The Brookston Family Blog
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Yesterday Porter got a new train from his grandparents. It was made in France and has a remote control, which is cool. He can make it go from a distance.

Porter’s new train set.

Using the remote control to stop at the station.

Our friend Jim is still in town and he played a gig last night, with his old musical partner Tom, at a place called Tiki Tom’s in Walnut Creek. Sarah and I went while the grandparents were kind enough to watch the kids a little — okay much — longer last night. It was great fun seeing Jim perform again, and, fingers crossed, were hoping he’ll moving back to the Bay Area soon.

Jim and Tom perform at Tiki Tom’s.

Sarah with our friend Bob R.

I’ve been having a weird story unfolding on the beer blog today. I did a post yesterday that was something of a scoop. I saw a six-pack of a new beer from a new brewery called Green Valley Brewing Co. at the grocery store and it looked somewhat suspicious to me. So I did a little detective work and figured out it was a new beer from Anheuser-Busch that they had created to look like a microbrewed beer. My post essentially lays all that out and chides them for not being honest about the beer. Starting this morning, the beer blog has been visited by A-B five times and they’ve poked around reading my blog for over an hour, forty-five minutes in just one visit! It feels a little weird, almost like I’ve been violated somehow. Since A-B is notoriously litigious, I confess it makes me a little nervous. I talked to my editor over at the Marin IJ, since I knew he’d read it last night, and asked him if there was anything I needed to worry about. He was very reassuring that I’m on firm journalistic and legal grounds. I just hope A-B sees it that way, too. I don’t really relish any David and Goliath-like fights. Those of you who watch Chappelle’s Show will understand this reference. I’m not sure I want to be “just keeping it real.”

Update: A-B has visited my blog two more times this afternoon, the most recent time was spent reading my biography. I don’t mean to seem paranoid, but I actually am and I have that odd feeling in the pit of my stomach that something bad is about to happen. Sheesh.

When Christi sent me the infamous blue tux photo for Sheldon’s birthday last weekend, she also sent along this delightful picture which seemed perfectly suited for this week’s group photo. Check out the date of the dance, it was almost twenty years ago. Of course, there are quite a few other clues that this was taken in the 1980s.

Top row, from left: Lenny, John, Sheldon and Mark. C.
Bottom row, from left: Jen F., Christi, Nikki and Suzanne.

I know I promised to keep politics out of the family blog, but this is really about children and their politics and it’s pretty funny, too, in its way. It’s about a study that began twenty years ago whose findings were just published last week. Here’s how the Toronto Star report on the study begins:

Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

Now that got my attention. According to the article, this is at least the second such study to draw the same conclusion. The earlier study, done at Standford in 2003, was savagely attacked by the right. I guess nobody likes be called whiny. And of course, nobody does savage attacking like the right, either. Can you say “Swift Boat?” Anyway the study was done at — where else — Berkeley, which will also doom it to not be taken seriously since having been done at a supposedly “liberal” institution means it must have been biased, especially if you don’t like the results. But as the article points out, “it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.” The original study was about personality and wasn’t specifically looking for political information. In the 1960s, about 100 nursery school kids were surveyed. The article continues.

A few decades later, [the author of the study] followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

An interesting question I have about all this is what role parenting methods may have played in turning our nation more conservative? Many prominent parenting “experts” (a loaded term if ever there was one) like Dr. Spock, T. Berry Brazelton and many others advocated techniques of letting the baby “cry it out” over the last several decades. And co-sleeping, while common in ancient times and up to the present in most of the rest of the world, is often equated here as almost criminal and morally reprehensible, although happily that’s finally starting to change. Even Dr. Sears has reversed his position on this one. Naturally, we’re in the snuggle camp. We believe it’s impossible to snuggle too much. Almost all, if not all, of the arguments against co-sleeping have been shown to be nothing but puritanical prejudice dressed up as science to justify those biases. And there are significant benefits, of course, both for the children and the parents. And one of the big ones is that not abandoning your child to scream in the next room to “teach him to be independent” fills your child with the idea that he is not alone and is loved, which leads to being a confident person. And now we know what raising a confident child leads to. So perhaps the best thing we can all do to insure a democratic future is to snuggle with our kids. I know I’m going to do my part. How about you?

My good friend Lisa, who lives in Portland, sent me this amazing little video. I must confess up front that I’ve always loved juggling, it’s a guilty pleasure. Maybe it’s because I can’t do it, but for whatever reason I can watch jugglers, especially novel ones, for hours. But this is the first time I’ve seen juggling to music. His name is Chris Bliss and the video is of him juggling to the Beatles’ last three songs from Abbey Road, which includes Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End. These are perhaps some of their lesser known tunes but they’re very dramatic songs and work very well with his juggling. Check it out, it totally brightened my day. Even better, check it out on a larger screen at Google Video.

With spring upon us, it was time for Porter to shed some of his winter fur and get a haircut. He was none to happy about it although overall he went through it pretty well.

Not happy to be in the chair.

Playing with Bob the Builder to distract himself.

Bullseye the horse from Toy Story 2 offers some comfort while the hair on the back of Porter’s head is cut.

The finished product: Porter’s spring haircut. Looking good. When I was his age, I got a buzzcut for the summer. Sheesh. And how that smile? It’s coming along nicely, don’t you think?

On Wednesday, we had about an hour and a half in between Porter’s occupational therapy session and his appointment for a haircut. I thought it would be easier to not go home so instead I took the kids out for pizza. Alice spent most of her time fishing ice out of her water glass and happily munching on it. I temporarily stopped her to take a picture, which is why she’s pouting in these photos.

Alice, with a mouth full of ice, and me.

“Do I really have to have my picture taken with you, Daddy?“