Fixin' Supper

I’ve been sitting here listening to the tone-deaf 5yo sing his 18mo sister to sleep, with a song he is making up. Here are some selected lyrics:

I will always love you
I love you so much
I love you so much I can’t believe how much I love you
I love you so much I will never forgive you
Even if you hit me
I will never forgive you
I love you sooooo much

I can’t figure out if he means, I will never forget you, or if he thinks forgive means the opposite of what it means. Either way, it’s quite precious.

On a related note, the 18mo has just gone to sleep for the second night in her toddler bed. With little to no help from me, and her sweet older brother providing the soundtrack. We ax the crib early around here, because 2 of my 3 have been extraordinarily talented climbers at a very early age. And the 3rd makes up for lost time now on the furniture and the tree in our front yard.

I’m mystified at the news this week out of Washington. [OK, it's not the first time.]

There’s been all these news stories about whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, and if so, which ones, and for how long.

My biases up front:

• I vote Democratic most of the time.
• I’m a fiscal conservative and a social liberal.
• I own a small business.
• And I strongly believe in a progressive tax system. [That's one where the tax rates increase on higher incomes.]

A quick primer on the Bush tax cuts:
Enacted in two batches in 2001 and 2003, these tax changes touched a lot of pieces/parts of the tax code, but there are several areas you hear about because they affect great numbers of people:

• An estate tax cut, including no estate tax at all for people who die in 2010 [Before the cuts, and starting again 1/1/2011, estates over $1 million are taxed at 55%. Of course, with real estate devaluation in the past couple of years, a lot fewer middle class people may have to worry about this in the near future.]
  What’s likely to happen here: Some kind of estate tax fix seems likely, pushing down the rate and pushing up the exemption level. That will protect a lot of family farms, in particular, some of which used to suffer under the old rules.
• Small-business expensing — allowing small businesses to subtract many capital expenses from their income in the year they make the purchase, thus reducing their income tax that year. This year, small business can expense up to $135,000, but as of Jan. 1, that amount drops to $25,000.
  What I think will happen: The small-business expensing provision has never been slated to last longer than 2 years….since it was passed 7 years ago. So I’ll be shocked if this isn’t extended in some fashion for 2011.
• Income tax rate reductions on all brackets
  What I think will happen: No real guess, but I think the lower tax brackets are going to get extended on lower incomes.

Now for the crazy part
This is the part I don’t understand. Many on the right want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and portray those on the left as if they’re unfriendly to small business because many of them want to allow the highest brackets, for those making upwards of $250,000 a year, jump back to their earlier rates.

The argument goes like this: When you talk about taxpayers making more than $250,000, you also catch a lot of small-business owners in the fold who are structured to pay business and personal taxes on one return. And increasing their tax rate costs the business money, and therefore could harm job creation.

At that point, the right and the left get into this lengthy, esoteric discussion about supply- and demand-side economics.

All of which is pointless.

If we want to create jobs, let’s just give employers a tax credit for every employee on the payroll. Don’t worry about the personal income tax rate [or do whatever you want with it]. It’s not tightly related to jobs.

Also, let’s please not act like this is a burdensome issue for many of the people we’re talking about. What will happen if Congress doesn’t act on income tax rates before 2011: People making just south of $400,000 a year will pay 39.6% on the next dollar, instead of 36%. A greater “middle-class” consequence: People making around $200,000 will pay 36% instead of 33% on the next dollar. [There are some significant consequences for the poor and true middle class, but again, I think that will be fixed.]

So, the real personal economic impact is going to be on truly wealthy people, or on some small business owners, whose income may look artificially high due to their personal and business taxes being on one return. Let’s just separate those issues by giving people who actually create jobs an incentive, and stopping the free tax ride that people who are wealthy but not creating jobs are taking at the potential expense of small business.

Photo by David Reber’s Hammer Photography.

I am not big on black and white. I have my own preferences, but I’m happy for you to go your way. Even when I disagree — a lot — with someone, I lean really libertarian. Let’s just say I’m a ginormous fan of the Bill of Rights. When I was growing up, the Jackson Sun printed the quote usually attributed to Voltaire [but actually a quote from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, writing in a book about Voltaire] in its opinion section: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I think that sentiment is a bedrock of a free society. I’ll defend the right of anyone to say practically anything, and to do most things to express themselves. Flag-burning. Klan marches. Even burning the Koran.

And yet.

I have thought about these kinds of hateful actions for most of my life. Maybe it’s having grown up in the then-recently-desegregated South: The presence of hate and evil have always seemed nearby to me. They are as much a part of the human condition as joy and laughter, and I’ve seen them up close more often than I’d like.

I think much of the hate in the world is inspired by fear. And for much of my life, I have tried hard to be tolerant of that hate, and of the fear that festers it. I have tried to believe that if only the haters could understand, they would not hate. That hate was a failure of education, of information, of opportunity. That the way to end hate was to teach.

And over the past two or three years, I have come to the end of that tolerance.

I can no longer be tolerant of people who incite fear and hatred with inflammatory half-truths.

I can no longer be tolerant of those who turn away from seeing the humanity in others.

I can no longer be tolerant of people who cling to ignorance to feed their fear when the truth lies obvious in front of them.

I can no longer be tolerant of Americans who wave their religion as a shield before them and seek to deny others the same privilege.

It’s taken a long time, but the black and white are obvious to me at last.

While you’ve got the right to burn the Koran, it’s not the right thing to do.

You’ve got the right to blame “Islam” for 9/11. But you’re wrong to do it.

You’ve got the right to somehow think a Muslim community center in New York is offensive, but you’re wrong.

I think the best we can say about these kinds of attitudes displayed by some Americans recently is that ironically, they’re mirrored by similar attitudes in some parts of the Muslim world.

And those attitudes are just as wrong.

It’s wrong to subjugate women. It’s wrong to deny freedom of religion. It’s wrong to support a stratified society that doesn’t offer opportunity to all. And for those few terrorists out there, it’s wrong to use suicide bombers to make your point.

But we aren’t going to win that battle by burning a Koran. The Koran isn’t anyone’s enemy. Fear is the enemy. Hatred is the enemy. Evil is the enemy. None of these lie in the Koran.

They lie in the hearts of people who are unwilling to trust, unwilling to learn, unwilling to embrace the other. I think that’s a normal human response — the fear — but dammit, we’ve got to learn how to get beyond it. As long as America is tolerant of our own citizens who display intolerance as deep as that that we abhor in our enemies, the terrorists, we are no better than they.

I still believe we can be better. And I’m willing for you to point out the log in my own eye….because I see the speck of intolerance in too many of your eyes. And it’s killing us every day. Your intolerance is killing trust in America. Your intolerance is killing our troops on the ground. It’s killing our hope for a better way.

I cannot be tolerant of that any longer.

Creative Commons photo by Michelle Brea.

Just thought I’d share that this is my new favorite food magazine. Its recipes are interesting, innovative and easy to make. It is a small book, and perhaps because of that, it doesn’t waste any space with pointless stuff.

More than worth the money I paid for it.

I was an Eat, Pray, Love skeptic. I did not read it until one of my book clubs assigned the book. And then I even missed the meeting when we discussed it. But what a joy. Elizabeth Gilbert’s autobiographical journey spoke to several sides of me: the part that would like to indulge her wanderlust, the part that’s curious about other cultures, the part that likes to eat.

In Eat, Gilbert’s year-long journey is spurred by an ugly divorce. She’s seeking self-healing and wisdom on her trip. In Committed, she’s struggling with the need to marry the man she met on her Eat, Pray, Love journey. [He's not an American citizen, and thanks to some fun with INS, they must either marry or live the rest of their lives outside the United States, problematic for them both.]

I was excited to read Committed after enjoying Eat so much. I don’t understand the critics who’ve called this book self-indulgent. Of course it’s self-indulgent. So was Eat, Pray, Love. This is serious navel-gazing. Gilbert notes as much and doesn’t apologize for it. So that’s pointless criticism to me.

I will say, don’t pick this up if you don’t like chick lit. It’s not chick lit exactly, but I can’t see a lot of men I know choosing this over a military history, for instance. My love of this book was quite personal, though. Gilbert struggles mightily with the mental anguish the failure of her first marriage caused. I divorced my first husband years ago, but it’s difficult to explain to others to this day, though I remain convinced it was in both our best interests. [I mean, not that it's any of your business.]

It’s easy to understand a divorce when someone cheats or commits another egregious fault like spousal abuse. I think that if those things have never happened to you [as they never have to me], you are alarmed not by a divorce that follows one spouse’s indiscretion — but you are terrified by divorces that have no visible explanation. If it can happen to them….

And Gilbert starts in such a hard place to contemplate her second marriage. The end of her first was so painful that she cannot think of marrying again, and her new partner is also pleased to be forever connected, forever unofficial about it. When the United States Homeland Security administration tells them they must marry for her partner to re-enter the U.S., they are truly conflicted, but decide to go ahead with plans as soon as he is allowed back.

I think even some people who loved her first book will find her difficulties with remarriage to be disingenuous, but I believed every word. I don’t have any way to know how much my thoughts about marriage have changed simply because I am older, how much was shaped by my first marriage [though I must assume quite a lot there], and how much by what I want for my children. I just know that I think about it almost completely differently now than I did when I first married in 1993. So I found Gilbert’s journey and philosophizing both genuine and interesting. Your mileage will vary, depending on your perspective, I suspect.

The Visual Miscellaneum is one of my favorite kinds of books. Though I’m in no way a designer, I am a very spatially oriented person. As much as I love words, I love the images that instantly tell the story a thousand words only begin to tell. So Strange Maps is a favorite website of mine, for instance.

When I saw this book advertised on Amazon back before the holidays, I quickly added it to my wish list. And I was incredibly disappointed when, after the NYC sister and her husband ordered it for me, it was backordered. I was so delighted the day it arrived about a week ago.

And I really wanted to rank this book as “Highly recommended! Don’t miss!” But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Because the only thing I can say is, I hope this was somehow rushed to press [though one of the charts in the book is a 4-page explanation of exactly how long it took to create the book, so that seems unlikely]. Because it’s riddled with errors — some small, and some more consequential.

In my case, the small ones are actually the more bothersome. Throughout the book, you’ll see two spaces randomly stuck in the middle of a sentence, kind of like  this. I’m not sure the average reader will notice these, but I’ve proofread copy my entire adult life, and I can’t not see that dumb error. [I even notice when there are two spaces between sentences in printed works. Unlike what you learned in typing class in high school, one space is now the standard. It has to do with computer-based typography, but I won't bore you with further details.]

But the reviewers on Amazon point out that there are actually errors in the graphs as well, and for many people, that will be a bigger issue.

I would say, you’ll probably enjoy reading this, and you’ll learn a lot from the unique perspective McCandless brings to data visualization, but read carefully.

The Help has been getting a growing level of buzz over the past few months, and as soon as I heard about it, I knew I’d need to read it. But now I’m feeling a bit bereft because I need more people to discuss it with before I’m 100% sure what I think of it. So I’m hoping some of you have read it.

The book has been pretty widely reviewed, but in case you aren’t familiar with it: The Help tells the story of Jackson, MS, in the early 1960s through the eyes of a young white woman and several black women who work as maids. Skeeter Phelan is just out of Ole Miss without a husband or serious prospects, much to her mother’s dismay. She wants to be a writer, and she decides to interview local black women working as maids for her friends.

Reviews of this book tend to focus on whether or not the experience of the maids, and their vernacular, is believable and authentic. Let me first tell you that I don’t have a lot of way to know. I was born in 1971 and grew up in rural West Tennessee…which just isn’t the same thing at all as Jackson in the early 1960s. At the same time, I lived my childhood in the South just a few years removed from the height of the Civil Rights movement. I still don’t think I fully understand what I’ve seen and experienced in my lifetime. My views on race and the implications of race in politics and economics continue to evolve. I see my childhood and young adulthood through a different lens today than I did even 5 years ago, and a completely different way than I did at the time.

My family had a maid when I was growing up. Henrietta came to our house at least a couple of times a week throughout my childhood. She was our babysitter when my parents went out. She was a confidante to my sisters and me. And she loved us dearly, and we her.

I really can’t say our experience [either ours or Henrietta's] was like those described in The Help, despite the obvious similarities that we lived in the South, and that she was our black maid. The 10 years made a lot of difference, as did the distance between Jackson, MS, and my hometown. Henrietta worked in the produce department at my dad’s grocery store the other days of the week. I’ve never heard my parents use the n-word, and they were saddened by racist attitudes that were common in our hometown. I know their attitudes — probably not the majority views of white people in my hometown at the time, to be honest — were critical in shaping the way I viewed race.

And yet.

I find the book incredibly believable. Every bit of it. Stockett didn’t set out to write a social history, but a novel. And I find her novel to be one that speaks to an ugly but awakening time in our history with an authentic voice.

We’ve all suffered through horrible PowerPoint presentations, and too many of us have even created them ourselves. In Presentation Zen Design, Garr Reynolds gives you several principles to simplify your presentations, and improve the design — and therefore make them more effective.

Of course, the challenge is in executing his simple principles. Reading this book reminded me that so often, the PowerPoint we see is just the second or third draft — not a final presentation. I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself. I get all my thoughts out in PowerPoint and then I tweak them a bit, and I act like I’m done.

But Reynolds [who authors a popular blog on the same topic, Presentation Zen] reminds us that PowerPoint [or Keynote, or any other slideware program] is meant to be a presentation aid — the presenter is supposed to share the information. If you can most effectively share your information via the slides, why would you do a presentation at all? Couldn’t you just forward the slides and save everyone from a needless meeting?

Instead, Reynolds wants your slides to augment the presentation you’re making. So, no more itsy-bitsy type, no more 10-bullet-point slides, no more boring images or poorly designed tables. Instead, he wants you to figure out what the essence of your presentation is, and put that on your slides. And that’s the work that many of us never do.

The real takeaway in this book is that you should be working harder on almost every presentation you make. If you can commit to doing that, Reynolds can give even non-designers some basic design principles to make your point more effective.

[Thanks to Michael Hyatt for this book recommendation. If you are in digital media or publishing and not reading his blog, well, fix that right now!]

I loved Freakonomics, so I was expecting to enjoy the sequel, and I did.

The criticism leveled at this book [and somewhat at its predecessor] is that the authors are too clever by half, and they are more interested in telling a good tale than in elucidating the solutions to any vexing problems facing our society. And that perhaps they’re distorting the truth a bit to make their stories entertaining.

I guess my question to those critics is, what are you looking for? I certainly can’t speak for the authors of this book, but I would think their point is more to encourage us to think in new ways, and not to just take the conventional wisdom for granted. Many things we assume to be true — even based on “evidence” — simply aren’t.

So I like books like SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, that make me review why and how I believe what I do.

I’m off on a quest to read a book a week in 2010. In classic overachiever mode here, I’m going to start with the book I read the week of Christmas 2009, In Defense of Food.

Some of you may be shocked I haven’t read this book already, since it ties in with a lot of what I believe about how we should eat. Honestly, when it came out, I read the reviews and thought, Yep, I agree, and didn’t feel the need to read it right away since I suspected Michael Pollan was just preaching to my choir.

But Ashby received the book for Christmas this year, and I quickly appropriated it.

I did enjoy it, and I highly recommend it to you if you are interested in the food-industrial complex or if you’re trying to eat healthy and local. Pollan does a nice job of de-myth-ifying lots of what we believe about food, showing us how conventional wisdom came to be — why we think eating low-fat is good, or why we think carbs are bad — and showing that many of these common assumptions are half-truths at best.

I found one thing frustrating about the book, though. While Pollan spends a lot of time debunking common food assumptions, he does not devote time to his own original research about food. And he’s up front about that, by the way — it’s not a hidden agenda. But I just found myself wanting the same rigor applied to what we ought to know about food, as he applies to that which we think we know, but don’t.

Ah, but part of his point is that we haven’t done the research, and/or don’t yet have the technology, to understand how food really works. At any rate, I found this book a nice companion to Marion Nestle’s What to Eat, long my bible for food-related questions.