A future baked from scratch

I shared two pieces of honey cake with my 14 month old son last weekend on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Seemed simple enough, I found a recipe that appealed to me, baked it with the usual mishaps (hand mixer started smoking, couldn’t find 3 ingredients I was sure I had), and then the cake was consumed on a lovely fall-like afternoon.

But this was different. Yes, the cake was especially delicious and Duncan could not get it into his mouth quickly enough, but this moment made me cry. I had accidentally started a positive family tradition where I had none prior to this moment. I had started a positive family tradition with food to top it all off.

Starting out being a parent I felt so inadequate because of my upbringing. But as I move and live through parenting, feeling my way around it, I am finding that I don’t need a schedule or a how-to book for creating traditions or even spur-of-the-moment-fun. This seems to occur naturally when fairly happy functional people who love each other are together.

Earlier I was convinced I was lacking the mommy-gene, but I seem to be finding my way around the honey cake crumbs and sticky-little-fingers just fine.

Fortune Teller

The late Neil Postman, author, New York University professor, and prophet, predicted how and why people such as today’s members of the evangelical/fundamentalist movement and other right wingers would be living in a dream world cut off from reality. Postman is best known for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he wrote

"Television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. . . . What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. . . . Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble puppy."