April 30, 2008 3:11
Why link online with a stranger?
So I finally succumbed to Facebook. It's really your fault. You kept friending me. All your friend requests were starting to clog my Gmail account. It felt rude not to accept. Like I was refusing your friendship. Like I'm all that.
So far I've been friended by TIME colleagues and former workmates, sources and old school pals. My LinkedIn network is far more extensive and numbers now in the hundreds; those are almost exclusively work-related relationships.
About once a week, I get a request to link online from a complete stranger. Usually I click through to see if maybe I've just forgotten the name; maybe it's someone I met once at a conference or interviewed for a long-forgotten story. But more often than not, it's a complete stranger. More puzzling still, the introductory invitation is no more descriptive than "Please join my network." No friendly how-do-you-do; I-know-you-from; this-may-seem-strange-but.
Here's what I don't get. Why would you request a link with someone you don't know? What's the point of online social networks if they represent people who don't know you from Adam? Enlighten me.
April 30, 2008 10:59
New U.S. passport: efficient, high-tech, purty
Remember all the hullabaloo about a year ago on the mess that was the U.S. passport application process?
I applied a week ago last Saturday, April 19, for a renewal. I downloaded the application online at the surprisingly easy-to-use website of the U.S. State Department; then I popped it in the mail along with a $60 check. Easy, peasy.
A few days later, I panicked. My very ill mother in Japan wasn't looking too hot; I thought I'd have to plan another trip sooner rather than later. On the web site, it says standard processing time is four to six weeks. But even with the expedited service, which costs about double, it says it takes three weeks. I didn't know if I had that long.
When I called the toll-free number, I got a person. Honest. A person. Who walked me through my situation, and calmly told me that processing times were now only one week. One week! "You should get your passport next week," she said. Meantime, she told me to check its progress online. I did, with an I.D. code; the State Department then updated me every day with an e-mail.
A few days later, still anxious and disbelieving, I called again. I got—get this—another person. A person! "I see here it went out today," she said, cheerfully. The next day, there it was: my little navy ticket to international travel. It took exactly seven days.
It looks different from my old passport. For one thing, its cover isn't bendy. Says inside: "This document contains sensitive electronics." Electronics! For real? Plus it's got moving quotes by famous Americans on every page. Like this one from Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We have a great dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grants that America will be true to her dream."
I get all misty looking at it. It's so purty. Plus my photo isn't horror-movie bad...for a preggers mommy with no makeup or sleep.
April 30, 2008 9:00
If everything is coming your way, you're probably in the wrong lane
If I wrote motivational posters for a living, that's what mine would say. Actually, I didn't write that line; I found it in a fortune cookie from my buddy Greg's wedding. They've since divorced.
Another friend of mine, Rob Walker, wrote this terrific piece in his Consumed column in The New York Times Magazine. It's about a company called Despair Inc. that produces exactly the type of posters I'd want on my office wall. An example:
The helpful web site even suggests customers who might enjoy the poster:
Narcissists; salmon with delusions of grandeur; disaffected college students
Or how about
Go ahead. Write your own. Cures the Wednesday doldrums right up.
April 29, 2008 12:00
A morning in the head of a working mom
12:01 a.m.: Lie awake fretting over childcare and work. Baby sitter has selfishly selected friend's funeral over feeding my child chicken cutlets. Weekly newsmagazine selfishly refuses to move publication date in order to accommodate childcare implosion. Husband selfishly unavailable to pinch hit, due to existence of own career. What to do...what to do.
12:14 a.m.: High-def Gossip Girl taking up too much space on TimeWarner DVR. Must watch and erase.
12:32 a.m.: Can no one, for the love of donuts, invent a maternity pillow that actually allows sleep.
5:22 a.m.: What to do about childcare today...what to do.
6:01 a.m.: What would be an appropriate fate for that monster in Austria? Certainly not death, unless it's dragged out over the next 10 years and involves unspeakable pain.
6:12 a.m.: Speaking of execution, must figure out how to kill mouse living behind stove. Maybe explosives.
6:45 a.m.: Leave desperate follow-up message at company's on-site childcare service, begging for emergency coverage.
8:20 a.m.: Finally reach live person at childcare service; cajole her into opening last-minute spot.
9:35 a.m.: Skate into 9:30 meeting. Just in time for important discussion of sociopolitical implications of Miley Cyrus posing semi-nude in Vanity Fair.
April 28, 2008 3:11
I didn't take my daughter to work day
Did you? It was April 24, last Thursday. I totally forgot about it, even after Cathy, our head of Time.com operations, reminded me to post that day on the topic. In my defense, taking my daughter to work requires a) securing a spot for her in the company's on-site daycare; b) planning my commute around her; c) clearing my work schedule of any overtime activities. None of that happened last week.
But I'd still like to hear: What did you do for Take Your Child to Work Day, as I believe the day's been renamed? Does its co-ed reincarnation take away its relevance?
April 28, 2008 2:50
My Little Ponies ate my weekend
Meant to post about this last night, but my wee brain was still awhirl with singing horses.
I took my little one to see My Little Pony Live yesterday. For those of you without three-year-old girls living in your households, I refer to a Hasbro brand involving pastel-colored, talking equines with long-lashed manga eyes. There are picture books and videos and small plastic dolls with cotton-candy manes. The story lines are beyond stupid, the dialogue unspeakable, the songs something other than music. For three-year-old little girls, My Little Ponies are like lollipops made of crack.
This creature appears in my dreams. / HASBRO
And so I found myself in $35 seats at the WaMu Theater in Madison Square Garden yesterday, watching 90 minutes of stultifying trash having something to do with a pony tea party. But you know what occurred to me? This doody production is, for some hard-working person, a gig. It's a job. Just look at the hundreds of idiot parents like me, willing to shell out for tickets and pennants and stuffed-pony dolls. That equals work for stage hands, voice actors, script writers, dancing ladybugs. Why shouldn't they take advantage of our desperate attempts to buy our children's happiness?
I'd post the YouTube video I found but I'm pretty sure it's taken illegally. So click here for the Hasbro ad and share my horror.
April 24, 2008 10:29
Equal pay isn't a partisan issue. Is it?
The outcome of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (see post below) yesterday: killed. By filibuster. From AHN:
Republicans in the Senate successfully prevented Democratic colleagues on Wednesday from considering a bill that would have overturned a Supreme Court decision giving employees only 180 days to make pay discrimination complaints. The filibuster by Republicans stood with a vote of 56-42, or four votes shy of the required 60 that would have overcome the legislative obstruction and allowed lawmakers to take up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Its proponents are baffled:
"I don't know how anyone would oppose something like this. It just makes sense that people should be treated fairly," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said in a statement posted on his website.
Senate Democrats blame Republicans for blocking the vote to protect employers from litigious workers. But what about protecting workers from employers who seek to pay them differently based on gender, race or religion? Can somebody clarify this for me?
April 23, 2008 11:06
What you don't know about how much your colleagues earn can hurt you. Ask Lilly Ledbetter
A few weeks ago, I got an invitation from the president of my company to a breakfast meeting. Ann Moore asked me, as well as a handful of top women editors at our other magazines, to meet a woman I'd never heard of: Lilly Ledbetter. Oh, and Anita Hill.
Hill came to lend her support to Ledbetter's cause. Since I'd received the invite, I'd learned a lot more about Ledbetter. She had sued her longtime employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., for pay discrimination. Her case got all the way to the Supreme Court, where—in a 5-4 decision—she lost.
Here's her case: Ledbetter worked for almost 20 years as a supervisor in an Alabama tire plant. During that time, she was paid far less than her male colleagues—a fact she was blissfully unaware of until someone slipped her a note showing the discrepancy. Stunned, she took the company to court, where a jury awarded her over $3 million in damages. She hasn't seen a penny. Why? Because the Supreme Court decided, on appeal, that Ledbetter had missed the 180-day statute of limitations on making her complaint—and that the clock started ticking the day she was hired.
Got that? So if you don't make a formal complaint of discriminatory pay within six months of the time your pay was decided, you don't have a case. Never mind that most of us have no idea what our colleagues make, and certainly not within months of our hiring.
Ledbetter, a sweet-voiced, kind-eyed Southern granny, didn't take this decision lying down. Though she's deeply in the red thanks to the court outcomes, she's made it her personal crusade to both publicize the law and change it. Today, the Senate votes on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would eliminate this crazy time limit on righting an institutional wrong. Read more about her case at the web site of the National Women's Law Center. Here's a blog post she co-wrote on HuffPo. Here's a video on her case:
April 22, 2008 2:56
10 reasons being pregnant at work blows
1. Office chairs laughably ill-designed to accommodate enormous rear.
2. Vending machines promote increased enormity of rear.
3. Bathroom is far, far away. Even when it's not.
4. Maternity office wear designed by mean, skinny people.
5. Glass office doors prevent 3 p.m. naps.
6. Three p.m. meetings prevent 3 p.m. naps.
7. Unsuspecting colleagues baffled by irrational behavior.
8. Bosses pile on assignments before due date.
9. After-work cocktails but a distant memory.
10. Profusion of doofus comments and questions: "Look at you, you're getting big!" "Are you...pregnant?" "So when exactly are you coming back?" "Seriously. Are you pregnant?"
April 22, 2008 11:30
Start spreading the news: statistically speaking, motherhood can't always wait
I had lunch the other day with a colleague who told me something totally alarming: that after age 40, the chances of a woman conceiving using natural methods is 5%. Five percent! Her point is that women suffer a great disservice when we're told, over and over, that motherhood can wait. Go ahead, grind out the hours at the office; gun for the fast-track projects; raise your hand for the business trips on which you'll never meet a guy who isn't hiding his wedding ring in his suit pocket. Career first; kids later. Right?
In researching this, I came upon this article on PregnancyandBaby.com that outlines your medical likelihood of conception at various age groups. Helpful, but not definitive. Here's an illuminating Q&A on WebMD with a Dr. Amos Grunebaum, medical director of the WebMD Fertility Center.
But the most thought-provoking story I found on this topic is Nancy Gibbs' 2002 piece in TIME, titled "Making Time for a Baby." She writes,
Baby specialists can do a lot to help a 29-year-old whose tubes are blocked or a 32-year-old whose husband has a low sperm count. But for all the headlines about 45-year-old actresses giving birth, the fact is that "there's no promising therapy for age-related infertility," says Dr. Michael Soules, a professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine and past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM). "There's certainly nothing on the horizon."
In her article, Nancy discusses Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, which was at the time stirring up a big fuss: would Hewlett's argument that young women must change their approach to having families and careers derail the gains of the feminist movement in the workplace?
Five years later, I'm not sure of the answer—at least for my generation. On the one hand, I look around at my own workplace and see two of my colleagues return from maternity leave and immediately receive well-deserved promotions. But in my current role squatting in middle management at TIME, I can tell you it's not a sane job for parents of young 'uns. I can name a number of talented, high-performing peers—male and female—who actively avoid promotions in order to keep a schedule that allows us time with our little people. By doing so, am I undermining hard-fought feminist gains? Or just doing the best I can to stoke a reasonably satisfying career while raising a family?
April 21, 2008 2:01
Peace Corps bars HIV-pos volunteers?
Just got this release from the ACLU:
The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the Peace Corps today demanding that it change its policy of barring people with HIV from serving as volunteers. The ACLU sent the letter on behalf of a Denver volunteer who was sent home from his post in the Ukraine and terminated after he tested positive for HIV.
Here's the volunteer's story, again via the ACLU:
“I joined the Peace Corps because I wanted to learn more about the world and help people,” said Jeremiah Johnson. “It was hard enough to learn that I had contracted HIV, but to then be shipped home and told I was unworthy of finishing my service was incredibly humiliating.” Johnson, now 25, began his tour as a Peace Corps volunteer in December 2006. He tested negative for HIV prior to beginning his service. For nearly thirteen months, he was the sole volunteer in Rozdilna, Ukraine, where he taught English to middle and high school students. In January 2008, Johnson, who was in Kiev to attend a Russian language program with other volunteers, received a midservice medical examination and opted to take an HIV test. After the results confirmed that he was positive for the disease, he was immediately told that he could no longer work in the country because of a Ukrainian law barring people with HIV from working in the country. He was also told he would not be able to finish his service elsewhere.
Then here's what happened:
Although he had no health problems, he was only allowed to return to Rozdilna for two days to pack his bags and say goodbye to the people he had met during his tour. He was forced to abandon projects that he had been developing to help the community. Johnson was then sent to Washington, D.C., for an end-of-service medical exam. In DC, he again asked Peace Corps officials to explain why he was being terminated and asked if he could continue his service elsewhere, but these requests were denied. Instead, he was given an automatic medical termination, stating HIV as the reason for his termination.
A copy of his termination documents are here. What do we think? Does the Peace Corps have a case for keeping HIV-positive volunteers from certain jobs, or is it blatant discrimination?
April 20, 2008 5:53
Sunday in the park with Benedict, live
April 20. I have a date today. To be totally honest, I’m not really looking forward to it. For one thing, I’m not sure about the guy. He seems like a nice-enough man, impressively intelligent and admirably energetic—considering his 81 years, anyway. But I already know we differ markedly on many issues that are of deep importance to me. For another thing, it’s kind of a logistical nightmare. I have to get from my house in New Jersey to Yankee Stadium without a car due to tight security, and at eight months of pregnancy I'm not relishing the trek. Oh, and 58,000 other people are coming along.
Still, as an American Catholic, I feel I ought not pass up the opportunity to attend a papal Mass, no matter my misgivings or the transportation obstacles. So here I am on my way to a date with Pope Benedict XVI.
NOTE: I didn't actually liveblog this, as I attended as a civilian and we hoipolloi weren't allowed laptops in the stadium. And I wanted you to experience the day with me in proper succession so I didn't break it out into separate posts. Hang in there; there're snapshots!
9:58 a.m. I leave the house to drop my three-year-old off with the sitter, then drive across the Hudson River and park near a subway stop in Harlem. There are more white people on the D train to Yankee Stadium than I’ve ever seen. A contingent of young women wear black windbreakers emblazoned with the words Choose Life. Although clearly I am bearing the consequence of having heeded their message, none of them offer me a seat. A cheer goes up when the subway conductor announces the stop.
10:40 a.m. Hordes of faithful inch out of the station and toward the stadium. Legions of New York's finest herd us toward the gates. Despite the cattle conditions, people—of every age, color and accent—are remarkably polite, chatting excitedly about the pope's earlier visit to Ground Zero; weather reports for the day (overcast and chilly); the preceding Concert of Hope and its headliner, Harry Connick Jr. When we get to the gate, though, the cheer turns to anxiety and annoyance as Mass-goers realize there are fewer than a dozen metal detectors set up for the thousands of us. It takes 20 minutes to move the last 10 feet. One of the security personnel decides to unpack the entire contents of my regulation-sized purse, and in the end confiscates my apple (did she think I might lob it at His Holiness?). Unbelievably, I don't reach my seat until after noon.
12:04 p.m. The Concert of Hope has already begun when I find my seat. The country's most famous ballpark has been transformed for the occasion into a sea of white, purple and gold, the Vatican's colors. The elevated stage is set up in the basic shape of a baseball diamond, with the pope's throne just over second base. The first act involves dancers in white unitards affixed with wings. Much more interesting is the parade of priests: pastors in white robes, seminarians in black, Franciscan monks in brown. There's a gaggle of nuns in bright blue veils, another group of sisters in gray, a choir robed in purple and gold.
12:30 p.m. The Harlem Gospel Choir gets the crowd on their feet with "Oh, Happy Day." As a rule, Catholics don't get on their feet, at least not to sing and dance; there's enough mandated sit-kneel-standing in Mass. None of the musical acts—not Ronan Tynan, Marcello Giordano, Jose Feliciano, Stephanie Mills, not even Harry Connick Jr.—induces the kind of eyes-closed, hands-in-the-air worship I've seen at evangelical services. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure the Harlem choir isn't Catholic. They've got way too much soul.
1:47 p.m. Some diva takes the stage to warble R&B renditions of classic hymns, and the Concert of Hope officially becomes the Concert of Nope, You Can Hope But It Ain't Yet the Pope. I take a bathroom break, and find a line at the ladies' room 58 people long. There's a nun guarding the exit to make sure no one jumps the line. There are many ways to serve His Eminence today, and I would argue hers is among the noblest.
2 p.m. Mass is supposed to begin now, but instead of the Popemobile, the dancers in white unitards are back, this time unfurling giant paper birds. A flock of doves—actually, more likely white homing pigeons—are released to flap around the ballpark. These pigeons are definitely not from New York.
2:17 p.m. "He's here!" "It's him!" The Popemobile finally appears on the Jumbotrons, then comes into view from Monument Park out in left field. Soon Benedict himself is visible, dressed in white, genuflecting slowly from within the little vehicle. He gets to home plate, then disappears into the Yankee dugout, presumably to change outfits. The crowd waves the yellow and white dinner napkins we were handed upon entry and begins to chant: "We want the pope!" "Be-ne-dic-tu!"
2:40 p.m. Benedict steps onto the stage. He walks slowly, gripping his golden staff, stopping to wave and acknowledge the crowd. He is wearing a gold miter and vestments, in contrast to the cream of the cardinals who processed before him. I'd read the cream represents anniversaries; turns out we're celebrating the bicentennial of the creation of New York, Philadelphia and other dioceses.
3:02 p.m. When the lector steps up for the first reading, I realize that of the hundreds of brilliantly robed celebrants on the stage, she is the only woman. The second lector is a woman, too. Oh, and the two sign-language interpreters.
3:20 p.m. Benedict begins his homily. He has a rather surprisingly gentle, mellifluous voice. I took his sermon to mean that as much as we ought to value our freedom in this, the land of the free, freedom means little without truth, and that we are obligated to pursue justice and good even as we cherish our liberty. "In this land of religious freedom," he says, "Catholics found freedom—not just to practice their faith but to participate in civic life." When he says that obligation extends to protecting "the most defenseless among us, the unborn child in the mother's womb," the crowd erupts into its first ovation of the sermon.
4:15 p.m. An army of priests fans out around the stadium to distribute holy communion. Though the event has gone off fairly smoothly so far, all organization appears to crumble at this all-important sacrament. The crowd watches in envy as about 40 super V.I.P.s receive the host from the pope himself—envy not just at their proximity to the Holy Father, but at the speed and orderliness of their rite. For the rest of us, it's a scrum. The priests are escorted into the stadium seats by cops and Knights of Columbus, in their silly feather-boa hats, where cupped hands are thrust toward the golden bowls, all but grabbing at the wafers.
5:00 p.m. Mass is over. The pope exits the stadium in his bullet-proof golf cart. As I make my way home, I feel glad to have experienced a landmark event for American Catholics—though being in the papal presence did little to answer my many questions about the church, its future or my place in it. Still, I kind of liked Benedict. I'd see him again.
April 18, 2008 5:58
We was robbed. Robbed!
Every year, my company doles out awards to itself. Time Inc., proud publisher of 125 magazines, recognizes its employees and titles in categories like best design, best reporting, et cetera. I suppose it would be like Disney giving itself awards for Best Animated Kiss, or General Electric for Best Turbine Adaptor. Come to think of it, they probably do.
The Luce Awards—unbeknownst to our long-dead founder Henry R. Luce—apparently has a new category: best blog. WiP so did not win.
But my colleagues over at Swampland did. Here's what our boss, managing editor Rick Stengel, wrote in a staff memo this morning:
Swampland was awarded the “Best Blog” title. During this unusual presidential primary season, all the contributors to Swampland have raised the level of intelligence, wit and analysis in the political blogosphere—all while writing and reporting their regular stories for the magazine and TIME.com. It’s enlightening and amusing at the same time.
So unfair! Not only is it about politics—a slightly hotter topic than, say, the work habits of church-goers—it's written by a whole team! Of stars! In Washington! Who hang out with Hillary and Barack! Some of you WiP loyalists have noted, sweetly, that some of my recent posts have generated decent discussion. But check out this one by Swampie Karen Tumulty. She writes all of 46 words, and gets 147 comments!
At least I've got you. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.
April 18, 2008 3:53
Ellen discovers the Hula Chair
From my husband's pal Janey Choi, who also sent us the link for this initial post. Happy weekend, all.
April 18, 2008 9:30
My impression of management so far
As I've mentioned, I'm squatting temporarily in a management job vacated by a beloved and longtime editor at TIME. The job entails overseeing a section of the magazine called Life, which is the part of the magazine everyone under 40 skips to. (I'm kidding, boss. I totally read that whole cover story on clean energy.) The section covers—well, life: health, fads, parenting, technology, money, philanthropy. It features lively graphics, great photos, useful tips. Does it sound like I'm selling? I am. Read the section. It pays my salary. And then ask your employer to buy an ad.
Anyway, after a week in this role, I now understand that managers have but one function: meetings. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Do you people do anything else? My Outlook calendar is teeming with meetings, and those are only the ones that are formally scheduled—not the impromptu ones that occur when people drop in with business. Used to be my colleagues stopped by for gossip and candy. Now they want to discuss a layout.
In a weird way, these meetings are kind of fun. As a writer, I'm usually focused on one project: me. My assignments, my sources, my deadlines. For an inherently social person, it can be a fairly isolating and isolated job. Suddenly I'm surrounded by people and talk and ideas and opinions. It's sort of what you imagine when you go to work for a famous newsmagazine, but not really something I experience in my regular role.
When I was backpacking through Europe as a college junior, I met a gaggle of American boys who had just finished up their own tour. We were about to head to Bologna, where they'd been. "What's it like?" we asked.
"AFC," they answered. "These towns in Europe, they're all the same. Another @#$%ing church."
AFM was my initial impression of managment: another effing meeting. But I just came from a really interesting one in which some very smart people sat around a big table and talked about the news of the day. That's pretty cool, right? It didn't even involve PowerPoint.
Go ahead, managers, make my day. Are your days all about AFM, or is management actually just one big party?
April 17, 2008 10:50
Sunday in the park with Benedict
I'm attending the papal Mass this Sunday at Yankee Stadium.
This is an odd thing for me to do. For one thing, it means giving up a precious Sunday I could have spent laundering little-girl underpants and vacuuming dog hair.
For another, it's five hours. On a hard stadium seat in the open air, which perhaps organizers thought would feel like home to a congregation used to wooden pews in a drafty cathedrals. Five freaking hours. Have I mentioned it's five hours? I go a long way to avoid baptismal Masses and First Holy Communions and any other sacrament that might extend my obligatory 60 minutes in church. (Before you Christians bombard me with e-mails again, take a moment to remember I'm Catholic. We're not supposed to enjoy worship.)
But the strangest part about me venturing across the bridge to see the pope—oh, all right, it's all of five miles from my house, while others are traveling across the country—is that I am a deeply conflicted Catholic. It's no secret that I've spent the past few years struggling mightily with my faith. (It's no secret because I wrote about it in a back-page essay for TIME.)
Though my issues dig all the way to the roots of my religion, the most nagging ones lie with the church itself. Like many American Catholics, I am passionately opposed to many of the Vatican's views—on reproductive rights, on gay people, on the role of women in the church. I regard Benedict, as the leader of said organization and the face of those views, with respect but no particular warmth.
So I see this little pilgrimmage across the Hudson River as less a spiritual exercise than an anthropological one. What I won't do for a good blog post, right? Also, my husband is playing in the orchestra and had a guest pass. Also, Harry Connick Jr. is performing. Also, I'm hoping one five-hour service will make up for the many I've missed over the past year.
Check back here for my review—I mean, my assessment—post-service.
April 16, 2008 10:24
Spain's new defense minister is tough, smart, young...and preggers
So my husband and I were listening to NPR this morning over breakfast when we heard this snippet:
For the first time, Spain's newly re-elected prime minister has announced a 17-member cabinet that has more women than men. One of them is Spain's first female defense minister, who is also seven months pregnant. Her appointment is causing waves in the Spanish media and beyond.
Holy orange juice! And I thought my job was demanding. But bossing the military? Carme Chacon's stress level trumps mine any day of the week. I'm trying to imagine sitting in on a Cabinet meeting suppressing pregnancy burps or waddling through a troop inspection in a big ol' maternity sack-dress. (Although I must say she looks uncommonly good; check out this AP photo and Lisa Abend's report from Madrid in this TIME.com article from yesterday.)
Never mind the hullaballoo in her famously male-dominated society; even the world's press is raising eyebrows. The Globe & Mail of Canada calls her "Large and in Charge" (that's a little rude, isn't it?). But the appointment has everything to do with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's commitment to equality. According to Abend in TIME.com:
In his first term, he passed a sweeping law against domestic violence, legalized gay marriage, eased divorce laws, and required political parties to practice gender parity. He also appointed equal numbers of men and women to cabinet positions, and named María Teresa Fernández de la Vega as his deputy prime minister.
Not only that:
Thanks to Zapatero's efforts, Spanish women are entitled to 16 weeks paid maternity leave.
Me, I'm betting Chacon is signing documents on her hospital bed. That's the flip side of women taking these traditionally male jobs; they're pressured to act more manly than any of their predecessors. Luckily, Hillary is long past her child-bearing years. As desperately as I want to see a woman in the Oval Office, I wouldn't wish her my sciatica.
April 15, 2008 11:00
Girls who go to church work harder
Growing up, I was made to go to church every week without fail. The experience left me with deep psychological scars. Here's one, according to a new study: having gone to church regularly apparently makes me work harder.
Researchers at the University of Georgia found that women who had attended religious services frequently (at least once a week) during childhood work about 80 additional hours per year when they are older. This effect is roughly equivalent to the impact on labor supply of an additional year of labor market experience.
A whole extra year! But at least I was raised a lazy Catholic. Worse off are my Protestant sisters:
Among Protestant women, the effect on annual hours worked of frequent religious participation when young is almost twice that amount.
Economics prof Ron Warren of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, who conducted the study along with colleague Chris Cornwell and Terry alumna Karen Tinsley, a researcher in UGA’s Housing and Demographics Research Center, speculates that
religious observance when young may give women a direction or “calling” to their personal conduct as adults, including a grea ter focus on market work. “Religious participation in childhood may instill a work ethic that is driven by early religious training, beliefs, or practice,” he says.
And guilt. Don't forget the guilt.
April 15, 2008 9:00
Another April 15, another missed deadline
The clock ticks inexorably toward midnight, and Chris and I are nowhere near completing our taxes. Again.
It's not that we're mindless procrastinators. We're both in deadline-oriented lines of work—mine featuring actual deadlines, his the deadline of a performance time. We work hard. We meet our responsbilities. We take out our recyclables on the correct days, at the correct times, in the correct receptacles. We just can't seem to get our freaking taxes done on time.
What's the problem, you ask? Well, this year, I was out of the country for the weeks leading up to the filing deadline. Why couldn't we have wrapped things up earlier, you ask? Well, we were kinda busy, juggling jobs and raising a kid and being pregnant and stuff.
What about previous years, you ask? Well, there was that one year we apparently forgot to press "send" and Intuit failed to register our Turbotax filing. It turns out the IRS doesn't think that's a legitimate excuse. And then there was last year. I can't remember why we couldn't file on time last year. All I know is we wound up pressing "send" sometime in mid-fall.
Missing deadlines gives me agita I don't need, and yet we can't seem to keep from missing the big one, at least as far as personal finance goes. If we fail this one, doesn't this mean we fail at time management? What's wrong with us? Are we alone?
POST-SCRIPT: I'm not alone!!! There are 10.3 million other procrastinating, lazy-a**, 1040-dodging jerks this year! Failure loooves company.
April 14, 2008 11:20
Hot job in China: official cheerleaders
While in Japan my main connection to the news was my Pop's Daily Yomiuri, which is a crap newspaper if ever one existed. The headlines are convoluted and grammatically horrifying; its front page is apparently selected by a committee of old Japanese dudes who have no clue what makes for relevant news to an international audience. Take the closing of a popular restaurant in Osaka, which somehow merited above-the-fold coverage in the English edition. Who gives a poop?
Its saving grace is its inclusion of selected articles from the Washington Post, Guardian and (ahem) TIME. One time the paper reprinted some garbage I had written for TIME's Asia edition, and I swear my father was prouder of that one clip than anything I've ever had published. Including my book, which I dedicated to him. What can you do?
Anyway, the Yomiuri's selection of articles from finer publications being highly suspect, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised at the inclusion of this important item from the Washington Post that says China is training hundreds of thousands of people to cheer at the Olympic games this summer.
They have been taught when to roar their approval and why not to boo other teams, especially those from onetime enemy countries. They will be assigned to events based partly on the decibel levels desired, organizers say.
Now, now, boys, before you get all hot and bothered:
Visitors to Beijing should not expect to see armies of Chinese 20-somethings in communist-red tights. The cheerleaders are more likely to look like a sorority of grandmothers, wearing matching T-shirts and equipped with props such as flags, handkerchiefs and "cheering sticks," inflatable, oblong plastic balloons that generate thunderous applause.
But China's already got an all-star squad. Why not hire this squad of overweight, bald Chinese men, wowing the crowd at this pro basketball game? Who needs cheering sticks when you've got belly jiggle?
April 8, 2008 4:28
Caretaking is no job for the weak
You start out all energy and clumsiness, oblivious to the routine, anticipating unmade demands. You arrange store-bought flowers in gaudy vases. You stack the unopened CDs. You hang up the crisp pajamas your mother will never wear while in hospice.
Soon you're getting the groove. You squirt the hand sanitizer automatically as you enter the floor. You scope out the kitchen and note the microwave, toaster oven, hot-water dispenser. You forget only a couple of items on her list of stuff from home.
You get to know the staff. They're friendly and professional, the nurses all young women, the doctors both men. They answer your questions patiently, spelling out the names of all of the drugs, explaining the procedures for palliative care.
You get to know the other caretakers. We bustle in and out of the kitchen and we nod politely, smiling with tired eyes. We bus the trays of food and slice up strawberries and snip the flower stems. Then we bustle back to our patients.
By now you remember she prefers flowers from her garden: daffodils, lilies of the valley, sprigs of rosemary. You risk arrest and public flogging by snipping branches heavy with cherry blossoms in full bloom from the neighborhood park. You know she takes her chai with extra milk. You launder her gowns, restock the towels, arrange the framed photos of the 10 grandchildren just so.
Yet when she wakes up from a morphine haze, she asks, "What am I supposed to do now?" And you don't have an answer. Because you're wondering the same thing yourself.
About Work In Progress
Nina Subin
Lisa Takeuchi Cullen is a staff writer for TIME. She blogs about work. Why? Because TV was taken. Think of her as the grumpy colleague ranting by the water cooler.
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Email her here:
lisa_cullen at timemagazine.com
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