June 7, 2010
11 Comments | 
Books, Expat Living, Trends/Studies/Research | Tagged: automated checkout, Cambridge library, future of libraries, John Keats, librarians, libraries, libraries and democracy, libraries and education, library books, library budget cuts, library cards, library closures, library closures in Boston, library hours, london review of books, Ode To A Nightingale, reduced library hours, reduced library hours in Los Angeles | 
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Posted by delialloyd
May 25, 2010
3 Comments | Current Events, Expat Living, Parenting, Trends/Studies/Research | Tagged: American PTAs, British education reform, British PTAs, budgetary shortfalls, charitable giving, coalition government, comparative PTAs, education reform, educational financing, fundraising, government debt, international trends in charitable giving, motherlode blog, parent-financed schools, parent-funded public education, PTAs, trends in American education, volunteerism, volunteerism in the UK | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
May 18, 2010
Christina Katz has a great post over on her Prosperous Writer E-zine this week about what she calls “clarity.” She defines clarity as “lucidity…exactness…simplicity.”
It’s about figuring out what you need and what you want as a writer and paring down your obligations and responsibilities so that you can really zero in on what’s important. (Note: you must subscribe to her free e-zine to read this post, which I heartily recommend.)
This is great advice for both writing and life, and something I continually have to remind myself to do when I start feeling overwhelmed. “Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity,” as the man said.
The problem is that isn’t always that…well…simple. Sometimes you can’t achieve clarity because there are too many loose ends in your life and you have to accept that some of these just aren’t going to get tied up in short order.
Which is where I’m at right now with – oh – just about everything in my life. You see, I’ve just moved house. So everywhere I look I see unopened boxes.
There are the real boxes, those last stubborn few that simply refuse to empty themselves because – if you cared to tackle them – they’d require you to scratch your head and say: Now where does that plug go? Which cannister is that the top to? And why, again, did we decide to save that yarmulke from that bar mitzvah five years ago?
Then there are the metaphorical boxes: The stack of New Yorkers that lie unread. The emails that began to pile up the day of the move and some of which sit still – unopened – in the dark recesses of my inbox. Those last few changes of address that haven’t yet happened because it turns out that you actually need to call the pension fund in the U.S. where you still have some pocket of retirement savings during (its) business hours because they can’t process an overseas address on-line.
And then there are all those technological boxes that can’t be opened because this is the U.K. where the customer comes last. So the internet provider lost track of your account and now you have to wait another 10 days for them to come to your neighborhood to set it up. Or the bank forgot to update your address so your credit card keeps getting rejected. Or – my personal favorite – the satellite dish for the TV can’t be installed because you live on the third floor and their ladders don’t go that high. (Um…no offense, but isn’t this what you do for a living?)
It drives me insane, all this mess. Because I hate things that are un-finished. I’m the lady who sometimes adds things to my to-do list *after* I’ve done them just to feel the satisfaction of crossing them off, remember?
So I’ve been feeling really unsettled lately. (It didn’t help that for the first five days of my move the U.K. didn’t have a government. I was like “C’mon, guys! Just make up your minds, would ya?“)
And then, something weird happened. Yesterday night was my monthly book group meeting. And, on top of everything, I hadn’t finished the book. This has never happened to me before. I’m one of those hard-core, unsympathetic book group types who *always* finishes the book. But this time, I just couldn’t.
But because I love my book club, I went anyway. Even though I hadn’t finished and felt wretched about that. (It helps that we were reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s marvelous Half of A Yellow Sun about the Biafran War. Speaking of learning how to live with mess…)
And you know what? It felt OK to be there, even half-read. Because it was the best I could do.
My life coach has a great phrase for moments like this. She calls it “radical acceptance.” It’s for situations where things are exactly how you’d like them *not* to be – where you can’t, yet, achieve “clarity.”
So you force yourself to extend the parameters of what you’d normally find acceptable. And you decide to just roll with it. Because you know that you are on the road to clarity.
And that’s O.K.
Radical Acceptance.
Image: Unopened Boxes by CDaisyM via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
4 Comments | Books, Expat Living, Wisdom of the Ages, Writing, productivity | Tagged: The New Yorker, To-do Lists, moving, Christina Katz, book clubs, change of address forms, british general elections, Prosperous Writer, clarity, mess, living with mess, coping with mess, half of a yellow sun, chimamanda ngozi adichie, Biafra, Biafran war, not finishing a book, hard-core book clubs, crossing off items on a to-do list, U.K. government, customer service in the UK, british customer service, installing a satellite dish, Unread email, unopened boxes, unpacking, simplicity | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
May 4, 2010
I’ve long been of the mind that right before you give something up – a car…a neighborhood…definitely a relationship – you allow yourself to be annoyed by that thing.
It’s not that the thing itself has changed in any fundamental way. It’s just that whereas you once focused on the upsides (he’s cute…he’s funny…my mother likes him), you now allow the negatives to creep in (I hate that shirt…please stop chewing like that…kissing you is so boring.) It’s just normal. It’s how we begin to separate before we say goodbye.
In that vein, as I pack up the last bits and bobs around our current house before leaving it permanently on Thursday, I find myself doing precisely that: allowing myself to hate all the things about this house that I’ve managed to put up with over the past four years.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to like about this house, which I’ve often described as an exceedingly well-located closet. I wrote a novel here. I started my blog here. And – most important of all – it’s the place that we first moved into when we decided to throw caution to the wind and move our family overseas four years ago. For that reason alone, it will always be special.
And yet, as we stagger towards the finish line, I’m allowing all the negative things I’ve suppressed about the house to come to the fore.
I’m not much of a poet. I usually leave that to the fabulous Communicatrix and her Poetry Thursday series. But as I take my last walk around this house and pick up the errant sock or felt tip (magic marker) cap or MatchAttax card that mysteriously appears – years later – in the obscure corners of our storage space, I find myself moved to wax poetic.
So here it is – my Ode to a Mews House – inspired by that childhood classic, Good Night, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I’m calling it Goodnight, Mews:
Goodnight Mews
In the tiny, cobble-stoned street
without a sign
there was a house
and for four years, it was mine.
And though I’ll be sad to see it gone
Here are some things for which I won’t long:
Goodnight kitchen tiles, that never quite fit
and were meant for the wall – not the floor – but tough sh*#.
Good night shower curtain, which hangs by a thread
And the sweaters I was forced to keep under my bed.
Good night builders, who knew nothing of plumbing
and Good night, next-door neighbors who hated my son.
Good night, storage closet that eventually hits earth
and was home to the rats who made our house their berth.
Good night, Toilet Seat from which I would fall
And the miniature fridge that stands two feet tall.
Good night shower that always floods when it rains
And goodnight darling landlord, you were really a pain.
Goodnight stars, Goodnight air
Good night Mewses everywhere.
*****
For those who are interested, head on over to PoliticsDaily.com to see why I think Gordon Brown will lose this election on Thursday.
Image: Pink Mews by tubb via Flickr under a Creative Commons License
11 Comments | Current Events, Expat Living, Lifestyle, Nostalgia | Tagged: British elections, Communicatrix, ending a relationship, goodnight moon, Gordon Brown, margaret wise brown, mews house, moving, moving house, moving overseas, poetry thursday series, saying goodbye to a house, separation | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
March 23, 2010
1 Comment | Expat Living, Lifestyle | Tagged: adult pop culture, BBC, bbc radio, bbc strategy review, bbc television, digital age, future of bbc, grown up telly, middle age, public radio, public service broadcasting, UK media markets | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
March 15, 2010
So I opened my Facebook account early this morning and came across this gem.
A friend of mine had linked to an essay at the BBC by a woman named Joanna Robertson. It was about a new ordinance in Berlin making it legal for children to make noise between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 pm. That’s right. The Germans had to pass a law in order for children to be…well, children.
When you read the author’s very funny account of what it’s like to raise a child in Germany, you may be a bit taken aback. As she reports, “‘Excessive child noise’ warranted a police call-out to our building for the crying of a newborn baby and, one Saturday afternoon, a group of cheerful 12-year-olds playing a game of Monopoly.”
And it’s not just in Berlin where things are rough for kids. Robertson also describes the rigorous and hyper-centralized French educational system her daughter was forced to endure, as well as the prohibition on getting your kids’ clothes dirty in Italy.
My friend on Facebook added this comment to her link: “Interesting comparison – wish they’d included London!”
Funny she should ask. One of the very first essays I published after moving to London a few years back was tellingly entitled “Where Have All the Playgrounds Gone?” It ran in the International Herald Tribune and it was an account – based on my then-newbie American eyes – of just how eye-poppingly different British expectations of childhood were from those I’d experienced in America.
As I wrote at the time: “Drama classes don’t advertise creativity; they talk about self-confidence, public-speaking and diction. Swimming lessons are not about making kids more comfortable in the water. They’re about learning the backstroke, dammit!“
(Of course, Americans are also annoying in their own right. Robertson notes the advice she got from one American parenting coach about how her family should all just “sleep together on cushions on the floor and switch to unpasteurized milk.”)
So today – to let the world know that it’s not just Germany and France – but all of Europe that seems to want children to grow up really quickly, I’m going to link to that early pre-blog essay I wrote on parenting culture in the U.K. and my own reactions therein.
Enjoy.
Image: Pondering At The Playground by christopherdale via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
*****
Speaking of kids, I am off to the hospital for the last of my son’s in-hospital allergy tests. The score so far: Peanuts: win. Milk: loss. Let’s hope that sesame is more than a draw…
7 Comments | Expat Living, Parenting | Tagged: american childhood, attachment parenting, berlin, british childhood, Childhood, children, children making noise, drama lessons, european attitudes towards children, french childhood, french educational system, german childhood, growing up in europe, italian childhood, Joanne Robertson, noise ordinance, Parenting, parenting culture, parenting cultures, parenting in Manhattan, playgrounds, swim lessons, unpasteurized milk | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
February 10, 2010
Every Wednesday I offer tips for adulthood.
Awhile back, I posted on five reasons you should listen to BBC Radio. Today I’d like to complement that post with some thoughts on why you should also watch BBC television:
1. It has the most amazing mini-series. Back when my husband and I first met, I knew that we were well-suited to one another when we both dove in with two feet to watch the six part BBC mini-series Reckless, about a young man who falls for an older (married) woman. A few years later, we watched State of Play, a contemporary thriller about a political-media scandal (later re-made into a less satisfactory feature film set in America.) Just this past weekend, we finished the trilogy House of Cards, a political drama about Westminster intrigue set in post-Thatcher England. All three series combine superb acting, fine writing and a willingness to explore the messy interface between love and power. Fabulous.
2. It has the most amazing documentaries. I’ve got a 9-year-old son, which means that prying him away from violent computer games is no mean feat. But I can’t tell you how many spellbinding afternoons we’ve spent this year watching the most compelling documentaries about science and nature on the BBC I-player. I’m particularly taken with the series How Earth Made Us. Watch this one entitled Deep Earth to learn why civilizations sprung up along fault lines. Incredible.
3. The presenters look like us. Despite charges of ageism and sexism, the vast majority of the people presenting and reporting the news on the BBC just aren’t all that attractive, at least by American broadcast standards. Rather, they look like – gasp – normal people. At first, I found this shocking and vaguely disconcerting. (What’s up with that guy’s teeth? How can she possibly go on air in that top?) But now that I’ve gotten used to it, I find it quite refreshing. The people who report the news look a lot like the people they’re reporting on. How…appropriate.
4. It Employs Jonathan Ross. At least for now. If you’re *so* over the late night television wars in the United States, I’d urge you to tune in to this weekend staple over here in the UK: Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Yeah, he looks a bit like Leno and – at first glance – acts a bit like him, with his bumptious grin and easy way with the ladies. But make no mistake. Ross is clever and funny and seems to really enjoy what he’s doing. (Even if he occasionally steps over the line.) I’ve never watched late night TV with any regularity in my life until now. I will sorely miss him when he goes.
5. It created The Office. Many Americans don’t realize this, but NBC’s hit comedy, The Office, is actually based on a BBC television show by the same name. (As Ricky Gervais – its star and co-creator – was quick to remind us at The Golden Globes recently. Read here for a terrific comparison of the two.) I love the American version of The Office. But there’s nothing quite like the mixture of humor, pathos and off-beat romance that defined the original series – it’s almost unbearable to watch at times. And Thank Goodness.
*****
For those who are interested, I’m over on PoliticsDaily.com today talking about efforts to improve the enfranchisement of overseas American voters.
Image: Empire Awards 2008 by Claire_h via Flickr under a Creative Commons License.
12 Comments | Expat Living, Lifestyle, Movies | Tagged: BBC, The Office, Jonathan Ross, BBC Mini Series, House of Cards, Ricky Gervais, BBC Iplayer, The Golden Globes, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, ageism, sexism, BBC news presenters, BBC news, How Earth Made Us, BBC documentaries, State of Play, Reckless, Expat Voting, overseas voting, enfranchising overseas voters, overseas voters, expat vote, Deep Earth, BBC Science and Nature | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
January 27, 2010
6 Comments | Consumerism, Expat Living, Relationships | Tagged: buying a bra, buying bras, buying clothes, companionate marriage, coparenting, dishwashing, grocery shopping, ironing, lingerie, marriage, pew study on marriage, Sandra Tsing Loh, shopping for clothes, washing dishes, wife, wives | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
January 26, 2010
My daughter came home from school yesterday and told me that her best friend had a “hate list.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a list of all the people in the world that she hates.”
“Don’t make one yourself,” I said quickly. “That’s not nice.”
“Yeah, but I only have one person on it,” she responded.
“I don’t care. You’ll hurt someone’s feelings.”
She looked up at me, wide-eyed. “But it’s Hitler.”
Pause.
At first – of course – I laughed. But then I kept on thinking about it and I realized that not everyone would find it funny that their six-year-old knew about Hitler. I remember once writing a post about talking to your kids about death, which dealt with my (failed) attempts to explain death in any meaningful and convincing way to my then five-year-old daughter. The post also touched upon our visit as a family to The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. And I got more than a few comments from people who thought that it was really bad parenting on my part to have exposed such a young child to the Holocaust. As one woman wrote in the comments section: “I think we have a parental duty to protect children from even knowing about the worst aspects of evil.”
Do we?
In my case, my husband is Jewish, we’ve been to Israel as a family and my nine-year-old could practically write a book on World War II at this point. So somehow I don’t really think that we could “hide” the Holocaust from my daughter, even if we wanted to. But I also feel strongly that the Holocaust is quite recent world history. And at some point children need to know that the Holocaust happened in order to comprehend its magnitude and horror and very possibility, if for no other reason than to guard against it happening again.
But the Holocaust isn’t the only evil we’ve talked about with our kids. I moved to London 3½ years ago, the day before a group of home grown British terrorists was arrested for a “liquid bomb plot” at Heathrow airport. The next day, as we tried to settle our new home/country/life, there were TVs on everywhere we went. People were jittery. My then five-year-old son asked me what was going on. Should I have lied to him? Perhaps. But I didn’t.
As I wrote about subsequently, 9/11 and all that has come since has permanently changed the way Westerners perceive and experience terrorism. It’s no longer something that happens “over there.” It is woven into the very fabric of our daily lives through things like threat levels (ours just went up to “severe”), how much freedom of speech is permissible at universities, even what kinds of liquids we can bring on board an airplane. Living – as we now do – in that sort of environment alters the equation for what kids need to become aware of at an early age.
You could also extend this line of argument to encompass natural disasters like the recent earthquake in Haiti (while understanding that this is a very different form of tragedy.) Is it distressing for a six-year-old to learn that 150,000 people just died in an earthquake because they happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time? Sure it is. But my daughter and I have talked about Haiti too. Whether that’s to make her appreciate just how fortunate she is or to begin to teach her about charitable giving, it’s a worthwhile lesson, IMHO.
So, at the end of the day? I’m totally down with the I Hate Hitler list.
But how about you? When do you think we ought to begin discussing the reality of “unnatural” deaths with your children? And are there certain topics that ought to remain taboo?
*****
For those who are interested, here’s a post I did yesterday about what Gordon Brown can learn from the recent elections in Massachusetts and Chile.
Image: Mai piu’ by maxgiani via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
16 Comments | Current Events, Expat Living, Parenting | Tagged: anne frank house, bad parenting, charitable giving, chilean elections, death, earthquake, evil, free speech, free speech at universities, Gordon Brown, Haiti, hate lists, hitler, holocaust, i hate hitler, liquid bomb plot, massachusetts special election, natural disasters, talking to children about death, talking to children about evil, terrorism, threat levels, travelling with liquids, unnatural deaths | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
January 21, 2010
8 Comments | Expat Living, Lifestyle, Religion | Tagged: burqa, burka, headscarves, france, burqas, islam, muslims, european muslims, european immigration, american immigration policy, european immigration policy, bonnie erbe, burkas | Permalink
Posted by delialloyd
I walked into my local public library in London the other day and got a rude shock. All of my favorite librarians were gone. They’d been replaced by machines. Where the circulation desk once stood — manned by a friendly soul with whom I’d chat about politics or the weather or the latest London Review of Books — I now swiped my library card and pushed a button that said “borrow” or “return.”
While reading the 
I’ve written before on this blog about my fondness for public radio, 
For those of you who live in Europe – and even those who don’t – you’ll know that headscarves – and now burqas – have been a hot-button political issue in France for awhile now.
