Put down the camera and the pen: just take it all in

Barack Obama accepted the Democratic presidential nomination with such style and fanfare it will become the new standard. Not the stadium of course, few politicians will ever be able to fill 76,000 seats. But there was so much imagery, from invoking MLK's March on Washington to the Federalist columns that framed Obama during his speech, making him look like a statesman. Our statesman.

When Michelle Obama and the girls came out it was like an updated, diverse version of the Kennedys in the White House. The regal, gorgeous wife, the kids bounding around looking every bit part of an American family. 

I wanted to tell my husband what that moment felt like, grab the computer and blog about it to you guys or click the camera in my mind to preserve the memory forever. I did none of the above. All I could do was stare the television screen, absorbing the monumental moment my son and grandsons will learn about in school.

Hillary knocked it out of the park

With grace, fierce intellect and an unshakeable sense of purpose, Hillary Rodham Clinton did her thang in Denver last night. She did her best to unify the fractured Democratic party.

She came with a mission that was threefold: thank and console her supporters; remind the rest of us of her place in the nation and in history and and why we should expect to see her again in 2012 and, last but not least, exhort everyone with a brain to get behind Barack Obama or explain to their shrinks why four more years of George Bush/John McCain is acceptable.

For me, what this election comes down to is the future. My future, that of my family's and of this nation. I want everyone, or darn near everyone, to have health insurance so they stop going to the emergency room and running up bills that those of us with insurance then pay. I want more emphasis on education and less on fighting wars. I want the return of our moral authority, not our ability to bully other countries.

Mostly, I just want peace. And although my life is really good, I can't know peace while 19-year-olds are dying in Iraq or coming back without their legs. I can't fake peace when children are going to horrific schools while my son enjoys the best our educational system has to offer.

Chatting with an acquaintance recently, she archly told me she doesn't read the newspaper or listen to the news. "It is too depressing and I don't want to live my life in fear," she said.
Nice try. The reality is kids will die in wars, people will suffer without health care and it will all happen even if we pretend not to notice. I know there is an emotional cost, but my conscience demands that I notice. I want a president who notices. Et tu?

Do children need to know for whom the bell tolls?

A friend of ours has just discovered he has a serious illness. Once he gets over the shock I think he can face the gravity of all this. I think, or hope, that at some point  my heart won't sink like a stone when I think of him. But the awful part, the thing I can't get my head around is that this has happened to a young, vibrant person with a daughter the same age as my son.

We parents struggle mightily to ensure death or nothing related comes near our children. We will give up our own lives to preserve theirs. Death is something that will come for all of us but we want to put it off as long as possible, more I think, for our children's sake than our own.  As I type these words my son skitters about the kitchen making a get-well card for his grandpa who is hospitalized with pneumonia. Grandpa's wife, my son's Nana, sits distraught 3,000 miles away. To cheer her up my son empties his Halloween stash and requests that I take him to the post office tomorrow so he can mail Nana a snack. 

To my son, sick feels like an aching tummy or a stuffed up nose. He is innocent of the word's wide and horrific bandwidth. I would like to keep it this way (he is only 7) but two of his friends now have seriously ill parents. Time to pick up one of those books I've passed over in the bookstores, the ones advising how to talk with young children about death. My instinct is to go slowly, but I also don't want him struggling for answers alone. 

Color Struck

Oh no they didn't. The mad social scientists at the New York Times' blog, Freakonomics, perked up a slow news day by wading into the age-old debate in black America over skin tone.

Economist Steven D. Levitt co-authored a Harvard University paper, "The Plight of Mixed-Race Adolescents" that asserts biracial kids exhibit terrible behavior but are all really, really good looking." Deep breath. Another. And another. Now discuss. I'll start.

I don't care whether the paper was written at Harvard or the London School of Economics, there is no scientific basis for assigning behavior by race or skin tone. Judging from the uproar the blog created, I suspect there is more outrage over the other side of the coin: biracial people are beautiful. Say what?

Dismissals of the notion of beauty being based on racial mix are flying. I've heard responses from the tepid, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," to the more interesting point that it is dark-skinned men who are considered real and beautiful men while paler male tones are just "pretty boys."

Since nearly all African Americans are of mixed ancestry, we're essentially talking about ourselves. Some of us have a white ancestor, others a white parent. Think Barack Obama. One would believe the recent success of Italian Vogue's all-black model cover would put to rest notions of beauty based on color. But America was built on absurd racial notions and they don't die easily.

Blacks are no longer required to have skin lighter than a brown paper bag to enter elite social milieus. But some of the twisted standards of beauty linger. I'm talking about the way black people can tease each other about their place in the hiearchy by invoking notions of field vs. house slaves. Both were owned but the latter held a higher status, working indoors and presumably eating and living better. Slaves in the house tended to have lighter complexion. Blacks, largely women, still remain obsessed with hair texture, an insecurity the hair care industry has profited from. And when it comes to love, color-struck remains more than a notion.

Farai Chideya takes up the issue with roundtable guests on her NPR show, "News & Notes."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/newsandviews/2008/08/mixedrace_kids_cuter_but_worse.html

Et tu?