Notes on Pop Culture: Periodical Beach Reading, The Newsroom & Political Animals

*Cross-posted on Notes from the Asylum*

I spent the past week on a Cape Cod family vacation where I swam, biked (rode a bike for the first time in many, many years), enjoyed sunsets, fresh seafood and got thoroughly and embarrassingly crushed on a farm-themed mini-golf course. (The Youngest Boy handily kicked my behind.)

But when we weren't scanning the seas for seals, the favorite snack of sharks  -- we were a few miles away from that Cape beach where a shark chased a kayaker -- I was gorging on the heaps of reading material I brought along (an academic book and Lord of the Rings, both for a research project I'm working on, along with a bunch of periodicals). Here's what kept me entertained (other than pretending I didn't hear my children's bickering and pleas for me to intervene and referee):

New Yorker: For a Boston area resident, I was rather sickeningly Gotham-centric this past week. I got substantial sunscreen and sand all over the July 9/16 issue of The New Yorker and enjoyed the long review of Douglas Brinkley's new Walter Cronkite biography by Louis Menand which included a fascinating debate over whether a Cronkite comment, coupled with the anchor's pessimistic view about American success in Vietnam, prompted LBJ not to run for a second term.

An article that sparked a beach-side conversation with The Spouse was by James Surowiecki about businesses that aren't hiring new employees because, the article asserts, employers are being too picky despite ample options:

"When companies complain that they can't find people with the right 'skills,' they often just mean that they can't find people with the right experience . . . Thanks in part to the sheer number of applications, screening of applicants is automated, with computers evaluating resumes according to pre-set criteria. Fail to meet one of those standards, and your application gets tossed, even if a good H.R. director might have spotted your potential."

How depressing.

Speaking of depressing . . . I was also riveted by "The Hunger Diaries," excerpts from American writer Mavis Gallant's journals written in 1952 when Gallant was literally starving for her art while living in Spain.

New York Magazine: The July 9 cover story, "Does Money Make You Mean?" ignited another lively debate with its provocative accompanying art (some of which we hid from the kids).

Citing various work by researchers who are delving into whether money causes people to be less humane and whether people who seek money share those same traits or whether the entire "less humane" question is bogus baloney, writer Lisa Miller worded her central query this way: "How does living in an environment defined by individual achievement -- measured by money, privilege and status -- alter a person's mental machinery to the point where he beings to see the people around him only as aids or obstacles to his own ambitions?"

New York Times: In between the pages of the Old Gray Lady, I greatly related to a Sunday Styles section meditation, "Friends of a Certain Age," about the challenge of making and keeping friends as we get older:

"In your 30s and 40s, plenty of new people enter your life, through work, children's play dates and, of course, Facebook. But actual close friends -- the kind you make in college, the kind you call in a crisis -- those are in shorter supply.

As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends."

The article also addressed how the parents of your kids' friends wind up being your friends too . . . only as long as the kids all get along.

In the same section, I found a scary story by Lee Siegel who accidentally sent Linked In friend invitations to all 974 contacts in his address book including deceased people, "lawyers, landscapers, accountants, literary agents, babysitters, window-installers, art dealers, ex-girlfriends, the ex-boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend . . . obstetricians, dentists, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, urologists, psychologists, pediatricians, billing offices for all of the preceding . . . my ex-wife [and] two litigious former landlords."

The Newsroom: As for TV, I saw the latest two episodes of Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama The Newsroom which, I've decided, has officially hooked me with its cutting dissection of contemporary cable TV news. Yes, it can be preachy, annoyingly preachy and smugly sanctimonious as well. The second episode irritated me with its relentless focus on two of the female staffers falling to pieces over their love lives. But by the fourth episode -- "I'll Try to Fix You," which I reviewed here -- that got me.

Political Animals: I also caught the first installment of USA's mini-series (the network is calling it a "limited series event") Political Animals where Sigourney Weaver plays Elaine Barrish, otherwise known as Hillary Clinton had Clinton dumped Bill right after she lost her 2008 presidential bid. It also features a tough reporter, who wrote nasty pieces about Barrish's ex, shadowing Secretary of State Barrish around for a week for a story. The show felt crisp, the relationship between the reporter and Barrish is promising and the political manipulations entertaining (better than the boring, real life presidential race we've got goin' on right now). Looking forward to seeing more of this "limited" event.

Image credits: Amazon and New York Magazine.

Can My Wolf-It-Down Family Eat More Slowly, Mindfully?

I had to laugh when I read an article in the New York Times promoting “mindful” eating. In my house, people eat as though bands of marauders are apt to rampage through the kitchen at any moment, stealing all the “good food” from the table (leaving behind the veggies and anything “weird” looking) and leaving my family bereft and hungry.

To say that we are gulp down our food at a rapid clip is as much of an understatement as saying that Donald Trump has a slightly inflated ego.

The Spouse in particularly is guilty of this. He does it so often that I frequently mutter under my breath, “Slow down!” (When I’ve had too much caffeine during the day and/or am on a tight time schedule, he does the same for me.)

So when I told him that the New York Times said he should put down his fork in between bites, as I oftentimes suggest, he accused me of ad libbing. But I wasn’t.

“Try this,” the article began, “place a forkful of food in your mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, but make it something you love – let’s say it’s that first nibble from three hot, fragrant, perfectly cooked ravioli.”

“Now comes the hard part,” writer Jeff Gordinier continued. “Put the fork down. This could be a lot more challenging than you imagine, because the first bite was very good and another immediately beckons. You’re hungry.”

Gordinier said if you take the time to chew the food s-l-o-w-l-y, appreciate not just the taste and texture of the food, but its smell and appearance on your plate while remaining silent, you’ll likely enjoy your food more AND eat less in the process.

This made me wonder if in my family, where eating is practically a competitive sport – that’s when The Youngest Boy isn’t talking 447 miles per hour as he scarfs in order to tell us the latest fifth grade boy joke about Uranus and something likely involving balls (it’s a comedy sketch a minute at our dinner table) – this could ever work, even for a single meal.

A lot of factors are against it, one being the fact that dinner is usually sandwiched in between youth sports practices, pending homework assignments, The Spouse having a mere 10 minutes to spare before he has to run out again, etc. Another obstacle is that The Youngest Boy has precious little patience with just sitting there like a civilized being and eating at a thoughtful pace. He's got a lot on his mind and on his super-secret To Do list.

I even wonder if The Spouse and I could achieve “mindful” eating on our own, what with being interrupted every other minute (because the kids haven't seen their dad all day and all want to tell him stuff). I guess it’d have to be while we’re out at a dinner someplace, alone.

Do you think you could get your family to slow down, to put down the fork between bites, and actually enjoy the food? Or is this just some Martha Stewart-esque pipe dream, particularly for the Picket Fence Post family where we go 10 rounds with The Youngest Boy in order to get the kid to eat two carrot sticks?

As for the article’s suggestion that the first part of the meal be consumed in silence . . . yeah, that’s not gonna happen my friend, not in our house.

Image credit: Jennifer May/New York Times

Four for Friday: A Friend for Max, More on NY Mag's 'Parents Hate Parenting' Story, Tween Texting & Talkin' 'Bout Birds, Bees

Item #1: A Friend for Max?

Our Havanese-Wheaten Terrier dog Max (we affectionately call him a Mini-Wheat) recently turned one. And although he’s still a rambunctious chewing machine – he’ll gnaw on anything he can grab (like shoes, books, clothing, decapitate action figures, etc.) – I’ve started a campaign in the Picket Fence Post household which is driving The Spouse nuts: I’ve been telling him that, in my humble opinion, I think Max needs a friend.

If Max were a person, he'd very likely be considered a “people person.” Whenever another dog is around, Max is thrilled beyond belief, playful and happy. It’s not that he’s unhappy when he’s home with us or when he’s sleeping on my office floor while I work at my desk, it's just that I’ve been wondering if he’d be happier with another, similarly sized friend to pal around with.

Friends to whom I've mentioned this think I’d be crazy to add to the chaos of our house, even though the kids think it’s a great idea.

That being said, I’d love to hear from anyone of you who have two dogs. Please, give me your unvarnished, true stories about what having two hairy beasts in the house is really like.

Item #2: More on New York Mag’s ‘Parents Hate Parenting’ Cover Story

That New York Magazine story about why parents love their kids but hate contemporary child-rearing certainly hit a nerve. It’s being debated all over them there internets. (I blogged about it here.) The story’s author, Jennifer Senior, appeared this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe (a show to which I’m addicted, by the way) and an interesting exchange ensued. You can see the interview here.

Item #3: Tweens & Texting/Social Media

If you have children in middle school – or about to enter middle school – I believe that it’s imperative that you read this article, “Online Bullies Pull Schools Into the Fray” from the New York Times which featured middle school principals who are struggling with the in-school aftermath of vicious, sexually explicit, harassing behavior on social networks and via texting that goes on between students.

The level of vitriol and physical threats became so bad during this past school year that one principal from New Jersey sent an e-mail to parents saying, “There is absolutely NO reason for any middle school student to be part of a social networking site.”

Why? Because the kids can’t, from a developmental point of view, handle it or sufficiently foresee the consequences of their actions. “It’s easier to fight online,” one middle schooler told the Times, “because you feel more brave and in control. On Facebook you can be as mean as you want.” Because when you're called fat, slutty, cheap or stupid by a whole group of your peers, in front of all your classmates on Facebook, it hurts your feelings less, right?

If you pair this article with one I saw recently in the Boston Globe -- which cited studies which have shown that the frontal lobe, which controls judgment, isn’t fully developed until roughly age 25 -- one could make a compelling case to bolster what the Jersey principal was saying about keeping middle schoolers off of social networking and texting.

A Harvard Medical School neurologist told the Globe: “We all know what the frontal lobe does. It’s insight, judgment, inhibition, self-awareness, cause and effect, acknowledgment of cause and effect. And big surprise: It’s not done in your teen years. Hence [teens’] impulsiveness, their unpredictable behavior, their lack of ability to acknowledge and see cause and effect. . .”

So it’s no wonder that kids think that being mean on Facebook or writing a horrifically abusive text messages has no correlation to someone’s real life feelings. Call me a Luddite if you will, but I’m with the New Jersey principal on this one.

Item #4: Talkin’ Birds and Bees

Having THOSE difficult conversations with one’s children -- you know, the sex ones -- can be awkward. And you don't tend to get them over with all at once, in a single conversation. You may think that, once you’ve covered the technical, biological explanations, you’re done, but in reality, that's only just the beginning.

In my house, having THOSE conversations only spawned more questions, MANY more questions. Hence my July GateHouse News Service column about having those talks with my fifth grader twins while The Spouse fled the room in terror.

Three for Thursday (The Crazy Edition): Condoms for 1st Graders, Facebook for 11-year-olds & 'Friendship Coaches' for Kids

Item #1: Condoms for 1st Graders

When I read this story out of Provincetown, Mass. a few weeks ago I thought, surely, there must be some kind of mistake. It couldn’t really be true that school officials had authorized the in-school distribution of condoms to students, to children as young as first graders, could it?

As I read the quotes in the news article from educational officials saying that parents could do nothing to stop this, that the school staff would hand out condoms to students even if their parents had requested that they not get them, I hoped that this had been taken out of context, perhaps misinterpreted somehow.

After all, schools won’t do the following without first obtaining parental permission: Let an elementary school student go home with a friend’s parent for a playdate without prior notification, take medicine in school (anything from Tylenol to cough drops, usually the school nurse has to hold onto medicine) and go on field trips.

In Massachusetts, children under the age of 18 cannot get body piercings, obtain a tattoo or patronize a commercial tanning booth without parental permission. This state law says that “inducing” someone under age 18 to engage in sexual intercourse faces potential fines and/or imprisonment.

So surely this story about condoms for grade schoolers must be a mistake.

Only it's not.

Earlier this month, the Provincetown School Board approved such a policy, according to media reports. Here's an excerpt from the Boston Globe:

"Students in Provincetown — from elementary school to high school — will be able to get free condoms at school under a recently approved policy that takes effect this fall. The rule also requires school officials to keep student requests secret, and ignore parents’ objections.

'The intent is to protect kids,' said School Superintendent Beth Singer, who wrote the policy that the Cape Cod town’s School Committee unanimously passed two weeks ago. 'We know that sexual experimentation is not limited to an age, so how does one put an age on it?'

The policy, first reported in the Provincetown Banner, keeps parents from knowing if their children receive condoms, and mandates that school officials can choose to supply them even if parents object."

What say you, Picket Fence Post readers?

Item #2: Facebook for 11-Year-Olds

A British mom recently wrote a column in the Daily Mail, “The horrifying week I spent spying on my 11-year-old daughter’s Facebook page,” and confirmed for me that children at this age -- with little to no impulse control, with few to no executive decision-making skills -- shouldn’t be afforded unfettered access to something like Facebook. They're not mature enough to handle it.

No matter how many ground rules they agree to in order to get their parents to agree to allow them to have a Facebook account (like not having strangers as friends, informing your parents if you're bullied on Facebook, etc.), as the author of the Daily Mail article said she did, it's highly likely that the kids are going to mix it up online anyway. And you, the parent, will have no clue about what’s going on.

The author -- who realized her daughter’s Facebook page had been accidentally left logged on after her daughter used Mom's mobile phone -- spent a week “spying” on her daughter’s activities and was astonished by what she saw. There were physical threats leveled at her 11-year-old, who engaged in verbal sparring while liberally using obscenities and casually directing and receiving words like “whore” and “slut.”  The writer’s daughter also referred to her mother as a “f***ing cow,” and broke most of her parents’ initial rules about using Facebook. In the end, the mother who wrote the column didn’t make her daughter delete the Facebook account, but insisted that she be her daughter's Facebook friend and know her daughter’s Facebook password.

At what age do you think it's appropriate for a child to have a Facebook account, given that Facebook itself says users must be 13 or older?

Item #3: ‘Friendship Coach’ for Kids

Free-Range Kids Queen Lenore Skenazy has challenged a notion advanced in a recent New York Times article: That children should be discouraged from having a best friend and that “friendship coaches” can help children engage in healthy social interactions with their peers.

No I am not joking.

First the New York Times piece. An excerpt:

“ . . . [T]he classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

'I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,' said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. 'We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.'"

The article then highlighted a New York co-ed sleep-away camp where “friendship coaches” have been hired “to work with campers to help every child become friends with everyone else.”

Here’s where Skenazy’s common sense irritation comes in. Writing on the ParentDish blog, Skenazy said:

“Friendship makes us better, not worse. But like everything worthwhile in life, it is not always perfect. And now the professional fretters have decided kids can't handle a friend who turns on them (I had two of those!), or the pain of being rejected by a pair of friends who don't want a third wheel. I dealt with that, too! I cried. I raged. I used a lot of exclamation points in my diary! What I did not do was end up emotionally crippled for life!!

These 'friendship coaches' buy into the current belief that kids can't handle any adversity. Kid loses a soccer game? Give 'em a trophy anyway. Kid's friend says, 'You're not my friend anymore?' Send in the grief counselors with a five-part friendship plan.”

Do you share the concern of the folks in the NYT article that having a "best friend" is bad for kid?