Buttermilk & Molasses

The Baby Factory: Keep on Baking (Crosspost)

This is a crosspost from Garden of Words.

It's been a drama-filled week for the family-in-production, so we were happy to finally get Nikole to the ultrasound room with the jovial Dr. Love yesterday afternoon.

I was visiting my sister at work when Nikole called me from the hospital to say they were wheeling her down to Dr. Love's ultrasound pad, so I hopped in the car and raced down the interstate. When I pulled in, I passed my mom walking toward the maternity ward and flagged her down. So, both grandmothers-to-be were able to see everything first-hand.

My mom and I got there just in time. Diana, the ultrasound nurse, came in just a minute or two after we arrived and got down to work.

Bumble looks great -- long and skinny, but measuring very well. Apparently, she has a big head and long legs (both measuring about a week-plus ahead of the rest of her). They estimate her weight to be 4 pounds, 11 ounces at 33 weeks, which is pretty good.

Dr. Love came in to take a look at everything and entertain us. Dude likes to banter. But he's smart and thorough. His verdict -- baby looks good, fluid looks good, blood flow looks good, placenta looks good (except for the fact that it is in the way of the cervix still).

He plans to see us again on Monday morning for another ultrasound peek, and is considering an early discharge -- sending Nikole home with extra-strict orders to keep herself attached to the bed.

Dr. Murray, her regular OB, stopped by our room a few hours later with a more cautious view. She agreed that things looked good, especially with the baby, but said she was more inclined to keep Nikole in the hospital at least for the next week -- if not for the next three weeks. (That's my inclination, too. We've had almost three tough years getting here, and anything we can do to keep Nikole and the baby healthy through delivery sounds good to me.)

So, that's where things stand. We had a movie date last night, curled side-by-side on her bed with the MacBook and Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Today, I'll visit Nikole on-and-off through the day, and try to get started on painting the outside of the house; pick Rilo up from the kennel; and attend an Infant Safety class at St. Mary's Hospital. We're hoping Nikole's nurses will let us wheel her downstairs to see Rilo (who will be freshly bathed and tired after 3 days of running with her daycare pack) this evening -- she misses that puppy!

I'll try to update everyone again on Monday, after our morning appointment with Dr. Love.

The Baby Factory: Week 33 (Crosspost)

This is a crosspost from Garden of Words:

Well, here we are celebrating 33 weeks of pregnancy in Henrico Doctor's Hospital, where Nikole hopes to stay for another 24 days or so until they deliver the baby (who has received the nickname "Bumble" from her parents).

For those who don't know, Nikole has had some problems with her placenta (details at her weblog http://babylust.typepad.com) and has been at some risk for serious bleeding for a while now. That happened on Wednesday, when we returned home from an Infant CPR class. Without much warning, she started bleeding rather significantly. She called the OB on call, left a message and we leapt into the Jeep and headed for the emergency room -- her doctor had convinced us several weeks ago that ignoring serious bleeding was an invitation for disaster.

We checked in and were hurried to the Labor and Delivery unit where they pretty quickly plugged her into an IV and checked the baby's status. The bleeding had slowed, and the baby was wriggling around with a steady heartbeat -- which lowered our anxiety slightly. There was still some concern that we might be delivering that night, so we were on pins and needles for a few hours. Her mom and stepfather, my mom and our friend Nancy were hanging in there with us.

By about 11 o'clock, things had begun to stabilize. My mom headed home and I ran back to our house to pick up a few things for Nikole and let Rilo out for a few minutes. Everyone was gone by midnight, and Nikole and I settled in for what would be a fitful night.

After trying the reclining chair (too short) and the couch (too short), I settled on the fold-out bed (too short). There were lots of small interruptions through the night, and Nikole ended up getting only a couple hours of sleep.

Thursday was really a day of waiting. Nikole's OB (the very awesome Vienne Murray) stopped by while I was out getting Nikole some real breakfast and delivering Rilo to her indeterminate stay at the kennel near our house. And our new nurse -- the wickedly amusing and 23-week-pregnant and super-attentive Karen -- totally made the day for us. In addition to giving us all sorts of tips on dodging the more stringent rules, she reassured us an awful lot and gave Nikole a vigorous sponge bath in bed. (If it isn't obvious, Nikole is currently on total bed rest.)

At the end of the day, Karen packed us up and shipped us to the third floor -- a place I lovingly call Pregnancy Purgatory, since it sits smack between the Labor and Delivery unit and the Post-Pregnancy floor. We were broken-hearted to lose Karen, and even tried to bribe her with cookies to transfer upstairs with us.

Our new room is tiny -- a bed, a nightstand and a reclining chair (shorter than the previous chair). I organized things as best I could, and got Nikole settled in for the night. And then I went home and crashed. She apparently also crashed, falling asleep at 11 o'clock and waking up when I arrived around 7 o'clock this morning.

Dr. Murray came back by this morning and gave us more clarity. The plan is for Nikole to deliver by c-section on April 22 (an already-scheduled date, mid-way between weeks 36 and 37). She said that Nikole would be here for the duration, which is actually a relief given the risks of more bleeding.

The basic goal is to keep her in bed most of the time, but gradually give her some more freedom -- i.e., being able to get up to go to the bathroom, take a shower, get dressed. Dr. Murray also hopes to get us a bigger room over the weekend, and make our three-week stay as comfortable as possible.

Our high-risk doctor is going to drop by later and do an ultrasound, and decide how much freedom Nikole gets to have. We'll also have a better idea of what's going on inside with Bumble.

Our current plan is to get her settled into her new room (hopefully) this weekend, and start a routine of sorts. Since the hospital is mid-way between our house and my work, I'll plan on eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with her -- and spending some nights (especially if the new room has a better chair). We'll figure out how we'll handle visits this weekend, too. Our goal will be to keep Nikole connected to close friends and family, but not to exhaust her with a thousand well-intended visits.

If plans come together (And that's certainly questionable, given our experience!), Nikole and Bumble and I will all be home together around April 25.

Style Spotlights the Mafia

With the Richmond Craft Mafia's very awesome Spring Bada-Bing on its way (Sunday, April 20, at Plant Zero), its appropriate for Style Weekly to spotlight a member of Richmond's most energetic craft family. One of my favorite card designers (my niece adores her ninja kitten card!), Erica Vess, gets a touch of the spotlight in the latest issue of Belle, Style's style and fashion supplement.

If Erica Vess’ stick-figure animal illustrations seem full of light and joy, there’s a reason. Long removed from her angst-filled years as an art student at Virginia Commonwealth University, Vess, a member of the Richmond Craft Mafia, now creates art that makes her happy.

“I like everything that is happening around me right now, and that is a big part of making happy art,” says the recently engaged Vess, who works by day as an artist for Old World Prints. “Back in college, I was trying so hard to be something I wasn’t. … I have long since come to terms with not being cool and am perfectly happy to get on with just having fun.”

Her paintings of stick-leg barnyard and safari animals, first conceived as a baby shower gift for one of her best friends, are simple but irresistibly cute — with the important distinction of not being cutesy.

You can check out Erica's irresistable prints at Bees Knees Studio or go directly to her Etsy shop and buy her out.

A Good Week for Style

Sometimes you miss it. Sometimes you hit it.

This week, Style Weekly hits it hard with a jam-packed issue bubbling over with good content -- from a great cover story on the Southern Graphics Council Conference to a slew of great news pieces to a snappy issue of Belle, their fashion insert. Just when you wonder whether print media has a future, Style shows up with a package that makes newsprint-soaked fingers a modest inconvenience.

News for Downtown's Migrant Class

For the six or seven people currently living in Richmond's downtown neighborhood of Monroe Ward -- that stretch of apartments, condominiums, hotels and tax-exempt buildings filled with employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia and VCU -- there's a new place to go for community news.

Monroe Ward joins the ranks of Richmond's expanding network of community weblogs with photos and information of interest to one of the fastest growing areas of the city. If you live or work between Jackson Ward and the James River, and Belvidere Street and the State Capitol, bookmark Monroe Ward and stay current.

Survey Says ... Roll Up Your Sleeves, Richmond

Tired of the gentlemen's agreement that keeps debate civil and public discourse milquetoast around this town? Well, go get tired about something else, because next Wednesday the largely invisible Coalition for a Greater Richmond is sponsoring a no-holds barred verbal sparring match about the recent survey about the political leadership in the City of Richmond.

"A Conversation about the State of Leadership in the City of Richmond" will be a three-person throw-down. While Christopher Newport University Professor Quentin Kidd will get the plush seat with armrests, the Coalition has decided to bring out the street-savvy experts from the local media to keep the discussion real. Columnist Michael Paul Williams of the Times-Dispatch and Scott bass (Style Weekly's political reporter) will be on hand to ask the hard questions -- and answer them if Dr. Kidd gets squeamish.

It all takes place in two short weeks -- Wednesday, April 9. Drinks and eats will be available at 5:30 with the presentation/discussion happening between 6:00 and 7:00 at that bastion of swank downtown dining, Bank, which resides at 1005 East Main Street.

Because there will be hors d'œuvre and drinks, the Coalition is looking for my more socially polite readers to RSVP if they intend to show up for the big event. You can email the Coalition at coalitionrichmondrsvp@crt-tanaka.com or call 804.675.8177 by Friday, April 4 if you want to score points with Miss Manners.

So, who is this Dr. Quentin Kidd and why is he prying into our family business? Good question.

Kidd is the director of Christopher Newport University's Center for Public Policy, and recently released a poll of 350 registered voters about the state of leadership in Richmond. The results were tepid. But with the proper spin, they're something else altogether!

Richmond voters are mixed on L. Douglas Wilders’ leadership of the city and the way he has tried to implement the new strong mayor form of government. Slight majorities think that compared to the past Richmond under Wilder offers positive hope for a better life to Richmond citizens (58% to 34%), think that Wilder is building an economic foundation for the future (55% to 32%), and think the city is better run (52% to 39%). However, voters are uncertain whether Richmond has made progress on improving relations with surrounding counties (41% to 40%). These mixed views are reflected in voter assessment about whether the city is headed in the right direction or wrong direction, with half (50%) saying more in the right direction and just over a third (38%) saying either mixed or the wrong direction.

The results also indicated that there remains a strong desire for change in the city:

Half of Richmond voters think the city is headed in the right direction, but when it comes to evaluating the overall political leadership of Richmond city government, voters by a wide margin want change. Just over 70% of voters say they want change and a new direction, while 20% say things are going well and should continue as is. This desire for change is reflected in mostly negative views of the working relationships between city institutions and the way issues have been dealt with. Nearly 3 in 4 voters say they are dissatisfied with the working relationship between the city council and the mayor, the working relationship between the school board and the city, and the handling of the Braves baseball stadium issue. Around 6 in 10 voters are dissatisfied with the management of city finances and with efforts to improve the quality of schools. A small majority are dissatisfied with taxes. Voters have no clear views on planning for a public mass transit system or on the working relationship between the city and surrounding counties in the region.

Now there are some issues worthy of debate. Let's get it on with the Coalition and their guests...

The Cost of War in Context

It doesn't seem to have sunk into the collective consciousness of America that the ultimate costs of the war in Iraq may ultimately be more than the entire federal debt that was accrued between 1781 and 1981 -- in the neighborhood of $3 trillion. Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz, co-authors of "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict," have been on the media trail for the past month explaining where this absurdly huge amount of cash has been, and will be, spent:

Why doesn't the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month -- $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we'll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

But the costs to our society and economy are far greater. When a young soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, his or her family will receive a U.S. government check for just $500,000 (combining life insurance with a "death gratuity") -- far less than the typical amount paid by insurance companies for the death of a young person in a car accident. The stark "budgetary cost" of $500,000 is clearly only a fraction of the total cost society pays for the loss of life -- and no one can ever really compensate the families. Moreover, disability pay seldom provides adequate compensation for wounded troops or their families. Indeed, in one out of five cases of seriously injured soldiers, someone in their family has to give up a job to take care of them.

But beyond this is the cost to the already sputtering U.S. economy. All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that's a conservative estimate.

Here are a few things America could do with $3 trillion:

• Pay down the national debt, which now stands at $9 trillion.
• About five years of free gas for every driver in the United States.
• 100 million Americans could attend Harvard with full tuition, room and board paid for.
• Feed and educate the world's poor for the next 30 years.
• 20 complete interstate highway systems.
• 15 round trips to Mars.
• You could buy the world a Coke -- 300 times

(Culled and extrapolated from a few sources, including: The Boston Globe, Physics Forums, USA Today) 

Geek Parenting

In a few short weeks, Nikole and I will be parents for the first time. We bounce between excitement and anxiety, which I suppose is natural when you're trying to decide whether your baby girl is going to grow up wanting to wear Doc Martens or ballet slippers -- and how you might manage to influence her to want to wear both. There are thousands of small things we do that will ultimately shape our daughter. Will she like reading or be addicted to video games? Is she going to hate listening to The Clash or sing along with Natacha Atlas? Is it possible that by the time she gets to kindergarten, she'll think every parent has six weblogs?

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing points ultra geeky parents to a new way of looking at parenting:

Wired's GeekDad blog has a great interview with "new weird" literary couple Jeff and Ann VanderMeer about raising children in a ultra geeky household, and about why tech geeks should care about the new weird.

A few of my favorite (and reassuring) quotes from the GeekDad interview:

When she was 10, she asked the neighbor's mother "What magazine do you edit?" because she thought all families had their own magazines. As for my fiction, she mostly encountered it as a teenager and made a show of not reading it, but then would talk to her friends about it when she thought I was out of earshot. Which was cute.

...and...

I think she embraces the strange and the new because of her upbringing ... But Erin has always been creative--playing in a band, helping run a great music store, writing, and all kinds of other things. She used to say things as a child that would crack us up, like calling a ferret a "long mouse.” The only way in which it kind of hurt her is that after Columbine her middle school targeted her as a possible problem because of the way she dressed, even though she got straight A's. it was a difficult time for her.

Who Would Illustrate Richmond's Master Plan?

Most city and regional master plans follow a similar format -- text, text, text, maps, illustrations. BLDGBlog spotlights an Atlanta-based collaborative project that uses the core concepts of graphic novels, namely story and art, to illustrate ideas on how best to humanize the Atlanta Beltline. "Willa's Wonderland" follows the travels of a young girl and a talking bird as the architects present a series of ideas on how to create a different sense of place around Atlanta.

A humanist model for the Atlanta Beltline envisions more than a belt that girdles the city. It must include supportive connections to neighborhoods along the way and a pathway filled with wonder. Institutions provide substantial support and inspiration to city inhabitants, in concert with dwelling and infrastructure. It is these Institutional Belt Loops that form the nexus of our reconstruction, encircling ten stops on the Beltline to invigorate strategic communities.

As a visionary collaborative model, we have constructed an idealized world in the representational form of a comic book. We were motivated to select a form of communication that would provide a platform for a writer, two artists and a gaggle of architects. We were able to work together by carrying forward our individual strengths to form a new synthetic vision. Though we are also aware of the comic nature of all idealized vision, this did not prevent us from joyful and serious forward progress.

The lead character in our narrative is Willa, a precocious eleven-year old. Through her journey around the Beltline she comes to understand the vital importance of building a dream with vision and wisdom.

Geoff has a Flickr set of all of the "Willa" images, but encourages people to check out the project's own website. The comments section at BLDGBlog has links to some other graphic representations of urban planning initiatives.

While "Willa" has a different look and feel, it still carries with it a bit of stilted earnestness -- I'd love to see a Jack Kirby-inspired treatment of a master plan for Detroit or some other crumbling industrial city, or the whimsical approach my old friend Joel Priddy might take in a graphic treatment of a future design plan for a neighborhood like Carytown.

Who would be a good artist to create a Downtown Plan graphic novel for Richmond?

You Say You Want A Revolution?

While Scott at Oregon Hill laments the increasing power of VCU to lay claim to real estate in Richmond, there is a simple way to fight power with power -- start your own country. World Changing has a few tips on starting your own micronation:

As tempting as it might be to declare your cubicle a sovereign state, customary international law actually does specify minimum standards for statehood.

   1. You must have a defined territory.

   2. You must have a permanent population.

   3. You must have a government.

   4. Your government must be capable of interacting with other states.

Under those rules, it seems to me that Oregon Hill almost qualifies.

Incidentally, the League of Micronations already boasts 35 member micronations -- though sadly many of the micronational websites seem to be suffering from a lack of attention.