Well, first there’s this little dude. He’s pretty darn adorable. He’s my nephew and has just begun a life of being spoiled by 4 grandparents, three aunts, and three uncles. All the adorable stories of newborns you can think of? Yeah, insert all of those here. And I’ve only heard him actually cry (briefly) twice in 4 days.

He’s also being spoiled by the family dog, which is pretty darn adorable. At first the dog was pretty interested in him as a squeak toy, which wasn’t so great. (Though in her defense, he does sometimes sound exactly like her toy duck.) Then all of a sudden her maternal instincts kicked in, and now every time he makes a sound she jumps up, sniffs him all over until she’s satisfied that he’s ok, and then reports his status to the rest of us. She was pretty displeased with us last night when he was doing his happy baby calisthenics and all of us were eating dinner. She wasn’t satisfied until one of us got up from the table and went with her to make sure these were happy sounds. Mom did the honors, told the dog everything was fine, and then we could all settle back down to eat. The dog also forgoes all romping with noisy squeak toys while the baby is downstairs. By now, the dog is almost as tired as the parents.

Dear State of Illinois,

I know you’ve got a lot going on right now and that taking suggestions from outsiders is probably low on the list of priorities. Even so, I thought I’d offer you an idea that could save you angst and money in the future.

Since it seems that putting governors in prison is becoming somewhat of a hobby over there, I thought you might want to alter the kinds of compensation you offer incoming governors, specifically their retirement benefits. Prison is an expensive place to stay, and it seems like making some provision for those expenses before the end of the governor’s term would really streamline the process. So it makes sense to have a gubernatorial retirement package that can either be paid out as usual, or paid to the state should incarceration become necessary. If there were also a gubenatorial wing on the prison, then governors could work through their terms of office knowing that they’d be put to pasture with like-minded individuals.

Not only would there be a ready-made fund to draw on when each new governor is found guilty, but the state could rest easier knowing that it has its bases covered, and the governors could get farther in their post-incarceration therapy sessions knowing that they were, in fact, paying for their actions.

Think of it as a pre-nup, but for governors.

Best of luck with your current trial, and I hope the weather is nice there this summer.

Love,
Iris

I’m having trouble caring about the gigantic oil spill in the Gulf.

It’s not that I don’t think it’s horrible, or huge, or likely to have catastrophic effects. Quite the opposite. My problem is that it’s so horrible and huge and potentially catastrophic that I can’t wrap my head around it. It feels like science fiction.

I don’t know what that many hundreds of thousands (or is it millions? or more?) of gallons looks like, in water or oil or any other form. I don’t think I’ve even ever seen crude oil. I’ve never been to the Gulf Coast, so it’s easy for it to seem like a fictional place wracked by too-big-to-be-non-fiction storms and larger than life tobacco plantations and Mardi Gras parties. It’s a place I’ve only seen in movies, only read about in books and newspapers. It’s like the moon.

And so, just like missions to the moon, it seems like something that only Other People can deal with. But unlike missions to the moon, this problem has never been solved before, which makes it more like a mission to an as yet undiscovered galaxy. Any solution seems too ineffectual, too removed from my sense of reality, to make any real difference. And all this makes it too easy for me to just dismiss trying solutions at all, which isn’t a helpful attitude, for sure.

Unfortunately, my conscious brain seems to have very little control over the unconscious part of itself that says “this is too much to be true.” And so I listen to NPR every morning in a state of suspended disbelief, knowing that this thing is science fiction but caring about it in the same way that I cared about Gandalf or Aslan or Lauren Olmina.

Just for some context, my dad really did learn Syriac this past summer, grew up in Japan, Indian wrestles on occasion, has a fedora, and was long ago nicknamed Indiana Jastram by his students. And yes, I’ve taken a class from him in college. And it was hard.

Running to a meeting, I picked up my computer bag and grabbed the power cord from my desk. Arriving a couple minutes early for the meeting, I flipped open the computer, whipped out the cord, and plugged the cord in.

Or rather, I expected to plug the cord in. There was simply no way the cord would connect. The little metal piece that’s supposed to slide into the laptop case didn’t even begin to fit into its socket.

Thinking that maybe I’d gotten mixed up about which laptop I was using (one has the socket on one side, and one has the socket on the other), I carefully examined the laptop from all angles. No, that was the only round hole. I tried it again. No dice. Not even close.

About this time I remembered that people who have strokes sometimes can’t figure out how to do tasks they’ve performed a million times. And I’ve plugged my computer in at least a million times. I’m attached at the hip to this machine. And yet I simply could not wrap my head around how the cord was supposed to attach.

I examined the laptop again.

I examined the cord again.

Both seemed unharmed. And yet the two simply would not connect.

I tried to envision the effortless action of connecting the two — that action I’ve performed more often than I’ve done nearly any other action over the course of the last few years.

I examined the laptop one more time.

Finally, in utter frustration (and not a little bit worried for my sanity), I wrapped up the cord to put it away in my computer bag.

And there, to my complete surprise, was another power cord.

As it turns out, I’d grabbed the cord to a work-owned machine by accident, not realizing that my own cord was already nestled in its little pouch in the computer bag.