The Setting Sun

Did you ever read Lucky Luke comics or J. T Edson?  Cowboys ride into the setting sun. After Matilda and a quick visit with our dear friends who are both having a tea with cancer (as opposed to battling it), we left Austin and drove into the setting sun.

The next morning we woke up in Lubbock and drove to Colorado Springs and to Aaron's house. Carol, Uncle Tom and Aunt Anna were visiting from Nebraska. The kids played. The men drank rum. The morning after that we departed with Carol for Telluride.

This is what kids look like after they have driven for 24 hours over three days. We reached Telluride in the evening. It was 52 degrees. And frankly that's all we cared about. 

Matilda

Evan and Vivian are together in a musical for the first time. Today we went to see the end result of a two week Alana Adderley musical camp. The only people who came were parents, relatives and friends who are deeply indebted to the performers in one way or another. The best part of the performance was that it was short. The second best part was the innocence of youth. They didn't care how bad or good they were - they stood in front of us with more guts and enthusiasm than any adult in the bleachers and they did their thing. Most of these kids won't end with successful careers on Broadway. But I will be surprised if they don't surprise us with what they end up doing.

Vivian and Evan have a long history with Matilda. They've watched the movie a million times and have seen the show in London in last Fall. Bruce - the kid who is forced to eat a whole chocolate cake in front of the school by a crazy principal, Ms. Trunchbull, is a legend, revered by Vivian and Evan and their cousins. So when Vivian wasn't picked to be Matilda and Evan was chosen to be Bruce, it was a mixed bag at home.

Alana is a force of nature. The show, as always, ended with a great short speech by Alana - except during this one, Evan jumped up and down on his box and Jo almost stepped over a few rows to go beat his ass. I for one was impressed by how well the kids did. 

But the best shot of the evening was not Vivian or Evan or Ava delivering their songs on stage. Zizi is going to rule the world one day. Calmly and without doing much more than half smiling like Mona Lisa. Can't you tell?

Haircuts and More

Yesterday Jo took both Evan and Vivian for trims. Vivian has been asking for bangs for a while and Evan has been resisting all discussions about going to the barber. "I'm going to grow out my hair" is his common refrain. I could barely recognize either kid when I saw them. Here they are with their cousins Grace, Ava, and Cade.

We have just finished watching a great performance of the Jungle Book. The Cousins were elephants (African, not Asian hathis, haha). Cade was the tiniest elephant, but he didn't play the role of the Baby Elephant "because I'm not a baby". Afterwards Nicolle treated everyone to gelato.

For inexplicable reasons, Disney took Kipling's imperialistic bombast and added King Louie to it. Louie is an orangutan (they don't live in the Indian jungles) and is often described as a thinly veiled reference to an African American. Disney introduced him as the king of the Kipling's leaderless bandar-log, a bland reference to colonial Indians who needed the rule of the white man - thereby adding a whole new layer of heated discussions in graduate literary criticism classes everywhere for decades.

Speaking of racism (nice segue), Jo and I had left the kids with Sarah and went to a friend's for dinner a couple of nights ago. There were guests Jo and I had never met before. After some wine, a guest was saying how the shootings of black men by police in 8 out of 10 cases were essentially justified (he might not have said those exact words but said something very close).

I know that this opinion exists in the wild but I had never faced it across a dinner table. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jo tapping the napkin holder on the table. It was a heavy metal ring with "family" and "friends" inscribed in cursive. She was getting ready to throw it at this guy. Specially when he explained how in the 70's he worked in civil rights. "I taught these people skills that they didn't have. Once I hired one of them even if he wasn't qualified for the job".

A black man in the US today is justifiably very scared when interacting with the police. A broken tail light could be the end. If it wasn't for phone cameras the public wouldn't know any better. Evidence would be planted. Stories would be made up. Anyone who argues that needs to read up some more.

Some say that if they followed every instruction, the police wouldn't need to shoot black men. A black man laying on the ground with his hands in the fucking air trying to protect his autistic client who is playing with a toy truck gets shot. A white man who shoots 9 black people dead in a church in Charleston is successfully arrested in the next state in a traffic stop without a single shot being fired. This is where we are. They say that if you don't know what you don't know, it's isn't going to be easy. We are screwed, kids. Long road ahead. 

A Slowish Start

After a super busy weekend, the week thankfully started slowly. On Monday morning Jo took the kids to camp while I met Guy for a morning stroll along the green belt and discovered a tiny turtle. Which led to an interesting discussion on evolution and Attention Schema Theory and the evolutionary purpose of self consciousness and the low price / low risk of certain false positives on the savanna and hyperactive agency detection devices and bam! Before breakfast we had explained the desperate human desire for God.

I wish more days were so easy.

Later that morning I was on the UT campus and the clock tower's clocks were frozen at 11:48 to mark the 50th anniversary of the tower shootings. That same morning also marked the beginning of legal concealed handgun carry on campus. The Texas legislature is attempting to make us feel safe. Evan used to take his plastic sword to bed at night when he was three. But by five even he has fallen prey to logic and now his swords lay at night in his weapons box.

Tuesday morning dawned bright and sunny. I hurried off to the gym. A bit later, about the time I was laying in a pool of self pity on a gym mat, Jo tool this photo of Vivian enjoying breakfast tacos at the Shack. No braces!

That afternoon we asked Vivian how she'd like to celebrate. "With movie theater popcorn" Vivian replied without hesitation. So we went to iPic and saw the latest Ice Age sequel while Vivian ate all the popcorn she could. Vivian has had expanders and braces and other heavy metal devices in her mouth for almost exactly a year and she's done a fantastic job. She's kept away from foods like popcorn and sticky sweets. She's been to frequent scheduled visits to the dentist. And the big unscheduled visit last year when her friend's knee accidentally attached her braces to the insides of her lips and cheeks. And she's done it all without whining or seeking attention. Bravo.