Clean House and Memory Inventory

Every Wednesday for the past few weeks, I've posted what I call a memory inventory.  I'm doing this because, like many people, have been holding on to stuff for purely sentimental reasons.  The material objects that travel with us through life call to mind and make memories, feelings and even physical sensation present for us over and over again.  They also clutter up our closets, junk up our dresser drawers, and make it difficult to find room for new stuff - new memories.

I have never considered myself to be very sentimental.  Even back in middle school, I would periodically go through my desk drawers and toss out old drawings, awards, papers, and so forth just to have the feeling of accomplishment that comes when you clean out a junky drawer to reveal space to put more junk!  Nevertheless, I now occupy a small apartment in the District of Columbia and there are things I have here with me that have followed me to all seven of the places I've lived since graduating from the University of Virginia in 1999.  For someone who does not consider himself very sentimental, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

So I decided to apply a little reason to the problem.  I came to the conclusion, that I keep these things around as a means to remember the times, places, people, and emotions to which they refer.  The television show Clean House would tell me that a memory is not contained in any thing, and therefore getting rid of these things is not getting rid of the memory.  But Clean House doesn't mention how the human mind forms and maintains memories.  Memories are, over-simply speaking, systems of biochemical pathways which become fixed in the physical structures of our brains.  They are a physical reality.  Every time you access a memory, some sort of biochemical electric process occurs that actually strengthens that physical structure.  If we don't remember something often enough, those biochemical neural connections weaken.  They may eventually break down entirely.  If looking at, handling, or smelling some thing causes us to remember some past event or person, that thing is a means to actually strengthening and preserving that memory.  These things I have kept for the past 10 - 15 years or longer are actually fixing the memories to which they refer more strongly in my mind.  If I simply get rid of them, I truly do risk losing those memories forever.  At the very least, I will impair my ability to access them.

At the same time, I do not want to carry this stuff around with me for the rest of my life.  So, I have decided that the best way for me to keep my memories and get rid of the stuff cluttering up my closet is to write the memories down on this blog and get rid of the thing itself.  The memory is what I want to keep, not the thing.  The internet never forgets.  Even now I can look back at things I wrote back in 2005 and feel what I felt then; I remember where I was and what I was doing.  Some of you who read this may be family and friends.  Maybe you gave me something special that I have had to get rid of and write about.  Keep in mind that the thing is not a relationship any more than it is a memory, and when I get rid of the thing, I also fondly recall our relationship and the memories we share. 

I'm going to continue going through my stuff and making a permanent record of my memories.  Writing memories down actually strengthens those neural pathways too - often more strongly.  I hope you don't mind taking a look through this window on my life from time to time.  At the very least, I know I am enjoying the view.

Smallville "Harvest" Review (Airdate 10/29/2010)

This week's episode seems to indicate that the problems that plagued last week's episode ("Isis") may be habitual.  Again, the larger plot lines which carry us from episode to episode were handled well.  Lois and Clark take another step forward in their relationship.  Tess Mercer and her rapidly-aging Luthor clone also move down an increasingly disturbing road.  Lois and Clark get a few things straight about just how much protection Lois needs or wants.  These are all good developments that move the season forward brilliantly.  I'm just not thrilled with the useless, throw-away vehicle which carried these elements. 

This week, we have a remote and hidden village of "believers" (in what, I have no idea) who believe that their continued good crops and good health rely on  the yearly sacrifice of a young lady to "fire from above."  In reality, a blue kryptonite meteor killed the leader's daughter some time ago and ever since then (thanks to blue K contamination in the water) no one gets sick, and the crops flourish.  These anti-modern "believers," having no use for science or reason, mistakenly believe that it was the human sacrifice which caused "the lord" (its never clear who exactly they mean by this) to bless them and not the consistent and visible presence of blue crystals in their water.  Oh well - its a plausible reason for Clark to lose his powers whenever he's near them, and a reason to kidnap Lois, dress her up (again) and try to kill her.  All of this happened to them in the first place because Clark, being the over-protective country boy that he is, asked Tess to assign them to cover some cherry festival in the middle of nowhere instead of the potentially dangerous anti-vigilante rally in Metropolis.

Tess has her hands full with little (and getting bigger every minute) Alexander, whose Lex memories are to be flooding back faster than his little mind can handle.  He's a creepy kid.  This plot line was far more interesting than Lois and Clark this week.  Tess's own inability to actually love someone when it gets difficult is something worth exploring. 

Oh, but at the end, Clark and Lois get it on in the barn, with lots of candles and not nearly enough chemistry.  But at least now they're having sex for real and not just in some alternate future which will never come to pass.  On the other hand, they cut from the sex scene to young Lex cutting off his hair all creepy-like.  So whatever warm fuzzies we might have had from all the love were immediately dispelled by waves of creep.

Final verdict: good stuff overshadowed by creepy kids and corny villagers.  

Rally For Sanity and/or Fear

I have to hand it to John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, they know how to throw a rally!  By now, just about everyone has heard about the guests, the comedic moments (the funny ones and the not so funny...), the signs and the crowds.  I'm going to pile on a little bit here. 

What a phenomenal event.  I went with a friend and took my toddler.  We walked from our apartment in DC.  As we got closer and closer, we realized that this was going to be a lot bigger than we had anticipated.  Luckily, the toddler was happy as a clam in her stroller, and everybody made pee pee before we left.

We arrived at what would become our spot at just inside the tree line of the mall on the east of 7th street at about 11:45 AM.  The last 25 minutes was spent inching forward the last 22 feet or so.  Everyone was packed in tighter than Karl Rove up Rush Limbaugh's CENSORED BY ZUKE [this is a family blog douche bag!]. 

For me, the best moments were Stephen Colbert's entrance in the Evil Kenevil jumpsuit, Ozzy (!), nap time (she fell asleep on my shoulder at about 1:30 and dozed in her stroller until about 2:15; I couldn't believe my luck!), John and Stephen singing a duet, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, John's speech at the end, and leaving the National Mall at 3:00 PM with crowds filling the streets for blocks in every direction. 

I decided the moment it was announced on The Daily Show that I was going to attend.  I am so happy I did.  Today I'm going to catch up on everything I missed.  It's all on the Comedy Central site.

You Know You're A Stay-at-home-dad When...

• ...you know for a fact that the most efficient way to clean up a smashed Cheerio is to wait 24 hours, by which time it will have been absorbed into the general dustiness of the floor, then vacuum the whole floor like you were going to do anyway (zero additional seconds wasted on Cheerio dust clean up).
• ...you figured out that one way for your two-year-old to get over her fear of the vacuum cleaner was to teach her how to use it.
• ...you skip to the bottom of the care labels on clothes hoping to find those three little words: "or dry clean."
• ...you loved "True Mud" on Sesame Street
• ...you've been asked (just like Joeprah), "Daddy, where's your vagina?" (I would never have believed it if it didn't actually happen...)

Fatherhood Friday: Dads of Daughters

Here are a few articles and links more or less related to fatherhood that have come my way via the Twitterverse this past week.  These are more relevant if you are a parent of a daughter or daughters.

Let's start on a light note!  I'm not a huge fan of the show (though in general I love Shatner), but this blog and Twitter feed make me laugh on a pretty regular basis.  This dad is hilarious in ways a dad is only allowed to be after his kids are grown: completely filthy and completely honest.

I think I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I read this article.  Here's my favorite part:

As with many things in medicine, things change, and this article concludes that it is no longer necessary for most adolescents to undergo a routine pelvic exam.  The first Pap smear is now recommended to be performed at 21 years of age.   Furthermore, an internal exam is no longer required to begin an adolescent on oral contraceptive therapy.  This has just recently become the recommendation.

Third, we head to the Bible Belt for an article about how well abstinence-only sex-education is working (here's a hint: it's not).  I want everyone to remember that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have been teaching abstinence-only sex-ed for thousands of years.  It has never worked.  If you want proof, just open your Bible to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Any time you read a "law" about what to do when men and women have sex outside of marriage, that means that it happened and the court had to rule on it.  Nowadays, absent the penalties of death, stoning, being forced to marry your rapist, being disowned by your family, being ostracized from your community, etc., abstinence-only sex-ed has no teeth and is ineffective.  Dads, I know it is tough to even think about the fact that your daughter is going to have sex some day, but please don't add to the risk of teen pregnancy by refusing to teach your daughter about birth control and safe sex in addition to making good decisions about her body and encouraging her to wait until she is old enough to make a good decision for herself. 

And now we have the troubling story of a high school cheerleader who refused to cheer the name of the basketball player who sexually assaulted her.  The courts actually ruled that as a cheerleader, she was required to cheer for him.  Unbelievable.  Here's the article about her and her father, who stands with her no matter what.  All parents need to be their kids' advocates, but fathers of daughters have a special role.  Even some conservatives become allies with women in the struggles against sex discrimination and sexual assault because they experience these things in a new way through the lives of their daughters.

Unfortunately, the realities of gender discrimination don't always ping men's radars.  Here we encounter a candidate for Congress who appears to be ignorant of the realities of gender discrimination.  A friend of mine recently told me that "in this country we have equal opportunity, not equal results."  We were discussing poverty issues in that case and the increasing disparity in income between the highest earners and the rest of the country.  However, while we have equal opportunity as a matter of principle, not all of us enjoy it as a matter of fact.  I could point to any number of relevant facts that show that women still do not enjoy equality with men.  That someone running for Congress is ignorant of the gender-discrimination which exists in this country is evidence enough for me.

Drawing from My Distant Past #5

Thor.  The God of Thunder.  Here we see him summoning the lightning with his invincible uru war hammer "Mjolnir."  Ugh.  I did this in 1991, no doubt.  At least I was drawing an established character again.

Check out the arm holding Mjolnir.  What is that?  Of course, Thor has no fingers, when he forms a fist, his hands become indecipherable blobs.  Face, cape, anatomy, pose, proportion, everything in this picture is just wrong.   But give a guy a break!  Like William Hung, I had no professional training!

Memory Inventory: Framed Medals

In high school, I was a swimmer.  First and foremost, I swam.  I put more time and effort into the pool than I put anywhere else.  I'd love to tell you that I was a great student and worked hard in school, but that would be a lie.  The numbers don't lie.  I swam anywhere from 1 1/2 to 3 hours a day Monday-Saturday not including meets that would last whole weekends.  I didn't put anywhere near that amount of time and effort into getting good grades or excelling academically.  I did well enough at school pretty easily.  But I had to work hard to do well in the pool.  Objectively, I was an okay swimmer; middling really, and it took a lot of effort for me to do as well as I did.  I didn't do well enough to be recruited by any colleges, but I didn't realize that was going to be the case until it was too late for me to do anything about it.  So I swam all through high school and into the summer after I graduated, without being anything close to a star athlete.

I'm not entirely sure how my dad, who was a star athlete, felt about having an oldest son who he literally had to teach, step-by-step, how to run, throw a baseball, and catch a football.  Even after all his efforts, it was pretty obvious to just about everyone that I was never going be a star of baseball, football or soccer.  I quit baseball after 5th grade, and soccer soon followed.  I never played a down of organized football.  That my father never let on that he was even slightly disappointed is to his everlasting credit and I am more grateful for that than he may ever know.

Instead, all I knew was that my father and my mother were completely invested in our (my brothers, sister and my) lives as swimmers.  And as unimpressive as I was on an objective level, my dad was totally behind me.  Over the years, I have carried a sort of token of his support around with me wherever I have lived.  My senior year in high school, I finally qualified for Eastern Zone Championships.  To give you an idea of how unimpressive that was, my younger brother qualified for the exact same Eastern Zone Championships, and he was in 8th grade at the time (he was a much more gifted swimmer).  I brought home a few medals from that meet and another middle-level championship meet that year, and as a surprise, my father mounted and framed them for me as though they were Olympic Gold.  He did not have them mounted and framed; he did it himself.  I'm not sure I appreciated it at the time.  I lived in a dorm and don't think I hung them up until I had graduated college.  But I kept those framed medals, and have hung them in every place I have lived since then.

Those framed medals traveled with me from Centreville, VA, to Washington, DC, to New Haven and Middletown, CT and back to DC.  After 15 years of being moved and re-hung, the mounting has had enough.  It basically fell apart.  I now still have the medals and the frame stored neatly away, but I doubt they will ever go up on a wall again.  Even the frame barely holds together.  But every time I look at it, I think about my dad and how much he supported an awkward, slightly weird, middling-level swimmer of an oldest son.  I appreciate him every time I think about it, and although I may need to relieve my closet of that frame, I want to keep that memory somewhere in my brain for the rest of my life.