ever-fixed mark

We have two bookstores in Port City, both independent. One has just been taken over by new management. They have de-cluttered the shop by removing a number of bookcases that were previously free-standing in the aisles. It’s opened up the space a bit, but fewer shelves = fewer books, and the selection has become really lean.

I went there earlier this week to look for Our Mutual Friend, because I just read Bleak House on a friend’s recommendation and fell in love with it to the extent that I wanted to stay ensconced in Dickens’s world (the book version, not the theme park). Also, I’m going to London and, in keeping with my policy of travel-themed reading, I thought it would be a good accompaniment for my trip.

There was not a single Dickens book on the shelves, which made me wonder if the new managers had re-catalogued their stock to put classics in a different category than contemporary fiction. I asked the clerk if that were the case.

“No, everything’s in the Fiction section,” she said. “We should have some Dickens…” she checked the computer, “…no, sorry, we don’t.”

“Your stock is getting kind of thin, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Well, not much comes out in the winter,” she said. “In spring there will be a lot more available.”

I did a quick double-take to make sure that I had not accidentally fallen through a trapdoor into the Gap. “But these are books,” I said. “They’ve been publishing books for hundreds of years. There’s, like, a whole back catalog to choose from. If you wanted to stock your shelves. You know, to sell some books and make some money.”

“We can order anything you like and have it here in a few days,” she said brightly.

Awesome. Now I can look up books on-line and walk all the way down here to order them from you and then walk back again, a week later, to pick them up.

When these guys go out of business I, for one, will welcome our Barnes and Noble overlords.

I just got around to reading the Sunday paper. My Sunday turned out to be a bit busier than I had planned. I took the boys and the dog for a hike in the woods, thinking to tire them all out before bedtime, when I would sit and luxuriate with the Week in Review. Dog decided to roll in something dead, though, necessitating an emergency trip to the self-service dog wash. (Which is why, fellow motorists on 495 North, you may have overheard someone in the next car on her cell phone yelling, “Wash and Wag! Wash and Wag!” at the hapless non-local 411 representative.) What with Dog trying to climb out of the tub and Minor trying to climb in the tub, I was too worn out by the end of the evening to do anything but lie on my couch, drink an Anchor Steam, eat some takeout, and watch the Oscars.

So it was lunchtime today before I had the pleasure of reviewing David Brooks’s latest polemic against “hipster parents” in “black-on-black maternity tunics” who “would get the vapors if their tykes were caught listening to Disney tunes”:

Don’t they observe that with their inevitable hummus snacks, their pastel-free wardrobes, their unearned sense of superiority and their abusively pretentious children’s names like Anouschka and Elijah, they are displaying a degree of conformity that makes your average suburban cul-de-sac look like Renaissance Florence?

Hmm. I don’t think I could ever be described as a “hipster,” but something tells me that non-conservative moi would be lumped in with the targets of Brooks’s attack. I love hummus; I favor clothing that is “black on black” (or as we call it in these parts, “black”); one of my children has an unusual name (named after his immigrant grandfather, but whatever); and I am no fan of Disney tunes. My sense of superiority, however, is entirely earned.

I’m not sure what he would have me do, though. Whose tastes am I supposed to consult when choosing clothing, food, and music for my pre-verbal children but my own? I guess I could just give them the credit cards and let them run wild. Or some well-meaning conservatives could pass some laws restricting me to the appropriate objects. As for my so-called non-conformity, I never imagined that my preference for black clothes set me apart from the herd, but then again I never thought about it that hard. Not as hard as David Brooks thinks about it.

Be very clear on this point: He’s not criticizing the New York Times for wasting precious column inches on stupid stories about upper middle-class urban parents. He’s just making the subtext of the original article explicit.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the opposite page, Nicholas Kristof has a piece about our government’s proposal to reduce spending on global maternal health programs. He describes an Ethiopian woman who suffered from an obstetric fistula, a horrifying yet totally treatable condition. Although he wasn’t able to tie the reduction in spending to this health issue in a compelling way, his article raises an important issue that is worth our time, whereas his counterpart on the other page basically wrote a snarky blog post.

A few weeks ago, the local theater ran Marie Antoinette and The Queen back to back, in an apt if short-lived theme. I was sorry to miss Marie Antoinette because our book club just read it, and I had been fascinated by the sophisticated and scurrilous media coverage of the French court, as well as the performance-art aspect of their lives (among other things, the fact that the public was invited to watch them eat).

I did catch The Queen, though, which is up for several Oscars, and despite the narrow scope of the story, I found it strangely entertaining. The film details the few weeks directly after Princess Diana’s death, when the monarchy lost favor with the public due to its tepid response. Helen Mirren is not very like Queen Elizabeth physically, but she was effective portraying someone who is not just clinging to the past, but genuinely horrified by all the false sentiment courted by Diana in her life and lavished upon her after her death. In the latter respect, Husband and I found ourselves firmly on the side of the queen, and we were rooting for her to stick to her guns and refuse to add anything to the funeral circus. Alas, she caved, and the British monarchy lived to see another day.

I remember Diana’s death very well. Just before her accident, I had been traveling around Indonesia. I was staying with friends in Surabaya when I got an e-mail from home informing me that my younger cousin had been killed in a plane crash, along with one of her friends. It was a sightseeing flight in a beach town. Her family was crushed. Due to the time change and the length of the flight, I wouldn’t be able to make it back in time for her funeral.

I flew to Bali, from which my departing flight was scheduled to leave, and hung around the beach by myself for a few days just waiting to go home. It was paradise, but I didn’t enjoy it. On my last evening, I got sick and developed a fever, something that has happened to me rarely as an adult. I couldn’t sleep, so I just stayed up most of the night watching CNN. At some point I heard the news of Diana’s crash. By the time my plane took off, I had not yet heard the outcome, but when I got to Los Angeles I remember seeing a Time magazine with her picture on the cover, announcing her death.

When I got back to Chicago, I was stunned to see the amount of media attention devoted to her death. I had thought it would have blown over in the time it took for me to fly back and recover from jet lag, but it didn’t. At the time I lived half a block from the Wrigley Building, where people who were waiting in line to sign a memorial book had set up a spontaneous makeshift memorial with candles, balloons, and other tributes. I think that surprised me more than anything else–that people in the Heartland, USA, would wait in line to sign a book that no one would see, for a woman that none of them knew.

I was appalled, actually, by the ostentatious grieving that the general public seemed almost to enjoy, especially in contrast to the real mourning that my aunt and her family were doing. I had never been a huge fan of Diana, who in my opinion played the victim card a little too often for someone so privileged. I felt a little bit of sympathy for her youthful mistake in selling herself in the royal marriage market–why didn’t her friends and family try to talk her out of it?–but she was, nominally, an adult when she did it, and unlike Marie Antoinette she did have a choice about it. She had endless resources to make something of her life, in spite of her lackluster marriage and dreadful in-laws, and I didn’t find her subsequent choices especially heroic.

On the other hand…I thought if my aunt was going to be in mourning, it was fitting that the rest of the world should mourn alongside her, if not with her. And, who knows–maybe all those hysterical people waiting in line at the Wrigley building were secretly grieving their own losses.

Last week, I took some vacation from work. No grand plans, just a little dolce far niente of the kind that I can only do when I am home and they are not.

I thought I might use the week to get back into running, which has been neglected during my travels. But I started out the week so tired and sore from a weird rib inflammation I’ve been dealing with for nearly a year. In its latest incarnation, I wake up every morning with sharp, shocky muscle pains all around my rib cage. The pain dissipates after I rise and take a few ibuprofen. Anyway, the last thing I’ve wanted to do is put on a constricting running bra, so I thought, “Hey, why not try to take a yoga class every day this week and see if that helps?”

I’m rich in yoga options here, because there are three studios I frequent, a fourth I’ve been meaning to try, and the gym, which offers a few classes. Nonetheless, by Tuesday I had already fallen short of my goal, because I couldn’t find a class that fit into my baby-entertaining, book-reading, movie-going schedule. And Friday when I checked out the new yoga studio, I found that they had switched to All Nutjob Programming and there was nary a yoga class on the schedule. (Seriously, click through and look at that program. “From Angels to Archetypes: The Magic and Mystery of SoulCollage”? “Intuitive Nutrition or Angel Readings”? How do these people stay in business? I am pretty sure that “New Agers” are not a protected class, so I am still free to make fun of them without endangering any future presidential campaign blogging gigs. Kucinich! Call me!)

I did manage four classes last week, and by Saturday I was feeling pretty great. On the Visual Analog Scale, on Monday morning I was inching up toward “Worst Pain Imaginable,” but by Saturday afternoon I was right down at “No Pain at All.” Of course it’s all been undone by the past two days spent in the house with a cranky sick baby avoiding the ice storm and attendant 40-, 50-, or 70-mph winds, depending on your weather source. But it was great while it lasted.

When I attended my first yoga class, I was shocked to see there was no mirror in the studio. Dance classes always have at least one large mirror in the front of the room, and sometimes side mirrors as well. The teacher and all the students face the mirror; the teacher demonstrates a move, and the students try to imitate it, checking their form against his or hers. The teacher uses his or her voice to help the students remember the combinations, trying to evoke muscle memory through auditory stimulation. In ballet class, this is done in a combination of French and nonsense syllables to fill out the rhythm; in other classes, the teachers provide or make up names from the steps. Occasionally the teacher will offer a verbal correction, but the majority of information about what you’re supposed to be doing is visual.

Yoga is very different. There’s no mirror, and participants frequently have their eyes closed or are in contorted positions where they can’t see the instructor. The majority of information that comes from the instructor is therefore verbal. He or she gives the names of the poses, usually in English and in Sanskrit, but then provides a wealth of additional information about how to perform the pose. For instance, this pose (standing up) can generate hundreds of words: “Ground your feet, spreading your toes out and then gripping the mat, then center your weight on your feet. Roll your thighs backward and tip your pelvis forward. Lengthen your side body…” and so on.

This constant narration probably drives some people crazy, but I think it’s fascinating because it’s so much more effective on my practice than just seeing and imitating. It’s amazing how being told to “breathe into the back” lessens the pain of one pose, or how hearing “draw everything inward” lets me do a frog stand.

Yoga is known as a spiritual practice, but for me it’s all biomechanics and linguistics. (Which sounds like an awesome double major.)

And if you want to do yoga at home, to address Julia’s question a few posts back, you can download one hour-long class a day from Yoga Today, or stream them live. Go here to choose a class. I’ll have to save RSS feeds and podcasts for another post.

Speaking of clubs…

This weekend, my friend hosted a surprise 60th-birthday party for her boyfriend at a private club in town.

Let’s put aside, for the moment, the fact that a woman who is exactly my age has a significant other who is about to be 60, and when they appear in public together people DON’T chastise him angrily for defiling a flower of young womanhood, which is what I would expect to happen if I dated a 60-year-old. Let’s talk instead about the boys’ version of a club.

The D——- Club (to use the 19th-century convention) is located a block from our house. We pass it every time we go to or return from town. It’s marked only by a discreet sign, and it has no web presence whatsoever, so for years we’ve wondered what the heck it was.

The first time we passed it, Husband said, “I want a club.”

“You?” I asked, pointing out that he was neither sporty nor social nor philanthropic, the typical raisons d’être for men’s clubs.

“I’m not interested in any of that. I just want a place where I can retire after dinner, drink brandy, and smoke cigars. Like Bertie Wooster and the Drones Club.”

The Palliser novels are rife with men’s clubs of that description, but I told Husband that outside of London or New York or the nineteenth century, that kind of club was probably no longer in vogue.

Fast forward to this weekend, when we got to see the inside of the club and found out that it is in fact a place where men go to hang out, drink brandy and smoke cigars. By design it eschews any sporty, business, or philanthropic purpose.

That started me thinking. What if the mothers’ club raised dues, bought themselves a cool little clubhouse, and turned it into a private bar and lounge for mothers to use to socialize their cares away? Children, men, and improving activities would be expressly forbidden. Wouldn’t that be better than a playgroup, a newsletter, and a Hallowe’en party?

Mothers who drink. Can you imagine the consternation?

I belong to a local mothers’ club, a group that arranges playgroups, hosts special events for kids and parents, and aggregates information about monthly happenings in the area in a newsletter it distributes to all members. Admission is open to anyone who can pay the dues ($35 a year), and women from all over the North Shore join, although the club bears the name of our town. There must be upwards of 300 members by now, so many that I know only a small portion, and in fact when I meet someone new I’m never sure whether they’re in the mothers’ club or not. What I’m getting at here is that this is hardly an exclusive group. There’s no secret handshake, no special members-only jacket, no blackball process. Yet about once a week I meet a woman who says she is hesitant to join the mothers’ club because she fears the other mothers will be “too snooty.”

Now, I’m not the rush chair for the mothers’ club, and I could care less whether you join or not. I do, however, hear this kind of characterization of “other mothers” all the time, both in real life and on the web. Women constantly express their distaste for “other mothers” who are too conventional, too cliquey, too materialistic, too snobby. This strikes me as the worst kind of reverse snobbism: “They’re all housebound suburban Stepford wives, whereas I…I’m an iconoclast who just happened to reproduce and was forcibly relocated to the suburbs by the Witness Protection Program.”

Hey, I’m as judgmental as the next person. There are mothers I want to hang with and those I don’t. I’m sure that there are women in the mothers’ club who are conventional, cliquey, materialistic, AND snobby. It’s a tiny minority, though. In fact it’s so tiny that I can’t really think of an example of a woman like this. Sometimes I see women at club functions who obviously know each other well and chit-chat volubly together, neglecting the newcomers in the group. Sometimes I see women like me who are so flummoxed by the dual demands of socializing and baby-minding that they can’t string together a coherent sentence and just sort of stare at the chit-chatting friends, unable to break in. There are no mean girls here, though. So from whence this disdain?

It smells a little like sexism to me. “Girls are catty,” “Women are too emotional to think rationally,” “Mothers are shallow thinkers”–these are messages meant to diminish us. Why should we buy into this bull? Why should we repeat it, at least without being really, really sure that we mean it? I mean, isn’t Linda Hirshman fulfilling this role more than ably?

This morning, during a break in my meeting, I logged on to a Boston web site to catch up on the marketing terrorists, a story I completely missed yesterday as I obliviously drove to and from Boston. Instead, a story about a local fishing boat caught my eye. The boat with two crew members has been missing off the coast of Maine since 2 a.m. this morning when it sent out a distress call. The Coast Guard is searching for it, but there is no news so far.

Port City is not a big fishing center, but we have three or four local boats that the boys and I see docked on the river almost every day. The Ladyluck is one of them. In fine weather you can barely spot them among the pleasure craft, but when it turns cold they’re the only boats on the seascape. They’re frequently featured in the prints by local artists and photographers. These unpretty tubs with their big nets and unwieldy antennae remind us that there are people out there who actually work really, really hard for a living. It makes me so sad to think that there are two of them out there waiting in that cold sea. With any luck, they are still waiting. I hope they come home soon.

Edited to add: The search was called off this weekend.