My Jenn-eration

Tonight, I did something I almost never do. For about 90 seconds, I turned on the national evening news. I watched. I took it in. I took a deep breath and let out the world’s heaviest sigh. And then I turned it off. I just can’t look anymore. I can’t watch. I feel horrible and useless that I’ve become so disheartened with the current trajectory or lack thereof by our leaders, that I just shut the whole damn thing off. I shut me off. I almost can’t stand to think and feel about how really screwed up its all becoming. Just in case you were smarter than me and decided not to watch the news tonight or read any news today online or otherwise, you might have missed the Supreme Court’s decision. They effectively decided to do away with key pieces of the now landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. It’s all very complicated and murky to dissect but effectively, there was an old formula that determined that certain local municipalities and cities had to receive “preclearance” from the federal govern...

Recently, I watched a fascinating documentary about a tiny town in Pennsylvania known as Roseto. Founded in the 1800s by a group of Italian immigrants, the town quickly began to flourish as more and more people from their original village emigrated from Italy. At first blush, it seemed like a rather non-descript little place. Except for one strange detail that came to light in the 1950s. The Rosetans were seemingly in perfect health with a near zero mortality rate from heart attack or heart disease. The statistics were almost too staggering to be true.   Stewart Wolf, a doctor from Oklahoma, flew to Roseto to study its people and investigate this phenomenon in the late 1950s and 1960s. Wolf studied whether genetics could be a variable, but in fact the local Rosetans proved healthier and far stronger than those that had emigrated from the same Italian village, but lived elsewhere in the United States. He studied their diet and exercise habits. But many Rosetans drank and smo...

Tonight felt different. As always, I went in to Dylan’s room to tuck him in and kiss him goodnight. On this, the eve of his preschool graduation, I leaned over and whispered to him with tears glistening in my eyes, “I’m proud of the boy that you are becoming.” He looked up at me, smiled, and farted. In some ways, I appreciated his not so gentle reminder to not take myself and this moment quite so seriously. After all, he is five and he’s graduating pre-school, not law school. As a parent, there is much more work to be done. But I can already feel my role with him shifting not so subtly, away from the emphasis on basic needs. Increasingly my role at least with Dylan is not to do so much as to step back and try to let him figure it out for himself; that is, to promote the struggle a bit. That in this it is good for him to struggle with the words on the page or the kids on the playground; to learn to use his own internal cues to navigate. It feels so different. It isn’t babywash a...