Clueless Business Timeline 2008

Sometimes families have a lot going on and don't notice the biggest economic events. We were no exception. I gathered a timeline of major financial events in 2007-2009 and added what my family was doing at the same time. My conclusion: yes, we really were that clueless.


2008
...

Jan. 11
Bank of America agrees to acquire Countrywide Financial.
-- Christine begins negotiating with her mortgage lender to sell the house in Michigan.

March 16
JPMorgan Chase agrees to acquire Bear Stearns at firesale price.
-- A week later, Ron and Christine sell their house. Hooray!

July 11
Mortgage lender IndyMac Bank becomes the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
-- Ron, Christine and Benny live the small life. “We've downsized our lives so drastically in the last year that I still have relatives convinced we sleep on straw mats and eat off a blanket on the floor. At the moment we have a small apartment and that's it. No deck. No car. No playroom.”

September
Lehman Brothers files bankruptcy; Bank of America agrees to acquire Merrill Lynch. Government takes control of insurer AIG. WaMu files for bankruptcy.
-- Ron and Christine hardly notice; we’re booking school tours for the Great Kindergarten Search.

Sept. 17
The government seizes Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
-- Christine reads the Greek tragedy "Agamemnon" to boost her spirits.

Oct. 6
Dow closes below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.
-- -- Christine attends her newspaper’s Infrastructure Business Forum, still coping with the trauma from producing an infrastructure special section.

Oct. 9
AIG bailout #2.
-- Ron and Christine tour San Francisco elementary schools until they want to puke, until the very phrase “test scores” causes a PTSD reaction that involves excessive drooling and a fear of chalk. Who cares about AIG?

Nov. 10
AIG bailout #3.
--We buy Benny a snazzy TIE fighter toy and a little Imperial Engineer. Benny immediately sets the Engineer to chasing zebras on the African plains (seems a bit unsporting).

December
Automakers receive government aid.
-- We arrive in Detroit for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

2009
...

March
Dow Closes below 7,000 for the first time since May 1, 1997.
-- Benny is assigned to Lucky Elementary School in San Francisco. What stock market collapse? It’s a great day!.

March 30
Rick Wagoner resigns from his role as GM CEO.
-- Benny and Christine wander about Cole Valley to celebrate Cesar Chavez Day. Now Wagoner has time to celebrate too.

April 3
Unemployment report shows 8.5% of Americans out of work.
-- A San Francisco mother posts on Christine's mother's group looking for a desk job with no commute, no deadlines, no demands, nobody actually depending on her ... one that she can do only when she feels like it, and presumably requires no capitalization. Good luck with that!

Hmm, perhaps we’re not the only ones who were a little clueless in this economy.

My Clueless Business Timeline 2007

In the frantic pace of everyday life, it’s easy to miss business events on a national or even global scale. Even a huge bankruptcy or plunge in the Dow can’t compete with unpacking moving boxes, rushing for the 43 bus or touring elementary schools.

Ron and I moved to San Francisco in July 2007, and even two business journalists like us failed to notice that this financial, professional and personal leap of faith was executed against a backdrop of economic collapse. Looking back, our sense of optimism was stunning, and surely had no basis in fact. We did notice the mortgage crisis – um, our house wasn’t selling – but there was still plenty of work in San Francisco, retail stores were packed with shoppers and San Francisco office space was reaching $100 per square foot (seems incredible now). We fretted about friends and family in Michigan —a state which never did get the full benefits of the most recent boom and was visibly sagging – but considered ourselves well out of it.

Like everyone else, we were simply too busy. Daily life requires some tunnel vision: you can’t remember to pack lunches and pay bills if you’re fretting over hedge funds at Bear Stearns or executive bonuses at AIG. I was too busy dealing with our own red ink to worry about Chrysler’s. I was tracking kindergarten tours in October 2008, not the Dow, which plunged below 10,000 that month.

Were we really that clueless? I didn’t want to believe that, so I gathered a timeline of major financial events in 2007-2009 and added what my family was doing at the same time. My conclusion: yes, we really were that clueless.


2007
...

June
Bloomberg News reports on the linkage between increased foreclosures and localized housing price declines.
-- Benny’s wooden Thomas the Tank Engine trains go on recall. Ron leaves for San Francisco.

June 14
Bear Sterns spends $3.2 billion to bail out two ailing hedge funds that invested heavily in subprime assets.
-- Two weeks of single motherhood in Michigan — filled with packing, potty training and house showing — and Christine’s ready for a padded cell.

July
The Boston hedge fund that manages money for Harvard University’s endowment and the Massachusetts state pension fund loses half its value.
-- Ron, Christine and Benny arrive in San Francisco to start a new life there.

Oct. 17
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson calls the bursting housing bubble "the most significant risk to our economy."
-- Christine moans about her long to-do list. “I don't have a California driver's license. I can’t remember my new phone number. Benny's preschool needed a form filled out by a pediatrician, which required finding a pediatrician, making an appointment, finding the office, etc. Now I've finally got the damn form, but I keep forgetting to bring it to the school.”

December
The recession begins, although we don’t know it yet.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Franco-Prussian War: Revenge of the Paper-Pushers

“The Franco-Prussian War” by Michael Howard

I’ll confess that when I opened this book, I knew very little about the Franco-Prussian War. I didn’t even know who won until I read the front flap. (“Darn, now I know the ending!”

The author, Michael Howard, would be appalled by this, of course. He wrote this book for serious history students who know all the players, read French and German fluently (1), and can find Staarbrucker on a map.

But despite the language barriers, the Franco-Prussian War fills a vital gap in history for me. I’ve spent some time with Napoleon I and Clausewitz and the Civil War generals, but then it’s a long dark night until Franz Ferdinand gets shot in Sarajevo in 1914.

So it’s time for the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871, between a barely united north Germany under Prince William and France under Napoleon III.

SPOILER ALERT: The Germans win.

In the 40 years following the Napoleonic Wars, Howard says, big armies supported by mobilized nations went right out of style. European governments were back to running little armies as a side hobby. The emerging middle class was more interested in making money than going to war.

“Everywhere armies languished in unpopular and impoverished isolation,’ Howard said.

Well, isn't that so sad. Poor, peaceful Europe.

That changed when Prince William took the Prussian throne in 1858. In a few short years he and his buddy Roon remodeled the army, created a North German Confederation and won some victories. The French also reformed their own military somewhat, creating a bigger army, but they didn’t account for the changes science and industry had made to war.

The Germans did. They realized that army commanders needed a good general staff now so they could split up their big armies and move them around. “The Prussian general staff acted as a nervous system animating the lumbering body of the army,” Howard said.

The French, on the other hand, “huddled together in masses without the technical ability to disperse.” They had a good breech-loading system, but terrible artillery. (2)

In effect, the Franco-Prussian conflict was the first Paper-Pushing War. Its outcome would depend on organization, not skill in leadership or courage in battle. Armies had to be in the right place, on time and in adequate strength. That certainly didn’t bode well for the French.

But in 1870, France felt fairly good about their reforms. They had nearly 500,000 soldiers available and could scrape up 300,000 more. They had tons of supplies.

“By the standards of its last campaigns, the French Army was ready,” said Howard. “It was the tragedy of the French Army, and of the French nation, that they did not realize in time that military organization had entered into an entirely new age.”

____________________________________________________

(1) The book's footnotes are filled with long quotes in French or German that probably begin “Ha ha, you monolingual Americans have no clue what’s going on here! Ha ha!” Not that I’m paranoid.

(2) Howard makes a little side joke about the artillery in French here. Apparently France’s minister of war just filed away reports about some great steel guns with the comment “Rien a fair.” I think that means “Nothing to do.”

Happy Memorial Day!

We attended the Memorial Day Ceremony at San Francisco Presidio. The military cemetery there is the oldest national cemetery in the West, beginning with soldiers from the Mexican War.

There was a short parade before the ceremony and we followed National Parks servicepeople mounted on horses to the cemetery. There we heard tributes to veterans and a 21 howitzer cannon salute as well as songs and hymns — including "Taps" and "Amazing Grace" performed by the 191st Army Band. Best of all, a talented speaker delivered the Gettysburg Address from memory.

Then we had a picnic on the Presido grounds near a cannon brought over from the Phillippines. A great Memorial Day.

Please God, Don't Let Him be a Golfer

Here's Benny at the Lucky Elementary School's annual festival. It was a marvelous event -- Californian people do everything with such style with a foodie flair. Benny threw bean bags, jumped in a jumpy house, ate hot dogs and popcorn, picked a lollipop tree and peeked into a kindergarten classroom. And, of course, got in a short round of mini golf.

Hiking California: The Miwok Trail

This is a nice little trail in the Marin headlands. After a brief spell in the woods, it winds around the hills just above the bay. It was an insanely hot, sunny day, so we couldn't hike it for very long.

The Best Use for Credit Cards

I'm not usually a "make a kicky mosaic out of recycled materials" kind of person, but I'm totally making this picture frame after Ron and I pay off the credit cards.

By the way, when I clicked on the link for CraftStylish's instructions on making the picture frame, a big banner ad appeared. It said "Chase Bank: We're Here for You."

Yeah, Chase, you'll be here in my picture frame. Take that!

Military History Seminar: Fun with Chainmail Hoodies

The military history seminar is back! In fact, I've gathered my military history posts and formed a new blog called Pick Your Battles. It has a few new features and a picture of Benny and I at a Civil War battlefield. Check it out, if you like that sort of thing.

This will be my first military history review in a year and a half. I've been doing this since 2005 and read six books in Ohio State University's reading list. At this rate, in 40 years I'll be sitting in whatever nursing home Benny can afford, reading No. 32, "War and Imperialism in Republican Rome" by William Harris.


"The Face of Battle" by John Keegan.


This book is one of my favorites on this list and not just because it's one of the shortest at 342 pages. It's a nice little paperback with a cheery picture of the skull of a Swedish soldier at the Battle of Visby in 1561.

The publishers obviously chose the skull for its dashing, cocky air (complete with chainmail hoodie) since the book doesn't discuss the Battle of Visby. (That's a good thing, too, because I looked it up, and I'm not in the mood to hear about Danish troops battling peasant farmers. Guess who won.)

Instead, "The Face of Battle" analyzes three battles: Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815 and The Somme in 1916. All great battles and surely worth 342 pages and a grinning skull for that alone, but Keegan writes so creatively and eloquently that I'm ready to look up his stuff on the Battle of Visby. He begins with one of my favorite history book openers (edited for length):

"I have not been in a battle; not near one, nor heard one from afar, nor seen the aftermath. I have questioned people who have been in battle ... have walked over battlefields ... have often turned up small relics of the fighting. I have read about battles, of course, have talked about battles ... but I have never been in a battle. And I grow increasingly convinced that I have very little idea of what a battle can be like."

This resonates with me, because I also have never been in battle (just some really mean editorial meetings). And it prompts me to consider why a 40-year-old wife and mother feels compelled to study military history. I have no military background, no ties except a brother in the Army. My paternal grandfather landed on the Normandy beaches as a combat photographer, my maternal grandfather and my father collected military history books. So there's some family precedent for this interest in battle.

Keegan says that some people read military history with the subjunctive question "How would I behave in battle?" I personally don't need a 100-book reading list to answer that question. I know exactly how I would behave in battle. It's like reading an airline pamphlet while flying over the Atlantic, the type of pamphlet titled "Your Role in a Water Landing." As author Jean Kerr wrote: "I know my role in a water landing. I'm going to splash around and sob."

So you see, I have no illusions here. At Agincourt, I'd be in the baggage park. At Waterloo, I'd be napping with the English 4th Regiment. (Where I wouldn't be at Waterloo is near Wellington, who apparently liked to be where the fighting was hottest.) At the Somme, I'd be the one wearing his gas mask in pouring rain. ("You never know!")

It's clear, then, that I don't read military history to learn about myself. I've done enough self-introspection and the results are rarely pleasant. Why then?

Well, reading military history helps me understand the world and how it came to be this way. Identifying patterns of human behavior is interesting. Most of all, I study the conflict and suffering of the past so it is not forgotten. My father and grandfather passed this interest on to me. Perhaps, by example, I will pass it on to Benny and the soldiers at Agincourt in 1415 live on nearly 600 years later.

Hiking California: Corte Madera Ecological Reserve Trail

I suppose there's a reason why the authors of "Best Hikes for Children: San Francisco Bay Area" wanted my family to trudge along an exhaust-filled, traffic-choked roadway, but damned if I can figure it out. I'm looking forward to hiking the 90 trails in this book, but I hope the rest aren't like this one.

We had actually planned to hike No. 85, the Redwood Grove Trail Loop in Muir Woods on Sunday, but Sunday was Mother's Day, which meant I got to sleep in, which meant we didn't get over Golden Gate Bridge until 11 a.m. Apparently half of northern California also wanted to hike Muir Woods on Mother's Day, because the closest parking spot was a half-mile away along a winding road with narrow shoulders. Not the hiking ideal.

So we at a picnic lunch in the car and then found a nice little trail that wound around the hills and revealed great views of Sausalito and the Bay, But the hot sun was beating down on us, so we decided to try something with a little more shade — say, No. 86, the Corte Madera Ecological Reserve Trail, just a short drive away.

I should've guessed this wouldn't be a happy stroll through Marin County flora and fauna when I saw that this particular hike began at the parking lot of Larkspur's ferry terminal. "Head east on the path toward Remaillard Park," I read out loud to Ron as we stood in the nearly deserted lot.

"What, along the road?" Ron asked, pointing to the traffic whizzing by at 50 mph. That made no sense, so we piled back into the car and drove to Remaillard Park instead, where the book promised a duck pond restored by the Marin Audobon Society.

I suppose it's a very nifty pond for ducks and turtles and frogs, but we could see very little through the reeds as we circled the pond on a dirt path. Ron hoisted Benny on his shoulders so he could see the three lonely ducks huddled near a log.

"The book says we can go back to the terminal parking lot and walk to the ecological reserve," I said hopefully.

"What's there?" Ron asked.

Good question. The book said to climb stairs to an overpass, follow another busy road and turn left under the freeway. Included in the hike's description was a picture with the cheery caption: "The freeway is only a stone's throw from this catwalk."

I shut the book and tucked it into my backpack. "Never mind," I said. "Let's go home and eat cookies."

Prudent practices

So the American Bankers Association is getting all nervous now that the Senate has the credit card reform act. They've sent a letter to the Senate detailing how a financial apocolypse will scour the land if they can't switch due dates and hike APRs for no reason. They've been playing a fun game of "gotcha" with consumers, those credit card companies, and made tons of money off responsible people in the process.

Here's an excerpt of the letter also posted on consumerist.com:
__________________

ABA recognizes that the Senate bill contains a number of important consumer protections embodied in recent regulatory action, and acknowledges that change is forthcoming in the way the credit card industry and its customers interact. However, we strongly believe that any legislation in this area needs to achieve the correct balance of consumer protections and market flexibility so as to not jeopardize access to credit.

ABA remains very concerned about the contents of H.R. 627 (as amended), and believes that if it is enacted as it currently stands, it will have a dramatic impact on the ability of consumers, small businesses, students, and others to get credit at a time when our economy can least afford such constraints.

The bill contains various provisions that limit a lender's ability to manage risk, price fees, allocate payments, and otherwise prudently conduct business. We believe these limits will necessitate reductions in available credit given current economic conditions, while increasing the price of credit where it remains available.
______________________

Prudent? Prudent? The lenders dare to use the word prudent? They have been anything but prudent in their behavior. It's like the Wild West out there in the financial sector. They are the ones who so prudently gave tons of credit to every meatball with a pulse. They are the ones who are jacking up every APR in sight for good customers in the name of prudent business practices. Switched due dates, double billing cycles, these are not prudent business practices.

Rail all you like about imprudent consumers who run up credit card debt, the reality is these people have this debt now and many have stopped spending and are trying to pay it down. Will it really benefit the economy to smack these consumers around some more? These are the same lenders who needed a godawful amount of time to to adjust to new rules effective next year and instead used this time to shove through every nasty business practice they could think of before the deadline. They certainly moved quickly on that.

And as for the reductions in available credit they go on about, that's a GOOD thing. There's still way too much credit out there, that was the problem. I feel for small businesses who depend on credit to keep going, but since when did the economy require underhanded tactics by credit card companies to prop up healthy small businesses?

Opting Out of Life

I’ve got a new part-time job these days — opting out.

I opt out of daily emails, I opt out of telephone listings, I opt out of ad-targeting and personal-info sharing. It seems like every week somebody is presenting me with something nobody in their right mind would want (piles of junk mail, anyone?) and giving me the option to opt out.

Unfortunately for me, the procedure to opt out is rarely optimal. In fact, I would suspect that these companies design these processes so the maximum number of people never reach the Holy Grail of Opt-Outedness. They probably have studies and everything.

1) Put opt-out option in tiny type in the back of a pamphlet or in a letter that looks like an ad for DHL.
2) Couch the opt-out option in convoluted language.
3) Direct customers to overloaded 1-800 number, include an address to write to (but no form or envelope) or require a tortuous trip through the company’s web site.
4) If by some miracle a customer does reach a customer service rep or actually mail off a letter, ignore them.

Not that I’m bitter, but I just spent a good hour last weekend writing letters to four credit card companies so I can “opt out” of their giant APR hikes. I know some opt outs are actually a good thing; if I no longer want to receive Cute Kitten of the Day emails, I can opt out. This is okay. This is a mutually beneficial relationship with escape hatches on both sides.

But in most instances, offering opt-outs is not an act of respect, consideration or cooperation. It’s a power move, a bullying tactic. Somebody wants to do something to you, such as sell your information or raise your APR. Because of legal or PR concerns, they have to give you the option of opting out. So they craft it in a way so the opting out is easy to miss, forcing you to be hyper-vigilant about every communication you get from them. They are betting you are too busy/tired/stressed or all three to meet their opting-out requirements. This is not operating in good faith.

I can only imagine what would happen if I tried such tactics in my own relationships. I suppose I could leave a message like this on Ron’s cell phone:

“Hi dear, I’m planning to serve raw meat and unwashed vegetables for dinner tonight. If you’d like a cooked dinner, please call 1-800-HUNGRYS before 3 P.M. today. Please have your 20-digit meal account number handy.”

Given Ron's frantically busy schedule, there’s only a 50 percent chance he’d have the time to call to request a cooked dinner. But if he balks at eating hard broccoli and raw hamburger, I can say, “You had the chance to opt out!”

Or maybe I could send my editor an email like this:

__________________________

Date: April 20 at 5:33 P.M.
Subject: Trivial email-not worth your time

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am scheduled to complete the 40-page, exhaustively researched project “The Bay Area’s Most Exciting Business Plans” by May 29. Upon consideration I feel the best professional action I could take at this time would be to refrain from any type of planning, researching, assigning or editing of the subsequent project and pursue other courses of action, namely, the writing of long, whiny blog posts. If you would prefer that I thoroughly and competently complete the project, including the marathon sessions with FileMaker Pro software, please write me at 1234 Befuddle St., San Francisco, CA, to be received by April 21 at 6:33 A.M.
__________________________

My supervisor only gets about 200,000 emails a day. If he dares complain when I blow the May 29 deadline, I can say triumphantly, “You had a chance to opt out of a uncompleted project! Let’s put pictures of cute kittens on the blank pages! I have a bunch in my email inbox!”

Sounds great.

Hiking California: Huckleberry Path Nature Trail

In the manner of all good used bookstores, The Overland in the Sunset knows what I need better than I do. Last week I entered the store to find a good mystery and walked out with a $5 copy of "Best Hikes for Children: San Francisco Bay Area." It lists 90 interesting hikes ranging from easy (strolling among the ferns near Fish Ranch Road) to the difficult (climbing ladders on Steep Ravine Trail in the North Bay).

We, of course, went for the former. The Huckleberry Path Nature Trail is a short hop from the City into the East Bay. Its a botanical regional preserve, and its heavy moisture and fog supports lots of big ferns. As we started the winding path down the canyon, I felt like I was walking back in time to the Jurassic. Ron and I were wondering how Benny would handle his first 2-mile hike, but he did great, tripping along the path, occasionally stopping to unfold his map. We don't have a car, so he needs tough little legs to get around San Francisco's hills. On the trail, he was surprisingly surefooted, keeping up a steady stream of chatter for more than an hour. ("I think hyenas are bigger than whales and the biggest number is infinity and I don't like red grapes, I like green grapes. ...")

This trail has some unusual plants because the soil doesn't hold water well. The shale and chert rock formation underneath was originally laid down on the ocean floor and later pushed up. Little numbered signposts pointed out the difference between the sword ferns (dark leaves, needs cool, shady moist spots) and wood ferns (light and feathery and tolerates more dryness). Benny looked out for the next number and I would read the little geeky description. Pictured above is No. 15, a Pallid Manzanita, which is now almost wholly confined to the preserve.

One down, 89 more trails to go. We're looking forward to hiking more trails in this book, now that springtime is here, hopefully moving from easy to difficult as Benny grows bigger.

Happy César Chávez Day!

Here are some photos of Benny out on the town on César Chávez Day — a school holiday. Holidays like this make me a little crazy, not just because I must take the day off and lose income, but because I think children would be better served by spending the day at school learning about César Chávez.*

Benny and I elected to celebrate by visiting his soon-to-be elementary school. There were no children there (see above), but we got to check out the student garden and play in the park nearby. Then we had lunch outside in the sun. I'm proud of how Benny has adapted to city life — he stops and takes my hand at every curb and identifies every bus. Some wild-eyed man came lurching by while we ate lunch, shouting about bicycles, and Benny didn't turn a hair, just sipped his lemonade.

* César Chávez, born March 31, 1927, was a Mexican-American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. (Thank you, Wikepedia!)

Somebody's being a little unreasonable

So I checked my online mother's group this morning for the first time in months and read this post:

Hi,

i am trying to figure out what options i have if i would like to start working part-time and am very curious to hear from moms who are doing the same, esp. if you are working from home, and started doing so AFTER you had your baby.

ideally, i would like a job that is VERY flexible, something i can do as i find time for it. i will still be taking care of my son full-time, at least for now...so the times i can work will most often be in the evenings after he goes to bed, with additional daytime hours during some weekends. it would be best if i can do the work at home, since otherwise, i may need to find a sitter...(my husband works long and unpredictable residency hours so it's difficult to depend on him) and jobs where someone else would depend on me/or ones with deadlines would be a bad fit, since my son will still be my first priority - and you know how that goes!

it would be great to find an option to help us bring home more income!!

all suggestions/input are welcome! thanks in advance!

best, Deena

Deena isn't asking for much here, is she? Just a job with no commute, no deadlines, no demands, nobody actually depending on her ... one that she can do only when she feels like it, and presumably requires no capitalization. She sounds like a great employee! Let's hire her!

We did it!

Well, our long educational nightmare is over. Seven months, 20 school tours, 40 lost work hours, a dozen hissy fits and two parking tickets later, we have an elementary school for Benny. We have reached our Shangri-La.

The assignment process at the San Francisco Unified School District, is, of course, horrific. You spend your autumn touring every blinkin' public school in the stupid city and choose seven, which you rank in order of preference. The district's massive computer then processes everyone's requests according to some arcane criteria and spits out each child's assignment. The key is to find elementary schools that are good, yet not so terrifically popular that you have little chance of getting in. They call such schools "hidden gems," and sometimes those gems are hidden under layers of seedy neglect. (How about a little more school funding, Governor Terminator?).

This process is called, fittingly enough, "the lottery," and it does put me in mind of Shirley Jackson's famous short story, except in this case, 0-7 parents surround lucky Rooftop winners and pelt them with chalkboard erasers.

Because you can do all the tours, the applications, the documents, the whole thing, and STILL end up without one of your seven choices. Friday's post on a popular San Francisco blog, which is centered around the school assignment process, asks "Round one letters are out: what did you get?" As of 3 p.m. Sunday, there are over 500 comments from parents, many of whom are spitting mad. Blame and angst are thick in the air as parents who hate their school assignments face months of Round 2 and waitlist stress. According to statistics the district recently released, nearly 1,000 San Francisco families received none of their seven choices this year.

But back to us (cuz this is my blog, after all). The letter from SFUSD arrived Saturday, while Ron, Benny and I were at the St. Patrick's Day parade. I literally ran up the street from the bus stop, keys in hand, eager to see if we got our letter. Then I carried it upstairs like it was a paper time bomb, which in a way, it was. We have been in limbo for three months waiting for this letter, unable to plan anything. Everything depended on the school: Would we have to buy a car? Would we have to move? Would we have to go parochial and pay tuition? Would we have to do all three?

Well, Ron opened it and the news couldn't be better. Benny was assigned the Shangri-La school, our No. 1 choice, in Cole Valley. It's a short bus ride away, in a good neighborhood that actually shortens our commute to work. It's a very popular school (630 families requested it this year) and not too big. We'll probably move to Cole Valley next year to be even closer, but for now, we can stay put. And it's free!

Financially, this is a huge help. This means we can take the princely sum we've paid for Benny's preschool each month and put it towards debt. This means we can take a family vacation this May and visit our family in Michigan this June and put money into savings every month. As soon as the debt is paid off, we can start a college fund for Benny and save up to buy a car. All of this is possible because of Benny's school assignment, and so I feel we just won the lottery in every sense of the word.

The depths of despair in Indiana

Work has been a little weird lately, with some strange, random management moves that do little to help morale. But hey, at least I don't work at the South Bend Tribune.

The blog "Ask a Manager" has posted a recent management memo to reporters that nearly stops the heart. Reporters must send a detailed, daily summary of their activities — every phone call, interview, research effort and email discussion — to five editors. That way the editors know every little thing their reporters are doing, which apparently helps them evaluate people's work, plan the paper's content and know "your accomplishments and your struggles."

Let's ignore the massive time suck this would be for reporters, who could be spending that 20-plus minutes (it's really that detailed) actually working on stories. Let's ignore the even bigger time suck for editors, who must wade through a dozen of such summaries a day. I assume all summaries will be forwarded on to the design department, which can develop cute pie charts and bar graphs displaying reporters' activities for everyone's edification.

Perhaps there's a value to this process that I am stubbornly overlooking. Perhaps my editors would be assisted (if not inspired) by such a daily summary from me. So here it is: an open memo to the Internet world about my Monday morning activities. Now go plan your next newspaper issue.

MONDAY, FEB. 2

Arrived at nine. Chugged Snapple. Consumed granola bar. Surfed the web and found appalling memo asking for detailed summaries from reporters. Forwarded memo to a dozen friends. Read emails. Flagged two emails I didn't understand and deleted three emails I hoped to ignore. Went into kitchen and told coworker amusing story about my morning bus ride. Returned to desk and hunted for vending machine change. Gave up. Started editing a real estate column. Reporter asked me to post an article on the web. Dug through my files for my two-month-old, hastily scrawled cheat sheet. Tried to read my writing. Decided to wing it. Posted article. Returned to real estate column. Giggled over punchy headline I wrote. Started thinking about article I posted. Should I add a reporter byline? Was the article too small for a byline? My notes were silent on this, or perhaps I just couldn't read them. Dithered some more. All the editors were in a Monday meeting so I had no one to ask. Added byline. Finished editing real estate column. Reporter emailed me and asked why his story now had a byline and requested I take it off. Took byline off. Indulged in self pity. Editors emerged from meeting and I asked about web story bylines. Was told that all stories must have them. Put bylines on seven stories, cursing softly. Attended editorial meeting. Suffered. Went to lunch early. I plan to return from lunch in April 2012.

Federal Reserve hides its mighty super powers

Apparently it takes more than $800 billion to impress Ben Bernanke, who gave a speech in London saying, gosh, Obama's stimulus package is sweet and all, but won't do much good.

But fear not, because the Federal Reserve has mighty super powers in its arsenal, Bernanke says -- he calls them "powerful tools." Of course, the chairman won't share what those tools are, especially since the rate-cut well has run dry. Perhaps Bernanke will be happier if we give the whole $800 billion to the banks and ask them really nicely to lend out a little of it this time. He has a laundry list of solutions to the mess, solutions which require actions by other people.

Bernanke's word of the day is "stability," which apparently requires "stronger supervisory and regulatory systems" without squashing "financial innovation." Well, good heavens, we wouldn't want to discourage financial innovation, would we? Why, it was the financial innovators who brought us the Ponzi schemes and ARMs, after all. It's like me announcing that my family needs strict rules to keep Benny from eating Hostess cupcakes for dinner, but if Benny finds the cupcakes in the back of the cupboard himself, hey, that's innovation!

Benny hangs out in Michigan

During our stay at my brother Andy's, Benny had a chance to play his new board game and attend his old playgroup.

Christmas on a Michigan beach

Here are some pictures of Benny and his cousins on a cold, nasty, West Michigan beach in December. (Can you tell this was Ron's family and that I stayed in the car?) I'm glad that Benny isn't a wimp like his mother.

Christmas at Cindy's

Here are a few pictures from our Christmas at Christine's sister's house in West Michigan.

Marley & Me & Benny

The great thing about long visits to family are the occasional, unexpected pockets of free time. At home, if you have a spare 20 minutes, there are at least 30 to-dos backed up behind your eyeballs ("Oh, I have a chance to change the litter/change the sheets/vaccuum the carpet/fix that weird faucet drip/call the cable people....")

But when you're at a someone's house and lunch isn't for two more hours and it's 15 degrees outside and you're too scared to approach your sister-in-law's psycho 6,000-piece jigsaw puzzle (her latest was simply a pile of glittery and wooden beads with a single thread of blue yarn running through it), you suddenly have nothing to do. The dishes are wiped, the sleeping bags are rolled and you can't wash the stinky laundry in your suitcase because your poor hostess is busy washing the 500 towels her family is using. I suppose a superior guest would root around in the pantry and spontaneously bake up a key-lime pie (what is in key-lime pie anyway?), but I am not that sort.

Well, there's Benny, of course. But the last thing he wants while running around with his cousins getting into trouble is Mom. So I find myself reading kid's books from my neice's room or the region's sad little local newspaper. One family connection tried to get me to read his business book ("Overloaded" or "Overweirded" or something like that) but I'm still recovering from "Who Moved My Cheese?" and that was 10 years ago. So I chat with my relatives and eat another cookie and I'm happy.

Last Monday took the free time thing to a whole new level. I not only had a free 20 minutes, I had a free DAY. A bunch of guys turned up at my brother's house at 9 a.m. to replace the windows and we couldn't be there. So at 9:01 a.m., we were cruising Ann Arbor in our rented Chevy Aveo and life couldn't get any better.

It was still minus-10 or something and I was shivering in my thin San Francisco coat, so we decided to start the excitement at a Bob Evans. Benny brought along his new Army toys (a Christmas gift from Uncle Andy) and created an elaborate military compound on his side of the table, complete with sandbags and itty-bitty fuel drums.

"After this, let's go see a movie," I said.

That presented a problem. Benny doesn't really like kids' movies. "Shrek" freaks him out and a "Cinderella" video sends him hiding behind a chair. He enjoyed "Bolt" at a recent birthday outing for his best friend, I hear, but that was a big exception. Ron brought home "Toy Story II" last month and he refused to watch it. The only Disney movie he likes is "Bambi."

I put this down to the frenetic pace of most current kids' movies. Yeah, I know that "Cinderella" doesn't exactly start with a bang -- she's just getting out of bed, for Christ's sake -- but then there's all those mice running from the cat. Almost all kids' movies these days start with some frantic chase scene with constant camera cuts and pounding music. It just sets Benny off. Maybe he watches too much PBS. Maybe he needs some antidepressants. All I know is, don't get this kid near "Ratatouille."

So we decided to take Benny to the 11:35 showing of "Marley & Me," which is about a newspaper couple who adopt a very badly behaved dog. Benny happily accompanied us to Showcase Cinema, up to the ticket counter and into the theater himself. But when the first preview appeared on the screen, he realized he'd been had and would be forced to *gasp* see a movie.

"I want to go home," Benny said loudly.

"Look, it's a kids' movie preview. Maybe you'd like to see it," I said gamely. The screen showed an animated girl who lived in a weird house, then walked into another weird house and there was screaming.

"I want to go home!" Benny shouted.

"Look, if you stay through part of the movie, I'll buy you popcorn," I said desperately.

Benny tried to leave twice during the previews, but then blessedly "Marley & Me" began and it started with some nice scenery and a voiceover. We all calmed down.

"Is this the movie, Mommy?" Benny whispered.

"Yes," I said.

Silence. But I knew he was thinking, "I want to go home."

Benny liked the movie. The dog was nearly every scene and when he wasn't, Benny munched on his popcorn. There was a scary part when Owen Wilson finds a neighbor who was stabbed and I knew that was coming (I'd read the book), so I put Benny on my lap and asked him about other stuff and he was OK. The scene with Marley half-hanging out the car and walking on his front paws while Owen Wilson held on to his rear legs and Jennifer Aniston inched the car along the road cracked Benny up.

It was a nice, long movie as well (too long, really). So the window guys were finished at Andy's house by the closing credits.

I didn't think much about our outing until I visited my old Ann Arbor mother's group. They had a playdate the next day and it was fun and chaotic as usual. I mentioned the movie to the other mothers.

"You took Benny to that movie?" one mother asked in shocked tones. "I read that was unsuitablefor preschoolers .. you know ... the ending."

"The ending?" I asked. Then I remembered. The dog died. Actually the dog died for a good 30 minutes, since the movie's producers felt moved to milk every possible tear out of it, with flashbacks and pictures and little children's moving speeches beside a freshly dug grave. It didn't seem to bother Benny; we had talked before about how animals don't live as long as people.

I don't know, maybe we're courting childhood trauma here and recurring dead-dog nightmares, but at least he wasn't hiding under the theater seat. For really scary themes, you can't beat a kitchen scene with a French-cooking rat.

Night Night

I just got my hands on a new digital camera. Couldn't wait for Benny to wake up to try it out. Can you believe that this picture was taken in a dimly lit room?

Vampire Bat!

Here's Benny all ready to go trick-or-treating. But we had to remember, he wasn't a vampire, he was a BAT. Um, okay.

Voting in San Francisco

Here's Benny outside our voting precinct — which happened to be somebody's garage two blocks from our apartment. The line to vote extended down the sidewalk to the corner. With 20 local proposals plus a dozen state proposals plus the presidential election, voting took a while. I had to bring a cheat sheet so I knew what to do. Check out the little dog in the window above the garage.

An Imperial Engineer goes shopping

I've got a new hobby these days — trafficking in body parts.

I bought Benny his first Star Wars spaceship and action figure last week. I've been waiting for this day: The future opportunities to buy a galaxy-full of Star Wars stuff was one of the reasons I'd hoped for a son. I have fond memories of imaginary adventures with Luke, Leia, Darth and the rest of the Star Wars gang, who lived in a shoe box under my bed when they weren't launching rebellions or adopting little plastic kittens (Darth Vader had a pink one, of course).

So off I went to Target, where I snatched up a TIE fighter (I'd always wanted a TIE fighter) and went hunting for a little Darth to drive it. Darth Vader is the only Star Wars character Benny knows. He must have picked it up at school, since he refuses to watch the movie. Actually he refuses to watch any movie — we had to practically force him to watch "Toy Story II" last weekend and he gets a hunted look whenever we bring it up now.

Who ever heard of a chid who hates movies and pizzas? And yet Benny dislikes both. And of course, whenever we're part of a casual child-centered gathering, the first thing the hosts do is pop in a video and order some pizza. And Benny ends up behind a chair somewhere, peeking out at the terrifying horror scenes in "Cinderella."

Anyway ... back to point. (And the body parts — I'm coming to that.) So I've got the TIE Fighter, but I can't find Darth Vader. I can't find anybody I recognize except for Obi Wan Kenobi and he has red hair now. Those wretched movies that Lucas produced after the first Star Wars trilogy had messed up all the toys, turning the most familiar characters and ships into weird mutants (Have you seen the new TIE fighter? It looks like an airport terminal.)

I couldn't find Darth Vader, so I settled for a suitably ominous henchman of his, called the Imperial Engineer. Oddly enough, he didn't carry a screwdriver or T-square, but a wicked little rifle. I considered hiding the rifle from Benny, not because I'm opposed to weaponry in children's toys per se, but because I know from experience that those badly molded plastic guns will never stay in the action figure's hands. But I quickly forgot about the gun, because I was too busy starting at the engineer's extra arm.

Yes, there was an extra arm in the package, prominently displayed. I was baffled. Was there a manufacturing problem involving the Engineer's right arm, requiring a spare? But no, it wasn't the Engineer's arm, it belonged to another character. Was it some sort of trophy? That seemed kind of psychopathic.

The answer, which I found on the back of the toy, was that the arm belonged to the Droid, and the idea was to buy all the other weird mutant Star Wars action figures, each with a different piece of the Droid and when you had all the body parts, you could put them together to create a Whole New Character!

Well, OK then. So I took the Engineer and TIE Fighter home to Benny and he loved them. He spent the rest of that Saturday implementing complicated schemes involving them. I thought the Engineer would be traveling the universe in his TIE Fighter, conquering planets and a stuffed animal or two. But Benny is a practical sort, and the Engineer instead spent his time chasing zebras on the African plains with his TIE fighter (which, to me, seems really unsporting). Then the Engineer drove his TIE Fighter to the grocery store and after that (swear to God) to Home Depot. Obviously things are a little slow around the Empire these days and therefore a perfect time to run some errands.

So what about the arm, you ask? I wasn't about to explain the whole marketing scheme to Benny and have him nag me for weeks about buying other guys so he could collect more robot pieces. Instead, I popped the arm into my jewelry box, which has several compartments obviously designed for such a purpose. Maybe next time I'll get a leg. Or a torso. Then Benny's Engineer will have a robot friend.

Maybe they could go to ACE Hardware together.

Playing the Lottery

So I’ve got a new obsession in my life. And let me tell you, I’m not the kind of woman who needs a new obsession. Some women like a new obsession they can really sink their teeth into: a new job, a new boyfriend, those extra 10 pounds, the perfect organic heirloom tomato, the elementary school’s dingy playground equipment, a coworker’s slacker ways. ... These are all appropriate obsessions. These are obsessions you choose, even when you don’t know you’re choosing them. (“When did I start cruising farmer’s markets every Saturday morning looking for the perfect hybrid tomato seeds?”)

But some obsessions are not chosen, but thrust upon you. And I’m walking around nursing some low-level resentment these days because I’ve become obsessed with San Francisco elementary schools.

San Francisco does not have neighborhood public schools, but has implemented the lottery system, where a prospective student can attend any school in the city, regardless of where the child lives. The child’s parents submit a list of seven schools they like to the district and then sit around crossing their fingers hoping to get one on their list.

“87 percent of parents are assigned one of their choices for their kid!” the district trumpets, but that’s a load of hooey because that lovely figure includes siblings of current students, who get preferential status. The real percentage for non-sibling applicants is likely much lower.

Then there’s the problem of choosing what schools to list in the first place. San Francisco’s schools are wildly unequal in terms of educational quality and safety (surprise, surprise). So you have to figure out where the good schools are so you can write them on your list.

Fine, you think. I’ll ask around about the best schools and write them down. But the well-known quality schools are wildly popular, with zillions of parents listing them, so your kid’s odds of being assigned one are quite low. So you’re encouraged to sally forth and find “hidden gems,” public schools that are good enough so you can send your kid there, but obscure enough so you’re kid has a chance.

I’m sure you’ve seen the problem here. How in God’s name do you find the hidden gems? Well, you tour. You tour every freakin’ school in your chosen neighborhoods, you tour until you puke, you tour until the very phrase “test scores” causes a PTSD reaction that involves excessive drooling and a fear of chalk. You tour, your write down that list of seven schools and still your child might be assigned to some grim, understaffed school across the city.

So you need a backup. This backup is called “private school.” Now there’s a huge debate raging in this city about public vs. private, that the parents who send their kids to private school are cowardly sellouts indifferent to America’s future. Parents who truly love their country, the common reasoning goes, find a marginal school and pour hundreds of man-hours and resources into making it better.

More power to them, I say. May their tribe increase.

I, on the other hand, am the morally bankrupt slacker who just wants her son in a decent school that won’t require two buses and a train to get there. Public, private, parochial — they are all ways to do this. So we’re looking at public and privates. Actually, Ron is looking at public and I am doing the private schools. Thank God we can split it up. I don’t know how some mothers do this single-handed, although many do.

So now my new obsession are private and parochial elementary schools in San Francisco. I’ve got a spreadsheet, a file drawer and an Internet connection, so I’m ready. Wish me luck.

The Seven Circles of Infrastructure

Tuesday was a long day. I'd arranged to arrive at Benny's preschool at 7:45 a.m. so I could dash over to a morning business event. Instead, the morning skittered out of control and I ended up dashing to the bus stop an hour later, red-faced and cursing the stupid shoes I have to wear with my best suit.

My lack of time management may actually have been a subconscious attempt at sabotage, since the morning event was an Infrastructure Business Forum. Two months ago I edited a newspaper section on Bay Area infrastructure and I'm still coping with the trauma. Ron and I were moving to a new apartment at the same time, and I found myself reading Dante's "Inferno," perhaps hoping to find a circle for newspaper executives who think an exhaustive, comprehensive special publication on infrastructure sounds like a kicky idea.

Instead, Dante muddled my thinking further and I started imagining the Circles of Hell for Infrastructure. The Editor becomes lost in a Wood of Typos and finds her way blocked by monsters representing Deadlines, Budgets and Photo Assignments. Virgil the poet (who never had to worry about inch counts) leads her to the right path to the surface, but first she must pass through the Seven Circles of Infrastructure.

The descent begins with the Dreaded Circle of the Overview, where sinners throw completely unrelated ideas into a giant cookpot. But the ideas never jell into a coherent discussion and the sinners must stir and stir and stir …

There is also the Circle of Pointless Graphics, where sinners must compare apples and oranges and bond measure allocations and throw in a few pie charts. Then we have the Circle of High-Speed Rail, where sinners must sit through endless planning meetings, and the Circle of Transit, where sinners must take the 43 bus around and around and around …

Of course, we can’t miss the Circle of Rail, where the sinners (mostly railroad executives) are tied to the tracks and lectured about the need for port-railroad cooperation. Or the Circle of Airports, which is well named, for sinners must circle endlessly and eat stale peanuts while airport officials argue about seawalls.

And finally, the Editor reaches the end of the section with the Circle of Water, where Satan himself sits encased in the ice of a frozen Hetch Hetchy water system in dire need of seismic retrofitting.

With such lurid images in my mind (and now, Dear Reader, in yours), it’s no wonder I didn’t want to relive the infrastructure section at the event. But I arrived at the perfect time — late — which meant I missed most of the presenters and didn’t have to hear any more about high-speed rail.

##

Greek Play Seminar: "Agamemnon"

With "Agamemnon" I truly entered the stage of Greek tragedy. Aeschylus' first three plays dealt with sad events, requiring much moaning and crying and beating of breast. Good people died, stupid people lived, all surrounded by shadowy portents of woe. The language was poetic, but the emotions -- well, they were interesting, but did they feel real? The answer, for me at least, was no.

That all changed with "Agamemnon," Aeschylus' first play of a trilogy called "The Oresteia." It begins with a watchman, sitting alone at night on a roof.

"I've prayed God to deliver me from evil
Throughout a long year's vigil, couched like a dog
On the roof of the House of Atreus."

Atreus is Agamemnon's family name, and what a family. The House of Atreus is cursed, beginning with Atreus himself. Atreus' brother Thyestes seduced his wife, so Atreus killed his brother's sons and served them to Thysestes as dinner.

Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus are Atreus' sons, sometimes called the Atreidae, and are both powerful Greek kings. When Menelaus' wife Helen is stolen by a Trojan prince (Why can't these guys hold on to their wives? Everyone would have benefited if they came home for dinner more), the brothers Agamemnon and Menelaus gather a bunch of Greeks to invade Troy and get Helen back. This is, of course, the famous Trojan War, and it's been going on for 10 years now as the play begins.

The opening speeches in Aeschylus' plays have been real yawners so far, but the Watchman's is different. This guy has been sitting on the roof for 10 years, watching for a sign that the war is over, hardly able to sleep, weeping as the the city-state of Argos becomes less honored and honorable without its king. A fire blazes and he cries with joy. Troy is taken! King Ag is coming home!

The Chorus (as usual, a bunch of old guys) show up, but they don't feel like celebrating. The victory was dearly bought. Before the Greek ships sailed for Troy, King Ag and his brother had offended the goddess Artemis. (They killed a bunny; it really didn't take much to irritate a Greek god.) Artemis would not allow the Greek ships to sail unless Ag killed and sacrificed his oldest daughter, which, sadly he did.

The girl's death, of course, did not go over well with King Ag's wife, Clytemnestra. She's been seething for 10 years about it, and the Chorus knows it, and they doubt the king's homecoming will be a happy occasion:

"The black Furies wait, and when a man
Has grown by luck, not justice, great,
With sudden overturn of chance
they wear him to a shade ..."

Queen Clytemnestra turns up with what another blogger calls a cool bit of "information technology." She and King Ag had arranged beacons from Troy to Argos, each one lit after the other when Troy falls (remember that scene in the Lord of Rings when one of the hobbits lights a fire and beacons on mountains light up one after the other?) It's like that. The blogger I mentioned earlier even mapped out all the beacons, so if you care, check it out here.

Anyway, Clytemnestra doesn't really need the beacons, because a herald runs onstage, telling her that King Ag is almost to the palace. (Aechylus never explains how the Greeks traveled from Troy to Argos so fast.) Clytemnestra starts bragging about what a great wife she is:

"Delight from other men and ill-report
Are strange to me, as strange as tempered steel."

You can almost the the Chorus rolling their eyes and elbowing each other, because Clytemnestra has been carrying a torrid affair for years with King Ag's cousin. The Herald looks at her confusedly for a minute, then runs off again.
Clytemnestra sweeps back into the palace, leaving the Chorus with some time to kill.

The old men don't have the nerve to gossip about Clytemnestra, so they spend a happy page or two abusing Helen of Troy, who just so happens to be Clytemnestra's sister. (It's a really small world in Greek mythology.)

"Helen," they snarl. "Hell indeed she carried unto men and ships and a proud city."

A cloud of doom hangs over this palace as well, they continue, a "horror of dark disaster," and on this bright note, King Ag makes his victorious entrance in a chariot.

Ag hops out. He sounds completely neurotic at first, trying to be triumphrant and humble at the same time, but we must forgive him for that. The Greek gods were really touchy about too-proud mortals.

Clytemnestra comes forward to meet him and it's a typical wife greeting: You've been away forever, I've been worried sick about you, how come you didn't write more, and so on. Then she spreads out a purple sheet for him to walk on. King Ag is pretty haughty and cold to her and he just hates the sheet she laid out -- he's never liked purple, the gods might not approve -- but Clytemnestra talks him into it and they enter the palace.

The men of the Chorus just shake their heads, sounding a bit like Charlie Brown: "I don't know, Linus, Christmas is coming but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel ..."

Meanwhile, King Ag's chariot is sitting there and it's not empty. He's brought a Trojan princess named Cassandra home as his personal sex slave. Cassandra has a terrible story: She was once loved by the god Apollo and he gave her the gift of prophecy, but when she refused to bear him children, Apollo turned the gift into a curse. She could still predict the future, but nobody would ever believe her. Everyone called her a crazy witch. She predicted again and again the fall of Troy, but nobody listened. She told them not to let the Trojan horse into the city, but nobody listened. So Troy was destroyed and all the men killed and all the women and children killed or enslaved. The ashes are still burning at Troy, and this poor princess has been picked up by King Ag and brought to Argos.

The Chorus tries to get Cassandra to leave the chariot, but she just shakes her head wildly and curses Apollo. Cassandra asks the Chorus where she is and hearing that she's joined the House of Atreus, she freaks out:

"Palace abhorred of God, conscious of hidden crime,
Sanguinary, sullied with slaughtered kin,
A charnel-house that streams with children's blood!"

She suddenly sees the death of Agamemnon by his wife's hand and her own death, following a line of blood leading from father to son.

The Chorus sighs. That's what you get with a prophet, they say, always bad news. "When did a prophet's voice ever issue in happiness?"

But it's too late for Cassandra, she walks knowingly to her death, entering the palace with a final word:

"Alas, mortality! when fortunate,
A painted image; in adversity,
The sponge's moist touch wipes it all away."

A pause, and then the Chorus hear Agamemnon crying out in horror and pain. They stage a quick little debate about what to do, and bravely decide to creep closer to the palace door.

Now Clytemnestra triumphantly enters, throwing the doors of the palace wide, holding a bloody sword. Behind her is Agamemnon, stabbed dead while wrapped in the purple sheet and Cassandra dead beside him. The queen does not deny killing her husband, she feels no shame. She considers herself an executioner, dispensing justice on her daughter's murderer and his prostitute.

She must be banished, the Chorus says, shocked.

Why do you judge me? the queen asks. Why did you not judge the king, who killed his daughter and carried on adultrous affairs with every women he could?

"Why did you not drive him from hearth and home
for that foul crime, reserving your stern judgment
until I acted?"

But the Chorus cannot forgive her and they cry for Orestes, son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, to avenge the murder. But Orestes is out of the city at the moment (probably seeing a therapist), the Chorus is in the power of Clytemnestra and her own lover, who has finally arrived now that the dirty work is done.

The Chorus sneers at the lover, calling him a coward, and they have huge argument, which Clytemnestra finally stops. She has a headache now and is ready for a nice bath.

"Do not heed their idle clamour," she tells her lover in the play's final lines. "You and I, the new masters of the house, henceforward shall direct it well."

THE END

Greek Plays: Seven Against Thebes

Greek plays always start in the middle of the story and Aeschylus' "The Seven Against Thebes" is no exception. Like "The Persians," it is a martial play, more set on reading the rolls of heroic soldiers than exploring character and plot.

Thebes was an ancient Greek city founded by Cadmus, who was out looking for his sister Europa, who'd been carried off by Zeus. He never found Europa, but he did find a great site for a city. Cadmus killed a dragon and the goddess Athena had him plant the dragon's teeth in the ground. An army of men popped up and started fighting and the survivors became the founders of Thebes.

Cadmus' descendents had the most terrible luck and nobody had it worse than poor Oedipus, who was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. The play "The Seven Against Thebes" begins after Oedipus is blinded and driven out of Thebes and his twin sons are fighting over the throne.

Eteocles is the son ruling the city and his brother Polyneices has gathered an army to attack. The play begins with a looong speech by Eteocles to his people describing the situation. A spy enters and gives a lengthy report: seven great chieftans are outside the gates, offering sacrifices to Ares, god of war.

Thebes has seven gates, you see, each with its own name. For reasons best known to Polyneices, he's decided to send one warrior chieftan against each gate, rather than massing all seven against one gate. Not the greatest military strategy (Clausewitz would never approve), but Poly is the leader, so they all go along. So now Poly's chieftans are busy playing paper-scissors-rock to see who will attack which gate.

Eteocles prays to Zeus, then leaves. And here comes the Chorus, a group of Theban women who are absolutely terrified:

"I wail in the stress of my terror, and shrill is my cry of despair ..."

They shriek for a good two pages, crying for the gods' protection, and finally irritating Eteocles, who hustles over to shut them up.

"Your flying feet, and rumour of your fears,
have spread a soulless panic on our walls"

He yells at them for a good long while, telling them that women are stupid and a pain, that the gods won't help them, to keep their voices down, to just shut up already. "Beshrew your cries!" he shouts. "In silence face your fate!"

This, of course, does no good at all, and Eteocles stomps out in disgust. The Chorus of women give a harrowing account of what happens to conquered people, working themselves into a real frenzy.

Eteocles finally returns, accompanied by six buddies who will defend the gates of Thebes. The Spy turns up and describes each of seven champions attacking Thebes -- each man's name, who his daddy was, what he's wearing and how much he can bench-press. Eteocles arranges his own champions to meet the enemy but saves the best for himself -- the Seventh Gate, to be attacked by his brother Polyneices. Eteocles will fight his brother at the gate.

The women start shrieking at the news, but Eteocles marches off. The defenders defeat the attackers, but at the Seventh Gate, the two brothers kill each other in battle. Says the Spy:

"So is the city saved; the earth has drunk
Blood of twin princes, by each other slain."

The bodies of Eteocles and Polyneices are brought in by their sisters, who sing a nice long dirge with the Chorus. A Herald arrives and says the City Council has decided to bury Eteocles (the defender) in all honor, his attacking brother Polyneices will be left out for the dogs.

The sister Antigone will not agree.

"I, I will bury this my brother's corpse
And risk your wrath and what may come of it!"

This, of course, sets up the famous Greek play "Antigone," where heroine must decide whether to bury her brother Polyneices despite certain execution for it. But "The Seven Against Thebes" ends here with the chorus carrying off Eteocles' body for a big funeral.

"He saved us from a foreign yoke,
A wild assault of outland folk,
A savage, alien wave!"

Benny at Golden Gate Bridge

Click on the picture to see Benny on a beautiful day at Golden Gate Bridge.

Greek Play Seminar: "The Suppliants"

Well, I read "The Suppliants" and I gotta say I wasn't a big fan. It's a very early play, where the Chorus was still the main character. All the characters are pretty sketchy and the plot, well, it's pretty weak.

The action starts with 50 girls and their dad turning up on the shore in Argos. They are fleeing their 50 male cousins, who are trying to force a mass marriage. The 50 girls are the Chorus, although I assume the Greeks didn't actually crowd 50 actors on the stage.

Anyway, so the girls are scared and pitiful and possibly a little seasick. They know their 50 cousins are pursuing them, so they pray to Zeus (who is always so helpful to young girls) and wave little olive branches. The girls are called the Danaids after their dad Danaus (he's there too) and they hope the king of Argos can help them out.

The Danaids are still really freaked. "From my living lips my own sad dirges flow!" they moan, vowing to kill themselves if forced to marry their cousins.

Dad doesn't try to calm them down -- instead he points out that an army is approaching and reads a little lecture to the girls on how to behave. The King of Argos strolls over, checks their identification and listens to their story. "I need to talk to my advisers," he says, stalling.

A real king doesn't need advisers, the girls say.

Well, I need to talk to them, the King snaps, sounding a little defensive.
"Yea, I have pondered: From the sea of doubt
Here drives at length the bark of thought ashore."

(That sounds like he's made up his mind -- a bark is a boat -- but he really hasn't. I guess the King just likes nautical images.)

If you don't help us, we'll hang ourselves on these statues of the gods, the girls cry.

"My bark goes forth upon a sea of troubles," the King says, sticking to his theme. But in the end he agrees to protect the girls from their cousins. He leaves to tell his city the joyous news that he's committed them to a war with Egyptians to protect a lot of strange girls.

The girls sing happily, but Dad stops the celebration quickly. The cousins' ship is approaching the coast, he says. Stay by the gods' shrine and I'll run after the King of Argos and he'll bring back an army.

"O father, leave us not forlorn!" they cry.

Don't worry, says Dad. It will take some time for the cousins to land. They're not great with the ropes.

So Dad leaves and the girls freak out again. A herald from the cousins arrive, and he's definitely an unpleasant fellow. Come along or I'll beat you all up, he says. The King, of Argos, however, arrives in the nick of time, chases off the herald and escorts the girls to his city. But the trouble has only started.

"Alas for the sorrow to come, the blood and the carnage of war," the girls sing.

The play ends here, but there are certainly woes ahead. This play was apparently part of a trilogy, with the rest lost. According the Wikepedia, the story continues with Argos fighting the cousins. The king of Argos is killed and the girl's dad becomes the tyrant of Argos. The marriage is still forced on the girls, but Dad tells them to murder their husband on their wedding nights. All the girls do that except for Hypermnestra, who refuses, and she and her husband kill Dad and they become rulers of Argos.

According to another myth, the remaining girls are punished for their crime of murder. In the Underworld, ruled by Hades, they must constantly bring water from a stream with jars full of holes.

The moral of the story? In Greek mythology, you're screwed no matter what you do.

Greek Play Seminar: "The Persians"

So, I read “The Persians” by Aeschylus, written in 472 B.C. Although Aeschylus wrote it for Greek audiences, the play is set in Persia, specifically the ancient city of Susa, which is now in modern-day Iran.

A couple of Persian elders are milling about near King Darius’s tomb. Darius’ son, Xerxes, the new king, has gathered up every Persian guy who can walk to go attack the Greeks. Xerxes was still mad at the Greeks cuz they beat his dad at the Battle of Marathon, so off they went.

Well, they'd left a while ago, and the Persian elders are feeling anxious, so they decide to gather at Darius’ tomb and serve as the Chorus for this play,

To pass the time, they chant a long roll call of all the mighty warriors who went to Greece. Xerxes had gotten the bright idea of tying ships together to bridge the Hellespont, a narrow strait dividing Greece and Persia. This way, he could march his big army right over to Greece:

“The narrow Hellespont’s vex’d waves disdain,
His proud neck taught to wear the chain.”

Queen Atossa then turns up, widow of Darius and mother of Xerxes. She’s a nervous wreck after two dreams predicting Persia’s defeat. (Her first dream, about two women harnessed to Xerxes’ chariot, was disturbing even without all the symbolism.) What are the Greeks like, she asks the chorus.

Pretty darn tough, the chorus responds. “Slaves to no lord, they own no kingly power.”

Suddenly a messenger appears, looking all freaked out. “Woe to the land of Persia!” he cries.

Persian dead are lying in heaps on the Greek islands, the messenger continues. More lie on the bottom of the Aegean. Xerxes is alive, and returning, but most of the Persian host is dead, and in case they don’t believe him, the messenger starts listing every dead chieftan he can think of.

Yes, yes, yes, Atossa says, I’m sorry about Arabus and Artames and our buddy Lilaeus, but WHAT HAPPENED?

It was a dirty, rotten trick, the messenger answered. Some Greek guy turned up at the Persian ships and said the Greeks planned to sneak away in the night. Xerxes immediately arranged all his ships around the area to prevent this and waited for morning.

But the Greeks didn’t flee. They popped up the next morning and started shouting:

“Advance, ye sons of Greece, from thralldom save
Your country, save your wives, your children save,
The temples of your gods, the sacred tomb
Where rest your honour’d ancestors; this day
The common cause of all demands your valour.”

Then the Greeks attacked. Persia’s ships were so badly placed they couldn’t maneuver properly and were defeated.

Then the messenger runs off, leaving everyone horror-stricken. What to do now? Atossa ponders her situation. Since the Chorus is obviously useless, she can only ask her dead husband, Darius, for advice. They’re probably placing bets down in Hades on Persia’s continued survival. Maybe they’ve got some inside dope. Bring Darius up from the dead, she tells the Chorus, which they accomplish with surprising efficiency.

Darius arrives and he’s mad as hell (no pun intended). “With what new ill doth Persia groan?” he asks.

Atossa spills the beans and Darius says, well, what can Xerxes expect if he insists on bridging the Hellespont? Neptune is all mad at him now – “Presumptuous … vain mortal!”

Well, it’s not all Xerxes’ fault, says devoted mother Atossa. He fell in with some bad company. They made him do it. But what should Persia do now?

Leave the Greeks alone, Darius snarls. And clean up a little, Atossa, you look a mess. Put on your best dress for Xerxes and treat him nicely. Then Darius vanishes in the puff of brimstone.

Atossa runs off to dig through her closet, leaving the Chorus to wail for a good three pages until Xerxes makes a surprise appearance.

Since Darius didn’t tell them to be nice, the Chorus guys don’t hesitate to pour as much guilt on Xerxes as possible:

“Asia sinking on her knee, O king,
Oppress’d, with griefs oppress’d, bends to the earth.”

You stink Xerxes, sings the chorus, you’re a rotten, stinky king. Where are all your friends? Oh yeah, they’re, um, “sunk and smeared with gore.” Relentlessly they chant name after name of the tortured dead.

I’m sorry, Xerxes says, really. Look at my clothes – I ripped them all up and I really liked this shirt. You know, this is all so great, let’s all go to my house and we can moan some more. I hear Mom has a new dress:

“Lead to my house, and wail the fate of Persia.”

This sounds good to the Chorus, and they exit singing:

“The haughty arms of Greece with conquest bless’d,
And Persia’s withered force confounded,
Dash’d on the dreary beach her heroes slain,
Or whelm’d them in the darken’d main.”

THE END

The Northern California Coast

Benny and I took a three-day trip to the Mendocino coast last week. We stayed at a beachfront hotel in Fort Bragg and rode the Skunk train through the redwoods.

Christine's New Seminar: Greek Plays

For reasons best known to myself (and too dull to tell anyone else), I've decided to start a reading program of Greek plays.

I'm not overly familiar with Greek plays — I studied a few in school, all tragedies, notably "Medea" and "Antigone." I didn't realize there were plays that weren't about insanely stubborn women. Antigone wanted to bury her brother, so by Zeus she was gonna do it if it killed her -- which, of course, it did. Medea was mad because her man left her and instead of suing him for every last drachma and making his life miserable for years, she killed everyone in sight except the guy himself and flew away in a chariot.

So you can understand why I wasn't totally enthused about this program. Would all the men be arrogant? Would all the women be crazy? What the heck was up with this Chorus, anyway?

But I'm determined, so I've found a page here that lays out all the greek plays in chronological order, beginning with Aeschylus, who wrote about 470 B.C. My first play is "The Persians" and when I finish it, I'll post a summary with comments.

Aren't you all so lucky?

Scrubbing That Grout with a Toothbrush

The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14.

Well, well, well.

31 hours a week. That's 4.4 hours a day. And that's with the hubster pitching in his own two hours a day.

I gotta say -- that's a lot of freakin' housework. Six hours of adult elbow grease a day -- what is the average couple doing, picking dirt out of corners with Q-Tips? Where on earth can they find the time? I thought the average American couple was so time-deprived that they lived on frozen Tater Tots and got speeding tickets in the school dropoff lane.

Even when we lived in a house in Michigan B.B. (Before Benny) and I was unemployed for a few months, I didn't clean the house for any 4.4 hours a day. But perhaps that's just a character flaw; I could have six kids, a home knitting business and a petting zoo in the back yard and still wouldn't do four-plus hours of housework a day.

Of course, Ron and I don't live anything like that lifestyle now. We've downsized our lives so drastically in the last year that I still have relatives convinced we sleep on straw mats and eat off a blanket on the floor. At the moment we have a small apartment and that's it. No deck. No car. No playroom. Only two pieces of good furniture (our dining table is a perfect example of the Modern Card Table motif).

So I'd estimate that Ron and I do about an hour a day of housework each. And maybe a total of eight hours over the weekend, if the laundry's really piling up or the cat's shedding again. I'd have to clean from 7-11 each night to fulfill a four-hour daily housework quota and I gotta say, polishing shampoo bottles at 10:40 p.m. doesn't sound all that appealing.

But again, we keep our socks in plastic bins, so we by no means represent the average American middle-class family. So Misguided Readers, (Are you out there? Yooohooo!) share with us how much you clean a week. And keep in mind that the 31-hour number is for women working outside the home. For stay-at-home wives, the weekly quota is 38 hours.