This Friday I point you to some recommended reading around the blogosphere:

1. Here’s a moving story from the New York Times’ Modern Love column about how one woman chose to move on after a break up.

2. For the wordsmiths out there, here’s a great post on the expression “It turns out” from the jsomers.net blog (via Ben Casnocha.)

3. And if you’re really feeling literary-minded, have a look at this quick, six-minute quiz at Sporcle to see how many books you can name from their covers (Hat Tip: Katy Keim’s Book Snob.)

4. In the Department of Visual Effects, check out Britain’s best-loved streets in The Guardian, as well as 19 insanely colored houses at Burbia.

5. Here’s a thoughtful meditation on grief as a collective experience at Salon. Do not miss the embedded video, which features a teen-age girl’s song tribute to her mother who died of cancer.

6. Finally, for those feeling nostalgic for the 70s, my favorite film critic – New York Magazine’s David Edelstein – weighs in on how he’d cast the sequel to Gilligan’s Island on his blog The Projectionist.

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I’ve written before on this blog about cycling as the latest sign of maturity and the trend towards eco-friendly cars. (Pay no attention to that runaway Prius behind the curtain…)

Several trends now point to the beginning of the end of car culture in the United States. But are Americans seriously ready to embrace alternatives to automobiles?

Today I’m over on PoliticsDaily.com talking about the end of America’s romance with cars and what it might portend. Have a look…

Image: New Car by Sumlin via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

*****

A few months back, I did a post on why we ought to limit children’s computer time. Here’s an interesting rejoinder to that post in Babble, by a Dad defending his decision to let his son play violent video games.

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

I mentioned yesterday that we will soon be moving.

Did I mention how much I absolutely *hate* moving? If I had my fictitious wife, I think I’d put “orchestrate all moves” at the top of her list of duties.

Not everyone feels this way about moving. I think it’s a great example of something where there are just two kinds of people. One friend of mine, for instance, loves to move because it enables her to throw away all the things in her house that annoy her. My husband doesn’t actually mind it either. It gives him an excuse to re-allocate our many gadgets within an entirely new space. (Aha! So the Dustbuster really *can* fit on top of the television! Whaddya know?)

But for me, moving is the very embodiment of hell. So if, like me, you dread moving house, here are five tips to make the process easier:

1. Get boxes beforehand. Lots of them. This sounds obvious but it’s amazing how many boxes you need to carry out even a small move. Fortunately, after all of my work on the PTA soliciting donations from various local businesses, most of the merchants in my neighborhood on a speed-dial relationship with me already. So I don’t foresee a problem obtaining boxes when I need them. But if that weren’t the case, I’d begin collecting now. Buying them from Mailboxes Etc. really adds up. Trust me!

2. Make a Change of Address List. Right now – while you’re thinking about it – sit down and make a list of every possible place that needs to know that you’re moving. Not just obvious places like your kids’ schools and your doctor’s office, but all of your frequent flyer programs, any utility companies who send you a paper bill, your grocery store if you have food delivered, and especially your local voting authority. There are way more than you think.

3. Declutter Now. I’m not a natural de-clutterer. I tend to favor putting things into neatly stacked piles, only to ignore them until said pile topples over under the weight of freshly sorted material. And particularly with this move we’re about to embark on, it looks like we’ll be moving into a considerably larger space. So it’s really tempting to just hang on to that PlayMobil Castle and all its attendant turrets, even though my son hasn’t played with it for years. But that would be a huge mistake. Because there are so many things – clothes, toys, kitchen aids – that we simply don’t use and must go buh-bye. (Unsure of what to toss? Here are 8 specific tips from the decluttering guru, Gretchen Rubin.)

4. Have someone else pack for you. Sadly, we can’t afford to pay someone to pack up for us this time round. But I have done that twice in my life and my husband often comments that those may well have been the two happiest days of my life. (Too bad all I owned at the time was a suitcase, a guitar and a futon, which did take a bit of zing out of the pleasure, it must be said.) But there is *nothing* like having a couple of people whisk into your house and pack up your belongings while you sit there sipping a cup of tea with your feet up.

5. Buy some Xanax. Really, just do it now. You’ll thank me later.

*****

Speaking of moving, Aiden Donnelly Rowley had an interesting post over the weekend on Ivy League Insecurities about what it’s like to sell a house and that bitter-sweet feeling that accompanies the open house. Have a look…

Image: Packed Boxes Upstairs by Arthaye via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

We’re about to move.

We just got notice from our landlord that we have 60 days to vacate our home. And among the many things we’ve had to contemplate on short notice is whether or not we want to continue to rent or go ahead and buy.

I’ll cut to the chase and reveal that it looks like we’re going to be renting our next flat (which – in an act I can only attribute to God or Karma or both – we may have miraculously already found, the very day that we got kicked out!) But for a brief moment over the weekend- 48 hours or so – we thought seriously about buying.

I’ve written before in this space about how I find safety in movement. For me, buying a house falls into a long list of things – jobs…careers…continents – which make me feel trapped, and from which I instinctively flee.

So I was heartened when renowned Yale economist Robert Shiller gave me an out from forcing myself to confront my commitment-phobia in a column that he wrote for the New York Times last week. Shiller points out that the United States government has been subsidizing home ownership for decades. And it has done so largely for cultural reasons:  for many Americans, owning a home is intimately bound up with our notions of citizenship. Home ownership is the very embodiment of individual liberty, whereas renting has been linked (culturally) with the oppression of the landlord.

Shiller wants to suggest that this American attachment to owning a home needs to end. Financial theory tells us that people should diversify their assets, rather than dumping them all in one place (a home). And by encouraging people to take a leveraged position in the real estate market at all costs, mortgage institutions have encouraged this culturally rational – but economically irrational – practice. And we all know where that got us. (Thank you, sub-prime mortgage crisis.) (For an interesting perspective that argues the exact opposite, see this article in Forbes.)

Shiller’s bottom line, then, is that we should re-think the idea of renting because it might make more sense for the majority of Americans. He gives Switzerland as an example of a country that has re-jiggered its housing finance institutions in the direction of rentals without sacrificing national pride.

Shiller isn’t framing it this way, but another way to put what he’s saying is that in the present economic climate, it may actually be more grown-up to rent, rather than to buy. Which is the exact opposite of how we normally think about this issue.

To which I say: Amen. When can I sign the lease?

*****

Yesterday, I was over on PoliticsDaily.com talking about the never-ending War In Iraq and its ongoing political and cultural legacy.Have a look.

Image: For Rent – Reduced??!! by Kelly Sims via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

Every Friday I point you to some recommended reading around the blogosphere:

1. Here’s an incredibly well-written account of what it’s like to live through an earthquake from Ben Casnocha, who’s living in Chile.

2. In the department of funny bits about aging, have a look at this post on The Ten Geekiest Ways to Hide Your Age at The Boomer Chronicles. While you’re at it, have a look as well at this thoughtful take on what The Partridge Family might look like 30 years on at Surviving Middle Aged Widowhood.

3. More funny. Sara in Vermont shows us a laugh-out-loud British comedy sketch about a writer pitching an idea to an agent. (Hat Tip: There Are No Rules.) And here’s a very funny four-second video at Formerly Hot designed for those of us who remain technologically challenged.

4. Further to last week’s recommended reading on libraries and librarians, here are some stunning photographs of 20 of the World’s Most Beautiful Libraries, as well as writer Bibi van der Zee’s take in The Guardian on what it’s like for a true bibliophile to go a week without books.

5. Finally, because sometimes you really can’t make this sh!$ up, here’s my post on PoliticsDaily.com today about the new condoms being designed for – gulp – 12 year olds.

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For Oscar lovers like me, the usual nail-biting anticipation that accompanies the Annual Academy Awards is all the greater this year. Not only are there more films up in the category of Best Picture, but the rules by which that movie is selected have also changed. And so, the big question on everyone’s mind is: who benefits?

Today, I’m over on PoliticsDaily.com talking about these new rules and what they might mean for the future of “grown up” (read: Indie) films. Have a look.

Image: I’d Like To Thank The Academy by IceNineJon via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.

About a year ago, I wrote a post entitled Five Things You Never Knew About Finland. I had just come back from a short trip to Helsinki, and was amazed by the assortment of fascinating – yet obscure – things I learned about this small Scandinavian country.

In a similar vein, I’ve just attended a quiz night at my son’s school, where I again spent an evening absorbing a treasure trove of arguably arcane – but indisputably interesting – facts about the world ranging from religion to history to pop culture to sport.

It’s tempting to dismiss these little facts as irrelevant. But as this recent post by etiquette expert Lisa Mirza Grotts notes, small talk isn’t trivial. It is, in fact, the very fabric of social interaction, the way we connect with other human beings.

In that spirit – and because, let’s face it – at some point in our lives, we all end up stuck in a line…or on a bus…or at a cocktail party with people we don’t know, here are five facts you can whip out of your back pocket to liven up that conversation:

1. The River Thames changes name when it passes through Oxford. It’s called…The Isis. My well-bred hubby knew that one. I had no clue. Whenever I think of “Isis” I think of that proto-feminist, the Marvel Comic Superhero, Isis, as in: “Oh Mighty Isis…” Live and learn.

2. A simple white cooking sauce made from flour and butter is called a Roux. That’s right, not a Béchamel, as you might have guessed. (Gotcha!) That one’s got milk in it as well. The roux is the basis for all else sauce-wise, at least in French cuisine.

3. The minimum number of shots in darts needed for a checkout is nine. What is a check-out, you ask? Excellent question. Inquire here. But you are now armed (no pun intended) with some serious dart trivia the next time the topic arises.

4.The first American television program to air an on-screen kiss was The Flintstones. I love this answer. I was sure it was Lucy and Desi on I Love Lucy. My husband thought it was The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. But here’s an even better bit of trivia. The first on-screen inter-racial kiss? Star Trek (between that knave Captain Kirk and the wily Lieutenant Uhura). Love it.

5. Marie Antoinette was Austrian. I think most people – well, OK, me – assume she was French because she later became the Queen of France, and, well, her name sounds so French. But she’s not. Just another wanna be…

Image: Darts Anyone? by Shankool007 via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

Thursday is World Book Day. In honor of this event, the head teacher at my daughter’s school has invited all of the children to come to school with their favorite bedtime reading, dressed in their favorite pajamas.

She’s also invited all of the staff – and even the parents – to do the same. That’s right. The parents can come to drop off in their pajamas.

My first thought upon learning this was:  And this is different…how?

As a freelance writer working from home, I often show up to school in some version of my PJ’s. And happily so. Wearing whatever you please is one of the many perks of the freelance life.

But apparently, it’s not for everyone. A head teacher in Belfast recently imposed a ban on parents showing up to school in their pajamas, which he described as “rude and slovenly.” As he pointed out, ‘People don’t go to see a solicitor, bank manager or doctor dressed in pyjamas, so why do they think it’s okay to drop their children off at school dressed like that?’ This was shortly after a supermarket in Wales imposed a similar ban in its store after too many women (it’s always women, isn’t it?) showed up to shop for food in their PJ’s. (Yikes! I just did that this morning!)

While my initial reaction was to get the government out of my closet, I did end up giving this matter a bit of thought. Clearly, the head teacher in question  thinks that those of us who come to school half asleep are evincing some sort of disrespect towards the school, its teachers and the rest. But I’m not sure it’s quite that simple.

A lot of it is just laziness, convenience and the fact that – for many of us – just getting out the door most mornings in a semi-timely fashion is a major triumph, let alone properly dressed.

But there are other things going on as well.

One reason one doesn’t “overdress” for the school run – OK, one reason *I* don’t do it, except when it’s a new school – is that in not dressing up, I’m also trying to signal to other parents that, some days, I’m really not ready for prime time. Translated: “No, I don’t want a coffee. I don’t want to chat. I just want to go home.” (I’m reminded of a friend who once confessed that there were some mornings when she’d just like to show up at school in a Burqa. Amen, sister. I mean, praise Allah.)

But, of course, there are lots of mums who show up for the school run in their perfectly orchestrated sweater sets ready to take on the world. And their put-togetherness is also often a social cue designed to convey something to their peers.

I’m also aware that by not dressing up for the school run, I’m sending precisely the wrong message to my six-year-old tomboy daughter. She insists on wearing sweat pants, a hoodie (with zip!) and some sort of clashing, striped non-turtlenecked shirt Every. Single. Day. But how can I possibly harangue her for looking like a slob when I look like something that the cat dragged in? (“But Mommy, you haven’t combed your hair yet either…“)

All of which is to say is that even the seemingly trivial choices we make every single day are loaded.

And so I think it is an interesting question to ask:  When we dress to take our children to school, whom are we dressing for (assuming we aren’t on our way to a proper job): Ourselves? Our peers? The kids? The teachers?

And should there be a minimum dress standard in place?

What do you think?

Image: Pink Pajamas by DCVision 2006 via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.