I finally got back to work as an Artist (Writer) in Residence at the children’s hospital last week. My warm-up was an art project at a tree lighting ceremony for chronically ill kids. It went beautifully, but when I got home and discovered I just missed tucking my baby into bed, I was a wreck. All I could think was, how do moms do this? How did my mom do this? Late that night I was as actually happy to wake up at 1 and 4 and 6 a.m. to feed and snuggle my little one. I didn’t know how I was going to leave her for eight hours that day and worried over whether or not I’d left enough milk for her. This must be the Italian mama in me. You know the ones who cook the ten course meal and wonder if that’s enough. In any case, getting back into the swing of things went more smoothly than I expected. It helped that the other artist and dancer I worked with are amazing and that one of the first patients I met said she loved, loved, loved Shakespeare. What I didn’t expect was how much it would affect me to see unwell babies and their parents.
A few weeks ago, I created the word, mom-athy. Now I feel that its definition needs to be expanded. Evidently this sort of deep empathy extends not only to your own ailing child, but also to those of total strangers. You don’t usually take an infant to the hospital unless something is very wrong, so you can imagine the condition of the babies I saw when I first walked through the automatic doors.
(But not at the same time; that could be dangerous.) Today, I highlight two very cool creative fathers – one whose writing I’ve read gratefully for seven years, and a friend of his who’s taking his son on the adventure of his young life.
My friend Michael is a brilliant writer and father of two almost unnaturally gorgeous little girls, one of whom is currently being potty-trained. The Poop Monologues is a running list of things his two-year-old says while pooping, or while trying to. My favorites are “My drink. MILK ON IT,” “My school, my lunch, my turn around, my sleep, my poop. Itsy bitsy SPIDER,” and “My got bunga bunga chair. MY MOVE IT.” And this is just the beginning… Follow his tweets for small doses of surreal hilarity.
A few years down the parenting line, his friend, Matt, has an eleven-year-old son whose passion for skateboarding has led his family on an unusual educational path: 50 Skate Kid Learns the U.S..
We hadn’t done anything illegal (you’re shocked, I’m sure). We hadn’t broken anything or hidden any evidence, and we weren’t re-enacting the Christina Applegate movie. We simply decided to protect the woman who bore us from: news of the Return of the Thrush. It may not be grammatically correct to capitalize the name of the infection or to put “the” in front of it, but it feels appropriate. We just weren’t sure Mom could handle it, even though she’s dealt with much greater crises with one hand behind her back and the other one cooking a gourmet dinner. You could hear her teeth grind every time she asked, “Is it any better?” and a pained sigh every time I said, “No, not really.” And I might have thought she was overdoing it a bit, had I not discovered for myself that knowing that your daughter is in pain is a whole new kind of anguish.
In May, I posted a video of The Beckoning of Lovely project, headed by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. She recently posted a new video with an update, a year after the original experiment. It’s short, but worth watching for its breath of fresh air.
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
I’ve never seen anyone tell a story in this medium. I am so impressed by human ingenuity. Watching this skillful artist is worth 8 minutes of your life.
edited to change “the Ukraine” to the correct “Ukraine.” Thank you, reader Anne!
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
Dear Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, Marc Webb, Eric Steelberg, the producers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, and everyone else involved in making the movie (500) Days of Summer,
I’ve been subconsciously writing this letter for four months, since I first saw your movie at SXSW. I wrote on this site about my screening experience, but looking back, my post seems flippant and doesn’t indicate the depth to which your story delighted me. My husband wasn’t with me at the SXSW screening, which was unfortunate, because as soon as the credits rolled, I knew he would see himself on that screen. (As will many, many men my age.) Last night, I took him to see the movie at another screening in town.
I loved the movie again, maybe even more this time. You have created a masterful film that captures countless desperately honest moments. It was a visceral pleasure to watch. And I want to articulate some of the reasons why it has touched me so significantly.
I’ll cut here so I can spill lots of spoilers below. (Crucial Minutiae readers, if you’re going to see this movie, bookmark this post and come back once you’ve seen it. I don’t want to ruin your viewing experience.)
Last Wednesday, I stood at the back of a cafetorium while 100+ teens clustered around the B-boy City Dance Crew, who showed off their moves to Busta Rhymes. The crew called for dancers from the audience, and a group of girls near me nudged and shoved their friend toward the stage. She waved her hands frantically and shook her head, not willing to single herself out. (She later did go up and show off her dance moves, along with another girl who sang an impromptu solo for us.)
We were all there for the iChoose: Real Talk on Sexual Health Teen Summit (I was a volunteer). This one-day workshop for teens provides real information and education about healthy sexuality, with an emphasis on each teen’s opportunity to choose what’s best for them. Over 100 Austin-area teens came out on a summer weekday for over 13 sessions, including “Sexuality & the Law,” “Healthy Masculinity,” and “Birth Control Methods.” I learned about very cool organizations like Men Rally for Change and Love Is Respect: National Teen Dating Abuse Hotline.
There’s a free party happening on the East River in Manhattan today from 3pm-7pm, and it celebrates the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the Supreme Court decision that legalized interracial marriage in the U.S.
DJ Dhundee and DJ Tyler Askew will be spinning, there’s free BBQ all day long, and there’s free beer for the 1st hour. It’s at Solar 1, on the East River Waterfront at East 23rd St, NYC.
Go soak up some of the beautiful day in the company of beautiful, happy people and families!
The 1908-1909 Broadway season featured roughly 140 productions and 12.8% of them were by women. 100 years later, of all the shows at major New York theaters this year, only 12.6% were by women. This isn’t representative of the number of plays being written by my gender. At least 40% of scripts submitted to professional theaters are written by women.
So if I can support the work of a female playwright, I will. Unfortunately, God of Carnage was already sold out and I was facing an impatient woman at the TKTS window. I didn’t think I wanted to see Reasons to Be Pretty. In spite of all the accolades garnered by In the Company of Men and Shape of Things, I’ve never been a fan of Neil LaBute’s. I may even have called his work misogynistic (on a regular basis). But there I was in the Plays Only ticket line, and I had been promised that this LaBute play was different. It was.
…in a sense, I am working on the one square meter of the planet that happens to be in the location where ‘I’ am now standing, just as you are working on your square meter of the planet. And with millions of people working on their square meter, we are changing millions of kilometers. Each one of us is contributing in tremendous ways to the evolving life of the planet, and the emergence of the New. And really, in a very short period of time we are changing thousands of years of vibratory structure.
The authors are speaking specifically of energy work here, of evolving our individual consciousness, but I think this quote applies to the physical world as well. What we do in our square meters makes a difference, in the physical and energetic world and in the people around us. Even if it feels like a tiny positive action, it ripples outward.
I’m taking vitamins and drinking water. I’m reading this Marianne Williamson quote daily. I’m releasing everything item in my house that I don’t need anymore. I’m talking to my neighbors. I’m breathing.
What are you doing in your square meter to contribute to human evolution? Remember, no action is too small to claim as your own.
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
Six months pregnant and living 750 miles away from family, it suddenly struck me as incredibly important to go home for Mothers’ Day. I grabbed a last-minute fare, threw my clothes in a bag after work, and took a plane back to the Midwest. My sister, who became a mom herself just over a year ago, picked me up at the airport and we surprised my sleeping mother. She must have some kind of daughter homing device, because even in the dark of night with her eyes half closed and before I could utter a word, she said, “Cristina?”
I imagine that maternal instincts are innate and that with the stacks of borrowed books on my shelf, I will find my way in this new role. Forget the fact that the books don’t concur or that friends mostly share their most traumatic experiences and not the day to day of course you’ll be fine stories. In addition to being a treat, my first Mother’s Day weekend at home in years was anthropological. I got to see how my sister parents and to remember how my mom pulled off the work/family trapeze act.
Another video landed for my column this week, this one about a promise made on YouTube that exploded into playful creativity amongst a group of strangers.
Here’s the video that started it all, from writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It’s strangely touching to me, the gathering of big and small things that she’s made. I’ve been in a funk this week where all I can concentrate on are the things I haven’t made. It gave me perspective to see “this mess” nestled in with “this boy” and “this book” as things that she’s made. It all counts. It’s all part of life.
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
I got the tip on this clever, well-shot short film via Facebook. “Validation” is a fable about the magic of free parking, starring TJ Thyne (on “Bones”) and Vicki Davis, and directed and written by Kurt Kuenne (“Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father”). Spending 16 minutes watching this film is highly preferable to reading panic-bloated coverage about the swine flu, I promise.
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays.
My friend, Geoff, with Shoot the Messenger Productions, shot this Very Serious response to the National Organization for Marriage “Gathering Storm” video. (That’s his handsome fake-moustachioed mug in the screencap below.) It’s going to be aired on Rachel Maddow’s show tonight.
My favorite is: “If gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, we will have no choice but to switch to digital TV.”
Last week, Elizabeth Mendez Berry published a powerful follow-up commentary about the issue over at Ill Doctrine. Her piece begins in a “gang awareness” meeting with fifteen Bronx teenagers, discussing domestic violence. The conversation lands on this “bottom line: sometimes you’ve got to teach a woman a lesson if she gets out of line.” Until this moment:
In the midst of the rationalizing, one usually talkative young man stood up and walked out. When he returned twenty minutes later, he quietly told the group that his aunt had recently been murdered by her abusive boyfriend. It was no longer a hypothetical conversation. The jokes stopped. Young men who were significantly invested in their inner gangsters gave them time off, and started talking about how domestic violence had affected their lives–and it had affected most of them. The young woman, who minutes before had been arguing in favor of beating females who didn’t know their place, talked about how despite the rules, male gang members beat up on female gang members. Behind her swagger, she seemed anxious.
The rest of the article is as beautiful and honest as this excerpt — I highly recommend reading the whole thing. She’s a sharp reporter and writer, and this issue is a matter of life or death for too many women.
After my six-film mania yesterday, it was inevitable that I’d need to take it easy today. I attended only two movies today, including the “Super Special Screening” this morning at the Paramount. I got in line with no idea what it was, until Janet Pierson, producer of the SXSW film festival, announced that we were about to watch Richard Linklater’s latest film, called “Me and Orson Welles.” It’ll be released in October, so I won’t say much about it, but I will say that one of my favorite moments of the day was watching Claire Danes’ performance in the movie. I know her mostly from her early and mid-1990s movies like R+J or Little Women, in which she played a tremulous ingenue, which was appropriate for her age at the time. In this movie, though, we get to see the actress playing a grown-ass woman, complete with gravitas, wit, and resonant lower-pitched voice. Something shifted between then and now, and she has come into her own presence as a strong actor. It was a pleasure to watch.
Yeah, I’m bragging on their behalf. I can’t help it; I’m thrilled and humbled by my friends’ talents.
The two hour dinner break turned into six hours of conversation and laughter, and I was glad I didn’t rush off to cram in another movie. It is a beautiful thing to know your limits, and to follow what feels warm and good. Sometimes that’s six movies, and sometimes that’s a relaxed dinner in the warm light at sunset. Today, it was the latter, and I will go to bed happy and satisfied.
—– Beauty in a Wicked World is a weekly column by Jennifer Gandin Le. It appears on Wednesdays, with a special daily edition during the SXSW Film Festival.
Dear Scott Neustadter, Michael H. Weber, Marc Webb, Eric Steelberg, the producers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, and everyone else involved in making the movie 
Last Wednesday, I stood at the back of a 
The 1908-1909 Broadway season featured roughly 140 productions and 12.8% of them were by women. 100 years later, of all the shows at major New York theaters this year, only 
After my six-film mania yesterday, it was inevitable that I’d need to take it easy today. I attended only two movies today, including the “Super Special Screening” this morning at the Paramount. I got in line with no idea what it was, until Janet Pierson, producer of the SXSW film festival, announced that we were about to watch Richard Linklater’s latest film, called “