More on SC Constitutional Amendment Question 1.

estaminet asked: "Is your proposed amendment worded like ours [Virginia's], i.e. so vaguely that it threatens many other issues, like legal recourse for victims of domestic violence, etc.?"

Thanks for asking! You bet it is!

Here is how the question will appear on the state ballot:

Question 1

1. Must Article XVII of the Constitution of this State be amended by adding Section 15 so as to provide that in this State and its political subdivisions, a marriage between one man and one woman is the only lawful domestic union that shall be valid or recognized; that this State and its political subdivisions shall not create, recognize, or give effect to a legal status, right, or claim created by another jurisdiction respecting any other domestic union, however denominated; that this amendment shall not impair any right or benefit extended by the State or its political subdivisions other than a right or benefit arising from a domestic union that is not valid or recognized in this State; and that this amendment shall not prohibit or limit the ability of parties other than the State or its political subdivisions from entering into contracts or other legal instruments?

Yes []

No []

Explanation of above:

This amendment provides that the institution of marriage in South Carolina consists only of the union between one man and one woman. No other domestic union is valid and legal. The State and its political subdivisions are prohibited from creating or recognizing any right or claim respecting any other domestic union, whatever it may be called, or from giving effect to any such right or benefit recognized in any other state or jurisdiction.

However, this amendment also makes clear it does not impair rights or benefits extended by this State, or its political subdivisions not arising from other domestic unions, nor does the amendment prohibit private parties from entering into contracts or other legal instruments.

As Uncle Zoloft has noted, here are a few things that the so-called explanation does not mention:

> South Carolina will directly violate one of the bedrocks of our Constitution and country, "equal protection under the law."

> South Carolina same-sex couples and their children will be relegated to second class citizens and denied rights accorded to every other South Carolinian.

> Government will tell state institutions and private corporations that they may not offer benefits to same-sex couples and their families.

> South Carolina will directly violate "the full faith and credit" clause of the Constitution. Same-sex couples who have been married in Massachusetts or another country will find their legally recognized marriages nullified in our state.

>Common law marriage will be eliminated.

> Domestic violence laws, protections and support systems will fail to include same-sex couples.

And as Walter Ezell pointed out in today's G-ville News, "It will complicate matters for the state's universities, in outlawing benefits for same-sex partners of the universities' employees."

I'm afraid to watch.

Those of you not living in the Great State of South Carolina may not be dreading next Tuesday as much as I am. Or maybe it is next Tuesday night, or maybe next Wednesday, but probably just next Tuesday.

Some of you may even be crossing your fingers in advance of election day, hopeful that some incumbent or another in your state will get the big thanks-for-the-memories boot. I am not particularly worried about that, though. I have long since given up hoping that Democratic challengers will have their day in the state I have come to call home.

But what I am really dreading is what I am nearly certain will be the passing of Amendment 1. You can read a pretty decent summary of the provision and the hatred and intolerance it will write into our state constitution here.

There have been opinion pieces and letters back and forth in the G-ville News for the past several weeks. The PP even wrote a pretty good letter (not published yet--in true G-News fashion, it will probably be published next Wednesday).

So why am I so certain? Not just because this entire region is held firmly in the grasp of baptofascists. Not even just because we tend to be a redder than red state. But partly because it was only in my first year of living here that interracial marriage became legal.

!!!!!!!

I clearly remember driving to work one day in the first week or so of my first year of teaching here, and getting disgusted by a long exchange of homophobic "humor" on a radio show. I changed the station, only to land on another such exchange. Where have I landed, I wondered in despair, trying not to arrive at the office in tears.

A lot has changed since then, although not as much as I might hope. There has been a lot more willingness to discuss BGLT topics on campus, and our university non-discrimination clause now even mentions sexual orientation. I remember being warned when I was first here about members of my department making thinly veiled threats to other members about revealing their orientation to unfriendly administrators. People speak more openly now. You still hear plenty of jokes about queers, and all too many people are comfortable snickering at them, but still. It's better.

Tuesday may be a big reminder that it is not that much better. The PP keeps trying to point to signs that the tide is turning, even here. He even tries to read the drive for this amendment as a sign that things are changing. But it's a constitutional amendment, I remind him. The constitution!

If you know anyone here in SC, or if you live in SC, or if there is a similar provision on your ballot this election day, please get your ass, or your friend's ass to the polls.

Stump the DJ.

So the PP got some new speakers and speaker wire, to hook up some music for us in our new fab living room. We have our old stereo back in the den, with the TV, and we have been known to play it loud enough to hear it in the dining room, but still. So now we have speakers, and he is on the verge of wiring them (through a P2C2E) to play music from my computer.

Given that Halloween is just around the corner, and that holiday is a big one in our new neighborhood (our neighbors claim that it is impossible to buy enough candy), he asked me to pull some scary music to play when he opens the door.

It turns out this is harder than either of us expected.

Sure, sure there is the toccata and fugue that folks have played from their Halloween porches ever since the baroque period. And soundtrack music from Psycho and such. But what else?

I tried out "Dead Man's Party," but he pointed out that lyrics don't count, and the music is not scary. Ditto with "Thriller" and "Freaks Come Out at Night," although we are considering looping that great Vincent Price laugh from the former. "Bela Lugosi's Dead" did not scare him at all, and he noted that the kiddies will not know who Bela Lugosi even is--let alone that they should be very afraid of Bauhaus. We tried Sex Mob, whose rendition of "Live and Let Die" on Din of Iniquity is certainly a little creepy, but really the only thing ultimately scary there is how much people can drink and still play music. And Elvis Costello's "Spooky Girlfriend" is hardly intended for the 12 and under crowd. I pointed out to him that any child who could listen to Pink Martini's version of "Que Sera, Sera" without fainting of fright must have nerves of steel, and he conceded that one. I think the scariest stuff I've found so far is Bone Machine, which certainly does not require the lyrics to be creepy, although they are scary in themselves.

But really, I am stuck. Ideas?

Toss frantically.

I'm not sure whether I beat the Gurgling Cod to the Sunday NYTimes, or whether he hadn't noticed a food-related item in the Book Review, or whether he is just not leaping fingertips-first to his computer at such an early post-DST hour, but I can tell you that I read Henry Alford's review of Amy Sedaris's new book on entertaining myself, and did not hear about it on someone else's blog.

I imagine that you too will want to run out to find the book, especially once you read this section about "freshening up her cheese balls":

This method of replenishing and re-forming round globs of nuts and cheese so they can be served at a second gathering is a good shorthand for Sedaris's cooking style, which is the heart of the book (more than 200 recipes are included). In the kitchen, Sedaris is a magpie, a recycler of both foodstuffs and already published recipes. She is not afraid of the phrase "two cups potato chips, crushed."

Friday Random 10: I'm not a circus star I don't need a bodyguard Edition.

Dedicated readers of this dedicated foe of evil may now be asking themselves, "Since when did this become an exclusively Random 10 blog?" To which I respond, after protesting that I just wrote yet another post about swimming, "What is there worth saying that cannot be followed by a list of 10 musical tracks?"

Besides, I have been too surly and stressed out lately to say anything not laced with profanity.

But because you are all so nice and patient, here is one piece of free advice for you: do not believe anyone who tells you that it would work to spend time in Tulsa without a car. Do not believe them when they claim that you could call a cab, or use a hotel shuttle. These are lies. If you do not have a car in that city full of amazing art deco buildings that are largely standing empty, you will eat every meal in the hotel. Every. Last. One.

1. "Like the Way She Moves," Chris Isaak
2. "Love Minus Zero," Leon Russell (Leon Russell and the Shelter People)
3. "Functional," Thelonious Monk (Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane)
4. "Love Among the Sailors," Laurie Anderson (Talk Normal: Laurie Anderson Anthology, disk 2)
5. Track 9, Faye Wang (a disk whose title and whose track titles I cannot read)
6. "If Only I Had Known," Peter Erskine Trio (Time Being)
7. "Hop Along, Let's Get Her," Henry Morrisson, John Davis and group (Southern Journey, vol. 12: Earliest Times)
8. "Mississippi," John Linnell (State Songs)
9. "Shy," Peter Murphy (Deep)
10. "It Takes Two," Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock

p.s. According to my internet sources, the real lyric is "I'm not a sucker so I don't need a bodyguard," but I like it better the way I heard it back in circa 1989. So there.

Going postal.

Our new swimteam participates in the US Masters Swimming Postal Pentathlon, where you swim five events in one session and submit all the times as a group. They call it a postal meet because you swim the event in your own pool and then mail in your results. There are three different distance groups. The sprint, which we did Wednesday night, has a 50 butterfly, 50 backstroke, 50 breaststroke, 50 free style, and 100 individual medley. Then there is the middle distance event, with 100s of each stroke plus a 200 IM. And then the “ironman”—200s of each stroke plus a 400 IM.

Too bad I’ll be out of town visiting family for that last one.

Postal events are a little strange, compared with real meets. For one thing, they happen during practice time, which may or may not be ass early in the morning or else at the end of a workday. Also, even though you might dive from blocks, the adrenaline levels are not quite the same. Plus no officials, so a little less pressure on the legality of turns. But all this to say, postal meet times are hard to compare with regulation meet times.

The way we did it was to warm up for 30 minutes, then swim one race every fifteen minutes. We swam in two heats, and happily the PP and I got to swim in the same heat for all the events. If you read about the Columbia meet already, you might already be anticipating the rematch on the 50 free.

This meet confirmed something I already knew: that I am not so hot at the 50 distance. Each of the races felt fine, but I did not really feel like I hit any kind of stride in any of them, until the 100 IM, which felt like an almost perfectly swum race for me. I did have a best time in the 50 back, but I had not swum that race since April 2004, and after all I have been working pretty hard to get that stroke together. Our coach even said one of the other coaches was commenting on how good my backstroke looked. (But recently our coach had noted that when I’m swimming backstroke I look like a turtle on its back. Nice.) But it was a lot of fun to do these races with the other teammates—and heck, practice was a LOT shorter than usual, even if the intensity was higher.

And the PP did whoop up on my ass during the 50 free. We were both of our regular meet pace, but he beat me by about a second. I’m sad to say I never got a lead on him, and by the end all I could see out of the corner of my goggles was his bright red swimsuit.

Bad news is that racing at night is no good for my sleeping. I suppose I could have predicted that.

Swimming the 100 IM made me excited about the middle distance races, which we’re doing the Monday before Thanksgiving. Stay tuned.

POSTAL SPRINT PENTATHLON RESULTS (YARDS)
50 FL :34.48
50 BA :38.69
50 BR :37.89
50 FR :34.30
100 IM 1:17.29

Wednesday Random 10: Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain Edition

I've been tinkering with my mp3 player: after about a year and a half, I have taken the classical off.

Why, you ask?

I don't listen to it that way.

I do listen to plenty of classical music, mostly on the CD player in my study, and sometimes on the CD player in the living room, and occasionally from my computer's speakers, where I have all my CDs digitized (13,950 tracks and counting).

But I do not listen to it in the car, because the car noise (whether from our noisy old car or the open windows) makes it hard to deal with highly variable dynamics. And mostly these days, I listen to the mp3 player in the car--where I also enjoy playing with the random feature. And frankly, I don't care for random programming that moves back and forth between, say, Gogol Bordello and the slow movement of a Vivaldi concerto. I am all about eclectic, but that does not work for my moods.

So for the last couple of days I have been enjoying Radio Isis on my new long commute. My mp3 player is very fond of Howlin' Wolf, it turns out, as he makes a better than statistically likely appearance in my random samplings. And I love the transitions I would never have thought of myself. Besides, I do not always think broadly enough about what music might work for me at any given moment, and the random feature brings me things I had forgotten.

So! A big set-up for today's early Random 10. I'll be at a conference the rest of the week, so a Friday post is not in the cards:

1. "Trappola Mortale," Nicola Conte (Bossa per due)
2. "Margarita," Grupo Niche
3. "Miracle," Swati Natekar (Essential Asian Flavas)
4. "Buggin' Out," A Tribe Called Quest (The Low End Theory)
5. "The Whistler," Doctor Rockit (Indoor Fireworks)
6. "Fennimores Lied," Ute Lemper (Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill)
7. "Everybody Needs Somebody," Wilson Pickett
8. "Pony," Tom Waits (Mule Variations)
9. "Ooh Child/Redemption Song," Molly Johnson (Another Day)
10. "It's a Blue World," Lionel Hampton

The Mug!

Explanation here.

(Just so you know, it is not easy getting an autofocus camera to take good pictures of etched glass.)

Meet Report: SC SCM Masters Champs

Greetings from the ass-resting period following the South Carolina Short-Course Meters (SCM) Masters Championship, held in Columbia, SC this weekend. Because we had wedding festivities to attend yesterday, the PP and I drove down this morning (leaving at 0:dark-thirty).

One hour and forty-five minutes of darkness and driving later, we arrived at the beautiful new Drew Pool in the Drew Wellness Center: it is a 25 yards x 25 meters pool in a beautiful sun-filled natatorium, with high ceilings, decks flush with the water level and seriously non-turbulent lane lines.

I had not been sure what to enter, since we have only been back in the water consistently for not quite 2 months, but I signed up for the 200 IM, 100 BR, 100 FR, and 50 BA. Then today, at the last minute, I deck-entered the 400 FR. It was the last event of the day, and I thought that would be the smart time swim such a beast of an event.

The very exciting part of this meet was being at a meet with a TEAM. There were three other swimmers (besides the PP and me), and our couch regularly travels to meets, too. It was fun to cheer on the other swimmers, and feel moral support from them. But what was REALLY fun was finally being able to swim a relay. I swam the first leg in the 200 meter mixed (that means 2 men + 2 women) free relay, where everyone swims a 50. There was only one other relay team swimming, but it was still a blast.

I was happy with my individual results, particularly given where I am in the season. I had a best time in the 200 IM, a so-so time in the 100 BR, and first-time SCM swims for the 100 FR, 50 BA, and 400 FR. It is hard not to be in the shape I was the last time I raced the 100 BR seriously, and so not able to pull a lifetime best time, but it is important, I guess, to race at different points of the season, to remember how to race and to be able to tell when I am having a lifetime-best swim.

Because it was a fairly small meet, they swam men and women together, so the PP and I ended up in the same heat of the 100 FR. Over the years, our times in that event have been very close, sometimes with him beating me, sometimes the reverse. But we have never gotten to swim in the very same heat--and in adjacent lanes! I have never kicked harder in a freestyle swim than I did today, trying to kick my husband's ass.

And I did--heh. I can revel in this now, but I am certain that he won't let it happen next time.

The highlight of the meet, surprisingly enough, was the 400 free. Before the swim, the coach said, "So, do you have a plan?" and I wanted to say, "Yes, to just rest it." But instead I said I would swim it like a 200 free, just longer: out fairly quick on the first 100, then dial back a bit on the 2nd 100, then pick it up on the 3rd 100, and crank it home for the 4th. He suggested I not dial it back too much on the 2nd, but otherwise, cool. So I took off, and of course my first several strokes were too fast, but I settled into an even, steady, strong rhythm pretty quickly. "Wow," I thought, "I feel like I am swimming on top of the water, instead of in it. I hope this will last."

Reader, it did.

I kept my pace pretty steady for the second 100, rather than dialing back, then I felt good building the 3rd and cranking the 4th. My splits showed that I did indeed negative-split the last 3 100s. And it felt awesome!

I think that a real difference this year has been the amount of distance-oriented training we are doing. This team does a lot more sets involving long (which to me means 200 yards and more) swims, and partly because of my shoulder troubles, I have been varying my strokes a lot more, swimming a lot of individual individual medleys (i.e., disproportionately little fly). This kind of swimming made the 200 IM seem like a breeze, instead of a chore. And it made the 400 free feel great.

Because it was a small meet, I also managed to score the high points trophy for my age group. How cool is that? It is a beer mug that says "South Carolina SCM Championship High Point." Heh again. I have never had the highest number of points in my age group in a meet where they were giving awards for it.

So that was more competition in one day than I have had at a meet in a good long time, and it felt like just what I needed, after not the week that I needed.

Now it feels awesome to sit on my butt. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, out there in blogland. I'll be sitting in front of the TV, perhaps drinking a beer out of my fab new mug.

RESULTS:
200 IM 3:08.81
100 BR 1:30.26
100 FR 1:15.12
50 BA :43.19
400 FR 6:08.86
200 FR Mixed Relay 2:35.86

Popov believes in Isis.

This just in from Timed Finals:

The world record holder in the 50-meter freestyle, Alex Popov, believes South Carolina’s Isis can come back from her extended slacking from competition, and be “even better than before.” Speaking at a launch event for Russia’s bid for the 2014 Winter Olympics, Popov backed the idea that Isis can return to Masters Swimming competition and be even more dominant than she has ever been. "She is really and truly a superheroine," he said. "She will crush the competition like bug."

Not long ago Isis claimed that retiring from swimming competition was on her mind daily. "I just don't know if that is where I want to put my energy," she said. Popov believes that would be a waste of talent, something that cannot be allowed. “She needed a break to sit back and relax,” Popov said. “But I know she could come back and she would just win. She is that good.”

After a better than expected performance at Masters Nationals in May, and a top-three finish in the Death Valley Open Water Meet, Isis had been wondering whether competition was something she should continue. "I'm wiped out," she said.

She has battled everything from a sore shoulder, to media overexposure, to the occasional hangover. She has moved households and trained briefly with a new coach, before switching to a new team and additional secret training in an undisclosed location.

If Isis decides to pursue major competition soon, she will find herself at the South Carolina Short-Course Meters Championships, and then perhaps the St. Nicholas Invitational--and who knows, even Dixie Zone Championships, date and location TBA.

Popov, one of the world’s greatest sprinters, believes that Isis’s extended absence from the pool will not be detrimental to her performance. "She has done so much. At her age she has the experience to be able to compete against anyone no matter how long she has been out. And all that while being a dedicated foe of evil--and champion of the weak!"

You may call her Hathor or Nut.

Some you in blogland may not realize that superheroes have mothers, but they do--and thank gods and goddesses for that!

My mother's birthday was yesterday.

Yesterday in Isisland was not the kind of day that allowed even a superheroine to sit down and write adequately about someone that important, though, so for the purposes of this humble blog, let's call today Isis's Mother's Day (observed).

Sometimes I try to imagine what it could be like to be her. I know she gave birth to me when she was 27, so when I was 27 I tried to imagine having a baby. I could not. This is not the first or the last thing that my mother has done that I find amazing.

Sometimes I have a sense that strength is something emanating from somewhere. Sometimes I can even stand close enough to it to feel it running through my body, and for a long time I wondered why those times were so often times when I was standing next to her, why that feeling got stronger as I moved closer, weaker as I moved away. Now that I so rarely get to stand so literally close, I look for ways to pretend I am. Luckily for me, I have so many memories of her resolute stance, of her armory of defenses, her statements of wisdom, that I can reach into my mind and almost feel like she is standing there beside me.

Many years ago, when I was first living away from home, my aunt and I hatched a scheme to surprise my mother, so that when my aunt and her husband visited for my mother's birthday, they had me in tow. This did not surprise my mother, because she (unlike me, who just pretends) really and truly is a wise and powerful goddess, and she can see through other people's attempts to be slick and wily, so she had even made up my bed.

A couple of years ago, she had a milestone birthday, and lucky me, I had some time away from work and I got to spend it with her. Every time that September 28th rolls around, I wish I could do that again.

So join me please in giving thanks for the gifts of Hathor, or Nut, or however we'll pretend to call the mother of Isis. You may not know it out there in blogland, but we are all happier and wiser and stronger and better for having her around.

I'm hanging with my best friend, Ibuprofen.

There were some fast people in my lane with me at practice on Monday night, and you know what that means. I wanted desperately to try to keep up with them, but I was also afraid I wouldn't be able to. For the most part lately, I've been as fast as anyone there (at least at evening practices), which does terrific things for my ego, but the challenge is better in the long run.

So do you know what I did? I wimped out. My "excuse," of course, is very sound. For the last week or so I've had quite a lot of soreness around the joint in my left shoulder, and ever sense a bout of tendonitis ended my triathlon career (and an illustrious one it was, let me tell you), I don't take pain lightly, once I am pretty sure it is not just muscle fatigue. I have been doing the icepack thing, but it turns out I don't really know how to approach pain and soreness the smart way.

Which involves not just icing, but also ibuprofen, and apparently my new coach is going to bring me a regimen of shoulder exercises. I am sad that I did not know all this before, because this is not the first time I have had this kind of pain at the beginning of the season. But meanwhile I am pleased to have learned the ibuprofen trick (I know, I know, everybody else knew this already, right?), and I am even more excited about the exercises, which might help prevent it in the future.

And on Monday I have an appointment with a new massage therapist, who my coach calls "The Answer." I am VERY excited about that.

All this to say that those fast people better watch out, because next time I'm not taking it lying down.

Just what you have not exactly been waiting for.

The new museum housing the Ara Pacis in Rome is open, such as it is. By most accounts, the building, open after delay after delay, which have kept the ancient monument hidden, is no success, making no attempt to engage with its context.

Or, perhaps one should say no better attempt than that designed by Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo for Mussolini. That building, opened in 1938, was one of the finest examples of how Mussolini made his mark on the city of Rome: for its construction, old neighborhoods of buildings were cleared, and the building was one piece of several composing an entire cluster celebrating Augustus--and Mussolini's admiration of him.

The reassembly of the Ara Pacis itself was no small feat. Fragments of it had been excavated for centuries when Mussolini's archaeologists figured out that by freezing the soil in the area where the remains were buried, they could be sure they had it all.

That building's construction was not the best, and in a post-World War II half-century when Italians were less than gung ho about Mussolini's legacy, it was allowed to deteriorate and folks decided to replace it.

And Richard Meier was to do the work.

In all the times I have been to Rome, and mind you, many of those trips have been for the express purpose of seeing what Mussolini did to the city and documenting the fascist past and its present legacy, I have never been able to see the Ara Pacis. And this lack of access goes back to well before I was working on this material.

The last time I was there we were able to tour the building site, see something of the planned design and how the spaces were to be used. It was nearly impossible, though, to visualize how it would work in its context--which includes not only other remnants of the fascist-era Piazza Augusto Imperatore, but also the Mausoleum of Augustus and two domed churches. How to integrate all that, without making a cliche-ed passeist eyesore?

Or at least without creating instead a hyper-contemporary monument to oneself?

Now it is open. I have to see it. But is this architectural solution really an improvement?

Let's have a little party in a small cafe.

I just learned that today is the birthday of one bad-ass seminarian. You might drop by and send her a greeting, if you like. Judging by what she's written lately, she might even be too tie-yord to remember how important she is to all of us. Wouldn't it be great if we could all just show up at the door of her blog and yell, "SURPRISE! We brought a cake and gin and tonics and little pointy hats. Let's have a party!"

So estaminet, since we have to put our little party into words, here is what I'll sing to you since I can't sing Happy Birthday To You in person (and actually we are all just as well off that I am not really singing):

We are all very lucky that you were born twenty-something years ago. Thanks to your mom and dad, too, for having you. We appreciate that. And we appreciate you--your humor, your sense, your insight, your compassion, your lovingness, your calling, and really everything you give us. I am especially grateful to have gotten reacquainted with you now, after entirely too long. How is it that the people we grow up with, with whom we share such random experiences, might then turn out to be such fascinating adults? And why is it that we find these people again, we find that instead of living around the corner from one another, we live a couple states away, our friendship relegated to the technological realms?

So happy birthday. Thank you for reappearing in my life. Thank you for the things you write that help me understand the world better, or make me rage at it, or relish it, or wonder at it and my lack of understanding. Thank you for enduring my piano playing in your basement once a week for so many years during our childhoods. Thank you for telling me recently that I was not one of the worst ones to listen to. Thank you for being the kind of person cares so much about other people, who really wants to make this world better and help people find an easier way to live in it. Thank you for your jokes that break my bad moods. Thank you for reminding me that bad moods are life, and life is precious. Thank you for sending me nice messages that help me get through difficult times. Thank you for kicking so much ass. And happy birthday.

He was swallowed by a song.

Welcome, Jonah Reuven Sela. Now we need no longer call you Cletus (the Fetus), or Gaby (the Baby), but can start to know you as your true self.

Jonah, I love it that this is your name, especially your first name. I remember a summer quite a number of years ago that I spent in New Haven, working in the library at Yale. That was the summer I met your dad, and got to know him a bit as your mom’s fiancé. As the years have gone by, I have felt very lucky to have had that time to get to know them a bit, to start to feel like your dad was not just someone I had been introduced to, but who I had gotten to begin to be friends with. And this was about the same time that I started to feel like I was really becoming friends with your mom. Sure, I had known her a lot longer, but now we were more grown up, more like fully formed people. (I do not mean to imply, Jonah, that you are not fully formed. From all I hear, you have all your fingers and toes.)

But I know that you are smart like your mom and dad and that you are starting to wonder why your cousin Isis is going on like this. What does this have to do with my name? You want to know.

You are right to ask, and I am sorry that I was going on. I hope that if I keep doing that more and more as I get older, that you’ll say, Cousin Isis, wrap it up! What is the point you are trying to make?

The point I am trying to make, Jonah, is about your name, and about my sense of your parents. And maybe, therefore, the beginnings of my sense of you.

That same summer I was reading Moby Dick. I like to do that, to read big novels, classics, when I am away from home, staying somewhere else to work in a library. And that summer I was living in a sort of boarding house near campus, although I got to spend a lot of time with your parents, your grandparents, and your aunt. Reading Moby Dick was appropriate, I thought, because there I was in a little New England town reading a novel about people from a little New England town. I would sometimes sit on a bench on the New Haven Green and read, my back to the two little churches there, and I would think about those kinds of little churches, and about the firey preachers who preached in them.

There is a place in Moby Dick where a firey preacher is preaching a firey sermon about Jonah and the whale. (And I do love you, Jonah, but I am not going to look up the page number.) And because there I was at a big university with a big library and without people to hang out with, I took myself to the reference room and found one of those big study Bibles that includes, in addition to the books from the bible, an awful lot about how particular stories in the Bible have been interpreted over time.

And that is when I started reading about your Biblical namesake, who I had encountered before, both in the classic tale of the whale and in studying Hebrew prophecy. But I had never noticed his father’s name before, which I don’t need to tell you, because it is also your father’s name. At the time I thought it was pretty cool just to come across that name in reading about something else, so that I started to know something more about your dad, who I had just met, but about whom my cousin was awfully fond. Now I am especially grateful for that somehow random series of events that led me to know something about you, even though I have not yet had the honor of seeing you in person.

So welcome, Jonah. I look forward to becoming friends with you.

All I need is the air that I breathe

Those of you who regularly share a bed with another person probably will not be any more surprised than I was at the recent attention that the topic of bed-sharing has garnered. What did surprise me was to come across an article about just this matter after our family launched a couple-sleeping experiment last night.

Let me explain. One evening I was on the phone with a friend and apologizing for sounding like the sinus problem poster child. This is not an uncommon state for me, because chlorinated pool water hits me almost as hard as lake water. He said, "have you tried breathe right strips?" and when my answer was no, he urged me to go to a nearby drugstore THAT EVENING. He used them, at the urging of his partner, who was not caring for his snoring.

I did not hit the store that night, but when he said "snoring" my ears perked up. Both the PP and I snore (or so he claims), but I am a notoriously light sleeper, whereas nothing can wake him from his happy slumbers, so his snoring keeps me awake.

I begged him to try the breathe right strips.

You see, three-fourths of the people in our family have breathe-wrong noses, which makes for a lot of snoring at night. Sadly, the breathe right strips do not seem to come in fat kitten size, so there is no helping Jacques Monod, who tends to make appearances in bed now and then, and for whose snoring the PP has occasionally been blamed. (Tut, as you might have guessed, is not a snorer.)

So last night, the PP came home with a little box of the sticky stiff wonders. We both washed our noses and applied them.

AMAZING! I felt as though the great red sea of my sinus passages had been parted, and for once, I could breathe! And while I cannot say that the PP stopped snoring entirely, there was quite a bit less of it overall. And I did not need to put the earplugs until 5:00 or so, which means I slept through my usual (yet annoying) 3 a.m. wake-up. And we did not even use the sound machine that plays a train noise (a.k.a., Sleep train sounding louder, everyone climb aboard the sleep train!)

So lucky us. I wonder, though, how much technology is needed for couples to share a bed.

You say it's your birthday?

Remember a while ago when I told you I was happy but could not tell you why? Well, now I can.

My cousin gave birth yesterday to a six-pound-three-ounce baby boy. During the gestation period, this baby was called "Cletus the Fetus," and I cannot even say how much I enjoyed the stories about his growth, his kicks, the indigestion he caused, the trips to the doctor he necessitated, the design of the nursery that he required--and seeing his leetle face peering through various ultrasounds.

Although I got a rather ecstatic e-mail from a proud grandmother, transmitting an even more ecstatic message from a similarly proud aunt (with pictures!), I do not know the name yet. I do not know if he has a name yet.

So for now, let me just say, Welcome, Cletus, to the great outdoors! I hope you had a good, if moderately traumatic, journey. In many ways, life gets easier from here, but I know you'll always miss that safe warm gooey place you just came from. Here, I can tell you, the day after your arrival is a cold and rainy one, but we are not sorry for the cold (finally---a break in the heat) or the rain (little thing called "drought). And that cold and rain makes your cousin removed however many times (your mom can give us the right terminology) a little depressed and cranky. But you know what? The news of your arrival cleared all that right up. I can hardly wait to meet you in person, but for now I am happy for any and all photos that come my way.

Last night, while you were emerging into the world, I skipped out on my regular weeknight life to hear a concert--Balkan Beat Box (who I had heard before) with Golem (who I had not). Golem's songs are sung in Yiddish, Russian, and/or English (and others too, probably), and they're made up of 2 singers (one of whom also plays the accordion), a violinist (with hot klezmer skills), a trombone player, a drummer, and a stand-up bassist. Cletus, they can make the ultimate haywire go nuts, let me tell you. Anyway, their new album, Fresh Off Boat, includes a song that is all about thanking your mother and father for everything they do for you. You should do that, Cletus, because, between you and me, your parents rock, and you're a lucky little guy.

Congratulations to Rebecca and Amitai for a job well done!

Whistle set cafe.

For the first time at the new swim team, we did a "whistle set" last night. I cannot tell yet whether this term refers specifically to the set we did last night, or more generally about sets where the whole team is swimming together, doing the same thing (but at different paces). Either way, it was fun. And then I collapsed.

The main set (after 30 minutes of warm-up) went like this: first a timed kick set, where (at the sound of the whistle) you alternated between easy and fast, for (I think) 5 rounds, the amount of fast kicking increasing with time and slow kicking decreasing. Then 200 easy. Then a swim set where you swim for 5:10 and see how far you go, then try to go the same distance or further in 5:05, and then the same distance or further in 5:00. Then about 200 easy. Then that swim set again, but perhaps you change up the strokes. Then cool down.

The whole thing came to 4300 meters for me--which was plenty of swimming, thank you. I see from that that this team swims more in their 1:30 practice than the coach I used to swim for had us do. (Less work on specific skills, though.) And during these swimming sets, we took our heart rate after each swim. I am a bit concerned, because after the third swim in the second round, and for a 6 second count, I counted 20 beats, making 200 bpm. Maybe this means I should coast for a while....

Having this kind of practice makes me more excited about the first meet of the season, in Columbia, SC on the 15th of October. We will only attend that one day, because we are going to a wedding the Saturday of the meet, but I think it will feel good to race again, see where things stand.

Friday Random 10: Clang, clang, clang went the trolley Edition

Latest sign that I'm getting my act together? This, after quite a few weeks.

In other good news, if I can get some productive work done today, the last day of a long week, I get to go for a nice BYOB dinner at a cool restaurant here that we have yet to try.

Or really, even if I don't get the work done. How cool is that?

1. "Curiosity," k. d. lang (Invincible Summer)
2. "Squeeze Box Boogie," Clifton Chenier (Zydeco Blues & Boogie)
3. "Talk to Me, Baby," The Yockamo All-Stars (Dew Drop Out)
4. Tchaikovsky: Ouverture Minature to Nutcracker Suite, Georg Solti, Chicago Symphony
5. "She Makes Me Feel Good," Lyle Lovett (Joshua Judges Ruth)
6. "The Trolley Song," The Pied Pipers (Music of the War Years, Vol. 2)
7. "Acetate Prophets," Jurassic 5 (Power in Numbers [bonus DVD])
8. Dufay: Agnus dei, Missa "l'homme armé", Paul Hillier and Hilliard Ensemble (Missa "l'homme armé" and Motets)
9. "Through Time," Roisin Murphy (Ruby Blue)
10. "Like Someone in Love," Björk (Debut)

Last night's practice.

Finally! I think I'm getting my mojo back.

Last night was 4000 yards, and it hurt, yes friends it did hurt, but I felt like I could push all the way through it without being zapped by the beginning of the season breathing issues that make you feel like the world's biggest wuss.

I'm getting more comfortable with the 1000-yard warm-ups and the lack of fins (I swam only my cooldown with them). And last night there were even some intervals (4x100 IM kick @ 2:00 descend). And then a dreaded breaststroke set. I had been avoiding that stroke where I could while I got a little strength back, because it is too damn depressing to swim it poorly, especially while the memory of my strength and speed last spring is fresh. But when the coach asked last night which stroke I'd like for the last set, I meekly volunteered it. Bad. Mistake. Because the set was 4 x 150 breaststroke, with the first 150 straight swim (focus on technique), the second 150 negative splitting (2nd 75 faster than the first), the third 150 ascend (getting slower by 50 through the swim), and the last 150 descend (getting faster by 50 through the swim).

After 2 of them I was really ready to just confess to the coach that I was not quite up to a breaststroke set, because I could hardly breathe and my arms and legs felt like fettucine alfredo (yes, soft AND fatty). That's when Coach pulled out the motivational speech, about how the 200 BR is the hardest event, when swum right, and that to swim it you have to be really tough and strong. OK, OK, I'll do the rest of the set.

It turns out there is a meet in Columbia in mid-October, and although we won't be able to attend the whole meet (we have a wedding to attend that weekend), I think we will go for Sunday only. So now it is time to start thinking about that as a goal....