Preschool, Take II

Tomorrow will be Jacob's second attempt at beginning preschool.

When his short-lived, three-day experiment fizzled with tears and distress six months ago, we decided to try again when he turned three. This time, we decided, he would be ready.

We set up regularly-scheduled days with grandma so he would be used to being away from home. We also talked up school and showed him videos from the school's website. We even took him to the school gate after hours to discuss the upcoming school session. Finally, he is now toilet trained, so that should also help.

On Friday, he went through his second "orientation," which serves as both an introduction to the school for Jacob and a test of his temperament to determine whether he really is ready.

The last "orientation" (in September) was a nightmare. He absolutely ignored instruction from the teachers, took toys out without putting them away and even tried to eat the play-doh (the latter of which stunned us at the time because he really had gotten past putting things in his mouth at home). In retrospect, that was our fault. He had never been watched by anyone but us, and we were all of a sudden ditching him to strangers for entire days. In hindsight, not well thought out.

This time around was different. He listened to instruction, did not seem to notice that we were not in the room when the teacher pulled him aside for some instruction and even communicated effectively. We peeked in to see him pull out his "play mat," work on a puzzle, put the puzzle away and then put the mat away. He surprised even us.

This particular school is a bit on the strict side, so who knows how he will do for entire days at a time and how much staying power his attention span will have, but we are at least filled with hopes of success this time around.

And, because Jen will have to drive to work every day starting very soon, it is going to have to work this time. So, we are looking forward to Jacob's second venture into schooling.

We jokingly refer to his first go-around as his "expulsion" from school (a joke apparently only funny to me and Jen), and I have a hard time imagining success based on how terribly things went last time. Still, seeing is believing and we have managed to become optimistic. (shocking, I know).

Taking the edge off

Time is relentless. It is also a blessing and it demands contemplation. Contemplation is a natural manure for personal growth. If that means this is all BS, so be it.

Contemplation has recently led me to consider how time has eroded / improved / horribly disfigured /etc. my own temperament / happiness / outlook / etc.

Make sense? Probably not yet.

Jacob turned 3 last week. Birthdays always provide a good reason to reflect, especially about how the things we never imagined would happen to us actually do so, and do so relentlessly. Specifically, I will never get over being a dad. It'll apparently never stop being weird or "hard to believe" how big Jacob gets. Alice blogged about this and she hit the nail right on the head.


My contemplation has lately been a little more self-reflective vis-a-vis Jacob's influence.


Specifically, time / circumstances / whatever have worked to dull the edges I once enjoyed / hated / benefited from. And that's not a bad thing.

What exactly does this mean? It means that the need I once felt so deeply to excel to the highest levels has dissipated. I no longer strive for endless ascension in school / business / life / recreation. I no longer care to compete in a ruthless / attacking sense. I still try to do the very best I can in my profession and still take pride in my work, but I now have one overriding goal: Peace.

I care about spending evenings at home. I care about not being pulled in every direction. I care about doing whatever I want to with my free time.

The only change I can really point to is Jacob's birth. My duties are to him and Jen now, and it makes me feel good to be home a lot. I think this transformation was aided by waiting to have him. I managed to squeeze in a lot of living before his birth / contemplation / existence.

I made a semi-bucket list in my mind and managed to cross off enough of the "me" things that I have never felt deprived by parenthood. I finished Ride The Rockies in 2002, went to law school, spent five weeks in Germany, stood on the Normandy beaches on a June 6, visited Yellowstone, hiked in Volcano National Park in Hawaii, visited Pearl Harbor, gone to a ton of sporting events and even lived in NYC for a summer.

Honestly, I can just take a breath now.

I know I would have put Jacob first had he arrived much earlier, but I think I'd still have some of the tension that accompanied me for the first 28 years of life. I remember my father as very tightly wound when I was younger. He mellowed considerably as he got older, but I've gotten an earlier jump on him in the mellowing department.

Any new bucket list will involve Jacob. I want to take him to Disney World, Sea World, to ball games... play catch, attend school performances and hold his nose to the grindstone in school (OK, so maybe I'm still a little tightly wound).

If there is one point to be made, I guess it's that I never realized how much I would love being a father and timing has something to do with it. Someone once told me you never know when you are ready to be a parent, so you need to stop waiting for the "right" time. At the time, that comment ticked me off because that message was of the "hurry up and have a kid" variety.

I think it's a true statement on its face, but, for me, the timing could not have been more perfect. Timing differs for every set of parents, but I feel like I will be a better father for having waited.

Jacob turns 3!

Some recent pictures of our little guy as he moved from 2 to 3.

Train Set expansion.

Jacob and his Birthday presents.

BATMAN!

Playing Sims with Mommy.

Pattern Behavior

I imagine financial advice had not changed one bit from the end of WWII until September, 2008. The market goes up and it always will.

I know I heard the advice. I'm certainly not claiming to have known better, but I've always at least suspected that a certain naive comfort had set into the population as a whole. I actually remember one person rolling his eyes when I asked "doesn't the market fluctuate?" No one would ever say "no," but the smile said it all: "there's no guarantee, BUT..."

Jen and I have been told many times by various financial advisers, well-wishers and strangers alike that money would best serve us when put into the market rather than into our home. I even almost cracked a few times. In my head, I began to suspect that maybe we were missing the train by shoving extra funds into prepayments on our home. I even remember one advisor giving me a condescending smile while showing the math based on a 10% return as opposed to money "under-utilized." No one ever questioned the regular growth. At least not really.

To Jen's credit, she wouldn't let me waiver.

My point? I guess it's that pattern behavior eventually leads to trouble because its based on assumptions. Twelve percent growth per year became such a pattern for many investors that no one ever thought, "how could this continue when people are piling up the kind of debt that would give a healthy man a heart attack?" To be fair, no one has asked that until now.

I've often asked anyone in ear shot "how did everyone miss that we were heading for financial ruin? Aren't these CEOs, financial gurus, regulators and overcompensated boards of directors supposed to know what they are doing?"

I've never been one to trust the undefinable "them" anyway, but surely SOMEONE must have seen the signs. Apparently Warren Buffett gave warnings, and I'm sure others did too, but what's a warning when graphs show a generation of growth? After all, the charts I've seen indicate growth that has been almost unfettered for 80 years or more.

I remember learning through quantitative reasoning that an assertion that, "the sun will rise tomorrow because it rose yesterday" was, by definition, a fallacy. No one doubts that tomorrow will bring light, but we can't quantitatively prove it will happen. We take it on pattern and faith. One could also say physics, but we can't know if a meteor will stop tomorrow, so even that is not a certainty. 99% does not equal 100%.

So, while we try to pick up the pieces and unwind the mess we've made, I am left to wonder where we go from here? Maybe, just maybe, we hit the very limit of growth through overuse and over-extension of credit. Maybe we've grown this far ONLY because we were so willing as a people to incur so much debt.

I don't know the answer, but easy credit provides an illusion that we have more than we ever really do. And, eventually, the bill comes due and there is no where else left to turn. It ruins marriages, it strains health and it leads to the kind of bust we are now witnessing.

The only way I think we can ever prevent this kind of crisis from happening again is if recovery leads to responsible use of credit and we stop basing our lives on the fallacy that "past performance guarantees future results." How about this time we don't forget that the market fluctuates.

But, before I get ahead of myself, we need to get through this mess first. Lest I assume recovery before it happens.

Music in my life

July 11, 2001. I was at Folsom Field with my father, sister, brother and sister-in-law for the best concert I will ever attend. Too soon to say? Not on your life. I may be the only one who would say that out of our group, but it's my story and my experience was otherworldly.

The song embedded above provided the most vivid moment for me. I know it's a long song, but it simmers until the 3:55 mark and does not calm down until the 7:15 mark. The song is deep and, as of this performance, yet-to-be-released. It also prominently features Leroi Moore on the saxophone. Moore died last summer after an ATV accident last summer.

I have been to four Dave Matthews Band concerts in my life (two of them released as DVDs), but only this one featured 3/4 of the rest of my family combined with a transcendent experience.

Music has played a big role in my life. That is mostly due to the fact that my father made sure music of all kinds echoed in the house as we grew up. His diversity of music taste is at least part of the reason my i-pod play list makes no sense except to me (it features everything from Mozart to Jay-Z and Rammstein... Paul Simon and the Beatles to Dr. Dre and The Killers).

Although the Dave Matthews Band is my runaway favorite band of all time, the right song from any era sends me back in time and starts the memories flowing. And, that often takes me back to Boulder, Colorado.

On July 11, 2001, rain greeted us at our seats. Although the rain was steady, it was tolerable and almost pleasant. The opening acts were good if not memorable (I only remember Wyclef Jean, but the others are hazy). The concert started at 8:00 and the rain stopped on a dime.

You can't make this stuff up.

I remember taking that as a sign not to let anything ruin the experience. I proceeded to have a blast until the final encore. My experience featured singing along, dancing and basically blocking out my surroundings. The concert went overtime by 15 minutes, but it could have lasted another hour and I'd have been fine.

I first heard of DMB from friends back in Virginia who told me about this great band playing in Charlottesville (where I used to live) at a local bar called Miller's. When "Under the Table and Dreaming" was released I about burned out my copy. The album flowed wonderfully and seemed to tell a story. DMB became a constant companion for me in college.

I can't really explain why they are my favorite. I guess, if pinned down, I'd say because of DMBs unique combination of instruments, their amazing improvisation as a live band and because, in a world full of formulaic canned pop music, DMB seemed deeper and more original. I have also consistently appreciated singers with unique-sounding voices, including Dylan, Paul Simon, Matthews, and even Elton John among many others.

After the concert ended, we stopped at a Denny's-type restaurant outside of Boulder for a snack. No one must have noticed the concert on the schedule when they made staffing arrangements because there were about two waitresses and one cook. We were not the first there, but by the time we were finished, the line for tables was out the door and the three workers were calling for reinforcements and in full-panic mode.

It was at the table when my dad stated that this concert had surpassed his experience seeing the Rolling Stones live in 1967 as the best concert he had ever attended. I remember being profoundly impressed by that statement and spent the rest of the night reflecting on my experience. I don't remember sleeping much that night.

And THAT is what makes a concert great. When a performance grabs you, the experience is special. There are countless examples, and I suppose the circumstances vary for each person. But, when you experience the "perfect storm" as I did in 2001, it's magical.

My dad provided an anecdote for the clip blow. Queen, live from "Live Aid" in 1985. He described watching Freddie Mercury take hold of the audience. I found the clip on Youtube and posted it below. No matter what you think of Queen, there is no denying that Mercury took command of the audience and absolutely touched them. He sent everyone home talking about the experience, and I have since discovered that his performance is widely considered one of the best of the 20th Century.



Jacob has taken a special fancy to some of the Muppet Show DVDs my mom owns. The series is a collection from the shows that aired when I was about his age. They feature guest stars such as Harry Belafonte, Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, Elton John, John Denver and others. His insistence on watching those DVDs whenever he earns a movie has brought back so many memories for me.

I remember those artists and others playing throughout my childhood, adolescence and early-adulthood. Once upon a time, I was up on all the new music and always on the lookout for good groups or albums. Unfortunately, I've become more and more detached from the music scene. I don't buy cd's hardly ever anymore.

Although it still didn't lead to a CD purchase, I did buy and download the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire via I-tunes after seeing the movie tonight. The music made a wonderful movie into a special experience much like John Williams did for Star Wars. Music doesn't usually break a movie, but it can absolutely make a movie.

I am going to try to update my music collection and get back to my old practice of listening to music around the house. Although I resisted my father's attempts to make me memorize the composer by sound as a kid (something I regret now), I don't want Jacob to miss out on a soundtrack to his life.

In a related note, Jacob, Year 3, begins production this week.

Another Deal

We are facing an economic crisis. And that sentence seems to represent the totality of agreement on the issue by the populace.

No one agrees how to handle this mess. That doesn't stop anyone from having strong feelings about the stimulus, which is good for healthy debate.

<-- GUESS THE REPUBLICAN ANSWER (Hint: Rhymes with Fax Struts)

My purpose in sitting down to spew my thoughts is threefold. First, I want to address the ridiculous practice of re-arguing the New Deal debate, especially when its done to political ends. Second, I will explain my reason for supporting the stimulous bill even though not one person in this nation is completely happy about it (as if that isn't argument enough). Finally, I want to explain why I believe the zero-vote strategy adopted by the Republican party neither helps the country nor the future of that party.

No one wants more debt and no one wants to waste. Even the best of solutions sometimes taste bad going down, but we do what we must.

FAIR DEAL

I recently read that the conservative talking points during the stimulus debate included an argument that the New Deal made the depression worse. The "proof" provided is sketchy at best. The truth is that this argument leads to a dead-end.

Once the New Deal is brought up in any context, the respective sides will take their usual places and dig in. I will never be convinced that it did not help the nation out of the depression because my great-grandparents credited the public works projects that employed my great-grandfather with saving their lives in the wake of depression.

The truth is that the New Deal represents a fault line for the most basic of political disagreements: The role of the federal government.

Just like I cannot be moved on this topic, neither will many conservatives budge from the assertion that only tax cuts and the private sector ever produce results on anything from slicing bread to ending a recession.

Ironically, they point to the war as the true savior while conveniently leaving out one important fact. WWII created jobs because of the massive government spending necessary to arm the nation to the teeth in a very short time. That's right, those private sector jobs would never have developed if the government wasn't in the market for massive amounts of products to be produced ASAP. Who else but the government would ever make such huge purchases?

Remember that fact when new RNC chair Michael Steele says that the federal government has never created a single job in the nation's history. Such a statement defines foolishness. It also shows that he is driven by only ideology and not by reason. And he's the leader of the Republican party.

Believe it or not, my purpose is not to sing the praises of the New Deal. It was not perfect. It probably did take too many steps toward government activism and earned some of the animosity of the right. My point is that we don't live in the 1930s or 1940s anymore, so the debate doesn't serve any purpose beyond creating arguments that lead to the same old stalemate.

We must use reason and thought to come up with a new strategy for this moment in time. And, all ideas must be considered without resort to blind ideology. That goes for both sides.

STIMULATING

Perhaps the best argument I can make for the stimulus bill that passed is that no one is happy with it. It makes the very liberal unhappy because many spending projects were shelved to make room for more tax cuts. It makes conservatives upset because there aren't enough tax cuts. What better evidence could there be that this bill (thanks to the only three Republicans willing to participate out of 219) involved compromise.

As usual, I look to Benjamin Franklin for perspective on this. Franklin put into eloquent words what I have experienced in my practice when discussing compromise. Franklin's final thoughts on the Constitution were as follows:

Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good.

I have reservations, as does everyone, about this stimulus package. But, I sacrifice them for the public good. We all admit something needs to be done. This package will absolutely create jobs. There is no doubt about that. Construction projects must be "shovel-ready" to receive funding and that means jobs now. Those people who are employed by the projects will in turn spend money, which will help surrounding businesses. The money will bounce around our communities, which is just what the doctor ordered. Is it being done perfectly? I doubt 100 years of debate would accomplish that.

Although the opposition to this bill has been fierce, that opposition has offered nothing reasonable as an alternative. To point only to tax cuts as an answer when that has been the only action taken over the last eight years represents slavery to ideology. Such positions do not involve reason. In fact, the opposition has often even refused to meaningfully participate in the discussion at all, which brings me to...

ZERO EFFECT

There are 219 Republicans in the two houses of Congress. Exactly three of them voted for the stimulus bill. And, many conservative groups have announced that those Senators will face primary challenges when they next face re-election.

But, any true conservative should send those Senators a thank you note along with me. Without those three Senators -- Arlen Specter, Olympia Snow and Susan Collins -- conservative ideals would be even less represented in the bill. Indeed, I wonder how many more of those ideals might have made their way into the bill if a handful of other other Republican officeholders would have decided to be part of the solution as opposed to political foot-dragging.

I understand that only 12 Democrats voted against the stimulus, and I do not pretend that only the Republicans are sticking to their guns. The difference in my eyes is in the effort. Only Republican leadership has threatened to "take my ball and go home." And, no workable (read: non-abolition of taxes) solution has been offered as an alternative.

By offering primary challenges to the few Republican party members left who have political courage and who are not slaves to the "only tax cuts will do" ideology, the party has cemented its status as a regional second-rate party. Until that party's moderates start making decisions again, there will be no meaningful opposition party. And, that's a shame.

Although I am not a conservative, I belive that our country works better when both parties are thinking straight. Afterall, no party (even my own) accomplishes great things without constructive opposition.

Here's hoping for success.

In the meantime, Jacob's generation is left to ask...





Wait!? We're borrowing HOW MUCH again?
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Update and Photos

Jacob has Croup right now, so our weekend has been spent just trying to make our little guy feel comfortable.

It has been relaxing to be home all weekend, but it's been tough watching Jacob struggle with coughing fits. I decided to post a few pictures that I have had saved on the camera for a while.

I have a lot of thoughts for coming posts and will get to those as soon as Jacob is over the hump on his illness, which we hope will be soon. In the meantime, enjoy a few pictures from happier days for our little guy.

At Ian's Birthday party

Waiting for cake.