bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Being prepared for precipitous labor.

    Yesterday I mentioned that commenter Jenny has a history of precipitous labor, and even though she typically gives birth in a hospital, she was interested in hearing suggestions for being ready in case of precipitous labor at home.

    Jenny writes,

    My general precipitous labor story is thus: my body dilates and effaces without me knowing it, i.e, no painful or regular contractions. My doctor watches the progression over the last few weeks of pregnancy. When I am a dilated to a 6, she schedules an induction for that night or the next day. I arrive at the hospital, have my water broken artificially, and deliver the baby in about an hour. It's a little crazy!


    IMO every woman preparing for birth, even in a hospital with an OB practice, should learn at least a little bit about home birth and about how birth unfolds when it's left alone.   It's not that uncommon for babies to come really fast when they decide to come, and once you pass a certain point it's much safer to stay home than to race to the hospital and risk giving birth in the car — or, as one woman I know did, next to a file cabinet in the fire station in her neighborhood.

    Wouldn't it be better to be prepared?

    Here's my suggestions.  

     

    Emergency Childbirth:  A Manual by Gregory White.   
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    My midwife would say that childbirth isn't an emergency unless you think it is, but she still recommends this slim handbook for all her birthing families. It was written mainly for people who might be expected to find themselves helping a mother who's giving birth outside the hospital — police, etc.  It has some advice that's pretty doctor-centric (advising that the mother be on her back, for example) but what it's really good for is telling the difference between normal birth and birth with complications, and how to handle some of the events that might be unnerving, including what to do if something serious happens.

     

     

     

     

     

    Double-make your bed.   You'll be glad you did this if your water breaks while you're sleeping.  This is one of the Great Secrets Of Home-Birthers.  It's also useful later if you have a chronically bed-wetting kid or someone's got a vomiting illness.

    Have an extra, waterproof mattress cover (a rubber sheet's cheap, but there are more comfortable, breathable options out there now.)   Make your bed once with mattress cover, bottom sheet, and top sheet well tucked in.  Then put the second, waterproof mattress cover on top and make your bed again with another set of sheets and your blankets.   If your water breaks all over everything, or you wind up giving birth squatting on top of your bed, zip!  it all comes off and there's a fresh newly made bed underneath.  You can go to sleep in it (maybe with your baby) and someone can wash the soiled sheets when it's convenient.

     

    Got a tub?  Clean it out.  Bathtubs are awesome.  Everybody should have one.  If you keep potted plants in your tub, take them out.  If your tub is gross, have someone clean it.  Or use some of that late pregnancy nesting energy to do it yourself.  There are worse places to give birth than a bathtub, and if you find yourself really WANTING to be in the tub, you'll be glad if it's all ready for you.  Skip the perfumed bubble bath.

     

    Have some clean towels.   If you're perpetually behind on the laundry, set some aside.  Three or four big ones should do.  

     

    Have a package of Depends-type underpads, a.k.a. "chux pads." This is another one of those magic tips for not having to clean up any mess, and they have utility later.   For the newborn period when I'm still resting a lot in bed and in chairs, I much prefer sitting/sleeping on one of these to wearing those damn postpartum pads.   I have been known to pull them out of my stash when the little one has their first bout of vomiting.

    How does the midwife use them?  When the bearing-down starts, someone puts one on the floor (or bed, or whatever — wherever you're squatting) between your feet.  From my POV, the chux pad magically appeared from nowhere just when I started to push — really the midwife put it there.  Although frankly, if you're having precipitous labor you might not care very much, it might give your husband something to do.  "Stay right there honey!  I will protect the carpet!"

     

    That newborn nose-suctioning bulb thing. 
    Images

     

    Some kind of heating pad.  For the afterpains.  They suck and you won't want to be without your heating pad.  I like a rice bag, myself.  Here's a fancy one, but you can just use a tube sock tied shut with a knot.

     

    Consider putting a flexible "telephone" shower head in your shower.  Well, I give this advice to every woman who is about to have a baby.

    + + +

    Since you are preparing for the possibility of precipitous labor — which is by definition fast — you don't have to do a lot of the things that home birthers prepare for.  Like always having your fridge and pantry stocked with the kind of food you want to eat when you've been in labor for 6 hours.   And you won't bother with a lot of the postpartum care stuff, because if you give birth at home, sooner or later you will probably be (unnecessarily and at great cost) transported to a medical facility where you will experience standard-ish hospital postpartum care.  

    I usually buy a custom birth kit put together by In His Hands Birth Supply from a list that my midwife gives them.  It has things like antiseptic, gloves, cord clamps, peri bottles, baby hat, gauze pads, and underpads in it.  In fact, In His Hands sells an emergency birth kit for $12.  They also sell Emergency Childbirth along with some other literature.  

    + + +

    Add more thoughts in the comments – and if you have a story of precipitous labor of your own, please share!

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    14 comments on Being prepared for precipitous labor.

  • Understanding the mechanism.

    I think by now everybody's heard the canard:  "It takes 20 minutes to feel full after eating, so wait that long before you serve up a second helping."  I saw it again today, but with a twist on it I've rarely seen.

    As far as I can tell, the advice to eat slowly and wait between servings in order to prevent eating until overfull is backed up by research — I don't think anyone disputes that it probably helps and won't hurt.  What I think is interesting is the rationale.

      Usually, this advice is accompanied by a folk-theory explanation of why it supposedly takes 20 minutes to feel full after eating.    Here are a few I managed to scrape up from Google:

     

    "It takes your stomach about 20 minutes to produce the hormones that tell your brain that you are full. This process doesn’t start until your stomach begins to stretch."

    "Eating quickly doesn’t give the stomach enough time to communicate with the brain to send up the “I’m full” message, and missing that cue can cause overeating. Waiting 20 minutes gives the brain enough time to register the “full” or “still hungry” signal."

    "Remember that it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that you're full."

     

    There's more like that out there.  The details vary but the gist of it is commonly "stomach talks to brain, 20 minutes required."

    Today, for the first time, I saw deviation from this folk tale in a soundbite-type article — the kind that takes you through a slideshow of stock images, one per "tip".  Tip number 6  in a WaPo slide show that starts here:  

    Wait 20 minutes for seconds:   Food must move 22 feet through your intestines from your stomach to peptide YY cells — the switch that says you are sated. 

    What's this?  Peptide YY cells?  The intestines are involved in the conversation?  How novel!

    The mechanism is apparently a bit more complex, though you wouldn't know it from the folktales.  I'm always particularly annoyed when the advice columnist, or whoever, suggests that satiety is primarily the feeling of your stomach "stretching" or some such thing, and that hunger is the feeling of the walls of the stomach touching each other or some such thing.   That's a theory from the early 1900s that's been well disproven.   (Have your stomach surgically removed and you'll still feel hunger and satiety.)

    Mostly, hunger and satiety are brought on by hormonal signals (even that is a vast oversimplification!), and if your stomach is straining to contain the food you've gobbled, chances are you've overshot it.  

    Peptide YY hormones (abbreviated PYY) are just one of several factors implicated in appetite regulation.  I'll borrow this brief explanation of PYY action in one set of mouse experiments from an abstract:  

    In response to food ingestion plasma [PYY] concentrations rise within 15 min and plateau by approximately 90 min. The peak [PYY] level achieved is proportional to the calories ingested, suggesting that [PYY] may signal food ingestion from the gut to appetite-regulating circuits within the brain.

    (I caution against taking single statements in reports of experiments, wherever published, as gospel.  I'm just quoting this here in order to borrow the wording, and emphasize that active research has moved beyond the "stomach walls rubbing together" thing.)

    + + +

    So why does it matter?  If the advice is good, who cares whether we understand the real mechanism or not?

    Maybe you can chalk it up to different types of people.  I for one find it easier to adhere to suggested behaviors if I have a mental model of what's really going on.

    Here's one example.  Like many folks, I get cravings for carbohydrates when I've had a busy morning dealing with the kids or a long shopping trip or a stressful afternoon.   I have had an easier time riding them out and solving them in better ways now that I understand a few things (the following does not apply to diabetics and prediabetics):  

        (1) they are physiological, not a sign of mental weakness;

        (2) they really do signal low blood glucose, and I really will be sluggish if I don't get fed;

        (3) eating carbs will feel great and deliver immediate relief, but might not last long;

        (4) eating protein-and-fat will deliver the same relief from the craving, because a protein snack really will raise your blood glucose; but the relief won't show up for 30 minutes or so, and sadly it will not deliver the rush of "oh thank God this cookie is the best thing I ever ate."  Still, it will solve the problem.

    How does this help with the carb cravings?

        (1) I know better than to try to ignore this signal.  It's a real message saying, "Either eat something, or quit doing anything mentally taxing until your next meal."

       (2) Even if the idea of a Coke and french fries and pie  is making me go yes yes yes, and the thought of a hardboiled egg or a handful of  almonds is making me go meh, I know that — in the end — the egg or the almonds will fix this problem.   

      (3) If I know this, I cannot fool myself into thinking, "But I really need a hit of sugar."  I don't.  But before I really understood the slower response to protein, I easily tricked myself into thinking that I did need the Coke or the cookies.

      (4)  If I can't stop what I'm doing and wait for the slower protein response, having a little bit of each might be a good compromise.  

    + + +

    I can't say for sure whether I'll be more or less likely to wait that 20 minutes if I know that one of the "you've eaten enough" signals is triggered by caloric food reaching the ileum.  (Or if I know that gastrointestinal transit is not simple either:  "Materials do not leave segments of the digestive tube in the same order that they arrive."

    One thing that does help me is knowing from experience how I've accidentally become overfull.  Can't count the times where "hm, I think I've got room for dessert!" has turned into "ooof, I guess I didn't really have room…" after, oh, twenty minutes or so.   I really have to almost feel like I've undereaten for a whole dessert not to make me all stuffed.

    We have a locally owned, family-style restaurant near our house that charges only a dollar for pie after 7 p.m.  I am a great fan of pie, and so this restaurant (kid's meals under $3 that include drinks and dessert!  No kidding!) has been a good training ground for "saving room for dessert."  I almost always take the kids there after swimming lessons when Mark goes out of town for a few days, and I almost always arrive thinking "At the end of this meal, I will have pie."  

    Keeping in mind the feeling of having eaten too much before the pie, and then added the pie onto that, really does help me remember not to order something big and then polish it off.   It's entirely mental — another kind of knowledge that makes a real difference.

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    5 comments on Understanding the mechanism.

  • Bleg: Preparations for the possibility of unplanned unassisted home birth.

    In the post about weekends, we kind of went off topic in the comments!

    Commenter Jenny mentioned that she had a history of precipitous labor, and I suggested that (even though she and her husband prefer to plan a hospital birth) it would be a good idea to make a few preparations at home in the event of a precipitous labor necessitating an unplanned unassisted birth.

    (If baby's about to come out, you're likely to be much safer staying home than trying to race to the hospital.)

    Jenny sez:

    I would love some recommendations. When I first went to the OB with this latest pregnancy, she actually suggested my husband come in to get some birthing pointers, just in case.

    My husband keeps plants in the tub in our bathroom (don't ask). During my last pregnancy in the last month, I insisted he get them out of there and clean up the tub. I was not going to be a happy camper giving birth unexpectedly amongst his plants!

    Getting the plants out of the tub is definitely a good start.

    I have some ideas, but as I'm about to rush off to the vigil Mass I'm going to put this up here and invite ideas, recommendations, and brief precipitous-labor stories in the comments.  Be back later!

    UPDATE:  More here.

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    2 comments on Bleg: Preparations for the possibility of unplanned unassisted home birth.

  • Trauma in football.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates has a devastating summary of the NFL's attitude toward brain trauma in players.  Here's an excerpt:

    1997 - The American Academy of Neurology establishes guidelines for concussed athletes returning to play. The guidelines recommend holding athletes who suffer a Grade 3 concussion (loss of consciousness) be taken "withheld from play until asymptomatic for 1 week at rest and with exertion."

    2000 - The NFL rejects these guidelines. ''We don't know whether being knocked out briefly is any more dangerous than having amnesia and not being knocked out,'' says neurologist Mark R. Lovell. ''We see people all the time that get knocked out briefly and have no symptoms,'' he added. ''Others get elbowed, go back to the bench and say, 'Where am I?' ''

    Lovell is a consultant for NFL and the NHL.

    2002 - Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steeler center Mike Webster dies. Towards the end of his life Webster was living out a pick-up truck, using a Taser to ease back pain, and applying Super Glue to his teeth. 

    2003 - In a game against the New York Giants, Kurt Warner suffers a concussion. Confusion ensues over the medical chain of command. Warner's coach, Mike Martz, says that the team doctor cleared Warner to play. The doctor, Bernard T. Garfinkel, agrees. But asked why Warner was allowed to play even though he "had trouble deciphering plays," Garfinkel says, "That's a coaching decision, not a medical decision."

    Warner leaves Giant stadium in an ambulance.

    "I would say it's not the coach; it's ultimately the physician's decision," says Pellman. "But you can't have a hard and fast protocol, because the injury is all over the place."

    The whole post is much longer.

    It's probably a good idea to point out that the kind of brain trauma that TNC has been discussing is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE — not just "concussion" or even much more serious, but acute, injuries.  (Here's the CTE page at Wikipedia.) It's a degenerative disease that's the result of repeated, rapid accelerations and decelerations of the head.  First noticed in boxers and prizefighters ("punch drunk" syndrome), since 2002 it has been found repeatedly in the autopsied brains of professional football players.  (All this info is from the linked Wikipedia page.)  Hockey, wrestling, and soccer (because of "heading" the ball) are also suspected to entail the kind of head trauma that increases the risk of CTE.

    If the data continues to pile up as it has been, professional football and its fans may be forced to do a lot of soul-searching.  Perhaps it will go the way of boxing in the public eye.  

    TNC has pointed out that the effects of this sobering knowledge may be seen first in the youth and pee-wee leagues, as parents reconsider whether they want their sons to set out upon a road full of repeated, rapid accelerations and decelerations of their heads.  The youngest known victim of CTE is Nathan Stiles, who collapsed and died from brain bleeding while playing high school football, after a series of hits in previous games; he was 17.

    I'm not a big fan of raising your kids wrapped in a protective bubble.  But I'm also not a big fan of repeatedly dropping your kids on their heads.

    Here are some more blog posts by Coates on CTE in the NFL.  here here here

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    2 comments on Trauma in football.

  • Class distinctions.

    Darwin links to a post about class differences between marriage partners.  Um, I'll just copy a big chunk of this from Darwin.

    I was struck by this post which talks about marraige frictions which derive from class assumptions:

    Oliver and Maggie are young, very much in love, and planning their honeymoon. What should be an exciting series of conversations becomes surprisingly unpleasant. Maggie resents Oliver’s nonchalance about where the trip should be; he’s seemingly happy with almost any destination. Oliver finds the normally easy-going Maggie strangely rigid and demanding about where to take the trip, and doesn’t understand her anxious, almost obsessive research into the possible details of each honeymoon location.

    Finally, it occurs to Oliver to ask a question: “Do you imagine that this is the only trip we are going to take together?”.

    Maggie bursts out “Of course it is!” and starts to cry.

    What is going on? Oliver grew up middle class and therefore anticipates a lifetime of travel with his future spouse, of which the honeymoon is only one journey. Maggie grew up in a community where virtually everyone was flat on their uppers. For her, a honeymoon is the only trip a couple would take, the sole travel memory they would share between themselves and with their children and grandchildren for 50 years to come. For her the choice was thus fraught with fear that she and Oliver’s one and only venture into the wider world would be less than perfect.

    Another couple, Alphonse and Pat, generally get along well until something in their household breaks and a long-running feud comes to the surface. When the dishwasher floods the floor, for example, Alphonse digs out the service manual and his tool kit and commences to tinker with it over a few days until its function is restored. Pat simmers with anger at the days without a dishwasher and the grimy tools and grease stains on the kitchen floor. Alphonse is bitter that Pat doesn’t seem to admire how handy he is at fixing things around the house.

    What is going on? Alphonse grew up in a blue collar home in which calling a repairman was considered an extravagance and in which men were supposed to know how to fix things with their own two hands. Pat grew up in an upper middle class home in which the only thing in the tool box was a cell phone. When Pat’s high-powered professional parents needed something to be repaired, they hired someone and it was done immediately, no muss no fuss.

     


    MrsDarwin and I have very nearly identical class backgrounds, so I don't think there's ever been a time when we've found ourselves working from different assumptions like this. There have been a number of times at work, however, when I've found myself suddenly conscious of my background assumptions as compared to those of other people….


    Darwin goes on to write about having "a deep feeling that 'people like us don't have vacation cottages' or 'people like us do our own yard work.'"  

    I'm tempted to go off in three different directions in response to the post, which has a lot of food for thought, but right here I'll write about the first one that struck me upon reading the fictional frictions between Oliver and Maggie and between Alphonse and Pat, based on unspoken assumptions that arise from their backgrounds.

    It reminded me of my marriage, just a bit.  Not because of significant economic class distinctions between Mark and me, but because of this difference:  A large fraction of my cohort of friends came from divorced families, and not one of my parents or my parents' siblings had stayed married.   Whereas in my husband's family and cohort, almost everyone had stayed married.  Mark comes from a place where it is assumed that marriages last.  I come from a place where it was assumed that they do not.  

    Indeed, during the time that Mark and I were planning our wedding, one close relative warned me (technically not "to my face" — it was over the phone)  that my marriage would likely fail.  

    The difference hasn't caused arguments between us, not that I can remember (maybe it did while we were dating) — but it has from time to time caused us to be bemused at each other's reactions.  

    I guess most of the bemusement comes from me, now that I think of it.  

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    3 comments on Class distinctions.

  • “Why Moms Need A Weekend…”

    "…and how to make sure you get one."   A post at SteadyMom.com that I heartily endorse.

    There was a time, especially when my children were much younger, when my weekend days mostly matched all my days. Steve stayed home from work, which we loved, but the basic rhythm and routine of life for the most part stayed the same….

    I've shed that load now, and I want you to be free, too.

    why you need a weekend:

    * because moms work really, really hard

    * because resignation from motherhood is not an option

    * because a burnt out, exhausted mama isn't a good one

    * because having your weekdays and your weekend look mostly the same is a recipe for frustration and resentment

    I am right on board with this.  

    (I've never felt this thing that so many other moms claim to have felt, this idea that it was wrong to take time to oneself to recharge, this idea that you were supposed to give and give and give and that you should feel bad for wanting to get away from the children once in a while.   Sometimes I feel vaguely guilty about not feeling guilty, but only for a minute.)

    (I've needed time away from people in general my whole life.  Even the people I love most.  So it is not particularly surprising that I should need time away from toddlers, preschoolers, and tweens.)

    (One thing that did surprise me, delightfully, is that I never felt a need to get away from the little ones until they started talking.  Handy for a nursing mom.)

    + + +

    My method for having a weekend is to leave the house.  For years I have taken Saturday mornings as a sort of mother's sabbath.  Mark stays home with the children and I slip out the door before anyone is up.

    Rarely are they filled with relaxation; I usually cram a bunch of errands into them, errands that I don't want to do with kids along — I shop for clothes for myself, or I get my hair cut, that kind of thing.  I take myself out for breakfast, and sometimes for lunch, too.  I go to the gym.  I go to Mass and Confession on first Saturdays.  I sit in a coffee shop and catch up on email and blogging.  

    This is something I look forward to ALL WEEK.  Lately, if Mark has to be out of town on a business trip over the weekend, I have taken  to hiring a babysitter for a few hours — can't usually do it first thing in the morning Saturday, but I can put it off till Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon if I want.   It's that important.  I told Mark that his life insurance policy has to have enough  money in it for me to hire a babysitter at least once a week if he ever gets hit by a bus.

    + + +

    Not everyone wants to spend their weekend (even if it's just a few hours of it) out of their house.  There are a few suggestions over at SteadyMom's post for making weekend days look different from weekdays even if you don't leave home.  

    Obviously, if you're churchgoing, that's one thing that makes the weekend "look" different (because you're going someplace you don't go the rest of the week) but it strikes me that it may take some doing to make the Sunday-morning out-the-door-rush feel a little different from the Monday-morning out-the-door-rush.  

    How about you?  What steps do you take to make your weekend really a weekend? 

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    26 comments on “Why Moms Need A Weekend…”

  • Les Misérables: the film.

    I'm trying really hard to get back into the blogging thing after a dry spell.  

    Acting on a hunch, I declared to the children that they were no longer allowed to set their alarms for 6 AM so they could get downstairs before I wake up and claim the computer in order to play Minecraft.  

     I assured them it was not a punishment, just an attempt by me to reclaim my working and blogging time.

    "You need more sleep anyway," I said.  "Unless there's schoolwork you need to finish, please don't set your alarms to go off before eight."

    + + +

    Mark and I went out this past weekend to see the filmed Les Misérables.  I've noticed that it's received many cool and critical reviews, and I get the impression that it's going to be a love-it-or-hate-it thing.  A local reviewer disliked it (but he also dislikes the staged musical:  "I'd like to say the show never got boring, but that would be a lie: it does stop often for songs, and once you realize what any given round of bellowing is about, you can let your attention drift.")  Jeffrey Overstreet at Patheos wrote a more thoughtful (and occasionally amusing) criticism, acknowledging that his dislike of it might be in part because it was his first exposure to the story, songs, and play.  

    (Overstreet's a little inaccurate, though, calling Jean Valjean a "Christ Figure" — if he's a figure of anything, he's a "redeemed sinner" figure, not at all the same.)

    My take on it:  I enjoyed the whole thing.  I am apparently one of the unwashed masses who, having loved the stage show, doesn't know any better than to like the movie too.

    (Mark enjoyed it too, even though all he remembered of the story was the TL;DR:  Jean Valjean is chased by a policeman.)

    I've seen the opera form of Les Misérables on stage, performed by top regional/traveling companies three times.  I own 3 different soundtracks, and I know the libretto by heart, including the French concept album.  (Come on everybody!  Á la volonté du peuple!  et á la santé du progrès, Remplis ton coeur d'un vin rebelle, Et á demain, ami fidèle…)

    Let's discuss the big-name stars.

    • Anne Hathaway: surprisingly good, I don't know why anyone was complaining.
    • Russell Crowe: Good on him for stepping up to the plate and trying so hard. Javert does deserve a stronger voice, but I couldn't blame Russell; just wanted to pat him on the head and say "You're doing a GOOD JOB." 
    • Sacha Baron-Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter were fine, but I kept wishing they were Eric Idle and Madeline Kahn for some reason. 

    Overall an excellent adaptation of the stage to the screen, retaining the stagey feel very well without trying to BE a stage production when it couldn't possibly have been, while exploiting well the things that cinema excels in.

    In particular, the close-up solos ("I Dreamed A Dream," "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables") were fantastic — they all really took the strengths of film and ran with them.  The film is being mocked for its close-ups, but I thought that the close-up was a good translation — into film — of the "spotlight" effect that's the best a stage production can do to highlight a character.

    The live-singing technique transformed the songs, especially the emotional solo songs, into something new.  (Here's a little video that explains it if you're unfamiliar) When you know the recorded versions very well, as I do — I  blast show tunes in the car from time to time to cheer myself up — you get accustomed to a certain "polish" on the voices.  In a stage production, the singer has no choice but to (a) belt it out, so that she can be heard all the way to the back of the theater, and (b) follow the timing of the orchestra.  

    But with the live singing, the actress/singer could adjust her voice timbre and volume, and the timing of the phrases to match the emotion of the moment.  (An earpiece provided a live piano accompaniment to keep them on key.)   Instead of the singer following the orchestra, the orchestral accompaniment was instead added later to match the singer.   This makes a big difference in "I Dreamed A Dream," which is placed here after Fantine's descent into prostitution, and in "Empty Chairs and Empty Tables."  Both of these characters are grieving, and you know, grief only sometimes calls for you to belt it out to the back of the hall, and it goes at its own pace.

    I forgot where I was and fell into the story and the screen for at least the first half, although that was possibly an effect of the two margaritas I downed before the film.

    (My new favorite date is to go out for nachos and too many margaritas at the bar next door to the theater, and then sober up while watching the movie.)  

    There was a certain grittiness to the look of it all which the film wore very well, too.

    I expect that if you go to it expecting it to be cinematic you will be disappointed; if you go to it because you love the stage production and you want it to be stagey you will be happy. 

    Here's the Overstreet review again:

    Hey, I have no problem applauding a narrative as profound as this one. But here I go again, digging out Ebert’s fundamental rule of film criticism: “A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it.” The filmmakers don’t get credit for the story; that belongs to Victor Hugo. As Gandalf might say, all the filmmakers have to do is “decide is what to do with the material that is given to us.” These filmmakers made me feel like I was suffocating, and I was oh so glad to get out of that theater.

    See, what I think Overstreet misses here is that this movie is not about what he thinks when it is about how it is about it.  It's not a movie about Restoration France.  It's a movie about the blockbuster stage opera Les Misérables about Restoration France.    The point is to bring the experience of the opera to new audiences in a new way.  And the movie goes about being about a blockbuster stage opera very well.  

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    4 comments on Les Misérables: the film.

  • So how did that whirlwind overview of Spanish for Latin speakers go, bearing?

    We're halfway into our school year and I thought I'd report back on an idea I had earlier that gathered some interest in the combox.   A little more than a year ago I wrote:

    The Memoria Press Latin programs that we are using – Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, and First Form Latin – all have a component that examines Latin-derived words in the English language.  It has seemed like a bit of a waste of time, sort of an afterthought, and we really haven't used it much at all.  But what if instead of learning about Latin-derived words in English, we looked at Latin-derived words in Spanish?  What if we studied Spanish as a specimen of late Latin – very late Latin?  What if learning Spanish became an extension of our Latin study?

    All the beginner's Spanish programs start from scratch.  But we're not starting from scratch:  we're starting from a few years of Latin.   Why can't we build on what they know already?  After all — a great deal of the effort that English speakers have to make, when they learn their first Romance language — we've already been through that.  Verbs are conjugated.  Nouns have gender.  Adjectives can come after nouns.  Adjectives agree with nouns.  And we've already talked about tense, and principal parts, and negation and interrogation… a lot of concepts that take up time grasping for the first time have already been grasped.  They just need to know how to do in Spanish what they already know to do in Latin.

    I wrote here, a little later, about teaching pronunciation lessons based on Latin pronunciation:

    I made a little chart of Latin words and Spanish words that are their cognates and that demonstrate the differences and some of the similarities between ecclesiastical Latin and Spanish pronunciation rules.  For example: 

    • In Latin gens (tribe), the g is pronounced like English /j/.  In Spanish la gente (race, nation), it's pronounced with a throaty /h/.
    • In Latin hora (hour), the h is pronounced as in English.  In Spanish la hora, it's silent.
    • In Latin signum (sign), the gn is pronounced as in English "lasagna."  In Spanish el signo, the g sound and n sound are distinct.
    • Vowels are similar: A: pater/el padre (father), E: cena/la cena (dinner), I: vita/vida(life), O: oculus/el ojo (eye), U: mundus/el mundo (world) and aqua/agua (water).

    So I figured I would work my way down the chart with the kids.  The emphasis is on similarities and differences between ecclesiastical Latin and Spanish.  I thought maybe Hannah, who knows more about linguistics than I, could talk to the kids a little bit about consonant shift and things — why filius became el hijo, why pax became la paz.

    But I am taking seriously the need to hear a native Spanish speaker pronounce the words, so I went looking for an online audio dictionary….

    H. found a neat article, which I described here, on which I constructed a pretty cool history-of-language lesson.    And then here's where I describe how we got started, just before last summer (summer's when I generally experiment with new subjects):

    Lesson one was conjugating regular verbs ending in -ar — those are very much like the verbs of the first conjugation in Latin. I picked "hablar" (to speak) as a model verb, not "amar," because I did not want to muck up the "amo, amas, amat" in Latin class. So I gave them about three dozen verbs, many of them derived directly from Latin verbs they know, and we practiced making sentences with those for a week. I had them translate from English to Spanish and Spanish to English and Spanish to Latin and Latin to Spanish.

    Lesson two was the irregular verb "estar," one of the two verbs that translate "to be," and then using it to form the present progressive tense — "I am speaking," "Estoy hablando" — with the three dozen regular verbs. The kids liked that Spanish has this construction that they are so familiar with in English and that is missing in Latin.

    What was great about it was that we could jump right in without having to explain about why verbs are conjugated, or how it can be that you do not need to use a subject pronoun, or what person and number and tense mean. The same recitation of the same meanings in the same order: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablais, hablan. There are some differences to get used to, like the appearance of informal and polite forms of address, but most of it is comfortable already.

    After my few experimental lessons, it turned out to take me approximately one semester to get a very basic Spanish grammar overview into them.  I have to tell you, I'm pleased with the results.  Let me tell you what I did.

    + + +

     I have three Latin students in this "class."  One's a ninth-grade girl, the other two are seventh-grade boys.  At the start of this year they had been doing Memoria Press Latin together for about 4 years; we had finished Latina Christiana I and were about halfway through First Form Latin, supplemented with translations I cobbled together from other sources and some other things I added along the way.  So they had had six tenses, two verb conjugations, three noun declensions, and some experience reading and writing Latin.

    Here are the lessons I presented.  I teach two days a week; on Mondays we did a lesson, and on Thursdays I assigned a written exercise based on the lesson.

     

    1- Pronunciation lesson, focusing on similarities and differences between Latin and Spanish.  Saves a ton of trouble as the vowel advice is all about the same, and there are only a handful of consonant differences.

     

    2 – Regular -ar verbs like hablar, "to speak."  I presented our verbs, including hablar, exactly as we would learn a new Latin verb:  through recitation.  Hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan.  We compared it to the first conjugation in Latin.    I also gave them a little chart that contained the infinitive, gerund (hablando, "speaking"), and participle (hablado, "spoken").  And I gave them a lexicon of about thirty completely regular -ar verbs and their meanings, including all the ones I could find that are cognates of Latin words they know:  convocar and adorar and amar and habitar and laborar and navegar and narrar…


     3 – The irregular verb estar, which is one of two "to be" verbs.   Again, we recited it (estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están), and I taught the gerund and the participle as well as the infinitive.  They learned a little bit about the usage difference between estar and ser (the other "to be" verb), and then I taught the present progressive tense, which uses estar + gerund just as in English:  hablo = "I speak," but estoy hablando = "I am studying."  

    Three lessons in and already two ways to speak about what is happening now!

     

    4 – Regular -er verbs like comer, "to eat."  I taught this lesson just the same as Lesson 2, but keyed to the second conjugation in Latin: Spanish deber is the exact cognate of Latin debere.  I explained that what we call the "stem" in Spanish is short one vowel — for example, the Latin stem of debere is debe-, with endings -o, -s, -t, -mus and so on, but the Spanish stem of deber is deb– and the vowel is considered part of the endings -o, -es, -e, -emos and so on.  And I gave them more words for their lexicon — about ten completely regular -er verbs.

     

    5 – Irregular verb haber, the helping verb for the perfect tense.  I taught it like the other verbs (he, has, ha, hemos, habéis, han), and then showed them how to use it with the past participle to form the perfect tense (como = "I eat," he comido = "I have eaten, I ate.")  Also habiendo comido ("having eaten…") and haber de comer (to be supposed to eat, to "have to eat.")

     

    6 – Regular -ir verbs like vivir = "to live."  Compared the conjugation to the two other families of verbs.  Added a dozen more verbs to their lexicon.

     

    7 – The irregular verb ir, "to go."  Voy, vas, va, vamos, vaís, van.  I built on that to teach the immediate future construction, ir + a + infinitive, which is very much like English:  vamos a decidir = "we're going to decide."  

    Seven lessons in, and they have one way to speak of the past, two ways to speak of the present, and one way to speak of the future.  (And in case you're wondering, they were doing fine on the exercises, except that they kept forgetting to add accents.)

     

    8 – Direct object pronouns.  We recited them in the same pattern as verbs (singular – 1st, 2nd, 3rd person; plural – 1st, 2nd, 3rd person):  me, te, lo/la, nos, os, los/las.  This came with a lesson on word order.  The usual order is S-V-DO just in English:  María lava la toga.   But when a pronoun replaces the direct object, it comes before the verb:  María la lava.  And when the verb is an infinitive, gerund, or command, the pronoun is attached to its end:  María debe lavarla, Maria should wash it; María está lavándola, Maria is washing it; Lávala, Wash it.

     

    9 – Irregular verb dar, "to give."  I taught this with a long list of idiomatic expressions that use dar, like dar la hora, "to strike the hour," dar un paseo, "to take a walk,"  and dar a conocer, "to make known."  I used this lesson to introduce the idea of idioms that don't translate exactly, and the technique (from The Loom of Language) of learning to think in the target idiom – to get it in your heads that whereas English speakers "take" a walk, Spanish speakers "give" one; that English clocks "chime" or "strike" the hour, but Spanish clocks "give" the hour; that in English you "make something known," in Spanish you "give to know" something.

     

     10 – Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, i.e., object pronouns that refer back to the subject:  me, te, se, nos, os, se.  As in, El gato se lava, "the cat washes itself."  I needed this lesson in order to teach the large class of …

     

    11 – Pronominal verbs, which have a reflexive pronoun as their object.  I felt I had to explain these before we could do any dictionary work, because they get their own entry in the dictionary with the pronoun stuck on the end, and I feared the kids wouldn't recognize them as verbs.  For example, llamarse, "to be called, to be named," so that you wind up saying Me llamo Juan, "I call myself Juan," instead of "My name's Juan."   I gave them a list, sorted into -ar, -er, and -ir families.

    At this point I gave them a dictionary and began using words they didn't know in their exercises, forcing them to look them up.

    12 – Irse, "to go away," an example of an irregular pronominal.  When you go, you go; but when you go away, you go yourself away.

     

    13 – The imperfect tense.  We recited all the forms in all three verb-families.  Thanks to Latin, they already know the difference between imperfect and perfect, so I didn't have to get into that.

     

    14 – The imperfect tense and the pluperfect tense.   Since the pluperfect is just made by adding the imperfect form of haber to the past participle of the verb (había lavado, I had washed) the two tenses go together quite nicely into the same lesson.  Thanks to Latin, they already know what the pluperfect is for and how to translate it.

     

    15 – Dissecting the noun phrase.  I presented this lesson as a lecture, after which I gave them an open-notes pop quiz.  Here's the gist of it:

    • The noun phrase is the part of a sentence that names participants in the action that's laid out in the verb phrase. 
    •  All nouns have gender.  They know about that from Latin, and were cheered to find out that there were only masculine and feminine, not neuter.  
    • All nouns have number.  
    • Nouns do not have case.  (More cheering.)
    • Common nouns need a "determiner" such as an article; proper nouns don't.  (Here I discovered that they were rusty on the proper-common distinction, so we veered into a general grammar lesson for a while.)    
    • Determiners and adjectives must agree with the noun in gender and number.  
    • Adjectives can come before or after the noun, and the placement affects the meaning.  
    • The entire noun phase may be replaced by a pronoun.

     

    16 – Plural forms.  Rules for making a singular word (noun or adjective) plural.

    17 – Feminine forms.  Rules for making the feminine-singular form of an adjective when they know the masculine-singular form.  We compared this to what we know of 1st/2nd-declension adjectives in Latin.

    And that's where I stopped.  By the end of that they were translating things along the lines of "Hace cuatro días la niña sufría.  Luego el médico la ha socorrido."  ("Four days ago the girl was suffering.  Later the doctor helped her.")  And "El espectáculo se ha acabado.  En seguida el auditorio ha aplaudido.  Luego lo loaban."  ("The show finished.  At once the audience applauded.  Later they were praising it.")

    I think that's not bad for 17 lessons, eh?

    Now we're starting something new:  we're using a Pimsleur audio course to work on spoken Spanish. I'm interspersing audio lessons with grammar and translation lessons based on the material in the audio course.  

    For example, after the first audio lesson, which introduces the utterances Entiendo ("I understand") and ¿Entiende? ("Do you understand?"), I taught them on paper to conjugate entender, which has regular endings but, like many, many otherwise-regular Spanish verbs, undergoes a stem change ("in the boot", as my high school French teacher called it when French verbs did it)  to make entiendo, entiendes, entiende, entendemos, entendéis, entienden.  This is a recurring pattern, and is necessary to know if you're going to try to find verbs like this in the dictionary.  

    After subsequent audio lessons, I did translation exercises based entirely on phrases that had been spoken in the most recent lesson.

    I didn't have any goals, starting out, other than to see what would happen, how fast they could learn, if we built on what we already knew from Latin.   I'm really pleased with how it's going.

     

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  • Zoning quirks.

    A number of people, some in my area, were surprised by my comment in the last post that we can't legally finish our basement in Minneapolis.

    Lemme  'splain.  

    • Our lot is zoned R1A:  residential, single-family.  
    • R1A properties are zoned for a minimum lot size of 5,000 square feet and a minimum floor area ratio of (habitable floor area)/(lot area) = 0.5 .
    • The lot is nonconforming, only 4800 square feet.
    •  All the other lots in the neighborhood are also nonconforming, because they were created before the current minimum lot size went into effect. 
    • Nonconforming properties are not the same as "illegal properties."  A great deal of properties in Minneapolis are nonconforming, because the zoning changes all the time.
    • Just because a property is nonconforming doesn't mean you can't sell it (without an issue) or live in it.
    • They do create an issue for new building permits. You have to get a variance from the city to pull a permit for creating anything that is new that will not conform to the zoning code. 
    • We had to do that in 2005 when we split the lot we owned from 9600 square feet to 4800 square feet — even though all the neighboring lots are also 4800 square feet, we had to get a variance to create two new lots < 5000 square feet each.   (We built our current house in 2006 on one of the two smaller lots, and sold the other lot along with the house we lived in previously.)
    • We do not have a variance for the minimum floor area ratio on our lot.
    • In R1A at this time no building permit will be issued without a variance for a new multifamily dwelling (even though the neighborhood is full of duplexes).
    • Similarly, no building permit will be issued for a new dwelling that would have a habitable floor area > 0.5 (lot area). 
    • And no building permit will be issued without a variance for any construction that will expand the habitable floor area past the minimum floor area ratio.  So our home is limited to 2400 square feet habitable space, even though many pre-existing homes don't conform to this and can legally be sold with no trouble.
    • In the past few years the rules were stringently tightened up for awarding variances. 
    • If we were trying to get the same variance we got in 2005 to split our old double lot today, we probably would not be allowed to, and building the house we own would not be possible.
    • Obviously it is possible to finish the basement on our own without pulling a permit and thereby coming to the city's attention. 
    • But it isn't legal.  

    That's the story.

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  • This post is so I won’t forget.

    I am coming off an almost golden weekend, chiefly because I got enough sleep.  

    + + +

    But perhaps the causality is not quite so simple.  Here's another data point:  Two weekends ago I also got plenty of sleep.  The last waking act I committed was, on Friday afternoon, to make a pot of chicken soup*, and then — as soon as Mark got home — I crawled into bed with a box of tissues and a bag of cough drops and stayed there until, oh, three or four o'clock on Sunday.  I did emerge, wrapped in a blanket, to watch Blue's Clues with the 2-year-old while everyone else went to Mass.

    It was great.  I love it when I'm just sick enough to stay in bed and not be bothered, and there's actually someone else around to take care of everyone else and make it possible.  There's something wonderfully decadent about feeling just bad enough to justify spending the day in bed, and it's truly a luxury to be able to afford it — because of a background of good health and another adult in the family who can take over for a couple of days.

    I thought a lot about Jen Fulwiler during those hours, counting my blessings and offering them up.  I'd have offered my sufferings, what with being sick and all, but as you can see I was enjoying it far too much to make that possible.

    + + +

    Again, that was two weekends ago.   I wrote on Facebook that my second superpower is, apparently, the ability to get sick on Friday afternoon and be up and about by Monday morning.**   But this past weekend I still felt kind of draggy, draggy enough that I rolled over and went back to sleep when my Saturday morning alarm went off.  

    That's a big deal.  Normally I flee the house on Saturday mornings, desperate for a few hours to myself.  The thought of an omelette and a bottomless cup of coffee and a Wi-fi connection in a busy Lyndale Avenue café that opens at 6:30 a.m. is plenty motivation for me to roll out of bed and get started on a string of solitary errands.  Not this weekend.  I didn't wake up until 8:30 when children were jumping on me. 

    So I got up, and Mark made coffee, and I made waffles and topped them with my stealthily-purchased, carefully-hdden half-pint of fresh blueberries.  As I munched on my waffles, I pondered the lovely feeling of having slept until late in the morning.  Over the waffles I made a deal with Mark that we would go to Mass at five o'clock and then we would sleep in on Sunday, which meant that I had to run my errands (and go to the gym, and have lunch) in a space of about four hours.  

    He agreed, and offered to do the quarterly big-box discount-store dry-goods shopping while I was gone.  Now that's a good husband.

    I ran some errands (library, office supply store), went to the gym and ran three miles, and then took myself out for a Vietnamese iced coffee and a killer bowl of bún bò Huế  for a late lunch at Quang.  It had to be done.  

    (Man, if I ever move away from this town, one thing I'm going to miss are the Vietnamese restaurants.  Never lived in a town that had so many good ones, unless you count Lyon — and back then I was distracted by other food.  Vietnamese restaurants are so well-integrated here that it's not terribly unusual to see bánh mì sandwiches on lunch menus among the reubens and bacon cheeseburgers.)

    I made it back home in time to help put the paper towels and dish soap and toothbrush family-packs away, and then we went to Mass in time to send those who wanted to go into Confession first, and then it was back home for a late supper of falafel-from-a-box and coleslaw.  Mark and I split a big Belgian-style ale*** and stayed up late.  

    And that —  letting the dinner dishes sit and the children run away to play video games while the two of us kill a bottle together — is about as good as domestic bliss gets around here.

    + + +

    Sunday was for sleeping in.  I sent a child to fetch bacon from the basement freezer, and we made enough so that everyone could have LOTS (three whole strips!), plus I baked a batch of cinnamon drop biscuits — read, ordinary drop biscuits with extra sugar and cinnamon added, and more sprinkled on top, so that no one felt the need to drown them in honey.  I don't think we had breakfast till 10:15, which is CRAZY.  

     I sat around in my pajamas and read stories to kids.  Mark wandered around in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee and occasionally moved pieces around on the chessboard, which was spread out among the breakfast dishes.  After a while we wandered downstairs (I dragged a blanket with me to wrap myself in) and sat amongst the junk in our kid-cave, discussing plans for it.

    See, we have a basement that's a sort of half-hearted kid-cave.  We've already hit the maximum finished square footage we are allowed by the city to have in our house, so we can't "finish the basement" (well, we could, but we'd be breaking the law).  There's some drywall up to separate the space into a pantry, a shop, and a kid-cave, and there's a big carpet scrap on the floor, and a pile of mattresses under a dozen or so climbing holds that Mark bolted to the wall, and a 10-year-old TV/DVD combo (with a cathode ray tube in it!)  and a bunch of shelves that are supposed to store toys but generally stand empty.

    Our new project is to transform the basement into a better kid cave — and here's the key — without actually "finishing" it. In the legal sense.

    So we made some plans — drew them in pencil on the wall, because you can do that when your basement is unfinished — for more climbing holds and a real climbing-wall mat and such — and then we went upstairs and bought a flat-screen TV with a tilting wall mount, so we can get rid of the old TV and the shelves right away.  At least as soon as it gets here.

    + + +

    Somewhere in there we ate cereal and crackers and canned kippers for lunch.  And then I did my school planning while everyone else cleaned up the kitchen.  And then we went out for cheeseburgers and fries so we wouldn't have to clean the kitchen again. and I ATE A WHOLE PLATTER OF CHEESEBURGER AND FRIES BECAUSE I DO THAT SOMETIMES AND IT WAS GOOD.  It was Surly Sunday at the cheeseburger place (think Five-Guys style, only locally owned and with local beer) and so I split a Furious with Mark and leaned back and felt the mild buzz and felt full of cheeseburger and beer and listened to the kids chattering about Mario Kart and DAMMIT I was happy.

    And then we came back to my clean house and played board games with the kids until bedtime.

    And I swear it does not get better than this, forever and ever amen.

     

     

    ___________________________

    Footnotes:

    *recipe here, except I didn't have any potatoes and used a can of hominy instead, and it turned out great

    **My first superpower is the ability to decide, just in the nick of time, that I really need to check on the kids.  Once I found my two-year-old, and H.'s, having just dumped a 5-lb sack of sugar on the driveway, on their hands and knees just about to start licking it up.  

    ***technically, brewed by Samuel Adams, but it tasted fine with falafel-from-a-box

     

     

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  • Bun bo hue, three bites in – @ Quang.

    0112131413-00.jpg

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  • I am hiding in my room to write this post.

    Man, do I hate the first couple of days back at school after a long break.

    Yesterday we had our “reading day” to wean them off the steady diet of video games and TV they enjoyed during our extended stay at the g-parents’. No screen time except for the hour after lunch (the usual amount), but they could play or read or go outside — whatever — while I got my schoolroom back together and figured out what I needed to do next. That went fine.

    Today I sat across the table from my 6- and 9-year-olds and watched — exhorted — declaimed — pulled my hair out as each of them took TWO HOURS to do a math lesson that should have been about half an houris (20 minutes, tops, for the 6-yo). My 9-yo has just started a new 4th-grade book that eases into things, and the first section of his lesson was simply to write out eleven different numbers, some given in digits to be spelled out in words, some spelled out to be written in digits. He was given a chart with all the necessary words spelled out, and a list of the hyphenation rules to refer to.

    Readers, this is not a child with a learning disability. Readers, it took me more than an hour to exhort him to finish this lesson-part, occasionally having to run after him and bring him back to his desk (“Oh, yeah! I have to do my math!”), and he STILL miscopied “ninty” for “ninety” AND left out all the hyphens.

    And let’s not talk about the 6-yo. Things weren’t so different for her.

    You know, I am never tempted to send the children to school. Really, I am not. For one thing, I have never done it, so I have no memories of a golden age when I got several hours of quiet time every day, or a chance to work for wages at a job among grownups. For another thing, I am perfectly aware that problems I can see happening before my own eyes might well slip under the radar of an instructor, however gifted, in a classroom of twenty-five children. For a third thing, I am quite intellectually convinced of the adequacy of homeschooling and of the reasons it is the best choice for our family.

    But I am tempted to raid the pile of Christmas chocolates at tea-snack time and then hide upstairs under the guise of taking a loooooooong shower. Also to spend the day shrieking things like, “Do you KNOW how RIDICULOUS this is? Do you know you could have been done with this NINETY MINUTES AGO? What is going on? No, it isn’t because you are bad at math, it is because you are CHOOSING not to SIT in your chair and DO it!”

    Something about there being two children instead of one who are both pulling the same thing, right in front of me, is crazy-making. I can only “make” one of them work at a time. When I turn to one, the other twirls her chair, sneaks jawbreakers out of her desk and wanders off to look for scissors to open them with; when I notice she is gone and go after her, the first one starts drawing ninjas in the corner of his paper.

    I hope this is a passing phase related to the “first week back” phenomenon. Because while I am not exactly tempted to quit, I am sorely tempted to cast about wildly for something, anything, that will “work,” whether that is concomitant with my long-term goals and values or not.

    Or just to give up and start drawing ninjas myself. Pass the chocolate.

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