Nice, Smart, or Athletic?

This morning was the perfect weather -- clear, sunny skies, cool breezes -- for a trip to the Como Zoo. A trip to the zoo with a toddler is sort of like shepherding. Shepherds might disagree, but ensuring the physical safety of a toddler can be fairly mindless. It gives me a lot of time to think.

I spent a good deal of my time reflecting on this conversation that my husband and I have from time to time. Smart? Nice? or Athletic? We wonder out loud about, if we could and had to choose one thing for Little A (and our imagined future kids) to really excel at, which would it be.

"Not athletic," my husband has said, which surprised me. He's kind of in to sports.

"Really?"

"Yeah. One injury and you're out. It doesn't last," he explained.

"But what if, in this scenario, there was no injury."

"Still. I wouldn't want her to be a dumb jock. I'd want her to be smart."

"But what about nice?" Part of me is always pushing for nice. I think it's because, even though it's not necessarily true, I equate nice with being happy.

"No. Not nice. Nice people get taken advantage of."

Giraffe licking the wall at the zoo. He might not be too bright, but maybe he's really nice?

 

 

"But they don't have to be."

"She will be if she's nice.. and dumb."

The trip to the zoo gave me a fair amount of fodder to think about this whole thing of what characteristics we would choose for our kid if we could. We were standing in front of the gorilla habitat when another kid, a little bit older than mine, came up next to us.

Little A turned to her, said, "No!" and then smacked her on the arm. The other little kid seemed unfazed, gave Little A a look, and then walked away to watch the gorillas further down the glass. Even if I do choose "nice," Little A doesn't necessarily want to cooperate with those hopes and dreams that I have.

"No hitting," I told her quietly (this was not the type of conversation I wanted strangers to be a part of). "It makes people very sad." She sometimes responds appropriately when told that other people are sad. This time, she didn't. She seemed indifferent.

At several enclosures -- the giraffes, for example -- each time another group of kids came up to the fence, she'd yell, "No!" at the animals and then "No!" at the people. I'm not sure if she didn't like the way that they were interacting or if she felt that she should be the only one enjoying the company of the animals. It's also possible that the human-animal interaction she observes at home is one in which Eric and I mostly say, "No!" to our dog. She learned it from us. She learned it from watching us.

"Little," I said to her. "Just say, 'Hi!'" I'm trying to replace this behavior of shouting "No!" with a more desirable trait. "Those kids are so nice!" I explained to her. "Just say, 'Hi!'" Sometimes she'd say, "Hi!" with a big cheesy (false?) grin on her face. I don't know what is worse: the cheese or the meanness.

Still, I stand by my desire for "niceness." She doesn't seem particularly happy when she's being mean.

After we visited the animals, we went outside and she ran in the open grass for a while. "Mama! Mama," she'd chant. "Run!" And I'd have to run after her. She watched groups of bigger kids trail past us. She seemed a little sad that she wasn't part of their fun.

But then she'd start running again. Running in circles. Running back and forth. Running into my arms. Running and laughing and giggling. And smiling. Maybe I should choose athletic after all.

This Table Will Eat All Other Tables for Breakfast

A few weeks ago, Little A and I ventured off for a little drive southwest of Minneapolis. We were looking for, amongst other things, a dining room table. On our drive, we found Antique Woodworks. (OK, a confession: we found them a week beforehand on-line and had arranged a visit to their workshop.)


They were in Gaylord, MN (yeah, yeah, "So your name is Gaylord Focker?") and had invited us to visit their workshop, a large, dusty, splintery space full of piles of reclaimed wood and hefty tools and manned by Kevin, his wife, their son, triplets (yes, triplets) and their friendly dog. Little A loved having some time with the kids and the dog and I was instantly charmed. They showed me a few pieces they were working on and explained the process of how to get a custom table made.


A week or so later, Eric and I made the decision to invest a hefty chunk in a table that we assumed will be with us for many years and many meals to come. Kevin came up with some sketches and, together with the blacksmith he sometimes works with, figured out an estimate.

But here's what really sold us: Kevin had just gotten in some beautiful cherry floorboards from a factory in New London, WI that used to produce cabinets for Thomas Edison's phonographs. The wood was beautiful and we loved the story behind it.

This weekend, Kevin and his son arrived at our house with the table in tow.

We love, love, love the table. It suits our space and needs. It has this great iron trestle base, which is out of the way so that we're not contending with legs. The wood has an incredibly rich color, interesting knots and textures and nail holes...

 


And, of course, there's that we can say, "Thomas Edison might have walked on our table."

Sign in Small Town Minnesota

This weekend, we took a couple of road trips, which meant that we spent a fair amount of time (nearly seven hours, all told probably) in the car driving through small town Minnesota. Even when I'm just going "out state" (Minnesotan for outside of the Twin Cities, equivalent of "up state" in New York), I feel like I've put on "outsider" or "travelers'" goggles just by stepping out of our normal routine. Apparently sometimes those goggles disrupt my husband's vision too.

As we drove through one town, he suddenly looked up from the road at a sign.

"Hey. Burger King as BK mini burgers, beef orkicks. What are beef orkicks?"

I looked at the sign: BK Mini burgers. Beef orchix.

I laughed.

"Beef or chicken."

"Oh!" Eric said. "I thought it was a cut of beef I had never heard of: beef orkicks."

"Sounds gross," I said. "Like something out of Oryx and Crake." And then we nerded out about Margaret Atwood's book, one of our favorites.

And then, a little silence as we drove past fields of corn and railroad tracks.

"...."

"Hey," Eric said. "Can we have beef orkicks for dinner tonight?"

No, Eric. No. We cannot have beef orkicks for dinner tonight. Or ever.

From Gaga to Dolly

Little A loves to dance. In the evenings, after dinner, I often turn on music and we bop around the living room. She marches and waves her hands and shrugs her shoulders. It's pretty fun. And funny.

But last week, I made the mistake of putting on Lady Gaga a few times. Now she's fixated on "Gaga" -- especially "Born This Way," which is basically Madonna's "Express Yourself."

So in the evenings, she'd say, "Gaga!" and I'd have to turn it on. Well, I wanted to expand her musical taste (and not drive myself completely insane with Born this Way on repeat), so one evening I suggested, "How about Madonna?"

She shook her head. "Gaga."

"Madonna?"

"Gaga."

I turned on Madonna anyway, thinking she didn't really know the difference.

She did.

She threw a minor fit.

I turned on Gaga.

In recent days, she's started to mispronounce "Gaga." It sounds more like "Ga-gong," which is also her rough approximation of what the grandkids call my dad: Ah-gong. (It's a Chinese word for Grandfather.)

"Ga-gong!" she'll say. And I'll turn on Born This Way. I try to get her to pronounce it correctly, but I'm fairly certain that she thinks this person:



Is actually this person:


Fortunately, this week, she's been willing to start to listen to other music. I eased her in with a little Madonna and then started, more or less, playing what I want to listen to.

The other evening I was listening to a little Dolly Parton.

Little A was pretty into it. "Ga-gong?" she asked.

"No. Dolly," I said. Problem is: she already has a Dolly in her life.

So I'm pretty sure that she now thinks that this person:


Is actually this person:

Made by hand, made in China

Last weekend, Eric, Little A and I went to the Uptown Art Fair, part of a big two-day affair here in Minneapolis in which hundreds of artists gather at three locations and thousands of buyers come to look and, well, buy.

I got this bowl from Monica Rudquist (and a strawberry ice cream from Bridgeman's for Little A):


I love Monica's ceramics. I also have one of her mugs and I use it everyday (form meeting function). She makes clean, modern, seemingly simple pieces. The trick is that each piece is full of detail and thought. I love the ridged texture that is her trademark (and the crackled glaze that is a new technique she's been working on). I love the subtle pink line around the edge of the bowl where the two glazes met. I love that I got to meet Monica -- that's part of the charm of the art fair: you get to meet the person that made the work.

But why?

I don't know why I love having handmade items in my home, items made by people I may have actually met or know a thing or two about.

Is there something about the narrative of the object that makes it more desirable to me?

I love it when an object has a story or history behind it. I love imagining an artisan sitting at her potter's wheel or in her studio or at her sewing machine, creating something beautiful and unique. I love that something in my home came from somewhere other than a factory, that my dollars are spent to support an artist, a member, potentially, of my community.

Sometimes I'll buy something second-hand at an occasional sale or a vintage store and I'm drawn to the idea that it was used by someone else. I bought this child's wicker rocking chair at Flamingo's Divine Finds.



Little A likes to sit on the front porch and rock in it. I like to imagine that (and am a little creeped out by) another child enjoyed it before Little A.

Here's the rub.

In addition to going to the art fair, I also recently saw an article about this exhibit, Made in China by Lorena Turner. In her work, Turner takes items that were made in China, removes them from the plastic boxes in which they were seemingly entombed (untouched, sans history), dusts them for fingerprints, and then photographs them under a black light. The photos reveal that these previously-thought-to-be-sterile objects are covered in fingerprints, evidence that even items made in China have a history. A handmade history.


Turner's exhibit has flipped what I'd thought about consuming on its head.

I used to think a lot about this when I was making things for craft fairs. I'd be watching Law and Order or CSI and I couldn't help but think of all of the fingerprints, epithelial cells, and hairs I was leaving. Traces of DNA and other identifiers. But even though I was thinking about it in the context of a crime scene, it wasn't creepy or gross. Because, absent a belief in some spiritual essence or aura being left on these objects, wasn't it precisely this physical humanness left on handmade items that made them attractive. Isn't one of the reasons why I buy handmade now is for some connection to another human being even if I mostly think about it in terms of (the relatively sterile) concept of design?

(The above item is a threader -- I thought it was appropriate to include given the context of "handmade" versus not.)

And yet there's something disconcerting about Turner's black light revelations. These mass produced items were made and packaged by someone's hands. They, too, have left their mark. How different is that from a charming piece of pottery or artwork that I buy from an artisan? Is it different because I've removed the middle man? Because some third party isn't making money off of their labor? But what about the art fair vendors or the team of people who developed and maintain a website like etsy?

How, then, is the story of the factory worker in China different from the artisan in smalltown USA?

A Shopping Day in Three Acts

Yesterday morning, Little A and I headed off to Toys R Us in the suburbs. This is not typical for us. We don't often just go shopping -- and especially not to a toy store. But we needed something for an upcoming trip and it seemed the best place to go. They had the thing we wanted. And they also had a lot of other things. A lot. I debated getting something for Little A's play kitchen, but everything seemed so plastic-y and cheap. She doesn't need this stuff, I thought to myself, as I pictured our living and TV rooms, already overwhelmed by her toys. We left with promises of finding more "babies" elsewhere. I am grateful that she doesn't yet understand that things at stores can be bought and brought home.

We went to a nearby mall for lunch and on the way out we stopped in to another toy store, Creative Kidstuff, which is very fancy and pricey. It's the type of place where the people working there greet you and ask if you need help several times. Little A loved playing with the train table and the doll house that were set out. I considered getting her some clothes for her baby doll, but they were really, really pricey. She doesn't need this stuff, I thought to myself, as I pictured our living and TV rooms, already overwhelmed by her toys. I got her a small pack of stickers for $1 and headed out. The stickers will last her for weeks and weeks.

That evening we went to the Midtown Farmers Market. We walked there with Eric. I bought some jam and some vegetables the next few nights. Eric got us some burgers and stir fried vegetables for dinner. We sat out at a little table that even had a seat for Little A, who played for ages with rocks she found on the ground. She said hello to a few neighbors and a few of the farmers she knows. We walked home, our bellies full of food and our pockets full of rocks.

Dear Mr. S and P,

I am afraid you are mistaken. In order to enlighten you, I have provided you with a list of 100 American items (in no particular order) for your perusal. I believe you will find ample evidence that the US should not, in fact, be downgraded from its well-deserved triple A status.

Sharktopus, basketball, Navy Seals, Little House on the Prairie, email, Michael Jordan, Garamond 3, bell-bottoms, bubblegum, The Simpsons, Georgia O'Keeffe, fast food, Al Gore, jazz, To Kill a Mockingbird, silica gel, Steve Urkel, GTL, Martha Stewart, coca-cola, jeans, the iPad, the credit card, Too Close for Comfort, Willem Dafoe, MTV, Breaking Bad, the cotton gin, the Segway, Atkins Diet, Babe Didrikson, jambalaya, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, John Steinbeck, bourbon, The National Geographic Society, John Coltrane, Free Willy, Tina Fey, Wilson Athletics, cotton candy, Larry Flint, Ansel Adams, the black light, the Constitution of the United States of America, the Muppets, tea bags, dental floss, choco taco, Rocky, crayons, Friendster, hip-hop, polymerase chain reaction, ET, Maxine Hong Kingston, Scientology, Charlton Heston, baseball, Lady Gaga, line dancing, Snoop Dogg, the phonograph, the pacemaker, Martha Graham, Chocolate Rain, Philly Cheese Steak, World of Warcraft, American bull dogs, Etta James, The Smithsonian, Ernest Hemingway, autopilot, cowboys, Alex Roberts, honey badger videos, nylon, Scrabble, Fox News, Seabiscuit, DC Comics, the shopping cart, Chuck Norris, Google, K-Y Jelly, microwave oven, Jason McElwain, the cotton swab, the internet, The Great American Hero, Sly and the Family Stone, Judy Blume, Jim Thorpe, the Civil Rights Movement, the electric guitar, putting a human being on the moon, roto rooter, the colt revolver, The New York Times, and the oil well.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I look foward to hearing from you regarding our upgrade.

Sincerely,
Rhena Tantisunthorn