My twins know my brother Ted as the Raspberry Tiger. He came cross-country to visit us when they were toddlers and enjoyed pouncing on them, leaving sloppy raspberries on their tummies.
Ted ended up in the hospital this weekend with chest angina. They did an emergency angioplasty to insert a stent. Wikipedia tells me this surgery is routine, but I can assure you that having your little brother keel over with chest pain is anything but.
Long live the Raspberry Tiger!
I was fortunate to catch Tim O’Brien, one of my favorite authors, at local reading earlier this month. He spoke eloquently about war, how it can shape a young man’s life, and what it can do to our country. But he wasn’t talking about Iraq or Afghanistan. When Tim O’Brien talks about war, he talks about Vietnam.
Beyond his devotion to exploring the Vietnam war, O’Brien stands out for me by his willingness to bend the rules of fiction and narrative. In The Things They Carried, he intentionally blurs the line between fact and fiction by naming his lead character Tim O’Brien, and then making him a writer who returns from Vietnam haunted by the war, subsequently devoting his life to writing about it. In his only memoir (If I Die In a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home), he writes in a straight-forward manner about his tour of duty. It was his first attempt at writing about the war. Although it’s not a bad effort, it lacks the power of his fiction.
O’Brien is at his best when he is searching for the truth, not trying to relay mere facts. He spent most of night discussing the literal truths that were the basis for his fictional account of the war in The Things They Carried. I found it fascinating. You can determine some of this yourself by reading both his memoir and his fiction. Or you can just ask him. Forty years later and he still loves to talk about Vietnam. Maybe as writers we need that same kind of passion about something to get at anything worthwhile. It’s certainly worked for Tim O’Brien.
Most interesting fact discovered: In O’Brien’s fictional account of the war, Henry Dobbins famously carries his girlfriend’s pantyhose as a good luck charm. In real life, O’Brien carried the pantyhose.
The last good memoir I read was Neal Pollack’s Alternadad.
It’s an amusing tale of fatherhood, told from the point of view of a slacker, Gen-X rocker who eventually comes to grips with the responsibilities of fatherhood. Since I know very little about music, I thought the slant toward alternative rock might alienate me. Instead I found plenty I could relate with about parenting. In particular was the family decision on whether to have their son circumcised.
When my son was born, my wife wanted to leave him uncut. Since I am cut, I felt mildly reluctant. I asked my wife for time to think about it. To help make up my mind, I solicited people’s opinions. I even called my mom, who raised us Catholic but then converted to fundamentalist Christian while I was in the Navy.
Talking to Mom decided it for me. This is pretty much how the conversation went:
Here is a screen capture of the plan for the remainder of our tree fort.
I’ve been using SketchUp, Google’s vector drawing program, to draw up my plans. It’s very intuitive and fun to play with. But like all vector drawing programs, it can be maddening at times. Once you learn how to do things the SketchUp way, it’s a satisfying and powerful tool. Google offers the software free for non-business use. If you look closely, you can see Kennedy has used SketchUp to add furniture to our plans. A bit more obvious is her decision to apply bit map textures to the walls and rails.
In the real world, we put up the other two legs, the remaining 2×8 crossbeams, added joist supports, and screwed down the floorboards since our last update. We have the hole for the secret trap door, but still need to assemble the lid and the rope ladder.
My right arm has become the limiting factor. I’ve developed some sort of repetitive stress injury, where doing even an hour of screwing with the drill can become very painful. It sucks to get old.
Kennedy has a much different approach to athletics than Aaron does. Here she is on the right, chatting up her defender in last night’s basketball game.
Aaron is a serious competitor. He plays so many sports our family tends to follow him around in the evenings, all throughout the year. Kennedy feels (understandably) slighted. Becoming involved in the local youth theater has helped, but this year Kennedy decided to try girl’s basketball. At her game last night I was thinking about how different she is from her brother.
Where Aaron is out to crush his opponents, Kennedy always tries to make friends with hers. At the break, Kennedy told Holly that this little girl had been a fish in the latest Youth Theater production, Thumbalina. Gushing with delight, Kennedy pointed out that she and her new friend were wearing the same number.
I am exhausted, but wiser.
I spent the weekend working on a fort I promised my daughter. I am terrible at these kinds of projects, so I rarely take them on. I don’t even own many tools. So why am I building a fort?
Here is how it happened: Last year I built a shed, which is really just a corrugated roof attached to the side of my house. Although it was a low stakes project, building it made me feel bold. In a weak moment, I promised Kennedy that we would build a fort this summer for her and Aaron. I immediately forgot all about it, but not Kennedy. Over the winter she occasionally reminded me.
This past weekend, the rubber met the road.
I got email from my cousin, who I haven’t seen in ages, after she apparently stumbled upon the site. Nice. As far as I’m concerned, this is what blogging is all about.
“I can’t sit with Zach, Daddy,” Kennedy says matter-of-factly.
I just agreed to take Zach across town to the Little League game at his mother’s request, so she could run an errand. He is on the same team as Aaron and all of them (Aaron, Kennedy, and Zach) are in the same third grade class. Having just finished our own early morning errand, the kids and I had stopped for a quick lunch at Quiznos before the game. Zach and Aaron immediately grabbed one of the tiny Quiznos tables. Zach’s parents sat at another table and Kennedy and I shared our own.
Leaning in conspiratorially, Kennedy whispers, “Zach loves me.”
“Really,” I say, raising my eyebrows.
I recently took my family to see the Disney movie Meet the Robinsons in 3D, yet I couldn’t discern any 3D. Yes, I did have my glasses on, as instructed. I still couldn’t see anything in 3D. What a rip off!
This is a terrible customer experience. I paid extra to see the movie in three dimensions, yet I was only able to view it in two. I want Walt Disney to come to my house and act out the movie for me. I can get my money’s worth and he can fulfill his contractual obligation.
I wonder if I can sue Disney? If you are a lawyer, would you please weigh-in on this?
But seriously: This was my first 3D movie, so I didn’t even realize I had this problem. Now I wish I had never gone! Instead of the comforting allure of knowing I will get around to seeing a 3D movie, I am now confronted with the cold reality of never being able to see a 3D movie. Ever.
How is this even possible? I thought seeing in three dimensions was the default view!
I have no idea.
But thank God for people like Philip Greenspun, who Wikipedia calls an “American computer scientist, educator, and early internet entrepreneur.” Philip is all of that, but I bring him to your attention because he is also Editor in Chief at Photo.net, where you can learn an awful lot about photography for free.
Philip caters to the advanced crowd, but he has just added two new videos that cover the basics of digital photography very well. I will refer you to his blog post, which in turn points to both videos. Although I’ve had my Canon Digital Rebel for almost two years now, I learned more watching the XTi video than I have gleaned from any other single source.
That sounds a little embarrassing, but it’s true.
Present Tense 