pre-stroller purchase, I got a lot of cute stares and wistful, appreciative smiles while walking around holding the two week old, most especially from young hispanic girls. Sadly, there may be something notable here about the lack of committed fathers in the local, mostly lower-class hispanic communities surrounding the mall.

On the jobfront, hours spent carefully crafting an application for a History position at a teaching peer's alma mater will have to be chalked up to experience after my digital inquiry netted an equally rapid response that, though the position had literally been posted just a few days ago, it has already been offered to someone, and they think he'll accept. I'm left with a few still-unanswered applications out there, a couple of vague "opportunities" from relatives and friends, and not much else on the horizon.

Let's be honest about this: we're not at "grim" yet, but we're getting close. I'm nowhere near as depressed as I was about the whole process last month -- having that new baby changes the perspective -- but realistically, there is a good chance that we'll still be jobless and homeless the day we have to leave the current house and job (that would be June 24th). We've got plenty of offers to family-crash, but that's eminently temporary. Another week, and I'm seriously going to start polishing my sandwich-making skills.

Tip of the day: thanks to the magic of automated alt tags from del.icio.us, plus a judicious use of borrowed Javascript, you can hover the cursor over any tinyblog item to see why it's called a tinyblog.

These ain't just sidebar links, folks. Think of them as a series of shortform commentary on the subjective best of the infosphere.

In the spirit of the recently tinyblogged study which provides hard data to "prove" the no-brainer that the chaotic, distracting mess of multiple information streams that is CNN and many other channels today isn't working, because it causes people to split... their attention into too many parts to understand any of the content, we here at Not All Who Wander Are Lost are proud to utilize the third dimension in order to support simpliticy of presentation and, in doing so, provide the best foundation for audience clarity.

Tendencies towards overspeak and linguistic obfuscation notwithstanding, of course.

An interesting and witty presentation of recent caucasian-use mass media sightings of the word crunk over at Stereogum yesterday leads to a comment-based discussion about the origins of the term. In turn, I find and post this page from Dr. Seuss' rightfully obscure 1972 work Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!

Yes, it really says 'You can go in a Crunk-Car if you wish.'

Urban Dictionary lists 144 definitions of the term crunk ranging from "to get crazy and act a fool" to "crazy and drunk; fucked up or intoxicated in some way." The Seven Lady Godivas notwithstanding, it's not likely that this was what Teddy G. had in mind when he penned this simplest of plotless kiddiebooks.

Yet, oddly, though the deliberately nonsensical Seuss-use surely predates the development of the actual term by some three decades, the modern street definitions seem to apply here. Especially if one considers the blue smoke emanating from the back of the seriously crunked-up vehicle.

[W]hen a passenger told a flight attendant he saw another passenger with suspicious materials...[t]he flight crew looked at the materials, and the pilot decided to land at O'Hare.

The material turned out to be wires, an MP3 player and homeopathic medicines.

D'oh! Full story here. (Who brings wires on an airplane, anyway?)

It has become the norm for Willow to watch a video upon awakening, juice box and granola bar in hand, while Daddy drinks coffee and otherwise struggles with consciousness after a long night perforated by diaperchanging. So normative, in fact, that in my especially groggy state this morning it took me a while to realize that I was insisting upon it, advocating passivity while the kid wanted to wander:

Daddy, can we go outside?

Baby, it's raining. And you're still wearing your pajamas.

But I want to go outside.

Let's just watch the Muppets, okay?

Please, Daddy?

No, honey. Maybe later.

(beat)

Daddy, I want to do something silly. Let's put my boots on over my pajamas, and get my new panda bear umbrella from the car, and jump in the puddles. Okay?

Hoorah, then, for coffee outside in a grey morning rain, wondering at handheld earthworms and new violets. Hoorah for puddlejumping with glee in yellow fuzzy pajamas and bumblebee boots. Hoorah for yes -- it's good for the heart. And, most especially, hoorah for a child who enforces the best kind of parenting, and keeps me honest. Something silly indeed. Love you, kid.

Students play games of all types here (note: I'm writing from work, in the information commons), and we've never really frowned upon it. Sure, I guess we'd say something if the multimedia stations were being overused for major multiplayer networked gaming, but the library primarily gets kids playing tetris, fling-the-cat, spank the monkey, and other cute low-fi timewasters from the endless glut of the gamewide web. You know, the stuff you can access quickly, and play for minutes or hours with little to no mental commitment.

No worries, right? Such microgaming is harmless or better: the blipscreens take up little bandwidth, give the brain a much needed breather, and keep the hand-eye coordination up up up. Heck, some of them ever tax the brain, pushing creativity, logic and problem-solving, and even three-dimensional geometric envisioning while the wrist goes numb.

Not enough for some people, apparently. Someone today proposed -- department-wide -- that we should help the students use their game time "well" by giving them quote-educational-endquote games. Not sure here if the logic is that a library which carries both People magazine and cheap paperback sci fi is somehow expected to have higher standards (and a higher cut-off threshold for the collection) when it comes to gaming...or merely that, just as Seventeen and Vibe are (obviously) a gateway to reading Dickens and Homer, a few hours of The Sims 2 or 3D Ping Pong leaves students secretly longing for something which claims to be educational but actually has no more skill or thinking involved than the stuff which is available free.

And, as if it weren't going to be hard enough to compete with the no-download-necessary ease of the Addicting Games mentality, the proposal is to lend these educational games out from behind the check-out desk, since otherwise we'd end up engendering -- horrors! -- more game play, especially during the game-taboo hours of study hall. (Not that students ever play free games during study hall now, of course.)

To be fair, I belive my proposing and enterprising counterpart when she says that her daughter loved getting her own copy of Zoombinis. My case here, though is that getting your own copy isn't the same as getting it from the library staff when you want to use it...and, also, that Zoombinis (and other nominally educational games) are no more or less educational than the games which students already play on their own. The fact that this particular student is unusually prescient and thoughtful in comparison to her peers is noteworthy, but not relevant to my argument.

I know my thoughts here are a bit oversimplified, and that it's easy to rant here in the blog, outside the work community, when work takes a turn for the silly. I was going to write something pithy and oracular in response to it all, but then I realized I don't care so much. If people want to make a difficult path to a slightly more "educational" gaming opportunity than the current organic, perfectly acceptable, often fully developmentally-appropriate and highly educational practice, who am I to say it's not worth the bother? Time will prove me right, adolescents will go on being adolescents, free online games will continue to be at least as educational as anything we could actually provide for students upon request, and those "other" games will gather dust behind the circulation desk, mark my words. And wherever I am, I'll be laughing myself silly, trying to hit 20k on Slide Out.

At the butterfly museum today for baby's first true outing. Older sister Willow, an old hat unfazed by high-ceilinged air aflutter with a hundred multicolored wings, chased button quail around the concrete floor to the underfoliage, stuck her nose into resting orangewings to feel the tickle. I chased her, in turn scolding and celebrating her allatonce. Mommy rested on benches. Baby in the bjorn leaned against her chest, asleep through it all.

Lunch afterwards -- foccacia sandwiches and fresh turkey clubs -- and a trip to the candle store: teacandles in Sage and Citrus, Primrose, and Tulip for the naming ceremony two weekends hence. Supper at the door when we returned, thanks to a wonderful meal exchange for new parents here on campus. Flawless bedtime with Willow apres ziti under a smooth goatcheese-and-fresh-tomato cream sauce.

How nice to forget the looming jobless, homeless horizon for an afternoon.

But the kids are back tonight, classes tomorrow. And the radio show is for me as much as for them a weekly meditation. So I key into the dark classroom building, stumble downstairs to the basement, settle myself into the deepred swivel chairs, ready to play my heart out for this community on the cusp of leaving so many of us behind.

Playlist, as always, follows. Every last drop.

Tributary 4/25/05

Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Fat Soul
Phish -- Down With Disease
Steve Earle -- A Girl Like That
Guster -- Barrel of a Gun
Rusted Root -- You Can't Always Get What You Want
Suzanne Vega -- Fat Man and Dancing Girl
Ben Folds Five -- Tom & Mary
De La Soul -- The Magic Number

poembreak: Bounden Duty by James Tate

Dan Zanes -- Wonderwheel
Kathleen Edwards -- In State
Jason Faulkner -- Both Sides Now
Wilco -- Kamera
Tori Amos -- Cornflake Girl
Sebadoh -- Cold As Ice
The Gourds -- El Paso

poembreak: Ignis Fatuus by Yusef Komunyakaa

Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Iron & Wine -- Woman King
Bill Withers -- Ain't No Sunshine
Lucy Kaplansky -- It Ain't Me Babe
Ray Lamontagne -- Jolene
Sam Phillips -- All Night

poembreak: Trying To Make Music by David Wagoner

Kasey Chambers -- Runaway Train
Shivaree -- I Close My Eyes
Richard Shindell -- There Goes Mavis
The Chieftans w/ Lyle Lovett -- Don't Let Your Deal Go Down
St. Germain -- Montego Bay Spleen
Donna The Buffalo -- Seems To Want To Hurt This Time

You've been listening to Tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show on WNMH, serving the tri-state area (no, the other tri-state area) and the world every week with a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and everything in between. Have a good one, folks.

Over the garage
moon rises low on the ridge.
Sweet dreams, proud sister.

Out in the driveway
the glow of a cigarette,
a portable moon.

Her side of the house
floods with reflected moonlight.
Our side is shadowed.

Flush against the porch --
inherited, surprising --
new daffodils glow.

After the movie
listen to the moon-baby breathe.
Step outside again.

Penultimate moon
cloudcovered before midnight.
Newborn in my arms.

This moon spills through glass,
illimunates all of us
skating on this moon.

From Steven Johnson's new book of essays Everything Bad Is Good For You. Originally in today's New York Times Magazine and subsequently picked up by BoingBoing, with a redirect to additional mediacult rantage on Johnson's blog, including a seminal piece imagining the sociocritical response to the book had video games arrived first (and subsequent discussion/criticism via comments):

But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to 'follow the plot' instead of learning to lead."

The excerpts alone simultaneously challenge and speak to the work of the greats from Postman to Paglia, and, as such, dovetail with and justify my own work (including that course analyzing Beavis and Butthead, The Simpsons, and South Park). Either, taken alone, is perhaps the most tantalizing riff I've ever read. Note to self: finally, a must-read.

Metathought: Okay, maybe the Postman/Paglia thing is a bit obscure; for those who actually want to follow-up, this Wired article is probably a decent enough summary, albeit in Paglia's own words. And speaking of academic field-specificity, total mega-bonus points to anyone who recognized the reference to a four decade old Tom Wolfe essay about Marshall McLuhan in the blogtitle.

Had so much fun with the last one, I'm thrilled at the thought of a weekly brainprompt. Here's this week's cartoon, with my own stab at the caption.

Nothing yet...but the gorillas were terrified.

Think you can do better? Act now, but hurry: contest ends this evening at midnight!

[UPDATE 4/26: New Yorker Cartoon Editor Robert Mankoff discusses the contest, it's cartoons, and "the nature of collaborative cartooning." Also, next week's contest cartoon is up!]

A baker's half dozen of today's moving targets, from the virtual to the local.

1. A link from there to here and a virtual high five, both for submitting one of the 20 questions Captain Platypus chose to address for post-series Ask The Captain. Answer (and my question about woodchucks) here.

2. Nifty male-parenting resource Fatherville, courtesy of fellow culture vulture (and Mother-in-law) Patty. She's helping with the wee ones this afternoon while I work, so extra thanks, Mama.

3. Blood everywhere this afternoon on my way to work, perhaps as much as a cup trickling from my nostrils before I could pinch the clot into forming. Damn allergies. Lucky I had all those leftover McDonald's bags in the car, or I'd never have had enough napkins to handle the flow.

4. Parents in droves cover our beloved campuses today for this term's Parent's Visting weekend. Since I'm not teaching classes while on paternity leave, I've got but one meeting (with an advisee parent), and have been otherwise hiding out behind the service desk in the library. Long weekend ahead!

5. Potentially pro-masturbation (and anti-feminist) message intended to "merely" promote Vagina Monologes proves my ongoing point about the semiotic limitations, vast vague openness, and ultimate danger to one's cause of bumper-sticker messages. Say what you will, but this principal is absolutely in the right to ban "I (Heart) My Vagina" buttons, as they can indeed suggest/reinforce the unfortunate idea that women should be (or want to be) valued for their body rather than mind and heart.

6. Today's McSweeney's Short Imagined Monologue: MICROSOFT OFFICE ASSISTANT: THE PAPER CLIP:

Let me help you with that. Oh, come on. I don't want anything. I just want to lend a helping hand. Look at me, I have eyebrows! I need attention. But that is all I need. Feed me attention and I will solve all your problems. It looks like you're writing a letter. I love writing letters. I love reading letters. I just finished reading The Collected Letters of Van Gogh in three volumes....

7. And, finally...

Yet another wonderful thematic Google icon

Even Google knows it's Earth Day. Now get outside and hug a tree or something.

Last week, in a planning meeting, Student Congress asked the librarians if we could add another silent study room for use during study hall. Since the library has turned into somewhat of a party zone over the past few terms -- a phenomenon easily exacerbated by the usual deadly combination of Senior Spring and the effect that warm weather always has on adolescent hormones -- we were happy to oblige.

Tonight, for the first time, we closed off the fiction room with a sign that said "silent study only." As each student came into the library, they invariably took a quick look and decided to camp elsewhere. Soon, the rest of the library became overcrowded...and loud enough to make silent study anywhere in the building totally moot.

Then someone stole the sign.

After milking the oversized brains of four candidates for what should have been major consulting fees but amounted to a free trip to the Princeton area, they gave the department chair job down in Princeton as an interim position to someone in-house.

Annoying, that, but not illegal.

So we're not going to be moving to Princeton, which is good.

But then, it's starting to look like we're not going to have anywhere to go, which is not.

I'm not at the end of the line just yet -- applied for a full-year job at a nearby prep school, and sent out a letter of intent to a tiny boarding school in the hopes that they'll want a Renaissance Guy like me to teach English. But every day gets a bit closer to total loserhood. And family homelessness. I'm almost afraid to count the weeks.

The reimbursement check from Princeton came today, and I've been eyeing my retirement account with a sort of shameful lust. It'd be pretty depressing to trade the family's future for a hand-to-mouth present, but it may come to that, in the end.

In other news, I've had a debilitating migraine for over 24 hours, my shoulder blade develops a sharp shooting pain after just three minutes of babyholding, and my herniated disk is back with a vegnance.

This is day two of sitting in an information commons for four hours with not a soul to assist with anything. Meanwhile, Darcie's home resting up after a too-soon-after-C-section full family trip to the grocery store and Friendly's. This is stupid; I should be home with my children, bonding. Desperately.

It's hard not to think that every minute I spend here at work doing nothing is time wasted laying a foundation for us to brave the unknown and scary future together.

It's hard not to think about how busy, fulfilling, and useful my mornings used to be, what with teachers and students clamoring for my time between and during their class periods.

It's hard not to resent the people who decided that sitting here blogging in public while every kid in the school hangs out playing frisbee outside all afternoon is the best way my time could be spent.

It could be worse, I know. We could be out of paychecks already; we could have no parents ready and willing to help; the two year old with Downs Syndrome at the next table over could have been ours.

But I hate people who say that. It can always be worse. That doesn't mean it's good. Or that it's going to be good anytime soon.

How long can one function on three hours of dead-to-the-world a night? How depressed can one get sitting twiddling one's thumbs when the world needs teachers, the children need parents, the teachers need support, and the timing's all wrong?

Maybe it's just the migraine talking. But, man, I wish someone, anyone, would give me a chance to make a difference in all these lives. I'm damn good at it. The world needs it. How impotent it feels most days to know that I'm not doing anyone any good. Especially when pretty much everyone who has ever seen me teach or parent agrees that what I do -- at home, at work, and at play -- is both amazing, and amazingly transformative, in exactly those ways that people actually need.

Responding to the severe shortage of old people who require fulltime assistance, a Japanese company has manufactured a synthetic senior citizen as a stopgap measure [for Nurse's Aid training].

Okay, now read it again.

How do you get a shortage of old people? If there's not enough old people to practice on, then why do they need to train nurses to work on old people? Where did all the old people go, and where is this sudden flood of septuagenarian invalids supposed to come from?

So many questions, so little old people.

Jokes with realistic endings thread over at Something Awful goes on for 8 pages. Some sweet samples:

Have you seen Stevie Wonder's new house?

No.

Well, it's really nice.

What do you get when you're gay?

Made fun of.

What do you get when you cross a chicken with a centipede?

A media circus about the debate over the morals and ethics of genetic engineering.

Endless fun for the secret/not-so-secret PC-hater in all of us. Even my students liked it. Link via Boingboing.

Cassia Jade remains a wonderment. Up at all hours of the night, her dark eyes darting everywhere during feedings, constant diapering; our little C.J. cries little, and watches much. The back of her head fits in the palm of my hand; tiny reddish blond hairs against that new baby skin softer than peachfuzz, anything imaginable. Now that she's guzzling milk like a pro her very pores ooze that sweet, wondrous babybreath smell. It lingers on my clothes even now.

At seven, her sister Willow comes alive between us in the family bed. Come downstairs with me, Daddy; time to get up, Daddy; I love you, Daddy; want to watch the Muppets? This morning I took her to library storyhour and almost fell asleep to the soothing sounds of the substitute librarian reading picture books about flowers to a room full of mothers and children but otherwise empty of fathers. Like every first child must, she has been regressing in her own way as her family shifts to make room for the newcomer; in Willow's case, this means a full-blown case of the go-limp tantrums at the drop of a hat, and more cuddles than there used to be at our father-daughter bedtime.

The mother of my children -- oh, how I love that phrase -- remains a superwoman. She's off even the Motrin, and fully functional; you'd never know she was 6 days past major abdominal surgery if you hadn't been there, cutting the cord, on her bleeding belly. Running on naps and nurturing, she spends most of her days curled around the new one, milking, rocking, drowsing in the unseasonable heat wave. Folks stop by to find her cheerful and welcoming on her living room rocker, eager to chat, perhaps even off sitting under a shaded tree in the yard with the baby blanketed on her lap.

Me? I'm back at work as of today, afternoons only for the rest of the term. Somewhat delirious, having slept little since the birth. I spend my time at home following the girls around at a distance, entering rooms once they have moved on to clean and gather, tidy and wash. My herniated disk is acting up; my shoulder blades ache constantly.

I've held Cassia for a total of about an hour and a half since she was born.

Yeah, I'm happy. She's a miracle, indeed.

But she's not my miracle.

With eight weeks to go before we lose both job and home all-at-once, no job offers in sight, and the school hiring season winding down, it's hard to stay focused on the beautiful newness of things. Too much time on my hands, too many questions about this or that unrealistic opportunity at some totally unrealistic school -- too much time dwelling on the fact that time is running out, and the bank balance empty as can be -- and caring for the family becomes a quick and constant confrontation with the fact that, just two months from now, I will have no way to feed, clothe, or shelter this wondrous clan.

And so I wash the dishes switch over the laundry diaper the baby feed the toddler check in on the mother fold the clothes restock the diapers over and over and over again, keeping the mind busy, the hands on soft things, the family first.

I drown myself in my family.

So I do not drown, myself.

Baby and more baby...the jobsearch and all the rest of my life has been on hold for days, and good thing, too.

Diapers. Headholding. The right way to wrap the body, and the too-loose way. How much it hurts the back to rest the baby's butt on the belly while she's in your arms. How to be a daddy. It's amazing what comes back, and how quickly.

It's amazing, too, what one forgets. How the world shifts. How the entirety of life refocuses in an eyeblink, as if we emerged from the hospital into bizarro world. I mean, last week the one year old next door was tiny, and now she's this giant person...

Anyway. Cassia is a little peanut. At four days old, she's lifting her head and cruching her stomach muscles, trying to sit up on her own. Her blueblack infant eyes open wide, scan the room for mommy and daddy constantly. Except during the day, when she sleeps like...a baby, I guess. Though she looks like a turtle with her eyes closed.

Of course, that means we're up all day with the two year old, and changing diapers and cooing all night with the baby. I've slept about 6 hours total since Wednesday.

So here's the result of all that exhaustedness: Tonight's slightly garbled, oddly inconsistent, eclectic, hectic edition of tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show on WNMH. More reports anon. For now, playlist follows.

Tributary 4/18/05

Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Fat Soul
Cake -- Sheep Go To Heaven
Peter Gabriel -- Steam
Calexico -- Alone Again Or
dmb -- the best of what's around
beck -- Hell Yeah

Gilberto Gil -- Three Little Birds
Timbuk 3 -- Born To Be Wild
Weezer -- Undone
They Might Be Giants -- They'll Need A Crane
Aberfeldy -- Love Is An Arrow
Patty Griffin -- Love Throw A Line
Alison Brown -- Everyday I Write The Book

Jim White w/ Aimee Mann -- Static on the Radio
Jack Johnson -- Losing Hope
Nickel Creek -- Spit on a Stranger
Wild Band of Snee -- The Clover Show
Tom Landa & the Paperboys -- All Along The Watchtower
Hird -- Burn

Jeff Buckley -- Woke Up In A Strange Room
Barenaked Ladies -- Light Up My Room
Monty Python -- I Like Traffic Lights
Keller Williams -- Anyhow, Anyway
Jem -- Maybe I'm Amazed
Shawn Colvin -- Say A Little Prayer

Yeah, that. I'll be back.

Generally, this blog is about words, first and foremost. In this case, however, a picture really is worth a thousand words (and a little extra download time).

Cutting the cord

Cassia Jade
8 pounds, 2 ounces
Born April 14, 2005 at 9:06 am

Daddy and big sister Willow

Back with more words in a few days.

In the meantime, I've never been so overjoyed to be speechless.

Today is Thank Your School Librarian Day. You can thank me here, or thank all of my coworkers here.

It's also St. Ursus of Aosta's Day and, my favorite, Blame Somebody Else Day.

Most importantly, however, today is the last day I will ever be the parent of an only child. God willing, of course.

If you happen to be thinking about us, say a prayer at about 8:30 tomorrow morning EST; if all goes well we'll be out of surgery with a new little one by nine o'clock. Blogging for the next few may be understandably sporadic, but expect baby pix by Saturday.

Read all about it on the NMH Library blog. The photo shows me on the left; scroll down to read my prizewinning entry Poetry is an Exercise in Futility.

What did I win? Mostly, the chance to read the work aloud to a few students and librarians this past Sunday over cookies and tea. I was also presented with a hardcover edition of Poems To Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology, a gift card for the school bookstore, and a signed certificate suitable for framing but destined for a drawer.

Brought to you by the letters I, V, and Y.

Today's Boston Globe reports on "Informal Learning For Children," a new course-based partnership between Harvard (see previous rant) and Sesame Street (see previous rant).

Despite my ongoing concerns about both institutions, and despite an overuse of the usual technology-in-education straw men (media-driven kiddie violence, tech-savvy students who "know more" than teachers) in the interview that follows the article, it's hard not to like class lecturer Joseph Blatt's response to the question "what results are you hoping to achieve?"

The immediate results we hope of this first venture together would be a large number of students who are trained both in learning theory and other sorts of human development that we teach here, and in how to reach children effectively through media. So we imagine that we're going to be graduating a number of students who will be skilled and prepared to be the curriculum developers, researchers, evaluators, possibly writers, maybe even the producers of new educational media for kids.

Kudos to Blatt, as well, for recognizing that the partnership between formal and informal learning has strong merit...and for mentioning museum education as another example of the informal. It's nothing new: I was working on the same issues in partnership with Harvard way back in 1994 during my tenure at the Museum of Science. But I suppose Big Bird has more news cache.

Bonus: In other Sesame Street news, Cookie Monster is curbing his cookie intake in response to public concerns about promoting healthy eating habits among kids. Sheesh! Thanks to Captain Platypus for the find.

Been riding the adrenaline rush all day, floating from task to task on a madman's giddy grin and enough coffee to kill an ox. Students think I'm insane, but the faculty know this glow, ask about the obvious impending joy, listen happily to me babble in my glee.

Tonight, too: through one last hoorah dinner at the People's Pint with Darcie while the Dean of Students and her partner marveled at our two year old's ability to keep up with their six year old, and shopping beforehand for soft animals and other sundry babystuff. And the moon, which even now shines low and orangebright like a cat's grin.

Just over 48 hours to the baby's arrival, and it's damn good to be alive.

Even another week of dead technology at the radio station couldn't kill the self-inflicted groove. I spun this week's show the old fashioned way, trading disks in and out of the oft-unreliable doubledecks, until deck two crashed just after 11, and I had to switch over to an iPod charged with wishes and not much else.

This is my life now -- on a shoestring, strung out like a junkie on a wing and a prayer, high on the fumes of hope.

Play, music. Play.

Tributary 4/11/05

Fat Footin' -- Skavoovie and the Epitones
Making Plans for Nigel -- The Rembrandts
Outsider -- Juliana Hatfield
Welcome To This World -- Primus
Back on the Train -- Phish
Fell In Love With a Boy -- Joss Stone
Me Gustas Tu -- Manu Chao

storytime: if you give a mouse a cookie (numeroff)

Slung-lo -- Erin McKeown
That Train Don't Stop Here -- Los Lobos
As Is -- Ani Difranco
Nightgown of the Sullen Moon -- They Might Be Giants
You Never Get What You Want -- Patty Griffin
Why Not -- Acoustic Syndicate
One -- Aimee Mann

storytime: the owl and the pussycat (lear)

I Need Love -- Sam Phillips
I'm Looking Through You -- The Wallflowers
Meet Me At The Corner -- Dan Hicks & Elvis Costello
I Love Her, She Loves Me -- Ware River Club
Every Little Thing (He) Does Is Magic -- Shawn Colvin
It's Amazing -- Mindy Smith
Arms of a Woman -- Amos Lee

storytime: goodnight moon (brown)

One Of These Things First -- Nick Drake
Sweet In The Morning -- Bobby McFerrin
My Baby Needs A Shepherd -- Emmylou Harris
I Wish My Baby Was Born -- The Be Good Tanyas
When You Dream -- Barenaked Ladies
You Are My Sunshine -- Elizabeth Mitchell

You've been listening to Tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show here on WNMH. Tune in next week, when I'll be tired enough to play anything.

This week's edition of tributary, your ten to midnight (EST) Monday night show on WNMH, starts in 41 minutes.

I probably missed you, but if you just got here, hit this link now to listen in!

From funk to folk, from jazz to jambands, from blues to bluegrass, and everything in between...bedtime stories on the half hour and the hour...a coffee giveaway contest at 11:15 or so...and all requests seriously considered at 413-498-3915.

Trust me. You'll love it. Heck, I'll even throw in a money back guarantee.

Hey, leave a comment if you listen in, will you? Thanks!

I'm back.

Princeton was better than I expected. Suprisingly New Englandesque, and the housing market is a bit terrifying, but it was nice to finally find two jobs that excite me in all the right ways. Two very, very different jobs, at two very, very different schools. But both felt like they could be home.

More, though, I feel like this was the trip where I hit my stride. Not sure how, but I left both places feeling like I showed the best of me, in the best possible light, without faltering or faking it. I was honest, and in doing so proved to myself that this really is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and amazingly so. I'm reasonably sure I impressed them; I know I impressed me.

Now, if they decide to go with someone else, it'll be because they decided they want someone else, not because I was weak. If they do pick a different candidate, it'll have to be for one of two reasons: they can be better at being me, or because the someone else that they are was a better fit for the job.

Either way, I think I can live with that.

I even think I can embrace it.

But it hardly matters anymore. Three days, two schools, and a whirlwind tour of the Princeton area later, I'm ready to put the jobsearch on hold for a while.

Because once I figured out that getting a job won't be a miracle but a triumph, I was finally able to come to terms with the true miracle in my life: little nameless, the baby-to-be.

Not to mention the family that spins around me, the storm to my eye, as the date grows ever closer.

We're coming into the home stretch with but three full days to go before our early Thursday morning C-section appointment. Since coming home the exhilliration of the jobsearch has been slowly supplanted by anticipation. Just this evening, I felt the first stirrings of crest-of-the-roller-coaster excitement deep in my gut.

Incidentally, for those keeping track of the blog over time, no, I didn't stay in Princeton for longer than intended. I've been back since late Friday night. But somehow, after coming home, family seemed so much more important than blogging. So no, I didn't write last night. Fell asleep putting the kid to bed instead. And no, I didn't write when we were at the library today for my poetry reading -- not when there was a neighborhood kiddie pool party waiting back home.

Heck, the only reason I'm here now is that Darcie wanted one last shot at putting Willow to bed before the infant took over her life completely, and before the C-section kept her from bedsharing with the older one at bedtime.

I know blogging is important for local reasons -- for my sanity, and in no small part because I want to leave the blog as a record for my children. But blogging for family will never beat being with family. I know how easily experience can be supplanted by the recording of experience; I've seen folks forget to put the lens down, and miss the life they're trying to record. I'd rather have no photos, no blog, no words, and a mess of true memories any day.

Expect little for the next few days, too. With only four nights left as a family of three, I'm sticking to my priorities, thanks.

Today the first crocus bloomed in the middle of our lawn. Tiny, streaked with violet, and totally unexpected.

Willow picked it when our backs were turned.

We've been watching the shoots come in for weeks, talking about the life cycle, preparing for the best signs of Spring together.

I yelled.

Turns out she just wanted to give it to Mommy.

I leave before dawn tomorrow for the airport, and will be in New Jersey on the job hunt until late Friday night. Not sure if I'll have a chance to blog from the road, but come back Saturday for a full (albeit anonymous) report.

Stay safe and sane, folks. The baby arrives a week from Thursday.

A bit frazzled this week as I make plans for the big lastgasp jobsearch jaunt and, subsequently, the birth of our second child. So no prose this week either. Anyway, music is supposed to speak for itself.

Big plans for this year's all-covers extravaganza tonight on tributary, your ten to midnight Monday night show on WNMH. Pity the in-studio technology wasn't working again. Apologies to streamshow listeners, if there were any, for the flailing first half hour; it's been a long time since I had to run the show from the CD collection, and it made it no easier that I had to run home and get the CDs while the music was playing.

I did manage to stay on-format, however, mostly because as a covers afficionado I have a good couple hundred covers lying around, some of which are actually good songs, some of which are even better than the original. Playlist follows; I swear, the first few songs are good, but I certainly wouldn't have played them if I had known that I needed to bring the hardcopy collection into the studio.

Tributary 4/4/05: Coversongs

~~Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Drunk~~
Rufus Wainright -- Across the Universe (Beatles)
Salamander Crossing -- Down in the Milltown (Gorka)
Salamander Crossing -- Wade in the Water (trad.)
Death Cab For Cutie -- Love Song (Cure)
Keb' Mo' -- Love Train (Spinners?)

coverstory: Moxy Fruvous -- Green Eggs and Ham

Chris Ardoin -- Your Love Keeps Liftin' Me (Wilson)
Steve Earle -- A Girl Like THat (NRBQ)
Nirvana -- Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam (Vaselines)
Herbie Hancock -- All Apologies (Nirvana)
Richard Thompson -- Kiss (Prince)

coverstory: politically correct version of the 3 little pigs

The Posies -- Looking Through You (Beatles)
Cake -- I Will Survive (Gaynor?)
Hayseed Dixie -- Highway to Hell (AD/DC)
Tori Amos -- Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode)
Tim O'Brien -- Father of Night (Dylan)
Evan Dando -- How Will I Know (Houston)

coverstory: politically correct version of the frog prince

Maroon 5 -- Pure Imagination (Wonka)
Crooked Still -- Orphan Girl (Welch)
Turtle Island String Quartet -- Crossroads (trad.)
Girlyman -- My Sweet Lord (Harrison)
Be Good Tanyas -- Waitin' Around to Die (Van Zandt)
Gone Phishin' -- Rift (Phish)

Phew. Come back next week for the last fully coherent edition of tributary -- I'll keep running 'em after that through the summer, but on much less sleep, once the baby comes.

Willow's interested in numbers; at four months shy of three years old she can already count to ten in her sleep, wants to know the exact age of everyone and their brother, and understands clearly the relationship between the act of counting and the number of fingers she's holding up.

Tonight daylight savings time threw us all off a bit sleepschedule-wise, so when the usual clocktime bedtime had come and gone, I introduced the concept of counting sheep. No problem there. I thought I'd try a little subtraction, just to see if she could do it.

I am proud to report that not only can the little genius easily visualize the numbers one through four well enough to figure out, without ever having encountered the idea of subtraction in any form, all the positive integer permutations of subtraction from four through two, she even pushed me past my own expectations near the end of the exercise:

Okay, Willow, let's say I have four sheep, and you eat -

I want to eat four of them!

Uh...okay, if you have four sheep, and you take away one two three four sheep, then how many do you have left?

Not! No! Not any sheep, Daddy! An' if there's one more again, I have one, and then if I have two sheep, I can only have two sheep...

And voila, the genius anticipates, and subsequently invents, the idea of zero without even having a word for it. Let's hope the second one is an artistic genius or something -- it's going to hard to compete with the logical skills of the older sibling.

In other subtractive news, the countdown to baby birth day continues. The planned C-section is just ten days from today. I'll be in New Jersey for at least three of those days pursuing the jobsearch, and will work every other workday between now and then, right up to (and including) the day before the birth itself. Total remaining number of days to be home, quietly, and enjoy our remaining life as a family of three: two.

Though it is, admittedly, a pain in the butt to be trying to find work and having a baby almost simultaneously, much of what's so frustrating about the jobsearch is that I'm new at it. I'm 32 years old, and until now I've been lucky -- every time I needed a job, one just sort of came along and offered itself to me.

Heck, even my current 7 year stint was a lucky one-shot. We saw the ad in the paper, answered it on a whim, and had an offer within a week.

I'm certainly not complaining -- I know that this unusual history makes me the envy of many who have suffered the stress of what is turning out to be an intensive, full-time process. But notably, my lack of experience leaves me with very little practice in the ups and downs of the interview process.

Every scenario I encounter is comprehensively new and unfamiliar. Where others my age have been toughened to the obstacle course that we call "looking for work," I cannot compete. With no experience in the simultaneous pursuit of multiple opportunities, I have no instinct for managing the unexpected.

Which brings us to today's dilemma.

I have been invited down to New Jersey for a full day job interview at School A plus half-day tour with a real estate agent, with all costs -- flight, car rental, and housing -- paid by the prospective employer.

I serendipitously recieved a call today from a second school in the same area, and had a lovely hour-long interview with the associate head of School B, who (hopefully) will contact me by email this weekend to discuss the possibility of a visit. While I'm already down in the area. On the other school's dime.

The question, then: what are my obligations -- financial, informational, or otherwise -- to each school in this scenario? For example, if School B does not generally pay travel costs for visiting prospective faculty, should I call School B, explain the situation, and offer to split the costs with them? If School B does pay travel costs, should I figure out a way to charge each school with one leg of the trip -- for example, ask one to pay transport one way, and the other to pay transport back home?

Yeah, I know: after weeks of little to no job prospects, I'm lucky to have such problems.

Nonetheless. Please advise.

Outside on the lawn today, Willow in her new spring bee boots stomping through the muddy snow under the neighborhood swingset, Zellie the the Jack Russel Terrier zigzagging collarless and unfettered as usual. Across the lawn we spotted baby Zinnia and her daddy, musician Peter Siegel, with their own dog Lucy, a big grey Lab mix.

Peter and I are both on the jobhunt these days, so though we knew Lucy has a thing about small dogs, after a few call-and-response across the wide ever-more-green expanse, we found ourselves grouped, comparing notes about the interview process.

Until, with no warning whatsoever, Lucy pulled out of Peter's grasp and lunged for Zellie, pinning her to the ground like a tiger on its prey.

It's funny how the panic instinct kicks in in moments like these. I have a vague memory of a single, tiny yip, Peter and I together struggling to pull this suddenly huge dog off little Zellie, a suddely grounded Zinnia screaming in the background. I remember it took perhaps a minute, maybe a few seconds more, to extricate Lucy's teeth from Zellie's neck; I remember I was screaming something, maybe Lucy's name, and Peter was, too.

Funny, too, how polite and casual one can be in the aftershock of a scare like this. It took another minute, maybe, to part as cordially as possible, reassuring Peter all the while that the dog was surely fine, that we knew this was going to happen and shouldn't have been talking, that we'd better get inside.

But under the politeness, I think I already knew Zellie was hurt. Though there was no limp in Zellie's walk, there was blood on her neck and shoulder. And she wasn't making a sound -- which, if you know anything about Jack Rusell Terriers, is a sign of serious injury indeed.

Back home, imagining the worst, we called Darcie, who was at the library, and told her to come home. Willow was a little confused, but I think she still doesn't really understand what happened, or why -- a truth of immaturity for which I will always be grateful, as I imagine this could have been a major trauma for her as well in other, more mature circumstances. Me, I was terrified, listening for a bark or whine that never came, trying to imagine the perils of letting a dog with no warning system, no voice box, run free.

Minutes later, we were in the car, on the way to the vet, Zellie wrapped in a towel. Willow spent the drive trying to figure out what happened -- Mommy, is Lucy going to be okay? Why is Zellie in the car? -- and trying not to panic. In other circumstances, her worst outburst (No, Daddy, you can't asnwer that question! It's mine!) would even be funny.

Me, I just prayed.

After a long wait for the vet -- she was removing some dog's teeth when we arrived -- over the course of a nervous hour, we began to hear the whine of a dog's bruised voicebox coming back to life. No surgery was necessary; though the vet discovered serious bruising over half of her body, and the shaved patches have revealed some pretty deep and gory puncture wounds, we are assured that Zellie will recover fully.

Thank the lord for small miracles, I suppose. But God, if you're listening:

Things are a bit fragile these days; we're still jobless as of June, about to be homeless, expecting a second baby in 13 days, now. I'm overworked, falling behind trying to cover work responsibilities and the jobsearch at once, skimping on kid and wifetime already, wondering where I'll be able to find the extra time and energy for a new baby and a post-C-section spouse. Not sure how much more of this I can take.

Please, stop testing me.