Random Thinking

Earlier this month, we received a note from Beth’s school informing us that Beth hadn’t handed in an absent note for a date back in September. So I gave her a note but for some reason she didn’t want to hand it in. Any ideas why?

To whom it may concern,

Please excuse Beth for being absent on September 24th. I had sent in a note with her the next day but perhaps she forgot to hand it in. As I mentioned in the previous note, Beth was helping Sarah Palin memorize the state capitals which turned out to be a very difficult task and took much longer than she expected. You betcha!

Also, please excuse Beth for being absent on December 3rd. I believe she handed the note in for that absence on Friday but in case she didn’t, she was home digging a fallout shelter in the backyard.

Thank you.

Sincerely

Back to the more recent alternative music for this week’s song of the week off my iPod.

Tegan and Sara is an indie rock/pop song-writing duo consisting of Canadian singer-songwriters and identical twins, Tegan Rain Quin and Sara Kiersten Quin. The two are originally from Calgary, Alberta. (By the way, the temperature is -6 F. right now in Calgary.) The two sisters sing, play guitar, and play keyboards. Other members of the group are Edward “Ted” Gowans on guitar, Shaun Huberts on bass, and Johnny “Five” Andrews on drums. The group has toured with fellow Canadian Neil Young as well as Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, The Pretenders, The Killers, and Ben Folds, and have appeared at Sara McLachlan’s Lilith Fair. The twins are noted for their onstage banter; their stories and commentary about their childhood, politics, and life on the road.

Their most recent album is The Con, which was released in July 2007. “The Con” is the second single from the album of the same name. Although the song did well initially, peaking at #34 on Billboard’s Top 200, the group has not had much commercial success.

Rolling Stone wrote this about the album:

As lesbians who never reference their oppression or even their sexuality, Tegan and Sara don’t have men to lash out at, put up with or gripe about. This may be why their uncommonly detailed love songs are so short on drama – a riddle worth pondering, because their keyboard-heavy, New Wave-ish music is also uncommonly catchy. When Sara changes up a chorus with a melodically climactic “But I promise this/I won’t go my whole life/Telling you I don’t need,” or Tegan caps a verse with a hook that goes, “All I need to hear is that you’re not mine,” your musical impulse is to empathize, if not identify. But the objects of their romantic ambivalence remain distant – the focus is the singer’s feelings, examined rather than indulged. Tune seekers will admire many of these songs – “The Con,” “Nineteen,” “Back in Your Head,” “Like O, Like H.”

Even the NY Times liked it:

Somehow The Con is even more obsessive sounding than Tegan and Sara’s earlier work, and it’s probably even better; it could well be one of the year’s best albums.

The Con
I listened in
Yes I’m guilty of this
You should know this
I broke down and wrote you back
Before you had a chance to
Forget forgotten
I am moving past this giving notice
I have to go
Yes I know the feeling,
Know you’re leaving

Calm down, I’m calling you to say
I’m capsized, erring on the edge of safe
Calm down, I’m calling back to say
I’m home now
I’m coming around, coming around
Nobody likes to but I really like to cry
Nobody likes me
Maybe if I cry

Spelled out your name and lists the reasons
Pain of heart
Don’t call me back
I imagine you when I was distant
Non-insistent
I follow suit and laid out on my back
Imagine that
A million hours left to think of you
And think of that

Calm down, I’m calling you to say
I’m capsized, erring on the edge of safe
Calm down, I’m calling back to say
I’m home now
And coming around, coming around
Nobody likes to but I really like to cry
Nobody likes me
Maybe if I cry

Encircle me, I need to be, taken down
Encircle me, I need to be, taken down
Encircle me, I need to be, taken down

Nobody likes to but I really like to cry
Nobody likes me
Maybe if I cry

Nobody Nobody Nobody Nobody Nobody
Nobody Nobody Nobody Nobody Nobody
Encircle me, I need to be, taken down
Encircle me, I need to be, taken down
Encircle me, I need to be, taken down

Written by Tegan Quin

Beth stayed home sick this past Thursday and Friday. Michel reminded me last night that I didn’t write a note for her. So I quickly tossed a note together based on my, admittedly, faulty memory of last week.

To whom it may concern,

Please excuse Beth for being absent last Thursday and Friday. We wanted her to go to school but she pulled out her handy six-shooter and told us she was taking a couple of days off. Needless to say, we understood her reasoning and decided to let her stay home.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

For some reason Beth didn’t want to hand this note in to the attendance office.

Kentucky Clay
by Katherine R. Bateman

I got a bad feeling about this book while reading the introduction. The author tells us that she is an historian but she never was interested in her own family’s history even as her parents and grandparents tried to pass down their many stories to her. But now that she is a parent and a grandparent herself, she has decided to record her family history for her own children and grandchildren. Right away the feeling I got was that a medieval historian was writing a book about American history because she felt guilty for ignoring her family’s history. OK, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a bad book, does it?

Chapter one ended any thoughts that this was going to be a good story. In the first sentence she tells us that she imagines that her first ancestor in America had brown eyes. Why? Because everyone else in her family has brown eyes. And then she imagines what he felt like arriving in Jamestown in 1613. Again, she has no basis to build her imagination upon, but she imagines anyway. And imagine she does – telling us what she imagines each member of her family felt at each moment in their lives. This isn’t exactly a family history as the author’s imagination of her family history. And once we get beyond the first few Clays we find out something even worse – since she isn’t directly related to the most interesting Clays like Henry and Cassius, she isn’t going to discuss them very much. Instead we get a long family story of alcoholism and divorce that reads more like a soap opera or a bad Hallmark movie than an historian discussing the history of an American family. Claiming that her book is the history of a Southern “dynasty” is extreme hyperbole.

I can see why the author wasn’t interested in her parents’ and grandparents’ stories. They really weren’t that interesting. She could have done us all a favor by keeping them as oral histories, or simply writing them down and passing them around at the next big family get together.

It’s time for a radical change in this week’s music from my iPod. I’m pulling a song from my childhood this week.

The Chambers Brothers are a soul music group from Los Angeles, best known for their 1968 hit record, the 11-minute long song, “Time Has Come Today”. The group was formed in 1964 by four brothers from Mississippi, George, Willie, Lester and Joe Chambers. Later they added Brian Keenan on drums and the group became a nationwide success. The group had difficulty following up their hit song and broke up in 1972. The reformed two years later and have been together (minus Brian who died of heart failure in 1985) ever since.

The song “Time Has Come Today” was a ground breaking track in 1968. It uses many effects such as a cow bell to represent the ticking of a clock, echo and reverb effects, and distortion. The LP version is the quintessential version having the full range of effects that are lost in the other versions shortened for AM radio which preferred songs under 4 minutes. The middle of the LP version features the full range of effects which are attempting to recreate the sounds of war using distorted voices and the other effects mentioned earlier. This is also the part cut out of the other versions.

The song has been frequently used in movies and TV shows. The full version of the song was used towards the end of the movie, Coming Home, a story of Vietnam veterans and the difficulties they faced in returning home. Other movies include, “Girl, Interrupted”, “The Doors”, and “Remember the Titans”. The song has also been used in Beth’s favorite TV show, “Supernatural” as well as “CSI”, and “Kingdom Hospital”.

Time Has Come Today
Time has come today
Young hearts can go their way
Can’t put it off another day
I don’t care what others say
They say we don’t listen anyway
Time has come today
(Hey)

Oh
The rules have changed today (Hey)
I have no place to stay (Hey)
I’m thinking about the subway (Hey)
My love has flown away (Hey)
My tears have come and gone (Hey)
Oh my Lord, I have to roam (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)
I have no home (Hey)

Now the time has come (Time)
There’s no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I’ve been loved and put aside (Time)
I’ve been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

(Time)
Now the time has come (Time)
There are things to realize (Time)
Time has come today (Time)
Time has come today (Time)

Oh
Now the time has come (Time)
There’s no place to run (Time)
I might get burned up by the sun (Time)
But I had my fun (Time)
I’ve been loved and put aside (Time)
I’ve been crushed by tumbling tide (Time)
And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)

(Time)
Now the time has come (Time)
There are things to realize (Time)
Time has come today (Time)
Time has come today (Time)

The video is a very short live version of the song. It does not capture the intensity of the song or give you an idea of the ground breaking nature of this song. For that only the LP, 11 minute version of the song will do. But at least it does give you an idea of what we looked like back in 1968.

When I started downsyn.com, I had no idea how much it would grow. When Mikey was born I knew very little about Down syndrome. I created the site as a way to document the research I was doing on Down syndrome. After I created the site, I received many emails thanking me for providing information about Down syndrome. I realized that there were lots of parents like me who were encountering Down syndrome for the first time, either with the prenatal diagnosis or with the birth of their child. That’s what led to the forum.

When I created the forum, I expected that it would be me and a couple of other people trying to answer each others questions. I never expected that it would grow to the size it has with so many people across the United States and around the world. As Mikey has grown older and with his dual diagnosis of both Down syndrome and autism, I have found that I have less in common with the people who visit our site but that’s OK. The members of the site take care of each other and help each other and support each other. When a new member shows up worried and frightened, the members of our site quickly answer their questions even if the answer is as simple as, “I have been there and I understand.”

The underlying theme of downsyn.com has always been that the lives of people with Down syndrome is worth living and worth protecting. I am pro-choice but I have always believed that choice is about making intelligent and informed choices. Aborting because your baby has Down syndrome is always the wrong choice because the lives of people with Down syndrome can be wonderful when they are raised by loving parents who understand the special needs of their child. I guess this is why what happened back in September hurt so much.

What happened? Certain members of the site became angry with me because I expressed my pro-choice beliefs. These people said that I couldn’t possibly be a Christian because I supported Obama and Obama supports choice. (Although, by their definition of what a Christian is, I would prefer not to be one.) These people left the site to start their own “pro-life” site because they couldn’t see what downsyn.com is about. I have no problem with someone wishing to start their own site, but to leave the site that brought these people together, to leave the site that showed them how to be a better parent to their child, to leave the site that comforted them in their time of difficulty, and to leave our site and then to try to convince other members to leave breaks my heart. It is as if a friend stabbed me in the back.

But these people fail the most basic understanding of what downsyn.com is about. Children with Down syndrome are saved by this site. Parents who are looking for information and are thinking about making that choice are not going to “pro-life” sites. They are looking for honest and complete information from non-biased sites. They are looking for information, not “abortion is wrong and you aren’t a Christian if you have one”. But that is what they get from “pro-life” sites. This means that the people on “pro-life” sites are talking to each other. The people who go to those sites have already made their choice.

I have never kicked anyone off my site for being “pro-life” and I never will. For children with Down syndrome, I am pro-life throughout their lives. I think our site (and by “our”, I mean all the parents who share their children on downsyn.com) have proven that people with Down syndrome truly have lives worth living and even more, they make our lives better.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

April 16, 1953
Washington, D.C.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States

The Wordy Shipmates
by Sarah Vowell

Before I start, I should mention that I don’t really like audio books. I find that I tend to think about what I am hearing. With a book, I can simply stop reading for a moment and do my thinking. With an audio book, it is more difficult as the reader keeps going in spite of my no longer listening. It’s also hard to skim through an audio book and skip the boring parts. Truthfully, I got this audio book by mistake, not realizing that this was not the print version. That being said…

First, the reading… Sarah Vowell does a noble job of reading her book. However, some people may find her voice annoying after a few hours. She makes a good attempt at speaking clearly but I found it hard not to think of Violet Parr from “The Incredibles” as I listened. The occasional musical interludes were pointless enough to get me to push the next button.

Second, the text… The book is about the Puritans and how they came to this country to build the city on the hill. Ms. Vowell does an excellent job of showing how our understanding of the Puritans and what they actually meant by that “city on a hill” (Hint: it was not Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill”) is mostly wrong. Unfortunately, the book is not nearly as good as Ms. Vowell’s earlier books. Her wandering through “The Brady Bunch” and “Bewitched” did not move the story along and was not particularly humorous. Her frequent allusions to the Bush administration were funnier but dated the book and would probably not be funny in a year or two. And bringing up Ron Paul will surely make many readers think, “Who?” not too long from now, if not now. Anyway, Ms. Vowell has obviously done extensive research and her book is rather interesting ignoring Marsha Brady’s broken nose.

My conclusion is that if you enjoy audio books and you are a fan of Ms. Vowell then you will surely enjoy this audio book version. If you are not already familiar with Ms. Vowell’s work, then I would recommend “Assassination Vacation” before this book. If, like me, you enjoy the print version of books, then I would recommend you skip this and buy the old-fashioned paper version.

The Good Thief
by Hannah Tinti

It only takes a few points to make a novel worth reading… characters you care about, a well-described setting, and some kind of interesting conflict. Unfortunately, “The Good Thief” has none of these. The characters are poorly developed and I assume we are supposed to develop sympathy for them because of their missing hand or their “harelip” (an offensive term she continually uses to describe one character). The setting is confused as it isn’t clear when the story takes place. We are told that shotguns are common which would place it in the period after the Civil War but one character is described as being a member of the American Society of Dental Surgeons, an organization the ceased to exist in 1856. But another character is described as wearing a powdered wig which would place it even earlier. The idea that orphans who are not adopted are drafted into an army where they have little future seems even more absurd for anytime in 19th century New England outside of the Civil War. But the greatest defect is that nothing really happens. The characters wander around a poorly described New England and occasionally steal something.

There is a basis for a good story somewhere in the book. The idea of an orphan being adopted by a con-man, thief in order to help him steal is not a bad idea for a story. But this book simply fails to make anything out of the story. The writing simply lacks the excitement or even the descriptive language that could take this story somewhere. Perhaps I am not the target audience for this book but I found it a difficult struggle to get through and can not recommend it.