Work Overload and Genetic Fatalism

I want to apologize now for any complaining I've done in the past about being too busy at work.  Or too bored, for that matter.  Either way, I had no idea what "busy" meant.  Nobody does "busy" like the US Senate.  Yesterday I stood on my feet and wrote memos and took notes and made folders and ran bills and amendments around like a crazy person for 10 straight hours.  And I was the first person in my office to leave (I've never been so grateful for class).

And all so a bill to rewrite No Child Left Behind could go to committee markup the next day so it could not pass.

You're welcome, tax payers.

While I would love to talk about all the things that made my life hellish yesterday, this is in fact the highest level of detail I can go into.  Maybe I'll come back and edit this post after everything goes public.  Suffice it to say, if I didn't hate Senate Republicans before, I sure do now.

A huge part of my job for the past few weeks in preparing for this markup process has been to get intimately familiar with the old NCLB and the '65 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB's predecessor).  In an interesting (and nerdy) parallel, I've also been watching Ken Burns' new documentary Prohibition on PBS, and it seemed like that particular amendment went through a checklist of bad legislative traits.

• Good intentions, not well thought-out
• No plan for implementation
• Overly strict and unrealistic goals
• Started off with broad public support, but no one wanted those standards actually applied to them
• Huge demands placed on states with little to no funds for support
• Stifled public debate, in part because of its good intentions

Sound familiar?  It did to me.

As for somewhere I've been recently, we hosted another seasonal brunch this past Sunday at our house.  It was lovely, and we had a great turnout and amazing food.  I stole a recipe for sweet potato hummus from my aunt and one for pumpkin rice pudding from a friend from undergrad who writes that blog.  Don't spend too much time looking around that blog though...the degree to which her whole life is put together and adorable will depress you.  Anyway, I made both of those things, along with a loaf of french bread to accompany my roommate's Bacon Bourbon Jam, and it was a hit.

So now for the genetic fatalism.

We decided, before this brunch started, that we were determined to have a minimum amount of leftovers after this shindig.  So we bought ziploc baggies and and containers in advance to hand out to guests as they left, with the idea that they could load up on some leftovers and reduce our burden.  People were annoyingly resistent.  I took it upon myself to be the pusher.

"That bag is hardly full."

"You barely ate anything!  You'll starve on the way home."

"This is how you repay us for hosting you."

"Who doesn't need a few scones for the road?"

If someone had brought me a shawl and some orthopedic shoes, I would have officially become my Jewish grandmother.  It's a good thing nobody in the room owed me a phone call.

Stealing from Myself

I'm required to blog weekly for my Ethics class, so usually those are short and not very interesting.  However, this is what I posted this week, and it's a little longer and better.  So I'm reposting it.

I don’t know if anyone else likes podcasts at all, or Slate.com, but if you like either, you should listen to their “Political Gabfest” podcast.  It’s one of my favourites.  Anyway, a point they’ve made several times on their show is that campaigns and primaries have the perverse effect of narrowing the field down to egomaniacs who either have extreme ideologies or are willing to lie and say they do for a while – either way, not a desirable candidate.

When I was reading the Warwick piece and got to the end bit about central ethical principles we should want to see public servants possess, I found myself thinking about that podcast and that particular point.  Campaigns and primaries do seem like a great way to weed out all five of those ethical principles.

-Public Orientation: you have to have money to run a campaign.  You have to say things that please interest groups to get money.  Having a general “public interest”, unfortunately, just won’t win you the money you need.

-Reflective choice: especially during primaries, there are just certain values we demand our candidates say, whether they actually believe them or not.  I’m thinking specifically of how Romney recently had to run away from his own health care policies.

-Veracity: fudging, stretching and otherwise distorting the truth is a fundamental part of campaigns.  While of course ideally a candidate should be able to present facts fully and honestly, I know from my own campaign work that omissions and distortions are presented to campaign staff as serving the higher good of election, and thus acceptable.  I’m sure they’re presented the same way to the candidate.

-Procedural Respect: especially in our current climate, you are not going to get elected saying that “Washington has its flaws, but the institutions are there for a reason so I’ll probably keep most of those in place.”

-Restraint of means: 1. Campaigns spend like crazy, and more money is always, always better; and 2. Campaigns are not won with small, reasonable promises.  They are won with big, sweeping, expensive promises of change.  Even promises to cut spending all over the place are not tempered and do not reflect a thoughtful restraint of means.

Finally. I know.

[Insert apologies here].  However, I genuinely had nothing interesting to say.  At least I can recognize that in myself and act accordingly, right?  I feel like if every 24-hour news network had this same trait...there would be a lot of dead air.  Now I'm just imagining TJ Holmes standing there saying "Yeah, not a whole lot today.  Don't want to just rehash exactly what I said yesterday.  So I'm going to write my grandmother.  You should, too.  Probably a better use of time."  Notice my Jew-guilt coming out.

Somewhere I've been this week: Shophouse in Dupont Circle.  It was started by the Chipotle folks, but it's the Southeast Asian version.  These are super popular around here - we have an Indian Chipotle, a Mediterranean Chipotle, a Japanese Chipotle.  Of course, none of these are actually from Chipotle themselves, but it's the same basic idea.  Anyway, Shophouse was surprisingly delicious!  I mean, you have to approach these things with the same mindset as you do Chipotle - it is not meant for real, authentic Mexican, it's meant for an enormous burrito that likely shortens your life by a couple years, but makes it much more enjoyable.  In that spirit, I got a pork and chicken meatball bahn mi with green papaya and peanuts and it was fantastic.  Highly recommended.  Killer lines though...hopefully those will die down once it's been open for a few months!

So I've gotten totally obsessed with the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.  He interviews these comedians about their lives and backgrounds and it is always totally fascinating.  He also vaguely reminds me of my old professor, Rick Hess.  Same level of directness, similar sense of humor, comparable amounts of cursing.  I loved his class so much.  I recommend starting with the Amy Poehler or Louis CK interviews.  Both incredibly moving pieces of journalism.

One of the most recent that I listened to was with a comedian I hadn't heard of before.  His name is Anthony Jeselnik.  Apparently he wrote for Jimmy Fallon and was famous for an outstanding roast of Donald Trump.  So I looked up that clip and I guess for that kind of comedy it was good?  I don't really know.  Everyone else seemed to be laughing.  To be honest, I don't understand roasts.  All I can think about is how much I would be crying if I were the roast-ee.  Yet another reason for me to never be famous.  But he did seem better than the other people, so good for him.  Anyway, one of the things he said in his interview with Maron that really stuck with me was that he actively seeks things that should be offensive and tries to make people laugh about them.  At one point he said, "yeah, I can't seem to find a good punchline for rape yet."  He got actively mad about people in his audience who found his language or his messages offensive.  He kept essentially saying they needed to grow a pair.

I had been thinking about this, and feeling very conflicted.  On the one hand, life is too short to be sad about everything.  Sometimes you just have to laugh and move on with life, and people who take things too seriously do harm to themselves and others.  Also I like the idea that as a society, we should be able to talk about anything and not cut people out of the conversation because they need to approach it in a humorous way.  I get making jokes about cancer or about disabilities - a lot of people who live with those things say that people tiptoeing around them makes it worse and it's something they have to live with anyway so they'd rather joke.  On the other hand, I don't like jokes about rape.  (Unless Always Sunny makes them.  Then it's hilarious.)

And then today the discussion happening in my mind (yup) took a new turn.  An ex-student of mine added me on facebook.  I went to look at his profile, and he's holding a gun.  He has a teardrop tattoo.  When I had him as a student, he read sci-fi books and stayed after class for homework help.  He got teased a lot.  I thought he would either have to go to an amazing charter school or he would get "toughened" up at the general high school beyond repair.  Looks like the latter happened.  And today, I was sad.

I was just sad.  My heart just hurt.  A lot.  I understand that some people aren't ok with that emotion, but I think it's on them to change.  There is a place for pure sadness in our lives and in our society.  Maybe it's ok to mourn, to not move on immediately or be ok with people making fun of things.  So to all the people who get angry at people who get offended and say they're too sheltered, I say this: I think you're too sheltered.  Not being sheltered means embracing a wide range of emotions, including shame and sadness.  Grow a pair.

Awaiting the Alien Invasion

So far this week, DC has gone through The Earthquake (holding back my CA disdain for the overreaction) and Hurricane Not-So-Much.  Turned out to be more just a really long-lasting drizzle.  I feel bad for North Carolina, because clearly they took the hit for us.  But the good thing is that I had a great excuse to stay home and watch about 12 episodes of my new obsession, Dr. Who.  I'm not usually much of a Sci-Fi person, but I'm learning that I have a serious weak spot for BBC sci-fi.  I think because they don't try to do anything fancy with the graphics or the storyline and also I'm in the first David Tennant season and he is rather dreamy.  Also I like the universe-i-ness of it.  Finishing The Sopranos and Six Feet Under has scarred me because there is just nothing nothing left to watch of these families I love so much. There seems to be an infinite amount of Dr. Who.


But enough about TV, even though it is taking up significant portions of my life.  This past week, I went to Austin, TX, and was totally rejuvenated.  I don't ever want to move back to Texas, but there is something homey about being around all those people I love so dearly and also being able to park easily.  Since then, we've been orientating the hell out of the new students, with trivia and dancing and dinners and info sessions.  Ready for that mess to be over - I have never been and never will be an orientation kind of gal.  Making 50 new acquaintances in two days makes my head hurt and also makes me more inclined to hate everyone.  Not a good attitude for a student mentor, but this is what they get.  One place I went this week that I absolutely do NOT recommend is Third Edition, one of the bigger bars in the Georgetown area.  Teeming with undergrads.  And in Georgetown, "undergrads" means girls who look like prostitutes and guys with popped collars and smarmy faces.  Picture a lot of this, except the girls are more naked and there are more booze involved.  Do not ever ever go there.


And this brings me to my thought for this post.  The Abilene Paradox.  If you don't feel like reading that Wikipedia article, let me summarize for you: a group of friends is in a car.  No one wants to go to Abilene (this is almost certainly true).  Yet somehow...the car ends up going to Abilene because everyone thinks everyone else must want to go to Abilene because that's where we're going and no one wants to be the squeaky wheel.  I feel like, theoretically, this should be an almost extinct phenomenon because we are such a squeaky wheel-friendly society.  Everyone has an opinion on everything and posts it immediately on Twitter.  In politics, this should be all the MORE true!  There is nothing more popular than saying "everyone else is wrong".  Yet somehow...we still end up going to Abilene.  We all think raising taxes and eliminating some deductions is a good idea, and yet somehow we are only cutting programs that the vast majority of people think should remain untouched.  Everyone says Social Security has to be addressed, and yet on we go.
So maybe the problem is that we have too many people squeaking.  There's a lot of chatter in the car about how awful Abilene is, and even some people suggesting a place to turn around, but there's just too much noise.  I don't have a solution for this at all.  Staying quiet doesn't help, but more talking doesn't either, and at this point, all the "I take real action" promises just add to the squeakiness.
Also, as an FYI, I'm hoping to go to Abilene in October, entirely of my own free will.  It's actually not that bad.

Nerd Love

Both my thought for the week and my Place I Went have to do with the concept of being a nerd.  I had a happy hour this week with a friend of mine at Brasserie Beck, an overpriced K-Street place where I once saw Carl Levin.  They have really good mussels and frites, which makes sense, since they are Belgian.  But you will easily put down $40-50 for a meal, which is no problem when you're on the company card, but choke-worthy for a grad student like me.  During happy hour, though, they have half-priced Belgian drafts, which are delicious.  As pretty much anyone will tell you, I am not a beer person.  Truth be told, I'm not even really an alcohol person.  Red wine makes me nauseated, I usually have to give back rail drinks for being too strong...if a diet coke could make me better at talking to people I don't know, I think I would be a tea-totaler. (Is that how you spell that?)
But Belgian beers are delicious.  They taste like light, refreshing juice.  And the bartenders at Brasserie Beck are delightfully geeky about it all.  They tell you the composition, the aging process, they let you try samples and pair them with things.  I ended up going with a Palm Speciale, in spite of its menu description of tasting like "warm biscuits".  (Dear BB, no one wants their drink tasting like warm biscuits.  Especially when it's 106 degrees outside.  Just FYI.)  All of this to say, Brasserie Beck happy hour is highly recommended.  Ignore the menu and let the bartenders put their geekery on display.
And now my own nerd-dom: I think I may be in love with Gene Lyons.  First, who can resist this come-hither look paired with a tweed blazer?  A woman can only be so strong.  Second, he writes fantastic columns on why current Republicans would hate Reagan, on why schools are not like companies and also has some of the best headlines around.  He has a way of taking a lot of my mutterings (and the mutterings of millions of others) and turning them into useful, articulate thoughts that can actually be shared with people on both sides of the aisle.  Take, for example, the debt ceiling debate.
 During the two speeches on Monday night, I sat with my roommate in our living room and moved through a roller coaster of emotions.  First, I was amused at Wolf Blitzer's anxiety in getting ready for the address - I think he's permanently scarred by the Bin Laden debacle, when he was forced to reveal nothing, nothing, nothing until a slightly drunk John King stepped in and totally stole his thunder.  Then I was worried for Obama and the reception of this speech - first of all, why exactly was he giving a speech a couple days after the GOP had specifically said "we're tired of speeches"?  And good gracious, did he have to keep saying all the things typical Americans don't know?  They already think he's pedantic and elitist, so recapping the nation's ignorance seems like a terrible idea.  But by the end of the speech, I felt he had, overall, done a good job.  He had used solid reasoning to back up his ideas - we have to do historic cuts, but to suggest you can tackle this problem without any revenue increases is insane, and the CBO, Moody's, S&P and the American people all agree.  We have already paid for all this stuff, this is about authorizing ourselves to be good on our word and about making a solid, sustainable plan for the future.

And then came Boehner's speech.  Facts went out the window.  Right off the bat, he compared the US Government to his own small business.  That is nothing but misleading rhetoric.  His small business did not determine the international economy.  His small business was not responsible for determining the behaviour of millions of other businesses in the US and around the world.  And then he moved on to some good ol'-fashioned revisionism.  
"Here was the president, asking for the largest debt increase in American history, on the heels of the largest spending binge in American history."  

I'm sorry, who had the biggest spending binge in American history?  I mean, not according to Sarah Palin?  Could it be...oh wait...maybe...not a democrat?!  Take a look at this fantastic graph the NY Times put together on the comparative spending of Obama vs. Bush.

And this.  This is why I'm in love with Gene Lyons.  This quote right here:

"Mr. President, this ain't Harvard Law Review, where everybody's done their homework and honorable colleagues seek reasoned compromise. If you want the great mass of Americans to grasp what's going on, you've got to tell them plainly and repeatedly until they can repeat your message like an ad slogan: "Less filling, tastes great." "Where's the beef?" Like that.

How does "deadbeat Republicans" sound? Because the simple fact is that the GOP under George W. Bush put two wars, a Medicare drug benefit, and tax cuts heavily slanted toward the rich on the national credit card. Now that the bill's due, they're planning to skip town and stick Democrats with the charges...

So when Speaker Boehner speaks of "the largest spending binge in American history," he's hiding who's responsible. The Obama administration has added a comparative fraction to the National Debt, almost all by necessity. Also due to recession, tax revenues are way down.

These are indisputable facts. GOP cultists, however, occupy a metaphysical netherworld where anything in the New York Times is false by definition, scorning arithmetic as an elitist tool. Much of the public simply doesn't know what to think; the Obama White House has been perversely reluctant to tell them."

 (Read the rest of the article here)

Roommates, in case you were wondering, this is what I was trying to get out when I was sputtering incoherently on the couch.  Gene Lyons, please marry me.

Justified Prejudice

I am not an Old People person.  I don't know what this is going to mean for me as I become an old person myself (although according to my students I reached that mark at least 10 years ago), but as it stands now, I just can't do it.  I really admire people who can talk super slowly and super loudly and about the same subjects over and over and over.  But I am not one of those people.  Now, of course there are exceptions to this.  I love swapping emails with my grandmother and I'm always up for a Golden Girls marathon.  But overall, there is a certain pace at which I need my life and my conversations to move, and old people just don't fit into that equation.

I bring this up because there is a lady at my work who is about one hundred and fifteen years old.  I'm guessing.  She is a very sweet lady, and I appreciate the fact that her glasses are the same size as her head, much like the Queen.  But you know, the woman cannot for the life of her work a computer, and this drives me up the wall.  She has told me she can't seem to send an email to someone, and I look over to discover she is trying to type their email address into the browser window.  Or she asks me how to do something like print a document.  Like a word document.  Like the kind of thing you just press the "print" button for.  And I think what gets me the most is that I'm usually the one who ends up looking stupid.  Consider this conversation:

Old Lady: Kath-a-ryn (this is how she always says my name)
Me: Yes, Old Lady?
OL: I just got an email from someone all the way up in New York.  But I can only see the first line.  How do I open it?
Me: How do you...what?
OL: Open it.  I would like to open it and see the rest of the email.
Me: Well right but...you click it.
OL: Click it?  What do you mean?
Me: Like click...with your mouse.  <-- notice how stupid I am starting to sound.


There is only so much I know how to break down.  I don't know how to further explain the concept of "clicking".


Ok, but the point of all of this is not to make fun of an old lady who, I understand, did not grow up with computers.  It's to say...it's amazing to me how generations change.  Because it's not just that she didn't grow up with computers.  It's that she didn't grow up having to constantly learn and adapt to new technologies.  I didn't grow up with Twitter or Google +, but I did grow up learning that things change at a rapid pace and you better get comfortable with teaching yourself how to open an email.  So when Twitter etc emerged, it wasn't scary and it wasn't overwhelming and I didn't automatically think to myself that it was the realm of the kiddoes.  I thought, "gee whiz I can't wait to see how congressmen make idiots out of themselves with this new technology."


Not really.  I would never think "Gee whiz".

But I think we should be keeping our eyes out for how this is going to impact schools and politics.  The idea that schools should look a certain way because they always have and always will is fading.  Check out this story from Slate, where they try to use crowdsourcing to design a modern classroom.  Are desks necessary?  Walls?  Teachers?  It's all on the table.




Oh and for somewhere I went this week: Station 4.  Go there for brunch.  Enjoy the people watching.  Stay out of the heat.  Ask for homefries.

New Nose, New Times

I have the best possible excuse for not updating: I've been hospitalized.  Coincidentally, this is also my excuse for not going to the gym and eating poorly, so I'm really hitting up all those New Year's Resolutions.

I had a deviated septum repaired, and let me tell you, it feels awesome.  Breathing is really underestimated. 

Since then, I've traveled to California and back for the holiday weekend.  I went to the Ojai 4th of July parade, and I think this event really captures my hometown in a nutshell.  There was a healthy mix of tractors, smart cars, giant raised trucks and people dressed like vegetables.  I wish I could find a good picture of the raised truck I had in my mind.  It was approximately 800 feet off the ground and had an eagle and an American flag painted on it.  Perfect for the parade, but I couldn't help but marvel at the fact that this person has this truck every other day of the year, too.  What happens on days when he or she is not feeling particularly patriotic?  Probably takes public transportation, like a real socialist.


There were also representatives of different spiritual centers from across the valley, as Ojai has the highest number of these per capita.  To be fair, we only have about 10,000 capita, but still, well done to us for being so enlightened.  Also this added lots of pretty saris to the festivities.


My journey back to DC had a layover in Cleveland, which actually turned out to be a halfway decent airport.  But the little hopper flight from Cleveland to BWI was miserable.  First of all, it was in a prop plane, which I hate.  I used to have to take those from DFW to Abilene, and it took me until about junior year to realize that the "prop" came from "propeller" and not "prop" like for a movie.  As in a pretend plane.  Because it certainly does not feel like a real plane.  But to be honest, I've more or less gotten used to those by now.  The main reason this flight was miserable was because of my neighbour on the flight.


I am a friendly person.  I don't mind a little conversation, a little polite small talk to make things less awkward.  One of my most pleasant flying memories was being on a plane to the UK and spending almost the entire flight chatting with a 70 year old man sitting next to me about the Harry Potter book in my lap.  But I have limits.  And these limits are even more important when working on 2 hours of sleep.  And I most often express those limits by answering politely but concisely and then putting in headphones.  And this lady, my neighbour, did not seem to know these rules.  She asked where I was flying from (because who the hell actually comes from Cleveland?) and I said L.A. and returned the question.  She said Miami because she was visiting her boyfriend.  I did my limits thing: "Oh, that sounds nice.  Well let's hope it's a nice, smooth flight home!" and headphones in.  Ready for some Bon Iver and mah jong.  Next thing I know, a cell phone (still on!  No respect for anyone's rules!) is in my face with a picture of an old chubby man.  "This is my boyfriend, he's handsome, isn't he?"  "Oh, um, yes, he has nice eyes." "Well he's 57 and he looks great for his age doesn't he?" "Yeah, absolutely, I would never have guessed 57." "He's wonderful.  So handsome.  Great body.  Big, you know?"  "Oh that's so great that you guys found each other." (hands still holding my headphones, about an inch away from my ears) "Well he's not all great.  Last night...he was texting someone.  At 2:30 AM.  And when I rolled over to see who it was...he covered his phone.   What do you think that means?" ...


I then proceeded to talk with this lady about every aspect of her relationship for about an hour and a half, the entire length of the flight.  That's longer than most of my own relationships even last.  

So this is my thought for this week: I miss etiquette.  That is to say, I miss something that has never been cool in my lifetime.  For the most part, I get this.  I don't like the idea that something just inherently should not be done for no reason other than it just isn't.  I think it's silly and, more importantly, disenfranchising.  If you know the rules, you're in the club, but there's no way to know the rules other than to be in the club, and so we limit social mobility and accentuate class differences.  I like the idea that we act in ways that make sense, not just ways that Emily Post says are acceptable.


But I also think basic social rules do play an important role, and total disdain for them is unhealthy and counterproductive.  For example, if there were rules of etiquette for text messages, we would not have people getting in fights over how tone comes across or texting too late or too early in the morning.  The dismissal of etiquette for wedding invites (so many of my friends do it on facebook now...) means that people end up confused and angry because it's unclear how official the RSVP is, or what guest limits are.  Placing the buffer of etiquette rules means that we can all maintain better relationships with one another, and that's the point of it all, isn't it?  If this woman next to me had just picked up on my polite hints, we both would have left the plane with nothing but pleasant memories of meaningless small talk.  As it stands now, if I ever see that lady again, I will run the other direction.


She decided to run a background check and make him come see her in Baltimore, in case you were wondering.  It seemed like a sound decision to me.

Don't say you're moving to Canada, don't say you're moving to Canada...

I generally hate those people who say things like "If [fill in the blank politician] wins, I'm moving to Canada" because 1. they never follow through and they're usually the kind of people whose move you would welcome; and 2. Canada? That's saying nothing about their conviction.  It's a great country with better healthcare, cleaner air, better schools and a more logical system of government.  It's probably a move we should all make anyway.  Now if someone said, "If [whoever] wins I'm moving to Zimbabwe" - there's real commitment.  They really hate that candidate.
However, these words almost passed my lips last night, as I sat watching the first (real) Republican debate on CNN.   My roommates got to see me at my most ridiculous: yelling, rocking myself, babbling, grabbing my hair.  It's more or less how I imagine getting through my twilight years.  Only less cursing.
But before I discuss the many, many thoughts I had on this topic, let me talk about one place I went in the last week, which will actually end up connecting.  I'm pretty sure.
Last week I went to happy hour with a good friend of mine from my grad program.  She is one of the only Republicans, and she reminds me so so much of Ainsley Hayes. She's blond, she's adorable, she's uber-conservative, she is wicked smart.  (One of my favourite West Wing scenes of all time: Ainsley arguing against the ERA).  Anyway, we went to Nooshi, this great sushi place in Dupont Circle, and I highly recommend it.  I had a "white peach bellini".  I like my alcohol to be juice with nice after-effects.
We talked a lot about her job - she's an intern in the senate - and Weinergate and, of course, the Republican primary.  (See what I did there?)
Of course, at that point the debate hadn't happened yet and so obviously my opinions have changed drastically since then.  I sometimes wonder if anyone's mind gets changed by these debates.  After all, if you like a candidate they either "showed their true merit" or "had a bad performance".  And if you dislike them, you come up with equal excuses for a good performance - softball questions, empty rhetoric, etc.  But then, I tend to hang around people with strong opinions, so what do I know.
The one overarching thing I did learn from this debate is why all my favourite Republicans are Republicans with a lot of caveats and qualms.  In other words, I learned why the Republican party has abandoned its people.
First of all, read this article.
If you did not read that article, then let me summarize for you.  Essentially, conservatism is supposed to be rooted in realism - in the belief that you must capitalize on what reality tells us people will do in certain situations, rather than what, ideally, we would like them to do.  We limit government not because government is inherently evil, but because we have seen that leaders, left to their own devices, will seize more and more power.  The current Republican party is based purely on ideology - we cut taxes because we're supposed to cut taxes, even though we see in historical evidence that it has led to massive deficits and does not help spur economic recovery.  In debating healthcare, the Affordable Care Act was just wrong even though the final CBO numbers said it would reduce the deficit by $140 billion over the next ten years, and approximately .5% of GDP in the ten years after that.  Repealing  the PPACA would increase the deficit by $210 billion.
On Monday night, we saw seven people spewing ideology and ignoring facts.  What I found most distressing was the lack of will to correct each other.  Bachmann made so many idiotic self-contradictions (somehow Obama simultaneously led from behind on Libya AND acted too quickly!  Amazing!  In addition, she would support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman BUT would not overturn state laws!  A totally new constitution!) and yet no one said anything.  I understand they were all following Reagan's 11th Commandment, but there is no respect for true facts versus spin, in a way that I don't believe is true across the aisle.  When the health care debate was taking place, you did not see every single Democrat supporting the legislation whole-heartedly.  You did see every single Republican vote no, even though the bill had many of the same elements as were put forward by Republicans in the 1990's - an individual mandate, government-sponsored exchanges, etc.  They stopped voting on logic and started voting on ideology and party biases.  In the debate, the candidates were asked if they could think of a single thing Obama had done that they liked or agreed with.  No one could say anything.  That's either stupidity or intellectual dishonesty.  I may have disliked W severely, but if someone asked me if there is anything he did of which I approved, I could come up with something.  Because in a real, nuanced debate that is based in reality and not on partisan grounds, we all agree in some places and disagree in others.


Apart from the disregard for the facts, we also saw on Monday night that the Republican party truly is captive to its far right constituents.  Now, to be fair, the reason Democrats don't have the same issue with the left is not because they are smarter, better people.  As is true for most of these other issues.  Kidding.  Sort of.  Democrats don't have the same issues because we are just a more right-leaning country.  Thank you, American Spirit of Individualism.
But when a very smart voter in the audience said, (paraphrasing) "I'm a moderate Republican, and you kind of need us to win, and we're scared that you're too captive to the tea party, so how are you going to win us back?" the response was essentially, "Don't worry, you'll grow to like the tea party and they're not that extreme anyway".  (You can look at the transcript here - the question comes in about a quarter of the way down.)  That is a terrifying answer.  The Tea Party is a nonsense, illogical organization that uses its status as kind-of-a-party-kind-of-not in an inconsistent and frustrating way, and they bring nothing but useless anger and a distrust of government as a whole to the table.  It is disappointing that none of the candidates seem to want to separate themselves, especially since, from a purely political point of view, they don't need to pander.  Those people are not voting for Obama anyway.
The thing is, I'm usually all in favour of saying both parties are just as bad as each other, etc, etc.  But I don't buy that anymore.  I think debate on the left is more rigorous, more based in fact, more honest.  Someone prove me wrong.


On a side note, the opening remarks by the candidates on Monday were hilarious.  In the contest of who has the most children, this was essentially the exchange (again, paraphrasing):
Santorum: 7
Bachmann: 5 children...oh yeah, and TWENTY THREE foster children.  Bam.
Gingrich: Wait I'm supposed to talk about children?
Romney: 5 sons, 5 daughters-in-law and 16 grandchildren.  (Biological ones count for more)
and my favourite, Paul: Oh we want to talk about children?  Yeah well I delivered 4000 babies.  Take that, bitches.

Multi-faceted

Well obviously about a week after saying that I would write about politics, I am going to not write about politics.  If you've ever heard me discuss the history of my career plans, made a date with me for any time not five minutes in the future or been with me in a kitchen while I bake, this will not surprise you.  It's not that I'm flaky or flippant about any of my endeavors.  I'm just really, really interested in a lot of things and I get distracted.  I had to swear of Wikipedia for any kind of preliminary paper research , not because of admonitions from professors that it isn't accurate or scholarly (professors of the world, it is time to stop having principles about Wikipedia...all your students use it. Get over it.) but because it would zap hours upon hours of my life.  I learned lots of things about lots of subjects - for example, did you know that your Hebrew name does not actually need to be Hebrew?  Since ancient times the Jews have borrowed names from lots of other languages.  I learned this while writing a paper on Invisible Man.
Anyway, I will not be writing about politics; I will be writing about my neighbourhood and a news story that's been haunting me since one of my TFA friends posted it on their facebook last night.
So let's start with a look at the bright side of life, before I move to one of the most depressing things you will read all day.

I love my neighbourhood.  I live in the SW quadrant of DC and it is a dynamic, diverse section of the city.  We recently opened The Arena Stage, which is doing a fantastic play right now called "Ruined" about a brothel in Rwanda during the genocide.  We have a pretty new Safeway with its own sushi bar.  By the way, when choosing an apartment, sight unseen, from California, this was a major draw.  Not the sushi bar.  Just the Safeway.  We have fun events like the 7th Street Landing, which features a farmer's market and live bands and beer and wine tasting.  At the most recent one, I was struck by how many different kinds of people were present - not just racially, but also students and elderly couples and young families.  All different socio-economic classes were represented.  In a city like DC, with its stark SES/racial/everything divides, this is a true feat.  But I think the thing I love most about our quadrant is its underdog status.  I still get this look of sympathy whenever I tell people where I live.  "Below the mall, you say?  They have houses there?  Oh..."  The thing is, I never correct them.  I am happy for everyone to keep thinking there is nothing here - I will maintain my low rent and the distinct lack of tourists and ability to get a table at a bar on the waterfront at the height of happy hour, thank you very much.  Judge away. 
Side note: part of my enthusiasm for this underdoggery comes from watching a neighbourhood that I moved into in Brooklyn go from livable-on-a-teacher's-wage and diverse and relatively quiet and safe to a haven for hipsters, complete with outrageous prices and lines for every single restaurant and unicycles tied to trees, in the space of about six months.  Goodbye, Prospect Heights.  It was fun while it lasted.

Ok, and now for a nice little dose of depression.  In case anyone reading this doesn't know me, I taught in Newark with Teach for America, and thanks to the wonders of Facebook, I still get to keep in touch with many of my colleagues.  One of them now works at a charter school up there, and posted this story.  I can't imagine how those poor little children will ever recover.  I can't imagine ever being able to trust another human being again.  But of course, children are amazingly resilient and I hope that the city gives them the needed resources to get back to a normal life.
But that's not the point of posting that story.  The point is this: the Bible says some crazy things.  It says to take daughters who disobey out to the city gates and stone them.  Doesn't like braids or make-up, etc.  Tells lots of people they will die in fiery pits.  It is strongly anti-fig.  And yet anyone who has spent time in a halfway decent church or knows my dad knows that this is not what Christianity is all about.  It is about loving your neighbour, taking care of one another, keeping the peace, talking to God about things as much as possible.  This crazy man who is using Christianity and Christ as some kind of a shield for his inexcusable actions is insane.  He can probably quote verses at you to justify what he did,  but that doesn't change the fact that he in no way representative of the religion as a whole.  I think most people get that.
The Qu'ran says some crazy things.  It says to get rid of infidels.  Wants us to stone daughters who disobey (hey look, a place for compromise!).   Doesn't like the Jews too much.  And yet anyone who has spent time around Muslims knows this is not what Islam is all about.  It is about loving your neighbour, taking care of one another, keeping the peace, talking to God about things as much as possible.  Those crazy people who use Islam as some kind of shield for their inexcusable actions are insane.  They can probably quote verses at you to justify what they did, but that doesn't change the fact they are in no way representative of the religion as a whole.  I think most people...sigh.

A confluence of thoughts

When I was teaching, I used to only be able to listen to music on the train to and from work.  Audiobooks, podcasts, etc., stressed me out because my job drained every last iota of energy from my body and I couldn't process anyone else talking to me, even if it was just my own headphones.  Bad side effect: there are bands I love, whom I can no longer listen to because they make my chest tighten.  I am instantly transported back to that PATH train on my way to Newark and I want to just get in a cab to the airport and leave and never come back.

But this is no longer the case.  My job no longer zaps the will to live out of me, so I can listen to podcasts (as this is obviously the main purpose of life, no?).  And boy do I listen to podcasts.

My current podcast roll:

Slate Political Gabfest

Slate Culture Gabfest

Slate Spoiler Special Podcast

Hang Up and Listen (Slate's sports podcast)

Manners in the Digital Age (also by Slate...yes, I will read/listen to/worship anything they create)

This American Life

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me

Start The Week

NPR's Intelligence Squared

The Week Ahead (an Economist podcast)

And my current favourite: The History of The World in 100 Objects

I listen to these when I walk to work, walk to school, walk to a bookstore, walk for funsies, sit on a bus, sit on a train, etc., and I always feel like a better person for it.  Or at least like I can make a decent conversation with more people.

But the point of all this is to say that the most recent podcast I listened to was an episode of AHOW on an "early writing tablet" from Mesopotamia (#15 in the series) that shows how much a worker was to be paid in rations of beer.  I think I know a few of my classmates who would happily convert to such a payment system.  But anyway, this is one of the earliest known examples of writing, so the series took the opportunity to talk about how the ability to write did more than just open up worlds of literature - it allowed for more complex mathematics, philosophy, science, and perhaps more importantly, it allowed for a system of government.  You could write down how much people were owed and how they should be paid and suddenly, some people had power and others did not and it was not based on whether or not they could hit you harder with a big stick.  So obviously my mind flew to educational inequity.  And actually it flew there from two different directions.

1. I am no luddite.  I love technology (if you couldn't tell from my podcast obsession) and my mother taught me to value "whole new concepts", successful or not - we had many As Seen on TV products in our home.  My favourite was the "Buttoneer", a thing that was supposed to attach buttons for you without involving any sewing, an activity that gives my mom anxiety.  In reality, it managed to take one of the easiest tasks of all time and turn it into an overly-complicated process of plastic fasteners and hole-alignment.  It also might have been my favourite because obviously it was buy one get one free, so we had one that I believe to this day is sitting in its plastic casing in a junk drawer somewhere in my parents' house.  But goodness I have gone off topic.  The point is, I love technology and think the internet is just fabulous and that technology should be integrated into every classroom.  But I can't help but wonder, if writing in the first place was what opened up whole new worlds of complex thought, does dumbed-down writing produce dumbed-down thought?  I think it does.  And this worries me because, truth be told, suburban school are still, for the most part, producing kids who may have terrible grammar in their text messages, but they can put together an essay.  High poverty schools are not.  There was an attitude at my school in Newark that grammar and spelling etc were going going by the wayside anyway because of technological advancement (in 5 years we'll be doing state testing on computers! they'd say) so let's not focus on that.  

But the thing is (and skip ahead if you get scared of a high levels of grammar nerdiness) a complex sentence is more than the sum of its parts.  It shows an ability to see relationships between clauses - things depend on other things, semicolons serve different functions than colons and represent different levels of importance for different parts of the sentence.  Knowing how to use an adjective versus an adverb and hearing the beauty of a well-crafted description shows an understanding and respect for language that just can't be conveyed in words that are half numbers and half letters.

So when we give up on teaching kids to spell because they'll use spellcheck anyway and we give up on anything more than basic grammar because language is constantly morphing anyway, I worry that we are giving up on complex thought for those kids.

2. Which brings me to direction #2 of my brain-plane.  (I wrote train originally, and then realized I had written "flew" before, so that didn't make sense.  See, someone along the way taught me to be consistent in my metaphors.)

Republicans make no sense to me.  Granted, this is a thought that pretty much goes through my head all the time anyway, regardless of brain-planes, but this time it was tied to a specific context.  They complain about rampant entitlement spending.  About "welfare queens" and "victim mentality".  And yes, we do spend over 60% of our budget on entitlements.  Note: a huge portion of this is on Social Security and Medicare, most of which goes to white, older Americans, most of whom vote overwhelmingly Republican.  But I digress.  We do also have issues with welfare system abuse and fraud, and lots of people think of themselves as victims, I'm sure.

So how do you make that go away?  You empower people.  How do you empower people?  Through education.  Who wants to slash funding for education in inner-cities and at failing schools that most need it? Oh wait.

I don't see how out of one side of your mouth you complain that people are not taking enough personal responsibility, and then out of the other, deny the resources to move people out of a state of perpetual dependency.  My kids, and I loved them to death and will never stop calling them "mine", are screwed.  I tried to help, of course, but almost all of them will graduate with almost no reading, writing or mathematical skills.  In other words, we are guaranteeing that they will have no choice but to be told how much they're owed and how they'll be paid, and some people will have power and others will not, and it's still not based on whether or not you can hit someone with a big stick.  This time it's just based on your school district.

In related news, my peregrination: for Memorial Day weekend, I went to the Maryland version of the Jersey Shore.  Ocean City was pretty fantastic - I got a great tan and ate some delicious crab.  But after a weekend of these kinds of sightings, I think you see the obvious connection to lack of complex thoughts and beer rations.

Embracing my Fate

When I started this entry, I had just finished finals.  It feels decidedly bizarre.  I keep getting off work and wandering around aimlessly, wondering what exactly I did before I started school.  I always think of that Christopher Walken SNL sketch where he claims to only work part-time because he sleeps for large portions of the day.

But anyway, the point of all that was to say, I finished finals, so we (and by that I mean pretty much everyone in my program...we apparently only do things in obnoxiously large groups) went out to Public Bar, a place with mediocre drinks and downright terrible music BUT an excellent rooftop area with a great view of Dupont Circle.  It was a really fun night, and I highly recommend the roof to anyone who comes to visit.  Not the bar so much, just the roof.  So really, if you have access to a free roof, take that one instead.

And now for a thought.  So part of the reason why I have been updating so rarely is that I want to be at least somewhat passionate in what I'm discussing.  And I also said (to myself) when I started this blog that I did not want to discuss politics ad nauseum, as I happen to have a few friends and family members who do that, and it is boring and occasionally infuriating.  It is what I think about and talk about pretty much all day, every day, but I thought I would be able to separate my real life from my blog life.  However, it turns out this was mostly resulting in me never updating.  I was discussing this dilemma with a friend, who  pointed out this very simple fact: "But it's your blog!"


And thus it was settled.  I am going to embrace my fate, and become an angry, rambling politico.  I plan on buying a frumpy powersuit ASAP.

Thank Goodness We're Free

My place I visited stand in stark contrast today.  One is a happy tale of a place that brought me nothing but joy, and the other is a rant.  Let's be joyful first, shall we?


It's spring time in DC, finally.  Maybe.  Okay, okay, maybe the temperature is supposed to drop back down by twenty degrees this week, but that's fine.  It's spring-ish.  It's at least winter-neutral.  So in celebration, I headed down to Eastern Market on Sunday for the first time in months and was delighted to find all my favourite vendors back with their wares.  If you are ever in DC, it is my #1 recommendation on a weekend.  It may be a little crowded, but totally worth it.  I bought some apples and strawberries and enjoyed the sunshine and live music and hustle and bustle of a busy market.  Someday, I will live in that neighbourhood.  And I will buy local hummus.  This is my version of the Red Hat Society.


And now to the anger.


I am never ashamed to be girly.  As my parents will readily attest, I was the most princess-, pink-and-purple-, frilly-dress-obsessed little girl you had ever met. Meet me at age...um...little with my brother and grandmother.  Notice the pink dress and frilly socks.  Those were standard beach wear.  So I get this whole "everything feminine is mocked mercilessly which proves we all hate women" argument.  99.9% of the time I agree.  And I agree with this anti-backlash, pro-royal wedding argument that the backlash came from the fact that feminine silliness gives us a negative gut reaction in a way that masculine silliness does not - why exactly are women idiots for going all gaga over this wedding but no one makes a peep when men sit in front of a tv for hours watching people in ridiculous clothes throwing balls at each others' heads?


However.


If I have to hear about this stupid royal wedding any more after this week, my head may very well explode.  And here is why.
1. Kate Middleton is not an everyday girl.  You could not be Kate Middleton.  I could not be Kate Middleton.  I mean she is not titled, but she is insanely wealthy and insanely beautiful and would never have met William if she could not have run in those circles.
2. We are celebrating rich people marrying each other and increasing the already staggering income gap in the UK that is continuing to grow there and here.  We are increasingly becoming a society where we only live, go to school with, marry and reproduce with people of our same class.  How charming of us all.
3. They seem like jerks.  I won't try to explain it here, but if you ever go to Oxford, you will see their counterparts, and you will know I'm right.  Also, I just don't get Will as a person.  If I had watched my mother chase after media attention and then get killed by that pursuit, I would never want cameras anywhere near me.  And I get that they were going to be harassed regardless, so maybe it's better to invite them in and get control of the situation, but it still seems like too calculated a move for someone who lost his mother to this kind of media frenzy.
4. I would still really like to be a princess, and now the only option left is the ginger Nazi.  No thank you.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

No more apologies for how often I update.  I'm a busy lady.  So moving right along, I had a birthday recently.  It was absolutely wonderful, quite possibly my favourite birthday ever.  Three dear, dear friends from undergrad came into town and we did all the things we're best at: we baked, we ate, we made silly jokes, we watched TV, we danced, we made fun of ourselves, we laughed a lot.  It was everything turning 24 should have been.  And by that I obviously mean that I pretended I was 20 again, with no one to miss.

One of the best parts of the weekend was going dancing at The Black Cat to some banghra music mixed with hip hop and 90's pop.  There were a bunch of people from my grad school there and one girl who actually knows how to dance, so we all just imitated her or thought back to the last Bollywood movie we had seen.  Turns out they do these nights once every 6-ish weeks, so I will definitely be back.  As should everyone else.



My thought for this post actually comes from one of my classes (academia inspiring further reflection?!  Shocking!), specifically my class on campaign finance.  We had a guest speaker, Ellen Weintraub, one of the commissioners on the FEC, and she was fascinating.  Her closing point, though, was basically that her job didn't matter.  She essentially said that if young people just voted and cared about politics, the amount of money spent would stop mattering because people would be researching issues on their own and politicians wouldn't think it was worth it to spend so much on cheesy advertising campaigns.  It sounded mostly like she didn't know how to make a clean exit out of her presentation so she went for a classic liberal position, but anyway, that's not the point.  The point is, she posed the question to our class, "Why do people your age not vote?!" and it rather stumped me.  Well, first I just thought, "lady, of all groups of people to address that to, are you really going to ask a group of Georgetown graduate public policy students in Washington, DC? Really?"  But then I started thinking...why don't people my age get more involved as a rule?  Even in 2008, a year we got SO excited about young people's involvement, they still did not even come close to the involvement of the electorate over age 65.  (Thanks for the Obama win, guys!)  Involvement among 18-29 year-olds has been increasingly dismal since about 1960.


So here is my theory, in bits and pieces, so far.


Watergate fundamentally altered the way my generation and late Gen X views politics.  I think that's why we have such a disconnect from the Boomers.  To us, politics is pure functionality - we've been overwhelmed with transparency, and it's a pretty disgusting picture, but oh well, that's how it gets done.  There is no romance.  Politics is no place for values, beyond efficiency and efficacy.  This has two main implications.


1. The personal lives of candidates is pretty irrelevant.  Nixon was a Quaker, and he almost single-handedly brought down the executive branch of our government.  Clinton was a cheater and a sleazy politician to the core, but also insanely intelligent - he kept us at peace, he reduced the deficit, he created AmeriCorps, he reformed welfare.  I'll take the cheater any day.  I think that's why, in the 2000 election, you saw Bush trying to push his "I go to church every week" schpiel, and a lot of older people getting excited, and a lot of younger people saying, "and...?"  Even young conservatives cared infinitely more about his voting record and his emphasis on compassionate conservatism than any professed religion.  And when it came out that Obama hadn't even attended his own church enough to know what the pastor was saying, we saw a bunch of boomers and early gen-x-ers up in arms, and most gen-y-ers wondering why anyone thought otherwise.  Of course religion is just a box politicians check off - you can't survive in politics and actually put some system of beliefs above yourself.  You can see this even in discussion of the founding fathers.  Honestly, you could craft a pretty coherent argument that either a) the founding fathers based large chunks of the constitution on Judeo-Christian principles and held to those principles themselves; or b) the founding fathers purposely separated themselves from any religion because they were largely Deists, secularists, Masons or some combination - hence the vague "not-quite-Christian-not-quite-anything-else" type language.  In my experience, which side of that argument you choose is pretty strongly linked to age.  Either way, the founding fathers are everlasting symbols of what politicians should be, the symbols are just entirely different.  For boomers, the founding fathers infused their personal lives and personal faiths into everything they did and created.  For Gen-Y-ers, the founding fathers may or may not have had some vague belief in something or other, but they kept that firmly away from their political actions, and they expected the same of future politicians.


2. Voting and political participation doesn't change things.  Ok, it's possible that Obama is going to change all of this, and maybe the generation after mine (Z?  Right?) is going to vote up a storm.  But I'm going to assume they won't, because they, too, have CNN (and MSNBC and Fox News and etc etc, I'm just using CNN because Don Lemon is such a fox).  CNN tells you way in advance who is going to win, what everyone thinks about everything, and it seems everything is decided ahead of time.  And since any idealism or romanticism about politics has long since gone out the window, what exactly is the point of voting?  The fact is, even if every young person in America voted, we would still not out-number the boomers, so from an efficiency standpoint, voting is not an optimal use of time. 


So there you go, Ellen.  Two weeks after class, I have an answer for you.  You're welcome.

Home where my thoughts escape

Eek, okay, writing on a regular basis is clearly NOT going well.  But if it's never too late to restart these things, then it also has to be never too early, right?  Right.

So the last month or so has been pretty much totally overwhelmed by school - I just finished midterms and basically was a hermit.  But I did manage to get in a few little adventures around DC.  Mostly food-related.  PS this has also not been the best month for that whole "go to the gym and stay healthy" thing.

A quick February food round-up:

-Georgetown Cupcake. Finally went for the first time (the setting of TLC's DC Cupcakes) and it was passable.  Totally overpriced, but a quality cupcake.  If you want my non-expert cupcake opinion on the many options in DC, the place to go is cake love (non-capitalization intended...it's hip like that).  However, if you are like me and love baked goods but absolutely do not understand the particular obsession with cupcakes, then I recommend either Baked and Wired if you're in Georgetown or Sticky Fingers in Columbia Heights.  And yes, Sticky Fingers is vegan, but you would never know.  It tastes like buttery eggy delicious.

-Taj of India.  An Indian restaurant in Georgetown that had rave reviews and...decent food.  I think all my family trips to London have spoiled me for life with Indian food.  Everything else just tastes decent.  It also made me very excited to get home this week and hit up the Indian buffet near my brother's work.  Although it's hard to tell if it's the food that's delicious, or if the appeal comes from the fact that my darling brother never fails to insist on paying.  (As well he should...given my need to work in school districts and non-profits, it is highly likely he will always make approximately 500 times more money than I do)  Oh yeah, and that I get the pleasure of his and my sister-in-law's company.  I guess that's important too.

-Winter Brunch.  My roommates and I hosted a winter brunch, and it was fantastic.  Some tips for success if you want to be as fabulous as we are:

• Limit your guest list.  People are more likely to come if they know they will actually matter AND if you make it open to friends (let's be real...if someone asks you're not going to say no.  And if this is a facebook invite you look like a jerk if you don't) you leave some flexibility for more guests than expected.  We hosted a fall brunch and basically invited the entire city, and it was a mess.  I mean, we still had fun and all, but it was overcrowded, there was not enough of some foods and WAY too much of others, people just got into little cliques because they could hardly move, and I know I spent most of my time stuck in a corner because it would have been hellish trying to get back to the buffet.
• Ask people to bring the alcohol.  Cheaper, can't go bad later, people are more likely to take it home if unused, no dishes to return.
• Invite some people you aren't as good of friends with, but want to be.  It makes the conversation more exciting, because you're getting to know someone new, and it's hard to run out of things to talk about.  Plus they are likely to come with lots of things...you know, because they feel awkward.

Ok, so that was my substitute for "somewhere I went" this month.  Honestly, if I had tried to do that the normal way, it would have gone something like this:

I went to my room.  I couldn't even tell you the colour of the walls...I was staring at a public finance textbook.  It was black and white with lots of squiggly lines.  What did it say, you ask?  Good question.  That probably would have been a good thing to know for that test I just took.

Now, a thought: this month, I've been pretty obsessed with following the happenings in Wisconsin.  (If you're not much of a newshound/have been living under a rock, this gives a pretty good summary)  I'm not going to attempt to comment on the politics of the situation here - if you know me, you know my opinions on unions and education spending, and if you don't, well...just know I have two public school teacher parents and I personally like that they get health insurance and can't be fired at a moment's notice.  I like that, given that they can't get the wages that anyone else working their insane hours in a job no one else wants to do would get, they can have job security and quality compensation in other areas.  I also like that my high school English teacher, who was not universally loved by students and parents but was a quality teacher, was not immediately fired when some idiot kid decided he didn't want to do his homework and started a hate campaign.

Like I said, though, not getting into the politics here.  My thought is this: for a society that is supposedly so one-track and simple-minded, we manage to hold a lot of contradictions in our heads at once.  We love the teachers we know (I challenge you to find a single parent that really disapproves of EVERY teacher his or her child has had), but hate teachers at large.  The unions are made up of those teachers!  Those exact same caring teachers.  Yes, there are a few union presidents who have lost sight of the mission, but there are also soldiers who are racist and are in their profession for the wrong reasons - and I won't even pretend to say anything bad about soldiers.  Because, you know, that would be unpatriotic, unlike bashing the people who shape our nation's youth.  Anyway.

We hate a general obsession with celebrity, and yet, it wouldn't exist if a lot of individuals weren't obsessively watching every minute of that fantastic Charlie Sheen live interview.  (Was I one of those people?  Absolutely.)  We want government to cut spending in general, but when asked specifically, want to increase spending in most areas.  We want science to march forward and for the US to be leaders in innovation, and yet it is practically an annual tradition to mock scientific experiments with unusual names and self-righteously cut them from the budget.  We are totally uptight about our children witnessing anything sexual (see the Miley Cyrus pole dance freakout or one of my favourite news stories of all time) and yet are totally fine with stores like Gap Kids or Limited Too that put our children in clothes that were meant to accentuate the ADULT form.

So to be perfectly honest...if I didn't care about politics, I probably wouldn't care about any of this.  Yes, we're all hypocrites, yes, we're probably all going to hell in a handbasket.  Got it.  However, as someone who really enjoys the politic-i-ness of of politics, this makes campaign and PR work really difficult and confusing.  When people are walking contradictions, you can't even win one group and forfeit another - you risk forfeiting the other half of the person you're trying to win.  Politicians have always been sleazy and flip-floppy, but maybe it's not their fault.  Maybe if we were less sleazy, flip-floppy and confusing ourselves, politicians wouldn't have to respond in kind.

Uh oh...already behind

Okay so yes, I have already fallen behind on my resolution to stay up with this blog.  But here I am now.  On top of it again.  Sort of.

So almost one month into the new year, how am I doing on my other resolutions?

-Gym at least 3 times a week: check!

-Starbucks down to once a week: check! (sort of...I decided dates/social coffee meet-ups don't count.  Don't judge me.)

-French practice: yeah, no check whatsoever.  Oy, I need to pick this back up.  But hey, I've been baking things out of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Vol 2".  Does that count?  I say so.

This week, I've been settling into the routine of school and work, and getting used to being busy pretty much constantly.  This also means no time for grocery shopping.  As a result, one place I've been multiple times this week is sweetgreen, an amazing salad place in DC.  There's a location on M Street in Georgetown that now knows my name and my order: romaine with butternut squash, spicy kale, grape tomatoes, cucumber and quinoa, in curry pineapple yogurt dressing.  I know you're jealous.  Just come visit and I will take you there.

And  to be honest, I have barely had time to think about anything this week.  Memos, problem sets, snow storms...who has time to think?  But last night, I took an hour off and watched the State of the Union address.  As per usual, Obama was articulate, though perhaps vague at some points (although who isn't in the SOTU?)  I have to say, when I heard from my favourite political writer John Dickerson say he thought education was going to be the biggest topic addressed in the SOTU, I got nervous.  I can't remember the last time I just 100% agreed with someone on education policy, especially a politician.  Would he start bashing tenure?  Would he start falling down at the altar of TFA?  Would he do the charter school dance like everyone else?  Well, he didn't do any of those things.  He was sadly unpointed and noncommittal.  It sounded distinctly like he was planning to do what every politician does: talk about the importance of education, and then drop it at the next news cycle.  I think the saddest part for me was when he made the plea to "young people" to look into teaching as a future career, especially in math and science.  I waited for the follow up statement - "We will reward you by forgiving all your loans" or "we will make it worth your while by developing a fair, thoughtful merit pay system that rewards good teachers" or "we will make the job easier by focusing on strong school administrations and parent involvement, so you can be in a supportive work environment".  Nope.  Apparently people who are strong in math and science should just choose to be teachers and give up millions of potential dollars and add hours of stress to their life for funsies.  Can't wait to see how that one will go down.