Geisha School Dropout

Lord, Have Mercy

It's a familiar trope that kids grow up to rebel against what their parents held dear: pastor's kids turn into wild heathens, Alex Keaton was the president of the Young Republicans to the dismay of his liberal parents (if you need to Wikipedia that shit, you are way too young to be reading this blog, baby).  

Well, Isaac is no different.  Case in point, this is what he yelled at us today because we made him go to bed:

Well ,when I grow up, I'm going to be a LAWYER and make you pay all your TAXES and you will DIE in poverty and the rest of the citizens will congratulate me!

I consider myself a pretty chill parent, to a fault sometimes, but I'd just like to see.  Him.  Try.

In other news, guess who has joined the bespectacled masses:

Sounds of Saturday

Tim sent me the "Bad Lip Reading" version of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used to Know":

I might even like it better than the original!

And bonus sexy presidential stream-of-consciousness beat poetry:

A Huge Boost for Same-Sex Marriage

Did you hear?  The day after North Carolina became the 30th state to vote against gay marriage, President Obama, MY president, just became the first president in American history to publicly support same-sex marriage.

YES HE DID.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: this man has singlehandedly raised our national pride and international esteem back up from the Bush years with his poise, intelligence, wit, and RAW BALLSINESS.  Needless to say, he has my vote again this November.  

Mr. President, here is what I have to say to you:

Working Mom

This image brought tears of pride and adoration to my eyes.  From the Wall Street Journal's Photos of the Day blog:

I've totally had that day, when school or daycare was closed, my back-up sitter was out of town, and I had to come into the office for a meeting or some other face-to-face interaction.  I was able to get away with locking the kids up in a spare conference room with a DVD player and some coloring books, but Licia Ronzulli, Italy’s member of the European Parliament, had her (gorgeous) baby girl voting alongside her on Wednesday.

Working moms of the world, unite and take over!

Storytime with Isaac #2

Isaac just brought home another stack of Writers' Workshop papers, so I think this can be a regular column for the rest of the school year.

"If I Had Three Wishes," by Isaac (9/14/2011)

Boy, it's a beutiful Wedneday at school.  But sometimes I get bored I want three wishes.  I wish that I was president.  This way I can't get bored as much becuase it's very, very busy.  I also wish I was in the USA navy so I could fly a F-14!!  I wonder if I could also ride a submarine!  Or maybe a helicopter!  Third wishes can be a little hard to grant.  You can wish chocolate, toys, candy, etc.  I would wish 1,000,000,000,000 toys.  The End

"When I Grow Up," by Isaac (9/22/2011)

When I grow up I want to be president of the United States because I like making new laws and having spies.  I think being president is exiting.  Besides, if you were president of the United States, you'd get to go into the splendid, enchanted, one-hundred roomed, warm hearting White House.  I often think about president Obama most of the time!  I think Obama's family is beutiful!  I wonder how many people could fit in the humongous White House.  End

A Call for Fair Chicken Laws

(based on the iconic "Skateboarding is not a crime" slogan, illustrated here and here)

I've recently joined the fight for fair chicken laws in Long Beach (there is an online petition here).  Currently, the laws are poorly written. First it says you are allowed hens...then it states you are allowed ONE hen with a 20-foot setback from all dwellings (who owns just one hen?).  You need a 50-foot radius for two or more hens.  We're lucky to live in a neighborhood that is made up of small houses on relatively big lots and our immediate neighbors did not rebuild their homes to fill up their whole lot, but that is certainly not the case in most of Long Beach.

I'd like to simplify this law to just set a maximum number of hens per household, or at least relax the setback.   Here is my letter to the Sustainable City Commission of Long Beach:

To whom it may concern:

My name is Julie, wife and mother of two children, and I have lived in Long Beach for 4 years, 1.5 of them with two chickens.

I am writing to you today to describe just a few of the great aspects of backyard chickens.

1. Egg-laying hens are a great step towards affordable, fresh, local, sustainable food, along with planting a backyard vegetable garden.  Chickens aerate the soil, provide fertilizer and composting starter, help you with your weed and pest problems, and are more than happy to eat your vegetable scraps and grass clippings. The city of Long Beach has already done so much to help its citizens with environmentally sound practices (the plastic bag ban, the composting program, farmers markets, and community farms and gardens, etc.).  Allowing a small number of hens per household with no setback restrictions will continue the great work done so far.

2. Nutritionally, humanely-raised hens lay far superior eggs, full of protein, vitamins, and Omega-3s.  Even my 4-year-old can taste the difference between our eggs and the ones sold in stores. Also, with all the salmonella breakouts and egg recalls over the last few years due to horrific conditions at factory egg farms, I feel great knowing the eggs I eat are not only more delicious than store-bought eggs, but the hens that provided those eggs have access to a varied diet, lots of sunshine and fresh air, and a stimulating environment.

3. My children have already learned so much from the chickens.  They have learned where part of their food comes from, and how important it is to take care of the animals who work for us.  Seeing cracked corn and seeds turn into delicious eggs is nothing short of miraculous, and it occurs daily in our backyard!

4. Contrary to popular opinion, as animals go, chickens are relatively easy, clean, and quiet (especially compared to dogs and kids!).  Everything associated with their care (leftover food, soiled bedding, even their poop) can be used as fertilizer either by turning it into compost or even put straight onto the ground.  Nothing gets put into the trash can; nothing is wasted.  I don’t think I can say the same for my own poop, or my dog’s.  :)

I cannot imagine life without my hens and the fresh eggs they give us.  Our family of four would love to have a small flock one day (up to six hens), and we hope that we will be able to do that without fear of doing something illegal.  Let’s join other great cities by enacting fair, sustainability-focused chicken laws.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

If you would like to know more about the Urban/Backyard Chicken movement, check out these links:

The article that was my original inspiration for getting backyard chickens

Old NYT article on some Bay Area chicken owners

Susan Orlean's "New Yorker" article on raising backyard chickens

Madcitychickens.com offers tips on how to organize for fair chicken laws in your city.

Backyardchickens.com

 

Animal Photo of the Week: Bubbles

 Ah, now that’s the life! In this sweet photo, Bubbles turkey brings new meaning to the word “relaxation” as she basks in the warm sunlight that shines on her pasture. Sunbathing, a favorite pastime of lots of birds, is just one of the many natural behaviors that turkeys at Farm Sanctuary get to engage in that those on factory farms do not. Packed by the thousands inside large warehouses and denied even a quiet place to rest, let alone the chance to go outside, these birds lead frustrated lives as their innate desires are thwarted by the unnatural conditions they endure. Had Bubbles not been rescued, she certainly would have never known the contentment she experiences at our New York Shelter today.

via farmsanctuary.typepad.com

I will be eating turkey this Thanksgiving, but I just thought Bubbles looked too sweet not to share.  Maybe I'm delusional, but after decades of living with different degrees of vegetarianism and animal activism, and to this day only owning 1 pair of leather shoes, I have come to believe that you can love animals and still eat them.  I do try to buy meat from animals who were treated with some modicum of respect during their lives, I make sure the animals directly in my care are treated well, I donate each year to animal welfare organizations, but that's it.

The way I see it, Mother Nature is one cold-hearted bitch.  Animals kill each other for a variety of reasons, and it's hardly ever for noble ones, nor do they try to do it with the least amount of pain and suffering.  Hell, even the hawk who killed my chicken Dr. Evil killed her by pinning her down with his claws, pulling out her neck feathers, then repeatedly pecking at her neck until her head was severed, then she went off with the head, leaving the most nutritious parts behind.  I dare say that was more terrifying, painful, and wasteful than what a humane farmer would do to a chicken.

(Gawd, am I Debbie Downer today or what?)

Did anything memorable happen yesterday?  Oh, I sent out the Evite for Isaac's birthday party.  I trimmed the guest list down to family and close friends, so we shall see how that goes.  I treated myself to an oatmeal white chocolate cranberry cookie and was so inspired by it, I resolved to bake some today.  During tae kwon do class, Emi declared she was a baby and said she needed milk, so she kept ramming her face into my boobs.  What's weird is that I actually felt the pins-and-needles let-down response.  Sigh, I miss babies.

Happy Fourth of July!

We hope you and your family had a great Independence Day! We spent the day noshing on barbecue and playing games, and watched a spectacular fireworks display at Veterans Stadium at LBCC. The show was put on by the fire department, so a lot of different types of engines were put on display.  

And of course, it wouldn't be a Mang holiday without some oddity. Emi wore this adorable dress all day, but suddenly around noon I realized that the tie-dye made a pattern that looked a lot like the Confederate flag! I noticed no one else had the same dress on although it was from a very popular store, and she garnered a couple double-takes from members of the crowd. Do you guys see it? 

A Little Wednesday Tear-Jerker

This Google ad made me WEEP, mofos:

I know it may touch me more than the average viewer because I am an Asian American who immigrated with her parents, parents who worked their asses off for me like the unseen user in the ad.  But there is so much life and emotion hiding between one search and the next, and in a way the story arc is so quintessentially American, I think this would touch many more people than the current immigrant population.  

What especially tickles me is with this commercial, Google has humanized the immigrant struggle, which is a brave thing to do right now, when immigration is such a divisive issue.  They didn't have to contribute to the debate, but they did, and in high style.  Hopefully, because of media like this, people will start thinking of the person washing their dishes as something more than a resource-hogging, tax-evading drug mule.  Sigh.  

Bravo, Google!

(Props to Bicoastal Bitchin for the heads-up!)

Fading to Black

I've been in quite a mood these past few weeks.  It might be related to the dieting, it might just be depression rearing its homely head again.  I don't know.

One of the sucky things about depression is the inability to tell whether your reaction to things is really true, or if it is somehow exaggerated or muted by the darkness in your brain.  There are no more landmarks in which to gauge your emotional direction, so your inner compass is constantly spinning, looking for north. 

It's frustrating, because even a few weeks ago, I knew where north was, what it felt like.

This morning I cried because Emi was struggling to put on her clothes.  It was half-hearted, ineffectual flailing at garments, and it just infuriated and terrified me.  How can she not do something so simple?  What kind of mother let her daughter become so helpless?  It just shattered me.

So did this:

After sobbing at the screen for 10 minutes, here are my thoughts:

Having lived with undocumented immigrants all my life, and for a period of about 5 years actually being one, I know this little girl's concerns are real.  As a child, I too have been afraid for many of the people in my life, that one day they would be taken away by La Migra back to their home country, away from the home they chose for themselves and their families.

I thought the First Lady's answer was remarkably poised and age-appropriate.  But I preemptively wince at the inevitable backlash.  Anti-immigration sentiment, in my experience, has always, without exception, had a racist and jingoistic foundation.  I always wonder about people with American roots that are only three or four generations old who are actively seeking to put an end to this current tide of immigrants.  Offended by the dirty wetbacks and the money-hungry chinks?  Man, you should do some research and see what people said about your ancestors when they decided to move to America.

Of course I know illegal immigrants are illegal.  But my proposed solution is to make it easier to become legal, not to hunt people down and throw them out of the country.  That would mean living in a police state, everyone as afraid as that little girl.  Is that American?