Hooray!

That is all.

I just spent an enjoyable half hour at the Kennedy School soaking pool. Usually, when I take a soak midweek, the pool is blissfully solitary and I can pretend that I do indeed own an Italianate villa. (Real story: I'm currently blocked writing-wise, the house is cold, I'm probably *getting* a cold, and I'd rather take advantage of the preheated water than run an environmentally insensitive bath).

So, a man and his daughter are there at the far end of the pool. I get in silently, and sit at the near end, head back and eyes closed. Their chatter is pleasant, non-intrusive, but eventually her curiosity gets the better of her and she walks on over to my side of the pool. She's an adorable and literal four year old (Me: "When did you turn four?" Her: "On my birthday." Him: "I think she was asking when your birthday was, sweetheart.") who really loves swimming and her daddy. He's a nursing student, his wife works downtown, and we alternate talking to each other or her, and playing catch with a pink netted bow she found at the other end of the pool.

It was such a pleasant, nondescript conversation - his studies, my research, Disneyland, his daughter's swimming lessons, what my husband does, what his wife does, how the heart works, etc. etc. A light, zero subtext, casual encounter, in the original sense of the phrase. I'll remember our interaction and especially the little girl as charming and sweet, but without regrets that it didn't continue longer. Today's connection added to the light and charm and sweetness that I already enjoy in my own life--it wasn't rain in some metaphorical desert--and I'm grateful for both, just as they are, and were.

There are new shopping carts at the local grocery store, designed specifically for parents. They're pretty cute, they've got plastic trucks on the either side, and there's space for two kids (with their own steering wheel) to face forward, and then a full-size basket in front of that. They're also huge. It's very cool that someone has gone to the trouble of designing a new type of cart for busy parents who have more than one child and still need to get the shopping done. While the carts are pretty heavy and not all that maneuverable when empty (I can't imagine how difficult they'd be to push when they're full), I'm glad that parents' needs are being taken into account. Perhaps the 2.0 version will address these shortcomings. Either way, I'm not sure I'd want to share a grocery aisle with one of these carts as they are now - perhaps new store designs are on deck?

Anyway, the very first thing that struck me was the implied expectation that a parent would have two children of about the same age (or size, at least) to take shopping with them. These carts were designed to fill a need that I hadn't previously considered, but that could have lasting reprecussions as time goes on: since women are having children later, and perhaps using IVF to do so, multiple births could be on the rise and so such accomodations are now necessary. Alternately, parents were more likely to have two children as close together as they could manage it as recently as, say, three years ago.  It would be interesting to interview the shopping cart designers to know what they were thinking when they designed the new carts, if they were developed in response to demographic information or some other reasoning.

Interestingly enough, the current version of "infant-seat carts" (these have a large grey infant bucket mounted on the top bar) only have room for one kid, so either the pendulum is swinging back, or the cart designers haven't caught up yet. Currently, the situation is reminiscent of the hot dog versus hot dog bun packaging problem where there's not enough of one or an excess of the other - maybe current parents are starting earlier, so they're having fewer kids? Or the infant-seat carts are a design phase behind? Or I'm overthinking this? Anything's possible.

Edited to add: Well, I spent a few minutes trying to find an image of the truck carts, above, but instead I found the product homepage: The New Bean. The carts I'm talking about above resemble one of the Bean Doubles, but with the kids up top near mom* rather than at the front of the cart and down low. The marketer in me would bet that the new, higher up placement increases the likelihood that the kid(s) will be better situated to convey that they want mom* to purchase the more expensive items that are located on the middle shelves throughout the store, rather than playing by themselves up front (where they're safe from falling items, as the original ad copy states). In any case, the site assures grocers that the new carts will increase shoppers' purchases by 20% per trip.

*the site has a dedicated "moms & kids" section, but I guess dad never shops with his kids.

I stepped out my front door and into a Richard Scarry version of Busytown:

On the sidewalk: a kid riding his skateboard going left.
On the street: two bicyclists riding right.
In the sky: a United Airlines 757 taking off going left, from the airport 10 miles away.

It was an intense few seconds.

What's your middle name?  Is there a story or history behind it?

Isabella.

I love my middle name - it's beautiful on its own, and works well with my first and last names. My mother's mother was named Isabella, so it's a family name as well. The story is that my parents couldn't agree on my first name for quite a while (this was back in the days when you had to wait until the birth to find out which sex you'd gotten). None of the other feminine names in the immediate relative vicinity seemed to work for some reason. My dad finally found the name Samantha in a baby names book (just in the nick of time, or my name on the birth certificate might have been "baby girl") and my mom liked it too. To me their choice symbolizes the fact that I'm a product of my parents, and also a new individual with no responsibility to anyone else's identity or tradition. Interestingly enough, my brothers' names are very traditional: one was named for his maternal and paternal grandfathers, and the other is a Junior. I kept my last name when I got married, both for myself and to keep a link to my dad and the rest of my family. Unfortunately, it's also the name of a popular drug, so google searches for my first and last names turn up lots of spam.

I've been ruminating for quite a while about the adverse effects of personalization on people's ability to live in a world that isn't always personalizable. In this age of TiVo and cell phones and iPods and the "always on" society, as well as the nearly infinite customizability of several different mass marketed objects (car seats come to mind), how does this elaborate and perpetual cosseting affect our ability to cope with adversity, much less hardship? I'd guess that we have shorter fuses than we used to, but it's possible that the counterintuitive answer applies: when there are fewer things that go wrong in one's life, one is better equipped to deal with those things that do. This is probably what's behind many people's storied ability to deal very well with some major trauma, while getting completely bent out of shape about waiting in line for two minutes or burning the toast.

Anyway, last Friday, I was reading quite a lot of online writing (as well as watching Zefrank's The Show) about the terrorist threat that had been thwarted, and one of the things that came up was the question of why, exactly, terrorism is so scary. Risk theorists (and frequent flyers) are fond of quoting the statistic that you're more likely to die in your own automobile than go down in a plane crash. There was also the famed "a woman over 35 has more chance of getting killed by a terrorist than receiving a proposal of marriage" canard a few years back, although that one's been rather thoroughly debunked. Even so, these reassurances felt a lot like whistling through the graveyard.

A better explanation of why terrorism is so scary, posited some, is that it feels at once random and completely personal. Somehow, there is intent behind the act--human choice--and you, personally, are important enough to be a target. This could be simply by virtue of being American or en route to America (in this case), or because you made a decision that placed you in the line of fire on a subway or in a cafe or whatever. The human element of choice is what makes terrorism work - you have no idea when or where (or if) the next attack will come. That's the point.

It occurred to me that this could be one of the reasons that other countries (like India, Ireland, England, Spain and Russia, as noted in The Show, above) might be better at handling terrorist threats--please understand that I am in no way saying that this equals deserving or enjoying them--but rather, if one's membership loyalty is to a group rather than oneself, there might be less fear around being the target of a terrorist attack. Since everybody's a target, your risk is no greater or worse than anyone else's. And since you're more aware of all of the other poeple in your collective, you understand that your personal likelihood of being a target is reduced accordingly/mathemetically. In any case, if it happens, it happens. We're pretty inventive as a species, unfortunately. But, barring taking obvious precautions, why should that change how you live your life?

So, when you consider the increasing societal or marketing movement toward Brand: YOU and other aspects of hyperindividualism that allow a certain class of people in the US to live seemingly uncontested and in control of their own little world, and combine that with the randomness and idea of intent that makes terrorism so frightening, it's not really that much of a surprise that the US population in general has become completely undone by the thought of a fifth* terrorist attack (in a way that is surprising considering how little attacks one, two, and four have infiltrated daily life). All that focus on control and isolation magnifies ones' sense of importance, which means that one is that much more vulnerable to the threat of terrorism, disproportionate to the actual threat.

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*These are: Oklahoma City, The Unibomber, September 11, and the Anthrax Letters. Remember those? What ever happened to trying to catch the person who expressly targeted Democratic officeholders and members of the "liberal media"? S/he's the only one who's still at large. Oh, and Osama bin Laden.

BlogHer originated as a response to numerous male bloggers asking "where are all the women bloggers?". Over 200 women bloggers showed up last year in San Jose at the first annual BlogHer conference, coming from as far away as Austin, TX and Durham, NC (at least). The themes last year had to do with making women's blogs visible, getting up to speed technically, becoming a better writer oneself, and inspiring more women to blog. There were panels for academic bloggers, mommy bloggers, political bloggers and more. I left the conference inspired and heartened, committed to blogging more and looking forward to reading the blogs of the women I met there. There was a cute litttle schwag messenger bag (courtesy of Google), and a few trinkets inside from various tech publishers and tech companies such as ThirdAge (an online community for seniors).

BlogHer was much more emphatically on the radar this year, and the most important women of all are clearly the mommy bloggers. This year's schwag bag (courtesy of Six Apart) contained offerings that were quite expressly gendered, rather than techy: an offer from a weight loss company (woman as body), a box of sugar substitute (woman as body), a magnetic bulletin board to organize the busy family schedule (emotional labor, woman as caretaker), a bib (...), a corkscrew (yay, alcohol!), information on new cars by Saturn and GM (Soccer Mom, anyone? I know, it's a slight stretch, and to their credit, Saturn also included a 64M thumb drive), weightloss water (again with the body), and a few other articles that were keyed toward getting your blog in front of more people and/or making a living from it (yay for target marketing!). I really do appreciate the fact that sponsorship makes the world go round, and made everyone's attendance at the conference possible. But.

I think what was so annoying to many BlogHer attendees  is the fact that the conference was aimed at the 51% of the population that is tired of being marketed to about 10% of our identity (and only about 5% of our conference-specific goals/specialties)--see the flack about "The Janes" pitch for the worst scripting ever. Women flew across the country for this tech conference, but our desirability as a target market revolved almost exclusively around biology (and, to be fair, sociology), rather than our brains. A smart company would've done more of what Saturn did: Brand a conference-specific item, rather than a gender-specific one. Do men get such gender-targeted schwag at their tech conferences? Didn't think so.

Today I'm at BlogHer - I've run into someone I haven't seen in 20 years, who's every bit as rocking cool as she was back in high school. Off to another panel, but want to at least begin the conversation here.

Interesting post on spanglemonkey about yesterday's session, and badgerblog in comments talking about someone talking and talking and talking -I suppose this is a common issue for bloggers, yes?

This is a microdeveloped post, because it's late, but while I was ambling around the vox site, I noticed young girl's picture that looks really familiar to me. The girl is lovely, kind of pensive, dark hair and eyes, and I could swear that I've seen her before. The name Mad or Madeline popped in my head. Maybe I've met her offline, seen her face in stock art, someone's flickr account (is it ok to talk about flickr here?), or through a friend of a friend -I have no idea. But I feel connected to her, because I've seen her face in a way that, although it has been made available to the web-world at large, is also very personal and intimate (and non-commercial).

Obviously, the access to personal narrative has been one of the amazing things that have propelled blog readership and publishing to the popularity it now enjoys. But the effect of visual intimacy vis-a-vis (sorry for the pun) photos and video is something I haven't yet seen explored. Specifically, the thought occurred to me that the more people there are who we "think" we know, the more compassionate we'll be about the strangers they are, and to the strangers who look like them in our own lives. Once again, technology brings us closer to each other.