Fighting for Delivery

Have you seen this sign? It's been making its rounds in the blogosphere. I think it speaks volumes about the state of the birthing industry in this country. Should it really be an industry?




Really, I just wanted to make a quick update to link you to a CNN article. I think it's great that a major news organization will print a story like this one.

It's about a couple that fights with their hospital to have a VBAC delivery. At the bottom of the article are recommendations on how to talk to your doctor when a C-section is suggested. Hopefully birthing rights will prevail in our society because they are under constant attack. Let's keep up the internet chatter about birthing rights.

My Top 10 Books of the 2000s

I read a lot this decade, but I generally don't read as much modern stuff as I should. My list covers the books that I read that really stuck with me. It is a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction, but you can clearly see where my loyalties lie.


11. The Traveler by Sol Smith
Shameless plug. But really, I loved it. Right up my alley.


10. Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis
This book takes a new look at the relationships of the founding fathers. I don't understand why students are stuck with textbooks when there is prose this exciting about our country's founding.

9. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
This book really takes a critical look at the entire food industry. Never have I wanted to change the way I live more than when I read this book. It's shocking and entertaining.

8. The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
I fell in love with "Brief History of Time" and I liked this one even more. Hawking has a real talent for writing in a way to make the layman understand the intricacies of time and space.

7. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
This is basically a history of the sciences. It's full of insight and really funny asides. By far the longest book on the list, it is really worth the time you spend on it.

6. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
A terrific look at local eating by the novelist, Kingsolver. She and her family decide to eat food that they grow and food grown within 100 miles of them for a year. Trust me, it will make you feel like crap about how you eat.

5. The Fifth Plane by Bull Marquette
An alternate history of 9/11 that includes victory in a fifth hijacking that day. It gives exciting insight to the world of the terrorists and offers an interesting paranormal twist to the political novel.

4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
For sure this is my sci-fi pick of the decade. What American Gods does right is take mythology and place it into modern day life in a believable way. The ideas are wonderful and the landscapes are breathtaking. See also the somewhat-sequel "Anansi Boys."

3. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
A boy is stuck in a lifeboat with a tiger. You don't want to read that?

2. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
My understanding is that the movie sucks, but trust me, this book is amazing. I loved this book so much that I really didn't want it to end. The author is expert at crafting the story with implausibility that reads plausibly--my favorite.


1. Fierce Invalids home from hot Climates by Tom Robbins
This is the book that stayed with me the most over the decade. Interesting, entertaining, and masterfully crafted, I don't know how I lived without this book. Of all of Robbins' books, this is tied for number one for me, right next to Jitterbug Perfume

My Top 10 Albums of the 2000s

At can't resist retrospective looks back at years and decades. I'm a sucker for them. So now that a decade dawns and I have a forum on which to publish it, here are my picks for top 10 albums of the decade. Anyone of these would make a great gift for someone who loves music.


10. The Be Good Tanyas- Chinatown

This album is just full of fantastic textures and harmonies. To me, the second best country album to come out in the decade.



9. The Mountain Goats- The Sunset Tree

For most people I know, The Mountain Goats go under the radar. But I'm telling you, this guy is one hell of a talented song writer. His voice is crystal clear and his songs end up being these little stories, often dark toned but with bright happy melodies.



8. Death Cab for Cutie- Transatlanticism

They've had a couple of great albums since this one, but this, to me, was the album where they really came into their own.



7. The Dixie Chicks- Home

My wife is a big fan of the Chicks and a lot of what they do is pretty good in my mind. But this album is by far their best work. Every song is bluegrass, all acoustic, and very well polished. Songs are written by the Chicks as well as Bruce Robison and Patti Griffin (who's album Impossible Dream really should be on this list).


6. Beck- Sea Change

I'm a huge Beck fan. This album--a genuine "break up album"--is his most low key. Beck is fascinated with language and his songs often include elements of rap and hip-hop. But this album is pretty free of anything funky--not that there's anything wrong with that. But often enough in a Beck song, it's hard to tell exactly what he's singing about or how he feels about his subject. But with "Sea Change," he really comes clean and expresses himself clearly.



5. Iron and Wine- Our Endless Numbered Days

This album is a perfect example of low-fi. The whole album is about love and death and is as gentle as its subjects. He heads into really beautiful territory and never leaves. I could listen to it over and over.


4. Sufjan Stevens- Greetings from Michigan: the Great Lakes State

Sufjan Stevens is an extrememely prolific song writer. His songs are personal and deep and moving. This is his first of his proposed 50 states albums. His second, "Come on and Feel the Illinoise" is just as good and could easily be in its place.


3. The Decemberists- Picaresque and Crane Wife

I'm putting these together because a) I'm cheating, and b) they work great together. "Picaresque" is the band's "Rubber Soul" and "Crane Wife" is their "Revolver." Listening to these two, you can hear them turn that same corner that The Beatles did in their development. Really, this is probably my favorite group other than the Beatles.
From Picaresque:


From Crane Wife:



2. Postal Service- Give Up

This album is just wow. It's absolutely amazing and a real look at what music of the 2000s sounds like to me.


1. The Decemberists- Hazards of Love

If the other two Decemberists albums are their Rubber Soul and Revolver, this is surely their Sgt. Pepper's. This one took me two or three times around for me to really become a fan of. It's a rock opera, plain and simple, following one story for 17 songs. To make this album even better, they have a "visualization" of it available on iTunes--basically an abstract cartoon done by four animators that goes for 60 minutes. It's really amazing and my kids even love it (ha! parenting!).

Howdy, Stranger!

Well hello there, blog. Things have been wacky lately and I've neglected this portion of my life. Hundreds of thousands of disappointed fans!

It's snowing here, and this is totally new to us. My wife and I both grew up in California, and there the snow is something that you can visit in an afternoon. Here, the snow visits you and it sticks around, well past its welcome, I'm told. So far, in this household at least, there's nothing but enthusiasm for it.

The biggest complication of our recent lives has been the hospitalization of our youngest girl. She's out now and everything is fine, but it was a pretty nasty couple weeks there. Daphne had cellulitus--or however you spell it--on her face. It started as a swelling, not unlike one might have under their jaw when fighting off an infection. But in the course of one day, it swelled up to the point that she couldn't latch on to nurse and even couldn't see out of her right eye.

My wife took her to the ER and the doctor--without even looking at her throat or ears or anything--gave her a shot of antibiotic and then sent her home. The next morning, things were much worse. We went back to the ER and were admitted. Her airway was being pushed on and things were very close to being dangerous. One doctor later said of the first ER doctor who sent us home, "What a numb nut." Indeed.

My wife stayed at the hospital with Daphne. Our firs complication was the hospital rule that children under two be in a crib. This doesn't fly with us. Daphne cosleeps exclusively and will not sleep for more than 30 minutes without her mom there. This isn't done because it's easiest, but because--as you know, gentle reader--it is best.

The nurses kept talking about suffocation risks. We explained to them the recent study that shows that babies are more likely to die in a crib than sleeping with a parent and that that statistic includes incidents of intoxication and water beds. They wouldn't listen. Babies belong in cribs, they said. So finally I told them that we were leaving if we didn't have a bed put in there.

At long last, they gave them a bed. But, they warned my wife, she would have to stay with Daphne 24 hours a day. Like what? She was going to leave her? Silly people.

At any rate, many days and tons of antibiotics later, she is fine. She acts like nothing ever happened.

So, here we are, the end of a decade. I have all these new decade resolutions to get started on, and keeping a better blog is one of them. Well, not really a better one but a more consistent one.