The Silent "I"

Traveling with Grade Schoolers

Now that Alex is a sophisticated first grader, the challenges and joys of traveling with him have changed.  On the plus side, he's big enough to carry his own bag, no longer needs a car seat on  a plane or in most states, and has the stamina to walk from place to place on his own without demanding to be carried.  As kids get older, they will remember more and more about the trips you take.  He's old enough to hopefully remember some of our adventures.  For many people, (myself and Frank included) family trips are some of their fondest, lasting memories of childhood.

On the negative side, we're now slaves to the school calendar, so our former care-free life of going wherever, whenever, is compromised by whether or not he will be missing school.  If we travel during school breaks, there is usually more competition for flights, and the airports are more crowded.  During kindergarten, we were able to take him out for two weeks, but as the years progress, we have be more mindful of what he might be missing at school.

To get the most out of your trip with your school-age child, try to make it a learning experience. Research the destination together at the library or on-line.  If you're traveling to a non-English-speaking country, borrow or purchase some language tapes and learn the basics. You can even download language programs from iTunes onto your iPod or mp3 player and take your lessons on the plane with you. Knowing how to say, "hello," "goodbye," "please," "thank-you," "excuse me," and "where is the bathroom?" will get you farther than you think. 

Let your children help plan some of the places you'll visit.  They may find some off-the-beaten path museum or park that you might not think to go to.  Let their interests help shape the trip, whether it's animals or stamp-collecting or soccer.  Use the research as a way to understand more about the history, geography, and culture of the place you are visiting.

Have your child practice writing by keeping a journal.  Alex kept a journal of our trip to Italy, Egypt, and Libya when he was in kindergarten.  He wrote single-word labels for pictures and postcards, and glued in some local currency and ticket stubs.  It's one of our most prized mementos of the trip.  When we returned, he practiced his public speaking skills by showing his journal at his kindergarten Show & Tell, and even to his daycare group.

Another way to practice writing skills is to send postcards home to friends and family.  Be sure to have your child write one to himself so he will have an exotic stamp and a postcard as a keepsake.  My husband is a fantastic postcard sender, and will spend hours writing cards to friends all over the world.  Make it a fun family ritual to find a cafe where you can soak up the ambience and write cards together as a family.

One of the great things about traveling to a new place is noticing how the most ordinary things differ from life at home, whether it's the bathroom or street signs.  Give your child a disposable camera or an inexpensive digital camera to record some of the small details and to have a lasting memento of new friends and experiences.  There is a new digital camcorder called the Flip Video Camcorder* that is simple enough for a child to use, and priced low enough so that you won't need a second mortgage to replace it if it's lost or broken.  With this camcorder, you can upload your video directly to YouTube or e-mail it to your family and friends back home. 

To hone math skills, have your child keep track of the budget and expenses for the trip in a small notebook. If you are traveling in a non-US destination, have him or her calculate the exchange rate every day by looking up the rate, tallying up your receipts, and figuring out how much you spent.

If you have to take your child out of school,  you might have homework assignments to contend with while you are are on the road.  If so, set a time each day to tackle the school work, and don't let it pile up until the end. 

If a trip to an exotic location is not in the cards for you, do what Veronique of Little Elephants did with her family and take a virtual world tour.  Write down the names of countries you and your kids would like to visit on slips of paper.  Draw one each week and take a virtual vacation by studying the country, cooking native cuisine for a few meals, and doing art and craft projects related to the country.  Who knows?  It might inspire your kids to be world travelers some day, but at the very least, you will all participate in a fun family activity.

Related Links:

Family Fun
Raising a Cultured Kid:  Hot Spots for Grade Schoolers
Travel Game for K-6

*Note: I received a free Flip to try out and will do a full review of it on my new review blog, The Silent I Speaks, as soon as I get around to launching it.
Photo Credit:  Alex showing "unbridled spirit" in Kentucky, taken by Frank.

War & Peace

When Alex was born, we decided that we would not allow toy weapons in our house.  Despite our best efforts, he made all kinds of things into weapons, from chewing his toast into an L shape to taking a puzzle piece shaped like Florida from a map of the US and turning it sideways.  The irony there does not escape me.  We kept away from TV shows and games with gunplay in them, but there was something so attractive to him about mortal combat that it seemed to be hard-wired into his brain.  We relented and allowed him to have a wooden sword that we purchased on a trip to Scotland.  Then there was a Star Wars lightsaber;  then a knight's helmet and plastic shield.  We entered the slippery slope of war toys and battle play, and kept right on sliding.

One of the moms in our preschool class a few years ago told a story about how her 3 year old daughter found a water gun on the playground.  Before her mom could even react, the girl held the gun to her head and started making a whirring sound.  She thought it was a blowdryer. 

We visited Lincoln's Birthplace in Kentucky at Christmas time, and Alex had his allowance money with him.  He chose a bag of plastic Civil War soldiers as his souvenir. He asked me who won the war, the blue team or the gray team?  I told him the blue team won, which led to a discussion of slavery, which led to a discussion of North versus South.  He was incredulous that people actually thought that it was acceptable to own another person.  He chose to be on the blue team and from then on, the gray team was called "the enemy." 

When Alex was four, I became somewhat disturbed by Alex's desire to act out fights and battles and be the superhero who swoops in to save the day.  No amount of redirection or attempts at arts and crafts seemed to quell his desire to be a hero.   I talked to one of his pre-school teachers about it and asked for advice on what to do.  The teacher told me that "Superhero play is the way that children, boys in particular, feel that they have some control in their worlds.  They are small and they know it, so by fantasizing and acting out the role play of superhero rescuing others, they feel stronger and learn to cope with conflict.  We try to rechannel that to having them develop scenarios where they are helpers, like firemen, and then they take turns being the rescued." 

I still worry sometimes about Alex's fantasies of war and the stuffed animals he lines up for battle, with a shout of "For Narnia!" as he races across the room, helmet on and sword held high.  I loved the Narnia books as a child, and it somehow didn't occur to me that there were battles in them when we took him to see the movie version.  The story I remembered was one of fantasy and good versus evil, of talking animals and mythical creatures.

When I start to worry about Alex's desire to play war games, I remember that my younger brothers had GI Joes, BB guns, and swords.  They fought imaginary pirate battles in their treehouse and went on Indian raids with the neighborhood boys.  They wrestled each other and learned karate.  They turned out to be peaceful, loving men.

My husband spent the better part of his seventh year of life wearing a Batman costume and fighting imaginary crime nearly 24 hours a day, wearing a costume that he made himself and even teaching himself how to sew when his mother refused.  He turned out to someone who marches against war, and takes his son along for the experience of voicing dissent. 

So maybe all this worry is all for naught, and Alex will somehow, by being a Jedi knight or a Union soldier, figure out right from wrong, and that conflicts  are rarely ever resolved by force. He's a smart, loving boy.  He'll figure it out.  I think that somehow he has the right idea. 

Maybe someday he'll know what his Grandpa spent his scholarly career learning: that lasting peace is born of understanding, not through death and destruction.  Maybe I shouldn't worry so much about his wanting to play with weapons and just let it be.

Maybe my role in this will be to introduce him to the warriors for peace, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., The Dalai Lama and William Sloan Coffin, Jr., and even his Grandpa Jim.  Maybe, just maybe, the world will be a little better for it.

The Internet ProAm Fight: Rumble in Berkeley

Last weekend, I attended the Berkeley Cybersalon, organized by Sylvia Paull.  The Cybersalon featured a  panel discussion on the topic "New Media Wars:  Amateur vs. Auteur."   With the name "salon" in the title,  was expecting a rather high-brow intellectual discussion of issues surrounding the impact of the internet on society and its norms.  Instead, it was like kind of like watching a room full of geeks replay their own version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" without the flying ashtrays and gin bottles.

The brunt of much of the vitriol was Andrew Keen, author of Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture.  The fireworks started with Robert Scoble reading excerpts of Andrew's book, in which Andrew refers to bloggers as the proverbial thousand monkeys with typewriters.  From the snippets he read, I expected to look up at the panel and see Robert sitting next to an elderly man with white hair, an ascot, and a pair of pince-nez perched precariously on the tip of his nose.  I was surprised that Andrew actually looked like all the Berkeley and Stanford-educated software engineers at my husband's company.  I thought, "That guy doesn't look old enough to have achieved 'curmudgeon' status, but he certainly writes like one."

Robert was followed by Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media, who seemed to have a personal axe to grind (or one to toss into Andrew's skull).  Dan lambasted Andrew as an amateur, a poor writer, and one who did not base his books on facts.  His main beef with Andrew's book was that it was full of misrepresentations of facts that he had some personal knowledge of, and he needed to set the record straight.  He made an excellent point that the traditional vs. new media is not an either-or proposition, but that both are here to stay.

The fourth panel member, Katie Hafner, technology reporter from The New York Times, tried to be more conciliatory, offering an apologetic "why can't we all just get along?"  Her perky optimism didn't last long, since the crowd turned on her about midway through the session.  By the end, she looked a little shell-shocked.

She started by relating a story about how she used to cover the technology beat for the NY Times, and spent months researching a story about how eBay was systematically going from state to state and changing the definition of the word "auction" to exempt eBay sales from regulations regarding auctions. They did this by employing lobbyists at the state level to make sure that their interpretation of "auction" was adopted into state law.  Immediately after the story ran, she was taken off the technology beat.  She noted that she had "tremendous resources" and that her job was to "tell her version of the truth."

Andrew spoke last, and seemed a little subdued.  Or, as he explained in his own blog, bored.  He explained that his book is a polemic.  It is not meant to be the be-all and end-all of the debate, but to raise the issues for discussion.  His major points seem to be that the internet offers an endless source of information without accountability, a beef with the "cult of anonymity," and the idea that the internet fosters a culture of narcisissm and encourages people to continually look at themselves, rather than seeking out others.  He noted that the book does offer some ideas for solutions at the end, and is not just a 200-page whine about the evil, evil internet.

As a polemic, he noted that his ongoing online debate with Kevin Kelly forces him to think more critically.  His view is that technology is a mirror, and that viewing technology in a global sense is just a way of looking at ourselves and how the culture is evolving.  He railed against the fact that Hannah Arendt, one of the "great thinkers of the 20th centurty" has fewer Wikipedia pages than Pamela Anderson, "a soft-core porn star."   He claimed to have a great interest in both political theory and pornography, so he outta know.

Tooth Fairy Confessions

My son lost a tooth this week. This is not an earthshattering experience for a six year old, so I'm not going to alert CNN News, but it was significant to him.  He lost his first baby tooth long after most of his classmates had started to look like pint-sized extras from "Deliverance".  Every time someone loses a tooth in his first grade class, they get a little pink tooth die cut on their desk to commemorate the  event, and the teacher puts their name on the big tooth on the wall.  In first grade, as in most nursing homes and hockey arenas, there is nothing quite as significant as having your teeth fall out.

I wasn't quite prepared for how sad I felt after his first baby tooth fell out. As I held the tiny incisor in my hand, I remembered how this tooth made its first appearance at age 6 months, how excited we were to see it, and how utterly miserable it made our baby boy before its eruption onto the landscape of his toothless gumline.  I cried a little when my husband wasn't' looking, thinking of that baby, and looking at the tall, inquisitive person standing before me.  Now, I look at the wiggly top teeth and think it's only a matter of time before those are replaced by huge, chiclet-sized permanent teeth that will change the shape of his face forever.  I'm going to miss that winsome little smile, so there's a part of me that's still in denial about all this tooth-letting.

So, maybe it's not entirely an accident, but some Freudian slip of the mommy mind, that caused me to forget about the importance of the Tooth Fairy when the second tooth fell out.  To be fair, I didn't actually see the tooth fall out or help it make its exit.  It happened on a night when my husband and I were out for the evening, and the babysitter had to inform us of the news when we got home.  After about 3 weeks of wiggling, cajoling, and obsessively checking it every two seconds, the tooth finally made its way out on a night when we were not there to witness it.

I said to my husband, "We'll need to make sure the Tooth Fairy comes to visit, or we'll never hear the end of it."  He agreed.  We both promptly fell asleep.

The next morning, I got up early and was sitting at my computer, when I felt a little tap on my shoulder.  I turned around, only to have a snack-size baggie thrust into my face, a baggie containing exactly one tiny baby tooth.

"I lost a tooth," my son said with a scowl.

"Congratulations!  That's great! Let me see the hole!"  I replied chipperly.

He opened wide and I peered in at the hole where his baby tooth had been.  My eyes grew a little misty at the sight.

"She didn't come,"  he said glumly.

"Who?" I asked, peering at the tooth, and not quite realizing where he was going with this.

"The Tooth Fairy.  I left this under my pillow and when I woke up, the tooth was still there. No money. Nothing."

I suddenly had this horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like the time I drove home from work and went to take baby Alex out of the backseat only to realize that I had forgotten to pick him up at the babysitter's house.  I was certain that I would end up on some parenting blog of shame along with Lindsay Lohan's mom and that creepy Florida millionaire who married his long-lost daughter.

"Um...maybe she...got busy?  Lots of people are losing teeth these days!  Maybe she'll come tonight."  I twittered nervously.  Lying was never my strong suit.

"Hmmph," he growled. "I was really hoping...she'd visit me."  His eyes welled up with tears.  I studied the tooth carefully and notice that it seemed a little off-color.

"Wonder what this little brown spot is," I said, thinking of his upcoming dental appointment.  "I hope that's not a cavity."

"Do you think the tooth fairy doesn't take cavities?"  He looked worried that somehow this tooth didn't pass the Tooth Fairy's exacting conditions.  He once asked me what the Tooth Fairy did with all the teeth she collected.  I had no idea and no time to Google it, so I made something up about how she was building a magic castle made of baby teeth for her parents to live in.  I could see the wheels turning in his head and he probably thought that a tooth with a cavity wasn't going to make a nice addition to the fireplace the Tooth Fairy was putting in the condo made of baby teeth.

"Er...I don't think that's a cavity...probably just something you ate got stuck on the tooth..heh heh...or something from the baggie."  We went to the dining room and I poured him some cereal and milk, which he ate with chin in hand.  I'm not sure I've seen a more forlorn face since the Cubs lost the pennant in '84, and the entire city of Chicago had that same look of wistful longing and disappointment.  Every day.  For a year.

I had to think fast.  I could keep trying to defer the Tooth Fairy's appearance another night or take action.  I surreptitiously took my wallet into his room and slipped a bill under the bottom of his many pillows.  Under the pretense that I was making his bed, I shouted, "Hey, did you look under all the pillows?"

I shoved the wallet into his sock drawer and asked Alex to come back and make sure that the Tooth Fairy hadn't dropped the money on the floor.  He came back to his room and I asked which pillow it was under, and he showed me.  "Maybe you didn't look in the right place," I said.

He threw the blankets and all the pillows off the bed and uncovered a $5 bill.  "Wow!" he exclaimed, "I just didn't look under the right pillow!  I got $5!  Last time I only got $2!  Wonder why she gave me more for this tooth?  Wonder why she didn't take the tooth with her?  Do you think maybe she had too many to carry?  The Tooth Fairy is really, really tiny, you know.  Like you said, lots of people are losing their teeth, so maybe her sack was already full."  He gave me a big, wide grin and that showed off all his remaining teeth.

I shrugged and gave him a hug.  I didn't have the heart to tell him he was getting guilt money from the Tooth Fairy.

Entrepreneurs for Obama, Panel Discussion

The final part of the Entrepreneurs for Obama evening consisted of a panel discussion involving three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Joe Rospars, Barack Obama's New Media Director, who agreed to stay on after his presentation.  The discussion was moderated by former California Controller, Steve Westly.  On hand were Seth Sternberg of Meebo, Dave Mandelkern, of QuickHealth, and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn.

Each of the panelists opened with a few words about why they were for Obama, then offered some advice to the campaign.  They were asked to address the question of how to use technology to inspire people, and what the campaign can do in the next two weeks to use existing technology to their advantage  Later, they were also asked by members of the audience for advice on how to address the facts that the average voter age is 52.5, and the Kerry campaign's mistake of focusing too much on the cities and not enough on the suburbs and exurbs.

Seth Sternberg opened the discussion by saying that he felt the Obama campaign was not so much about technology as about interacting with real people, and that Obama's message reached out to a wide swath.  He thought that the fact that Obama was able to raise a tremendous amount of money in small increments was an indicator of Obama's appeal.  He felt that Obama was someone who really wanted to "hear your issues" and listen to and embrace people.

Seth's ideas for using technology in the near-term were to create widgets for voter registration and fundraising that could be spread virally through MySpace and blogs.  He also cautioned that candidates often become too risk-averse based on polls as the campaign wears on, and that Obama should not be afraid to take big risks.  He stated that the use of technology to mobilize people is fantastic. 

He also mentioned that blogs and social media now influence the press, which influences older voters and those who do not use social media.  I thought this was an excellent point.  Not every blogger has the readership of Kos, but most bloggers have developed a community of people who read them and who are to some degree influenced or engaged by them.  Even a small blog like this one gets offers from advertisers and quoted in the press from time to time.  In the past month, I've spoke to the San Jose Mercury News and the Wall Street Journal on topics relating to family life.  The power of the blog cannot be underestimated.

Dave Mandelkern talked about how California political discussions having an "echo chamber effect."  If past elections had been decided at the Stanford Faculty Club, he quipped, we would be just finishing up Al Gore's second term, perhaps in an unbroken line of Democrats going back to President Adlai Stevenson.  He thought the key to this election is to capture the enthusiasm of California and have it spill over to Florida and Ohio.  There needs to be a way to leverage contacts in key swing states, so that California campaigners are not left cold-calling voters in those states.  Dave thought that "knowing how to count" was a crucial element in winning the election, stating that they not only have to know the metrics,  but also actually get people to turn out to vote.

Dave said that Obama needs to look ahead to the general election and stop the rhetoric of the "red state/blue state" dichotomy.  There are pockets of conservative and liberal voters in every state, and many, many people who are fed up with the current politics in Washington.  Obama needs to be able to tap into that dissatisfaction and reach out to sway voters who may have voted for Bush the last time.

Reid Hoffman echoed some of what Seth and Dave had to say, and added that he felt that there is a "great demand for something new" in this country, and that Obama fits the bill.  Obama has the energy, charisma and willingness to take a stand that people look for in a leader.  He said that he often tells people that "I never thought I'd feel nostalgic for Reagan," but after six years of George Bush, he does.

Reid suggested that the campaign can appeal to older voters by putting voter information in PDF form so that organizers can print out the information and easily hand it out to people in retirement communities or other places where voters tend not to have access to computers.  He also thought that the website was too text heavy and that some of Obama's key points should be put up on YouTube or in video format so that people have more opportunities to hear his voice.  Reid also suggest that the campaign could make use of tools like Digg.

If you look at the Obama '08 website, there is a section called "BarackTV" which has snippets of video of various speeches, but I agree with Reid that he should have more video that is issue-centric, and maybe something that is downloadable. I would have gladly put some video up on this post, if it would have been available, but I didn't want to go searching YouTube to find it.

I think the Obama website is doing a great job of capturing the grass-roots enthusiasm and allowing people to voice their opinions and concerns.  My concern with it is that "echo chamber" effect that Dave mentioned.  People who are using the Obama (or Edwards or Clinton) sites are already convinced that their candidate is the right one, or are trolls there to bait the true believers.  I'd like to see something for those of us who have not yet decided, something that would give a side-by-side analysis of where each of them are the same and where they significantly differ from one another, without demeaning the other candidates.  That said, I don't think that it's the campaign's job to do this; their job is to show their candidate in the most favorable light possible, and they are doing an outstanding job of that.  I got a little choked up watching Barack's mom-and-apple-pie bio, I must admit. 

At the end, Steve Westly gave some closing remarks and mentioned that Hillary Clinton recently hired Ace Smith to run her California campaign.  Smith is well-known in California politics as a negative campaign master.  He didn't see this as a positive sign for the Clinton campaign.  I can't say that I do either, since negative campaign ads are probably the worst thing about elections, and I think turn people off to the point that they prefer not to vote at all.  I would much rather vote for someone than cast a vote against the other candidate.

He also told the story of how Obama is the best unifier of people that he has ever seen.  When Obama came to California in 2006, he wanted to go to Orange County first.  Steve warned against it, and told him he would be better off in Los Angeles or San Francisco.  Obama decided to make his first appearance at the Saddleback Church, an evangelical Christian church in Orange County.  By the end of his speech, Obama was met with a standing ovation.  Steve saw this as a great indicator of Obama's ability to unify and reach out to people, regardless of their beliefs or party affiliations.

I'm not so sure that this was as big a coup as Steve seemed to think it was, since the pastor, Rick Warren, is not normally associated with Falwell, Robertson and other members of the so-called "moral majority."  I think it would be a mistake to write off conservative Christians as a monolithic voting bloc. 

Overall, I had a very favorable impression of the event and the content of the evening.  I felt like I learned something about how the campaign views technology, and how Silicon Valley views the campaign. Steve Spinner and the other organizers were able to pull together an interesting panel of Silicon Valley movers and shakers, a top-level manager from the campaign, and an interactive video-feed (though the technology was not quite up to par, but that's Microsoft's fault, not Obama's).  I hope that I will have a chance to see Obama in person some day.   

On May 31, I will be attending (and hopefully live-blogging) a luncheon with Hillary Clinton.  At this point, it's going to take a lot for her to convince me she's the best person for the job.

Photo:  From Obama '08 Campaign Website.

Entrepreneurs for Obama, Part 2

After the choppy video-feed of Barack Obama, our evening at the Entrepreneurs for Obama meeting got a little more lively and interesting.  Joe Rospars, Obama's Director of New Media, was on-hand to speak to the group about how the campaign is using new media to its advantage.  He gave a Powerpoint presentation (which I thought was very old school), but did a nice job of explaining how the use of the internet has evolved from the Clinton-Dole race of 1996 to now.  Originally, campaigns used the web as static content brochures, which later evolved into a fundraising "bucket" to pour money into, and later into a more interactive environment for people to meet each other and the candidate.

The New Media group within the Obama campaign consists of writers, organizers, designers, and fundraisers who strategize on how to best use the new media platforms to their advantage.  Their primary focus seems to be evolving the website into a place where people can use new media tools like blogging and meet-up software, to voice opinions and share information about the election.  The website is constantly evolving as new tools and ideas are developed by the group.

The secondary goal of the New Media Group is to go outside the website to create a presence on other internet platforms.  Joe mentioned MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook as examples of ways that people can form groups, get information, and show support for the candidate.  Each of these has some limitations.  For example, after a Facebook group has more than 1,000 members, there is no way for an administrator or anyone in the group to push a message out to the group.  There is a Facebook group called "A Million Strong for Obama" that has 350,000 members now, but no way to really use the power of the group to the advantage of the campaign.  He mentioned that Obama now has more MySpace friends than Hillary. 

He mentioned my darling Twitter as an "ugly site" but a quick way to inform people that Obama will be on TV or send out a quick message to people.   And here, I thought it was there so I could find out  what the surf report in Santa Cruz is today, or whether Suburban Turmoil's baby is sleeping more than two hours at a time yet.  Silly me. 

Obama is on my Twitter friends list, as is John Edwards, but my complaint with both of them is that they rarely update on Twitter and often let us know after the fact that something has happened.  Edwards sent a tweet recently that said, "Wasn't Elizabeth great on Larry King last night?"   I would have preferred it if he had said, "Be sure to watch Elizabeth on Larry King tonight."  Otherwise, it's not likely I'll watch Larry King, especially if Dancing with the Stars is on.

Joe also mentioned using LinkedIn and other social networking sites soon.  He talked about Eventful, a site where people can demand that someone come to their town, whether it's Kelly Clarkson or 50 Cent or Barack Obama.  When Obama visited Atlanta, 20,000 people showed up at a rally for him.  They were able to mobilize large numbers because there had been a groundswell on Eventful of people asking for him to come there.

Obama Videoconference

Frank and I attended a meeting of a new group of called Entrepreneurs for Obama, which featured a live videoconference with Barack Obama himself, plus a visit from Joe Rospars, Obama's New Media Director.  This was billed as "an Interactive Technology Forum" for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and members of the venture capital community.  I'm not exactly sure how we got on this list, but it was free, we had a babysitter, and we figured it was a good way to learn more about the candidate. 

Since my addiction to Twitter has grown over the past month or so, I have become increasingly interested in what all the fuss is about this "new media" business.  I haven't decided which candidate to back, although Obama has a certain appeal to me as a mixed-race person, and as his former classmate at Columbia (we graduated the same year).  I was an early Edwards supporter, and still am, but I'm not going to decide who to fully support until I hear what they all have to say.

Overall, I'd say the teleconference part of the evening was a-bomb-a.  The feed kept breaking up, and we only saw jerky still pictures of Obama.  It was like watching one of those awful hostage videos on Al Jazeera, only worse.  Members of the audience were able to get up and ask him direct questions, but it seemed as though every time he started to say anything of substance, it was interrupted by loud, annoying static.  He said at one point, "I swear I'm not doing this on purpose."

The first person who asked a question wanted know why it took him so long to sign on to the Sanders/Boxer Global Warming Bill.  His reply was that they needed buy-in of automakers, otherwise the bill would result in political gridlock.  A nice soundbite (and a pretty good pun) perhaps, but didn't really address the merits of the bill, or whether he jumped on only after it became apparent in the polls that people were behind it. 

I don't doubt that Obama is for measures that would reduce carbon emissions, but I would have liked to hear more about why he now feels this bill is the right piece of legislation to back at this time.  Automakers will go where the profits lead them, and right now it's in SUVs and minivans.  Unfortunately, most of his answer was cut off, so I'm not sure if he had more to say on this topic or not.

Designing Woman

Like my fabulous new banner?  A thousand thanks to The Aitch who designed it for me! I sent her a vague list of what I'd like to see and she turned my ramblings into exactly what I wanted.

In case you're wondering, all the photos were taken by me or Frank when we visited these places.  We went to the Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa on our honeymoon, so those were taken before Alex was born.  The rest are places we visited as a family.  They are:

1.  Alex atop the ruins of Leptis Magna, Tripoli, Libya (2006)
2.  The Sphinx & Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt (2006)
3.  Alex and the Moai of Easter Island, Chile (2004)
4.  Taj Mahal, Agra, India (1996)
5.  Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy (1996)
6.  Alex contemplating the Great Wall of China (2005)

All the photos were taken by either me or Frank, although now we can't really remember who took the one in Easter Island.  I think I did, and he swears that he did.  The new photo in the sidebar above the "About" link is of Loch Lomond, Scotland, taken in 2005.

I hope you enjoy the new look of the blog.  I've updated the About page to include a list of all the countries we've visited as a family. 

Contests, Carnivals, and Celebrations

Thanks to the lovely folks at GNM Parents for designating my post "The Day We Lost Becky" as GNM Parents Hot Stuff. They run a weekly contest in which readers can submit nominations for postings that they found informative or useful, then people vote on the top story for that week.  I won a lovely badge for my sidebar.  On top of that, Mommybloggers featured one of my postings as part of their tribute to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.  That, plus the jewelry I got for Mothers Day, made it a very good week to be me.

Speaking of Hot Stuff...Over at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, the ladies are running a contest for a local mom to get a full make-over, including sessions with a personal trainer, a day at a spa, and a new outfit.  The prize is valued at over $1000.  I can't enter because I'm a contributor,  but I hope one of you will enter and win!

In other contest news, Scribbit is hosting a Write Away contest for postings about vacations.  I couldn't resist entering this one, especially because the prize is chocolate.  If you have a great travel story to share, go over to Scribbit for complete rules/details.  The deadline for submissions is midnight on May 15, so hurry and send in your link.

In print news, Kimchi Mamas gets a shout-out in this month's KoreAm Journal, a magazine about Korean-Americans.  The issue hits the newstands this week.

Check out the Carnival of Cities over at The San Diego Beat.  My posting called "My Kind of Town:  Palo Alto" is among some very fine entries highlighting various cities, from Beijing to Buenos Aires to Chattanooga.  For a virtual vacation, check out all of this week's entries.

It may have been a good week for me, but it was nothing compared to two of my favorite bloggers.  Congratulations to Mir of Woulda Coulda Shoulda on her marriage last Friday, and to Liz of Mom-101 on the birth of baby girl Sage Alexandra on May 11.  I send both of you my best wishes for all the love and happiness your hearts can hold.  Now that's something to celebrate!

My Kind of Town: Palo Alto

There are times when I'm glad that we're not traveling, when we just stay home and enjoy the place where we live for a while.  Sometimes, it's fun to be a tourist in your own town, to look at everything with fresh eyes, and to remember why you call it home.

My town, Palo Alto, California, is located mid-way between San Francisco and San Jose.  Palo Alto features a mild climate, a hotbed of intellectual and cultural activites, and great restaurants.  When I first came to Silicon Valley on business trips in the 90's, I marveled at how it seemed to always be 70 degrees and sunny.  "Just another day in paradise," a colleague told me.  After weathering 110 degree heat in Texas, and sub-zero temperatures in Chicago, it did seem like the perfect climate.  While it's not always 70 degrees and sunny, it seems to be that way more often than not.

Palo Alto is perhaps most famous for being the home of Stanford University and the heart of the Silicon Valley.  Technically, Stanford has its own zip code and is separate entity altogether.  Like many college towns, there are tensions between the university and the local community from time to time, but for the most part, it is a symbiotic relationship.  We need them, and they need us, so we just have to work it out.

Around here, the local folk heroes are entrepreneurs who started out with nothing but a dream and ended up with a technology empire.  Those stories, the ones involving two guys with an algorithm who go on to start a global empire, are the legends are the stories handed down from generation to generation.  Forget Johnny Appleseed, did you hear the one about Bill and Dave's garage, the birthplace of Hewlett-Packard?  Or the lucky building on University Avenue where Logitech and Google were both started?  These might not sound significant, but to Palo Altans, it's part of what makes our town unique. 

Here are some of the things we love about Palo Alto:

Museums

The Museum of American Heritage is a small museum located in the historic Williams house, near downtown Palo Alto. There are some interactive activities for kids, temporary exhibits, and the museum offers classes for older kids on how to build transistors, crystal radios, and short wave radios. If you have a budding engineer or entrepreneur in the family, this is a must-see.  Surely, this is how Hewlett & Packard started out.  Another great place for kids is the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo , which features interactive exhibits, an indoor playscape for small kids, and a small zoo. 

Technically not in Palo Alto, but Stanford, the Cantor Arts Center houses a collection of fine art, antiquities, and often quirky temporary collections.  It's a great place to spend a rainy day with kids, but on sunny days,  you can sit outside and enjoy the Rodin sculture garden and let them run around on the Andy Goldsworthy piece called Stone River, outside the front door. I like to meet my friends for lunch at the Cool Cafe, where chef Jessie Cool serves up delicious, inventive twists on American cuisine with fresh, organically grown ingredients.

Restaurants

Caffe Riace is a great Italian restaurant that is a little off-the-beaten path.  It's not on a commercial street, so you have to know where it is to find it.  One of our neighbors directed us there about eight years ago, and we have been going ever since.  The owners are an Italian family, and every time we go there they greet us like we're their long lost cousins who just got off the boat from Sicily.  Most of the seating is outdoors, in a lovely patio with large bronze statues and colorful artwork all around.  It's a great place for a romantic date, or to go let the kids run around the fountain.   In eight years, we've never had a bad meal--or even a mediocre one--at Caffe Riace.  Frank's favorite is the Osso Bucco, a veal stew that is so tender it barely needs chewing. Alex is crazy about the home-made gelato for dessert.

Joanie's Cafe on California Avenue is a great place for a hearty breakfast or a tasty lunch.  It's a small place, so on weekends, there is almost always a wait.  The owners are French, so it has a bit of a Parisian cafe meets California Diner feel, with a few outdoor tables.  The friendly, amiable waitstaff, who always make you feel welcome whether they know you or not.  For breakfast, the scrambles, omelettes, and waffles make for filling stick-to-your ribs fare.

Palo Alto's downtown area boasts a myriad of high-end boutiques, restaurants, cafes, and offices.  You can't walk ten feet without running into a coffee shop, since this town seems to be run on caffeine.  Some standouts include the University Cafe for coffee and a full menu of light meals and pastries, and Caffe del Doge, an espresso bar that serves up exotic espresso mixes in martini glasses.  New on the scene is Madison and Fifth, where I had what was probably the best risotto I've ever eaten in my life. 

Entertainment

Most people who live here live on fairly small patches of land, because real estate is at a premium.  Luckily, you're never very far from one of Palo Alto's many parks.  Our favorites are Juana Briones, with a new playscape that was just installed last year, including a train to climb around on, a climbing wall, and tireswings.  We also like Bol Park, with its jogging trail, large open field, and close proximity to the famous Barron Park Donkeys, Perry and Niner.  Perry was the model for the donkey in the Shrek movies, and you can go by and visit him and his buddy.  In the summer, if you're a parent with a small child, you can't beat Mitchell Park, which boasts a creative water spray area to cool off in, and separate play areas for toddlers and big kids.

If you are interested in the performing arts, Stanford hosts an eclectic Lively Arts series that includes world-renowned musicians and dance groups, everything from Japanese taiko drums to American folk music to baroque ensembles.  For theatre, we love the Peninsula Youth Theatre (though it's technically based in Mountain View).  PYT features some of the most amazingly talented kids around.  We usually go when we know someone in the cast, and have always marveled at the professionalism of the costumes, sets, and performances.  We also like Theatreworks, which often stages performances in Palo Alto's Lucie Stern Community Center.

And finally, if you want to take a peek at life in Palo Alto, coming soon to a theatre near you is Palo Alto: The Movie.

When we first moved to Palo Alto, I always had a bag packed, ready to go back to Austin at a moment's notice.  I had always planned that we would only be here temporarily.  Over the years, I've learned more and experienced more about our community, and now I now can't imagine going anywhere else. Quirky, eclectic, cutting-edge, and endearing, all of these qualities make Palo Alto home.