Women: Dumb as Cream of Wheat?

If you're interested in a debate about women's inherent abilities (or inherent dimness), there's been a torrid debate about a column that appeared recently in the Washington Post's Outlook section.

This op-ed, by Charlotte Allen, is called "We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?" (click hyperlink to read), and it contains this questionable conclusion:

"I don't understand why more women don't relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home.(...) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts' content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim."

In response, Katha Pollit wrote a strong reply for Washingtonpost.com, "Dumb and Dumber: An Essay and Its Editors". Pollit says Allen mainly detests women who "reject, with every fiber of their latte-loving beings, the abstinence-only, father-knows-best, slut-shaming crabbed misogyny of the Republican right." (that really is a fantastic line... "slut-shaming"!)

She further calls out the Washington Post editors who approved the piece with another great line: "Here's a thought. Maybe there's another thing women can do besides fluff up their husbands' pillows: Fill more important jobs at The Washington Post." Hear, hear!

Agree, disagree? Are women inherently "dim" because they get into more car accidents, but die less frequently in car accidents, than men do? Should we give up on math, science and politics just because some women like "Grey's Anatomy"? (I can't judge - I've never seen it.)

Finally, if you want more, the Post's ombudswoman, Deborah Howell, summed up her reaction here. Turns out the Post editor (a woman) who worked w/the writer on the original piece thought it was "funny, clearly tongue-in-cheek and hyperbolic but with a serious point" about women in the context of the presidential campaign. Funny? I don't see that either.

New songs

We have some new songs to show:

First, Lucinda sings a song for Hina Matsuri, Japan's Doll Festival or Girls Festival. She learned it in her Japanese class at Nishimachi.



About.com tells me that the song is "Ureshii Hinamatsuri (Happy Hinamatsuri)," and that the lyrics are:

Akari o tsukemashou bonbori ni
明かりをつけましょう　ぼんぼりに
Ohana o agemashou momo no hana
お花をあげましょう　桃の花
Go-nin bayashi no fue taiko
五人ばやしの　笛太鼓
Kyo wa tanoshii Hinamatsuri
今日は楽しいひな祭り

Let's light the lanterns
Let's set peach flowers
Five court musicians are playing flutes and drums
Today is a joyful Dolls' Festivalｌ

And here's Arno with a very brief rendition of "Zousan", or Little Elephant. He pronounces it "Do-o-san" and refused to sing the rest on camera.

Disaster prep

Last weekend, we ran across a "disaster preparedness" event in Azabu Juban, the market street near our house. The goal was to teach children to handle emergencies: fires, earthquakes, car accidents, sick people. It was so much more hands-on than anything you'd see in the US!

Naturally, because this is Japan, there were large characters in costumes.


Kids were strapped into this "car," which then "crashed" to show the effects of seatbelts and airbags. The amusing thing about this display is that you often see Japanese children bouncing around moving cars without seatbelts; families also routinely disable the passenger airbag so kids can sit in front.


This girl and her dad were learning CPR.


The fire engine ladder took people for a speedy ride 10 stories up.


Kids and parents sprayed water on a gas- or kerosene fire.


There was a telephone setup for children to call "119" (Japan's 911) for different scenarios. The girl on the telephone is talking to the "dispatcher" on the right.


My favorite was this "earthquake truck" - something you don't see in the US, but apparently a relatively common sight here.


Children climb into the back of the truck (taking off their shoes first) and, when the truck starts to shake violently, the children huddle under the tiny table. Note the swinging lamp above the table.



We walked around, nabbed two fire hats and a few balloons and went to the bakery to get doughnuts.

Origami of the week

Lucinda made this lovely box/bowl with the help of her Japanese teacher, Hayashi Sensei. The colors and design are in honor of the Japanese festival of Hina Matsuri, the Doll Festival that honors girls' health and happiness on March 3 (3/3) every year.

Lucinda also made this collage in Japanese class for Hina Matsuri: Lucinda folded several pieces of origami paper to make kimono for the "emperor" and "empress" that appear in displays for the festival. (click photo for closeup.)

Time flies

Where has the week gone? Here's the update: Blaine and I both have colds and are grabbing kleenex at a frightful pace. The kids are fine; Arno has discovered the joys of wearing his blue turtleneck, while Lucinda has a full schedule of playdates.

And Hillary wins Ohio and Texas, which means another six weeks of hard campaigning to get to Pennsylvania. Which not-so-brilliant blogger confidently predicted that Obama would at least win Texas? Um...

Maybe I should explain that political reporters - especially those who are 9,000 miles away - really don't know what the hell they're saying. If anything is certain in this campaign, it's that no one - not Tim Russert, not anyone - knows what's going to happen.

On to the blog...

"Life is struggle and struggle is life" - Kim Jong Il

Blaine arrived home tonite at 7pm, and 10 minutes later, Arno asked, "Daddy, did you have a nice day in North Korea?"

This was my present from Pyongyang, purchased in the hotel gift shop.




Some women want diamonds, but how many women have the Dear Leader's delightful 329-page illumination, "On the Art of the Cinema"? Too few, alas.

To satisfy your intellectual curiosity, here's the title page."Workers of the Whole World, Unite!"



The first page (of three) in the table of contents. Click to see a closeup - it is so...deep. Like, "Life is struggle and struggle is life."



My favorite subhead from the table of contents (page 3), under the heading, "Art and Creative Endeavour," is: "Speed campaign is fundamental to the creation of revolutionary art and literature."

Every chapter begins with a quote from Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader. This is the treat on page 237.



Blaine said it was a totally weird place, with creepy artificiality. The traffic cops were gorgeous women wearing full makeup - but there were almost no cars. The journalists were brought to a huge library to see people "doing research," but when 50+ journalists walked into the room, none of these "researchers" looked up or stood up for the next hour and a half.

He's finishing his last DPRK story tonight, and I'll post it when it's on the Post's website.

Hillary vs. Obama

For the first time during the campaign, I was hanging around the house during last night's Democratic debate (that is, at 11 a.m. in Tokyo) and could watch the action - mostly live, with buffering delays - on msnbc.com.

My back-of-envelope analysis:

1. Obama is such a natural that HRC and her staff must be going nuts that her intense preparation and criticism don't rattle him. He has an innate ability to respond rhetorically when he's under pressure - and to know in advance how the audience will hear him. He's a rhetorical boxer, very light on his feet, and about 99 percent on message.

So he always sounds tough on big issues, i.e. when he criticizes her vote on the Iraq War. He's wonky enough - but not too wonky as to bore anyone - on policy stuff like health care. On bland subjects like the economy or veterans, he filibusters with long-winded, uncontroversial answers so she can't interrupt. And when he's asked about her criticism of him, he fends it off with a joke.

For example, in the debate tonite, he sort-of praised the "timing and delivery" of her sarcastic "choirs will sing" speech of last weekend. I think he wants to convey to the audience that he doesn't take anything personally; conversely, when HRC complained that she always gets the first tough question in debates - like the Saturday Night Live skit - it proved again that the Clintons do take everything personally.

But what I also think is so tactically smart is that Obama knows when to concede a lesser point - that is, to give in and get on with it, while Hillary is primed (like many powerful women) to argue every point because she always wants to look tough and in control and to make him look soft.

The best example was the question about Louis Farrakhan's endorsement of Obama. I thought Obama's original response was quite tepid - "I've denounced him many times, blah, blah, etc." Hillary saw an opening and feasted on it, saying sternly said that he should "reject" Farrakhan's endorsement. (Side note: I'm sure that at that moment, the NY Post's political editor said, "Hey, what about the time she kissed Suha Arafat after Suha trashed Israel?")

But Obama just slipped away. Instead of getting into a "mine is bigger" contest, he tossed off this quick line about, effectively, "reject or denounce - I'll do both if it makes you happy." End result: no headlines, nothing big, move on.

2. She's not going to win Texas. The Newshour tonite interviewed Texas reporters who said that early voting was, like 900 percent higher than last year - especially in big cities like Houston, which have large black populations, and in Austin, home of the Univ of Texas. There's nothing to suggest that HRC is inspiring or inciting people to flock to the polls.

3. Bill Clinton said she has to win both TX and OH, but I think if she wins one of two (i.e., Ohio), she'll move on to Pennsylvania and drag it out for a few more weeks.

4. McCain: I think the NYT's story about his alleged affair was half-baked, and the story was wedged uncomfortably into a "McCain's history with lobbyists" profile. I assume the NYT reporters knew more than they could print - but heck, even if he did sleep with her, they should have offered more than the "concerns" of two former aides and a corporate plane ride from Miami to DC.

5. But the brief, NYT-inspired love affair with McCain ended in the past 24 hrs, after McCain denounced a conservative radio talk show host's nasty speech about "Barack Hussein Obama." That's exactly what conservatives want to use in the general election, and they don't like it when McCain takes the high road.

Blaine in pictures

I've located a few shots of Blaine in the New York Philharmonic's web slideshows about the North Korea concert.

You have to wade thru several photos, but you can find Blaine twice if you click on the slideshow under "The Concert" entry on the Philharmonic's diary page.

In the photo showing the Philharmonic's chairman and his wife being escorted to their seats, Blaine is sitting in the front row, second from right. And, for a closeup, Blaine is standing behind former US Defense Secy William Perry. (Doesn't look like Perry is saying anything too riveting, though.)

Blaine's latest from N Korea

Here's Blaine's account of the NY Philharmonic's concert last night in Pyongyang. Sounds like a pretty amazing situation: playing the US national anthem and Gershwin to a bunch of old guys with Kim Il-sung pins on their chests!

The 16-hour time difference makes these stories a little odd, because the stories appear in the printed newspaper almost a day after the event itself.

Blaine's latest from North Korea

Here's Blaine's first story from Pyongyang, filed before the New York Philharmonic played its concert on Tuesday night in Asia (at 4 a.m. in NYC).

I haven't heard anything from him, but I've been reading all of the wire stories to figure out what he might have seen and heard, other than orchestra stuff: an English class, a big library, some young soldiers-in-training.

He'll be back in Seoul tomorrow afternoon/evening, so I'll post an update then.

Blaine's latest

Here's Blaine's orchestral preview story from Beijing.

Blaine in China

Blaine and I Skyped for a half hour tonite. He is hanging out with our friend Ed Gargan, who arranged our blind date in NYC 10 years ago. They ate an entire roast duck, walked around the Forbidden City, hung out with other journalists and generally enjoyed themselves.

He will fly to Pyongyang Monday afternoon, arriving 3pm for a news conference and bus trip in the city. Tuesday night is the concert; the master classes are Tues and Wednesday morning. They'll fly to Seoul on Wed afternoon. Sounds like fun: he'll be with journos from the NYT, LAT, Financial Times, BBC, among others.

He wasn't sure if he'd be able to call me but I hope he'll send a few emails. From his DPRK hotel, it will cost 7 Euros/minute to use the telephone and 3 Euros/minute for an internet connection. (Apparently the dollar has fallen so far that the DPRK will only take Euros!)

Adventures in parenting

I rarely think or say that an entire day sucked, but today really did.

First, there was the lingering problem of Lucinda's gymnastics class. This program, called "I Can Gymnastics," effectively owns gymnastics for expats in central Tokyo. The owner, who is well-known, conducts classes at the three major international schools in our neighborhood, including Nishimachi, and at the Tokyo American Club. His program is the only game in town unless you're willing to travel (without a car, in our case, which would probably take an hour) to another neighborhood for a one-hour class. Also, I think his classes are somewhat repetitive.

But Lucinda likes gymnastics; in Seattle, she went to weekly classes at a program called The Little Gym, and I could see that, for example, learning to walk on the balance beam did build her confidence to try other new things. I'm not planning an Olympic career - after all, she'll probably be about 6 feet tall - but I think gymnastics at this level can be fun.

But the owner of I Can Gymnastics and I do not get along, which is pretty unusual for me. He likes to philosophize with parents about how he, personally, convinces children to try new things in his classes. I'm not saying he's not effective, but in my experience, the activities are more important than any one teacher - and I've said as much.

What happened today is that I tried to get Arno to join Lucinda's class. Arno is old enough, he likes jumping and swinging and somersaulting - and Lucinda really wanted him to go along. He has resisted before, but this time, he took off his shoes and took a few steps toward the other kids... and then ran back and clung to my leg.

The owner, seeing this happen with Arno for the second time in the past few months, promptly lectured me that, in his program, the children must decide to participate - implying that I was a pushy parent. I objected and said that (1) if I waited for my children to want to put on their shoes in the morning, we might never leave the house, and (2) my children often resist new things, but almost always enjoy them if they give it a try - sometimes with a nudge from me.

The owner then said, with some disdain for my cruelty, that Arno "has only been on this earth for three years". And insulted that I would question his expertise, he asked, "How long have you been" a parent? Six years, I said. I tried to explain myself - and then he told me that I was a bad listener. He wondered aloud why I didn't seem to like him. When all I want is a simple program where my children can have fun - and if I can drop them off for an hour on a kid-intensive weekend, so much the better. (A few weeks ago, when Blaine took Lucinda to class and planned to read at Starbucks for an hour, the owner cornered Blaine to lecture him about his philosophy, too.)

The whole interaction was so absurd, and I fumed about this for much of the day.

Then later, after I'd taken the kids to the Tokyo American Club and we'd trekked back on the bus and stopped at a coffee shop, I couldn't find my house key. It was cold outside and very windy, which made me panic a little. I called TAC, but they couldn't find the key. I decided I would take the kids home to look for the key before I called the management company for help.

So where was the key? Sticking out of the lock in my front door, where I'd left it after rushing to go to the damn gym class. On the plus side, that's one benefit to Tokyo: Leave your key in the front door for six hours, and no one breaks into your house.

Crown princess

There's a new novel that might interest anyone who remembers Japanese Crown Princess Masako, the Harvard-educated diplomat's daughter who was convinced to marry into the royal family. Masako had one daughter, followed by several miscarriages and a nervous breakdown under pressure to bear a son to inherit the throne.

NPR interviews author Jonathan Burnham Schwartz about his novel, The Commoner, a not-so-fictional account of the lives of the modern-day Japanese empress and crown princess. He paints a troubling picture: two young women, both commoners, marry royalty only to be emotionally pulverized by a royal existence and entourage that turn them into symbols rather than sentient beings.

In recent years, the Japanese royal household was forced to consider allowing girls to inherit the throne, because Masako and her sister-in-law only had daughters. That possibility was shelved for at least another generation after Masako's sister-in-law gave birth to a son; it's no wonder that Masako has rarely been seen in public for four years.

Blaine's latest...

Great timing for Blaine's latest, a front-page story about North Korean sales of its minerals to raise hard currency.

US administrations have negotiated with the DPRK based on the understandable assumption that North Korea needs American help in the form of fuel oil, food or hard currency; a decade ago, one North Korean defector said that he'd seen the bodies of starved children in the streets of Pyongyang.

Blaine's story, however, says the DPRK has an estimated $2 trillion - that's trillion with a T - worth of minerals in its mountains. It sounds like any serious effort by the DPRK to mine these materials and sell them (most likely) to China could give the North Korean leadership some long-term staying power and could alter the equation with Washington.

Trailing Spouse: China and North Korea edition

Blaine left today for an amazing trip: to Beijing and, on Monday, to North Korea (!) with the New York Philharmonic. Blaine's travel can be tiring for both of us, but I think this is so cool.

It's very hard for American journalists to get into North Korea; many foreign correspondents who cover the Koreas never get there. But the Philharmonic had space on the plane and naturally said yes to the Washington Post, among others.

The Philharmonic is on tour in Asia. It will play in Beijing on Sunday night (Blaine is going to that, too) and then will fly to Pyongyang on Monday for a concert on Tuesday night. The orchestra and journalists will leave N Korea on Wednesday to fly to Seoul; Blaine will probably be back in Tokyo on Thursday.

I don't know anything about where Blaine is staying or what else he'll be doing in Pyongyang, but I'll blog if/when I get details.

The program in N Korea includes Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 From the New World and Gershwin's An American in Paris. Will Kim Jong-il be there?

(Here's a creepy website about the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, if you're inclined to read a "bio" of the Great Leaders.)

And if you want to see and hear the concert for yourself, the NYT says: "The concert takes place in Pyongyang on Tuesday at 6 p.m., which is 4 a.m. on Tuesday in New York. Channel 13, WNET, will show it on tape on Tuesday evening in the New York area, and it will be available two days later to other PBS stations. It will also be shown around the world."

It's good to be Arno

After supper tonight, we asked Arno about his friends at school. We mentioned a few children, and then Arno said, "Can we talk about who else loves me in Umi class?"

Working mom

I had a terrific week at work last week - but, wow, was it exhausting to rush from school to work to playdates to school to home, and then to cook dinner and get the kids to bed.

Backtrack: I've found this great part-time job here, editing for Kateigaho International Edition, or KIE, which is a quarterly, English-language magazine about Japanese arts and culture. I found them, or they found me, because KIE's exec editor (an American woman, Mary Ord - Hi Mary!) lives in the Seattle area and I met her before we moved to Tokyo.

KIE is owned by a prestigious Japanese family and their company, Sekai Bunka, is sort of like the Conde Nast of Japan, but smaller. They also publish a Japanese language mag called Kateigaho, which is very glossy, heavy paper, super stylish.

I'm editing for KIE, and last week I went to their office for 4 days (Tues to Fri) to help them close the magazine. This is superfun for me because I love editing (more than writing, actually) and I could use editing/production skills I learned almost 20 yrs ago at Aspen Magazine and In Fashion. I was editing English mag stories to make sense, to fit the space, to look right in the space, and working with the creative director and other editors to solve problems with the text and look of each story.

The closing week happened to take place while (1) Blaine was in South Korea and (2) Arno had a school vacation on Monday and Tuesday, and (3) Lucinda had a school vacation on Thursday and Friday. I scrambled around and found childcare for Arno on Tues, and Lucinda hung out w/her closest school friend on Thurs and Friday - and that girl's mother is a saint, as far as I'm concerned!

I rushed to get the kids squared away each morning and then commuted to work on the Tokyo subway, grabbed a coffee, focused on the magazine for 6-7 straight hours, then rushed back on subway to pick up the kids and go home. Full-time job w/traveling husband? This fell in the "be careful what you wish for" department. And I totally loved it.

I also had this great, funny cultural experience: lunch in the company cafeteria. Major publishing companies in the US, like Conde Nast or Hearst, have very fancy cafeterias; Conde Nast's, in the 4 Times Square building, was famously designed by Frank Gehry (I've been there exactly once, for coffee w/a Glamour editor).

So on Tuesday, at lunchtime, I went to Sekai Bunka's cafeteria with some of KIE's staff. It was 350 yen (about $3.50) for a lunch that you'd find in Furr's Cafeteria: rice, soup, beef burger, pickled vegetables, green tea - served by, I swear, old ladies in hair nets. Like a school cafeteria for professionals!

After you eat, you bus your tray. And at the station where you drop off the tray, you pick up each dish and hold it under a spray of water to rinse your food off. Then you (gently) toss the dish into a big vat of soapy water for the hair-net ladies. Rinsing your own dishes?

I said to the cool creative director, Alexander Gelman, "This isn't exactly Conde Nast, is it?" And he said, "No, not exactly Frank Gehry."

Blaine's latest

Blaine had an awesome story on A1 last Friday, about a Japanese chef whose restaurant, Ozaki, got a 1-star review in the new Michelin Guide for Japan.

The point is that Tokyo has more Michelin stars than any other city, including NYC and Paris. And the food here is fantastic - superfresh, lovely to look at, and carefully prepared and seasoned. (If you want to see the full list, here it is.)

The side benefit to his reporting: I went to the restaurant with Blaine, his translator Ako, and her husband - and we had a 15 course dinner with probably 20 different kinds of seafood, for $150 each, plus beer and sake. Each course is 2-3 bites and by the end we were stuffed.

Here's the chef, Ichiro Ozaki, who sleeps in an apt at his restaurant 6 nights a week.



This was an extraordinary food experience because we ate so many things I would never dare to try if I weren't sitting at a counter in front of the chef who was serving it me.

Things like: This enormous raw prawn.



First you pull out the tail and eat it, and then you slurp out the turquoise-blue, oceany-tasting slime that's left behind. (I guess that would be prawn guts.) Then you eat the small cubes of tuna with a sprinkle of Japanese lime juice and salt - but no soy sauce because it would overwhelm the gentle flavors.

We also had fritters made of snapping turtle, and turtle soup - how strange to need a toothpick to pry turtle meat from your teeth! Or an abalone, served the half-shell as it's heated over a small flame, which burns the hairs on the shell, not such a friendly smell.

Or raw cod testicles, a question of mind over matter. The chef asked if we'd like to try them, and we said yes - but then stared at this dollop of wavy white flesh. (Sorry, no photo, but I'll try to get one from Blaine.)

Crab, conger eel, and blowfish - the fish that can poison you if it's not prepared properly by a licensed fish guy. And octopus, abalone, and anglerfish. And probably eight kinds of sushi.

Including this unbelievable tuna sushi, which was actually two different types of tuna.

Chef Ozaki scored - that is, cut thin lines on - each slice of tuna so the soy marinade that he painted onto it would seep into the fish. It was masterful.

We felt perfectly fine afterwards - that is, no funny stomach. But I don't think we'll go to a sushi restaurant for a few weeks, at least.

We have liftoff!

This is a first: Lucinda is reading Green Eggs and Ham by herself at the breakfast table. Very exciting!