All about Barbie

Here's an interesting article about Barbie in The Economist magazine, via the Ms. Magazine blog.

The PBS program P.O.V. showed a provocative documentary by Susan Stern about Barbie a few years ago: "Barbie Nation: An Unauthorized Tour".

Fragments of a week

Re-immersion in family Stayed one night with my sister and brother-in-law in Seattle. (My sister used to stay overnight with me in Seattle.) The rest of the time I was with my parents' in the house that used to be my grandparents'. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and the cousins' babies. Visiting my mother's aunt—snow and evergreen trees. Reading my grandfather's travel diaries. Grandmother's and great aunt's stories of simple Christmases in the past where the children each received a pair of mittens as a gift. Occasionally someone might get a doll. I won the Scrabble game we played huddled around the wood stove in the kitchen.

Washington Rain. Always rain. But sun, too. Outside my mother's kitchen window, the neighbor's newly painted barn perched on the edge of the hill. The annual pilgrimage to Easton's Books. In Seattle, we stopped by Chubby & Tubby's for some last minute gifts, a store that, sadly, is going out of business.

Traveling Celebrity sighting: one of the actors from Gilmore Girls, the man who plays Jackson, was on my flight from Seattle to Burbank, where it was unexpectedly and dangerously windy, so we were diverted to LAX until the wind died down and then flown back to Burbank. Rough landing. A fellow passenger in the shuttle on the way home—a float plane pilot in Alaska—said we should complain to the airline and get a partial refund because that sort of landing was inexcusable. Almost finished reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, which I want to finish before seeing The Hours.

Home again Raining last night but clear and rather cool today. Two long services at church. Much music; today is the fifth day of Christmas. Listening to a Christmas gift, Songcatcher.

From today's paper An article about a naturalist, Craig Childs, who walks the Southwest. His most recent book, for my "To Read" list, is Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land. At the end of the article, Childs muses about his desire to be in the wilderness:

"What I want to know...is why am I so hungry for this?"

Extended family

Here's an interesting trend, "Instead of Scattering, Families are Living in the Same Town," as reported in Friday's WSJ:

In a little-noticed but steadily growing trend, the American extended family is making a comeback. Increasingly, the people next [door] may well be your parents -- or kids. And the in-laws? They're moving into a casita in the backyard. Indeed, according to the most recent Census, the number of households with three generations under one roof has doubled in the past 20 years, while the number of young adults moving back home is up 6%.

[Edit: I finally caught on that I can link to articles in the WSJ so that non-subscribers can read them after the editor over at Path to Freedom posted a link to an article I had e-mailed her.]

Ents

I saw the movie The Two Towers yesterday. It was quite good, although I didn't have the same experience of being fully caught up into another world that I did with the first movie. Part of the reason was I didn't see it on the 60-foot screen and, also, the theater was full of elementary and junior high school boys who were a little young to understand all that was going on. Thus, they tended to laugh at inappropriate scenes, such as when the two voices of Gollum were contending for his soul.

The line that struck me was Treebeard's [the talking tree, or Ent] characterization of Saruman:

He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things except as far as they serve him for the moment (p. 76).

Treebeard continues:

He and his foul folk are making havoc now. Down on the borders they are felling trees—good trees. Some of the trees they just cut down and leave to rot...but most are hewn up and carried off to feed the fires of Orthanc....Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop! (p. 77)

And then he rallies the other Ents to go against Saruman's Isengard.

And the rains came down, and down

The sky got really dark, and then it started to pour with windy, driving rain. The gardeners mowing the lawn across the street got soaked. Day two of the rains has arrived. But, already, the rain is much lighter, and the gardeners are still working. I can see blue sky behind the mountains.

Our water supply

I often don't agree with the Opinion page and editorials of The Wall Street Journal, but in its investigative news reporting, the Journal is not afraid to tackle corporate or government malfeasance head on. Today's Page One article (paid subscription required), "Perchlorate Runoff Flows to Water Supply of Millions: A Fuel of Cold War Defenses Now Ignites Health Controversy" by Peter Waldman, is about perchlorate, an ingredient in solid rocket fuel, in water supplies.

In the human body, perchlorate affects production of thyroid hormones -- a phenomenon that the Environmental Protection Agency says can cause thyroid ailments such as Graves' disease and cancer in adults. Fetuses and newborns, the EPA says, are at even greater risk, susceptible to neurological and other developmental damage.

For decades, millions of Americans have been unknowingly exposed to perchlorate through their local water supplies. No one denies that the chemical is toxic. But the level at which it becomes dangerous in drinking water is the subject of a fierce debate that pits the EPA against the Pentagon and its defense-industry allies. As a result, the U.S. is still years away from establishing a nationally enforced standard, and until it does so, a poisonous chemical lingers in the environment in amounts that could still be causing the slow spread of serious disease on a large scale.

Waldman goes on to report:

The EPA wants suspected water supplies tested nationwide for perchlorate, but the Pentagon, which argues perchlorate isn't dangerous in small doses, is resisting in many cases. Instead, the Pentagon has asked Congress for an exemption from environmental laws covering the cleanup of explosive residues at operational sites.

The article investigates in depth the dumping practices of various corporations, including Aerojet, which had a manufacturing plant a few towns to the east of where I live before the company relocated outside of Sacramento, Calif.

The polluting continued for years after evidence began to mount of the dangers of perchlorate. A three-month investigation by The Wall Street Journal has found that even after California regulators tried to control disposal of the chemical in the 1950s, companies dumped it with impunity. It wasn't until the 1970s, after passage of federal clean-water laws, that the defense industry began trying to contain perchlorate waste for treatment. But by then, the chemical had already begun its long, slow seep into water supplies nationwide.

As late as 1976, in fact, Aerojet-General Corp., operator of the missile plant near the Voetsches' home, built a special, 3,500-foot pipeline to dump toxic waste into unlined earthen pits -- directly disobeying a local water-board order issued just months earlier, state documents show. At first, Aerojet told investigators the pipe was just a stopgap measure to bypass a clogged holding pond.

And the article continues. If you don't have an online subscription to the WSJ, pick up a copy of today's paper at a newsstand.

Yet another To-Do list

I've been in this very detached state of being: I survey the many things I should be doing, and then I do none of them and, at the same time, feel no guilt or dread of the consequences I know are unavoidable. However, I received a message yesterday that my job position has been approved, and thus I probably will be employed once again by some time next week. Therefore, more of my life will again be structured by outside demands. So, let's see if I can get things in order around here, so I can make progress in my studies while working at the same time.

• Clean house. Kitchen. Living room/study. Bathroom. Bedroom. Garage.
• Finish organizing and assembling Christmas gifts.
• Do laundry on a day when rain is not predicted.
• Choose and practice music for Sunday.
• Get front-end alignment.
• Finish book review and submit by Friday, December 20.

I am going to start with the kitchen: wash dishes; organize refrigerator; make vegetable stock with accumulated vegetables; make lentil soup for lunch; wash floor; tidy counters. On your mark, get set, GO.