No, I Won't Let Business Jargon Dominate the Way I Communicate

Recently, a friend of mine worried that, as an MBA candidate, I won't be able to escape adding business jargon to every sentence I produce. Every sentence I speak, he warned, will start sounding like I memorized the latest fad-speak from that new must-read management guru or one of those blog posts designed to help you to be a better leader and enhance your productivity.

Don't worry. I may be incubating in business jargon, but I won't let it change me! And I have good reasons for this. 

Let me unpack the difficulties with business jargon. Business jargon fails to align end user desires with the marketing intention of my communication targets. This results in a loss of communication value which disrupts the synergy I normally have with my ideation partner. Such disruption means that both myself and my communication partner fail to ideate to the scale that we are accustomed to and our productivity falters. Another result of the loss of communication value is a lack of bandwidth available to accomplish the day's deliverable, which could cause me to lose leverage with communication customers.

Likely, if some business evangelists are utilizing business jargon beyond their building capabilities, they won't be able to circle back to their core competencies on their own. They need a change agent willing to give them the face time needed to provide a life hack to see that their interests are aligned to a more customer-centric, value-producing style of communication. The change agent will reach out with a holistic approach to sustainable communication, streamlining words and sentences in ways that make the end user feel empowered. The key pivot point is a strategy of organic communication vocabulary that breaks through the clutter for maximum impact. Once sustainable communication becomes part of their DNA, each sentence, email, or text will have a positive value-added for a greater return on investment, enabling communicators to develop their own personal brand and emerge as thought leaders. Communication sustainability will provide the right end-user solutions to every enterprise.

So don't worry - moving forward, I won't be drinking the Kool-Aid of Business Jargon, because communication transparency is a win-win for everyone involved.

Loving Language in a Time of Commerce (or Happy National Grammar Day)

Once, when I taught upper-intermediate English to a design team at a major German auto company, one of my students showed me a grammar mistake in an email from an American colleague. This group of students was advanced enough for me to run a pretty tight ship, grammar-wise, so he was a bit amused that his native-speaker colleague would make the sort of grammar faux pas I would always pounce on during class.

Of course, the grammar mistake wasn't all that important. It didn't inhibit communication in anyway; the colleagues could continue business as normal. In commerce, it's clear communication that counts. I even read, in a Business English textbook of all places, that poorly-written emails are a sign of someone moving up the corporate ladder. Well-written emails reveal someone with too much time on their hands, but non-capitalized words clumsily spat out on a smart phone - that's a person with places to be.

Still, I loved unpacking little grammar secrets and the purposes of "why-we-do-this-when-in-German-you-do-that" mutual detective games in my English classes. It was great fun. But at the end of the day, I know that the need for international business is not elegance but to just do enough to overcome Babel, even if it ain't always pretty.  (I consider "ain't" a pretty part of the English language, but that could be a byproduct of my Appalachian)

This is thrilling, of course. There's communication! People who once may have never understood each other understand each other now! This also part of the dual nature of being an ESL teacher. I love language, especially written prose, but I also love it when people use language as is, discovering different channels and springs of communication along the way in our eternal effort to be understood.

This is partly why I blog, because my own electronic scribble creations are an outlet for me. There's a danger, though. I so wish I could be a real grammar snob and publicly rage against those native-English writers who fail to achieve every literal jot and tittle. For me, a fun way to spend the afternoon is a comma discussion by way of a memoir on the website for America's best source for all things prose. But a blog is a bad way to brag, especially about grammar. I bet, in fact, that as soon as I upload this, regardless of rereads by my wife and me, some grammar mistake will pop out like a pimple on my website, and a real grammar snob, if he had even bothered to read that far, would have to bite his fist to stop screaming. My writing goes on in fits and starts, a patch here, a paragraph here, an idea that occurred to me when I should have been thinking about something else, months of busyness when ideas collect like pollen waiting for the Spring, and some ideas are even remembered. Little time for editing, for prying my big-picture brain into a detail-oriented mentality. So I hit publish, hoping that the "you'res" aren't "yours" or that I didn't confuse "affect" and "effect," all the while wondering if I should mail Bill Gates a thank-you-note for blessing the world with spell check. Then, if I catch a mistake post-publish, I put on a hair-shirt and whip my own back 39 times. Ok, I don't do that, and I know the world doesn't care, but I can tell you that vanity-reading your own stuff isn't good for the soul.

Then, there's foreign languages. Over half of my MBA courses are in English (yippee!), but most of them are taught by non-native speakers, so the lectures are peppered with grammar mistakes which, as an English language trainer, I can analyse, explain, and suggest improvements. But I say nothing, not only to keep my professors' good graces, and not only because their mistakes rarely inhibit communication, but also because, often enough, it's my turn to speak German, and, and C1 fluent that I am, there's no way this side of heaven that I am going to get every detail of this language right. I'll never remember every gender of every non-gendered object, I'll continue to mix up their backwards numbers, and I insist that the differenced in pronunciation between o and ö is zero, null, nil, nada, and nothing. I am in deep need of grammar grace - at the university, at my church, in my family, and in any future employment.

Good writing with good grammar is beautiful. I can recognize it in German, even if I'll never produce it myself, and I can strive for it, however imperfectly, in English. The letter of the law, in language as in elsewhere, shows purpose, making communication effective, elegant, and enjoyable. But in our world of international commerce, international friendships, and international families, we get to communicate with each other, even if we'll never be maestros, and our strivings are beautiful in and of themselves. What should we do otherwise? In language, as with anything else in life, the best way forward is to love both the law and the person who will never perfectly fulfil it. We need to be full of grace and truth, and for this, we have an example.

Meanwhile, should you catch me in grammatical error, your welcome to point it out.

Notes on the Second - V. Chunk

Five years ago, after the first was born, I chunked up. A lot of dads do. If you don't believe me, go to Facebook and look at pictures of your new-father friends. Then watch from the day of birth until about three months as the papa's cheeks swell, love handles pour over the side of his skinny jeans, and all his shirts start to develop little mouths between the buttons as if screaming for help. The new mom shrinks, the new baby grows, the new dad expands. I never got really fat, but it's enough chunk for me to get a little queasy-cringy every time someone breaks out the photo album. Moving to Germany and regular exercise, among other thing, has kept me reasonably fit sense, and I want to keep it that way. This time around I'm determined to avoid the chunk.

Papa-chunking is hard to avoid though, and there are two reasons. One is a new kind of tiredness; the other is a vague sense of karma. First the tiredness. During stressful seasons at work or study, I'm tired, but I need exercise. There comes a point when my brain can't take it anymore until I put my running shoes on and burn five kilometers like I'm Lola. New baby tiredness is different. It comes from staying up late with a baby intent on exercising her new lungs just to give'em a spin. When she's finally swaddled and asleep, I'm exhausted. Keep in mind, I've done very little physical activity except catch her every time she does those scary little newborn trust falls from my chest. Additionally, I've paced around and sang to her and watched terrible early-morning television that I'd have been better off not knowing about in the first placed. After she's finally quiet, swaddled, and sleeping, I'm not ready to hit the running trail, the weight machine, the basketball court, or however else we men keep our college boy figures. I'm ready to pass out on the hallway floor or ready to eat, and this is where the vague sense of karma comes in.

The vague sense of karma is the big reason for papa-chunking. After all, holding and comforting a tiny little human being for three and a quarter hours while she cries her little heart out is a GOOD. EFFEN. DEED. And because it's a good deed, I deserve seven cookies, three pieces of that good cheese we were saving for New Years, four spoonfuls of peanut butter (plus a couple of illicit swipes with the index finger), a hunk of that good peppery salami, a Magnum bar, and a bottle of beer to wash it all down. And my vague sense of karma tells me that if there is any sense of sovereign justice in the world, this three-and-a-half minute snack will have zero effect on my waste line.

So this time round, I haven't shunned the jogging trail, even though part of me wishes I could stay on our couch until my funeral. And, even though it's the Christmas season, I like to think I've held the binge-eating in check. Stay away, papa-chunk. You're not welcome here.

(At this point, the blogger takes a break to throw away the wrappers from the three chocolate Santas Clauses he took to write this post)

This is the fifth chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second - III. Woman

Awe is the appropriate response a thoughtful man has to the woman he married. Awe usually requires a certain thoughtfulness. Being thoughtful means using your thoughts to poke through the stress and distractions and day-to-day muddle that makes everything too urgent for awe. When we can't do this, events come along to bring it out. My sense of awe, neglected like I neglect this blog, focused and compounded upon itself while watching my wife give birth. Most dads would agree with me here.

The cocktail worked so quickly that we had no time for drugs or anything else. The birth was going to be all natural, with the help from a midwife, a doctor, and a hot tub. It's hard for a man not to feel so unessential to the process, even as I brought her water and gave her a shoulder to lean on. We walked back and forth, we tried different positions and "labor massages," and in the end, pretty much anything we planned didn't really work, other than to say: "full steam ahead!" The midwife was a hero, making a little moan every time my wife yelled in agony, which apparently helped, and spoke words of comfort through the torturous fear between labor pains.

The screams came from every part of her body and soul. They contained fear, pain, determination, and love, somehow shameless and proud at the same time. In labor, there's a sense of irrational urgency, and yet a wise, determined patience. In all of these paradoxes, the culmination of the 9-month process of giving life, the woman in labor is more animal, more angel, and more human than a man could ever be.

During the final pushes, she grabbed my shoulder as the doctor and midwife directed traffic. "Grabbed" - no. She crushed my shoulder between her fingers. It hurt for a week, though that'll elicit no sympathy from a birthing woman.

At the end of it all, my daughter emerged from my wife. They let me cut the cord, and they sat her on my wife's broken body for her first meal. There were tears and greetings and pictures and weighings. We had a new person to get to know, but my wife was nine months ahead of me.

This is the third chapter of a longer post about getting to know our second child. You can read the post in its entirety here. 

Notes on the Second

I. The Waiting

Our second child was late. Ok, late is a stupid term. Every doctor, nurse, and midwife we talked to reminded us that the "due date" was really just the middle of a range, and real earliness or lateness can involve a lot of unpleasantness. She came eight days after the due date, which isn't late. It's right on time, like a wizard.

But it felt late, especially when the doctor told my wife, eight days before the due date that "THE BABY IS LOW! GET READY! IT'LL COME AT ANY MOMENT!!!" We spent the following to weeks like Olympic sprinters waiting for the gun, head down, bottoms up, cleats sharp. This stressed us, especially as we invited everyone around us to get in sprint position - my in-laws, who were to pitch in with our first child during the labor adventures, my co-students, who were ready to pitch in with my projects and take copious notes should I suddenly get called to the hospital.

From then on, every conversation began with a look of expectation. "Is the baby there?" My daughter's kindergarten, university, church, street. Texts and Facebook, Email (remember Email?). It could get tedious. "No, not yet. My wife is uncomfortable, but she and the child are healthy. She's due the 13th, but it could be up to ten days after it." Every time. Tedious, but part of me loved it and not just the part of me that craves your approval. I loved it, because it's much better than the alternative. Those around us saw my family - my unborn child, my wife, my daughter, me - as something worth caring about. That old question, "how are you doing?" honestly asked, means something.

II. The Cocktail

We have friends who lovingly refer to one of their sons as their "margarita baby." You laugh, because you know. Your decision to get pregnant may have been lubricated by a cocktail (or three). Well, in Germany (and perhaps other back-to-nature oriented northern European countries), there's a cocktail for the end of the pregnancy. No, it's not Mommy's little Jägermeister to ease the her into a stupor so she can forget the experience. It's the labor-inducing cocktail, and it works. (In fact, don't go googling it and making it for yourself at home, which may be tempting with 9-months and nothing moving. We've heard of mothers going for the home cocktail, resulting in some unwanted, and unsafe, home births.)

It works, but it's not delicious, according my wife. The back story: My wife's water broke the morning of my daughter's birth, so we packed what was still left to pack, sent our first daughter with her grandmother, and moseyed on over to the hospital, hoping the labor pains would come soon. Well, the pains were there, but they were too wimpy to take on woman. By the afternoon, the midwife, for no extra tip, poured the cocktail. My wife sipped it down over the next hour - it's mostly nut oils, which isn't exactly "great taste, less filling." But I repeat: it works. Not only does it work, but from what I understand, the labor pains it induces are less painful than those from the medical procedure we were familiar with from having our first daughter in the States. But Labor pains they were, and my wife suddenly became capable of balling up steel beams with her fingers.

III. Woman

Awe is the appropriate response a thoughtful man has to the woman he married. Awe usually requires a certain thoughtfulness. Being thoughtful means using your thoughts to poke through the stress and distractions and day-to-day muddle that makes everything too urgent for awe. When we can't do this,  events come along to bring it out. My sense of awe, neglected like I neglect this blog, focused and compounded upon itself while watching my wife give birth. Most dads would agree with me here.

The cocktail worked so quickly that we had no time for drugs or anything else. The birth was going to be all natural, with the help from a midwife, a doctor, and a hot tub. It's hard for a man not to feel so unessential to the process, even as I brought her water and gave her a shoulder to lean on. We walked back and forth, we tried different positions and "labor massages," and in the end, pretty much anything we planned didn't really work, other than to say: "full steam ahead!" The midwife was a hero, making a little moan every time my wife yelled in agony, which apparently helped, and spoke words of comfort through the torturous fear between labor pains.

The screams came from every part of her body and soul. They contained fear, pain, determination, and love, somehow shameless and proud at the same time. In labor, there's a sense of irrational urgency, and yet a wise, determined patience. In all of these paradoxes, the culmination of the 9-month process of giving life, the woman in labor is more animal, more angel, and more human than a man could ever be.

During the final pushes, she grabbed my shoulder as the doctor and midwife directed traffic. "Grabbed" - no. She crushed my shoulder between her fingers. It hurt for a week, though that'll elicit no sympathy from a birthing woman.

At the end of it all, my daughter emerged from my wife. They let me cut the cord, and they sat her on my wife's broken body for her first meal. There were tears and greetings and pictures and weighings. We had a new person to get to know, but my wife was nine months ahead of me.

IV. She's so Friendly

Part of the purpose of this post is to "treasure these things in our hearts", which sleeplessness, stress, and an unfortunate bout of disease have made difficult this week. The sleeplessness, at least, serves a purpose. The times when I am awake with her are little treasures in and of themselves, the first father-daughter moments where I have her all to myself. Whenever I first look into her wakeful eyes, the first word that comes to mind is "friendly." I never thought an infant could have any sort of friendly disposition, but she does. It's as if she says, "I'm content to let you be who you are, and I want to get to know that part of you better." The sentiment reveals itself in the way she looks, even in the way she coos and grunts when she's hungry. She cries a lot as a colicky little thing, but crying for her seems to be a last resort. She's a friendly person who would rather communicate through less intrusive means. I'll play the little baby games; I stick my tongue out, and she mimics me. I experiment with different voices to see how she reacts. I show her different patterns. And of course, I sing.

Babies aren't carry ons or blocks of wood. They're little people with little personalities, and it's the privilege of a parent to treasure these things so early.

V. Chunk

Five years ago, after the first was born, I chunked up. A lot of dads do. If you don't believe me, go to Facebook and look at pictures of your new-father friends. Then watch from the day of birth until about three months as the papa's cheeks swell, love handles pour over the side of his skinny jeans, and all his shirts start to develop little mouths between the buttons as if screaming for help. The new mom shrinks, the new baby grows, the new dad expands. I never got really fat, but it's enough chunk for me to get a little queasy-cringy every time someone breaks out the photo album. Moving to Germany and regular exercise, among other thing, has kept me reasonably fit sense, and I want to keep it that way. This time around I'm determined to avoid the chunk.

Papa-chunking is hard to avoid though, and there are two reasons. One is a new kind of tiredness; the other is a vague sense of karma. First the tiredness. During stressful seasons at work or study, I'm tired, but I need exercise. There comes a point when my brain can't take it anymore until I put my running shoes on and burn five kilometers like I'm Lola. New baby tiredness is different. It comes from staying up late with a baby intent on exercising her new lungs just to give'em a spin. When she's finally swaddled and asleep, I'm exhausted. Keep in mind, I've done very little physical activity except catch her every time she does those scary little newborn trust falls from my chest. Additionally, I've paced around and sang to her and watched terrible early-morning television that I'd have been better off not knowing about in the first placed. After she's finally quiet, swaddled, and sleeping, I'm not ready to hit the running trail, the weight machine, the basketball court, or however else we men keep our college boy figures. I'm ready to pass out on the hallway floor or ready to eat, and this is where the vague sense of karma comes in.

The vague sense of karma is the big reason for papa-chunking. After all, holding and comforting a tiny little human being for three and a quarter hours while she cries her little heart out is a GOOD. EFFEN. DEED. And because it's a good deed, I deserve seven cookies, three pieces of that good cheese we were saving for New Years, four spoonfuls of peanut butter (plus a couple of illicit swipes with the index finger), a hunk of that good peppery salami, a Magnum bar, and a bottle of beer to wash it all down. And my vague sense of karma tells me that if there is any sense of sovereign justice in the world, this three-and-a-half minute snack will have zero effect on my waste line.

So this time round, I haven't shunned the jogging trail, even though part of me wishes I could stay on our couch until my funeral. And, even though it's the Christmas season, I like to think I've held the binge-eating in check. Stay away, papa-chunk. You're not welcome here.

(At this point, the blogger takes a break to throw away the wrappers from the three chocolate Santas Clauses he took to write this post)

VI. The First

When the first came, our new family was an insulated little bubble of three people, one of them new. Sure, we had enormous help from family and friends - especially the heroic grandmothers and fabulous meals from our D.C. church friends. But while they were constantly coming in and out of our little bubble, our little family strengthened like a three-fold cord.

Now, the first is five years old, and because of her, if our bubble isn't porous, it doesn't exist. She's blossomed into the richness of life that five years has to offer, the delights of learning and play and discovering things like characters and stories and science. Then, there are the challenges of discipline, disease, and the normal, everyday hassle of getting her ready for kindergarten.

Her new little sister has been thrust upon all of these things, and there's a strange paradox here. On one hand, she's old enough to be aware of what's going on, to know how to behave around her (gentle! quiet!), while avoiding the jealousies of younger older siblings. On the other hand, she's too young to really adjust her own life and habits for the change. She needs help and attention every morning, she needs and wants to play with her parents, she has moods, gets sick, gets excited, and, for the first time in her life, has become a picky eater. This of course, damages the sense of "mama-and-papa-against-the-world" was there for the first week of the First's life, and the Papa's supporting role is something like....

DoSomethingDoAnythingToDistractOrEntertainHerSoThatHerLittleSisterCanFinallyLearnToBreastfeedProperlyInPeaceExceptNotAnotherEpisodeOfSeanTheSheepBecauseShe'sSomehowInABadMoodAfterWatchingSeanTheSheepEvenThoughSheLovesItAndIKnowIt'sMuchTooColdToGoOutsideSoHelpHerPutOnHerPrincessDressAndColorButPleaseDon'tMakeTooMuchNoise!!!!!

Then, sickness entered the picture. The First came home from kindergarten (that oversized petri dish) with a nasty fever and a stiff neck. It got worse, and on Sunday, we took her to the hospital. By the grace of God, our own paediatrician was on hospital duty there, and the stiff neck signalled meningitis to him. The next day, my oldest daughter and I checked into the hospital, where we would stay for the next few days. My wife and youngest daughter stayed at home, still learning to feed and drink. It was a sad, sad situation - separation, hospital food, nightmares darkening our thoughts. There was, though, a warmth strengthening my bones at the time, and I think it was the knowledge that by simply being there I was where I ought to be and what I ought to be, and this confidence is foreign to me. A father and husband, present, within fear and sickness and suffering, standing against the effects of the Fall like a palm tree in a thunderstorm.

I wasn't alone of course - friendly and competent medical staff, my in-laws were heroes, and my wife was able to visit the hospital, and when we brought home a nasty intestinal disease from the hospital, everyone suffered but the baby, protected beautifully by my wife's milk. The antibiotics worked their magic on my oldest daughter, and we still don't know if it was actually meningitis, even though several doctors worked like Dr. House throughout the week to find out. Now, we're healthy, even if rumours of other diseases here in our neighbourhood tempt us to barricade our house 'til spring, and when we actually stop to think about it (and stopping to think is challenging when you have small kids), we're deeply thankful. My mother-in-law is convinced that our prayers helped my older daughter as much as the antibiotics. One doesn't exclude the other, and we did indeed pray.

There's another thought that helps, one that my wife brought home from the midwife that led her birthing classes. Whatever new amount of stress a little baby brings to her older sister, we've given them both an incredible gift. The love of a sister (or a brother) is not something you can easily replicate. And of course, every little girl's favorite film right now is about sisterly love, and from my daughter's Elsa dress to the way she kisses her little sister (gentle! quiet!), we get some nice reminders. As the midwife said, the sibling relationship is often the longest relationship someone can have.

VII. Horrible, Horrible Thoughts

In the background of our hospital stay, you can think of parenting as a sequence of horrible thoughts. We all have horrible thoughts about the things we care about, like the way my fellow students and I are having exam-time nightmares about impossible questions and train delays. Parents' horrible thoughts are not here for a season, though; they stay background like the colors of your walls. We have (and I think I can speak of "we" here) horrible thoughts, because horrible things happen to people, and when these things happen to babies, to any children, then this new, common, transcendent, and entangling love that I've described elsewhere is ripped out of the chests of parents and communities, irreplaceable.

In my own experience, baby's complete dependence and vulnerability make the horrible thoughts so pressing, because in many cases, I'm the one responsible. What if I slip and fall down the stairs while I'm holding her? What if I nod off on the couch and she slides off my lap? What if she's not swaddled properly and she pulls the blanket over her head? What if the bedroom temperature isn't precisely 18 degrees Celsius, which we read somewhere is the least dangerous temperature for babies to sleep in? What if I touch her after eating peanut butter only to discover an acute peanut allergy? What if I left the coffee machine on because I was in a hurry not to be late for an exam and the house burns down with the three most important people in my life inside it?

Such questions circle my brain like dancing devils, and though anxiety is health-reducing bit devilment, I've surprisingly found these horrible, horrible thoughts to work towards something else entirely. A horrible thought ambushes me when I'm minding my own business, and then I cringe and I say, "Oh, God," not as a swear, but as a prayer. My child is at the mercy of everything from my own powers of concentration to diseases in nature still unrecorded, and so I plead to God for mercy. The babies under my roof have increased my prayers in frequency and intensity, the entangling love for them entangling our very beings into his sovereignty. This is not a get-out-of-trouble card, and I'm under no illusions that these things can't or won't happen to us. Nor is this an excuse for fatalism, and our prayers have the opposite effect, promoting a careful and engaging sort of love between parent and child. Rather, this is a sober kind of hope, not always comforting but always providing a an unanswerable form of joy, that neither death nor life can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A few days ago, I was walking home, lost in thoughts about my university exams when I was almost killed. I was crossing the street, legally, when a car made a hasty and illegal turn. Had I not been awakened and jumped out of the way, I would have been hit. The car screeched to a halt a good thirty feet to late then pulled over. The driver didn't get out, but I can assume she was as shocked as I was. This experience is not uncommon - it happened to my wife back in the U.S. But it served as a reminder that however adult and in control we are, our situation is precarious.

This precariousness makes love all the more costly, and this is acted out in family and community as we do things to make each other happy, better, and alive. Drinks with friends, jokes among my co-students, an episode of Dr. Who while feeling my wife's warmth against my thigh, playing Frozen with my daughter - all of these things shine through the precariousness like the sun on a summer morning. It deepens the joy of holding my own baby daughter, ten pounds of helpless, human warmth, in my arms. Horrible thoughts are drowned out by the knowledge that this moment with the Second is an unmatchable gift.

These Jets Are Lagged

"I used to be better at jet lag." I've been saying this to anyone who asks about my Christmas holiday in Florida. I've rocked back and forth between the US and Germany since university, and it's true. I could handle it. I could handle it better than most of my peers. I remember how on one summer trip to Germany, so many of my pitiful cohorts slouched like war refugees on Deutsche Bahn while I stoically willed wakefulness and sleep at their proper time upon my compliant body. Several days later, I was chipper as a springtime squirrel while others were still falling asleep before dessert.

Not anymore. I can will nothing. Instead my hands, feet, and head are tethered to a timezone six hours away, watching football, avoiding public transportation, and eating large, fatty meals just before bed. The sun, wintery and distant as it is now, has no effect on me. It sits on the horizon, I sit in my living room, and we ignore each other like bored roommates. I sleep at my body's command. This could be mid-sentence in a conversation with my mother-in-law, or while chewing a piece of toast, or while typing something up so that my head hits the keyboard like this: 8iuy65rfd

What changed? Well, two things.

First, my body is aging. Now, whenever I say this, anyone older than me points out that I ain't seen nothin' yet. And that's true. I'm not old; I'm not even middle aged. I will be some day, Lord willing, but not yet. Nonetheless, I'm no longer that cock-sure traveling college student. There are things I could do a decade ago that my aging body just won't play anymore:

Me: "I'm going to sleep in."
Aging body: "This is your 7:00 wake-up call!"
Me: "That chili-cheese dog looks delicious! I'm going to eat it."
Aging body: "Of course you are, you contemptuous glutton. And for the next few days, you're going to feel as if someone poured cement in your intestines."
Me: "I'm going to run ten kilometers!"
Aging body: "And your joints are going to HATE you."
Me: "I'll put some ice on it. It'll be fine!"
Aging body: "...in about three weeks."
Me: "Jet lag doesn't phase this traveler! I'm not going to fall asleep!
Aging body: "Zzzzzzzzz"

I hear it's only downhill from here.

But age isn't the only reason I'm suddenly a jet lag failure. After all, my dad beat jet lag well into middle age with the right combination of tablets, wine, and airline pasta (WARNING: Do not attempt without first consulting your physician - especially the airline pasta part). The other reason is, of course, a small child.

Yes, for the past four years I've been traveling with a carry-on that I can't stow in the overhead compartment. No traveling parents, no airplane sleep for you. You are there to feed, change, walk, and entertain the passenger capable of throwing herself into a temper tantrum somewhere over the Atlantic. And when you land, your schedule will not abide by actual sunshine, but by your little sunshine. And when you say, "we should go to sleep," she'll say "neither of us can sleep, so let's play princess ponies," and you will smile and neigh like playing princess ponies is what you've wanted to do every since you bought your plane tickets.

So, for the parents of young children, jet lag is not something to be willed away, but to be endured like recovery from surgery, slowly, until a week later, you notice yourself rising with the sun again.

Nothing New Under the Sun

Oh look, my blog! I found it between the couch cushions, next to a bottle cap and a couple of pennies. I had to dust off the cookie crumbs, not to mention two, no, three impermeable gummy bears, plus hair that could be human or teddy bear. I tell you, one day, you put it down, and the next day it falls through the cracks and coats itself sticky with sugar. Well, I rinsed it off in the kitchen sink, because I found something familiar and needed to write about it. This is from Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. It describes the protagonist's mother, mothering in the late 1800s but still familiar today: 

"In many ways, she was a remarkably careful mother, poor woman. I was in a sense her only child. Before I was born she had brought herself a new home health care book. It was large and expensive, and it was a good deal more particular than Leviticus. On its authority she tried to keep us from making any use of our brains for an hour after supper, or from reading at all when our feet were cold. The idea was to prevent conflicting demands on the circulation of the blood. My grandfather told her once that if you couldn't read with cold feet there wouldn't be a literate soul in the state of Maine, but she was very serious about these things and he only irritated her. She said 'Nobody in Maine gets much of anything to eat, so it all comes out even.' When I got home she scrubbed me down and put me to bed and fed me six or seven times a day and forbade me the use of my brain after every single meal. The tedium was considerable."

If she lived today, she'd have a blog. I say this as someone deep in the careful parenting camp. And I'm sure the Internet makes her "health care book" look less like Leviticus and more like a book of nursery rhymes. I know I wield it like a weapon against any potential malady or sign of ill-health that could approach my daughter. And I'm sure a good portion of it is really healthy! Perhaps in a generation or two my daughter will laugh at this area and say "the tedium was considerable." But I hope she'll also remember herself as well-loved.

Speaking of which, you should read (or re-read) Gilead. I've just finished, and I haven't felt this way about prose since I read Breakfast and Tiffany's a couple years ago. I know Robinson is read and loved by plenty of literary connoisseurs, but for the rest of us, well, this book is a feast and there's no shame in being late for it. I won't say too much about it, because it's one of those books that's best left to speak for itself. I'll only mention a couple things. It's the letters of an aging pastor who knows he's dying to his young son. It's beautiful - more like a hike in the country than any sort of action film - with the most nourishing food for thought gently weaved into the narrative. And there's this quote: 

"For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest. Or they might never reach you, for any number of reasons. Well, but how deeply I regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful I am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed. That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth."

With this in mind, I intend to write more. 

The Picnic (Home Sick)

We didn't want to get sick, of course, and we tried everything. But sickness is part of life and winter and public education, and, on the night my daughter's fever set a personal record, our sainted pediatrician was open late treating a relentless line of sniffling kindergartners. That was Thursday, we got the medicine Friday morning. It's Saturday afternoon as a write this, and my daughter is restlessly watching one of the "BBC Earth" films. She wanted to see the one where "the shark eats the seal," which is the first one. This might sound like bragging, as in, "I-got-my-daughter-to-watch-something-educational-nanny-nanny-boo-boo," but really, this my penance for letting her watch a DVD of Disney Princess greatest hits earlier this morning.

Speaking of morning - this morning was very short. Blessedly short. For all the suffering and worrying about a sick child, there is one delicious mercy. We slept in. All of us, including teenie one. Normally, one parent sleeps in while the other does his or her Christian duty to wake up like it's a Tuesday to feed and clothe and entertain a tiny little person. This morning, for perhaps the first time in her life, she out-slept the both of us. I woke up to nothing but sunbeams and quiet. My wife had already gotten up to fix coffee. Our church had it's women's day, where all the ladies sang and ate and encouraged. So I think she's having a good time, even if she had to get up for it. The poor woman. She had a terrible night sleep anyway. My daughter has a fever, but I wasn't spared the sniffles, which means I snored like an eight-hour freight train. My wife informed me of this first thing when I emerged from the bedroom. Maybe she didn't sleep in after all. 

So after a leisury breakfast involving peanut butter and bananas (when you find peanut butter in Europe, you buy lots of it), I helped my sick little daughter up. She ate her light breakfast, slurped her antibiotics and played and toddled around. Not needing much attention, I left her to do some Internet reading (don't worry, my chair was about five feet away from where she was laying on the couch). 

I got lost reading a lovely essay, when, I felt a little tug on my jeans pocket. She's up. "It's time for a picnic, Papa!" I look outside. Snowflakes, lots of them, but too indecisive to stick to the ground. Not picnic weather. Nonplussed, she unrolled a piece of bubble wrap from a package we opened long ago and laid it out on the living room floor. She invited me to her feast, and Î sat down. "What are we eating?" I asked. 

"I have hambooger for you, papa!" 

"mmmm... hamburger. I love hamburgers." I wanted to ask if they were made with horse meat, but I don't think she's up enough on current events to get the joke.

Hamburger finished, she announced, "Î have spaghetti for you!" I'm normally not in the mood for a bowl of spaghetti after a burger, but I didn't wan to be impolite.

"Thank you. Mmmm... that's some good spaghetti!" 

Then we each took a few minutes to pop the bubbles in our picnic blanket. 

Real lunch was served later. I let her watch the Princesses (while wearing her official Cinderella dress) while I fried up some pressed sausage and boiled some potatoes. The Germans call pressed sausage "Fleischkäse," or "meat cheese." It's because it looks and tastes like meat but has the consistency of cheese. I realize this sounds like a form of cafeteria torture, but it's actually quite good, especially if you have onions and a bit of Bavarian sweet mustard. I managed to fry it up on the 2nd try - the first time I left it in the pan too long and the alarms went off. Delicious, even after hamburger and spaghetti. 

Surviving the German Winter Part IV: Temptation

This is part IV of an award-winning*, four-part series on surviving the German winter. You can read part I here, part II here, and part III here. 

Remember your New Years resolutions? New Year, new you and the rest of it? Remember how through the harmonious combination of diet and exercise, you were going to sculpt your body into something that, come summer, will cause traffic accidents outside your house as you flex in your living room with the window open? If you've managed to keep them until now, then let me say this: respect. So many of your comrades have fallen victim to Jack Frost. It's a sick irony that New Years' resolutions are made in the dead of winter. Winter is no season to avoid chocolate. Winter is no season to ride your bike three times a week. You'd be lucky if you can brave the cold enough to get from your office to a fitness studio.

Now don't get me wrong. I've managed to work out during the winter. For a few moments when I step out into sub-zero temperatures to go jogging, I feel like a superhero. I don't feel like a superhero, because I move with superhero strength (nope). I feel like a superhero because winter running tights are the closest I get to wearing a superhero costume in public. If I could find them in patriotic blue with red briefs, I'd be even closer. Mercifully, they're black. The idea is that while running, no one has to see me in them for more than a few moments. Besides, all the Germans wear exercise tights while exercising. Anything less form fitting would be unnatürlich.

***
A brief aside on exercise fashion. When we were back in the States for Christmas, I couldn't help notice how many women wore exercise tights for non-exercise purposes. In the grocery store or around town, the uniform was as follows: exercise tights and tennis shoes (both perfectly clean with no trace of sweat) with a stylish, semi-professional shirt and perfectly placed hair and make up. It was puzzling for these ever-europeanizing eyes. The look suggested, 10K on the bottom, business casual in the middle, job-interview on the top.

***
Ok, winter exercise. Things were going well until one frosty day, I sought to prove I wasn't a Warmdüscher and went running on one of the few forrest paths that wasn't salted. There was only one minor fall, but the awkward running on hard, hard ice was enough to give me a slight tear in the achilles and a week's limp. The doctor gave me some of that magical Chinese tape that all the soccer players are wearing, but the incident was still demotivating. Superheroes don't get small tears thanks to ice and bad form.

I am back to running - carefully - but temptation is much harder to avoid.

This is how it goes: I squeeze my body into my exercise tights and head for the front door when I hear something in the kitchen. It's a voice singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" the way Nora Jones sings it. What is it? Oh, don't play the curiosity card. I know dagum well what it is. It's that Swiss chocolate bar that I was supposedly saving for the moment my ambitions were realized. It's supposed to be my, my reward, for crying out loud! Well... some things deserve a reward. Something like thinking about going running in the sleet. (Big eyes. Pouty face) Just one. little. chocolaty. square. Where's the harm in one tiny little square? Besides, I'm an American! A free person, using my agency to maximize my utility! Why do I need to conform to puritan notions of nutrition? I can have a little taste - just a taste - if I want. Who's going to judge me? If I eat, say one row of squares, I mean, I could devour the whole chocolate bar, but what's the harm in one, harmless row of squares? I mean, baby it's cold outside, and I, frankly, could use a little comfort in trying times (like January or February). I deserve to be comforted, and I don't see why you should judge me!

But what's this? No... Some how, my chocolate bar has found a boy chocolate bar and multiplied. There's a good dozen Swiss chocolate bars that inexplicably found their way into the secret corners of our kitchen. Dark. Milk. White. Hazelnut. Minty. Oh, and Marzipan! No prejudice, just the entire variety of chocolate experience in one snack drawer. I mean, I have no choice but to try them all. It's my duty as a connoisseur to know, to understand all of the tastes! I could write a blog about it, too, and wasn't that another one of my New Year Resolutions? It won't be more than two or (in extreme circumstances) three squares each, and, yes, I know that will all add up to more than one chocolate bar, there will still be plenty left to share with my wife and daughter, provided they come home soon. Speaking of my daughter, I know the packet of gummy bears is her reward for successful potty training, but... she won't notice if a few are missing. You can't accuse me of taking candy from a baby - she's over three! Baby was so a year and a half ago. Oh, and what is that smell? Why, did the oven just give birth to cinnamon rolls? Two or three, while they're fresh. I shouldn't eat too much. After all, I intend to pop open a hard earned Hefeweizen at the end of the day, so I need to save room.

...yeah...

The worst thing you can do for your New Years Resolution is lock yourself in from the blizzard surrounded by candy and beer. Just don't do it. Instead, pack your winter stocks with tomato juice, herbal tea, mandarin oranges, walnuts and whole-grain bread. Also, don't go running when your belly is full of chocolate. And, don't run on the one path in Germany that isn't salted. Take it from me.

*I gave myself the award for best series published on the blog in February. 

Surviving the German Winter Part III: Don't Get Sick

This is part III of a four-part series on surviving the German winter. You can read part I here and part II here. 

The most important thing about the winter? Don't get sick. Ban disease from your presence. Avoid it like.... ok, I won't finish that sentence. Winter sickness is spawned in the floors and desks of kindergartens and elementary schools all over the world, where it's then carried to bus drivers, parents, grocery store workers, office drones and government employees. If you have kids, then, or if you know someone who has kids, or, if you're vaguely aware of the presence of children within a fifty-mile radius of your front stoop, then you need to take the appropriate defense measures.

First, flu shot. It's just a pinch, folks! Then, the teas. Here in Germany, flu shots are under-girded by liters upon liters of Gesundheitstee. Gesundheitstee comes from the German words, Gesundheit, which, you probably know from sneezing, means "health", and Tee, which is how I spelled the word "tea" in first grade (someone should probably point this out to the Germans and get back to them once they corrected their documents). Most of them taste like hot, piping vegetable liquid, which is to say they're delicious. Also, innovate Germans like my wife make tea using real ingredients. You know those tea bags full of ginger and honey flavoring you can get at the grocery store? Well, here's a breakthrough - for roughly the same time, cost and effort, you can make ginger-honey tea using... wait for it... actual ginger and honey, which is a heck of a lot healthier than whatever it is they put in those other teas. Ahh... warm hot tea is just what you need after a day of your daughter using your sleeves as a hankie. Put in a spoon full of honey and open a Charles Dickens book if you're really feeling wild. You can also bathe in the stuff, or try to breathe it to relieve your throbbing sinuses. Just remember, don't drink the tea you bathe in.

Then, vitamins. Vitamins, vitamins, vitamins. Germans have many vitamin-enhanced products, often things you fizz up in water or pills or vitamin-enhanced tea, with various combination for every situation or stage in life. Then, Der Spiegel told us that the Pharma industry was lying to us (the title of the piece translates: "The Vitamin Lie," but they should have taken a page from Dawkins to call it "The Vitamin Delusion," which would have been snappier) and that we could get all the vitamins we need from food. So now, I'm eating less vitamins, except the vitamins that I'm getting from food, which I'm told is plentiful.The way to do this is buy those tennis ball crates they use for practice and fill them with oranges. An orange a day keeps the sickness at bay. At least, until you get sick. I don't recommend using the tennis ball shooter though, at least if you want to use the oranges.

Then, of course, there's prayer. I can't say if prayer gives me some sort of psychological advantage in the face of disease, but that's not the point. I wish prayer worked like a magical incantation, where I get to use supernatural forces to bend the world to my whims. Otherwise, I would have waived my wand to straighten my teeth like Hermione Granger did instead of suffering through five years of braces. It works like this. I pray for my health, which could affect my family's health, or finances and much more, and I find myself trusting God with these issues. This introduces peace into my life. Then, I pray for the health of my wife and my daughter. My wife has been sick this winter, and my daughter could easily get sick and get us sick. But I trust God with this. Some more peace, usually, but even better, praying them leads to think of them more, realize my thankfulness for them, think of them more than I think of myself, and love them in ways even deeper then before. This happens as well when I pray for those in our community, especially for those who've gotten sick.

The problem starts when the prayers turn into actions. I had a roommate who hated prayer. He was from Mexico, and he believed the church there just prayed about problems instead of taking steps to solve them. That hasn't been my experience. The best pray-ers I've known, the ones who've really done it and stuck with it, have been the ones who were quickest to put love into actions. That's why a friend of mine got sick. While another friend and her husband suffered through the flu, my friend took care of their daughter and caught whatever bug they had. I think she's near recovered, but as I write this, my wife is watching her daughter while she's at the doctors office. With such actions, my wife's liable to find herself sick this winter. Which is no fun. I pray she doesn't get sick she's been fighting a cold already. But giving your body for love has a president in Christian history.

Surviving the German Winter Part II: Play in the Snow

This is part II of a four-part series on surviving the German winter. You can read part I here. 

Once the snow comes, the kids naturally want to play in it. My daughter has seen enough Christmas specials to know that as soon as the ground is white, all the neighborhood kids burst out the front doors, armed with sleds and cherry-red mittens. They make enormous snowmen with pipes and coal for eyes (I have never seen a three year old walking around with a pipe and and two lumps of coal, though I guess that's what they all did in the 50s when the Christmas specials were filmed) and toboggan down enormous hills. These are my memories as well. What I don't remember is the battle Armageddon my mother must have went though just to get three kids dressed for the winter. I'm struggling with just one.

It takes about seven and a half hours to dress your average three year for snow. Five of those is just getting her little fingers into those friggin mittens, but the rest consists of several pairs of tights, wooly socks over thins socks, hats not truly designed for children, water-resistant snow pants with zippers to bleed your fingers and the most incomprehensible pair of snow boots in the world (they look so simple, then you try to put her feet in them). Once my daughter is wearing enough layers that I could safely roll her down a mountain with a sled (don't worry, haven't tried it, no plans to), she removes her scarf from her lips and announces that she has to go potty.

With this news in mind, I teach my daughter three choice curse words, and frantically unbutton and unzip enough for her to do her business at the proper way in the proper place. By the time everything's ready to go, of course she's already soiled herself. I can now only sigh and check which of her many layers are salvageable and which need to go directly to laundry. My daughter, then, sees her shadow in the bathroom light and declares six more weeks of potty training. Or, I could just remember to let her empty herself before we hit the sleds.

Of course, we've managed to go out in the snow a couple times this winter. It's fun - watching a little girl discover how snow crunches under her little boot is a reminder of all that is good about life. But it only takes a couple of snowfalls to crush a few of your idyllic snow scenes, and this has much to do with the nature of snow itself. You really can't have it all. Snow that is powdery and good for sledding is rubbish for snowmen, and wet, heavy snow ain't up to snuff when it comes for sledding. The snow is the great decider of your activities, even as your daughter is screaming "I WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAAANNNNNN!!!" Nope! We're going sledding, darlin'! This is after we built a snowman that looked more like a six-inch dollop of whipped cream. Just like in the commercials.

The 2012 Holiday Movies: A Nostalgic Look Back

I saw five films this Yuletide season, and to my surprise, I liked them all. This could mean that getting older, living in Germany, wanting to impress people, or writing a blog have not yet managed to make me a proper critical curmudgeon, though I'm reeeeally trying (see below). Still, no one wants pay for a movie they don't like, and I'm almost afraid to see another one lest I break the streak. Here are a few thoughts on the movies, in the order in which I saw them.

Skyfall - At this point, it shouldn't be a spoiler that the latest 007 is setting up a reboot - reintroducing old characters, killing off another old one. I don't mind. The only part I minded so much was the "getting-shot-off-a-moving-train-into-a-river-but-still-surviving" part that was pushing it, even by Bond standards. But a big part of the fun is always watching how they re-brand this product of the Cold War to fit into the modern era and still maintain the spirit of 007. I'm curious how the next installments will handle the resurrected Moneypenny (Mark Steyn has an interesting essay on the old one and the actress who played her). Like every Bond film, there was plenty of booze, women, travel, chases, fights and villains - Javier Bardem combined the slimy, the ruthless and the genius archetypes into one - so much so that he doesn't need a memorable sidekick like Oddjob. Action and food for thought.

Cloud Atlas - I hate saying how much fun I had at this movie. I hate admitting that I was giddy as a hyena juggling the plots, actors, times, directors and gobs of race-bending makeup. I hate it. I hate it because all the cool people, by which I mean the critics at intellectual, left-leaning websites and radio stations hated the film. And I want to fit in with the cool kids. It's probably because I haven't read David Mitchell's book just yet (I got it for Christmas, though it's an edition with a movie poster for a cover, which also embarrasses me). I came in with a blank slate and remained engrossed  from start to finish. I was warned I'd get lost the first time, but even watching it dubbed in German, I had no problem following. There was fun aplenty just watching where the characters show up (Hugh Grant as a tribal chieftain in a post-apocalyptic future!), and I thought the plots, past and future, weaved together nicely. My favorite plot is the adventure of Somni 451 in Neo Seoul - Doona Bae is excellent. Maybe I'll hate the film after I've read the book. But I'll probably still hate the fact that I love the film so much.

Lincoln - I love Lincoln the more I think about it. I was still fighting off holiday jetlag when I saw it back in the USA, and between then and now, I read my father's copy of Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the film's principle source. There's a cynicism, brewed in anyone who reads too much Internet or lives in Germany, about any hero type, especially a historical hero type, that nobody can be so good, that there's some clever person out there to deconstruct our hero so we might as well prepare ourselves for disappointment. Yet Lincoln, freely willing to deconstruct himself, still stands as a real American hero. Not a military man, no formal education, and not even the most progressive of his day on the issues of race and slavery, yet he was the one who had the fortitude to preserve the union, free the slaves and, according to Goodwin's accounts, managed to treat those around him with dignity. I wish I had these honest Abe traits - a real genius who managed to like and respect those around him, even those you'd forgive him for hating. Thus, Spielberg's saintly portrayal is not Hollywood sentimentality but something good and right, and I can't wait to see the film a second time. The New Yorker's review makes this point: "The movie itself feels alive with disquiet, torn between its duty to tell an earthly, complex tale and - as so often with Spielberg - the urge to break free and rise to the realm of myth." The more I think about Lincoln the man, the more I can relate. A few more scattered thoughts - add my thanks to all of those thanking Spielberg and his writer, Tony Kushner, for focusing on a small sliver of Lincoln's life rather than shooting another bloody biopic. Nonetheless, the film doesn't forget to deftly include Lincoln's family dynamics, and I thought Sally Field was great as Mary Todd. Some of the best scenes were from their stormy, loving marriage. Oh, and, you got to love anyone who can tell a funny story in the middle of a crisis. By the way, should anyone other than Daniel Day Lewis be nominated for best actor? ... Nah, I don't think so either.

Argo - My second dose of American history and a small, exciting, redemptive story out of the 1970 Iran hostage crisis. Credit to director Affleck for not white-washing America's role in the mess that Iran became (the opening history lesson makes this very clear) while still nurturing our natural sympathies for the hostages whose lives were in real danger. A small thing - it was fun to see John Goodman as Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers. John Goodman always makes his films better.

The Hobbit - Unlike Cloud Atlas, I have no trouble admitting how much I loved the film. I am a JRR Tolkien lover, but I'm not enough of a nerd to have ready all of the notes and encyclopedias and extra stuff (though I did get the painting Calendars through college). So for the most part, I know where Peter Jackson varied from the original text in his expanded and stretched out film, and the only thing that really bothered me was the (spoiler, but honestly...) a forced redemption scene at the end where Bilbo, in classic Peter Jackson slow motion, saves Thorin Oakenshield's life. A big part of the story is Bilbo finally earning Thorin's respect, but did they really need to create a forced, magic moment out of nowhere? But other than that, good times all around. I particularly loved how he made Thorin so compelling. And of course, it's great watching Jackson's imagination come to life and comparing it with your own. Whatever the real fans pick at, Peter Jackson knows how to speak to that little boy in me playing with dinosaurs and action figures on the kitchen counter twenty some years ago. When Peter Jackson remade King Kong, I remember hearing a commentator complaining about how he left out the social and racial commentary of the first film. I'm sure a better movie wouldn't have done so. But he did produce a scene where King Kong fights a Tyrannosaurus Rex - a scene I had acted out in my little imagination so many times. My adult, pseudo-critic wasn't satisfied, but the little boy thought, "now THAT was cool."

So, my holiday movies. I haven't seen the other notables, such as Anna Karenina, Django Unchained, Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, or a certain musical based on my favorite novel, and no promises on those for various reasons. But Tinseltown had a nice Christmas, didn't it? What were your favorite movies?

Back in the US of A

My daughter must think Florida is a tropical Christmas land. We harked the herald in the Sunshine State last year, and we're back again, novelty German presents in tow for another round of palm tree cheer. The same houses on my parents street have the exact same decorations around their palm trees. Yup, my daughter has no proof that Florida ever removes its Christmas kitsch. Come to think about it, neither do I.

As I write this, Germany's under a blanket of snow and will likely remain that way through the Yuletide season. We, however, spent the day on a beach just north of Naples, Florida, worrying about getting sunburned. Sure, I know you're supposed to dream of a white Christmas. Anyone who has lived in Florida for more than three years might dream of a white Christmas until they actually (re)experience one. Then they realize that snow never shows up without cold and darkness and then "In the Bleak Midwinter" becomes the appropriate carol. Enjoy your hot cocoa folks, but I'm happy to pop open a cold one while soaking up the vitamin D this December. "Snow on snow on snoooowwwwww....."

Of course, coming back to America is a reminder of the things I miss and don't miss. Here are some back-in-the-US-of-A observations, in no special order:

1. Patriotism - "the American flag!" squeals my daughter from the back seat of the car at pretty much every traffic light. Now, I'm doing my duty to teach her to wave the flag and smile (She's not quite old enough for the "Fifty Nifty" song, but she'll get there. If you don't know what the "Fifty Nifty" song is, ask your American friend), but sometimes you forget how much patriotism you can fit in a square block. The used car lots are surrounded by so many flags you'd think the bones of some hallowed president were buried under the Toyota Tundras. Of course, I was proudly patriotic when I went to see Lincoln. When I found out about the film a couple months ago, most of my German friends gave me strange looks when I got all giddy. I loved the film (Daniel Day Lewis is worth the price of admission), though something in me, planted by almost two years on European soil, rebelled in silent protest whenever the film became too sentimental. 
2. Trader Joe's - It's good to see you Trader Joe's. Thank you for opening in Florida just down the street from our little vacation condo. The chips, salsa, bean dip, peanut butter, and various American craft beers were just like old times. Of course, this time around I'm less impressed with the fact that you have Rittersport. 
3. Fashion - Everyone knows day-to-day American fashion is more casual than day-to-day European, but it's always a small culture shock when you actually see it, and I come from a part of Germany that's not exactly a world fashion capital. But wow, it's Christmas and the gym clothes are out! You can't waive an American flag without hitting someone in yoga pants, gym shorts or tights. Speaking of tights, I had the strange experience of being startled by body openness coming back from Europe. Somehow, between the time I left two years ago and Advent 2012, tights transformed from something women wore under skirts to an appropriate trousers alternative. Walking through the Atlanta airport, I thought that I had stumbled into the locker room at the local ballet. The times they are a'changin'. In any case, I take full advantage of America's casual attitude combined with Florida's pleasant weather. No, I'm not ready for tights yet (unless I'm running in the winter time) - I still feel a continental need to wear something that requires a belt when I go anywhere. But man, hello flip flops! I wear them in Germany too, though I get judgmental stares in the supermarket, because in Germany sandals combined with socks, are indoor-only attire. But flip flops are to Floridians what leather loafers are to Italians. Wear them all the time. Do you feel that breeze, feet? This is America. This is Florida. This is freedom. 
4. Plastic bags - Good gravy, America, do we really need to use so many plastic bags!? If we stacked up the plastic bags we've used since Thanksgiving we could probably get back to the moon. The lady at Target will double your plastic bag if you buy a pack of gum. The Germans have the good sense to charge for them. Everyone goes to the store armed with baskets and cloth bags, not just the types who pack their NPR totes with arugula. I remember when a plastic bag tax was introduced in DC  - people cried out as if they were being forced to go to the dentist. But it seems to have worked. Let's cut back, folks. 
5. Southern hospitality - Southern hospitality, oh I've missed you. I didn't even realize how much I missed you. We all love to feel welcome, but as a parent, you hope for a special place in heaven for those who welcome your child. This was especially true when we touched down in Atlanta to hit customs before our connecting flight to Orlando. Few people are happy to see a child in an airport, but the Atlanta airport staffers delighted at the sight of a tired, curly-haired almost-3-year old in our umbrella stroller. I near' thought they were going to invite us in for a glass of sweet tea. And it wasn't the whole smile-with-your-mouth-not-your-eyes plastic hospitality you sometimes get. The good folks in the ATL were happy to see us. We felt welcomed. 

Olympic Post

The closing ceremony is over. The medals have been lovingly packed away (sorry if the American team took so long... zing! Hollah!). I watched it. Like other sports, I loooovvve watching the olympics. I remember watching the '84 Olympics with my mom. Both of us were especially excited by the horse-jumping. As I grew up, I was dazzled by Carl Lewis and the original dream team and Michael Phelps and marathons and running and jumping and swimming and synchronizing! This Olympics was no exception. This Olympics was spectacular. I loved the variety - sports, countries, fans, scenery. Well done, everyone.

Here are a few post thoughts:

1. Keep all the sports. Keep that ever-expanding Olympic Leviathan consuming strange, wonderful sports from all five ringed continents. And why not? Basketball's popular, running is elemental, but why not include walking, synchronized swimming or handball? The fun part of the olympics is that the popular and the obscure meet on level ground (or water). The olympics isn't a closet to sort out the stuff that prevents you from finding your favorite socks. There's room for everybody in the party. Now, the impatient sourpusses who can't handle flipping between rhythmic gymnastics and field hockey might ask, where do we draw the line? I like the cigar test - if you can smoke a cigar while playing without it impeding your performance, then it's not a sport (sorry darts and poker - they show you on ESPN, but not the Olympics...).  But everything we might find boring (I find riding bikes in circles in the gym boring, but I can't deny it's a sport and the athletes are worthy - plus the moment when that old Brit came back and won and cried during the anthem... well, good stuff) or not fitting into our cultural understanding or looking silly.... I mean, the 50 km walking looks silly. Evidently, proper athletic walking technique involves shaking your hips in a sexy salsa dance style. But I've never seen a sport where so many people keeled over in exhausted. Well, maybe at band camp, but that always involved asthma and heavy brass instruments... But anway, there were 303 disciplines. Keep'em all... 
2. Speaking of different sports, how can we even talk about who's the best olympian all time? Folks can make they're case for Phelps, Bolt or dozens of people before them (maybe Bolt makes his own case - this seems to annoy some folks, but I like his Muhammed Ali showmansship - plus, behind the cocky act, he clearly takes joy in running like a cheetah). Apples, oranges, times and training. I wish we could watch Bolt could race Carl Lewis or Jesse Owens or Jim Thorpe on an even plane of modern training and technology. But we can't. Enjoy the present, remember the past. Know that this bar and blog conversation can't ever really be decided. 
3. On display - part of the profession for the athlete is being on display, and none more than the Olympics. This includes way those aerodynamic suits don't leave much to the imagination (not that I noticed... someone else told me). But I'm actually talking about the emotional (which requires looking up at their faces). Honestly, would you like to have millions voyeurs watching you at your job? Imagine if your last job interview were not only broadcast live all over the world, but it was analyzed ad nauseum by business experts, journalists, and comedians for the remaining night. Especially the part when you didn't get the job and you sat on a park bench sobbing like that poor Korean fencer who was gypped out of a spot in the finals due to a strange clock malfunction. Or you got the job and you celebrated by hurdling park benches like that hulking German guy who got gold in discus with Mo Farah's victory expression pasted to your face. Sure - they knew what they were getting into, but they're still human. This struck me especially when a German high jumper got 4th place for something like the third straight tournament. There, for all the world to see, she jumped up an down, tears in her eyes, screaming "I always get 4th! Always 4th! Always 4th" That hissy fit of raw frustration reminded  me of my own pathetic hissy fits, behind closed doors, usually alone or with someone who made a promise to God and me that includes the words "for worse." But I will say, come winter time, that I have a great pair of aerodynamic running tights. 
4. London - China's incredible, collectivist display at the Beijing opening ceremonies may have been astounding, but for whatever our many flaws, I much prefer the dynamic, multicultural West with its breathing room for movement, humor, song and spirit. Great vision, great games, and if I had money to spend (ha, hehhhhh....) I'd immediately do what your tourism offices is hoping I'd do. 

Not Athletic

From the moment my legs could kick, from the moment my fingers could touch the leather stitches and lacing of a ball, from the moment I could watch modern titans put on superhero costumes to reap points, touchdowns, goals, runs for their city, country or university, I have loved sports. My earliest audio memories include my father's voice, my mother's voice, my grandmother's voice and football commentator John Madden's voice. (if you don't know who that is, ask your American friend to imitate Madden's trademark "BOOM"! He would yell "BOOM" for touchdowns, good hits, good blocks, good runs and effective athletes foot fungus removal. "BOOM" is America's answer to "GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!")

My dad took me to my first baseball game when I was just five - Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, standing room only, industrial stadium nachos, Cubs lost to the Mets. I dressed up like Washington Redskins' Quarterback Joe Theismann for Halloween. My walls were decorated with the likes of Michael Jordan, Charlie Ward and Gred Maddux, among other titans of my youth. Today I can straddle the Atlantic and rage and rejoice with the tides of European and American football. (to those who think one or the other is boring, then you need better cultural understanding: Americans like to hit things and need to take frequent breaks. Europeans think life is too complex for winners, losers and scoring opportunities.) With every major tournament my spine gets sparkly and my eyes get tingly (or maybe I overcooked the barbecue). Athletic feats! Matching uniforms! Philosophical arguments about meaningless things! Yes, from the very beginning, I could watch sports like a champion. Playing sports, however, was a different matter.

You see, the problem, the suffering, the shame, is that I was always awful at sports. Really awful. From the moment the first gentle grounder avoided my baseball glove and went through my legs because I was imagining dinosaurs sitting in the dugout, I tried to keep up, but never quite had that spark. My trophy case is full of participation trophies and the occasional coach's award for team spirit. I tried, but sports required an amount of concentration I could only give to stories and television, as well as a coordination that only existed in my muscular imagination. (My imagination needs no performance enhancing drugs)

Now, this never stopped me from useful childhood participation in team sports. But from the little leagues to pop warner, coaches recognized my deficiency. They would place me in positions that required the least amount of participation. In baseball, that meant left field, the part of the diamond where it was statistically unlikely for a ball to reach me. I'd stand there fantasizing about hitting home runs like Andre Dawson while my teammates fielded double plays. By the way, baseball's the worst for a non-athletic person. In all other sports, I could hide my inability in a cloud of dust, cleats and team activity. But when I came up to bat, all eyes were focused on my stance, my motion and my strength, and this knowledge hung on my mind like an ice brick. It's like every play is a penalty kick. My greatest triumph was whenever I was walked. "Good eye!" my coach would shout, encouragingly, after I trotted to first after not swinging through six pitches. Yes. My "good eye" (where did I leave my glasses?) and the knowledge that not swinging was my best chance at reaching first base.

When I played youth soccer, the coaches always had me play sweeper. Now, in Germany, sweeper is a hallowed position, but in American youth soccer, sweeper is where you put a slower person who doesn't have the hands or the attention span to play keeper. Essentially, I would stand in a defensive position and dream about dinosaurs attacking the neighboring parking lot, and if the ball got close, I was supposed to kick it away from our goal. I remember actually kicking the thing, like, three times. The rest of my teammates would fight tooth and nail for goals and glory. If we won, I was overjoyed for our group effort. If we tied, I was relieved. If we lost, I wept. But no matter how the game ended, there were free soft drinks for everyone, which was by far the best part of youth team sports. I did score a goal, once, when I was seven years old. My coach let me take a penalty kick, probably to fulfill some contractual obligation to have everyone touch the ball at least once. Without any particular strategy in mind, I kicked the ball straight ahead as hard as I could, and the keeper was kind enough to had been standing somewhere else. I was ecstatic, and my father, to his eternal credit my biggest fan wherever I went, erupted in a triumphant scream like I had just struck out Willie Mays.

It's a horrible thing for a boy to be bad at sports. It's like a fish being bad at swimming. It's like a calculator being bad at math. It is psychologically and spiritually important for boys to test their speed, strength, agility and endurance against one another, and to overcome - to triumph. Sure, there are other talents out there, but none so primal as athletic prowess. For such amazing feats, the athletic boys received respect, honor, swoons and early first kisses. I would play in the playground and in the large backyards of Virginia, hoping desperately that at some point, mind and body would kick in to find me home-running, slam-dunking, last-second-diving-catch-for-a-touchdown-celebrating like all the other neighborhood boys, for whom these things just clicked like the button of an old-fashioned coke machine. Instead, I was the easy out, the last pick, the "everybody go long except you" guy.

I kept trying though, and in high school, I ran cross country - a sport that required zero coordination and that valued camaraderie among under-nourished high school kids above talent. A sport for the weirdoes, where I was a four year junior varsity member and a winner of the coach's team spirit award. And I still run today, for fitness and vanity. Fitness, because I want to live a long and comfortable life, and vanity, because I want to give my wife a reason to look up from her iPad whenever I walk to the shower. It's for those reasons that this past Saturday, participated in my first public sports event since my cross country days. I ran the Plochingen 5K.

Saturday was brutally hot. Now, I'm from Florida, and Florida is brutally hot, but Florida is at least decent enough to have a violent thunderstorm every afternoon to cool things off. On Saturday, every air particle hung over the pavement like it was in suspended animation. Every speck of dust, every piece of pollen, every smudge of pollution stuck to the the inside of your lung like old rice in a pot.

But we persevered! My goal was 25 minutes, and in the face of rainforest conditions between three-story houses and the occasional friendly man with a garden hose, I reached it! Crossing the finish line, I tore off my shirt and flexed my muscles like Mario Balotelli, except that my body hair to muscle ratio is much higher than his. Ok, actually I kept my shirt on and walked like a drunk in an obstacle course towards the water station. My wife cheered (we even had our own WAG section!) and my daughter cried (mainly because of the weather). Ok, so a girl overtook me on the last lap. That doesn't matter. What matters is that I reached my goal and I had fun. Besides, everybody deserves a victory dance.

The Tall One and the Short One

In a flash of spiritual inspiration, I gave up Facebook for lent. On Fat Tuesday, after an orgy of status updates, link sharing, photo tagging and friend stalking, I closed the blue f-tab for the last time until the Feast of the Risen Lord, during which I will open the tab back up and frantically share every funny thought that occurred to me during the previous forty days. The tab was closed, and I moved my neck. Up. Down. Right. Left. Roll the neck. Look around. Evidently, the computer is at some sort of table designed for eating (judging from the crumbs on the keyboard). There were three chairs - the one I was sitting on, white and wooden, an identical one next to it, and, across, a funny-looking chair with long legs, a small seat, and it's own individual table.

My steps away from the computer were tentative. Everything was strangely non-digital. There were colorful playthings on the floor and bookshelves much like the ones I see in the backgrounds of literary blogs. The difference was that it was so three-dimensional and there's a feeling of touch to it. It felt like I was imposing myself.

Suddenly, I heard a noise! It was the light, clumsy rumbling of little feet. A very short human person came running at me with a peculiar smile on her face (from the dress, hair and other appearance indicators, I am assuming "her"). I made gestures to indicate that I came in peace and that she should take me to her pigmy tribal leader, or at least a representative from the nearest Consulate. The little person simple smiled, grabbed my leg and said "pa pa pa pa," and some other phrases in broken English, including "story," "pretty," "I'm a Little Teapot," "Jesus," and "Elmo."   

Then, what I will now call the "Tall One" entered. She (and I am sure she was a she) was not especially tall per se, but she was significantly taller than her babbling companion, whom I will now refer to as the "Short One." The Tall One seemed to be the matriarch of the... well, where were we? Clearly indoors (as indicated by the large wooden door and several windows that couldn't be clicked)... However, unlike the Short One, she did not speak the language I'm accustomed to on Facebook but rather the one they use at studiVZ. The Tall One spoke to me in a familiar manner, something involving food and plans for the evening, but I was relieved to see that I understood her. My translation function was working away from my profile (though I haven't been able to test other languages).

In an effort to bond with the Tall One and the Short One (no telling what they would do if they turned on me), I tried sharing a clever commentary from the New York Times website. I couldn't post it anywhere on the walls, so I simply held up the computer and used gestures to point to the still open tab, highlighting a sentence that I found especially pertinent. But I got no response, no effort to re-share - not even a thumbs up. Well, I thought, if they weren't into insightful observations, how about humor?

I held up a series of funny, tongue-in-cheek pictures about how various strata of society - the media, my parents, the education system - see personal bloggers. I found the pictures hilarious and was secretly comforted by the thought that anyone sees me at all, but no dice. Neither the Tall One nor the Short One Got it. In fact, the Short One wanted to draw on my pictures. I suggested she use the keyboard to type, but the Tall One intervened.

Then it dawned on me why I wasn't getting through to them. I hadn't sent either of them a friend request, and with my privacy settings, that means they wouldn't be able to see what I shared. I wasn't sure how to do this without the Internet, so I improvised. I found a couple of pictures of myself (for some reason, there were several of them, along with pictures of the Tall One and the Short One framed by polished wood). On the back I wrote "Un Till would like to be your friend". The Tall One frowned and put hers back in the frame. The Short One drew on the picture until the Tall One took it away.

My last hope was an ancient socializing technique called "poking." Cautiously, I drew closer to the two companions. I extended my index finger and poked each one in the belly area. The Tall One gave me a bemused look, but the Short One shrieked with childish laughter. Finally, I was getting somewhere. Facebook has a lot to teach them about bonding.

Elmo Among Other Monsters

When it comes to Sesame Street, my daughter is following in my footsteps. I love Sesame Street, still do. It was the only show that I was both consistently allowed to watch and enjoyed watching. The show's educational, yes, but not only did it "make learning fun," but it captured the joy of learning things, a joy so many of those drab hygiene and physical science videos we watched in school never had. Add in smart pop culture references and characters kids and adults can care about, and you've got yourself a fine piece of television. So in this new age of the Information Super Highway, one of my first acts as father was to plop my kicking baby in my lap and watch YouTube videos of classic Sesame Street. She loved it so much I can't open up the lap top to do something important (like write a blog or goof off on Facebook) without having my daughter run up, grab my leg and in her best "melt papa's heart voice" say: "Letter B?"

There has been, however, a cultural shift since my childhood of sitting on our plaid-green couch to watch a show brought to you by the letter "K." You see, one of the biggest appeals of Sesame Street was that it was always a little rough around the edges. The street itself appeared a bit dirty, the characters lovable but gritty, the pictures and film had sort of a Public Television residue that smelled of cheapness and passion and authenticity. But this has changed. Sesame Street looks gentrified. Take a look at the website. You won't find smoother edges in Buckingham Palace. It's as clean the surgery ward. There's been a change, and I can sum it up in one word: Elmo. 

No question Elmo is the Street's most popular character. No question. If you visited the website, then you were greeted by his sweet furry face. That same face makes the little icon on the URL. He's everywhere, including my daughter's crib and coloring books. He's ingeniously designed for maximum cuteness and cuddliness. The cute one with a cute voice, and his cuteness has spread all over Sesame Street like a funny picture on Facebook. When I was home for Christmas, my mother wanted me to go to the local art house theater to see a documentary about Elmo's mover, shaker and speaker, Kevin Clash. His story is a powerful, feel-good, American-dream story of the best kind. No doubt he's a genius at his chosen career, and if there's a puppeteering pantheon, then he will sit with Jim Henson and Frank Oz to judge us all. But I couldn't see the film. There were some scheduling difficulties that explained this. But the truth is, I hold a grudge against Elmo. I miss the old furry monsters, like the ones in this old "C is for Cookie" video. 

It's not that the old monsters have been fired. Cookie, for one, still plays a prominent role (though the good folks at Sesame Street are reigning in his gluttony to help confront America's childhood obesity problem). And if you look through the website's list of muppets, you'll find characters like Herry, Frazzle and the Two-Headed Monster, all monsters of the old school. The old-school monsters weren't like cuddly kittens. They were more like your crazy uncle's biker friends. You know who I'm talking about. They were rough. They drove American-made motorcycles, drank beer from the bottle and had powerful, meaty arms. In fact, they may have both showed you your first tattoo and given you your first sip of beer. Your love for them was mixed with fear. They weren't ones for snuggles, but if you ever had a problem with a bully, needed repair work on the tree house or were threatened by a rabid dog, you knew you could count on them, just like you could count on old-school monsters. Now, not only are they crowded out by Elmo and his relentless sugartooth, but they're in a sad state. Look at their pictures on the website. They look like they've been thoroughly scrubbed and shampooed by a child-marketing expert. 

I don't mind Elmo's existence. Cuddles are necessary, and I wonder how many of today's conflicts could be solved (or at least eased) by a good snuggle. But life has rough edges, and Sesame Street's greatest strength was that it could acknowledge this and still take joy in singing, laughing and learning. 

Of course, the Elmo promotion is on to something. My daughter loves Elmo, the same way she loves puddles and pretty dresses. With no prompting (certainly by me), she was drawn to them. Among her army of stuffed animals, she has two Sesame Street dolls: Ernie and Elmo. Ernie was my favorite growing up. My daughter likes Ernie, and Ernie is my daughter's main sleeping partner, because by chance we threw him in the crib when it was dark outside and she needed a friend. But as much as she may try to hide it, Elmo is her favorite. She just sees him first. Elmo's like that gregarious kid in your third grade class that always made your teacher smile in a way she never could for you in spite of your obvious superiority in both behavior and grammar. Whenever we watch that old "Letter B" video, her next request is "Elmo." Doesn't matter which Elmo video, and there are lots to choose from. And, given time and mood, I indulge her. But I use my fatherly authority to throw in some old-school monster videos too. After all, there's more to fatherhood than snuggling. 

An Open Letter to My Daughter

Dear Daughter,

It's been a great 20-plus months. Your mom and I are proud of the way you're growing: walking, talking and fulfilling that divine duty of being unspeakably cute. However, now that you are freely running around and resolutely expressing your own opinions, it's time to set some ground rules.

1. Every morning, you are to eat nutritious oatmeal with little pieces of apple mixed in, not banana-chocolate chip muffins (like the four I ate).
   
2. You are not to walk in the street (as I often do, because I like having more space).
   
3. I know you like the YouTube videos of classic Sesame Street songs that we watch together, but goofing off on the Internet is a destructive waste of time. Oooo... someone posted a link on Facebook analyzing the challenges facing the Bears' offensive line.... interesting... stay there, I'll be back. (reads for ten minutes, then opens a political blog from a Twitter feed)
   
4. Speaking of glowing screens, relaxing in front of the television is not a healthy way to spend an evening (fortunately, you go to bed before your mother and I indulge in this nightly ritual).
5. Never let your anger get the best of you. This is especially relevant in the car, where we have to deal with TAILGATERS!!! HONESTLY, ARE PEOPLE JUST SO FULL OF THEMSELVES OR SO PERSONALLY FRUSTRATED THAT THEY NEED TO PUT THEIR LIVES AND THE LIVES OF EVERYONE AROUND THEM IN JEOPARDY TO SAVE, WHAT, SEVEN SECONDS OFF THEIR COMMUTE!!???? HEY!! YOU IN THE AUDI COUP WITH THE PRETENTIOUS SUNGLASSES! GET OFF MY... I'm sorry, where were we?
   
6. Refrain from all addictions. Oh wait, my coffee just ran out... I'll be right back (hurries to kitchen.... )
   
7. I know that you have enjoyed getting to know some of the little boys in the church playgroup. Let's remember: it is never too early for fatherly intimidation. Be sure to tell them that your dad is an expert in five forms of martial arts and is particularly effective with nunchucks.
8. Finally, it is in poor taste to wantonly post personal reflection, pseudo-insights about religion (or sports or politics or philosophy) or attempted humor on some blog where anyone with Internet access can read it.
   

Joy in Writing

I've put aside at least two posts this weekend. I also left a couple of post ideas festering in the fantasy stage of the process. My writer fantasies usually involves: 1) a blogpost changing the world for the better 2) it goes on to make me independently wealthy without damage to my soul 3) for my efforts, I am interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. It goes something like this:

TG: Un Till, I have to say, your posts are well-written, inspiring, and worth the outrageous wealth that has been showered upon you. Yet, you keep rejecting a stable career as an Abercrombie model to type on the internet. What is your secret?

UT: Well, Terry (may I call you Terry?), it all comes down to my humble refusal to obsess about myself.

Ahhh.... (dreamy smile before coming back to earth with a frightened shutter)

But the aforementioned posts tempted by anger, and anger, while sometimes appropriate, is a dangerous emotion to publish on the Internet. There is something to this, though. Part of writing's charm and joy is processing our emotional responses to something.

I've been thinking about why I enjoy writing. I wish I enjoyed building machines as some of my relatives do. Building things create beauty and discovery and economic stability, not to mention tremendous opportunity to practice generosity. But I enjoy opening up one of those glowing built things and typing words on it (in between reading words at other growing places). Writing helps me make sense of my reactions to what I read and experience; it helps me sort out my messy top drawer of emotion, imagination, thought and memory. When I'm finished, I better understand close things like my daughter's voice or distant things like another country's national tragedy. Not that I ever truly understand them, but it takes me down the road, loosening some convictions and tightening others. Posting these thoughts where others can read them gives them a measure of discipline and accountability that was not otherwise there. I've journaled before, and I'll probably do so again, but the results are usually (not always!) a fire hose of free-writing gibberish, offering me only outlet without light. The idea that someone may actually read it means I have to make the swarm of bees that I call my brain somehow coherent. And (to the best of my abilities) fair, honest and respectful. Or completely silly.

When he completed the Narnia series, C.S. Lewis received a lot of mail from children asking him if he would ever write any new books about the land of Aslan, Lucy and Caspian. Lewis always wrote back, "no," but he encouraged the children to write their own Narnia books. "It's most fun!" he would write (at least I think that's how he put it - my copy of Letters to Children is elsewhere). And it is, for many of us. Give it a try. After all, part of the great fun of the Internet is we all get to write on here for free. If you find your posts are angry, though, be careful. Shouting "you fool" is a dangerous indulgence.