the mouths of babes

I am, at the moment, a Park Ranger at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.
One of the things about being a Park Ranger that is equal parts frustrating and rewarding is giving tours to children. Frustrating, because as much as I love children, holding their attention for 30 minutes can be difficult, especially if they are undisciplined (or hungry, or tired, or over-sugared, or whatever).
Rewarding because for those 30 minutes, I am their teacher, and I can share history with them, and because, true to the King and I lyric, they sometimes teach me.
I sometimes despair that all my young visitors will take away is new knowledge of chamber pots and other charming artifacts of Victorian hygiene, even though I try to keep the focus away from such things. (The Victorians themselves, I feel sure, would be greatly disgruntled to hear me discussing Victorian sex lives and toilet habits, but I suppose it's what they deserve for being such prudes that we are still paying for it 100 years later).
But sometimes, they clearly are getting more. The look on a girl's face when I tell her that women used to have to give all the money they earned to their fathers or husbands, that they couldn't own property or vote tends to be a look of sheer incredulity. It is somewhat satsifying to see these young children, boys and girls both, seem both doubtful and scornful that anyone ever thought women shouldn't be allowed rights equal to men. I can't help but wonder if Lizzie Stanton and her fellow fighters would be happy that these rights are taken for granted, or worried that taking them for granted is the first step towards taking them away. But I feel, as do their teachers, that it is important for these children to know that the rights and freedoms they have today were hard-won by men and women of vision and courage, and that the world has not always been perfect.
One of those men of vision and courage, who I rarely talk about on my tour, is Sen. Charles Sumner. Sen. Sumner's picture hangs on the wall near the front window of the house, and so sometimes I get asked questions. Today, one of my guests, who know that Frederick Douglass' father was white, asked if that was him. I informed him that he was Sen. Sumner, a famous abolitionist, who got into a fist-fight on the floor of the Senate. The students were confused. I told them that the Senator had made a speech against slavery and had made another member of Congress angry, and so had been hit. "Why would you hit someone just because you didn't like what they said?" asked a child. My heart leapt for joy at this question. I tried to explain that slavery gets people emotional, and that 150 years ago people were more likely to settle things with violence. The children were not satisfied with this answer, because it apparently still seemed profoundly stupid. One of them raised her hand and said "I know a better way they could have dealt with it, they could have talked about it instead of using violence." I said "yes, that's true and very smart." These are the children I want leading us someday.
No, not every child who walks through our doors has such pacifist sentiments. They push to get a peek in the room, they roll their eyes and snap at each other. But the mere fact that this whole class seemed to agree that violence was no solution at all made me very, very happy.

It snowed today

I got to walk home in it. Big, heavy wet flakes. The kind that are perfect for snowballs and snowmen but lousy for skiing. The kind that are ideal for catching on your tongue, that are straight out of the magical ending of a Hollywood Christmas movie.
It's the kind of snow that brings you back to your childhood, if you let it, assuming you had snow in your childhood. And even if you didn't. Yes, I know, snow sticks to the roads and your car and you have to clean off the windshield and shovel the walk and the grocery store is full of people stocking up on toilet paper and milk and you'd skip it but you are actually legitimately out of milk or bread or toilet paper or tampons or microwave popcorn or whatever it is you stopped in to buy, and now you have to drive home in the snow and you are the only person in the world who can drive competently in this particular kind of precipitation. But if you forget all that for a second, and really take a moment to look and listen to the snow, you can remember what it felt like to think the world was full of magic, when you believed in Santa and the tooth fairy and knights in shining armor rescuing princesses from high towers. The pure, silent sound of the snow falling, muting everything around. The snow remaking the world into something new and different, full of wonder.
I thought of sledding trips and snuggling in the bed with Mom and Dad listening to the radio hoping we'd all get a snow day. And coming in after playing in the snow to eat chicken noodle soup and drink hot cocoa and get all defrosted.

Happy D-Day

Freddy D-Day that is.
Did you know that Frederick Douglass celebrated his birthday on February 14th? Of course, slaveowners didn't generally keep records of the birthdates of their slaves, but we think he was born in or around February, and he chose the 14th as the day on which he celebrated.
Since Lincoln's Birthday is on the 12th, and Douglass' on the 14th, February became Black History Month in honor of these two men.

Valentine's Day

Point the first- Did you know that Valentine's Day is also the day on which Frederick Douglass celebrated his birthday?

Point the second- I am not generally a huge fan of Valentine's Day, whether I am in a relationship or not. I don't like the way it puts pressure on people to make the perfect romantic gesture, I don't like the way it sets people up to be let down, and I don't like the way it makes people who are single feel bad. But I do like when my friends and family decide to make it about more than just romantic love, to make it instead about all kinds of love.

Point the third- Despite my general lack of enthusiasm for the day, I do have a Valentine's Day playlist on my mp3 player. I happen to think it's a good one, mixing songs about the different things romantic love can make you feel. So here it is, perhaps it will inspire you.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough- Diana Ross
Ain't No Mountain High Enough- Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell
Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing- Marvin Gaye
All I Want is You- U2
As Long as You're Mine- Idina Menzel and Norbert Leo Butz (from Wicked)
Beyond the Sea- Bobby Darin
A Bushel and a Peck- (Tina Marie DeLeone- from Guys and Dolls, Revival Cast)
Can't Help Falling in Love With You- Elvis Presley
Come What May- Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor (from Moulin Rouge)
Cupid- Sam Cooke
El Tango de Roxanne- Ewan McGregor, Jose Feliciano and Jacek Koman (from Moulin Rouge)
Fell in Love- Moxy Fruvous
Fever- Peggy Lee
Fly- Moxy Fruvous
For Once in My Life- Stevie Wonder
Ghost- Indigo Girls
God Only Knows - Manhattan Transfer (because I don't have the Beach Boys original)
Guess Things Happen that Way- Johnny Cash
Hallelujah I Love Her So- Ray Charles
I Believe in You- Frank Sinatra
I Get a Kick Out of You- Frank Sinatra
I Wanna Be Around- Frank Sinatra
I Will Survive- Donna Summer
I Wish You Love- Frank Sinatra
I'd Give It All For You- Andrea Burns and Brooks Ashmanskas (from Songs for a New World)
If I Had $1,000,000- Barenaked Ladies
If I Were a Bell- Josie DeGuzman (Guys and Dolls Revival Cast)
I'm Gonna Make You Love Me- The Temptations and Diana Ross and the Supremes
I'm Not That Girl- Idina Menzel (from Wicked)
Irresistible You- Bobby Darin
It Doesn't Matter- Alison Krauss and Union Station
It's De-Lovely- Robbie Williams
I Quit- Hepburn
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For- U2
Jackson- Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash
Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)- The Temptations
Let It Be Me- Everly Brothers
Let's Get It On- Marvin Gaye
Love Rescue Me- U2
More (Theme from Mondo Cane)- Frank Sinatra
My Cherie Amour- Stevie Wonder
No No Raja- Moxy Fruvous
Nobody Makes a Pass at Me- from Pins and Needles
Overjoyed- Stevie Wonder
Peel Me a Grape- Diana Krall
Power of Two- Indigo Girls
Rest in Peace- James Marsters (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
She Cries- Brooks Ashmanskas (from Songs for a New World)
Someday my Prince Will Come- from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
Stay- Sweet Honey in the Rock
There's a Fine, Fine Line- Stephanie D'Abruzzo (from Avenue Q)
To Make You Feel My Love- Billy Joel
Under Your Spell- Amber Benson (from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More With Feeling)
Wild Horses- The Sundays
You Don't Know Me- Ray Charles
You're the Top- Patty LuPone and Howard McGillin (from Anything Goes, Revival Cast)

Ultra: Seven Days

I have my own personal comic book lending library in my best friend Jose. Last night, after watching the Super Tuesday returns come in on his giant screen, I got loaded up with books and headed home. On the train I took out one and started to read. It happened to be Ultra, which I found to be delightful.
The art is very clever and quite beautiful. Ultra and her fellow super-women are, of course, tall, statuesque beauties, but not in an unrealistic way. They don't have the anatomically impossible figures so often found in comics. They have flat stomachs and great legs, sure, but when they're off duty they wear real clothes and none of them have those impossibly tiny waists that are found so often in Barbie dolls and comic-book women. And the writing helps paint them as real women with weaknesses that have nothing to do with extraterrestrial elements. The dialogue is natural, realistic and at times laugh-out-loud funny.
I would have liked for the writing to give a bit more backstory on the characters, but the way the characters move through their universe it's quite easy to understand how their world works.
Throughout the collection are little biography articles that shed light onto the history and personality of the main characters, which is a delightful way to inform the reader without the use of clunky expositionary dialogue where the characters tell each other things they already know for the audience's benefit (a personal story-telling pet peeve of mine).
At the end, I felt like I had just watched a singular episode of a really good TV show, one which was self-contained and a complete story to itself but which also was connected to a larger story, and one I'd like to read more of.

Volumes 1-8 of Ultra by the Luna Brothers (Image Comics, 2005, ISBN 1852404836)

Four stars