But there are situations where a politician needs to take unscripted questions from a potentially hostile audience. Sally was in the audience for an MTV special (the boxers-or-briefs one) when Presidential candidate Bill Clinton debated the future of the country with a group of teenagers.

She wasn’t feeling well that day, and decided not to ask any questions. After the taping, Clinton mingled with the crowd. When he shook hands with Sally, he looked her in the eye, and said, “Why didn’t you ask me a question? I think everybody else here did.”

Stunned that he he had recognized her as the person who did not ask a question, she stammered out a reply. “I’m not feeling well, and I didn’t want to be on TV and look and sound sick.”

“Well,” he said, leaning in closer, “if you weren’t sick, what question would you have asked me?”

She says she felt like the only person in the room with him, and they were surrounded by dozens of other people. Love him or hate him, Bill Clinton was no ordinary politician.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

“Relax,” said Mario. “The guy probably just doesn’t want any curveballs. It’d look even worse, because we’re 17-year-olds.”

“You’re just saying that ’cause you get to ask him a question.”

From nowhere I could ascertain, a disembodied voice announced, “Ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States.” And from that same nowhere “Hail to the Chief” started to play.

Someone opened a side door, and Ronald Reagan came striding into the garden. He sprung up the steps to the make-shift stage and stood behind the podium, which had been adorned with the Presidential Seal while we had our heads turned.

He welcomed us to the White House, made a speech I cannot even remember, then asked if any of us had questions for him. I was not a huge Reagan supporter (nor a huge detractor for that matter), but even the very little amount of pomp surrounding our visit impressed me, as I’m certain it’s designed to. I wondered if Dan had been equally impressed, and turned to ask him, when his hand popped into the air.

“I’m totally gonna throw him that curveball.”

Whether President Reagan thought Dan looked a little too eager, or whether he was just lucky that day, we’ll never know. He didn’t call on Dan. But he did call on Mario, who asked the question he was supposed to, in spirit if not in letter.

“So, yeah, Mr President, whaddya think of Mikhail Gorbachev? Is he like a good guy?”

I don’t remember the answer.

After the questions, Reagan stepped off the stage and mingled with the crowd for a few minutes, shaking hands and posing for pictures. Before walking back inside, he pointed and waved at some windows in the residence. Nancy Reagan was standing in one of them, waving back. She stopped for a moment, bent over out of our view, and when she reappeared, she was holding their dog, Rex. She waved his paw at us.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

It is a feeling that, when they are talking to you, they’re thinking about 10 other things. They are looking at you, but not really listening. The best illustration of it I’ve seen is Al Pacino’s performance in City Hall. The combination of distractedness, deflection, and denial he uses to define his character is an incredible performance in an otherwise average film.

I understand that I’m not particularly important, and most of these politicians do have other things on their minds. What for me might have been a memorable moment, was for them something quickly forgotten. They seem to want these meetings with the public to be quick, predictable, and uneventful.

In the summer of 1986, I was a delegate to Boys’ Nation. For those who are not familiar with Boys’ Nation, it is a fantastic program sponsored by the American Legion. Every year, two boys are selected from each state to travel to Washington, DC and learn about the nation’s history and government. One hot August day, all 100 of us delegates were waiting in line to tour the Old Executive Office Building. I was talking with my friends Dan and Mario when guys wearing dark suits and fusilli wires in their ears started pulling a few people out of line. One of those pulled out was Mario.

After a few minutes, Mario got back in line next to me and Dan.

“What was that about?” I asked.

He handed me a small piece of paper. On it was typed, “What are your impressions of Mikhail Gorbachev?”

I looked back at him. “Is this…?”

He held his hands up. “I dunno. They just asked me a few questions, and then gave me this piece of paper.”

After a trip through the metal detectors, we were corralled into a small auditorium in the OEOB. A woman walked to the front of the stage.

“OK, welcome to the OEOB!” she said. “As you probably have started to suspect, in a few minutes, you are all going to meet with President Reagan in the Rose Garden.”

The audience started murmuring, and a few people cheered. Though I hadn’t yet conceived of the list, I was about to fulfill item #21 – Meet a US President.

Once we settled down, she continued, going over some basic rules and the protocol of meeting the President. Then she told us one last thing.

“The President will be taking questions, but only those who have already been spoken with are to raise their hands. If I didn’t speak to you personally before we came into this room, you are not to raise your hand when the President asks for questions.”

My friend Dan was excited, but for a reason I hadn’t considered. As we stood and started to walk over to the White House, he shook his head and said just one thing.

“I’m gonna raise my hand anyway.”

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

Off-leash hours in all New York City parks are from 9pm-9am, and there are few things in her life she enjoys more (see picture). Normally, we take her in the mornings, but lately we’ve been taking advantage of the abnormally temperate nights. So we’ve been going into the Park at night.

Central Park, and New York in general, is not nearly as dangerous as many people think. We’ve never had any problems, and as long as we stay out of the Ramble at night, I don’t imagine we’ll have much to worry about. But just because it isn’t particularly dangerous, doesn’t mean it’s not downright creepy sometimes.

On a recent night, Beezus and I were walking with a friend and his dog when we strolled by a bench, upon which were some very fancy red cowboy boots.

“Don’t look at them,” said my friend.

“Why not?”

“A guy puts them there, and then hangs out in the bushes and watches people. If they look at them too long, he jumps out of the bushes.”

“And does what?”

“Hassles them, I guess. I’ve never given him the satisfaction of looking at the boots, but I see them there every night, and I’ve seen the guy in the bushes.”

“Where is he?”

“Tonight? I don’t see him, but he’s here, and I’m sure he’s watching us.”

I looked around, making sure Beezus was within a few yards of me. I felt my skin start to crawl.

“How do you know he jumps out and hassles people?”

“I’ve seen him do it. I was on the other side of the street, but later I talked to the people he accosted.”

“What did he say?”

“‘Don’t look at my boots,’ I guess. They weren’t really clear.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“I doubt it. It’s just his thing.”

“His thing? His thing is really creepy and f**ked up!”

“I know. That’s why I don’t look at them. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.”

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

The third one is much more interesting to me. Rather than being told what the greatest literary works of humankind are, what if I were to learn enough about them to decide for myself? If I were to define my own canon, I would have to come to terms with other canons, like the Harvard Classics, and I would necessarily need to develop an appreciation of literature.

What the canon should be is a discussion for another post. For now, I will be merging the above three items into the single item: #64 – Define my own literary canon.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

I’ve stated that, once I post about one of my items, I can no longer change it. I’ll need to modify that rule.

I will only change an item in order to add clarity and specificity.

Therefore, I am changing the following 3 items:

#22 – Develop a better understanding of poetry is now Read a poem a day for one year.

#41 – Develop an appreciation of visual arts is now Determine which 300 works of art I would put in my dream museum.

And, finally, #28 – Develop an appreciation of music is now Explain why Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Miles Davis are considered great musicians.

There will be a few more changes in the next couple of days, but for now this addresses something that has been nagging at me for weeks.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

“Bring them with you!” she said. She knew how much I was giving up, how important my library was to me. “We’ll find the room.”

“I can’t,” I said, “The cost of moving them all would be outrageous. Plus, I have a bigger problem that I need to address, and bringing them with me just postpones the inevitable.”

I had to get rid of them. Most I sold to a local used-book store, but the lucky few in those 7 boxes came with me to New York. When I arrived in Brooklyn, Sally surprised me with a new bookcase she had picked up at a stoop sale. My 7 boxes filled about two-thirds of the case, and I swore I would never have more books than could fill this bookcase.

I’ve filled two more smaller bookcases since then, and have even more books on my Kindle. If I had the space for it, I’d probably be right back where I was before I purged the Treehouse.

But, this year, something changed. I’ve only brought 8 new books into the house since December.

What brought about this sudden change? The night I sat on the floor of my emptying library, realizing that I was acquiring more books than I could ever read, I did some math.

How many books could I read in the rest of my lifetime? I was in my 30s, so if I lived into my 70s and averaged one book a week, I had about 2000 books left to read.

While that might seem like a lot, it seemed like far too few for me. Plus, a book a week? Could I really read Boswell in one week? Proust? Gibbon? Not likely. 2000 was optimistic.

But, years later, I added it to my list anyway: #50 – Read 2000 books.

In order to achieve this goal, I had to read 50 books a year. I don’t think I’ve read 50 books in a year since I was in college, but decided 2009 was the year to start. For the first time in my life, I created a reading list.

In December, I reviewed all of the books I owned but had not yet read, about 250. (Most of them are ones I brought with me in those 7 boxes.) Creating a list of 52 books to read this year meant 200 that were not going to be read for at least another year, 150 for at least 2 years, and so on. It was sobering.

I use LibraryThing, which made the whole process much easier. As you can see I’ve kind of rigged this year to make it easier on me. There are several graphic novels, and a few books under 200 pages, but if I have to do this every year for the rest of my life, I can’t fail the first year I try.

As of this writing, I’ve read 28, so I’m in pretty good shape. More importantly, though, the process has helped me address my book problem. Rather than just picking up books that I might want to read in the distant future, I now see new books in a new light. Will I read it next year? Do I want to read it more than that Pelecanos that didn’t make this year’s cut? Should it really be one of the 1,948 I have left to read in my lifetime?

I have found the process so helpful, I’ve already started on the list for next year.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

Like many people, I acquire them faster than I can read them.

Before I moved to New York, I had a huge apartment. It was an in-law, the entire fourth floor of a house formerly owned by a governor from the 20s. A previous owner, not the governor, had a taste for evergreen trees, and had planted a dozen species in the yard. By the time I lived there, they all reached above the roof. I looked out every window and off both decks into tree branches. I dubbed the apartment the Treehouse.

Though it was mostly one large, wood-paneled room, there were two smaller rooms built out under dormers. One was my bedroom, the other was my library. When I moved in, I thought, Finally enough room for my books.

A friend from out of town visited one day with his wife, and when I showed them the library, his wife said,

“Wow! That’s a lot of books! Have you read them all?”

My friend looked down and covered with his eyes with his hand. He had known me long enough to know my answer.

“It’s a library,” I said, “not a trophy case.”

A few weeks before I moved to New York, I had to decide what to do with all my stuff. I taped off a corner of the main room, three feet by three feet by seven feet high. Everything coming with me had to fit in that space. Everything else went to the Salvation Army.

One night after work, I entered the library. I had 7 boxes in the taped-off area reserved for the books that were coming with me. All others had to go. I took each book off the shelf and weighed whether it was important enough to make the trip. Those went into a special pile. All the others went into their own stacks. I sat cross-legged on the floor, and at the end of the night, I sat among 28 stacks, each one higher than my head.

I looked at those stacks and estimated there were over 800 books that I hadn’t read. If I read one a week, it would take 16 years to finish them all.

My problem was now clearly two-fold. It was fairly obvious that I acquired books faster than I could read them. But, the second issue was far more sobering.

I was on the path to acquiring more books than I could ever read.

(continued next week)

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

It was a cold January night. I had my collar up and my hat down, and was trying to convince my dog to pee. This is more challenging than it sounds, as my dog had recently started doing the fakey: she squats as if she is going to pee, and then changes her mind. She was on her third or fourth fakey when another dog owner approached us.

“That’s Beezus, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It is,” I replied, stroking her inquisitive Ridgeback behind the ears. Beezus pulled up from her squat, leaving the sidewalk dry beneath her.

º º º

We had taken her to the vet, worried that this new behavior was the symptom of a bladder infection. Nope, said the vet. The problem was psychological, not physiological.

This wasn’t surprising. Beezus can charitably be called odd.

A few years ago, Sally and I contemplated getting a dog. She had never had one, and I grew up with one that I wasn’t especially fond of. But, we both loved our friends’ dogs, and it was on my list, #35 – Own a dog. One Saturday, we went to a mobile adoption event at the Petco on the Upper East Side. Just to look.

We went upstairs and met the people from Northshore Animal Shelter. Our plan was to talk with them about how realistic it was for us, living in a tiny Manhattan apartment, to adopt a dog. They assured us it wouldn’t be a problem, and pointed us towards the puppies.

There were three that I could see, all long-haired and very vocal. Neither trait was appealing, but I asked what breed they were.

“Those 3 in the front are shepherd mix, and the one in the back is a boxer mix.”

“Boxer?”

Several of my friends had boxers, and I love every boxer I’ve ever known. I squatted down and saw this mild-mannered, short-haired, fawn-colored little puppy wedged into the corner of the crate. The guy from Northshore took her out and handed her to me.

She was incredibly calm. No trembling, no whining, she just curled up in the crook of my elbow, and fell asleep. I talked with the guy for another half-hour or so, about quality of life issues for a dog living in Manhattan, about the adoption process, about whether our life could accommodate a dog.

He asked for 2 references, people he could call who would verify we were capable of being responsible dog owners. While he was on the phone with them, I asked Sally, who had been circling us and taking pictures with her phone, what she thought.

“Are you going to put this back in that cage?!?”

She thrust her phone under my nose and showed me this:

º º º

“I thought it was her. I see her with Charlie all the time.”

Charlie is our dog-walker. One thing about owning a dog in Manhattan, and having a full-time job, somebody has to take your dog out at least once during the day. Most people hire dog-walkers to come and grab their dogs in the afternoon, take them out for a quick walk, and then drop them back in the apartment.

Beezus wasn’t quite so easy.

When we first got her, she did little more than whine, as most puppies do when first separated from their litter. In fact seeing her sitting calmly in the crate while the other 3 puppies yipped away was a big reason we were attracted to her.

For the first couple weeks, she was sick and lethargic. We also discovered that she had been spayed the day before we got her, so her mellowness was probably just the general anesthesia still in her system. One day, I was goofing around after getting out of the shower. Sally pulled off my towel, and I ran away from her, mock-giggling like a school girl.

From the top of the stairs came an ungodly sound. Part baying, part yelping, and a whole lot of barking, it froze us in our tracks. We turned and looked, and Beezus was standing there, this horrible sound coming out of this tiny puppy. She had found her voice.

º º º

“Did you know she’s in the New Yorker this week?”

“Ummm….. what?”

“Yeah,” said my neighbor, “she’s mentioned by name. The writer was interviewing Charlie and she’s with him and gets a name-check.”

Charlie was a god-send. After Beezus found her voice, she never lost it again. If we left her in the apartment for longer than an hour, she would start barking, and wouldn’t stop until one of us got home. When our neighbors complained to the landlord, we decided to leave her with Charlie and his crew all day. It was that or face eviction.

She barks when the neighbors walk by our door. She barks when an unfamiliar man approaches her on the street. She barks at sanitation workers, mail carriers, police officers, anybody in a uniform. She barks at balloons.

We’ve tried everything humane to address it, but nothing has worked. Our vet told us we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that we have a barky dog.

All of our neighbors know her. Many of them don’t like her, and I can’t blame them. But those who like her, love her. If she trusts you, she is the most loving, submissive dog you’ll ever meet. After I decided to stay home with CJ and we cut out the regular dog-walking dates, one of her walkers cried when she dropped her off for the last time.

º º º

“I was in bed last night,” my neighbor continued, “reading the new issue, and I said to my husband, ‘I know that dog!’”

Beezus finally peed, and I took her to an all-night newsstand. I picked up 4 copies of the New Yorker, thumbed through one until I got to Talk of the Town. There in the fourth paragraph of “Shaggy Dog Story” is my dog:

Beezus, a mutt….

Many people have asked how we can live with a dog in Manhattan. Where else could we live, and get our dog mentioned in the New Yorker?

Many more people have asked how we can live with a dog that cannot be left alone. I have asked myself that same question many, many times.

I stood in front of the newsstand and looked down at her. She looked up at me and wagged her tail.

Sally’s question came back to me, and I asked it of myself again.

What was I going to do, put her back in that cage?

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.

Why am I the person to be writing this story?

I’m not.

I am not a doctor. I am not a scientist. I am not a child psychologist. I have absolutely no qualifications as a childcare professional.

This story is not my story.

I am still a skeptic, but that is not all that I am. Most of my free time for the past 9 months has been consumed by this subject, and I feel that it has had a larger role than perhaps it should have.

I have said more times than I can count that skepticism is a tool. I have begun to feel like a carpenter, writing a blog about his favorite hammer. It is time to stop talking about the hammer, and start building.

For the past few weeks, I have looked for a way to incorporate other aspects of my life into this blog, but to no avail. It is with more than a little bit of sadness that I announce that this is my last post at Domestic Father.

I have been overwhelmed by the success of [domestic father], and I cannot adequately express how grateful I am to all of you who took the time to read here, link here, and comment here.

But, there are other things I wish to learn about, to write about. These are for my other blog, evenlake, where I have decided to continue some of the topics of this blog. Just not exclusively.

I can only hope you will chose to join me there, but I understand that it may not be to your liking. If you want to know what it’s about, visit the About page. Or you can just trust me and subscribe to the RSS feed sight unseen.

I will continue to manage Skeptical Parent Crossing, periodically hosting and submitting articles as well. I will keep reading and commenting on your blogs, and will remain a member of the community. I just no longer have the time nor the inclination to maintain a blog devoted solely to skepticism. It is time for me to move on.

Thank you again for your time and your attention, and I hope to see you around.

Originally published at evenlake.com | © 2009 evenlake media, all rights reserved.