Nuclear Power Context

I had a really good conversation with my daughter about nuclear power this week.  We've been having a lot of conversations about infrastructure and the environment during the voting period while she filled out her ballot.  

[I'm so proud of her doing the research and voting the whole ballot.  At her age, I left some of them blank, especially the down ticket races & obscure government boards, thinking that others were more qualified to decide.  We all know how that worked out.]

Anyway, I wanted to document our discussion in case your kid asks, too.

The federal Energy Information Administration is a font of information.  Hooray for deep state operatives that collate, quality check and make good information available! 

The US generated about 4118 Billion kilowatt hours (kWh) in 2019. It's impossible to know how much electricity is generated by privately-owned solar panels "behind the meter", but EIA estimates there's an additional 35 Billion kWh.  It's a drop in the bucket, but growing.

The largest chunk of carbon-free electricity in the US is from nuclear, 19.7%.  That's slightly larger than the 17.5% generated by renewables.  

If we were all to magically replace our gasoline powered cars with electric ones, we'd need to double our electricity generation.  If we were to close down all the existing nuclear power plants, we'd have to figure out a way to add carbon free electricity at an unprecedented and extremely difficult rate.  If we were to do both, as some people want, I don't know how we will keep the lights on.

Moreover, large hydropower and existing nuclear power plants in the US were all built 40-90 years ago. 25% of our nations' electricity generation capacity is at the end of their design lifetime and need to be replaced along with the 23.5% that comes from coal.

The US doesn't produce solar panels any more.  (It's dirty and dangerous to produce.  It's expensive to produce safely.)  We rely on Chinese imports.  The Chinese government just announced an aggressive schedule to decarbonize their electricity generation, which may mean exporting less panels to the US.

NIMBYs have stymied wind mill deployment around the country.  

California Governor Newsom announced an executive order that all cars sold in California from 2035 and later have to be electric.  That's 15 years from now and our electricity grid is neither ready or on the way to being ready in time. 

We are in serious trouble unless we dramatically reduce the number of cars we drive, the number of miles that we drive and the size/weight of the vehicles.  This is why I'm such a shill for Ebikes.

In California, I spend a lot of time on the California Independent System Operator site viewing daily electricity data*.  Consider August 16, 2020.  It was a particularly hot day.

Due to a combination of factors, there was insufficient electricity and California experienced rolling blackouts in the late afternoon and evening to keep the grid from crashing over wider areas.  Here's CAISO data for energy sources for that day. 

I replotted the data to put the "Green" energy on the bottom and the most carbon-intensive sources at the top.  EIA reported that roughly half the electricity imports to CA in 2019 were carbon-free. I have no idea what other means so I left it at the top.

Here's a detail of the renewables portion:

When the sun goes down, renewable energy plummets while energy demand rapidly rises. This leads to the infamous CA duck curve.  

Filling this need with batteries would take an insane amount of highly toxic and dangerous batteries.  There aren't enough rare earth minerals to make it happen, anyway.

You could fill the need, in an emergency, by releasing water from dams during the evening to generate hydropower.  But, rivers and streams don't exist solely to be our batteries.  Rivers support whole ecosystems that rely on the cooling power of water flow during the hot afternoons.  This mimics the natural rhythm of snowpack melt, stream flow in Sierras.  Moreover, you can't count on having water to release in drought years.

This gets us back to where we started.  On an annual basis, CA gets about 8-10% of our electricity from Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.  Before the closure of San Onofre, nuclear used to provide ~20% of CA's electricity.  San Onofre and the geothermal power plants near the CA-MX border used to provide SoCal with nearly entirely carbon-free electricity at night.

So we talked about how and where Cobalt is mined; nuclear, battery and coal waste problems, tradeoffs of different sources of electricity, and environmental justice.

It made me feel like I was doing my job as a mom.

* I was the type of teenager that got insider (not public) tours of Diablo Canyon and Forsmark nuclear power plants. People knew that I was interested in science and energy/water, and I also finagled my way into places.  That wouldn't happen today.

Simplicity 1463 Set

I bought Simplicity 1463 because I thought Iris would like View C, but her friend selected View A.

I've always had good experiences with Karen Z for Simplicity patterns and this was no exception.

I like the way the top gently curves down in the back.

Again, we went one size down from a L to a M.  We also used a S neckline.

It looks much cuter on the 18 yo than on my dress form.

We went straight from the airport to Colorado Fabrics, where she selected 3 pieces from the pre-cut tables in the back.  There was enough of this red and black stripe rayon/lycra jersey to make a skirt using Vogue 9789 View C.  We added CF and CB seams and mitered at a 10 degree angle.  10 degrees makes a very subtle V.  If we had more fabric, we could have angled the skirt pieces more.  But, I was pretty proud to show her how to get 2 items out of a ~2 yard cut.

She has 5 new pieces for her fall/college wardrobe and some new skills.

Iris doesn't have the attention span for or interest in sewing.  I made one skirt for her.  She OK'd the pattern and fabric, then said it was all wrong.  Grr.  I'm going to step away and do some selfish sewing for a while.

The legacy of John Galt

People kayak in the Animas River near Durango, Colo., in water colored from a mine waste spill. Credit Jerry Mcbride/The Durango Herald, via Associated Press

A whole lot of unbloggable stuff is happening chez BMGM and I hesitate to blog about something that makes me angry.  I have a ton of work to do, both at my paid job and at home.

But, this review of Ayn Rand’s ‘Ideal’ Presents a Protagonist Familiar in Her Superiority on top of all the unchallenged bullshit people are saying about the Animas River toxic spill pushed me over the edge.

In short, Kay Gonda is one of Rand’s Nietzschean protagonists — an über-frau who has fans, not friends, and who thinks that she towers above all the losers and “second-handers” who populate the world.
...
“Kay Gonda does not cook her own meals or knit her own underwear. She does not play golf, adopt babies, or endow hospitals for homeless horses. She is not kind to her dear old mother — she has no dear old mother."

To admit to having a mother would be to admit that one owes the debt of life to a 'second-hander'.

Literary Background

John Galt is the protagonist in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged (plot summary).  The business men who really create value go on strike against 'second-handers' who want a share of the wealth they created.  They hole up in 'Galt's Gulch', a town in southwest Colorado, near Durango, while the country collapses without them.

Ayn Rand has a Colorado fixation.  She thinks it is the land of wealth grabbers creators like Howard Roark and John Galt.

It's no coincidence that this week's mine waste spill is in John Galt country.

Mining Background

Colorado has created a lot of wealth.  But, the unique geology of the region and the indulgence and assistance of the federal government had a lot more to do with it than the men Ayn Rand credits.

Precious metals are largely mined where the earth folds, e.g. in the mountains. In fact, Colorado gets it's name from the Colorado River, which means the colorful river. The color comes from minerals. Guess what came out of Silverton and Leadville, CO.

Cyanide is used to leach heavy metals out of ore.  Mining industry websites (that are high on Google search rankings but not on impartial information) claim that cyanide is used in dilute quantities of only a measly 0.05%.  I don't even want to link to them lest I push their search ranking higher.

They don't report the large quantities of water involved in mining.  That dilute chemical stew?  Suppose the 3 million gallons estimated to have leaked in this spill contained 0.05% sodium cyanide by weight and that the chemical stew has roughly the same specific gravity as pure water.  (This is only a back of the envelope estimate because evaporation could concentrate the cyanide and rain could dilute it.)

3 million gallons is 1.13562e7 liters or about 1.13562e7 kg.
0.05% is 0.0005*1.13562e7 = 5,678.1 kilograms

5,678 kilograms of sodium cyanide sounds a lot less benign than 0.05%, doesn't it?

It gets worse.  The heavy metals are probably more hazardous to human health than the cyanide in the river.

That yellow color probably comes from sulfur, which is released in the mining process.  It makes for a dramatic picture, but I'm more worried about the stuff we can't see.

The Legal Background

WaPost gives some background in What the EPA was doing when it sent yellow sludge spilling into a Colorado creek.

Ginny Brannon, director of the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety, told the Denver Post that until 1977, Colorado had few laws requiring mining companies to deal with the wastewater they created.

“Folks could go out and do what they want and walk away from the sites, and this is one of them,” she said.

After the John Galts of the world were done doing unspeakable things to the land, they let someone else deal with their damage.

The Animas River Stakeholders Group that was set up to deal with the issue after the mines were closed, which includes Sunnyside Gold Corp., didn’t have the estimated $12 million to $15 million it would take to treat the contaminated runoff. And for years, Silverton residents resisted EPA involvement out of fear that the “Superfund” label given to the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites would jeopardize the tourism industry — the only source of income that could replace the vanished mines. A few even hoped that the mines would reopen one day.

Meanwhile supporters of EPA intervention accused Sunnyside of stonewalling the cleanup attempt to avoid liability.

The two sides reached an agreement of sorts this year. The mines would not be designated a Superfund site, and the EPA would provide $1.5 billion to plug the problematic Red and Bonita mine, where polluted water drained at a rate of 500 gallons per minute, according to the Durango Herald.

That's $1.5 BILLION of federal dollars to clean up one mine site that isn't even designated a Superfund site.

It gets even worse.  Colorado has thousands of mines and hundreds of Superfund sites.  The EPA archive lists 237 Colorado Superfund sites where the cleanup was performed with federal dollars after the perpetrators fled (either before laws were in force or by declaring bankruptcy after making the money they earned disappear).  Nationwide, we have spent trillions cleaning up after the John Galts of this world.

The Media Background

People say stupid bullshit like in this LA Times Story.

“There is usually wave after wave of people floating past, but today nothing,” said Sairi Dwyer, 32, watching the yellow water roll past. “The EPA causes all of this and then they say, ‘Oh well’ and nothing happens. If you or I did this or anything close we’d be in jail.”

Even the headlines in the NY Times (the Times!) give the impression that the Feds caused this mess.

Actually, the people who created this mess are not in jail. In fact, no one has been sent to jail for this mess, or any other of the thousands of toxic sites in Colorado.  They took the money (precious metals) and ran, leaving you and me on the hook for the billions (perhaps trillions in total) that it takes to clean up after them.

Moreover, they didn't even tell us what they did before they fled the scene of their environmental crimes.  The EPA created the breach while probing the site to figure out just how bad the mess was.  The earthen dam gave way precisely because it was in such a precarious state to begin with.

Yes, the 'nanny state' that objectivists rail against is paying for the 'externalities' aka messes of these selfish ingrates.

The BMGM Background

I hate it when people propagate bullshit and get away with it.  It's especially egregious when the errors are in major papers.  Reporters should actually report rather than ape back erroneous opinions.  Fact-checkers should check facts.  Editors should edit.  How does so much bullshit get published?

Read my (anti) bullshit series.  Join the pushback against bullshit.

Aside

Ever heard of Coors beer?  The one that advertises that the beer is made from pure Rocky Mountain spring water?  Did you know that the Coors bottling plant near Golden, Colorado had to shut off one of their water intake sources after a mine tailing spill from an upstream uranium mine?

As an English visiting professor put it, "Colorado is a beautiful place with unspeakable things done to it."

Addendum

The Colorado Water Blog is much more conversant with this issue than me.  Read The Orange Animas.

Mothers' Day Flashback: Lessons in Freeway Calculus

NOTE: I originally wrote this essay for James Fallows' blog in 2011 without compensation.  It was published here.  I retained the copyright and I think Mothers' Day is a particularly good time to repost this essay.

As an immigrant, I hate to see my chosen team (America) dissed by know-nothings. The views of the governor of Pennsylvania, after an Eagles-Vikings playoff game in Philadelphia was postponed because of snow:

We've become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything," he added. "If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.

Gov. Ed Rendell clearly doesn't understand calculus. If he did, then he'd know that calculus was basically invented to describe motion. (He should have read Steven Strogatz's Change We Can Believe In.) Therefore, anyone in motion -- whether walking to the stadium or driving in a SUV with heated leather seats -- is doing calculus.

(Thanks to my favorite math website, Wolfram MathWorld, for the figures and theorem info.)

On a more serious note, I want the general public to understand that math is a huge subject encompassing much more than arithmetic. People shouldn't give up their math education too soon just because they don't like arithmetic. Many mathematicians are only so-so at arithmetic.

Truth be told, after I finished the introductory lower-division undergraduate math courses at UC Berkeley, I hardly ever worked with actual numbers. My math homework consisted mainly of Greek symbols and other abstract notation along with copious arguments in English describing the steps of the proofs. It usually ended with relief and a big Q.E.D. as I finally signed off on my homework and could go to sleep.

Math is also so broad that mathematicians do not understand all areas of math. It would be like expecting a historian to know about the history of everything. It can't be done, though it might be fun to try.

It would be more productive to think of math as both a liberal art and a science. Not only is math the language of science, giving us a framework for describing our physical world, but it is also a construct of the human mind. As such, lessons learned from math can help us understand the human condition, moving it into the realm of humanities.

A friend who had been an English literature major and I discussed how we thought a book was mainly about one thing, and then reread it years later and thought it was mainly about something else. Was our past judgment so wrong? Or had experience and circumstance changed our perceptions?

Much as I enjoyed Steven Strogatz on the Elements of Math, I hope that readers will go beyond that. I will use the meaning of calculus as an example.

When I first encountered calculus in high school, I mechanically went through the motions of "turning the crank" to learn the rules of differential and integral calculus. I thought that was what it was all about. Sure, there were pages and pages of material about limits in the textbooks, but they were just a prelude to the real stuff of finding the derivative (slope) or the integral (the area under a plot) of a function. So, if you had asked me back then, I would have agreed with Strogatz.

But then a boy that was a year ahead of me in math at Cal told me that he didn't understand calculus until he took math analysis and "proved" calculus. That freaked me out; was I so clueless and shallow that I misunderstood the whole point of calculus?

The panic intensified when I took the class he referred to: Math 104, aka "Real Analysis and Introductory Topology." Our class spent the entire semester on proofs, including six weeks to prove the compactness theorem. What did that have to do with calculus?

Looking back, I can laugh about it. I see now that calculus is such a broad topic, and touches so many aspects of our lives, that it can mean different things in different contexts.

All those weeks spent proving the limit of an infinite series exists and is unique? That tells us that there is a solution of the integral described by the series.

The other weeks spent proving that some limits are reached more quickly than others? The mystery was revealed when I took numerical analysis (solving math problems with computer algorithms). Those fast-approaching limits will converge before lunch. Slower ones may take overnight. The really slowly-converging limits might converge if you made a lucky guess at the initial condition, but will more likely go shooting off into infinity (actually the dreaded floating point overflow error). It's really embarrassing when that happens.

My last big calculus insight occurred while driving across the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge near San Francisco with my daughter. A friend had warned me not to speed on the bridge. She said that cameras photograph the license plates of cars as they enter and exit the bridge; you need not be seen by a cop to receive a speeding ticket by mail.

How can they prove someone was speeding from two photographs? With calculus, using the basic form of the mean-value theorem:

Let f(x) be differentiable on the open interval (a,b) and continuous on the closed interval [a,b]. Then there is at least one point c in (a,b) such that
f'(c)=(f(b)-f(a))/(b-a).

This is the formula for a derivative on an interval. If a and b are the times your car was photographed (at the entrance and exit of the bridge), and f(a) and f(b) are the locations where your car was photographed, then your average speed is f'(c).

The bridge, or rather the distance between the two camera locations) is a fixed length. If not enough time elapses between the two timestamped photos of your car, then your average speed exceeded the speed limit.

You can compute the average speed with simple algebra; you don't actually need calculus for that. A motorist can try to argue that s/he was not actually observed driving above the speed limit.

But, assuming the time clocks on both cameras were well synced, the mean value theorem says that, even without an observation at the critical time, the motorist must have exceeded the speed limit somewhere along the bridge. The basis of the state's case rests upon a foundation of calculus.

As my daughter and I discussed how this system of cameras might work (and why she should have told me she needed to make a pit stop before we got on the bridge), I had an epiphany.

There is a whole family of mean-value theorems. One in particular leapt to mind, the intermediate value theorem.

If f is continuous on a closed interval [a,b], and c is any number between f(a) and f(b) inclusive, then there is at least one number x in the closed interval such that f(x)=c.

This has major implications in integral calculus, but that is not why I am mentioning it.

I explained herehow I get performance reviews for both my market work (from my boss) and my family work (from my daughter, who claims to be my boss). When I am an ideal worker, putting in long hours at my market (paid) work, I am not at home doing my family work. The opposite is also true.


The term "work-life balance" implies that it is possible to maintain a steady-state ideal balance. In real life, one always gets more than the other, though which one gets more varies  over time. As I oscillate between whichever place demands more of my attention right this instant, I used to feel like I was always failing. But, now, I take solace in calculus.

The intermediate value theorem assures me that -- somewhere between those two positions -- I pass through the state of my ideal self.

In defense of Home Ec 3

I realize that Home Ec has become unfashionable in feminist circles, but it is historically important as a career path into science for so many talented women in prior generations.  Universities were willing to accept women in some departments only because they had viable career paths in industry working in food and textile sciences.

Make no mistake about it.  The nutrition science major at UC Berkeley is among the most challenging ones on campus.  Nutrition students have to learn everything required of biochemistry majors, take all pre-med requirements and then take nutrition classes on top of it.

I read in The Queen of Fats that the reason it took so long for other labs to replicate/confirm UC Berkeley's research in omega-3 fatty acids and cholesterol ratios was because no other food science department had access to the special centrifuges at Lawrence Berkeley Labs.  (They were a holdover from the Manhattan Project.)

Women who were interested in studying chemistry could sneak into their local universities as Home Ec majors and take everything that chemistry majors take.  Then they can apply at more enlightened universities further from home for graduate studies in chemistry.

Topologically-inclined women also studied Home Ec so that they could work as pattern-makers--an engineering discipline that pays much better than fashion design.  I was delighted to read that David Hockney's mother had been a pattern-maker in her youth.  I was less delighted when he wrote about how she was harassed into quitting by a colleague who was jealous/threatened by her superior abilities.  She continued to sew for her family.  When Hockney first sold a painting, he purchased a better sewing machine for his mom (along with more paint for himself) with the proceeds.

I've written about sewing and topology before, and will do so in the future, but let's get back to my intended subject.

I initially applied to graduate school to chemistry departments as a physical chemist.  I was particularly taken with spectroscopy and the study of reaction dynamics.  There is something so intellectually satisfying when you go from the micro world of quantum mechanics, compute the available energy before and after chemical reactions according to quantum rules, and then come out with a pretty accurate prediction for bulk reaction rates.  It's better than magic.

Science departments commonly fly prospective graduate students to visit in person after acceptance.  "Prospectives" receive schedules that provide time to meet with students and professors in their research field of interest.

My undergraduate research advisor, who had guided me through the application process, expressed surprise to see Dick Bernstein on my UCLA visit schedule.  He thought that Bernstein was no longer taking graduate students in preparation for retirement.  Did that mean they had to pad out my schedule because not enough active professors were interested in me?  Was that a bad sign?

No matter.  This gave me 30 minutes alone with the co-author of Molecular Reaction Dynamics and Chemical Reactivity and co-creator of Surprisal Analysis (the degree with which we are thermodynamically surprised by an experimental outcome).  I mean, who wouldn't want to spend time alone with someone with the imagination and humor to get IUPAC to accept Surprisal as an official chemical term?  Calculating surprisal indices is one of the funnest things imaginable.  But, it does take a lot of math and hard work in lab to get to the point where you can calculate one.

At the appointed time, I went to his office.  I asked why he was on my schedule even though he was winding down his research lab.  He said that my personal statement reminded him so much of his childhood, he wanted to meet me.  One of my science heroes wanted to meet me!

My personal statement was personal.  I broke the rules about not bringing any additional attention to my gender.  I wrote about staring out the window as a child and wondering why the sky was blue (common enough for spectroscopists).  But, I also wrote about learning to love chemistry in the kitchen with my first science teacher, my mother.  I learned about oxidation and chelation by squeezing lemon juice on bananas or in tea.  My mom told funny stories about her chemistry lab in nursing school and encouraged me to take science classes whenever possible.

His extended biography showed more parallels.  We both double-majored in math and chemistry.  His mother sewed and ran a dress shop.  And, we both puttered around in the kitchen with our moms, learning chemistry and being surprised.

I highly recommend reading both the extended biography published by the National Academy Press after a conference to celebrate his life and contributions and his NY Times obit.

You never know where Home Ec will lead you.  I'm certainly glad that it led me to meet this extraordinary man.

In the days before helicopter parenting

The cat in the hat came avisiting.

So why do people ask what the mom was thinking?  Why does the dad get off scot-free in the blame game?

The Mom From ‘The Cat in the Hat’ Finally Speaks by Sarah Schmelling explains all.

You need to read this. Really.

Mommy dearest moment

Remember "No wire hangers, ever!"?

I'd taken my daughter to Lands End last week to buy her a new jacket.  But, she was so cranky and tired, she didn't want to shop for anything else.  I was doing (more thankless) volunteer work today nearby so I swung by LE again to peruse the clearance racks.  I bought her four things and showed them to her this evening.  She liked two of them and asked me to return the other two.

Anyway, one of the items fit right now and went into her bureau.  We agreed to hang the slightly large shirt in a corner of her closet until the next growth spurt, when it should fit.  (She grew from 4'11" to 5'2" in less than a year.)  I went to my room to fetch an appropriate hanger.  When I returned, she asked what was wrong with the hangers in her closet.

I replied, "They are all the wrong type."

She probably thinks I am crazy, but they really were all the wrong type.

The shirt is too large to stay on her child-sized hangers and all the wider non-slip hangers were being used by her wider-necked tops.  I really did have to walk to my closet and fetch an adult-sized plastic hanger.  Really.

Of course, we don't use wire hangers in our house.  That would mean dry-cleaning, which we seldom use.  When we do send stuff to the dry cleaners (every spring when we put away the wool clothing that can't be hand-washed), I gather the wire hangers and return them to the dry cleaners for reuse.

Just in case you have never read the book or seen the movie, here's a clip. I read the book and skipped the movie. Reviews were negative, portraying it as a campy, over-the-top movie that failed to capture the nuances of the relationship explored in the book. The book made me so uncomfortable, I wouldn't have been able to watch it, even had it been a good movie.



References to "Mommie Dearest" in pop culture tend to get the story wrong.  Yes, Joan Crawford could have been a better mom.  But, she worked damn hard in an unforgiving business--a business notorious for pumping it's talent full of drugs and booze to make them work on demand.

Her daughter had very few household responsibilities.  She had been told repeatedly that it was her responsibility to take her clothes off the wire hangers used by the dry cleaners and rehang them on padded hangers.  That was her single household responsibility, requiring mere minutes each week.   Yet she failed to do it week after week.

By her own admission, Christina had a loving grandmother, housekeeper and many maids, nannies, cooks, gardeners and drivers.  She was not neglected.  She was loved (but, perhaps, not by her mother).  But, she also came across as too narcissistic to be lovable.  Publishing the book is only one among many transgressions against her mom.

When I was eight, my mother showed me how to use the washer and dryer and put me in charge of all of the family laundry--including ironing and planning washday around the weather because we used an outdoor clothesline.  My eleven year old sister and I traded responsibilities weekly.  One person was responsible for laundry and cleaning both bathrooms.  The other was responsible for doing all dishes and cleaning the kitchen.  We swapped every weekend.  When we were the age of Christina during that scene, we were the gardeners as well, swapping care of the front and back yards on the weekly schedule.

My mom worked as a charge nurse (senior registered nurse) at a small hospital.  She had Wednesdays off, which she spent cleaning, shopping, cooking and schlepping us to music lessons.  She also had every other weekend off, and she planned outings for each of those weekends.  (Ordinary people would have spent that time sleeping.)

I don't know how my mom did it.  I would never have dreamed of treating my mother the way Christina Crawford treated Joan Crawford.  I can't believe that people got the story so wrong; did we read the same book?

There are so many ways that a mother-daughter relationship can go wrong.  Give me strength because I  need it to get through (her) puberty.

I got another call today about an interesting job in another city.  Is it wrong to dream about getting my own apartment in another city and being a mom only on weekends?  Is it wrong to dream about her lifting a finger around the house?

Backstage support: traveling nannies

I decided to break up the nanny arrangements post and treat this backstage support item separately.

My last manager used to say that he could not put me on such and such (high profile) project because I cannot travel.  I repeatedly told him that I am able to travel, but I need to know in advance so I can make appropriate arrangements.  This back and forth went on for years with him making a false statement and me gently correcting him.  Anyway, all water under the bridge now.

In the last post, I wrote that the amount of backstage support that elite women can afford to purchase is out of the question for most women, even ones with PhDs like myself.  When my daughter was young and I was working nearly full-time, I did spend on a high-quality daycare center that provided coverage 7AM-6PM Monday through Friday.  A cleaning lady came biweekly.  My husband, when he was in town and not otherwise occupied, helped.  Otherwise, I was on my own.

My husband is a field scientist and travels frequently and with little notice. He told me that, if I put my travel on the calendar at least 6 months in advance, then he will hold that sacred and not book travel at the same time. That didn't work out as promised.   I have put travel on the calendar as far as 13 months in advance and he has then arranged to travel at the exact same time.  Again all water under the bridge now.

One time, when I was traveling to DC to brief a large project to the client agency, he had a trip pushed back from the prior week to the exact same week.  His client was one that could not be denied.  I couldn't back out of a big meeting arranged months in advance.  We were booked for the same flight to DC and shared a hotel room and car, saving our employer hundreds of dollars.

Our parents were in too frail health to help out with childcare overnight, so I  called the work/life balance counselor at HR for help with overnight daycare arrangements.  Blah, blah, blah.  They talked a good game, giving a work/life balance phone number.  But, when I really needed help, they offered me nothing but ridicule for even calling.   I told the counselor that the company was sending both parents out of town and that we needed help locating an overnight nanny.  She paused for a few seconds and then went into a spiel about how daycare is a private matter and not something that she can help me with. 

Anyway, I was heartened to read that U.S. Soccer provides and pays for traveling nannies as a normal part of the of cost of doing business and competing.

Wouldn't it be nice if all this talk about bringing women into STEM included more backstage support?  Or offering backstage support to anyone who needs it, regardless of profession?

Nanny arrangements

There's quite a bit of chatter about Marissa Mayer's new job as head of Yahoo.  Good for her!  And that's all I feel qualified to say as I've never worked in the dot com world.  If you want to read something, see Wandering Scientist's very thoughtful take.

I have to say that I am impressed at the difference that throwing money at a problem can make.  I was astonished to learn that the MBA CFO wife of a former scientist coworker had three full-time people facilitating her 'having it all' life.  At the office, she had a full time secretary AND a personal assistant in addition to the finance department staff.  At home, she had a full-time nanny.

Scientists don't earn that kind of money or have that much clout in the workplace.  Her personal assistant made about as much as I made working full-time as a scientist at a nonprofit.  Anyway, that kind of backstage support is not available except to elite women.  In effect, she's at the top of a pyramid scheme.

That's the thing that is getting lost in the debate.  There is a whole lot of care and attention necessary to run a home and family--what Joan Williams calls family work.  Family work, when it is not outsourced, generates no money and doesn't add to the GDP.  However, it is still work and it is still necessary to keep the family, community, state, nation and world running.  For instance, if no one signed up for the unpaid job of growing and raising children, society would eventually stop.

Elite women can afford to outsource.  But what are we doing to support all the lower-paid women propping her up?

Links:

• I have riffed on Joan Williams' excellent analysis multiple times, most thoroughly in Perfect Madness.  
• Please go back and read the Joan Williams series.  
• More than 20 years ago, sociologist Arlie Hochschild followed the lives of Silicon Valley women, the women hired to perform their family work and the women hired by those women.  She wrote a fascinating book, The Second Shift.  Follow the money trail and the pyramid scheme is evident.
• The pyramid scheme does not stop at our borders. Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild contains an uneven (but worthwhile) compilation of pieces by researchers following the global movement of women to satisfy the "care deficit" with devastating effects in their home (and host) countries.
  

Modeling behavior

Trena has a really insightful post about how people shop for entertainment because there are so few other options for them where they live.  I left a comment that shopping is also a socially communicable disease.  We learn how to spend our time from how we see others around us spend their time.

This year, Bad Dad and I are focused on teaching our daughter how to safely bike for transportation AND recreation.  (We are also helping her learn how to navigate public transit in metro LA.)

When we were driving up to Point Imperial at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (see map), it reminded me of how much fun Bad Dad and I had riding our bikes, and stopping at every view point, around other national parks and similarly scenic places.  I begged Bad Dad to let me ride the route while he drove behind.  Surprisingly, Iris said she wanted to try it.  Here we are leaving the parking lot at Point Imperial, elevation 8803 feet above sea level.

I am carrying my purse and first aid kit in the left pannier and we are both carrying water.  It was in the upper 70s F and very dry.  You can see the burn scars on many of the trees from past forest fires.  It took us only 15 minutes to cover the 2.6 downhill miles to the junction.

The map I had showed Roosevelt Point at 8400' and visitor center at 8200'.  I expected rolling hills but an overall downhill so Iris wanted to go on.  The switchbacks climbing out of the junction and Greenland lake surprised me with their duration and it turned out to be too hard for her.  It was surprisingly easy for me.  (It must be all those trips to the gym now that I am unemployed.)

I left her at a turnout, confident that Bad Dad was minutes away with the minivan/sag wagon.  Iris took this picture of my bum as they passed me.  This is the kind of alpine riding I did every summer weekend in the Boulder foothills in my 20s.

It was so much fun, and I was so happy that my daughter could share part of that.  See my big smile?

The air is also somewhat hazy with smoke from fires that dot the southwest.  She was also suffering from altitude and smoke inhalation.  It's a complete mystery how I was able to ride without resorting to the inhaler in the first aid kit.  Fortunately, we had a bit of rain at the North Rim (AZ) and in Northern New Mexico; more relief is on the way.  This year, we will not complain about the rain on our vacation.

Mommy and me AI

I am not sure if this is a violation of the rules. But Iris and I signed up to take an online AI (Artificial Intelligence) class together, but using my email account only.

We are going to listen to the lectures and discuss the problem sets together. I will be responsible for writing up and emailing our homework sets. I don't know in advance whether she has a long enough attention span for this. Or whether either of us really have the time to do this in between her school and my work commitments.

We signed up for the advanced class, which requires us to do all the homework and take all the exams. If we fall behind in our homework, we can always change to the basic (audit) version of the class.

We are really excited about this. I have had a long-time interest in Markov models. Are there any other people doing this with their kids? Is this considered cheating or collaborative learning? After all, she's 10 years old--too young to sign up on her own.

Thoughts on Tigers and Dragons

People have asked me what I think of the Tiger mom. I don't know the woman. I haven't read the book. I have nothing to say about her. That doesn't seem to stop a lot of people from commenting, however. If you are going to read something, then this sfgate.com piece looks like a good place to start.

I was appalled to learn from my daughter that one of her classmates hears this question repeatedly from her mom, "Why can't you be more like Iris?"

That is awful on so many levels. Shouldn't we want our children to be their best selves instead of other people? Okay, that's a biased question and I have put my bias out there in the open.

I also get questions about what I did with her when she was young. Did I read to her a lot?

NO.

This is primarily a blog where I chronicle the happy things that happen in my life. I do not like to dwell on how many things I am/was unable to do. If you want to know the truth, I missed out on large chunks of my only child's childhood because of my health. And don't ask me why I didn't provide her with a sibling.

A mother's primary responsibility is to live long enough to teach her cub to hunt for herself. That means I missed out on many things while I optimized my life expectancy.

My big parenting secret is benign neglect. ;-)

Back to tigers and dragons.

As a child, I was able to play Flight of the Bumblebee on my violin at a pretty good clip through long hours of practice. I did not enjoy that particular piece. (Slower Brahms and Haydn pieces are more my thing.) I am glad that music is a part of my life and I don't resent childhood time spent practicing the violin.

When I told my mom that I was going to take a break from the violin, she didn't push back. In fact, when I think back, I can't recall a single time when we went back and forth over something. That is, when I pushed back, she let it go. Or when she pushed back, I let it go.

I am in awe that a single mom of two, working full-time, made music for my sister and I such a priority that she found the money to pay for weekly lessons with some fantastic private teachers--the kind you have to audition for before they accept you.

A high school friend's mom said that, at PTA meetings, they marveled at my mom's child-rearing abilities. It's a good thing she was at work and not attending the meetings. If they knew us better, it would have ruined her mystique. No one really knows what happens behind closed doors.

Oops, I digressed again. Back to tigers and dragons.

My mother once told me that people took entirely the wrong lesson from the Chinese adage, "When you raise a dragon, expect to get singed."

She said that people used that adage as an argument for raising docile and compliant children. But she was of the opinion that the world needs more dragons and less sheep. Her takeaway lesson from that adage is to raise a dragon and not take it too personally when you get singed.

And that is why I gave myself that purple heart and went back to work.

Next up, I was in Tanzania less than 48 hours before I made my first fabric score! More later.

Purple Heart Day

I took a workshop with artist Ellen Anne Eddy years ago. At the beginning of class, she passed out purple hearts (made out of her hand-dyed fabric). She said something to the effect of, "There, you've all earned or will earn a sewing purple heart. Get over it and get to work!"

I came across the purple heart late last night after a huge row with Iris earlier that evening. They should give out purple hearts for motherhood. Well, I just took Ellen Anne's and reissued it to myself for motherhood.

At the very least, don't you think that our society should give health insurance for people willing to perform the hazardous duty of growing a baby, giving birth and raising a future taxpayer? Apparently, we don't think so.

Economists actually did the math on the point I made in Insufficient Margin. The Present
Value of Producing Future Taxpayers. Keep in mind that $200,000 is an average value. Higher-earning parents and parents of children that require above average care & resources lose more. In addition to a purple heart, I would like the same lifetime health coverage given to veterans, a thanks every year, and a check accompanying the thank-you note. Is that too much to ask?

The Choices that Matter

The LAT newsroom is so lean these days, they don't have much time to do real journalism.  Mostly, I just read the press releases sent out by PR agents masquerading as news reporting and shake my head in disgust.  This article about a new diaper merchandising trio was unintentionally funny.

On a recent Friday night, a very pregnant Sheila Dos Santos and her husband were two-thirds of the way through an hour and a half cloth diapering workshop, trying to wrap their heads around the myriad diapering options available to the modern parent.

Laid out on the large coffee table in front of them were dozens of types of diapers and covers and inserts, as well as a plastic baby doll to try them on.

"I'm so overwhelmed," said Dos Santos, looking down at the 11-page booklet she held in her hands.

The workshop was being given by Lena Hill, Lisa Hubbard and Jennifer Rodriguez, three new-ish moms who are planning to open Los Angeles' first cloth diapering store, Tush (www.tushdiapers.com), in early June.
...
For those moms who do plan to use cloth diapers, making the correct choice can be fraught with anxiety. Are hemp inserts a better bet than bamboo? What type of diaper cover breathes the best but will also eliminate leaks? Which ones are the most environmentally friendly? What is the most organic choice?

These decisions feel all the more important because, according to the Tush handout, a reasonable supply of newborn-size fitted diapers and covers can cost close to $700. And that just lasts for the first six months of the baby's life.

But the article redeemed itself by injecting a dose of credulity.

According to Sharon Hays, a professor of contemporary gender studies at USC, an hour and a half diapering workshop falls neatly into what she calls "the extraordinary pressure of intensive mothering."

"Intensive mothering" is a term she coined in 1997 in her book "The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood." She describes it as a "child-centered, expert guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive, financially expensive ideology in which mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture and development of the sacred child and in which children's needs take precedence over the individual needs of their mothers."

I would also like to add that most daycare centers require disposable diapers. Only stay at home moms or people with in-home nannies have the luxury to choose cloth diapers.

It's not clear that cloth diapers are the environmental choice in water-starved southern California. I fondly recall a Sierra magazine article doing the environmental impact study about "cloth or disposables". It was an environmental tossup EXCEPT in arid areas (such as LA) and places running out of landfill space.

In water-scarce areas, it was better to import disposable diapers than to import the water to wash them.

Cloth diapers using a diaper service were the better choice in a handful of densely populated cities (mainly in the northeast), where they had exhausted nearby landfill space.  Diaper services have economies of scale when washing tons of poop-filled diapers. But diaper trucks spew pollution and burn gas (or diesel).  They were not a good environmental choice unless there were large numbers of other diaper service users in your area. 

In no case was washing diapers at home with bleach a good use of water and energy.

If you bought specialty diapers from Tush, you wouldn't be able to use a diaper service. So you'd have to wash them at home, adding a hefty dose of bleach to your sewage.

This is a really long preamble to a mother's choice that really matters, and a damn fine piece of reporting in the LA Times by Joe Mozingo, In Haiti, aftershocks of a mother's wrenching decision.

This mother had to make a decision that matters.

Marie Lud's recollection of what followed that night of the earthquake comes in fragments: Running through the smoke and dust for half a mile to the National Palace. Seeing it collapsed like a smashed wedding cake. Standing all night with her children and tens of thousands of others in the open plaza of Champs de Mars. People clutching whatever random items they escaped their homes with. Chanting hymns. Swatting mosquitoes. Thinking that Bernard [her husband], who had been downtown on business, was dead. That ghostly scream with every aftershock.

The next morning, Marie Lud was desperate. It was as if all her points of reference had been wiped clean: no work, no school, no market, no home, no government. She didn't have food for her children, and was frantic about losing one of them in the crowd.

Just down the street all the inmates of the main prison had escaped. She had long had a fear that some thug would one day try to rape one of her daughters and Bernardo would be killed trying to protect her. 

She kept the three children within arm's reach. A woman noticed them all, and introduced herself as a social worker. She told her that she knew of a local orphanage that sometimes fed, schooled and sheltered children whose parents couldn't do it themselves.
...
They both started crying. "Where are they taking us?" Bernardo screamed. "I don't want to go!"

Marie Lud couldn't hold back her tears. Her eyes always betrayed her emotions.

"Cherie, things are going to be OK," she told them. "It's only for a short time and I'm going to pick you up."

They got in, sniffling and wiping their eyes, and the car pulled away. They stared at her as they drove off.

Marie Lud didn't sleep or eat that night. She just kept thinking of the betrayed look on those two faces that were as much a part of her as her bones.

Bernard appeared the next day, his face swollen and caked with dried blood and dust. He had been knocked unconscious by the falling blocks of a hotel, and then had wandered through the chaos in a daze.

When Bernard didn't see Bernardo or Barbara, he immediately panicked, thinking they were dead. She told him what she had done. He didn't understand.

"Why did you do that? he asked repeatedly. He was furious. He wanted his children.

Later that afternoon, some thugs started screaming that a tsunami was coming, setting off a stampede. Some children were separated from their parents in the chaos, and the thugs stole whatever valuables were left behind: pots, toys, radios, portable televisions, picture frames, shoes, Sunday clothes.

Bernard then understood her decision. 

Read the whole thing to find out what happens to this family.  It breaks my heart.

I initially read this story in the hard copy format.  But newspapers can't tell if people read ambitious stories like this.  It's all very nice to collect Pulitzers, as the reporters at LAT have done in the past, but the management cares about page clicks.

Click on that link.  Hit refresh several times.  Send it on to friends and family.  The LAT management spends a lot of time and energy analyzing page clicks. They are not going to do more meaningful stories like this unless you click on that link!

And I absolve you from enviro-guilt if you use disposable diapers in LA.


Related posts:

• World Water Day 2010  
• Water, water every where, Nor any drop to drink

The road not taken

Did you read the heartbreaking The Return: A stay-at-home mom attempts to go back to work after nearly two decades. Can she revive her career?

Two quotes stood out.

"It was against everything I ever thought I was going to be," Beckett said. "Everybody I knew went right back to work, couldn't wait to get back to work. It was hard to reach out and find people who would support me." A few months after Nellie was born, Tarbox and Beckett had a couple over, and when Beckett said she wasn't returning to the firm, there was silence. Then the woman said, "You're going to make it harder for the rest of us."
...
Her distress wasn't all family-related. "I have a very hard time feeling like I'm walking away from the law." But looking back, she wouldn't change the path that led to her current career limbo. "Raising children is honorable and worthy," Beckett said. "I felt ashamed of my choice, like I was ... failing the feminist movement." Above all, she wants her daughters to be more confident about the lives they choose and the role of motherhood.

Amy Beckett is an attorney. If you are interested in the situation of mothers in the legal profession, I highly recommend Joan Williams' book,  Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It.  I've blogged about the book ad nauseum.

She also wrote a great letter to the editor (of the NYT) recently about the plight of women in science and engineering.

The Road Not Taken, a poem by Robert Frost

Did you miss anything lately?

Well, I would say in the beginning I thought I had to keep work and home very separate. I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do, especially as a woman. You know, you don’t bring up your children and you don’t bring up the fact that you’re having these issues at home.
...
I used to keep literally two separate calendars, and then wonder why I missed a few things.

I still don't have any shorty, pithy answers for work-life balance, whatever that means. But the interview with Teresa Taylor, COO of Qwest, contains one interesting viewpoint (and journey).

Dads' Thoughts on Free-Range Kids

Michael Chabon and Roger Ebert wrote recently about free-range kids. Bad Dad has shared some thoughts that he should post on his blog. We will see if he does it any faster than the other things on his honey do list.

Here are some excerpts from Roger Ebert's Raising free-range kids, but you should really go read the whole thing.

Certainly today we take for granted things that we never imagined in our own childhoods, like child car seats, bike helmets, bottled water, security guards, sunblock, hand sanitizer and childproof bottles. I mentioned my childhood memory that we boys would pee behind trees, shrubbery, or garages ("If you run home, your mom might grab you and make you do something"). I forgot to mention that one of the reasons we needed to pee is that when we got thirsty we drank out of garden hoses--our own, and anybody else's.
...
I don't know what the solution is. I really don't. What I do know is that something fundamental has disappeared from the American landscape, and that is the sight of girls and boys running around and playing. In 1957, there was a best-selling memoir about childhood titled, Where Did You Go? Out. What Did you Do? Nothing, by Robert Paul Smith. These days, a kid had better have an answer ready for that question.

Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood awakens a yearning for the wilderness of my youth. Again, read the whole thing.

Most great stories of adventure, from The Hobbit to Seven Pillars of Wisdom, come furnished with a map. That's because every story of adventure is in part the story of a landscape, of the interrelationship between human beings (or Hobbits, as the case may be) and topography. Every adventure story is conceivable only with reference to the particular set of geographical features that in each case sets the course, literally, of the tale. But I think there is another, deeper reason for the reliable presence of maps in the pages, or on the endpapers, of an adventure story, whether that story is imaginatively or factually true. We have this idea of armchair traveling, of the reader who seeks in the pages of a ripping yarn or a memoir of polar exploration the kind of heroism and danger, in unknown, half-legendary lands, that he or she could never hope to find in life.

This is a mistaken notion, in my view. People read stories of adventure—and write them—because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity. For the most part the young adventurer sets forth equipped only with the fragmentary map—marked here there be tygers and mean kid with air rifle—that he or she has been able to construct out of a patchwork of personal misfortune, bedtime reading, and the accumulated local lore of the neighborhood children.

What frontiers will my daughter map? I guess that is why I take her to Lair of the Golden Bear each summer.

Links:
Where the girls are...
Free Range Kids series
Lair series

Breathing Treatment took this picture of Bad Dad and myself while we were kayaking on Pinecrest lake this year.

Latchkey Kid

Iris' carpool drops her off at home every afternoon. She is home alone for 15-45 minutes and loving it.

We leave the computer unlocked because her homework requires her to do internet research. She is "very responsible" about that. LOL

A mommy coworker wonders if I am OK about letting her use the internet.

I am ambivalent. But, even when I am home, I am not always in the same room with her. We tend to leave the doors open and go about our independent activities.

How do you handle this?

Memorial Day

It was a busy and happy weekend. There are no pictures because I left my camera at a friend's house where we attended a BBQ. Because he lives in southern Orange County, we figured we'd keep driving south to visit overnight with my in-laws in San Diego. The drive between LA and SD passes through some pretty landscape (and awful traffic), but it is more enjoyable during jacaranda season.

Memorial Day is a poignant time, and especially so when our nation is fighting two wars. It's hard to convey the significance of the holiday to my daughter when mall parking lots are so full. (Yes, we did stop at a mall to pick up a cup of coffee on our drive home; I wonder if other people looked at us judgmentally, too?)

I started to think about the two holidays in May, Mothers' Day and Memorial Day. Did you know that Mayan death rituals give the highest honors to warriors who die in battle AND mothers who die in childbirth? Both groups make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve their civilization.

So how about we celebrate both holidays this year by giving all mothers in the US access to healthcare under the VA system, just like we do for veterans?

Curtains

Summer is zooming along. This afternoon, Iris performed in her second play of the summer season. Her nanny is moving into her college dorm next week. (She will be a resident assistant and needs to return to campus early for training.)

After the performance, we were going picnic at the beach, but no one had the time to pack sandwiches. We decided to go eat at the Redondo Beach pier instead. Iris fell asleep in the car. That should have been a clue. I parked at the Spectrum Club lot and we never made it to the pier. As soon as we passed the Cheesecake Factory, Iris would go no further. She told her nanny that she had gone there once before and said she really wanted to eat there again.

Iris posted about the show on her blog.

Aside:
We are so happy her nanny came home from college for the summer. We are even more happy that she was able to help out so many evenings. Marriage to a field scientist is not so glamorous. They work out in the field for weeks (if not months) at a time, usually in the summer. Day camps have much shorter hours than school and daycare. If it weren't for her nanny's help this summer, I don't think I could have coped.

We pay her decently. She told me that one of her college friends takes care of THREE kids, two of them diagnosed with special needs (but she suspects the youngest one is as well), for half what I pay her for taking care of Iris. I also reimburse mileage at the IRS rate.

I am going to miss the luxury of emailing my shopping list in the morning and coming home to find the kitchen stocked, the house picked up, and my kid happy, fed and bathed.

Fortunately, the Lufthansa strike is over and Bad Dad will be able to return as scheduled.