On Eight Presidential Elections

Rosalind Little has lived through eight presidential elections. She was alive for the 1976 presidential election, but just barely. She does not remember it, being preoccupied with drooling and bawling. She vaguely remember Carter being president. His name made her think of grocery carts. But she does not remember the 1980 election either.

In 1984, my elementary school had its own election. I remember wearing my Mondale button to school, and being surprised that other kids made fun of me. I was amazed that anyone I knew would support Reagan, who was obviously a putz. Plus, there was a girl running for vice president on the other side! As it turned out, I was the ONLY student in my third grade class to vote for Mondale. Sadly, the school's election probably mirrored the country's.

This was my introduction to the brutal world of presidential politics. Lesson one: it turns out your candidate doesn't always win. Lesson two: your friends don't always make good political decisions. Lesson three: a girl running is not necessarily an advantage.

In 1988, I was in seventh grade, and I represented Dukakis as a mock candidate in a debate during an all-school assembly in our junior high auditorium. There were particular topics we were supposed to research in advance, and I remember asking my mom what she thought about abortion. That was really the first time I was ever aware of the abortion debate. I also remember researching the environment and the defense budget, and it was my first serious introduction to those issues as well.

For me, anyway, the 1988 election worked out more happily than the 1984 election. My candidate still lost the national election, sure, but Dukakis won by a landslide at my junior high. I like to think my debating skills had something to do with that. Sure, I had only known about the abortion controversy for a few weeks. But it turns out there's really not far to go on that topic once you've made your mind up, now is there?


In 1992, I was in eleventh grade, and living in a much, much more conservative town. Because Georgia was a swing state back in those days, and because in those days he was only a governor of Arkansas, Clinton actually came to my home town to speak. I skipped school that afternoon to see him.

It was a beautiful, crisp, clear fall day. I went with some friends from the Drama Club, who dresssed in goth and flannel clothing to signal their political apathy. I wore a flaming red blazer, my braces, and a Hillary-esque hairdo. I carried a Clinton/Gore sign. We walked through the throng of angry conservative protesters out front, and entered into the amphitheater, and I was entirely taken with Clinton. It was a wonderful speech. Even the Drama Club kids seemed properly awed. I shook his hand afterwards. He smiled at me, and I was elated.

Still, I was shocked when he won. Just floored. I'd never supported a winning candidate, you see, in memory. Moreover, Augusta was such a conservative place that I didn't actually know anyone else who had supported Clinton. Lesson Number Four: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

In 1996, I was a sophomore in college in Atlanta. College students by reputation are deeply politically active, but in 1996 I was not. I was busy with school and musical theater. I remember watching the election results on TV in my dorm, relieved but not surprised to see Clinton win again. That year, I remember being exposed to no controversy or debate over the election. I was surrounded by fellow progressives. I knew very few people who voted for Dole.

By 2000, I was in a place that seemed to have no conservative voters at all: Berkeley, California. I followed the election very closely, as I was in journalism school at the time. I was not an impassioned Gore supporter, and some of my Berkeley friends and neighbors were telling me I should vote my conscience for Nader. I didn't do that, as I was just paranoid enough about the possibility of Bush winning. It turns out I was right to be anxious.

And yet really it seemed unfathomable that Bush actually won. (Arguably, of course, he did not.) It seemed unthinkable that we had this man as a president. He was just so obviously inappropriate. I'm afraid I had to relearn the lesson of 1992 from the opposite vantage point: you can't judge the outcome of a national election by the political sentiments of your immediate neighbors and friends.

By 2004, I was back in Atlanta, married, barely pregnant with my Lucy. Indeed, we didn't know yet that I was pregnant. We went to watch the returns at some friends' house -- still optimistically, as this election was hardly a done deal -- and we brought little cut-out donkey cookies with us as a refreshment. When it became clear that Bush was going to win again, I drank several miserable glasses of wine. It didn't do Lucy any harm in the long run, but I worried about it later. Lesson Five: Do not drink if your candidate loses if it is possible you are pregnant.

It's striking how much one's life changes in four year increments.

On Rosalind's Favorite Film Scenes

Rosalind Little has a very short media attention span. She does not like albums. She prefers singles. She is well aware that this is not very indy cool of her, and that it implies she has shallow musical tastes. So be it. She just likes to listen to a good single again and again and again until she knows the words and can scream them like a fifteen year old. Is that so wrong?

I have more patience for films. I can enjoy an entire film easily. Yet I also have a certain fondness for the art of a good film scene. Think about this carefully. What are your favorite scenes in movies?

Think specifically of the scene itself: its mood, its dialogue, its beginning, middle, and end.

As I make a quick list, I notice that some of my favorite films, and some of the best films, don't make the cut. They are brilliant overall, but there's not one standout scene that is really amazing, that takes your breath away.

I also notice that early and opening scenes of films are especially close to my heart, because they can have such tremendous forward momentum, such an irresistable energy.

Of course a film can have a superb opening scene, one that makes your heart race, and still not be a very good movie. The film Contact (1999) is a good example of this. But the criteria isn't that the film be good. Just think about the scene.

Some of Rosalind Little's All Time Favorite Scenes in Movies:

- The opening of Contact: the long pull away from earth into space in which you hear snatches of radio broadcasts from the present into the past. I could watch this four hundred times in a row. (And have.) It's fascinating. It makes a sub-par film worth watching.

- The opening of Rushmore. Clearly an amazing, amazing scene, from a filmmaker who is a master of amazing scenes. The math problem, and then the montage of Max's activities. Over the one of the best soundtracks of all time.

- The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Come on, it's a classic. It still gets you going.

- The scene in which Cole tells his mother his "secret" while in the car in The Sixth Sense. Creepy, tender, beautifully observed. The dead bicyclist out the window. Toni Collette's hand over her mouth as Cole tells her about her mother's message for her. Lovely scene.

- The scene in E.T. when Michael and Gertie meet E.T. for the first time. I mean, maybe I'm showing my generational bias, but does anybody make movies with such natural performances from children anymore? Do kids ever curse in films anymore? This scene is just spot-on, just perfect. If you've not watched it for a while and think of E.T. as being sentimental kids' mush, you should watch this film again. Gertie's sarcasm, Michael's Yoda impression, Elliot's anxiety: it's wonderful.

- Oh, and the bicycle chase in E.T. The one with the guns still in it. I dare you to watch it, watch the kids take off flying and the music swell, and NOT to start to get excited. I dare you.

- When Marty walks into downtown Hill Valley in 1955 in Back to the Future. Mr. Sandman is playing. As he picks up the newspaper and sees the date, the music turns ominous. This one always takes me back to the first time I saw the film.

- The sword fight between Jack and Will Turner in the beginning of the first Pirates of the Carribbean. This is the scene that clued me in that this movie was going to be better than I thought it would be. Funny, well-choreographed, charming. And both these men are so hot. I mean really. Rosalind Little is but a mortal heterosexual woman.

- The sword fight between the Man in Black and Inigo Mantoya in Princess Bride. Which is obviously cited in the Pirates of the Carribean fight. Another classic, at least for a certain age group. Love it.

Maybe I can think of more. Let me mull it over.

On the Mommy Wars

I regularly read an online discussion group at BabyCenter.com. It's a group of mothers who gave birth to their children the same month I had Lucy, and the idea is that we will support one another and offer helpful parenting tips. Sometimes this is true. Other times it is a theater for outright mommy warfare.

Motherhood is an awfully thick institution. We have a lot of cultural scripts telling us what good mothers do and don't do. Yet we also have a country and culture that don't support mothering particularly well. Our economy requires most women to work, but we don't have a good child care system. We pressure women to stay home with children, but we don't reward working women who take time off, and we don't give much respect to stay-at-home moms.

This means the whole mothering thing is sealed up tight in a big old fat envelope of guilt.

I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know. Especially if you've reproduced yourself. I see this playing out in the way me and my female friends react to motherhood. We judge ourselves, and one another, using some mighty unfair yardsticks. We have some idea of How Things Ought To Be. And this idea is non-negotiable. And unattainable.

On BabyCenter, women express their daily anxieties about motherhood. They post questions asking for our opinions on what they SHOULD have said to the pushy woman in the grocery store, whether you SHOULD listen to the pediatrician about vaccinations, or whether or not you SHOULD give a 2-year old time outs. They also do a lot of effusing about how much they love being (mostly stay-at-home) mommies.

When they discuss difficult mommying issues, or situations, they very rarely get angry about unfair cultural expectations for motherhood, or any kind of big picture issue. Like most Americans, they tend to see problems as originating from individual decisions. It pisses them off when people try to "blame others" for their problems. If you have a problem with taking care of your kid, it is probably due to your mommying. Or somebody else's mommying.

In fact, they often tend to blame other mommies for social problems. BAD mommies. You know, the kind that puts themselves ahead of their kids, that parks their toddlers in front of the TV for hours, who lets their kids misbehave during play dates and doesn't discipline them, who doesn't use the right car seat and doesn't care, who just doesn't care enough to meet the expectations of motherhood.

The other day I reached a breaking point of frustration with this. I rarely post, especially on contentious subjects, but I was sorely tempted to.

Somebody posted on BabyCenter asking why on earth any stay-at-home mom would send their 2-year old to preschool. Two year old was way too young. They could get nothing out of it. The poster's friend was sending her daughter to a 3-hour preschool a few days a week, and the poster just didn't get it. Why was her friend absolving herself of the proper job of a stay-at-home mom?

Not to analyze the poster too much, but it really seemed like this was seriously threatening.

A (slightly modified) excerpt from her post:
"My friend is mad that I don't understand why she's doing it. She claims it's for the social benefits and for learning a little too, but she also says that now she will have time to get manicures and go shopping by herself. Why would she pay to have somebody else teach her kid? Doesn't she know that's the whole point of being a stay-at-home mom? Why would anyone do this? I seriously don't understand."

The argument followed from there. There were 58 posts on the subject -- some supportive, some not. Some people pointed out the academic benefits of getting a head start; others pooh-poohed this as ridiculous. Some said preschool was just fun; others said it was serious and real school.

What was remarkable was that almost no one considered the sanity or comfort of the stay-at-home mom as a legitimate reason to do it. It was all talked about in terms of the benefits or disadvantages to the toddler. Mommies aren't supposed to make decisions based on their desire to get their nails done. That's just not acceptable.

I wrote and rewrote multiple responses to the woman's question. But Rosalind Little is a chicken. She can't deal with confrontation.

So here is my never-posted contribution to the discussion. Do bear in mind that I was adopted a certain colloquial style for the chat room, which is probably very obnoxious and very condescending of me. Here we are:

"My daughter isn't in a preschool, although I don't think it would be a bad thing for her at all. If we did it, it definitely wouldn't be for the test scores or the academic head start in school. It would be because she would find it fun to play with other kids in a structured setting, and because I would get a break. If she learned some new songs and picked up some new skills, hey, that's great, too.

But I'll come right out and say it: I don't think there's anything wrong with stay at home mommies, or any mommies, making the decision to do preschool because they want time to themselves for a few hours a week. I don't even think wanting to get your nails done is that bad. I don't think that makes anybody a bad mommy.

First of all, getting some hours to yourself during the workday means that you might be able to be more invested in "family time" when your spouse is home. I know that is true of me.

Second, I truly think that some mommies are going to do a better job if they get time away from their kids.

Some of you seem to treasure every second with your children and dread the day they start kindergarten, and that is really a blessing for your kids. It's wonderful. If you're putting all your energy into activities with them everyday and getting up the next morning ready for more, you are amazing women and deserve pats on the back. But I would ask that you not assume that everyone is like this, or that they HAVE to be like this to be good mommies.

The reality is, not everyone handles this toddler stage equally well. Mommies have different temperaments, different strengths, different life situations. (Not to mention different kids -- we know some are more challenging than others!) Some of you may have been born to play this role at this stage in our kids' lives. Others of us might love our children dearly but are struggling to do our best, with our love for our kid motivating us to try harder. What's challenging and fun for one woman might be pure hell on earth for another.

This age isn't going to last forever. And the tables might turn when our kids are five, or ten, or teenagers -- who knows? The point is, there's room for tolerance for different people's parenting strengths and weaknesses.

If some mommies are at the end of their rope and are finding there is a lot of their day that they are not enjoying, not treasuring, then I think it can be the right decision for them to do preschool with a two-year old. It can improve the situation a lot for some people. I've seen it happen with friends of mine. The happiness of mommies and toddlers is deeply connected, after all.

Sure, if your child hates preschool above all else, and you're dragging them in against their will and then sprinting out the door towards the nail salon, that's probably a bad idea. Of course.

But I honestly know that my daughter loves that kind of thing, and I think a lot of kids this age do, too. If they're having fun and you're getting a manicure, and everyone's in a good mood afterwards ... what's the problem? Can't we relax the mommy rules to allow it?"

On Webster Groves, Missouri

Rosalind Little moved away from Webster Groves, Missouri when she was thirteen years old, never really to return. This is an disruption in her life's narrative that continues to disorient her. She's still getting used to the move.

What do you think? Is it accurate to say that Webster Groves her is home town? Or is she from the town in Georgia where she attended high school and her parents live now? What does it mean not to be able to walk and touch and see the physical locations you associate with your oldest memories? To have no casual, everyday relationships, outside family, that predate the 1990s?

You see how I overthink these things. I'm a historian, you see.

Now the decent thing for the people and places of Webster Groves, Missouri to have done was to absolutely freeze in time. Like a perpetual shrine to my childhood memories. So that if I did go back, everyone and everything would be the same. But this didn't happen.

Not only does Webster Groves, Missouri continue to exist, it has a disquieting visibility for what is really just a very average suburb of St. Louis. It shows up all the time. I can think of many examples, but I'll share one here.

Apparently the novelist Jonathan Franzen is from Webster Groves, and writes about it in his famous novel The Corrections. I know this not because I am especially up to date on best-selling novels of the past ten years. I have not read The Corrections. I know this because I read it in an essay, "How I Got Jonathan Franzen To Stop Stealing Things From My Brain," by Sara Crosby, in my husband's Believer magazine.

In this essay, Crosby tells us that she, a struggling nonfiction writer, is also from Webster Groves. At a low point in her own career, she becomes frustrated that successful Franzen writes about the Webster Groves she knows, drawing upon places and cultural idiosyncrasies she also remembers, effectively "stealing" her own best and most personal material. His description of pulling pranks at the flagpole at Webster Groves High School in the 1970s gives her a shock of recognition:

I not only knew the flagpole and the entrance’s concrete columns and faded nuclear-fallout-shelter sign, but I also
knew plenty of prankster kids like Franzen in my 1994 graduating class—tall, lanky boys with easy, toothy laughs who
usually took Advanced Physics with Mr. Wojak.

Eventually she comes to her senses, has some professional success of her own, and no longer finds Franzen as threatening.

Which is fine, and great for her.

Except for what she's describing feeling when she reads Jonathan Franzen? I feel it reading Sara Crosby. Except for she and Franzen, their memories share only space in common. Sara Crosby and me, our memories share time.

Not only do I know her Webster Groves, I know HER. Had I never moved, I would have been in that 1994 graduating class with her. I went to first grade with her at Steger Elementary School. I can picture her face in my mind's eye. She was the first kid I knew whose parents got divorced, and I remember feeling sorry for her. Later, in junior high, I remember being scared of her. She was sullen and smartass.

She talks about one of her oldest friends, Peter, and I know exactly who she is talking about. I remember what he looked like in first grade, and that he dressed up like a St. Louis Cardinal for Halloween, but came late to the school that day because he was sick. And I know that he really must be one of her oldest friends because they knew each other back then. And I know that because I WAS THERE.

This might not be as mind-bending to others as it is to me. But that's why I have my little blog without readers.

I have no memory of Sara Crosby ever being a writer. It's not especially surprising that she is one, since it often happens to sullen smartasses. And people do tend to take up different life courses after age thirteen, or maybe she was already an accomplished writer when I moved and I just don't remember that about her.

It is unspeakably strange to discover a childhood memory, someone you never thought about after 1990, suddenly an intelligent and introspective adult writing about a past you have, at least to some degree, in common.

(Sara Crosby even taught me something about my past that I did not know. Apparently telling a joke in order to get candy while trick-or-treating was something unique to Webster Groves. I remember doing this, and have never been aware since that it wasn't the same everywhere. I suppose I never discovered this because after I left Webster Groves, I was thirteen, and I never really trick or treated again. For me, Webster Groves = everything before 1990 = childhood.)

On Naming Trends

Is there anything more fascinating than naming trends? What on earth makes people up and decide that they are going to start naming children Braden and Madison and London and Neveah?

That last one is "heaven" backwards, if you didn't catch that. It was one of the top 1000 most popular names for girls in 2006. Which I know because I frequent the Social Security names database, which is SERIOUS fun.

But not quite as fun as The Baby Name Wizard Name Voyager, which lets you look at a graph that changes baby name trends over time. So you can see the spectacular fall of names like Walter, and the spectacular rise of names like Kaylee, and the spectacular rise and fall of names like Erin.

I mean, this IS fun, right? Fun if you are me.

The name Madison for girls, which is currently the third most popular name in the country, seems to have been created by the 1984 romantic comedy "Splash." After the movie's release, the name Madison started climbing the charts. It was virtually unheard of before. Did you know this? (Apparently this same story is related in the book Freakanomics, which I've not read.)

In that movie, the main character, a mermaid played by Darryl Hannah, names herself after the Manhattan street she is on: Madison Avenue. Tom Hanks' character makes some joke right afterwards like, good thing we weren't on 39th Street, or something like that.

Yeah, funny, okay ... but seriously. The screenwriters really might have placed her on another street, given her a different name! What if she was on Mott Street, and called herself Mottie? Would that be a top-ten name now? Okay, that's hard to imagine. But what if she'd named herself Mulberry, Macdougal or Park? Or if she'd named herself Manhattan or Brooklyn? Would those be the third most popular names in the country today, and Madison virtually unknown?

Or maybe it wasn't the character in the movie that did it. Maybe it was the name Madison itself, something slightly feminine sounding (connoting Madeleine), with certain high-class associations, and yet slightly offbeat. Maybe the movie just served as the jumping off point.

Either way, Madison was a name that nobody ever heard of thirty years ago. Now it's more common than Mary or John in elementary schools.

There tends to be this tendency to assume that it is only recently that people started making up names for their children. That names before had been unchanging and constant. That it's only been lately that people saddled their children with monikers like MaKayLa and what have you. But this overlooks the fact that it was once acceptable to name children Epaphroditus or Birdadorothea or Hezekiah. That people would name children after any old favorite author or friend or virtue.

In my research lately, I came across an 18th century woman named Experience. I mean, come on. That was probably a bad name even at the time. Not only do opportunities for off-color jokes abound, but what the fuck was her nickname? Expie?

That said, it is the case that Rosalind Little tends to gravitate to the nineteenth-century names. She is not especially drawn to johnny-come-lately names like Brianna and Logan. They seem like suburban cookie-cutter names to her. She prefers Emma, Jacob, Hannah, Olivia and Andrew. They seem weightier, more substantial.

Yet she is not alone, as those are all top-ten names for 2006. My taste in names might seem individual to me, but it's really part of some national trend. Who understands broad subtle cultural change like this? Not me, folks.

So for my husband and me, the quest in naming a daughter became about finding a name that had roots, history and tradition, but finding one that other people weren't using in droves. We were drawn to lovely names that had been forgotten in recent years. The nursing home names. Ruby and Nora and Stella and Alice. And Lucy, which is what we named our dear girl.

A good compromise, right? And yet in doing this, in looking for possible names, we were told by baby naming books that we fell into another trend: "antique revival names." We shared this in common with other urban and college-educated types. So how unique is it possible to be? Individual taste is a myth. You can't escape the impact of culture.