Bonnie's On It

Let's Help New College Grads Test the Waters

2012-05-31T07:02:00.002-04:00

If I didn’t have Facebook photos to remind me that this is the season of college graduations, I’d have two very clever New Yorker cartoons. Captioned “I’m looking for a career that won’t be obsolete before my graduation loans are paid off,” one shows a young man at the internship office of his school. The knapsack on his back and the checkered sports coat illustrate the tension between college and the real world.

The other cartoon shows a couple introducing their grown daughter to another couple on a block of New York City townhouses. “Remember little Rosalie?” asks the caption. “She has twelve people reporting to her now.” The cartoon reminds us that there's more than one way of measuring success.

For those graduates not spending the summer backpacking around the world, reality has set in. If the parents are like me when Daphne graduated from Barnard in 1998, they are worried about their child having health insurance and becoming self-supporting in a fulfilling career. During her brief return to Boston, I bought her two Ann Taylor outfits, suitable for wearing on the job interviews I prayed she would get.

Despite my tears when I put her on the Peter Pan bus headed back to New York, my daughter showed great resilience and self-confidence. Eager to start her own life in a tiny Manhattan walkup with two girls she’d known since kindergarten, she assured me she’d be okay. “I’m going to seek my fortune,” she told me.

With a part-time job to pay her share of the rent, and an unpaid internship at Time Out New York to provide give her experience in publishing a magazine, she began networking her way to the first job of her dreams. By Columbus Day, she secured an entry level job at Parents magazine.

Now on the CNN iReport desk in Atlanta and also a mom, Daphne's done lots of stuff since college graduation -- including a job at WSJ.com, a masters degree at Columbia J School, and jobs at three different dailies. In her career choice, she hasn’t sought the last dollar on the table, but I think she’s happy and I’m just as proud of her as little Rosalie's parents.

During my daughter’s senior year, the recruiters from consulting and investment firms came to campus. When I expressed my enthusiasm for a job promising great pay and benefits, Daphne told me that even though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do post graduation, she knew she didn’t want to work in either field. She said she was participating in a series of workshops Barnard was providing for girls interested in “alternative careers.”

At the time of my greatest anxiety about the future of my new college graduate, a friend at work told me he admired Daphne for her willingness to tolerate the uncertainty of leaving Barnard with no job and no immediate plans for grad school. His own observation was that too many kids were heading off to law school, business school or other graduate programs more by default than because of some positive vision of their future.

I share my story not to sound smug, but as a way of telling new graduates and their parents that it’s okay to graduate without a job. No, I’m not saying parents should provide endless subsidies to their kids. Even if they can afford it, and most can’t.

Yes, I can speak from the perspective of someone who works at a non-profit known for hiring talented liberal arts grads for entry level positions. The young people get a paycheck and mentoring, and the older folks get people solid performers who appreciate working in a stimulating environment. After a few years, these recent college grads either rise within the organization, figure out what kind of grad school would meet their needs, or use their experience to move on to other jobs.

Earlier this week, we read of the tragic death of a brand new Yale graduate named Marina Keegan. A journalist and playwright heading to an entry level job in the legal department at The New Yorker, she had written a beautiful piece last fall for the Yale Daily News called Even Artichokes Have Doubts.

“Sure, working at Bain or McKinsey or J.P. Morgan might be one way to gain skills to help us get hired elsewhere, but it’s obviously not the only option,” Keegan wrote. “There’s a lot of cool shit we could all be doing — and I don’t need to enumerate the clichés.”

Her friends memorialized her by setting up The Artichoke Fund, “to permanently endow a staff position at Yale, dedicated to providing students with support in seeking truly fulfilling careers and avoiding the trap of choosing a career path simply because it is the one most readily available to them.”

Would that every college had such a position! In the meantime, those of us in fulfilling careers should help mentor new grads, while providing reassurance to their parents.

NATO Protestors Spark Relaxed Dress Code

2012-05-28T14:10:00.001-04:00

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
The Chicago branch of my extended family visited this weekend -- fresh from the NATO protests in their city. One family member, a partner at a national law firm, reported being told to work at home to avoid sitting in traffic when he could be billing time. Another family member, a lawyer at a global financial services institution, had a better story.

She had been instructed to wear “casual dress,” so as not to become a magnet for protestors as she approached her office tower. And yes, the devil was in the details. She reported seeing a group of male colleagues looking as though they were all set to play the back nine at their respective country clubs. Hardly a good disguise for those hoping not to be identified by protestors as members of an industry associated with one per centers!

This particular family member is a good twenty years younger than me, but we could still enjoy laughs about the meaning of “business casual” in 2012. Particularly since each of us could look back on times when it was considered unacceptable -- and then brash -- for professional women to show up for work in a well-cut pant suit.

If for men, the great moment of liberation means no neck tie, or a just-in-case neck tie in the jacket pocket, for women it means saying "no" to panty-hose. Yet I listened in disbelief as my family member told me of seeing a recent memo at her company decreeing that the wearing of hosiery for women was to be at the discretion of their mostly male managers.

She said that when her manager, a woman, urged their top manager, a guy, to declare a no panty-hose policy, he became visibly grumpy. “Listen, I don’t want to be put in a position of having to look at your legs, regardless of what you have on them,” he responded. The lower level manager wisely chose to interpret his answer as a “yes” for bare legs.

Trust me, men feel very uncomfortable being enforcers of proper work attire -- especially if it means having to deal with women -- and will often relegate the conversations that need to be had to other women. Even if those other women have job titles having nothing to do with H.R.

At the risk of over sharing, I’ll have to admit that with summer approaching, I’ve begun wearing dresses again. No I won’t wear sundresses or low cut attire associated with the adjective “revealing.” But if it’s really hot I see no need to swelter in a dress with a jacket. And yes, knowing that I can go bare legged obviates the need for the pants suits and trouser socks required by Boston winters.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when women pretty much abandoned the wearing of “nylons,” other than to say my mother thought it was scandalous for one of my high school teachers to be wearing sandals and bare legs. Even if it was late June and the school had no air-conditioning. And that was back in the ’60’s, when New York’s Forest Hills High did have a policy forbidding the wearing of “Jesus Christ” sandals.

The forbidden leather sandals had one band across the instep, and a tiny band around the big toe. The two loops were connected with one T-strap. The wearing of such sandals conveyed that a student's mind was on Jones Beach, not the academically competitive Forest Hills High.

Dress codes have the potential to be land mines for those whose responsibility it is to enforce or ignore them. As I’ve explained to young people, you can’t base dress code enforcement on whether the wearer looks great or grotesque in the attire in question.

Happily the crop tops in vogue among young women a few years ago have disappeared. Meant to go with the low rise skinny jeans that could be flattering for some, these tops had a way of accentuating the muffin effect presented by those for whom the aforementioned jeans were a bad choice. Regardless of what they cost!

And now I have a confession to make. I enjoy working in an environment where my colleagues wear stylish, professional attire -- except for the occasional Friday jeans day, which I also enjoy.

On the other hand, thank goodness I don’t work in a place with memos about hose, toe cleavage, or peep toe shoes.

Craig Claiborne and My Age of Excess

2012-05-23T07:29:00.002-04:00

(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)

For the past week I’ve been reading Thomas McNamee’s new biography of Craig Claiborne, The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat. More than 60 per cent of the way through this story of how food became both a source of delight and affectation for those of us who don’t have to worry about having enough to eat, I’ve now reached the low point in Craig’s life. Years of alcoholism have resulted in his being fired from his 30 year gig writing about food for The New York Times.

Of course the book has a description of Craig’s infamous $4,000 meal of 1975, compliments of American Express and The New York Times. At the time it outraged readers that the paper would support anybody traveling to Paris solely for the purpose of seeing what type of meal money would buy were spending an obscene amount of money the sole objective.

If not a page turner in the way a thriller would be, the 361 page McNamee biography is engaging enough for me to want to keep reading. It takes me back to my coming of age here in Boston in the early ’70’s -- with frequent trips home to New York -- and my introduction to fine dining other than veiner schnitzel and black forest cake at the Luchow’s of my childhood.

Early in my senior year at B.U. I began dating my first husband, a psychiatrist who told me tales of once in a lifetime splurges at two of Craig’s New York favorites, Le Pavillon and Le Caravelle. 1971 also marked my introduction to a wonderful Indian restaurant in Harvard Square, great Chinese food at Joyce Chen’s on Memorial Drive, and also a short-lived smorgasbord restaurant on Boston’s then no-man’s land of a waterfront.

Married right after my graduation, we had lots of “special occasion” meals -- dining on food so rich it would now revolt me. At Joseph’s in the Back Bay and Loch-Ober’s in Downtown Crossing, I acquired a taste for prime ribs, beef Wellington, roquefort dressing, and crepes suzette, Grand Marnier souffles, baked Alaska, and any other dessert needing to be ordered in advance.

At my first job as an admin in a cardiology lab at the Mass General in 1972, birthdays meant that my boss treated all of us “girls” to lunch at the Cafe Budapest, another eatery specializing in “heart attack on a plate” specialties like beef stroganoff and desserts with lots of butter cream. I can’t remember any of us not ordering at least one whiskey sour before the food came.

Not that the 70’s didn’t have their moments of austerity. The oil crisis of 1973 meant that trips to fill the tank of our little Saab had to be planned, and I gave up the Pontiac Bonneville Grandpa had given me.

Wearing platform shoes high enough to cause me to experience frequent falls, and lucky enough to sustain nothing more than black and blue marks, I went through the ’70’s listening to Steely Dan, the Bee Gees, and the Village People. Please don’t judge me too harshly if I tell you I still hear the Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music” playing in my head.

Having tried to swear off rich desserts, I have my moments of weakness -- especially when I see cupcakes. Drastically reducing my intake of red meat or any meat, I rarely drink hard liquor -- except for the occasional “organic” margarita.

I’m now making a serious effort to eat kale, but feel like I’m cheating when I get the kale slaw mixed with avocado at Whole Foods. I’ve also taken to sprinkling ground flax seed on my fresh fruit.

Au revoir, but not adieu, the age of excess!

The Nachas Shots I'm Seeing on Facebook

2012-05-19T12:01:00.000-04:00

Lately my news feed on Facebook has been filled with what we Jews call “nachas” -- images of joy derived especially from our children or grandchildren: a picture of a young man in cap and gown standing next to his very proud father, a status update from a dad retreating to Starbucks while waiting for his daughter’s Phi Beta Kappa induction, and a pic of a young mom, her newborn baby, and a grandma looking like she could burst with joy.

Also showing up in my feed are images of beautifully dressed, good looking sons and daughters about to head off to the prom, girls in their tutu’s for the annual dance recital, and updates about children’s athletic accomplishments. Top this all off with news and photos of engagements and weddings.

It occurs to me that Facebook is better than the class notes section of a college alumni publication -- with accounts accompanied by visuals -- of all the stuff that makes us proud. I like the word “nachas” because from my vantage point, my friends are sharing with me and their other FBF’s the things that make life worth living.

Besides, this gives me a right to share on Facebook the stuff that brings me joy: a video of my soon-to-be 11 month-old grandson Jack showing how well he’s mastered the sport of stair-climbing, a picture of him wearing a red Phillies onesie for his first baseball game at Turner Field, or “dining” al fresco. The latter means he’s playing with pieces of string cheese on his high chair tray -- on the front porch of his parents’ home.

Despite today being a Saturday and my feeling sleep deprived after a week of more than the usual number of evening meetings, I woke up at 5 a.m. to row on the Charles. On the dock, I chatted with a former man about town who's now an ecstatically happy, married father of 18 month-old twin boys. He assured me he’d be done rowing by the time they woke up at 7 a.m.

In the locker room, I also chatted with a young woman who’s the mom of two boys, ages 4 and 5. Glad to have had the opportunity to row, she, too was heading home to get ready to manage the “bounce house” at the Spring Fair for the school her oldest attends. Her husband's work requires frequent travel, and she’s a full time mom with a roster of volunteer commitments. She may look for a part time job for next year, when her youngest is in kindergarten, but she’s not sure what will be available.

These are challenging times for my daughter and son-in-law, and also for my two rowing friends. All of them are trying to balance being first rate parents with work, being active in their communities, fitness activities and relationships with each other, their families and their friends.

I wish I could reassure them on those days when things seem especially tough -- enduring traffic jams that threaten to steal the limited time they have, dealing with the occasionally cranky child, or wishing they could stay later at work to show they’re more conscientious than anybody else -- that these are just blips on the screen. The difficulties of today will ultimately be outweighed by those Facebook photo opps. At the risk of sounding smug and self-congratulatory, I’m happy to report that nothing surpasses being a parent, except being a grandparent.

Am I "Living the Dream"?

2012-05-17T07:30:00.002-04:00

“Happy marriage, healthy retirement & green living outrank success in a high-paying career,” said the headline on a news release from Boston public relations firm Solomon McCown. It came in the context of a national poll they commissioned from Anderson Robbins Research.

Some context. . .Yesterday I left my “green” Brookline condo at 6:30 a.m., walked around the corner, and hopped on the Green Line to attend a forum on “The New Normal” convened by the aforementioned PR firm. How do people define the American Dream post Great Recession?

As I walked back to my office afterwards, I felt unsettled. “There but for the grace of God” feelings surfaced as I reflected on the 14% of people pollster Chris Anderson said feel they will never fully recover from our most recent recession. I also felt for the children growing up in homes without two college educated earners in families whose odds of “getting ahead” are reportedly slim.

If my retirement accounts haven’t recovered fully, I get comforting comments from the folks at Vanguard that I’m “on track” and more disciplined about putting money away than the many Americans in my age cohort. Still, Ted Tye, a real estate developer on the panel, pointed out that many people are now forced to choose between home ownership and IRA or 401K contributions.

Having recently refinanced the modest mortgage on my condo to a 3.75 per cent interest rate, I hope to pay it off before I retire. Admittedly, my monthly principal, interest and tax payment is less than my daughter paid to rent a modest studio apartment in Queens after graduating from Barnard. I paid off the student loans a long time ago.

There were likely recent college grads in the audience at yesterday’s forum whose parents were in no position to pay for college. I felt for older attendees “in transition” who may never get jobs comparable to the ones they lost.

There were also people in the audience at yesterday’s forum with second homes, children in private school, and cars fancier than my 2006 Honda Civic. They have vacationed in places I’ve never been to, like Bhutan, Patagonia, and Bahrain. These were likely people benefitting from high paying careers, “wealth transfers” from Mom and Dad, not having children, or a combination of the three.

I learned that it costs the average middle income family $250,000 to raise one child up to age 17 -- before factoring in the cost of college. As for the rising cost of college, one panelist, Tripp Jones, said he fears we may some day have a world where one group of kids gets to attend a college with fancy dorms, and another group makes do with an online college education.

Too superstitious to say I’m living the American Dream, I prefer to say that life has been good to me. My grandparents paid for my college education plus dorm, books, pens and notebooks.

The beneficiary of a liberal arts education, I have no regrets about majoring in English. And that brings me to the 46% of the people in the poll who ranked “being successful in a high paying career” as “very important” or “extremely important.”

My first husband, a psychiatrist who died way too young, steered me away from graduate studies in computer sciences, a field in which I had no interest but thought would lead to a well paying job. His message to me was that if you pursued a field for no reason other than money, you would curse your choice when economic conditions rendered the job no longer desirable.

“Living the dream?” is the question one of my neighbors asks when she sees me in the parking garage on a Saturday -- as I’m heading off to do food shopping and other errands. The next time she poses the question, I’m going to laugh harder than ever before. And it will feel good.

A Technophile's Nostalgia for Public Libraries

2012-05-12T14:12:00.001-04:00

Public libraries in many major U.S. cities continue to see circulation rise, with Seattle leading the way with a whopping 50% increase in the past six years. - Report from the American Library Association, April 2012

One of the best things Mom did was introduce me to the public library. Before I could read, the two of us borrowed as many Astrid Lindgren picture books as we could carry home from the newly constructed Jackson Heights branch of the New York Public Library. Mostly I remember illustrations of tow headed triplets playing at the seashore when they weren’t iceskating in identical snowsuits.

Less concerned about the expense than Mom, Dad later began buying me books from the Bobbsey Twins series. Later on, he bought me books from the Nancy Drew series involving the sleuthing daughter of an attorney who did well enough to give his darling a sports car with convertible top and also from the Cherry Ames series about the adventures of a young nurse.

Once in a while Dad came home with an “educational book” from the Landmark series of biographies. These books taught me that Teddy Roosevelt was the president who grew up conquering his asthma, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, his cousin, was the president who caught polio after swimming in cold waters at the family compound near Canada.

Still most of what I read came from different branches of the New York Public Library. We moved to Forest Hills in 1959, where I entered fourth grade as a free range child. I discovered that if I walked the mile from our home to the library just off Queens Boulevard, I could lie about taking the bus, and pocket the fare or better yet, spend it on candy.

Sex ed was not yet part of the public school curriculum. By sixth grade, I found my own sources at the library -- including erotic novels like The Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill, and a series of pre The Sensuous Woman marriage manuals. Of course none of these could be checked out on my children’s library card, so I had to be content and read whatever snippets I could before I was due home for dinner. I would claim to have been using the World Book Encyclopedia, something my parents said we couldn’t afford.

Fast forward to one week ago, 2012. My Kindle breaks, and when I post a Facebook query asking what type of tech device I should replace it with, one of my friends tells me to get a library card. The response amuses me. Another friend asks: “Can you imagine us having this discussion ten years ago?”

A decade ago I was purchasing the bulk of what I read at the Borders in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. With a mix of more paperbacks than hard cover selections, it seemed more convenient than figuring out when the Brookline Public Library would be open or when I might have time to return the books.

I have a library card in my wallet, and think the last time I used it was before my daughter and her husband got me a Kindle for my birthday in 2010. But the Facebook comment made me ponder the fate of libraries -- given the important role they played in my life, not just as a child but in college and grad school too. I was, after all, an English major.

Knowing one of my gym buddies, Lee, works for the Minute Man Library Network, a couple of days ago, I asked her “what are libraries doing to prepare for the digital future?” She corrected me that the “digital future” has been here for a while, and that public libraries have working to meet the challenge for several years.

She explained that public libraries offer e-books and audio books in a variety of formats, with some even lending out Kindles loaded up with titles. When she told me many libraries don’t offer as many titles as we might like, I thought she’d tell me that publishers, like music and software companies, were trying to limit how many people could benefit from one purchase.

Wrong. The bigger issue is that libraries are trying to satisfy people on too many different tech platforms, using a variety of electronic and audio readers -- spreading themselves painfully thin.

My friend’s info peaked my curiosity enough to drive me to the web site for the Brookline Public Library this morning. After clicking on the link to the Minute Man network, and entering the numbers on the bar code for my library card, I failed to gain access.

Do I need to get a NEW library card?

Killer Mother's Day Gifts for a Technophile

2012-05-09T07:24:00.000-04:00

Reading beach trash even when I’m not at the beach is one of my secret pleasures. So on Saturday night I planned to finish Lisa Scottoline’s Come Home -- a thriller about a pediatrician trying to get to the bottom of what she thinks was the murder of her ex-husband. With a protagonist who calls everybody “honey” and spends a lot of time either getting into her “comfy jeans” or putting pods in the coffee maker, the book is quasi nauseating. At the same time, it’s a good read.

Not a digital native, I still have a hard time believing that tech gadgets can break. Despite re-charging the battery and following whatever suggestions my fellow Amazon consumers had posted online, I had to accept that my less than two year old Kindle could not be resuscitated. The first e-reader I ever owned, it was a birthday gift from my daughter, Daphne, and her husband, Etan.

When my son-in-law came into our family, my dreams of having a loving and reliable source of free tech support were fulfilled. Once Etan helped me register that Kindle, and taught me how to use it, I was hooked and began reading more frequently than I had in years.

An internet enabled model, the Kindle permitted me to download samples of books while riding in the car or go online at home and use Amazon’s one-click function -- secure in the knowledge that the book would “arrive” within minutes. Does it get any better than that?

Like any English major worth her salt, I have a stack of unfinished books on my night table, and a wall of books in the TV room. Like a spoiled child who wants what she wants -- right now, thank you -- I turned my nose up at all them and went to bed.

Following a night of tossing and turning as I agonized about how I was going to “replace” the Kindle and how fast I could make it happen, on Sunday morning I posted a query on Facebook: “My Kindle died unexpectedly. Should I get an iPad or a Kindle Fire?”

While waiting for my Facebook friends to respond, I called Kindle tech support. The most appealing option -- paying $85 plus the cost of FedEx shipping -- would get me a later generation model similar to the one I’d grown to love. All the books I’d purchased for my dearly departed Kindle could be retrieved too. Problem solved, right?

Happily, my FBF’s Dave Pittman and Kristin Johnson reinforced my decision. Dave reported hating his Kindle Fire because of its glare. Kristin cited the pluses of an old fashioned Kindle: very light weight and good for reading in sunlight.

A woman after my own heart, Kristin said: “We have both - we share books between the iPad and Kindle and love them.” As some of you recall, the Hanukkah before last, I opted for the 11” MacBook Air. A gift from my husband, I love it for blogging when I travel.

By Monday morning I’d pretty much convinced myself that I needed an iPad too, because I was missing out on important apps like Zite and Flipboard -- both online news aggregation services. Can I can get them on my iPhone in a pinch? Sure but it’s hard for me to read on a tiny screen. As for getting them on my iMac, why should I be tethered to the desk?

Besides if the Apple Store in Chestnut had the latest, greatest iPad in stock, I could finish my trashy mystery novel before the new Kindle even arrived. After consulting with Etan, I decided to go for extra memory for pics of my baby grandson but not a 4G model.

Is this the height of self-indulgence? Why did I choose to believe my FBF Michael Bogdanow’s response that I get “a library card” was just a joke? Because Mother’s Day is coming, and I have the right to buy myself nice gifts -- including a pink iPad cover, iPad adaptor for uploading digital photos, and a nifty floral sleeve that can be used for either my iPad or my MacBook Air. Don't I?

Have I finished Lisa Scottoline’s latest novel? I’m working on it, but I’ve been busy playing with the iPad and setting up the new Kindle.

A Belated Tribute to Mrs. Schor

2012-05-05T12:36:00.004-04:00

Call me a hater of anything wreaking of hokeyness. I once pushed back pretty hard when a well-meaning bureaucrat demanded I focus on “acid rain awareness” week in announcing a proposed rule designed to reduce emissions of the chemicals associated with paints and coatings.

But New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow today sparked my interest when he announced that next week is “National Teacher Appreciation Week.” Saying “a little social media appreciation once a year wouldn’t hurt either,” he suggested we tweet about a teacher who meant something to us.

Mrs. Ruth Schor (nee Shaffro) came into my life junior year at Forest Hills High. With short, curly steel gray hair and rimless glasses, she delivered a message of brooking no nonsense.

About Forest Hills High School. . . Notoriously crowded since its creation in 1937, the school had more than 4,000 students, and ran on triple session. The kids I knew went on to college. But the school offered general diplomas for those who couldn’t pass the Regents exams, and commercial diplomas for those planning on a life of secretarial work.

Among the alums who made it big in the world of entertainment were Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Burt Bacharach, and Bob Keeshan a/k/a Captain Kangaroo. Other alums included Columbia University film professor Annette Insdorf and twin brothers Robert and Gary Katzmann, who became federal and state appeals court judges respectively.

Academic competition could be fierce and unforgiving, with class rankings computed down to two decimal places. A solid student in every subject but math, I never felt confident enough to sign up for an Advanced Placement class.

Mrs. Schor taught American History, one of my favorite subjects. We learned about the constitution, separation of powers, the Great Depression, and the New Deal, among other things. At home I found myself engrossed in college texts my older brother had discarded. My teacher was delighted to hear me citing Richard Hofstadter’s Age of Reform and Henry Steele Commager’s and Samuel Eliot Morison’s Growth of the American Republic.

Asking me to stay after class one day, Mrs. Schor announced she was moving me into her A.P. class. However anxious I felt about being put in a group where I would be required to compete with the editor of the school newspaper, a Westinghouse Award winner, and the types of kids who had been in programs for “intellectually gifted children” since 4th grade, she gave me no choice in the matter.

With a new academic peer group, I became a more motivated student in all subjects -- even making modest improvement in math. To my great shock and delight, I won the history medal at graduation.

I never saw Mrs. Schor after I went off to college in 1968. Her death notice, published in The New York Times in 1997, requested that donations in her memory be sent to the Scholarship & Welfare Fund at her alum, Hunter College. Like many bright women of her generation she entered teaching.

In an era of greater opportunities for women, she might have become a physician, a law professor, a judge or a business executive. In a way, that’s the point of Charles M. Blow’s column. He wants public school teachers to be accorded the pay and respect that will make teaching an attractive career for the best and the brightest. People like Mrs. Schor.

Was My Screen-Free Dream a Nightmare?

2012-05-02T07:11:00.000-04:00

(Photo Credit: www.oldphoneworks.com)

The Facebook post from my artist friend, Catherine Meeks, featured one of her lovely pastels, and said: “if you're seeing this, you're not observing Screen-Free Week, which I incidentally think is a great concept.”

No, I had no plans yesterday or any day to abstain voluntarily from viewing the screen on my iPhone, iMac, MacBook Air, Dennis’ iPad or my PC at work. My hopes of finding a new pic of my 10 month old grandson would never permit such abstinence. Nor would my need to check wind speeds for rowing conditions, make dinner reservations at LaMorra for Sat. night, or text my son-in-law with a question about one of the few television shows I do watch, AMC’s Mad Men.

When my alarm went off at 4:30 this morning, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. In my dream I needed to call my mother but couldn’t find a pay phone. Nor could I find my hotel room, which presumably had a landline on a night table. I was trapped at a woodsy resort, but the concept of poor cell phone reception or too many smart phone users trying to get on the network at once never entered the equation.

It occurred to me that even if I found a pay phone, I would need to give some operator my credit card information. What if a bystander overheard me and stole my identity? I worked that one out by deciding that I would do something only people in penitentiaries do these days -- call collect or “reverse the charges,” as Mom might say.

Based on my feelings of frustration bordering on despair, I would have given anything to be in Cambridge’s Kendall Square. If you happened to be observing Screen-Free Week yesterday and don’t have a hard copy subscription to The Boston Globe, you might have missed Michael B. Farrell's story about techies tormented by terrible cell phone reception in the neighborhood housing MIT and numerous startups.

If you’re wondering how my dream ended, nobody suggested I use my cell phone to ask Mom to come get me. Based on my level of emotional maturity in the dream, I was in the era of the pink Princess phone with touch tone buttons and “unlimited service” within New York City. Circa 1963 in Queens.

Does the mere concept of traveling back in time to life without smart phones strike you as quaint? Can you imagine Dad gave me an “emergency dime” to be kept in my little change purse in case I ever needed to call home? This assumed my “at home” Mom would be there to get my call.

I can barely remember when I purchased a metallic pink Motorola Razor Phone that came with roaming charges for calls beyond the 617 area code. No “apps” for Facebook, Twitter, OpenTable or CNN. What I do remember is learning to tap very lightly and go for the upper left corner of every “key” on my first iPhone.

Could my dream have been precipitated by the most recent episode of Mad Men? We see Sally Draper, perhaps 12 or 13, engaged in conversation with a friend at summer camp. She’s home in suburban Westchester --using what we now call a landline. It’s 1966, and her friend is on a pay phone -- surrounded by other campers waiting impatiently to make their own calls. Is it really possible these kids got through life without texting?

Sally’s mother and stepfather are away, and her phone conversation is interrupted. The nutty step grandmother left in charge manages to trip over her own feet -- breaking an ankle. After the child calls for an ambulance, she phones her father, living in Manhattan with his new wife.

Entertaining his in-laws, Don responds immediately to the ringing black phone. Were this 2012, he might ignore the call -- assuming that Sally would have the number of a second cell phone kept solely for its hotline function. At a minimum, he might have checked caller ID before picking up.

I’ll state it once again for the record: “Screen-Free Week is NOT a great concept.” If, like Dennis, you’re one of my family members that still has one of those flip phones, please take no offense. Revel in your inverse techno snobbery!

Thank You, Mad Men, for Taking Me Back to 1963

2012-04-29T06:46:00.000-04:00

Editor's Note: After this post went live, my friend, Daniel Ezra Johnson, informed me that the episode of Mad Men I'm about to describe is set in 1966, not 1963. Rather than make drastic revisions, I ask my readers to forgive me for not grasping the fact that each season of Mad Men represents a new 12 month period in the '60's.

By the time Friday evenings arrive, I look forward to dinner at home with Dennis -- preferably dining on "healthy" prepared dishes from Whole Foods -- and then watching television. Courtesy of TiVo, I catch up on whichever Mad Men episode aired the previous Sunday night. Is a spoiler alert in order?

Thank you, Matthew Weiner, creator of AMC’s Mad Men, for transporting me back to what I thought was 1963. In episode 6 of series 5, we see Don Draper and his lovely and genuinely nice, younger wife, Megan, travel to upstate New York in hopes of his landing the advertising account for Howard Johnson Motor Inns.

Who knew how iconic those orange roofs would become for those of us who grew up in the 50’s and ’60’s? I now see there’s even a blog, America’s Landmark: Under the Orange Roof, dedicated to Howard Johnson Motor Inn memorabilia. While the Mad Men episode highlights anything but wholesome living -- including domestic violence and acid tripping -- the orange sherbet laden with food coloring and artificial flavoring, Howard Johnson’s 28 different ice cream flavors, and the gift shop evoke a simpler time in life.

My family’s outings all involved travel in whatever Dad was driving at the time -- probably a two tone grey DeSoto sedan in 1963 -- and stops for ice cream cones at Howard Johnson’s. Dad’s main concern had nothing to do with us consuming sugary snacks, and everything to do with not dripping ice cream on his upholstery. Amid concerns about the dental bills for three children pre water fluoridization, he nixed the most tantalizing of HoJo gift shop items -- individually wrapped pieces of saltwater taffy inside a box with a cellophane window.

In a comic interlude, The Mad Men episode points to a key feature of the Ho Jo Motor Inns, a swimming pool. As a 13 year old, I could only aspire to an overnight stay at a Ho, Jo, permitting me a dip in a small, heavily chlorinated cement container.

What made me originally think the episode took place in 1963 was listening to Don humming The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” recorded in October of that year. A tune equally iconic for me, if not for Matthew Weiner --also recorded in 1963 -- is “Only in America,” by Jay and the Americans.

Aside from what the characters on Mad Men experience, 1963 was a year that for me, then a thirteen year old living in Queens, represented the best and worst of my adolescence:

With “Only in America” blaring on the AM radio in Dad’s car, he and I often drove up to Boston to visit my older brother, Arthur, a very home sick pre-med student at B.U. En route to Boston and on the way home, we dined at McDonald’s. Who knew I would acquire a taste for hamburgers with ketchup, mustard, pickles -- along with match stick fries that tasted better than anything from the kitchen of a Mom obsessed with healthy eating.

Once in Massachusetts, Dad would take Arthur and me to a Brookline deli called Jack and Marion’s. If not quite the New York deli to which we were accustomed, the corned beef sandwiches on “light” rye with coleslaw and Russian dressing and generous portions of potato salad tasted pretty good.

Back in Queens, I was an unhappy 8th grader eager to escape from the fashion show that was Stephen Halsey Junior High. It was during a home room that year that my classmate, Steven Rosenberg, run up to the teacher’s desk and read off our I.Q. scores from a recent standardized test. Before we worried about data breaches, teachers left notebooks filled with sensitive info on their desks during bathroom breaks.

If my memory serves me correctly, Steven, listening to a forbidden transistor radio, also shocked us by announcing that President Kennedy had been shot. Sylvia Plath committed suicide that year. But I had no idea who she was until I got to college and became an English major.

That was also the year I took up cigarette smoking -- if only to dispel any notion that I was a nerdy kid whose mother forbid her to wear mini skirts or eye makeup. Is it any wonder that my high school graduation pic shows a girl with Vidal Sassoon asymmetric hair cut, too much black eyeliner, white lipstick and large gold hoops in her ears?

N.B. The classy Courreges dresses favored by Megan Draper were beyond my budget. But Mom later made me a knockoff from a Simplicity pattern she picked up at Woolworth's.

A promise to my readers: I will get to 1966 in a future post.

Traveler Confesses First World Worries

2012-04-26T06:53:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite Wall Street Journal writers, Laura Landro, used to do a column called “The Finicky Traveler.” A poster child for first world worries, she reviewed the hotels frequented by one percenters. She demanded room changes until she got the perfect suite. This was followed by a massage she might find adequate or a dip in a pool that was just close enough or tough to locate.

Mostly I envied Laura her expense account and ability to jet off to exotic locales I could only dream of. Occasionally her reviews gave me comfort. A Sedona resort pitched by my travel agent was a place Laura found lacking.

The world has moved online. Now I never book travel plans without consulting Trip Advisor -- featuring reviews by ordinary people trying to get the greatest bang for their travel bucks. The reviews saying “ask for Maurice or Helmand” at the beach bar, concierge desk, or spa make me gag. But comments about room size, location, and noise get my attention.

Yesterday, over lunch with my friend Jeanne at a charming restaurant called Grotto -- you’ll find my Trip Advisor review online -- we decided that Dennis and I should return to Paris some time in 2013. This came in the context of a discussion about our finicky traveler husbands. They resist rubber stamping the plans their wives propose.

Jeanne reminded me that city vacations offer something for everyone -- except for the opportunity to bake on the beach. Ice cream and pastries preceded by breakfasts of crusty baguettes and flaky croissants. Endurance walks for those of us obsessed with staying trim. Taxi cabs or trains for those with aching backs or knees showing the effects of years of running on pavement. Art museums for culture lovers, parks for photographers, and plenty of variety for those of us who love beautiful clothes.

This suggestion came after Jeanne and I explored another possibility, a luxury guided tour. This yielded a quick Q & A:

Q: Will I be trapped on a tour bus for hours at a stretch?
A: I can’t even tolerate being in a car for more than an hour. I don’t care how “comfortable” the bus is. Listening to a tour guide pointing out the sites along the way will put me over the edge.

Q: Will Dennis tolerate being on a boat for days?
A: He loved the boat ride from the airport in Venice to the hotel. But the thought of “living” in a cramped cabin will put him over the edge.

Q: What about the other travelers?
A: Jeanne said her China tour, led by a college professor, was marred by a flock of middle-aged spoiled brats from St. Louis.

Say no more! Dennis says he would be happy to go back to Paris. All he requests is a spacious room and good weather.

Amazon Insanity

2012-04-22T15:28:00.000-04:00

There was a time when I refused to deal with Amazon.com. In a rapidly changing marketplace, I can’t even remember when that was. So I’ll just say it was five years ago.

My mother had requested a particular novel for Mother’s Day. Because she lives in North Carolina and I live in Boston, I thought it would be simple to have it shipped to her via Amazon.com. Little did I realize how difficult it would be to challenge Amazon’s “decision” to mail the book to my billing address in Brookline, MA. If you say I was too dumb to follow the instruction’s on Amazon’s web site, I’ll accept that.

Book stores were plentiful five years ago, and I ended up walking into the Border’s in Boston’s Downtown Crossing, purchasing the book Mom wanted. It was simple to have the store ship the book, gift-wrapped, to the correct address. I cursed Amazon for “remembering” too much information, and making it so cumbersome for me to add a new shipping address.

My forced love affair with Amazon began when my daughter and her husband got me a Kindle for my birthday two years ago. I love the notion of being able to adjust print size and read sample chapters of books before deciding whether or not to make the buy. Except for Jeannette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, a book I purchased but couldn't finish, I’ve been happy with what I’ve bought from Amazon.

My enthusiasm for Amazon escalated when I got my Amazon credit card. Okay, this was not entirely my choice. When Schwab discontinued its two per cent Visa card, morphing it into a Bank of America Visa card with bonus points requiring multiple phone calls or a complicated online scheme for redemption, I cast the credit card net wider.

Not reading the fine print too carefully, I subsequently learned that the points I earn for making purchases with my Amazon Visa card cannot be applied to purchases I make on my Kindle. Still, I felt giddy with glee when my daughter told me my grandson, Jack, would love to have a toy called Zany Zoo. Though this giant wood cube with dozens of entertainment possibilities for a 9 month old just learning to stand costs in the neighborhood of $100, I was able to “shop with points” and bring joy to Jack’s little heart at minimal expense.

Not that Amazon makes it easy to “shop with points.” But when I first encountered problems having my points synched to my account, Amazon had a 1-800 customer service number I was able to call. There a helpful service rep who explained that if I wanted to “shop with points” I was never to use Amazon “one click.”

Though it took me awhile, last Friday morning I was once again able to “shop with points” to order a Le Sportsac casual shoulder bag for use on weekends. Because I accumulated new points following the Zany Zoo purchase, I was able to get this $68 item for a mere $28 -- and all because of using my Amazon visa so liberally.

On Saturday morning I reached the end of my patience with Amazon. At some point I realized that kitchen items can also be purchased on Amazon.com. Like the LeSportsac, these items aren’t provided directly by Amazon, but by a multitude of vendors who partner with the internet marketing giant.

Trying to be green, I decided it was time to swap those #4 Melitta paper coffee filters for dishwasher safe metal filters. An easy item to order via Amazon, right?

Wrong. When I realized it made no sense to pay $5 in shipping for an item that cost 89 cents, I tried to order additional metal filters. For whatever reason, Amazon’s web site refused to accept my change. After canceling the order in disgust and trying to reorder, I gave up and tried to phone Amazon at the 1-800 number.

FAIL! When I dialed Amazon’s 1-800 number, I got a recording saying it had been disconnected, instructing me to go to the web site that had given me so much trouble. If you want a phone call from Amazon customer service, you know have to answer a series of questions, each of which leads to more questions -- in hopes that you will actually get a call back.

On my second try, I learned that if I wanted to make any changes to the order, I would need to send a subsequent e-mail to the vendor of metal coffee filters. “Let’s just cancel the order,” I told Amazon’s customer service rep. “It will be easier for me to drive down to the kitchen store at my local mall.”

A Pulitzer for Fiction Is Not an Entitlement

2012-04-18T07:34:00.000-04:00

(Photo Credit: OpenLettersMonthly)

The news came to me via Twitter. “Book world expresses disappointment, outrage over #Pulitzer snub . . . @csmonitor” tweeted @GlobeMartyBaron.

Blame it on the fact that I was traveling on Monday, April 16, or that it was Patriot’s Day here in Boston, and I was focused on the well-being of a friend running her first Boston Marathon. It was not until the next day that I learned that for the first time in 35 years, the Pulitzer Board had declined to name a Fiction winner.

A story posted by BBC News quoted the director of publicity at Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher of Karen Russell’s Swamplandia, one of the three finalists, voicing his disappointment: “The Pulitzer makes sales. It’s a prize that can change the career trajectory of a writer.” While scoring points for candor, the publicist seemed to miss the point that the prize is given to recognize excellence, not boost sales.

In the run out and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat mode, the editor of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King, another finalist, said: “It’s wonderful that the Pulitzer nominating committee recommended The Pale King to the judges. Anything that brings the readers to David’s brilliant novels, especially his great novel, Infinite Jest, is a good thing.

Even more interesting to me were the reader comments. “The decision implied none of the books were good enough, which I think is a cop out,” wrote Violet Mildred. “The prize should have been shared between the three which could not be separated.”

While I read enough of the sample of Swamplandia on my Kindle to decide I didn’t want to read on, I know nothing about The Pale King, published posthumously, or the third fiction entry, Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Happily I was not one of three Pulitzer jurors charged with combing through 314 works of fiction to come up with three finalists. (A twenty member board with only 18 voting members determines the winner, and in this case none of the three finalists garnered a majority of the votes.)

Isn’t the ultimate cop out deciding a prize should be shared? For me that type of thinking is a cousin of believing a prize should be given, not because the winner is the most deserving, but because he happens to be in the final stages of some horrible illness, and wouldn’t it be nice to give it to him before he dies. The prize is ultimately diminished.

Perhaps the most thoughtful comment came from David: “This is a little confusing - there is no prize because the panel could not agree or because none of the shortlisted works were of the right standard? One is a failure of the panel; the other is a failure of the shortlisting process or . . . it has simply been a bad year for literature.” He goes on to say he suspects a “clash of egos among panel members.”

Pulitzer Prize administrator Sig Gissler tried to make light of the result, saying: “We are always sorry when people are disappointed. I always like to think that giving an award is like sprinkling fairy dust on the recipients.”

“It is not a statement on fiction in general - just a statement about the process,” he added. The fact that the process is not required to yield a winner makes the award that much more prestigious.

Am I concerned about the feelings of the losers? Knowing how much rejection fiction writers face, I imagine the two living competitors have skin thick enough to insulate them from disappointment.

Besides, Associated Press just minutes ago reported that “sales have increased for the three books that nearly won.”

When Risk Management Gets Up Close and Personal

2012-04-15T10:24:00.002-04:00

Back in the ’60’s my father reported that Emma Klotsky died in a plane crash en route to a Mexican archeological site. “Who flies with a bush pilot?” he asked in a tone suggesting schadenfreude had trumped any sense of sorrow over the passing of a woman he had known at our summer home in Lake Hiawatha more than a decade earlier.

With a tone suggesting both fear and sadness, he also reported that Emma’s husband, Ben, had succumbed to colon cancer a few years before her death. I have no idea whether Dad ever considered the difference between the odds of dying of some deadly disease at age 70 and the odds of accidental death and dismemberment. I’ll leave that one for the actuaries.

In yesterday’s New York Times, I read two stories dealing with risk. “Among this set, risk taking is a badge of honor,” reported Somini Sengupta, Nicle Perlroth and Jenna Wortham in a story about the founders of Instagram, a photo sharing app recently sold to Facebook for $1 billion. The story also noted that one of the founders had gone to Middlesex, a pricey boarding school in Massachusetts, suggesting he had come from comfortable circumstances.

Just last month, I had the occasion to witness CNN’s Soledad O’Brien moderate a panel discussion based on her documentary, Black in America 4: The New Promised Land - Silicon Valley. There a panel of black tech entrepreneurs also talked about the concept of risk. Your tolerance for risk is very different when you’re talking about risking your rent money, observed one of the panelists.

So it may well be that risk tolerance is a function of having reserves that won’t be put in play, or at least knowing that your parents will be there to provide you with a roof over your head if you lose everything you have in a failed business venture. Regardless of whether or not it feels demeaning to live in their basement, you’re not homeless.

Another story in yesterday’s New York Times, Ron Lieber’s “Fatal Collision Makes Car-Sharing Worries No Longer Theoretical,” told of a professional woman who rented out her 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid to perfect strangers via an internet service called RelayRides. Despite the fact that this woman may face considerable liability following a fatal accident involving the driver of her vehicle, she continues to use that same service to rent out the Toyota Prius she got after the Honda was totaled in the accident.

Risk taking isn’t always rational or calculated. And it doesn’t always take in concepts of individuals being held accountable for their choices, prudent or foolish. Back in the ’80’s, when I worked for an environmental regulatory agency, the health risk associated with industrial sources of air pollution was expressed in terms of a certain number of puffs of a cigarette over a lifetime. Ironically, the “neighborhood activist” who opposed the citing of an energy facility for the Harvard Medical Area chain smoked as he ranted on and on to me about the cancer deaths that would surely follow if the facility were granted a permit.

Earlier this week, I faced my own risk management dilemma. After listening to a friend tell me that he and his wife both rushed out to get long term insurance after a family member had been stricken with Alzheimer’s, I decided to investigate.

Despite my excellent health, the premiums would be close to $5,000 per year with a $500,000 lifetime limit on benefits. What bothered me most was that premium increases were a certainty, with the only uncertainty the amount. I envisioned a retirement eating cans of non-organic cat food to pay the escalating premiums on a policy I might or might not need.

After gathering all the relevant information, I decided to forego the long term care insurance. Granted, any decision in such matters is deeply personal, based on assets on hand, the needs of one’s dependents, and one’s comfort with risk.

Though I suspect Dad would support my decision to forego what he called “nursing home insurance,” I never discussed the matter with him. The fact is that neither Ben nor Emma Klotsky would have benefitted from long-care insurance. If you ask me, I’d rather die Emma’s death than Ben’s.

The Rise and Fall of a Foodie

2012-04-11T07:28:00.001-04:00

Photo Credit: Heaven and Hell Cake comes courtesy of my friend, Christina, a woman who says the 3 basic food groups in Texas are butter, chocolate and sugar.

If I had the luxury of staying home today and finishing Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s Monday Mornings, a gripping novel about the lives of five surgeons just perfect for us baby boomers who remember those Gray’s Anatomy predecessors, Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey, I would. Alas, my responsibilities as a grownup beckon. Rest assured the next book I download on my Kindle will be Thomas McNamee’s The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat: Craig Claiborne and the American Food Renaissance.

Is it ironic that I juxtapose novels and television programs focusing on hospitals and the sick with a food writer for whom red meat, butter, heavy cream, creme fraiche and other cholesterol boosters were the essentials? Or is it that the tension between eating things we know are bad for us -- and not in moderation -- delights us beyond belief?

Flash back to an evening in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1978. My first husband and I had scored tickets to see Julia Child and Craig Claiborne up close and personal -- doing a cooking demonstration to benefit Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library. I bought a white chief’s apron on the event, and Claiborne autographed it with a Sharpie, but only after shaking my hand. For years that apron provided my sole credential as a chef -- long after the thin ribbon strings were in tatters.

With little aptitude for gourmet cooking, I spent those years mastering the art of making myself miserable. Convinced that real adults hosted dinner parties based on recipes from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and whatever Craig Claiborne happened to publish in The New York Times Magazine, I bought only the finest veal pounded paper thin by Julia’s butcher or standing rib roasts.

Boston’s restaurant scene was mostly ethnic in the ’70’s. Still we frequented Locke-Ober’s, Joseph’s, the Cafe Budapest and other places serving only the richest of foods. On visits home to New York, my parents would treat us to dinner at the legendary Coach House -- if only because my little sister, Phyllis, had discovered the elite eatery in Gourmet magazine.

Was this around the time when food writer Mimi Sheraton -- the woman who described McDonalds’ milk shakes as aerated Kaopectate -- had to take a sabbatical under doctor’s orders that she go on a diet? The type of snobbery exhibited by Mimi extended to my newly acquired affinity for brunch at the Soho Charcuterie featuring highly caloric Irish soda bread, croissants, brioche and large glasses of fresh squeezed, orange juice.

Last week I witnessed a showing of the documentary, Forks Over Knives, which makes a compelling case for the benefits of a plant-based diet, namely avoiding cancer, heart disease, strokes, and type 2 diabetes. Afterwards I went home and ordered Dr. Neil Barnard’s the get healthy, go vegan cookbook. This week, I also asked a friend to send me info about getting a weekly order of organic fruits and vegetables from a food coop in Boston.

The cookbook has been sitting atop a stack of New Yorker magazines on my dining table for several days. I’ve done nothing about joining the food coop. Is my excuse worse than pathetic? My adult responsibilities don’t leave me much time for cooking, and we eat out more nights than I care to admit. If I buy the agave nectar, a key ingredient required by the vegan cookbook, it might go bad before I ever get to use it.

Cut me some slack! The best I can do is purchase chicken breasts, boneless pork chops, and once in a while sirloin steaks, along with broccoli, asparagus or green beans on a just in time basis at Whole Foods. Armed with a bottle of Costa d’Oro olive oil, a choice of two different types of A.A. Borsari Seasoning Salt, and a Cuisinart electric grill, I’m doing the best I can.

As Frank Bruni put it in his recent New York Times column about the new biography of Craig Claiborne and his inability to find sustained fulfillment, “His tale is a sad reminder: happiness has less to do with achievement than perspective.” 

Way to Go, Digital Daddies!

2012-04-07T16:17:00.000-04:00

Dear Jack,

I know you’re skipping both your Gymboree class and also your swimming lessons today to spend the weekend with with your Auntie Dana, Uncle Dan, and grandparents, Coach and Jani. Had your Mom not already told me about these plans a few months ago, I would have gotten the info from your Dad’s social media postings.

Using the Instagram app on his iPhone, he snapped a pic of you in your car seat -- your mouth stuffed with toys -- strapped into the window seat of an airplane. Sharing the image with his 6,774 Followers on Twitter and his 850 Facebook Friends, he typed “Heading to Philadelphia for Passover and to visit family. @ Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).”

As it turns out, your Dad is not unusual in his use of social media to share his pride in his family. Earlier this week, I caught an item on eMarketer Digital Intelligence saying that “56% of new dads post family photos at least a few times a week, while 21% post family-related videos.” Defining “new” dads as those “whose oldest child was 2 or younger,” the study found that dads can be just as much the “social network standard bearer of the family” as new moms.

The study, sponsored by Edelman and The Parenting Group, is of course focused on the potential for marketing baby products to both parents, not just mom. Regardless of any commercial ramifications, I love the trend, and wasn’t that surprised by the findings.

Your Dad is not the only one who takes joy in showing off his little one. Your Uncle Rasmus just posted a terrific pic of your cousin Stellan “dancing” with your Auntie Julia in Central Park. Another young Dad I know on Facebook, a corporate attorney, posts nearly daily pics of his son and daughter -- often in costume -- eating breakfast, playing outdoors, celebrating birthdays, or displaying brother/sister affection. These moments add welcome levity not just to his life, but to those of his 451 Facebook Friends.

I can’t point to an absolute dichotomy between the Dads of my generation and those of your generation. For example, my friend, Bill, the father of two grown sons, loves posting updates about his family. Recently he shared with his 79 Facebook Friends the following: “I am the ultra-proud dad! Micah learned today that of 100 interviewees, he is one of SIX admitted to a special MFA degree program at MassArt - AND he got a teaching position, too! I love this little guy!” Knowing that Micah supported his art with a job as a tattoo artist, I too shared Bill’s joy.

But about 50% of Bill’s posts could be described as quasi political, often exposing what he sees as the foibles of Republican elected officials and candidates. In this regard, he is quite similar to my another friend in my age cohort, Dan. A staunch Republican, Dan dedicates most of his posts to attacks on President Obama. Dan is just as dear a friend as Bill, but I have to say I strongly disagree with Dan’s posts.

In any event, I’m counting on your Dad to post some new pics on Facebook later today. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had you pose in a Yarmulka at last night’s Passover Seder, perhaps following by some shots of you trying to walk. It wouldn’t surprise me if he has a video of you crawling around in search of the afikomen.

Please tell your Dad I especially love that video of you he shot last week with the comment, “Every morning this week we've found Jack standing up in his crib. In this video he shows us how he does it.” That video, along with his Facebook post about you crawling from your room to the bathroom every evening, and then pulling yourself up to the tub to indicate you’re ready for bath time, just melts my heart.

With you living in Atlanta and me living in Boston, your Dad’s social media postings and those of your Mom too, are the “virtual visits” that keep me going. Skype is okay but you’re often too restless to stay in front of the camera for more than a few seconds.

By the way, I’m coming to visit you next weekend. As much as I like seeing those pics and videos of you on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, nothing is better than getting to play with you in real life.

Love, Bubbie Bonnie

Betty Draper's Comeuppance

2012-04-04T07:06:00.001-04:00

Season five of AMC’s Mad Men has begun, and at a time when many of us are trying to move toward plant based diets, I’m loving this intellectual junk food. For me the most exciting development in this 1960’s era series is that Betty Draper -- the beautiful blonde who divorces legendary ad man Don Draper to marry the rich, older Henry Francis -- has gotten fat.

Taking to her bed in a pastel, quilted housecoat, Betty tells Henry she can’t accompany him and his morbidly obese mother -- clad in the proverbial, black tent -- to a black tie event because she has female problems he wouldn’t understand. In this “zip me up era,” we know the real reason Betty can’t go.

Despite her best efforts, Sally Draper -- perhaps 11 or 12 and already the caretaker for her two younger siblings -- announces she cannot close the side zipper on the tight fitting sheath Betty had been planning to wear. By contrast, in another “zip me up” scene, Don has no trouble zipping up the dress of his new wife wife, Megan, a beautiful 26 year old, brunette copywriter with the curves Twiggy was missing.

Let’s not forget Betty’s abusive, “Mommy Dearest” behavior toward Sally. Nor can we forget her mean treatment of her African-American housekeeper, Carla -- whom she fired after her marriage to Don fell apart. And for the chain-smoking woman who in Season One of the series wore tight riding breeches or pearls and a cotton frock with nipped in waist, packing on the pounds seems like a fitting punishment.

So I don’t take seriously for one minute the threat of the lesion a doctor discovers on Betty’s thyroid being cancerous. Despite being a Barnard graduate, Betty’s self-esteem rises and falls with her weight. The viewer is asked to imagine that running into an old friend who does have thyroid cancer and a lousy prognosis throws a scare into Betty, causing her to perhaps try to redeem herself by being a nicer person.

Talk about the double standard for weight gain so prevalent in the ’60’s, and just as prevalent now. So while the episode devotes a scene to one of Don’s underlings insisting on finishing the junk food in a brown paper bag before getting out of his boss’s car to face the wife who wants to put him on a diet, this is more comic relief than anything else.

As the episode draws to a close, Betty is in her kitchen sharing an ice cream sundae with Sally. Knowing the lesion has turned out to be benign, she has a celebration of sorts. When the daughter announces she’s full, leaving half her sundae, Betty turns into human garbage disposal, finishing what remains of her daughter’s ice cream.

As for Betty’s future, I’d be surprised if she hires a personal trainer, and takes the weight off with exercise and sensible eating. At the risk of being wrong, I predict that Betty returns to the doctor her mother-in-law suggests she see for diet pills, and that she becomes a prescription drug zombie.

This is, after all, the ’60’s, when Jacqueline Suzanne’s Valley of the Dolls -- focused on women consuming amphetamines and other controlled substances to stay thin and anaesthetise themselves from the pain of life -- topped the best seller lists.

Reflections on NOT Winning Mega Millions

2012-03-31T10:18:00.000-04:00

Now you know. I was NOT the winner of last night’s Mega Millions drawing. Don’t expect me to show up at the Massachusetts State Lottery offices in Braintree some time next week to claim the $640 million jackpot. Besides, I would not make for the sympathetic character journalists love to portray when writing about lottery winners. You know, the live-in baby sitter to some rich family on Beacon Hill, the third world immigrant washing dishes at a sweat shop pizza chain, or the little old lady who lives with her cat in a basement apartment in Lynn.

If truth be told, I have a good job in public relations, live comfortably with my husband, Dennis, in a spacious loft style condo in Brookline, and have a happily married daughter in Atlanta. She and her husband have a nine month old baby who’s the sunshine of my life. Their biggest problem is that little Jack recently figured out how to stand, and now refuses to lay down in his crib -- in hopes that Mom or Dad will change their mind about his 7:30 p.m. bedtime because it breaks their hearts to hear him cry.

I’ve only played the lottery twice in my life. Several years ago, a receptionist at work who bought tickets each week in hopes of leaving her job to become a florist, insisted that I purchase a ticket. The size of that week’s pot had grown to astronomical proportions, but neither of us won. I think she now does floral arrangements in East Boston.

On Thursday night I logged on to my Facebook page to see a hilariously funny entry from my friend, Steve Brown, a reporter for WBUR, Boston’s NPR affiliate. He snapped a pic of his ticket, with the caption “Planning on Calling in Rich on Monday. He’s a talented reporter and a devoted husband and father of two college daughters. Like any parent these days, I’m sure he would have liked help with the tuitions.

As far as I know, those of us lucky enough to live in Boston will be listening to Steve’s melodious baritone on Monday morning. But seeing his Facebook post captured enough of my attention that yesterday morning, on the way to work, I asked Dennis whether there was still time to buy lottery tickets.

My husband volunteered that he had already purchased ten, planning to split his winnings with me if I won. Before going to the Dunkin’ Donuts near my office -- as in poor me, no Starbucks or Peets close by -- I bought ten more lottery tickets at a tiny convenience store.

The line was long, and in addition to me in my new ostrich cowboy boots and designer down coat, were men wearing the uniforms of maintenance workers, and a woman, perhaps a State House worker, saying she hoped Mega Millions yielded more than one winner because it would be “nice to spread the wealth.” I admired her sentiment but being more of an “all or nothing at all” type didn’t share it.

Riding home with Dennis last night in my Honda Civic after a stop at the Whole Foods on Beacon Hill to pick up a dinner of poached salmon, Moroccan carrots, and cranberry pecan couscous salad, we talked about Mega Millions. Inspired by my husband’s spirit of generosity, I said that I, too,would share my winnings with him.

Neither of us had anything that we especially needed or even wanted, not even a new car or second home. I could imagine that perhaps I’d be able to travel to some exotic locale, and I say “I” because Dennis hates going through airports.

All that either of us wanted was to be able to make life easier for our children. I’m lucky to have just my daughter, and I imagined giving her the bulk of what was left of my half after taxes to purchase the best of everything for little Jack -- whether that be a house in a great public school district or a private school education, along with overnight camp when he’s old enough, and then college.

With three children, I thought the division of assets would be tougher for Dennis. Still I thought he’d want his only daughter, also happily married with baby, to have enough money to move from her walkup apartment on the Upper West Side and into a co-op overlooking Central Park. Perhaps also a slush fund just in case her little boy didn’t win the lottery for the Manhattan public school on which she and her husband have their eye.

For now, our gifts to our children will be a lot more modest. The nice part is knowing that our kids never counted on us winning the lottery, and will love us just the same -- I think.

Finding Catharsis in Mommy Dearest Books

2012-03-29T07:53:00.000-04:00

The most recent New York Times Book Review has a front page article about the latest in the “Mommy Dearest” genre, Jeannette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal. It’s a memoir of an adopted daughter growing up under the tyranny of an abusive, religious fanatic mother. Unless the first few paragraphs prove more unnerving than my comfort level permits, I’d like to read this book.

Finding Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, another book in that same genre, too creepy, I devoured Laura M. Flynn’s Swallow the Ocean, a memoir about a girl and her sisters growing up in San Francisco with a paranoid, schizophrenic mother. Rescued by a judge who finally awards custody to their father, this book is especially poignant because it shows a very loving daughter trying to become her mom’s caretaker.

Among my closest friends are women who have disappointing relationships with their moms. As petty as it sounds, we compare notes when we get together. Sometimes we share the “can you top this” examples of Mom’s most outrageous behavior -- such as her putting her black, wool coat on two hours into our wedding, signaling that she expects to be driven back to her hotel without having to verbalize her request.

It’s probably unkind to talk about the stuff that might cause a court ordered social worker to look askance, and besides, my mom would probably have no recollection of the incidents I’ve shared with my similarly situated women friends, each of whom grew up having enough to eat in an adequately heated home. I never discussed with Mom those teeth marks on her end table holding the porcelain, Chinese lamp with fringed shade. But the damage goes back to that winter day she left me alone in our Jackson Heights apartment as a four year old. Crying hysterically because I thought she was never coming back, I gnawed into the table.

The law judges people on intention, so I can’t in good conscience compare my mother to the low-income mom who left her tots unattended while she went clubbing. I had a fever and Mom got a call from P.S. 69 to come get my older brother, Arthur, because he too was sick. A big believer in the notion that taking a sick child outdoors in winter would lead to pneumonia or worse, she no doubt never considered bundling me up and taking me with her. A loner by nature, she probably didn’t feel there was anybody she could call to keep an eye on me for the half hour or so it took to retrieve Arthur.

By summer of that same year, she enrolled me at a half day arts and crafts program at the local elementary school serving Lake Hiawatha. Not knowing how to drive, she arranged for me to be transported back and forth by taxi. Overwhelmed by life, her chronic lack of attention to detail resulted in my being dropped off on a day when the program was cancelled for an all day field trip.

Crying once again, I walked up and down the street until a responsible adult phoned her -- at which point she got a neighbor to drop off a pot roast sandwich for me to take on the trip. Whether she knew I loathed pot roast and wanted only to be taken home is now irrelevant.

Fast forward to the summer of 2011, when I became a grandmother and my parents were safely ensconced in an assisted living community in North Carolina. Meeting them at the airport in Atlanta, I suggested that they see the new baby the day before his bris. Mom insisted on being taken straight to her hotel. Who knew she would prefer to meet her first great grandson in a ceremonial setting in a home filled with guests?

Over the last several days, The Boston Globe has written about a woman who reportedly slashed her children’s throats and then set their home on fire. Whether she will meet the definition of legal insanity is for her lawyers to decide. But the case suggests that those of us craving a better mother-daughter relationship should shut up and continue finding catharsis in those “Mommy Dearest” books!

7 Warning Signs of FOMO Addiction

2012-03-25T08:22:00.001-04:00

Please don't burst my bubble -- telling me I've already missed out! I’d never heard the term FOMO until I read a tweet from my friend @Vhernandezcnn -- giving a shout-out to a CNN post about Sonar, Highlight, and Banjo, three new mobile apps guaranteed to “keep you abreast of all the interesting people around you.” According to the Urban Dictionary, FOMO means Fear of Missing Out.

While FOMO is the label often pinned on the discourteous behavior of people of all ages using social media apps on their iPhone while in the presence of real -- as opposed to virtual friends -- this phenomenon is really nothing new. During my lifetime I’ve witnessed the seven warning signs of FOMO many times over:

(1) Logging 15 miles in pre-GPS darkness and stopping the car every other block to ask for directions because you’re intent on finding a new ice cream place in Somerville, Ma that got mentioned in The New Yorker. At the risk of alienating family members trapped in the car, you persist until you find the ice creamery claiming to be the first place mixing M&M’s into vanilla ice cream on a marble palate.

(2) Spending $900 to join a new swimming pool because a neighbor tells you there will likely be a waiting list in the very near future. Done, even if you’re perfectly happy swimming at the municipal at nominal cost.

(3) Paying close to $200 at Lululemon Athletica for a pink and grey striped sport top and matching grey yoga pants that you don’t need because the salesman just happens to remark that it’s very unusual for the store to carry that color combination. And that was before the Wall Street Journal ran its article about planned scarcity as the Lululemon business strategy.

(4) Booking flights for a winter vacation on some tropical island in August because you’re convinced that if you wait, all the non-stop flights will be filled, and even if they’re not, the aisle seats could get scooped up. The ultimate punishment would be connecting flights and a middle seat.

(5) Signing your little darling up for the best overnight camp in the world in October because you fear that if the place if filled, the little darling will be relegated to the second best overnight camp, never forgiving your lack of attention to something so monumental.

(6) Suffering an interminable wait on a Sunday morning for a table at a chi, chi -- and believe me the term is relative -- breakfast place like the Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown, MA, Norma’s at the Parker Meridien in New York, or Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side. The prospect of eating your pancakes at some chain that's never earned a review in The New York Times is too mortifying to imagine.

(7) Signing up for the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in August because you fear that if you wait, the Hilton -- closest to the Austin Convention Center -- will be filled, and you will G-d forbid, be required to stay at a hotel across the bridge spanning Lady Bird Lake.

Despite its intractability, FOMO is strictly a #FirstWorldProblem, unlike diseases born of famine, pestilence or lack of potable water. It's more like the "Get a Seat" directive Mom etched onto my brain before I could walk.

You're Not a Digital Native if You Remember. . .

2012-03-22T07:14:00.000-04:00

Having recently returned from South by Southwest Interactive, the largest new media and communications festival in the world, I am once again reminded that as a child of the fifties, the biggest “wow” event in my life time has been the invention of the internet. In the interest of preserving history, dear readers, I ask you to join me in sharing tidbits of how we and our parents survived before internet enabled phones, computers, and cars.

You are not a digital native if you remember. . .

Listening to your boss tell his board of directors “We’re poised to enter the information highway, but for now we’re still on a bumpy country road” -- only after he’s reached the conclusion that web sites are not a fad.

That scratchy sound coming through your telephone receiver, indicating that you were about to be connected to the internet for a few seconds before getting cut off and needing to redial again.

Friends bragging about getting AOL or CompuServe email service to go with their dial up connections.

Receiving calls or post cards from status conscious relatives broadcasting trips to swank restaurants or hotels -- never once dreaming that someday they could achieve those same goals with an iPhone and a Foursquare account.

Phoning LLBean to order boots and ski parkas you saw in a catalog so thick that it’s cover tore when the letter carrier put it through your mail slot.

Using the yellow pages to find plumbers, electricians, shoe stores, and travel agencies.

Hearing Dad say “Don’t use your credit card to buy things on the internet -- he would never say ‘online’ -- unless you want your credit card number stolen.”

Listening to the Beatles, Beach Boys and the Supremes -- interrupted by commercials and other groups you enjoyed less or not at all -- on a Motorola transistor radio in a leather case.

Asking Dad to drive your enormous stereo system up to school -- never imagining that one day you’d have just a tiny iPod or iPhone and a small set of speakers.

Filling out college applications with ballpoint pen and paper, never having heard the phrase, “hard copy.”

Going to a travel agency, picking up glossy brochures for faraway places, and then returning to book your trip.

Staying on hold with an airline forever -- without being told that if you want faster service you should book your flight online.

Seeing your parents use roadmaps and AAA triptiks to plan the family vacation trip.

Mom returning from the parent/teacher conference to report that according to your scores on the Iowa Tests, your map-reading skills are deficient.

Mom ordering you to use the phone book, explaining that calling directory assistance costs money.

Using your landline to check the time or weather before the word “landline” entered our lexicon.

Never getting into the car without directions -- unable to imagine that day when you would routinely head off an appointment in some remote part of town -- confident that with a combination of GPS and an iPhone you’d be fine.

Not referring to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or Boston Globe as “legacy media.”

Dad having a subscription to TV Guide.

Phoning a restaurant or hotel to make reservations.

Standing in line to buy movie tickets.

Inviting the relatives over for a slide show of photos from some pricey locale -- only in your wildest fantasies envisioning the possibility of being able to brag about the trip in real time -- posting the pics on Facebook, Flickr or Picasa.

The joy of not needing to remember multiple passwords with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and characters from the top row of your keyboard.

Hot off the Presses! My Digital Estate Plan

2012-03-18T15:04:00.001-04:00

“In the past we were sad about grandparents not leaving enough information; in the future we’ll be sick of all the stuff they’ll leave.” - Richard Banks, Microsoft Research

Dear Daphne,

As my only child, you will want the inventory of my assets: a condo in Brookline, retirement investment accounts, jewelry, and a 2006 Honda Civic with sunroof -- all of which are covered by my estate plan. But we’ve never discussed my digital legacy, including accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, the CNN iReport, and more recently an account with TripAdvisor on which I review hotels and restaurants. Not to mention my three Google accounts: Gmail, Picasa for photo sharing, and Blogger.

Not to creep you out or anything, but I need to tell you about Digital Immortality, a seminar I attended earlier this month at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin. After listening to Bill LeFurgy, a professional archivist from the Library of Congress, I felt like the college freshman overwhelmed by all the papers a really hard ass professor was going to require for the semester. Except in this case, the assignments seem like they will last as long as I have my marbles and keep generating digital content.

I left the seminar fearing that if little Jack ever gets the passwords for all my above mentioned active social media accounts, he will come to the conclusion that his Bubbie Bonnie was either disorganized or a digital slob. Indeed the last time I visited the three of you in Atlanta, Etan told me that if I don't start deleting some of the junk vacation photos from Aruba, Puerto Rico, and Cape May on the hard drive of my MacBook Air, the thing will eventually come to a grinding halt. No doubt he was disappointed I had not done the curating before uploading the pics to the cloud.

Passionate and scholarly, Mr. LeFurgy urged conference attendees to run, not walk to a link on the Library of Congress web site that provides detailed guidance for families wanting to curate and preserve the best of their digital content, and not just pics. He even talked about saving hard copy.

Not the scrap booking type, I at least take pride in the fact that I once spent an entire summer cataloging all the correspondence generated by you and your parents during your years at overnight camp. And now I don’t even feel foolish about not scanning the letters!

“In the future we probably won’t find Uncle Dave in an institutional setting (i.e. Library of Congress),” said Mr. LeFurgy. “His remains are probably in the cloud among zillions of pictures.”

He went on to say that we have an obligation to tag those pics for future generations. At the same time, he could not be more emphatic about cautioning his listeners not to “rely on the generic cloud” to maintain one’s digital legacy. He even questioned whether people will even know what Facebook was or what it meant, generations from now.

That last comment made me sort of sad. Especially when I think of the adorable St. Patrick’s Day pic you posted of Jack -- clad in a scally cap good enough for South Boston, his green South By Southwest tee shirt, and white cargo pants -- crawling around on the mat in his nursery.

Keeping what Mr. LeFurgy said in mind, I immediately dragged the pic to my iPhoto folder filled with whatever pics of my Jack I’m planning to transfer to my iPhone. The folder is labeled Jack Lucas Horowitz, and if it were paper it would be really fat.

Yes, please be assured that images of my favorite grandson are being stored in a variety of places: in the cloud, on Picasa; and on the hard drives of both my desktop iMac and my little MacBook Air, and also on the external hard drive Etan told me to get for my desktop. Eventually I will accumulate more pics of Jack on Instagram, that photo taking/sharing app all the cool kids are using.

I was too chilled by Mr. LeFurgy’s predictions to ask him whether my Picasa and Blogger accounts will exist after I’m gone, provided you continue paying the nominal yearly fee. On the other hand, if you find this too burdensome, please feel free to let it all lapse. As Airdrie Miller, the widow of one of British Columbia’s most famous bloggers, put it, “we shouldn’t necessarily be required to think of a loved one’s digital remains as a memorial.”

Explaining the South by Southwest Mystique to Baby Jack

2012-03-10T22:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Jack,

When I saw your Mom’s Facebook post that you and she would remain in Austin while your Dad and Bubbie “represent the family,” at the 2012 South by Southwest Festival, I felt a tad sad. You have a way of tugging at my heartstrings, and never more so than in the Instagram pic your Dad showed me over dinner last night.

There you were in just a diaper and your green SXSW tee shirt. A very engaging 8 month old, you had used your Dad’s suitcase to pull yourself up, and then proceeded to play with the zippers. The cool thing was that I bought that tee shirt for you exactly one year ago, adding just one more item to the stash of gifts for the baby shower your Auntie Dana was throwing for your Mom in Atlanta.

I’ll admit I was a tad superstitious because your great grandmother believes it’s bad luck to buy anything for a baby that hasn’t been born yet. Happily everything turned out beautifully and you're growing up as a digital native in the home of two super savvy veterans of all things digital. So I wouldn’t be surprised if you make it to SXSW before you’re out of your Uppababy stroller.

Don’t be too impressed, but your Bubbie has earned the SXSW Three-peat badge on Foursquare, one of those geolocation based social media platforms -- or what the geeks are calling SoLoMo. So I think I’m qualified to offer you a few pointers in the event for whenever you choose to go:

SXSW has three components: interactive, film, and music. If you can sign up for just one thing, make it the interactive. Upon claiming your badge, and your freebie canvas shopping bag -- which always features a cool commemorative graphic, complements of Adobe -- you will receive something that looks like a college course catalogue. The course offerings are mind boggling, and each one will offer a glimpse into the future.

The catalogue can be overwhelming, so get your Mom to help you start reviewing the SXSW schedule online months in advance. First I go through the alphabetical list of speakers and panelists, determining if there are any world class thinkers, such as Jennifer Preston, Brian Stelter or Jill Abramson of the New York Times, Soledad O’Brien, Ali Velshi, Mike Senzon or Alicia Stewart of CNN, or Danah Boyd of the Berkman Center. I “favorite” the programs they are on before filling out my list for each day, knowing I can revise if your Dad tells me about a session he thinks will be especially valuable.

Some folks say to get to as many parties as you can to meet lots of cool kids, but I actually think it’s smarter to get your eight hours of sleep to be fresh and alert for the next day’s sessions featuring all the social media thought leaders you’ve gotten to know on Twitter. When you get to your sessions, sit in the front row so you can introduce yourself to the panelists before hand, and thank them afterwards before a big line forms -- leaving you time to sprint to the next session.

Live tweeting during an SXSW event can only help you get retweeted and gain new Followers, raising your Klout score. Make sure you know the hashtags or # for every event and also the Twitter handles of all the speakers so you can refer to them by their online names. Hashtags are a way of grouping tweets from a particular session, but they are also good for making your name stand out. Not that your Bubbie is an egomaniac or anything.

SXSW is a world of swag, but be discriminating about what you accept or you will end up with a suitcase full of junk -- even if like your Bubbie, you bought the big Eagle Creak duffle on wheels in anticipation of your trip to Austin. One nifty item I collected today was a bright yellow rain poncho. And I didn’t even have to do anything that compromised my privacy to obtain it.

Who knew it rained in Austin? Every other time I’ve been in Austin it’s been warm and sunny, but the first few days of SXSW have punctuated by heavy, bone-chilling rains. After accepting the free poncho, your bubbie realized it was a perfect example of first world greed -- considering that she was wearing a Marmot 3/4 length, featherweight, hooded rain coat atop a NorthFace polar fleece with a Firefox pin.

So my final tip is to be generous. Following a session about The Power of Fear in Networked Publics, I approached a stranger who looked like she didn’t have a raincoat, and handed it to her.

At the risk of watching your mom roll her eyes, I’ll ask you whether my good deed rose to the level of a mitzvah or really served to lighten my Krumpler SXSW mailbag.

The Tsuris of the Over Privileged

2012-03-04T19:36:00.000-05:00

A hat tip to CNNiReporter Adriana Maxwell 71 in Atlanta! She recently suggested that other iReporters share their experiences about “first world problems,” the things we worry about that take us away from big picture issues. She didn’t elaborate on what she meant but I assume she was thinking about world hunger, global warming, and international terrorism -- the stuff that would keep me up at night were I a kindler, gentler person.

At the risk of causing you to question my sanity or my values, I will share with you just a sampling of my own “first world problems,” many of which relate to my trips from Boston to Atlanta to visit Jack, an 8 month old baby for whom I suffer the indignities of TSA screeners every six weeks:

Failing to pay $20 each way for early boarding could put me at risk of being required to gate check my wheel-on that’s half the size of a large checked bag -- if only because all the overhead bins will be filled to capacity.

Limiting myself to a wheel-on that’s guaranteed to fit under my seat requires that I also carry a Le Sportsac big enough to hold my oversized purse plus MacBook Air, which will then count as “a carry-on plus one ‘small’ personal item.”

The aforementioned “compliance effort” means there’s a good chance that I won’t have enough space for the two sets of Lululemon workout gear I’ll want in addition to my jeans, tops, motion control Nike sneakers and Paul Green lug loafers -- plus the Patagonia parka I’ll want to stow inside once I’m on the plane.

While waiting at Logan Airport to board my flight to Atlanta, I can count on being subjected to an annoying video or questionnaire as the price of free wifi service. While waiting to board my flight home to Boston, I will be deprived of wifi service unless I choose to pay for it.

Using one of the very limited number of power outlets at the airport without a Belkin mini-surge protector could potentially destroy my MacBook Air. If I order a Belkin mini-travel surge protector from Amazon, will it be just one more piece of crap to worry about forgetting either at home or at my daughter’s home?

Foursquare freezes up frequently enough to frustrate my plan to announce to my limited number of Foursquare followers that I have arrived in the Peachtree state. When Foursquare works, I’m offered a check-in special of two “travel ready” skincare products at Kiehl’s. The problem is that Kiehl’s is in Concourse B and my AirTran gate is in Concourse C.

Finally, since I’m not flying KLM, I don’t have the option of selecting my seat mate via LinkedIn. Will I be subjected to a member of the “traveling public” consuming something that to my delicate sensibilities comes across as foul smelling?

As my Aunt Anna, a Russian immigrant prone to calling what my parents called “sob stories,” might have said: “You shouldn’t know from my problems!”http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-756507

A Homecoming That's Never the Same

2012-03-01T07:48:00.001-05:00

Once I went off to college in Boston in 1969, I knew I wanted to stay in this very manageable city with its quirky but quaint public transit system, a vitality attributeable to its colleges and universities, and a bo bo informality causing me to see more Patagonia than Prada on the city’s streets.

Returning home to New York has provided me with a usually welcome change of scenery -- fulfilling my occasional cravings for the vastness captured by Roz Chast’s cartoon of the New York City subway system on week’s The New Yorker cover. Yes the public transit system I began using as a seventh grader has its dark side. Yesterday the New York Times reported that some “50 people get killed by subway trains each year.” Presumably they leap, fall, or get pushed.

Lured by that aura of drama, I traveled on that same subway system one Saturday in February of 1979. That day I came into the city to see my dying grandmother. With the self-preservation instincts of any New Yorker, I stowed all my money in internal pockets. Still it creeped me out when a panhandler literally got in my face on the token line, an experience happily not repeated for me at Boston’s Park Street Station.

When Dennis and I began dating in 1995, we would go to New York to visit my daughter, Daphne, at Barnard and his daughter, Julia, at Juilliard. I would also fit in a quick visit to my parents in Greenwich Village. That was before they swapped their high rise apartment for a cottage in North Carolina in 1999, bequeathing Daphne the remainder of their Theater in the Round subscription.

A high point of our visits was Sunday brunch at whichever restaurant featured the best reviews and the longest lines. For a while it was Sara Beth’s Kitchen or Good Enough to Eat on Amsterdam Avenue. Only when Daphne reported via her Aunt Helene -- a New Yorker with a nose for whatever’s new and trendy -- that Norma’s was far more fashionable, we switched.

We never visit the same New York. Julia and her husband, Ras, became parents last May, and our focus is now Stellan, a nine month old with pensive blue eyes, a determination to walk, and a sweet disposition. Also witnessing the evolution of brunch choices and family have been Ras’ parents, Marianne and Steffen, who travel to New York several times a year from their homes in Denmark and France.

Listening to Marianne and me discussing our own parental "best practices," Steffen is likely to say something along the lines of “there’s a lot of experience in the room,” making us all laugh and signaling to Stellan’s parents that they really do know best. Then we’ll head out for a stroll in Central Park or coffee and pastries, taking lots of pics along the way.

Dennis and I will stay at the Parker Meridien on 57th street, a perfect location for connecting with family, brunching at Norma’s, and sprinting to a few stores in search of the perfect shoes, eyeglass frames, or swim suit. No longer a seventh grader dazzled by the elegance of Bergdorf Goodman’s, I’ll remind myself nothing offers a larger selection than the internet.