Light and Momentary

Looking ahead

Before I turned 40 I had a whole set of goals. There was a brain goal: finish the novels of Charles Dickens. There was a body goal: get in shape. That one had sub-targets: do a hundred pushups in <15 minutes, run a 5K in less than 30 minutes, and develop enough core strength to do the Pilates move called the Teaser. There was a professional goal: finish the PhD. And there was a home goal: declutter the whole house. 

It made for a hectic run-up to my fortieth birthday, but I hit almost all of the goals. (I didn’t get the basement decluttered. Everything else happened, though.)

These days I’m thinking about the next big birthday. I’ll turn 50 in a whisker more than 2.5 years— long enough to accomplish something meaningful if I tackle it wisely. 

I’ve thought about another reading project, like finishing all of George Eliot. (My Trollope project will carry me into retirement, even if I read two of his books every year. There are a lot of Trollope novels in existence. A lot.) Or maybe I’ll read Proust. (Oh, I just had a thought for 2018: maybe this will be the year that I read Dance to the Music of Time.)

i could use a house project or six. Things get shabby when you stay put for a while, and then you get used to the shabby. 

I also like the idea of a bigger fitness goal, though probably after tenure. A longer triathlon, maybe, or possibly a marathon. Tenure is the obvious professional goal, but what I’d really like to aim for is a research award. I’ll have to think about that. 

Tonight at dinner my brother suggested that I think about something else entirely, like learning a new language or another skill. I might prefer to polish up one of the rusty languages. For a while there I was reading Les Misérables in French, which was slow but satisfying. That would be a worthy fiftieth birthday goal.

it probably makes sense to give myself a couple of weeks to decide what I actually want to prioritize. I have some time to figure it out, and choosing a motivating goal is a significant chunk of the battle. 

I do not, however, have much time in which to settle on 2018 new year’s resolutions. There’s only one day left in 2017. I’m not quite sure how that happened.

 

Adventures in language learning

I got a Christmas present today: a robot vacuum. I've thought for years about buying a Roomba, but it always seemed a little extravagant. This year, though, Elwood found a deal on one manufactured in China. The instruction manual is in Chinese, but I was able to figure it out from the pictures. (I think.) The woman's voice that emanates from inside the unit also speaks in Chinese. She is much chattier than any vacuum I've ever had before. Unfortunately, I have no idea what she is telling me.

After I charged her up, I sent her to vacuum under my bed. She had a lot to say about this. 

My husband found a deal on a Chinese robot vacuum, which patrols the house and interjects occasional comments in Chinese. Pretty sure it's saying, "Listen, lady, it cannot be good for you to have this much dust under your bed."

— Jamie (@mostgladly) December 28, 2017

I have no frame of reference here. She is probably saying, "Please return me to my base so I can charge my battery." Or "please empty the collection container." But it might be "How can you stand to live in this squalid hellhole?" How would I know?

The kids have opinions about her too. They think that I will mess with her head if I pick her up and carry her to another part of the house. How can she build a mental map if she doesn't move around under her own steam? They think that when I pick her up she says, "Stop it! Put me down and let me navigate by myself like the manual says!" Except none of us can tell if that's what the manual says or not.

She had some comments about the dining room too. I think they were along the lines of "Why are there NINE chairs in this room? Are you feeding a baseball team around here?"

Maybe she is composing thoughtful poetry:

Ashes to ashes
Dust to SO MUCH FREAKING DUST
Hire some help, girlfriend!

Huh, perhaps it is revealing that I imagine my robot vacuum composing an angry haiku when required to deal with the evidence of my cursory housekeeping habits. I...might decline to think about that.

I found an English blog post in praise of this brand of robot vacuum, with instructions for downloading a Chinese-language app that will allow me to connect my personal robot vacuum to the internet. That way, the writer tells me, I can instruct her to get to work while I am away from home. I can't be the only person who finds this a little head-scratch-y, can I? I can't be the only person who imagines a robot army, taking over Gladlyville (and thence the WORLD) from footholds gained by pretending to be agreeable domestic assistants?

Okay, I might be the only person imagining that.

The five-hour email reply

Yesterday I got a long worried email from a relative, asking me to investigate the scholarly literature on hoarding. My correspondent wanted to know specifically about strategies for supporting kids being raised in a home where hoarding is an issue. All right, said I to myself, let's do some searching.

But

oh

my

goodness.

I did not anticipate the physical reaction I would have to reading those papers, the intense need to get up from my seat and start eliminating stuff.

So. All of the kids' dressers have been purged. The wrong-size/wrong-season storage has been purged and reorganized. The puzzle box has been purged. The giveaway shelf has been emptied. A couple of spectacularly wrong Christmas gifts went straight from the "what the heck do I do with this?" spot on the counter to the trunk of the car. I made a thrift shop run in the freezing cold and filed the tax receipt on my return.

How, then, is there still so much STUFF in my house? 

It's a clutter-y time of year. My kids are generally pretty good about keeping their possessions stripped down (with occasional exceptions), but this is the time of year when new things are jockeying for spots in a small house. Pete was given an origami book and a package of origami paper for Christmas, with the result that the coffee table was covered with an armada of origami birds and pianos. New books are resting on end tables. Games are everywhere because people have been playing them with siblings. I'm not going to be the mom who says NO FUN ALLOWED PUT IT ALL AWAY.

Unless I keep reading about hoarding. 

Fact I didn't know: hoarding seems to be highly heritable. My kids have multiple relatives with worrisome acquisitive tendencies. My great-aunt Mary Bob is the only one I know of who would definitely have met diagnostic criteria. She wound up in the hospital with a gangrenous foot (the consequence, it was said, of poor circulation resulting from her refusal to turn the thermostat up above 55), and while she was there my mother and my aunt spent uncountable hours cleaning her house. This was in the early 90s, I think, before people were really aware of hoarding as a form of mental illness, and they were stunned by the fury that erupted when she learned they had disposed of her collection of 40-year-old newspapers.

Probably the one kid who seems to like to pile stuff up would not appreciate it if I regaled him with tales of his great-great-aunt Mary Bob, any more than the kids who seem to struggle more with emotional regulation appreciate it when I regale them with tales of family substance abusers. One of the things that's most distressing to read about is how often hoarders are resistant to treatment. How does a person wind up living in an unlivable situation? I don't really get it. I think I might have to stop writing this post and go do some more purging.

But maybe I should send a reply to that email first.

The art of the non-apology

Remember last Wednesday, when I discovered that some sort of clerical error at an insurance company had caused us to fall afoul of their subrogation department? I do not think I managed to convey the arrogant accusatory awfulness of the man I spoke to on the phone. Brief recap: I hung up on him; I called my insurance company; I left him an icy voicemail. When he called me back I sent him straight to voicemail.

His message had been sitting on my phone for a week, because I did not want to hear the sound of his voice again. I kept thinking about asking someone else to listen to it for me. I was pretty sure it would be ignorable, but not 100% sure. Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and played the message.

"I called Geico," said his recorded voice, "and it turns out that you did have coverage for that date. Sorry for any confusion."

Sorry for any confusion.

He needed to apologize for completely misreading the situation. For insulting my husband. For insinuating that I was deliberately  misleading him. For threatening me with legal consequences for an offense I never committed. For cackling at me like a Speed Racer villain. Confusion was never the issue -- it was more the tachycardic fury.

There's been a change in the way that people apologize, with the prominence of "I'm sorry you were upset" as the prime example. There have been lots of shifts in the ways we use polite language since I was a kid -- I don't remember anyone saying "thanks in advance" in those days, for instance. Language changes; I get that. I'm curious about the rise of the non-apology, though. 

Questions:

1. Is this a real change? Is it accurate to say that the non-apology is a newish thing?
2. Is it related to changes in patterns of conflict resolution? Here's the specific thing I'm thinking about: men used to have the option of punching each other in the face when they didn't want to apologize for something. Nobody says "Do you want to step outside and say that?" in my part of the world these days. A non-apology might be a face-saving way to de-escalate.
3. Does the increase of non-apologies correspond to increasing societal litigiousness? Your car insurance company will tell you not to apologize if you cause a crash, because they don't want you to say anything that could be construed as accepting responsibility. Is the non-apology just a thing that happens in a world where a genuine apology might land you in court?
4. What fraction of non-apologies are a purposeful exercise in undercutting the actual meaning of the words "I'm sorry"? Did this insurance guy know that he was getting it wrong and do it anyway? Or did he not know that it would have been more appropriate to say "I am sorry for speaking to you with the inarticulate incivility of a walrus in need of a root canal. I will try harder to act like a human being in the future"? I'm still wondering. 

Every folly shall be un-halted

I was trying to be helpful, you guys. Usually the Christmas tree is a joint effort, and Elwood is the person who handles the sawing parts. But today is Christmas tree day, and he was making a quick run to pick up some last minute groceries. So I sent the 15yo out with the saw. He cut off a narrow ring from the bottom, as requested, and I brought the tree in myself. "Wow," said Pete. "You can pick up the tree in one hand?" I was feeling kind of macho, I must admit.

We worked together to seat it firmly in the stand, and make sure it was straight, and tighten the bolts symmetrically. We decorated it in a cloud of nostalgia, chattering about favorite ornaments. Pete brought it a drink, and shortly afterward it occurred to me that I should see whether it had enough water.

And then I discovered my error.

Since I'm not usually in charge of the sawing parts I forgot that there are sawing parts, plural. You don't just saw a ring off the bottom; you have to make sure there's enough naked trunk to slide right down to the bottom of the stand. You have to saw off any branches growing too close to the bottom. So when the boys and I agreed that the tree was firmly seated in the stand, what was actually happening was not that the trunk was resting on the bottom but that those lowest branches were preventing further descent.

The result: a three-inch gap between the bottom of the tree trunk and the puddle of water in the bottom of the tree stand.

I thought briefly about taking off all of the ornaments and all the lights and removing all the bolts and sawing off the branches and doing it all over again.

Instead we just added a lot of water to the stand. I mean a lot of water. Our house elves could bathe in there, if we had any house elves.

If we still had little bitties this strategy would be spell certain disaster. We'd wind up with spilled water or toppled tree or maybe both. But I think we're out of the tree-toppling years, and I think we'll be able to keep enough water in the stand to prevent the tree from drying out and setting our house on fire. I'm even optimistic that we'll be able to keep the water from splashing onto the presents lying all around, though that may be more optimism than the situation warrants.

Next year I will vote for a return to our usual division of labor. Play to your strengths, they say.

The birthday cake I keep making

Stella continued the "surprise me!" birthday cake tradition we've had going around here, although I asked her to narrow the options a bit. Last year I made her a surprise cake that she didn't love, and even though she was very polite about it I was hoping to spark a little more enthusiasm this year. She went through a couple of my cookbooks, marking possibilities with post-its.

I started with an almond cake that I've probably made a dozen times now. It's easy, as long as you're using machinery to do the whisking, and its list of ingredients is short and gluten-free. It bakes up into a cake that's flavorful and tender. You can take it in a slew of different directions if you're so inclined. So if you're looking for a new birthday cake recipe, here you go:

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease a 9-inch springform pan. If you are going to want to remove it from the base, you'll want to line it beforehand.

Start with six eggs; separate four of them. Beat the whites until you have soft peaks; add 2 T. sugar and keep beating until the peaks stiffen up. Next, beat your four egg yolks and your two whole eggs with a half-cup of sugar until they reach the ribbon stage. Gently fold in 150g ground almonds, the beaten egg whites, and the flavorings of your choice (recommended: 1/4 t. salt, zest of a lemon, tiny dribble of almond extract; I've also used orange zest, vanilla extract, and I know that I once did a coffee version but perhaps I only put coffee in the filling). Scrape it all into your springform and bake for about 50 minutes. Do not peek; it may come crashing down because it's mostly eggs and air. After it's cool, you can split it for filling and frosting.

Today I just filled and frosted with lightly sweetened whipped cream piped into a zillion stars, but I've told you before about various versions of this cake. I've done adventurous gelatin-stabilized sabayons and I don't even know what else in the middle. Whether you go simple or complicated with the filling, this cake is easy to split horizontally because the eggs lend a helpful degree of tensile strength to the layers. 

She loved the poncho and wore it all day, and after she asked for second helpings of cake she ate every last bite. In between I think she had a lovely birthday.

Let's talk about something fluffy

Earlier this month Stella said to me, "Mom, do you know what a poncho is?" And I said, "Oh, honey, I was born in 1970. Of course I know what a poncho is!" 

Ponchos are back, did you know? Stella was telling me, with just a trace of envy in her voice, about a classmate's cozy poncho, and my Knitting Opportunity Sensor went WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP. Did my daughter want a poncho? I was on the case.

I flipped through Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop in search of her pelerine pattern. Hers is garter stitch, knit flat, open down the front. I wanted none of those things, but I liked the shape of it. So I dug out some yummy Aran-weight hand-dyed wool, in charcoal gray shading to silver, and I cast on a hundred stitches. I worked K2P2 rib for 8 rounds, and then I switched to stockinette. Sixteen stitches from the beginning of the round I put a pair of lifted increases, and then I put another pair astride the middle two stitches of the round, and then I plopped in the final pair sixteen stitches from the end. I increased every other round until I figured I had Stella's shoulders covered, and then I switched to every third round to keep the fit a little snugger. When I estimated that I'd reached her waist, I went down a needle size and finished with 10 rounds of K4P2 rib, maintaining the increase line through the knit section of the rib. (I'll have to post a picture of that specifically when I create a Rav project. It creates a pretty fan-like corner. I love the line that lifted increases create.) I used Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off, which gave me a subtle and pleasing ruffly effect.

I was not at all sure that this recipe would work. I was afraid that changing the rate of the increases would give the garment a weird shape. The shade difference between the first and second skeins of yarn niggled and niggled at me. But now that it's bound off I think it's pretty cute. From the front:

From the back:

II was splicing ends as I went, so there are only two to weave in. I'll give it a gentle block tonight, and it should be dry and ready to go in time for her birthday. 

I hope she likes it. :-)

S-INM gets her own post

Stress-Inducing Neighbor Mom has been a thorn in my side for a little over a year now, ever since we had the most terrible phone conversation of my life. It's hard because our daughters are best friends, but I have never been surer that I cannot be friends with another adult. There's a piece of her story I've never mentioned here, and it is that in...hm...2014 or 2015 she was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. At the end of her treatment they told her the odds were 50-50 that it would come back. My understanding (though of course I did not press her for details, since even in the "friendly acquaintance" stage of our relationship we were only ever friendly acquaintances) was that a recurrence would almost certainly be a terminal diagnosis. Her daughters are both in grade school.

So. Even though I rolled my eyes when I learned that her daughter had never been permitted to walk from the library's front door to the children's section without an adult by her side, it makes sense to me that S-INM is very protective. In similar circumstances I might strive to buffer my children from all possible harms as well. It makes sense to me that she is very sensitive to the idea of kids in her orbit not getting enough mothering. It makes sense to me that she's thinking back on the legacy she will leave (she resigned from an academic post to stay home), and that she wants to encourage me to choose wisely and number my days aright.

(Though honestly, at the time of The Awful Conversation the thing that seemed most likely to me was that her cancer had metastasized to her brain and overridden all her filters.)

Another thing she does is talk about her life in capital letters. It's pretty common for Stella to pop over and ring the doorbell to see if the girls can play, only to hear that they are having Special Family Time (i.e., watching a movie together). Or that one of the girls and S-INM are having Special Mom And Daughter Time (i.e., going to the grocery store). I can appreciate that under the circumstances she wants to populate their memories with all the upper-case Special Moments she can. It also makes me wonder if what she calls A Party is something that might or might not deserve the label at somebody else's house. Was she planning to make box-mix cupcakes with her girls tomorrow afternoon to kick off Christmas break? And they said, "Oh, can we invite a couple of neighbor girls?" And she said, "Oh, yeah, and it's Stella's birthday on Saturday so we'll stick a candle in her cupcake and call it A Party!"?

I could see that happening. That would not be outrageous at all. But I still don't know what she has in mind. I saw her at school pick-up yesterday and we said hello, but she said nothing about Stella's birthday. I had no idea how to bring it up. It's possible that the younger daughter told Stella, "We're going to throw you a party!" in a moment of wishful thinking. How weird would it be for me to bring that up to the mom? Very weird. And I, my friends, am determined not to be the weird one in this relationship. I am also determined to keep our verbal exchanges to a minimum, because she makes me very unhappy. I will say a cordial hello when we cross paths, because I am a grownup. I will text her if her garage catches fire, because ditto. That's about as far as I'm willing to go.

Trying to figure out the Christian response in this situation has been really painful. I have this little fiery coal of resentment in my gut about the things she said to me last December. I keep coming before the Lord and asking him to hose it down. I keep handing it over in my mind's eye. I am willing to forgive her, I keep telling him, but you have to help me make it stick. In your comments here, I ask you to help me refrain from stoking those flames. I ask you, too, to be kind if you think I'm getting it wrong. This is a really tender spot for me, and I feel chronically uncertain about how to proceed. 

Wednesday morning whirlwind post

Oh, HUZZAH, the day stretches ahead of me. The kids are in school and my work for the semester is done. The university servers are offline for maintenance, so I couldn't do my annual report even if I wanted to. This is the sort of day on which a person could be tempted to linger over Twitter and an extra cup of coffee, but I am going to resist that particular temptation. So. Goals for the day:

0. Write a relatively quick blog post while eating breakfast.
1. Hit a lick at some snakes: the laundry, the clutter, the dusting, and the vacuuming. (Oh, the thought of vacuuming the filthsome stairs fills me with glee at this particular moment.) (And how could I forget the bathrooms? The forces of entropy are going down with a crash in my bathrooms.)
2. Go for a gentle run in the sunshine.
3. Draft a Christmas letter.
4. Address some envelopes while listening to Sister Sinjin.
5. Yoga video!
6. Do some Christmas knitting (Epiphany knitting, really, at this point) with a podcast for company.
7. Make a batch of gingerbread cookie dough and stash it in the fridge.
8. Smack down the Gmail inbox. Or, realistically, cauterize one of its myriad heads while fleeing the remainder.
8. Meet Stella at school and walk home with her.
9. Cut out cookies and make cocoa.
10. Make something yummy for dinner.
11. Tonight after Stella is in bed: write that post about our Chicago trip.

Okay. That's a substantial list, which means I have to blog efficiently.

First: I have updated that post about the "banned words" list which turns out to be a "discouraged words" list.

Second: It occurred to me last night that self-doubt makes everything harder. EVERYTHING. I wrote >20% more letters this year than I did last year, when I thought I would be crushed under the weight of all the letters I was writing, but they caused me much less angst. I was always worried before this year about the calibre of the letters I was writing. When I served on the admissions committee last winter, I read hundreds of letters of recommendation and discovered that mine are fine. My life would be a lot easier if I could shake off the self-doubt.

Third: yesterday was kind of a hard day. I knew it would be hard, because I knew I would be spending hours and hours and hours on a difficult task (and "less angst" doesn't mean "angst-free"), but I wasn't expecting the two additional wrinkles.

Wrinkle #1: Stella told me that Stress-Inducing Neighbor Mom (the one who thinks I'm negligent rather than free-range) had said she was planning a birthday party for Stella on Saturday. We have a capital-T tradition for our late December birthdays: the actual day is for family. Birthday Kid picks all the food, picks the games, eats a beauteous homemade cake unless s/he prefers a fancy bakery option, opens family presents-- and then has a more traditional birthday event on his/her half-birthday in June. Party with friends, trip out of town, whatever s/he chooses. But apparently S-INM thought poor Stella had nothing planned for her birthday, again, and that she (S-INM) would provide a corrective. WHO DOES THAT?? WITHOUT CONSULTING THE PARENTS??? Isn't that bizarre? She thinks I am a terrible mom, prioritizing career over family and disregarding my children's most basic needs, and she is not really interested in thinking otherwise. It bums me out. And makes me mad.

Wrinkle #2: I called my 18yo from the office about some college application stuff I wanted him to take care of during the window in which he used to have calculus but now plays internet chess on the loveseat. "By the way," he said, "a guy called about that fender-bender that happened in the church parking lot on my birthday. He said there was a problem with the insurance policy number." "No problem," said I, "I'll call him back."

You guys, you would not BELIEVE the conversation that ensued. Elwood and another parishioner backed into each other at the end of October as they were leaving Mass. We didn't even consider repairing the scratches on our bumper, but the other driver wanted hers fixed up. (This is a post I will write another time: let's embrace cosmetically damaged cars as a form of embracing poverty. and bringing down insurance premiums too.) Turns out that when you back into each other, you each pay half of the damages. But there was some kind of hiccup somewhere with our policy number, and her insurer kicked the claim over to a guy whose job is to collect on bad claims -- people who deliberately give fraudulent insurance information after a crash.

This guy spent about 3 minutes being pleasant, and then he morphed abruptly into Captain Asshole. I was in courteous pleasant law-abiding mode, eager to sort out the mistake and fulfill our obligations, but you guys, he was talking to me as if he could see into my soul and RECOGNIZE that I was actually a scurrilous criminal. There was no possibility of a mistake in his world: my husband had been operating our vehicle ILLEGALLY, WITHOUT INSURANCE, and that is a CRIME. "I have the policy in front of me," I said, "and my husband and that vehicle are covered." He was so nasty to me that he triggered my arrhythmia, something that only happens when I am intensely stressed out. "I'm calling Geico now," I said with an edge in my voice, and he CACKLED at me like a Scooby-Doo villain.

Reader, I hung up on him.

Of course we were covered. Of course Geico was happy to address the issue -- there was no record of this claim in their system, and their adjuster agreed to follow up (and pay out) immediately. Of course they talked to me as if I were a courteous pleasant law-abiding bill-paying citizen, BECAUSE I AM. But whoa, I'm thinking about calling the other insurer to lodge a complaint about this guy. If "good neighbor" is supposed to be their brand, they don't want this buffoon dropping their name into his phone calls.

Oh, goodness, this post is pushing 1100 words and it is 9:26. That, my friends, is time to put on the JP2 rosary CD and Fold All The Laundry. Over and out from Gladlyville.

freedom Sweet

finished of recommendation have I the letters.

lost Unfortunately ability the have I put to row words a in.

hope is it us Let temporary.

I...think...

In the very earliest Thomas the Tank Engine stories, one of the engines had trouble doing his Very Useful tasks. Do you remember this? He needed special Welsh coal, or maybe he needed to have his firebox rebuilt. Or maybe it was both. Anyway. I am wishing for a Fat Controller to infuse me with a bit more get-up-and-go, because my native supply is sadly diminished.

All of the grades are submitted. All of the college-level committee tasks are done. I think all of the search committee tasks are done. I still have to write a bunch of letters of recommendation, but OH MY FRIENDS, I really want to get them finished tomorrow. I had resolved to get them done by Friday, but that was not a realistic goal given this year's service responsibilities. Tomorrow is good. Two spreadsheets + the last of the letters: it's a plan.

It might be smart to plan something to look forward to afterward, but planning things always feels like work to me and I am too tired to take on more work just now. (Okay, I know that doesn't make very much sense, but that's the way it is.) Here is a thing I would like to do: I'll tell you the story of our trip to Chicago for Elwood's 50th birthday. That'll be something to look forward to.

Over and out. THIS TOO SHALL PASS.

Evidence-based

Two recent pieces of news from the Trump administration have raised my hackles in the past few days. Yesterday the Washington Post reported on news from the CDC: they've been forbidden to use* strongly cautioned against using selected words and phrases in the reports they prepare for next year's budget. One of those phrases is evidence-based.

This is dangerous. Even worse, it is dangerous in a way that a fourth-grader should be able to explain.

The foundation of science is familiar to everyone: we start with an idea that might be true, and we look empirically at the evidence for and against it. Evidence-based medicine is all about distinguishing between the codswallop remedies and the lifesaving treatments. It's harder than you might think. It matters.

I started working as an allied health servicer provider in 1995, and I have watched patients and families and practitioners alike seizing onto bogus ideas in the hope that they could ease suffering. Across both the disciplines in which I am credentialed, I have seen practices move in and out of favor. I have seen everybody in town rush to get certified in some fancy new (profitable) therapy approach -- which was roundly discredited in a randomized controlled trial a decade later. I have seen us reverse course, as a body, on the specific advice we give to people in pain.

We get better at helping people when we rely on the evidence. An important way to reduce healthcare costs is to stop charging people for treatments that don't work, or don't work very well. But we can only determine which treatments those are by means of meticulous empirical investigations, because it's really tricky for healthcare providers to distinguish among results caused by natural resilience or the placebo effect, and results caused by our actual treatment.

The only people who benefit consistently from a healthcare market unconstrained by empirical evidence are people with something to sell. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Trump is also arguing that we would be a better society if we deregulated ourselves. Look how many more regulations we have now than we did in 1960, he said this week. Many people have pointed out the public health costs of returning to an era in which cars had no seatbelts. My specific concern is related to infant safety. Babies can't speak up for themselves, so we as a society speak up on their behalf. We have regulations specifically to protect babies. (You wouldn't think this would need to be explained to a president who was elected in large part because pro-lifers turned out for him, but there you go.)

In 1960, most US babies were fed with a concoction based on diluted evaporated milk. It was 20 years before the passage of the Infant Formula Act, a response to an event in which creative formula manufacturing caused harm to US babies. These days most US babies are breastfed, at least initially. We have regulations to protect their mothers' milk, keeping toxic chemicals in human milk down within reasonable limits. The move to turn the EPA into the Environmental Pillaging Agency will alter environmental levels of known neurotoxins, with unpredictable but almost certainly adverse consequences. A minority of US babies are formula-fed; regulations keep the food they receive within acceptable ranges for critical nutrients. When formula companies get it wrong, babies die. They are maimed -- they suffer irreparable brain damage. They fight avoidable and potentially fatal infections. (Darn it, I'm writing in an hurry and I can't find the page I've linked to before, with the long list of US formula recalls. Please share in the comments if you know what I'm talking about.)

Regulations save lives. They may also narrow profit margins, but profit margins cannot be our highest goal.

In recent days I've also seen Catholics continuing to talk about how much they like President Trump. Oh, Catholics, this is important: the idea that "science-based" is a dirty word is not compatible with a Catholic worldview. The idea that in the pursuit of profit we can be cavalier with the well-being of the vulnerable -- infants and those who are suffering -- is also not compatible with a Catholic worldview.

This is not acceptable. Let's say so unequivocally.

*UPDATED: It appears that the Post's source for this story was describing advice from CDC officials intended to anticipate objections from the Trump administration, rather than a clear edict from the administration itself. I continue to assert that a climate hostile to science is a climate that must be changed.

Voting while Catholic, one more time

I have an old friend who argued on Facebook tonight that a Catholic could not justify a vote for Doug Jones, because of his views on abortion and gay marriage.

It is too late for my opinion to  make any difference in the Alabama Senate race -- the outcome is still in doubt as I write this post -- but oh, my friends, that is a dangerous pile of nonsense masquerading as piety.

Why would a Catholic vote for Doug Jones?

Because Roy Moore is a dumpster fire of a candidate. (I am sending you to the National Review with that link. The NATIONAL REVIEW, for crying out loud.)

Catholics are obliged to choose candidates who support the rule of law. Roy Moore is not that candidate.

Catholics are obliged to choose candidates who view racism as a serious sin, who will work to stamp it out. Roy Moore is not that candidate. Doug Jones, on the other hand, successfully prosecuted KKK members for their crimes against children.

Catholics are obliged to choose candidates who respect the intrinsic dignity of their constituents, regardless of their sexual orientation. And we can continue to talk about how Catholic positions on sexual morality should shape public policy, but there is no denying the facts here: Roy Moore is not that candidate.

Catholics are obliged to choose candidates who believe in the importance of protecting the vulnerable. And I hear you on the importance of protecting the unborn, but this is important: if we narrow down our definition of "the vulnerable" to the unborn, we do so at our peril, disregarding enormous swaths of the gospel. Roy Moore has been credibly accused by multiple women of sexually predatory behavior directed at underage girls. I have heard his denials, but here is a true fact: every person ever accused of molesting a child initially responds with denial. Every single one. Don't @ me, as they say on Twitter, because the machinations of his supporters have been weighing on me like a giant-squid-sized pile of osmium.

It is not a mark of ideological purity to be a single-issue voter. I have been a single-issue voter, and I will not make that mistake again. Single-issue voting represents a failure to acknowledge that evil is many-faceted, and that complex problems have complex solutions. Single-issue voting represents a failure to recognize that our God is a God of integrity, who sees the big picture clearly, who judges wisely, who calls us to do the same.

So for the hypothetical voters who value posturing over performance and tribal identity over truth? Maybe Roy Moore is their candidate. For the rest of them? The choice is unmistakable. And to the voters who thought it was better to cast a quixotic write-in vote than to make the sensible decision in a down-to-the-wire contest? Take the plunge next time. If the "pro-life choice" is a candidate who gives lip service to pro-life positions while declining to protect the vulnerable in any meaningful way, go ahead and vote for the other guy.

Rodent vs. Gladlys, round...I forget

Things were quiet in the bedroom wall for a while, but our visitor is back. I left a message for an exterminator after my last rodent post, and he left a message for me, and then I kept writing "call exterminator" on my to-do list and not doing it. Today, though, I was awakened at 5:30 by a four-legged friend, and I called Nate the exterminator as soon as I deemed it polite. 

He called me right back and wanted to know more about the problem. He thought it sounded more like mice than a squirrel, based on my description. "The things about mice, though," he added, "is that they breed in the walls."

"Oh, no," I told him. "No, no, no, Nate. This is a celibate mouse. I am sure of it."

Nate was available to meet me after my 3:00 meeting. (This day, you guys. SO BANANAS. This whole stretch of the semester is JUST BANANAS.) He was youngish; vibe = low-key competence. He climbed up on the roof and looked all around the exterior of our house and talked about options. None of them will be cheap, but we are kind of at a loss as to how one gets rodents out of the walls. They're not coming into the living space where we could trap them; they've just found some sort of new bonus exterior door that they're using to get inside Hotel Gladly. If I could find it I would hang up a sign: ONLY SHAKER MICE ALLOWED. (Or, you know, caulk it. One of the two.)

Nate is going to come back with bait. "It will get rid of mice," he said, "and voles if you have them. Or if you had rats--" Here I cut him off. "No rats," I said, channeling Edna Mode. He raised an eyebrow. "No rats are allowed," I continued. "I have created an anti-rat perimeter by the power of my mind."

Most of the time I know not to say the very goofiest things that churn up out of the depths of my brain, you guys, but here at the tail end of the semester my filter is sometimes less than adequate. 

December gifts

If I were designing a calendar that worked perfectly for my usual state of mind here in the waning of the year, I'd give myself permission to focus on ending and death in November. And then I'd shift focus in December to say, Yes, the darkness is immense, but the Light is coming back. Is it weird to say that I am feeling mothered by the church's calendar this year? It says to me, Go ahead, Jamie, acknowledge the nature of November, and then get ready for better things once the calendar page turns to December. I don't have it in me right now to decorate a Christmas tree. But it's not Christmas, so I don't have to! I have pulled out the Advent things from their basement tub and I am shifting toward hopeful anticipation. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him! (It is perhaps a little odd to quote Martin Luther in a post singing the praises of the Catholic liturgical calendar.)

I am also thinking about the gift of right judgment. I am going to be judging up A STORM in the next two weeks. (This is me resolving to finish the letters of recommendation by the end of finals week. Two weeks, not three.) There are more grant applications, more job applications, a BOATLOAD of student work, and then the inundation of letters of recommendation. They'll be hard tasks, all of them. When I was younger I thought it would be nice to be the teacher doing the grading, or the judge sitting in the seat of authority. I didn't see what difficult work it would be. Sometimes I can see good intentions in the middle of sloppy student work, and I wrestle with how, exactly, to respond -- to honor the good intentions while also being clear about my standards. Sometimes I am asked to write a letter for a student who is a particularly mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses, and it can be agonizing to attempt to depict her fairly. 

I think it's the first letter of Peter that describes Jesus as "the one who judges justly," and it occurred to me that tackling these tasks with kindness and consistency is a way of imitating Christ. I am grateful for his example, and for the unfailing grace he bestows on me to finish the work to which I am called.

(And now I am going to throw up this post without editing it and squeeze in a quick workout. I am behind in the roommate fitness challenge, but I'm not giving up quite yet. GLORY awaits me, I am sure.)

The would-be kakistocrat

In the spring of 2010, 29 men said goodbye to their families for the last time. They went to work as usual, heading a thousand feet underground to mine coal for the benefit of Massey Energy. Massey could not, however, be bothered to safeguard their efforts by maintaining safe conditions in the mine. The independent commission's report to the governor is subtitled: "a failure of basic coal mine safety practices."

This wasn't a mistake. It wasn't as if someone forgot to switch on a fan, or failed to read a gauge. It was the direct result of willful defiance of the ground rules for keeping people alive underground. One of the site supervisors pled guilty to conspiring to impede the efforts of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Let me repeat that: site management, directed by Massey higher-ups, made a deliberate choice to subvert efforts to improve conditions in the Upper Big Branch mine. 

Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, served a well-deserved prison term as a consequence. It was cold comfort, no doubt, to the families of the 29 men who died, but it was an attempt at justice, at least.

The purpose of prison is threefold: to prevent further crimes by the convicted, to punish them by taking away their liberty, and to spur them to reflect and amend their lives in the future. I'm sorry to say we're one for three with Don Blankenship. He felt the loss of liberty keenly, tweeting vociferously about the injustice of his conviction. The "reflect and amend your life" part? Nope. The "prevent further crimes" part? Also nope.

Last night my husband said to me, "Did you hear who's running for the West Virginia Senate seat? Who is the very worst person in West Virginia?" I knew instantly that he meant Don Blankenship.

I've posted before about the relationship West Virginians have with industry: the villager-pillager symbiosis, so to speak. It doesn't make sense to me, but I have the luxury of living far away these days. I am stunned, though -- genuinely floored -- that someone convicted in a court of law for conspiring to maximize profit at the expense of human life would think himself fit to represent the people of West Virginia in the Senate.

Twenty-nine men died in Raleigh County because Don Blankenship thought his profits mattered more than human suffering. Twenty-nine men were trapped underground in a fireball fueled by coal dust and methane and greed. Many of my Raleigh County friends added black ribbons to their Facebook profile pictures in the wake of the disaster. Miners don't need cyber-ribbons. They need safe working conditions and safe water supplies, uncontaminated by the waste from their workplaces. They need justice.

Don Blankenship has made it clear that he thinks justice is less important than money. If you check out his Twitter feed, you'll see that he also thinks truth is for losers. He shouldn't go to the Senate. He should go back to prison.