katie allison granju

I’ve been listening to Lamar Alexander’s new radio… April 30, 2002

I’ve been listening to Lamar Alexander’s new radio spots (he is running for Senate here in Tennessee since Republican incumbent Fred Thompson decided not to run again due to a recent family tragedy), and I kept wondering who it is that Lamar reminds me of. That’s always been in the back of my mind when I see or hear the guy, but I just couldn’t figure it out. Today I finally did.

Lamar Alexander sounds exactly like Pat Boone. He looks a good bit like him as well. Don’t you think so? By the way, my mother’s little brother, my Uncle John B. Anderson, wrote the Rolling Stone cover story on Pat Boone to which I have linked above. Family mythology has always maintained that it was the lowest selling issue of the magazine in its history.

alt.support.childfreaks

It seems that the mean, cranky, vile majority who populate the infamous alt.support.childfree newsgroup (read the newsgroup for yourself) have decided to harass blogger John Scalzi this week. Read back through the childfree newsgroup and you’ll see that this bunch is always outraged by something someone somewhere has written about parenting or family life.

A few years ago, a couple of them decided that I was the target du jour after I had written something at hipMama.com and then asked a few questions about their philosophy at their newsgroup. Within 48 hours, I had been inducted into the ‘Breeder Hall of Shame’ along with the mother of the McCaughey sextuplets (even though I myself have only given birth to three “odious liitle spawn” — that’s what my children were referred to on this particular childfree website). One enterprising alt.support.childfree website creator took a photo of me from my book jacket PR shot and altered it so that I had 666 inscribed on my forehead, plus horns. I sent it to everyone I knew. It was hilarious. I wish I had saved a screenshot but I think the site is gone now.

Please note that these people are not just folks who have decided not to have kids. They are also not people who simply prefer adult company and become annoyed when parents allow their children to bother other people in public places. They are people who HATE children and amuse themselves by spending their time posting disgusting, often-violent fantasies of what they would like to do to babies and kids on their newsgroup.

Not long after I first encountered the alt.support.childfree gang, writer Kymberly Seabolt wrote a

terrific article on the subject. Also, after being referred to as breeders in a pejorative sense by the alt.sopport.childfree pundits, a group of very clever writermamas I know decided to claim the meant-to-be-insulting moniker as their own. They published a terrific anthology of parenting essays in 2001 called Breeder: Stories from the New Generation of Mothers (Seal Press). It has been a big hit.

It isn’t about the weapons… April 27, 2002

First of all, my deepest sympathy and condolences go out to the German families and community that experienced the horror of a multiple murder in one of that country’s schools today.

That said, I have to make the none-too-original point that some of the strictest weapon-control laws in Europe failed to stop this terrible crime from being carried out.

To the dismay of many of my more progressive pals, with whom I agree on lots of other issues, I am in favor of as little government control of guns as possible. I never want to live in a society where only the police and the military have access to guns. Also, I grew up in the 1970s and 80s in a very rural area of Tennessee, where every farm home had a shotgun and/or rifle or two hanging on a rack on the living room wall. These guns were not locked up and my childhood friends who lived in these homes no more would have considered taking their parents’ guns down and messing around with them than they would have decided to drive their father’s tractor onto the front porch.

Since becoming a parent myself, I’ve had to decide how to handle the gun play issue. I wrote an essay about it which you can read here.

Saudi Women April 26, 2002

Saudi women are only marginally better off (at least they aren’t impoverished or without food and medical care) than Afghan women are and yet we happily welcome members of the Saudi royal family to the U.S. without saying a word about it. The women of Saudi Arabia belong to the men in their family, body and soul. They must stay veiled. They cannot read or write about what they choose. They cannot travel without permission from the men in their family. Their marriages are arranged and often against their will. They can still be stoned to death. Some Saudi women are still circumcised. Girls as young as 13 are given over as brides to men old enough to be their grandfathers and who already own many other wives. The practice of any religion other than Islam in Saudi Arabia is totally disallowed.

If you are interested in learning more about what it is like to live as a woman in modern Saudi Arabia, you might start with this book. And here is an interesting FAQ compiled on Saudi Arabia since 9/11.

Well, DUH… April 25, 2002

From a story at Yahoo Health:

>>>

“Similarly, men who dubbed themselves primarily as “househusbands”–about 10% of participants–had an 82% higher 10-year death rate than men who worked outside the home. “<<<<<

Women have been telling men for decades that staying home with little kids is one of the most challenging, stressful jobs imaginable. Apparently for some men, unused to the rigors of changing 45 diapers a day, refereeing 28 arguments over small pieces of plastic toys, and preparing more than a dozen meals and snacks ( most of which will remain only half eaten) in an eight hour period, this stuff can actually kill them.

Classy Action Suits April 22, 2002

My husband has come up with a great name for the band he and our ten year old son keep threatening to start: “The Classy Action Suits.” I love it.

I just saw one of the funniest things… I was…

I just saw one of the funniest things…

I was watching Fox News, to which I am inexplicably addicted, during one of its midday shows with Linda Vester and Shepherd Smith. The two anchors seemed genuinely irritated as they introduced a skit that Saturday Night Live had apparently done this week spoofing Vester and Smith’s show. Vester suggested that her producers were actually taking both of them to task for behaving on air in a way that would give SNL any material. Anyway, so they roll the tape of the skit and it’s really funny. It’s centered around Fox’s obsession with the upcoming Blake murder trial and how the network is continually trying to make parallels between it and the OJ Simpson trial. It included a hilarious bit by Darrell Hammond doing his new, best impersonation of Geraldo Rivera.

When the SNL bit was over, Smith and Vester shifted uncomfortably in their seats and stumbled through some dialogue about how the SNL players didn’t look anything like them (!). I couldn’t believe how seriously they seemed to be taking it. After a moment they seemed relieved to turn their attention to the “real news.”

First story up? An interview with their on-scene reporter covering Robert Blake’s arraignment in L.A., during which the guy repeatedly compared the upcoming trial to the O.J. Simpson trial…

Wife…Interrupted April 21, 2002

My friend Jeannie and are are eerily alike. We are the same age and we both have three children of about the same ages. We both got married in our very early twenties. She is a writer/editor and so am I. I have edited her when I was a producer with Oxygen Media and before that she gave me some truly budget-saving assignments when she was the editor of Minnesota Parent magazine. We both consider ourselves essayists, first and foremost. We even sold a book proposal together (which was later killed by the publishing house) She’s a better writer and a lot skinnier than I am though

Anyway, in the past two years, our lives have taken some interestingly divergent twists and turns. Jeannie is now an editor with the new Minneapolis magazine, The Rake, and you can read what she has been up to in her latest fabulous essay.

A few weeks ago my 6 year old daughter, Jane, deci…

A few weeks ago my 6 year old daughter, Jane, decided to cut of her bangs — all of them. I literally shrieked when she showed me what she had done. It looked AWFUL. Jane is a beautiful child. Really! I’m not just saying that because I am her mama. She has very striking features for such a little girl. Huge brown eyes and Angelina Jolie’s lips, plus olive skin and black hair. Obviously, she doesn’t look one whit like me. But anyway, her self-inflicted haircut looked especially awful in combination with her dramatic features. And the rest of her hair didn’t help either. She is constantly wanting to grow it long — and it had gotten pretty long — but she refuses to take care of ot or let me mess with it much. So it often hangs there, stringy and unkempt.

Yesterday I told her that we really had to do something with her hair. She began to wail and gnash her teeth and holler that she didn’t want to cut it. I begged and begged and finally we came to a compromise. She agreed to let me get her hair cut and I agreed to let her get her ears pierced, which she has been begging to do. So off we went to West Hills Barber Shop to get her hair cut and Henry’s trimmed up. I showed the stylist a picture of an Ashley Judd haircut and she started cutting.

The finished product is absolutely adorable. She looks like a cross between Audrey Hepburn and Edie Sedgwick (both at age six, of course). Within the first few hours after having it cut, several people actually stopped us while we were out and about to tell her how cute her haircut is.

Well, she hates it. Hates it. She has complained about it non-stop since we did it and periodically bursts into a yelling fit and insists that she is not returning to first grade on Monday unless we buy her a wig. She went to sleep last night crying for a wig and then woke up this morning talking about her need for a wig. I hate to be unsympathetic, but I can only tell her so many times in succession that her hair will grow. Secretly I plan to lobby her hard to stick with her adorable Mia Farrow-circa-Rosemary’s-baby look because it’s just great on her and we won’t have to battle over hair care.

If you have any suggestions for convincing a kid to like a new haircut and stop her from rolling around on the floor and insisting at the top of her lungs that she needs a wig, please let me know.

Ro can write April 19, 2002

I just finished reading Rosie O’Donnell’s memoir. I bought it on an impulse at the grocery store late last night when I was without anything to read in the bathtub , and I finished it in 3 hours when I got home. It’s a truly surprising and well-written little book. You can read my review at the book’s page on Amazon.com

Today’s theme was "no power." I drove Henry and J…

Today’s theme was “no power.” I drove Henry and Jane to school only to discover that there was some sort of blackout on campus, so the school was letting out for the day. Not good since I was supposed to spend my day writing about the power industry for the TVA website I am working on. All the content is due by Earth Day and I am a bit behind. I had planned to work all day. After an unsuccessful attempt to take Elliot to his riding lesson (his instructor was late and I had to give him his lesson), I took all the kids back home only to be greeted at the door by a guy informing me that he would be cutting our power off at that very moment because Chris had forgotten to pay the bill. He refused my offer to write him a check on the spot and proceeded to turn our power off as I frantically attempted to call Chris at work to tell him to go take care of this right now. As I was using our cordless phone, I was cut off just as he answered. So I had no computer upon which to write about electric power and I had a house (without air conditioning on the first super hot day of the year) full of cranky children who kept wanting to let the remaining coolair out of the fridge. Chris arrived home at lunch time and apologized profusely. He called the electric company on his cell phone and they promised to have our power turned on by the end of the day. Then he took us all out for Indian food at the yummy Sitar buffet in the a converted Captain D’s with lots of air conditioning. The power at our house finally came back on at around 5 pm.

I grew up in a totally un-air conditioned (or adequately heated) old farmhouse. My sibs and I would often sleep on the front porch on especially hot nights. The first time I ever experienced air conditioning on a regular basis was in my college dorm. I became an AC junkie and I swore that I would never go back. Today reminded me of just how hot a house in Tennessee can get when it is 90 degrees outside and no electricity is available for ceiling fans.

Tonight I will be writing many, many articles on the wonders of electricity and I will be very cranky as I do it.

I’ve started my recommendations page with the bo… April 18, 2002

I’ve started my recommendations page with the books, music, websites, blogs, people, etc that I think are worth checking out. If you have suggestions for me, send ‘em along to kgranju@yahoo.com.

This is a rather gruesome set of relatively recent… April 17, 2002

This is a rather gruesome set of relatively recent photos posted at the NoSpank.org website of kids in Tennessee after being “paddled” at school. If you proceed to the bottom of the page, you’ll see a link to the correspondence between Tennessee state officials and the head guy at NoSpank.org. They want him to take the pictures down. He wants them to stop beating kids at school. I plan to write the Tennessee Dept of Education a letter. And yet again, I am glad that I am able to choose the school my children attend rather than being forced to send them to whatever public school happens to be closest to my house…

Look at this neat-o picture I found on the Web of …

Look at this neat-o picture I found on the Web of my grandmother, Nancy Anderson, with Elvis in Las Vegas. My grandmother was an editor with Photoplay magazine (the People magazine of its day) for a number of years and also did a lot of freelancing for major magazines. She and Elvis were very fond of one another, in part because they were both transplanted southerners working in Hollywood. These days my grandmother stays busy chasing after great-grandchildren, attending DAR meetings, and volunteer-tutoring the wives of Japanese businessman in Bell Buckle, TN.