Given the relative scarcity of recent pictures of my oldest child, this one, despite the "No Pickchas!" demeanor is a definite classic. There's been a bloody LOT on the boil in the past month; Martha had her pacemaker battery replaced, and still isn't entirely healed up. Her father just had a pacemaker installed, and insists on being his usual feisty self. Frankly, after a couple of days of staying with the man, just to make certain he didn't manage to kill himself doing something he wasn't supposed to in the intervening time, it dawned on me what one of my Korean students meant when she called me ugly. (You can probably find that post, if you're willing to dig back far enough.) It wasn't so much a matter of appearance, as is probably testified by the fact that somewhere, probably on some Korean website, are pictures of my derriere, snapped by another student with her cell phone. No, I think "ugly," in this case was more like, "Ugly American;" the net result of someone who has been so propagandized by anti-foreign sentiment that they couldn't see straight if they wanted to. It goes by a lot of other names; closed-mindedness, bigotry, call it what you like. It centers around the idea that you could make the call on something without even knowing all the facts. Man, is that a dangerous state of mind. And the thing is, when you put a mind like that in a position of power, particularly as a parent, the results can have a hellacious ripple effect, and one that can be hard to contain. Thankfully, the people who have propogated a lot of this sentiment, primarily the World War and Depression youth, are either dying, or so jacked up on Seroquel that no one really pays them any heed anyway. Even the Baby Boomers are mostly 60+ these days, and although whatever anti-American sentiments they're given to are probably directed at different groups of people, it's at least a bit better. What we've propogated in the last 30 years is a lot of biracial children, which will probably go a long way towards easing hostility in the future, despite the fact that some still face the "Who-am-I-really-and-what-group-do-I-identify-with" hand-wringing. So be it. Suffice to say, blanket sentiments coing from anywhere are dangerous as hell. And I go back to work tomorrow, thank you, Jesus, doing a 4-day stint. Always nice to open a year like that. Further the hope, and La Chaim. And I almost forgot, actually......I don't know where this picture of Syd came from, but man, it is *so* nice! How couldja not not love a face like that?!