The Beer-Centric Universe

It's no secret that I spend way too much time thinking about beer.

Family vacation?  Sure, if it involves a brewery tour.  Secret Santa time?  Six-pack, and done!  A little light reading?  Check this out:

Quality father-daughter time.

I love making beer, and drinking beer.  And I love learning about beer. And as I've learned more about beer, I've come to a single and awe-inspiring conclusion:

Everything in this universe can be explained by beer.

Politics?  Tastes great!  Less filling!

Anthropolgy?  Hunter-gatherer societies gave way to grain-based agriculture.  To make beer.

But I've recently started to realize that this is not just my own bizarre beer-centric obsession.  Beer is at the very heart of our universe.  Without beer, none of this could exist.

Let me explain.

This idea came to me while reading a Stephen Hawking book.  No, really.  In it, Hawking (I call him "Steve") was explaining the theory of the multiverse, and used the example of the Anthropic principle.

Basically (if I understood it right, and that's one BIG if), the Anthropic principle reasons that we, as intelligent beings, can observe the universe because the universe displays the correct age, the exact right physical values and laws, a planet with just the right climate and physical conditions for our species to emerge through evolution and eventually observe and seek to understand the universe around us.  Since, according to quantum theory, the observer changes the outcome of the observed, our ability to observe the universe has helped create the universe which we observe.  One version of this thought, dubbed the Strong Anthropic Principle, says this is all part of the "design" of the universe; that the Universe came into being in order to develop intelligent life.

The more accepted (at least by cosmologists, and other people who generally aren't crazy) variant of the Strong Anthropic is the creatively titled Weak Anthropic, which states that, yes, this universe is exactly the right kind of universe for our observation, which makes sense because any other universe within the infinite multiverse would be incapable of being observed because intelligent observers (like us) would be impossible.

In other words, we observe a universe that seems just right for us, not because that's how some supreme being created it, but because if it was any other way, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

Ok, pure, totally circular logic, but at least it's consistent circular logic.  It makes sense.

And the same is true of beer.

Beer has been important, even essential, to human civilization from its very inception.  Indeed, civilization would have been impossible, and according to some scholars, would never have arisen, without beer.

Let that soak in.

Yes, other drinks, like wine and coffee and tea, have helped civilization make leaps forward in certain areas, but beer predates all of them.  Indeed, recorded history began because someone wanted to record his homebrew recipes.

This makes perfect sense.

Beer provided a way of storing grains in more compact form.  Their additional benefits (spoiler: it's the alcohol) made them more popular, therefore more valuable, which led to commerce. And they were safe to drink, even when water was dodgy and untrustworthy (like when people started building cities).

As a homebrewer, I know at least the basics of what makes beer beer, and that encompasses biology, chemistry and physics, starting with the enzymes in the grains that convert the starches into simple sugars, which requires both water and heat in very specific quantities.  From that point, the yeast, generally one of two specific species of Saccharomyces, take over to process the sugar.  The yeast consume the sugar (C12H22O11) into carbon dioxide (CO2) and ethanol (C2H6O), resulting in a carbonated alcoholic beverage.

Science!

Take all that in for a moment.  In fact, if you skimmed that last paragraph, read it again.  This is important.

We happen, by total chance, to live in a universe where an enzyme in a seed is released under specific circumstances that converts complex carbohydrates into simple sugars.  We live in a universe where microscopic fungi consume the sugar and convert that sugar into alcohol, which is a weirdly specific and mind-bogglingly useful thing for a micro-organism to do.  And we live in a universe where the chemical properties of alcohol on our bodies are not so deadly as to preclude their consumption, but rather we note instead certain no-entirely-unpleasant after-affects.  In addition, we live in a universe where the alpha acids in hop resin have an anti-microbial effect that keep harmful bacteria at bay, but allows the yeast to grow unmolested.  If any one of these traits of our universe were different, it would mean one thing: no beer.

And no beer would mean:

No agriculture.  No safe drinking supply.  No cities.  No division of labor.  No schools.  No medicine  (for beer was one of the first effective medicines ever used, and its sister drink, whiskey, was another).  No concentration of people in order to bring diverse ideas into a single world-view.  No development of early scientific principles.  No science.  No observation.

And since we live in our observed universe, it must be a universe that supports beer.  The observer cannot be separated from the observed because our very act of observation helps define what we observe.  Our universe cannot be observed without beer, thus our universe cannot exist in the absence of beer.

 It is only because we live in a universe with beer, that we can observe the universe around us...while drinking a beer.

Why We Celebrate Thanksgiving (A Historical Perspective

It was late September, 1863.

In his office at the White House, the President stared down at the reports on his desk, seeing them, but not reading or absorbing a single word.

In his mind, he was reliving every lost opportunity, every missed chance to bring the war to a swift conclusion.  Gettysburg.  Meade had Lee on the run, and stayed put because the roads were muddy.  Unbelievable.  Grant had performed well giving us Vicksburg, but now what?  Should really see about giving that man a bigger command somewhere.  And in the meantime, the fighting goes on.

The President looked up at the clock.  Two in the afternoon.  He'd spent most of the morning at the telegraph office.  Almost time to walk over there again, get the afternoon reports.  He mumbled something under his breath about getting enough exercise.

The only other man in the room glanced up at the sound.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Nothing, Seward.  Nothing at all," the president replied to his Secretary of State.

"Does not the war go as you would like it?  We have enjoyed excellent success this summer."

"I would like it over.  As it goes on at all, then no, it is not to my liking."  He sighed, heavily.  "No, not to my liking at all.  And our funds are low, our morale is lower.  Those rebels, for all the trouble they're causing, they have the conviction of their beliefs.  They're broke, but as long as they believe, they keep fighting.  You need either conviction or money to win a war.  And we are quickly running out of both."

Seward thought about this for a moment.  "You could free the slaves, again.  Everyone really seemed to enjoy that.  Gave the country a good boost."

"I don't find your humor very appropriate."

Seward chuckled.  "You never do." 

Seward stood and walked over to a map of United States tacked to one wall.  The map was covered in pins, reflecting relative positions of the nearly countless armies in the field.  As he walked, he stuffed his smoking pipe with tobacco and lit it casually.  "We already have the income tax; that's helped.  I supposed we could raise it again, but I doubt that would be very popular.  Do you wish to be re-elected next year?"

"The only thing I fear more than re-election is the prospect of someone else being elected.  No, if I must be in this office to prosecute this war, this is where I will stay."

Seward nodded.  "So, no income tax.  So, either we need to find another way to generate money, or we need to unite all the country in a common cause, perhaps based on some mythical aspect of our nation's heritage.  Remind them of the hardships our forefathers endured, and the beliefs that they clung to when little else remained.  That sort of thing."

The president thought for a long time, the silence broken only by the ticking of the clock and Seward's gentle puffing on his pipe.  It had the feeling of one of the defining moments of history; one of the moments that changes the course of a nation forever.

Finally, he said, "I like the money idea better."

Seward grinned.  "Excellent.  Then, this is what we need to do.  Christmas is coming."

"Do you suggest we pray?"

"Just the opposite.  We start encouraging the people to buy more Christmas presents to give to each other, especially the children."

"Won't that just encourage greed?"

"No, sir, it most certainly will do much, much more than JUST encourage greed.  It will encourage generations of greed, selfishness, avarice, covetousness. And spending.  Much, much spending. We will encourage the merchants to extend lines of credit, so people can spend more than they have.  Banks will finance low-interest loans to pay back the merchants, and then raise those interest rates.  And we'll throw in enough excise taxes to bring in revenue by the wagon-load!  But..."

He trailed off.  The President looked expectant.  "But...what?  It sounds like a marvelous idea."

"But, it will work better if we focus our attention on just the few weeks before Christmas.  Just enough time to spend lots of money, but not long enough to regret the purchases and learn from their mistakes.  We should start it...I'd say the last Friday in November.  You should declare a holiday."

The President nodded.  "Yes, of course!  And I shall call it, Thanks-taking! To encourage people to take those presents they are being given, with thanks."

Early Bird Special:  Four-score and seven bucks off!

Seward blew a smoke ring in the shape of a dollar sign.  "You're a capable leader, Mr. President, but not very shrewd.  We can't declare a holiday just to make people buy stuff.  The holiday must be the day BEFORE.  And the next day, the shopping day, we'll tell all the stores to open early, so people can start shopping sooner.  And every year, they will open a little sooner, and a little sooner, until the holiday itself disappears.  By that time, we shouldn't need the holiday anymore."

"Excellent," the President shouted.  "Write something up, some declaration, or proclamation, or presidential thingamajig.  Call it Thanks--something.  Work on it.  And throw in some claptrap about Indians or Pilgrims or something.  Make it work!"

Seward nodded.  He had a piece of paper in his hand now, and was scribbling furiously:

New holiday, last Thursday of November.  Thanks-getting, or something similar.  Throw in crap about Pilgrims.  Try to work in a parade, and maybe some football.

And the rest is history.

Some thoughts on being Red Sox fan

It seems that the Red Sox have once again won the World Series.  And again, against the Cardinals. Third victory in less than a decade, and all the players should be very proud of themselves.  They are some fantastic ball players, and justly deserve the parade that the city gave them.

While we were watching the coverage of the parade as it was happening (because the TV happened to be on), my daughter looked up just as some reporter was interviewing a little girl about her age, all decked out in Red Sox gear, clutching a little stuffed Wally the Green Monster.  And my daughter looked at me and said, "Why can't I be the little girl on TV?"

And I chuckled good-naturedly.  I may have even tossled her hair.  And I said, "Maybe next year."

And to her, that meant just what it sound like.  I'd agreed, tacitly, that next year, after the Red Sox win the World Series again, I would take her to the victory parade so she could be interviewed by a TV reporter.

But to me, it was like a secret code, a quiet acknowledgement that while we in what is repeatedly referred to now as "Red Sox Nation" have gained a World Champion team, we have perhaps lost something in our nature, something that defined us for many decades.

Now, I'm probably not the biggest fan of baseball, in general.  I don't really follow it, don't watch it on TV, didn't watch a complete World Series game this year. 

My daughter probably likes baseball more than I do.

But I was born a Red Sox fan.

There really was nothing I could do about it, and choice never entered into it.  My father was a Red Sox fan, thus I was taught to be a Red Sox fan, and there was very little else to say on the subject.  He told me about Ted Williams, about the Impossibe Dream, about Carlton Fisk and the the homerun that almost wasn't.

I collected the baseball cards. Had an official Red Sox batting glove.  A souvenir baseball.  I remember my first game at Fenway (I'm pretty sure it was Clemens on the mound, though at the time, that meant nothing to me, and I had no idea why people kept holding up signs saying "K.")

But the year I really became a Red Sox fan, as I have always understood the term, was 1986.

That year, while I was busy being a kid, the Red Sox made it to the World Series for the first time in my lifetime.  Suddenly, I was interested!  The Red Sox were going to be World Champions!  All they had to do was beat the Mets, and really, how hard could that be?

You must know the story: They just about had it sewn up, when a ground ball down the first base line went right past the glove and between the legs of Bill Buckner, and the Mets went on to win, and win the following game as well, leaving us Red Sox fans heartbroken and disappointed.

Which, of course, was exactly the point!

We, the true Red Sox fans, have always lived in a state of perpetual heartbreak.

And that is not to say that we were never proud of our team, or that the team, prior to 2004, was somehow inferior.  I'd submit that Ted Williams, Dom Dimaggio, Carl Yastremzci, or the '86 team that included Clemens, Wade Boggs, and Dwight Evans are easily the equal of any recent Red Sox lineup.  No, it wasn't for a lack of talent; it was... something else.

Every year, or so it seemed, they'd start off the season strong, then they'd lag behind, and come September, they'd surge ahead, sometimes barreling into the playoffs like an out-of-control locomotive, sometimes coming up just short (in '49, the entire season came down to one winner-take-all playoff game against the Yankees.  Hey, that reminds me of another season...)

And then, as though the universe realized what it was about to let happen...they lost.  No, they didn't lose: they blew it!  Year after year, they blew it!

And did eighty-plus years of constant disappointment turn Boston into a city of fatalists, without any shred of hope for the future?

Never been to Boston, have ya?

Red Sox fans have always been veritable fountains of unyielding optimism.  Every year, after every defeat, we would simply look at each other and say, "There's always next year."

This was famously immortalized on a bottlecap from the Nantucket Nectars juice company, which got into the habit of putting interesting facts or short jokes on the underside of their caps.  One cap said, "The Red Sox will win the World Series next year."  I guarantee, non-Sox fans didn't understand that cap.

And that taught me everything I needed to know about life.  That no matter what happened, no matter how hard you worked, how far you came, sometimes you'd still lose out, right at the moment it matters most.  And you what?  That's ok, because there's always next time.

They taught me good-sportsmanship.  They taught me persistence.  They taught me resilience.

And I'm a little worried that my daughter will never not know a world where the Red Sox are not known as World Champions.

Sure, I'm happy for them.  I was happy, truly happy, for all the fans in 2004, who had waited so long.  But now, I'm worried about the fans.

I'm worried that the fans will begin to expect to win.  They'll forget what it means to say, "Maybe next year."  They'll feel like they are entitled to win. They'll be obnoxious, unruly, intolerable.

In other words, I'm afraid they'll become that which they most abhor:

Yankees fans.

The Vampire State

Halloween is here again, and that means 3 very important things: costumes, candy, and scary stories.

The candy is coming, we just need to beg strangers for it.  You know, I try this year round, but for some reason it only ever works at the end of October.  Go figure.

As for the costume, my daughter has chosen ninjas as this year's theme.

I was hoping for "astronauts."

And finally, the scary stories: I love scary stories in all forms.  Be it book, or movie, or TV, I love being scared.  And while it seems like every horror movie put out these days claims to be "based on a true story," the very best scary stories are 100% true.

Like the story of Mercy Brown, the Rhode Island Vampire.

Now, I'll grant you that this happened back in 1892, which seems like a long time ago, but this is also the most recent documented incident of vampirism in the United States.  And like most of my favorite ghost stories, it takes place in Rhode Island.  And the real kicker is, while Mercy Brown may be the last vampire reported in Rhode Island, she's not even close to being the first!

Our story begins in the town of Exeter, Rhode Island.  There in 1892, the Brown family had suffered a string of terrible tragedies.  Mary Brown had died the year before of a horribe illness, where she seemed to slowly be drained of all life, becoming thinner and thinner, her eyes becoming sunken, her skin pale, like she was becoming a living corpse before their very eyes.  Soon after she died, her oldest daughter (also Mary, because, you know, it was a popular name back then) contracted the same illness, and shared the same fate.

By the following year, Mary's  (first Mary, not second Mary) daughter Mercy and son Edwin were also ill.  After Mercy died, the people of Exeter were convinced that a vampire was to blame.  They exhumed the three Brown corpses, and while two of them showed appropriate amounts of decomposition, the third, Mercy, showed very little decomposition, with seemingly fresh blood still in her veins.  Seeing this, the people of Exeter, immediately cut out her heart and burned it, making her ashes into medicine for poor Edwin.  (It didn't work.  Remember that the next time your doctor prescribes "ashes of your dead sister.")

Mercy, and the rest of the Brown family, had what was known at the time as consumption, what we know today as tuberculosis.  It was a poorly understood illness at the time, with many conflicting and incorrect ideas about what caused it.  (It's much better understood now, but really, do you know what causes tuberculosis?  I didn't think so.  And if your doctor told you, "Yep, that's definitely vampire-related," you'd at least consider the possibility, so don't look down on the poor folks of Exeter.)

But why did these not-nearly-as-ignorant-as-people-think Rhode Islanders jump right to vampirism as a likely cause?  Probably because of all the times it had happened before!

The first documented case of Rhode Island vampires seems to date back to the 1790s.  And that's not necessarily the first case, just the first one where we have found clear documentation proving that said person existed, died, was exhumed and treated as a vampire.

This first case of vampirism centered on a girl named Abigail Staples of Cumblerland.  According to official town records, after her death at the age of 22 or 23, Abigail's father asked permission to exhume her body, "In order to try an Experiment on Livina Chace Wife of Stephen Chace Which Said Livina Was Sister to the Said Abigail Deceased."

(They really liked capitalizing back then.)

So, that doesn't say anything specific about vampires or consumption, simply referring to an "Experiment'" but destroying a vampire to keep her from destroying her own sister is rely the least creepy explanation I can come up with.

And soon after that, around 1799, comes another story out of Exeter.  After the deaths of between 4 or 6 (details vary) of his children, Stukeley Tillinghast (Best. Name. Ever.) decides to exhume their bodies, and ends up believeing that his daughter, Sarah, is the vampire feeding on the rest of the family.  Hilarity ensued.

Between 1799 and the finally story of Mercy Brown in 1892, as many as ten documented cases of vampirism can be found just in Rhode Island, plus a few more just over the border in eastern Connecticut.

Just ridiculous superstition, right?  Just silly folklore nonsense from those crazy, ignorant Rhode Islanders.

Well, perhaps, but this isn't fifteen or sixteenth century Europe.  This is happening in the United States, starting in the same time period as the writing of the Constitution, and on up past the end of the Civil War, almost to the beginning of the twentieth century.

But of course these folks were isolated in their small towns and not as educated as the average American.

Except that's not entirely accurate, either.  These towns kept careful records, they had newspapers, so people obviously knew how to read. If they were isolated, it was really only because they wanted to be, not because of any great distance or physical barriers.  This was, after all, just Rhode Island.  You could walk the entire length of the state without too much trouble.

So what was really going on there?  Why did so any people believe in vampires, and why did it stop after Mercy Brown?

This mystery reminds me of something I've always felt was odd about the Salem Witch Trials. Again, they happened only in one isolated area, and quite apart is distance and time from the European witch trials. And while it is obvious that most of the victims were blameless, it seems possible, just possible, that the panic could have been sparked by some degree of truth: that maybe, just maybe, someone in the village was practicing witchcraft.

Similarly, why would the people of these small Rhode Island towns be so convinced of vampires, even after consumption had been identified as tuberculosis and treatments had been developed, unless somewhere, at some point, one of these "vampires" had really been an actual vampire?!

Imagine this: One by one, members of a family become stricken by what appears to be consumption.  One by one, each family member wastes away, until their skin is drawn tight over protuding bones, their eyes so sunken into their sockets that at night, by the light of a few candles, they seem not to have any eyes at all.  And then, they die.

Perhaps, then, someone sees some creature in the local cemetery, perhaps just too big to be a dog.  Perhaps they notice a grave recently disturbed.  At any rate, they decide to investigate, to dig up the grave, open the casket.

Inside, they find something horrible; something not dead, but not truly alive either.  They realize this...thing...has been the cause of the lamented family's misery, and calling upon stories they always thought were only folklore from the Old World, they cut off its head, they cut out its heart, they destroy the thing with fire.

The town is at peace again, but none of them will ever forget the thing that they saw in the cemetery.

And if something similar happens in a town nearby, won't one of the townsfolk want to help, to warn those citizens of what it could be.  Again, they are not superstitious, do not believe in such creatures, but the man gives his word he saw it with his own eyes.

And so it continues.  Never spreading far from where it began, and the supernatural cure does not always work, for often these are just what they seem: vicims of consumption.

But once in a while, just enough to keep the stories alive...

And why did it suddenly stop in 1892?  Maybe it didn't, they just stopped talking about it!  It could be that the same thing is happening in parts of Rhode Island even now, they just don't publicize it anymore.  The Brown case got quite a bit of media attention, and maybe once the late 19th century version of Fox News descends on your village and starts openly mocking your beliefs, you may shut up about it for a while.

"Damn liberal media." - Dracula

That doesn't mean it stopped.

So the next time you find yourself driving through Rhode Island late at night, keep your eyes open. You might see a young woman walking along the side of the highway.  You might think she's looking for help, that perhaps her car broke down somewhere.

I'd advise you to keep driving.  Don't even slow down.

Because the Ocean State might just be... the Vampire State!

Happy Halloween!

I should add, I am deeply indebted to Michael E. Bell and his fantastic book on New England Vampires, "Food For the Dead."

Remember the Poodle

Last week, we had to say goodbye to a member of our family.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a dog lover. And when we bought our house nine years ago, we immediately got a dog.  My wife found him at a local shelter, a scrawny, underfed, unkempt little mutt, found wandering around, abandoned.  We named him Joe.

Believe or not, he was not always this dashingly handsome.

Soon after, my wife picked me up from work and told me, "We're going to Billerica."

"Ok," I said. "Where's Billerica?"

She didn't know.  We needed to buy a road atlas to find it.  (This was before the world of ubiquitious iphones and GPSs.)  It turned out to be almost 2 hours away.  There, in some woman's house that doubled as an "animal shelter," we got our second dog, a tiny ball of white poodle that we named Mae.

Mae, pictured moments before she tried to convince my toes to become unattached from my foot.

Mae did not immediately ingratiate herself to us.  She whined a lot, she growled, she bit, she picked fights with Joe.  But over time, she grew on us.  She would sleep at the foot of our bed, and bite my foot nearly every night.   As she got even older, we had to get used to cleaning up her accidents all over the house.

She had breast cancer, which was removed by surgery twice.  She had to have one eye removed after it became swollen and infected.

This wasn't exactly "Marley and Me."

Nine years later, last week, we took Mae to the vet for another eye infection.  They found she'd lost over 2 pounds since she'd been there last.  Considering she'd never weighed more than 7 pounds, she didn't have much left to lose.

Within a day, she'd stopped eating entirely.  The next morning, she passed away in her sleep, in her favorite bed.  We buried her in the backyard.

I don't want to talked at length about this one poodle (although I guess I am), nor do I want to talk about death, about picking up her cold body, or the smell that infused her bed.  No, that's not something I'm feeling up to talking about.

If you remember nothing else about this blog entry, please remember this: there are animal shelters near you, filled with dogs and cats that need a home.  That need love.  That need you.

Don't go to pet stores that sell puppies out of cages.  Please.  Yes, that puppy may be given a good home and a wonderful life, but you're encouraging the store to bring in more puppies, and very few of them will be so lucky.

During one of her checkups soon after we brought her home,  one vet commented that it looked like Mae had had puppies before.  They guessed that she'd been a breeder, used to churn out as many puppies as she could to sell to those same pet stores, and had probably been abandoned, literally thrown out, when she got too old to be useful.

Mae had endured 9 years of being beaten, forced to breed, forced to fight other dogs for food, for water, for a place to sleep.  And because of that, despite being given a safe home surrounded by a family that loved her, she still woke up in the middle of the night snarling and biting anything that moved nearby.  (Spoiler: it was my foot.)

The 9 years she spent with us cannot erase those first nine years, but she was able to die in her favorite bed, peacefully, and that counts for something, since it was probably the first thing she was able to do peacefully in her entire life.

So the next time you see a puppy in the pet store, please remember my little white poodle.  Remember her nine years of torment, and the nine years of peace that couldn't erase them.

Then, drive down to a shelter, and give your love to a dog that needs it.

Or else her ghost will bite your foot off.  I'll make sure of it.

How a 37-Year-Old Man Joined the Girl Scouts

I’ve done it.

I’ve raised a school-aged daughter.

Please, hold your applause.

Still, it was a surreal feeling, as my wife and I watched her get on the bus for the first time, sporting her new Chucks (with neon yellow shoelaces of course), smiling broadly at her first day of kindergarten. No tears from her eyes, no shouts of “I don’t want to go to school!”  And walking back to our house, I reflected that this was something we had done: we’d brought a child into this world, raised her, helped mold her little personality (just kidding, there’s nothing little about her personality), and brought her to this point.

Clearly, she gets her style from her old man.

School!

And the first day went perfectly.  She was happy, she was excited to go back, and she didn’t get in any trouble for misbehaving or not listening.

She saved that for the second day.

Oh, well.  Even I had to stand in the hall a few times…

And at open house last week, she saw the Girl Scout recruiting table and decided that she wanted to be a Daisy Scout.

Of course she did.  How could this rainbow unicorn ninja resist becoming a Daisy Scout?

But for one small problem:  There was no one to be a Daisy Scout Troop Leader.

Solution:  Meet the new Daisy Scout Leader!

What have I gotten myself into?

All kidding aside, I’m feeling pretty excited about this whole prospect, although I know it won’t be the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  Still, let's face it: I wasn't cut out to be a soccer coach.  Scouting, on the other hand, seems a natural fit.  It seems to be about instilling in young people a sense of honesty, integrity, responsibility, for our country, for our civic duty, for our planet.  That's a message I can certainly get behind.

Plus, my wife pointed out to me that I would be much better at teaching outdoors-y type stuff than she would.  I pointed out that Daisy Scouts don’t learn to start fires or build lean-tos, as far as I know.  (Although they will, now!)  Still, I feel lucky to know that my wife will be there to help me when I need her to, and my daughter will (hopefully) love having me as the troop leader.

Even still, shouldn't a Girl Scout leader maybe have been a Girl Scout, or at least, you know, be a girl?

Now, I’ve said a thousand times before that the parenting world is mom-oriented, and sometimes very anti-dad.  And this may seem like one more loud protest that yes, we dads can do this stuff, too.

It isn’t.

If there is one area where it makes a certain amount of sense to prefer females over males as leaders and mentors of children, it would totally be the Girl Scouts.  I’m not here to change anything.  I’m not standing on my soapbox, I’m not holding up any protest signs, I just want my daughter to be able to be a Daisy Scout.  And if that means they need a Daisy Scout leader, then I will happily volunteer to be a leader.

If it means I’m the only guy in the room, that’s okay.  If it means that all the generic literature will refer to me as a “she,” I’m cool with that.  I won’t say a word against it.  I don’t know yet if I will be required to wear the uniform, but if so, I can do it.  If it means there will be special extra rules that I need to follow, as a guy, for the safety of the scouts, I will happily abide by them.

That all said, I applaud the Girl Scout for giving me, and dads like me, this opportunity.  It still boggles my mind that the Girl Scout Membership form has a box for "Male," 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to start memorizing the Girl Scout promise. 

I assume they'll teach me the secret handshake at some point.

It looks like I am in for another interesting adventure in parenting…

Stay tuned!

The Tricks That Time Plays

Last weekend, we spent a couple days in Vermont, running around in the woods, deciphering secret messages, and following fictious maps from a very real Revolutionary War general named John Stark.

Because this is the kind of thing we do for fun.  Deal with it.

It was a nice getaway which reminded me, at moments, of other weekends spent many, many years ago, not in Vermont, but in New Hampshire.

I in no way mean to imply that Vermont and New Hampshire are indistinguishable from each other.  I’m saying that outright.  They look pretty much exactly the same.  Residents of either state can feel free to send me hate mail.

Anyway, the mental comparison has very little to do with the states themselves, or much to do with the scenery (picturesque mountains, babbling streams, beautiful lake vistas), but instead had everything to do with something has been on my mind quite a bit lately, which is time.

When my sister and I were kids, our grandparents would sometimes take us up to a lake house in New Hampshire.  I have no idea where in New Hampshire, although last year, while visiting Storyland and North Conway, I realized that I had totally been there before, so it must have been near there. 

And I remembered the log I would play with in the lake, just the right size to try and ride like a horse, only to have to rollover and dunk me under.  And bringing my favorite bear, Jack, and the time he “fell” off the porch of the house (he might have been pushed…conspiracy theorists, take note!), and I bandaged his arm using my socks like a cast.

This is Jack, my bear since as far back as I can possibly remember...

And this is what happened to him after my daughter got hold of him.  Look at it!  LOOK AT IT!

And with that memory, came all the other memories attached to it, like a parade of the past, marching before my eyes, of going fishing with Grandaddy, of going to church with Grandma, of a hundred more, or a thousand, or more.

And now on this trip, seeing some of the odd signs, the roadside eateries, the beautiful scenic vistas, I couldn’t help but think of Grandaddy stopping there to show us something, or talk to the folks there, or play some practical joke on us.

Why was I thinking about New Hampshire all those years ago while watching the scenery of Vermont pass by?

Because time plays tricks on you.

Not memory, though memory does play tricks on you.  In fact, everything I’m remembering could in fact never have happened.  Or could have happened, but only in, say, New Jersey.  I’ll never know for sure.  Because that’s the kind of trick memory plays.  Time plays a different, and more subtle trick. The trick time plays is all about people you love, people you lose, people you miss.

When we lose someone that we love, no matter how long (or how short) we’ve known them, they take pieces of us with them when they go.  What they take, indeed, is often completely out of proportion to the length of time we’ve known them.  What they take can never be replaced, but that emptiness, while painful, helps to define us, to make us the people we are.  And when the person we lose is someone we’ve known and loved our entire lives?  Well, you see, that’s part of the trick that time plays.

And often one loss awakens the echoes of other losses, and time plays its tricks again.

 

Grandaddy passed away years ago, before my daughter was born, which seems a shame, ‘cause he would’ve gotten a kick out of her.  Grandma, or as my daughter knew her, Great Grandma Mary, passed away just over a month ago.

A rare photo of my pre-facial hair days...

So it wasn’t surprising that this was one of the things on my mind as we drove through Vermont.

I try to be a positive person.  (This statement alone sometimes comes as a surprise to people who have known me for years.)  And this blog is meant as a way to capture what I think and feel about being dad, and being a husband, and about the world, which I still believe to be an essentially good place.

But time, don’t you see? It plays tricks on you.

I’ve written before about the importance of talking about sad things and bad things, in a way that comforts, while resisting the urge to pretend that bad things don’t happen.

But not shielding your kid is very different from having to actively hit it head on, which is what I felt I was doing when I had to tell my daughter that Great Grandma Mary had passed away.

It went a little something like this:

Me:  I have something important to tell you.

Her: Ok.

Me: It’s about Great Grandma Mary.

Her: Ok.

Me: Well, sweetie, she died.

Her: <gasp>  (The momentary look on her face was the look of anguish, of sadness, or mortality.)

Me: She’s in Heaven, now.   She went to see God.

Her: Why?

Ok, now, I’m not a theologian.  I’m not even an armchair theologian, or a Monday Morning theologian.

I’m more of a Comparative Religion kind of guy.  I don’t know what awaits us in the hereafter, I have little to no opinion about our immortal soul, and while I try to live a life that is good and moral, I ultimately have no idea how, or when, or if I will be judged based on that life.  I have some ideas about God and the afterlife, but I also know I’m as likely if not more so to be completely wrong.

Thank God (no pun intended) for Catholic schooling.  Heaven was something she knew, something she understood.  Probably better than I do.

As to why, that’s the question, isn’t it?  And not one I was really prepared to answer.  So, I told her what I knew to be true.

Me: You never knew your Great Grandaddy.  He died before you were born.  But he loved Great Grandma Mary very much, and she loved him.  And she’s missed him ever since he died.  Now, she gets to see him again.

Her:  In Heaven?

Me: Yup.

Her:  Oh.  And they loved each other?

Me:  A lot.

Her:  Oh.  And now they’re together again?

I nodded.

Her:  Oh.  Ok.  Can we play Ninja Surfer Team, now?

(Sidebar:  “Ninja Surfer Team” is that greatest name for a TV series ever.  And I call dibs.)

I don't know where she gets this stuff from.

Grandaddy and Grandma had many influences on my life, on who I am and how I think about things.  About storytelling (they could BOTH tell a story, like only a Virginian grandfather or an Irish grandmother could), about cooking (I remember how proud I was when we bought our house and I was able to invite Grandaddy to dinner, as a way of saying thanks for all the dinners he’d cooked for us), about being Irish (if I know all the words to Danny Boy—and I do—it’s because of Grandma).

Goodbye, Great Grandma Mary.  Ella was very lucky to have known you for as long as she did.  As am I.  Tis you must go, and we must bide.

Tell Grandaddy we say hi.

File Under: Things That Piss Me Off

I recently came across this article.  I included the link only in case you think I'm just making shit up.  I'm not.  Someone actually wrote this.

The name of the article tells you all you really need to know: "When mom earns more, it's tough on dad."

And in deference to Dr. Drexler, you need to know the conclusion as well, which states, essentially, that dads who feel threatened by these changing gender roles need to get over themselves, and accept the idea that moms can be the primary breadwinners, dads can be primary caregivers, and families need to move beyond the social gender stereotypes that we've been locked in for most of the past century.

I happen to agree with that part.

What I do not agree with is that dads who earn less, and/or have a lower level of formal education, can't handle being in a role that they perceive as inferior.  I'm sure there are plenty of those dads out there (I've written about them before), but if this is a continuing or growing trend, then we, as a society, need to give back all the nice things that we've accomplished and slink back into the caves.  Neanderthals don't get iphones.

So, what's really going on here?

Well, either I'm wrong (on the whole, unlikely), the cited studies are deeply flawed, or the author of the article interpolated the wrong conclusions from the data sets she was looking at.

So, I decided to look at the studies, or at least what I could find of them online without having pay anyone any money.

The results were quite surprising.

(Except about me not being wrong.  That wasn't surprising.)

The article referenced three specific studies, one by the good folks at Pew, and 2 academic studies which I was only able to find abstracts of.

The Pew study showed that more and more women have higher levels of education and earn more than their spouses, and also showed that both men and women claim that they don't think it matters which spouse earns more.  Yet the study still shows the general social attitudes still prevail, with more people believing that the woman should be the primary caregiver, and that having a successful marriage and family life is more difficult when mom works.

But, if you read the rest of the study, it becomes clear that, despite having some ways to go, this represents a significant shift in attitude versus just a decade ago, and that these trends have been moving in the direction of more equal co-parenting between spouses since at least the 1960s.

So is this an historical trend that is going to continue to harm the fabric of our society by making dads feel inferior to the point that they have serious commitment issues within their relationships, or even physiological problems that require medication to maintain a normal lifestyle?

Well, a second study cited indicates that men who earn less than women are 10% more likely to be on some kind of medication for such physiological issues...

...In Denmark.

Does that matter?  Is there a difference between social and gender roles in U.S. and Denmark?  I don't know, but given that the U.S. is one of the most heavily medicated societies in the world, I think it is telling that the study about the difference in medication in men based on household income was done in Denmark.

Context is everything, and I don't believe that social context was fully taken into account or explained in this case.  Rather, it seems as though results were found which seemed to coincide with the authors thesis, and so were shoehorned in.

This is really easy to do.  I did it with that prescription drug report I linked to in the last paragraph.  I wrote the conclusion, then found an article on the web to back to up.  When you start from a preconceived conclusion, making the data fit your argument usually isn't too hard.

The third cited study noted that men who earn less are more likely to cheat on their spouses.

Well, you say, that can't be good.  Is this data somehow flawed?

No, the data on this is pretty solid, but what is portrayed in the article once again only tells half the story. The full study shows that men who cheat either earn less than their spouse, or more.  In other words, the men in the study cheat, and it may or may not have anything to do with their relative income.  The author of the study then goes on to claim that men who make less feel threatened, and therefore cheat on their spouse.  And men who earn more cheat on their spouse because, you know, their guys and they can get away with it.

So, guys who earn less are threatened, and guys who earn more are on a power trip.  To be clear, the data supports this hypothesis only as far as that hypothesis fits the data.  The data itself does not identify that actual reasons that the men in the study cheated.  So, the conclusions, which are full of terms like "threatened" and "feelings of power," seem to be more the author's rationalizations of the data based on his own preconceived notions about social gender roles than on any hard data.

Overall, it kind of sounds like they just studied jerks of different income levels.  A poor jerk and a rich jerk are, in turns out, still jerks. 

Now, to be sure, these are very smart people writing carefully researched articles that are meant to shine some light on gender roles in our society, and in particular family dynamics and the shifting roles of breadwinners and caregivers, and help us understand how those roles will impact the next generation, which is growing up right before our eyes.  But as soon as we fall back on our preconceived notions of male and female roles, we are undermining our own progress.

Because when we do that, the headline changes from "Families Are Succesfully Beginning to Shift Away From Decades Old Institutionalized Sexism," to "Dads Have It Tough."

And I call bullshit on that.

If you, as a dad, feel you have it tough in this new and emerging social gender paradigm, tough shit.

Because being a successful parent is tough.  Also, having a fulfilling career.  Also, having a successful marriage.  I'm sorry, you wanted "easy" social roles?  Sorry, buddy, you've been watching too much "Mad Men."

Parenting, career, and marriage, if plotted out, all fall along the same data curve:  the more challenged you are, the more effort you put into it, the more fulfillment you receive from it.  So yes, I agree, being a working parent is challenging.  Making a marriage and a family work when both spouses have careers that they also find challenging and fulfilling, that's Difficulty Level: Expert.

Which is kind of what makes it so worthwhile.

It may sound like I'm being defensive here, and perhaps I am.  But I have been waging a seemingly one-dad war against just the kind of social gender role stereotyping that these studies seem to be validating, and I'm convinced that we as a society not only can change, but need to change, and are changing even now.  But these studies, lending "scientific" credibility (while simultaneously violating the scientific method through common fallacies like "correlation versus causation," and basing conclusions on subjective ideas rather than objective evidence), create an environment where guys are given a free pass to act like assholes.  And you're better than that, guys.

Oddly, while reading up on the cited studies in the above article, I found a reference to another article in a journal called "Sex Roles"  (Best name for an academic journal ever, by the way), which said, "macho men whose partners earn more than they do have worse romantic relationships, in part because the difference in income is a strain for them. Conversely, men who are not so traditional in their masculinity do not place as much importance on the difference in income and, as a result, appear to have better-quality relationships with their female partner."

Now that, I believe.  But I don't think income has anything to do with it.  That sentence should read: "Macho men have worse romantic relationships; men who are not so traditional in their masculinity have better-quality relationships with their female partner."

Ultimately, I find all this very hopeful for the future.  And here's why:

Because if you're the kind of guy who is that insecure about his masculinity that you let your relative income affect your family relationships, than I would much rather you not have any hand in raising your children.  Because you're going to raise them wrong.  And you're only going to further perpetuate the same gender role stereotyping that is so ingrained in our thinking that even the researchers who are trying to understand the current state of gender roles in our society fall back on the same old and out-dated assumptions seemingly without questioning whether those assumptions are still valid, or if something new is actually starting to emerge.

I haven't done any scientific research, and I have only anecdotal evidence to go on, but I remain hopeful that the emerging trend is one where guys come to understand  that to be a good man, a good husband, and a good father means much more than providing for your family financially.  You also need to provide for it with love, with stability, with communication, and with a clear understanding of  the impact of your example on the next generation.

And hopefully, you can choose to be an example of what to do, rather than what no to do.