How I Keep Trying to Forgive Seuss

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(This was originally written as part of a giveaway for movie tickets. Now it serves as some thoughts on Seuss and his fraught legacy.)

I have a complicated history with Theodor Geisel. More specifically, I have a complicated history with his work. It's not complicated in any real world way, it's complicated like a relationship status on social media. Which is to say, it's entirely one sided and all in my head and heart.

Like a great many North American children, I grew up loving Dr. Seuss. From The Birthday Book, which was read to me on my birthday every single year, to the adventures of young Bartholomew Cubbins, I read everything Seuss had written at least 20 times over by the time I was 10. Or at least that's what I thought. What I didn't know about were Geisel's early advertising works or his WWII era propaganda cartoons. They were problematic to say the least. Geisel supported the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, an action on the part of the government that resulted in my family being sent to prison camp and losing their house to the military. It wasn't until I read, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street to my kids that I began to understand Seuss' transformation over the course of his career. If you don't remember Mulberry St. (the book, not the street) it's about a young boy who makes up a story about things he saw on his way home. He strives to come up with the most outlandish things he can possibly think of. The capper, the most outlandish, bizarre, inconceivable thing he can come up with is, "A Chinese boy Who eats with sticks."

What?

I was floored. I remembered everything else in his fanciful parade, but I had never registered the Chinese boy. It turns out that in the original 1937 printing it was a "Chinaman." Ouch.

I've had some long and involved debates about Mulberry St. (the book, not the street). The opposing view is that it's not racist because it's a product of its time. Well sure, but that was a time when it was OK to be racist. After all, it was just five years later that the government shipped 120,000 people off to prison based solely on their race. (Not to mention Jim Crow, segregated military units, and rampant anti-Semitism.) The fact is, through the 1940s, Dr. Seuss was kind of a racist.

Lucky for us, the story doesn't end there. Seuss' views changed over the years after WWII. He wrote, Horton Hears a Who as a commentary against the bombing of Hiroshima and dedicated it to a Japanese friend. In 1978, Seuss made a re-write to Mulberry St. changing "Chinaman" to "a Chinese man," and changing the color of the character from bright yellow, to something more neutral. This came after writing a 1966 book under his Theo LeSieg pen name called, Come Over to My House, which celebrated different cultures rather than mocking them. In the end, Seuss fully deserved the reputation he enjoys today, as a celebrated and beloved author whose books contain both humor and morality. Still, I don't read Mulberry St. to my kids because they are Asian and I'm not going to subject them to anti-Asian iconography. I refuse to normalize their ethnicity and culture as something peculiar. There's also at least one Dr. Seuss based movie I haven't shown them. (More on that below the picture)

Which brings us to, The Grinch.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas has to be one of Dr. Seuss' most well known an beloved works. It was another one that we read every single year at my house. It's one I can quote up and down, often using the quotes outside of Christmas or anything remotely related to Christmas. It's also one that has been controversial for completely different reasons, adaptations.

The 1966 animated version of the book is so far, the best. It's essentially the book, with animation and a great song. Little is changed in terms of the wording and it's read by Boris Karloff, so that's going to be hard to beat. It's also just 26 minutes long, which means it's easy to digest and of a length that it could be shown on television in a standard half hour block. I used to beg my mom to be able to watch it the ONE time it would be shown each year, usually along with the Peanuts Christmas special, and a one-off Cone Heads cartoon. It was something I looked forward to every winter almost as much as Christmas itself.

Then there's the Jim Carrey version. Yikes. I was excited about a live action Grinch movie and I thought Carrey was a good choice for the role, but how would they stretch it to 104 minutes? The answer was with a lot of back story, including neglectful adoptive parents and a key party. Ew. Critics gave it mixed reviews, I don't know anyone who liked it. And like that, The Grinch was put away for the next 18 years.

18 years?! It must be time to try again right?

Right.

Just like I kept looking for reasons to forgive Dr. Seuss and his early career, I'm really hopeful about this latest film. First of all, it's a return to animation, which I think is a good choice for Seuss adaptations. It has an all-star cast, including Benedict Cumberbatch and Rashida Jones. It clocks in a tidy 86 minutes so it won't be too long for the kids. I'm 100% certain it will stray from and embellish the original book, (the preview articles pretty much promise that) but it has to do that and I know it can be done well. I thought Peter Rabbit was pretty good for what it was. I'm also the guy who cried both times I watched The Peanuts Movie, so I know there can be adaptations that provide an updated experience while holding true to what we all loved about the source material.

So I'm excited to bring my kids to an advanced showing of The Grinch coming up on Wednesday, November 7th at 7:30pm at the AMC Bay St. 16 in Emeryville, and I want you to join us. I'm running a raffle right now, through Friday, October 26th. Check out the info below on how to enter. I have at least 6 sets of 4 tickets to give out. I may have Grinch swag for the winners as well. So if you want to hang out, meet the fam, or argue with me on my Dr. Seuss takes, enter below and I'll see you there!

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Get Involved: Toddler Storytime at Children's Fairyland

Last year I had the pleasure of attending Toddler Storytime at Children's Fairyland in Oakland. Moving back to the East bay has been great for so many reasons. One of the big ones has been being able to bring my kids to many of the places I loved as a child. Every school kid in Berkeley and Oakland makes trips to the Oakland Museum of California, and so does my family. We also became members of Children's Fairyland. Walking in, seeing that friendly dragon and the coffee stand shaped like a pumpkin brought back a flood of memories I didn't know I had. Like Tahiti, it's truly a magical place.

Robert Liu Trujillo

Fairyland however, is more than just story book themed attractions and rides for people under 5 feet tall. The park also puts on educational and community programming. I attended Toddler Storytime with my youngest child, where we saw a fantastic artist and author, Robert Liu Trujillo read his book Furqan's First Flat Top. The day also included local community and city sponsored literacy groups, who talked with parents, led fun activities and gave away books. It was very cool, Yo and I had a great time. 

"Great," your thinking, "why are you telling me this? Is this an #ad?" Well no, it's not. Sure, I think it would be great for you to bring your kid to Toddler Story Time, or to sign your older kid up for the Children's Fairyland summer theater camp. (Dude, I totally wish I had gone to summer theater camp here when I was  kid. It looks really cool.) But that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this to encourage you to get involved as a reader at Toddler Storytime.

Children's Fairyland is holding their next round of trainings for readers coming up on November 2nd and 3rd, 2018. Dads, they are specifically looking for you. In fact, the event I attended with my kid was specifically geared towards dads. But I'm sure they'd be happy to have you come read any week.

They are looking for adult volunteers (18 and older) who want to be trained to lead toddler-specific Storytimes on the outdoor Emerald City Stage. Volunteers will commit to two days of training and lead approximately two Storytimes per month. Readers should be comfortable engaging with and leading a group of children, parents, and caregivers. In the training, you will develop skills in reading aloud, song leading, and other fun literacy-focused activities. We strongly encourage men to apply!

Toddler Storytime takes place on Fridays at 10:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. with 20 minutes of interactive early literacy activities: reading aloud, singing, and movement. It encourages language development in a joyful environment. The training is led by Fairyland’s librarian, Angela Moffett, who is also a teen services librarian at the San Francisco Public Library.

Training dates:
Friday, November 2, 9:30 a.m.–4 p.m.
Saturday, November 3, 9:30–3 p.m.
The training is highly interactive and both days are required!
 
If you or someone you know would like to become a Storytime volunteer, please email Vicky Chen at outreach@fairyland.org. You'll be asked to complete a short questionnaire to find out more about your experience and interests.


Please give them a look if you're in the East Bay.

The Stories We Tell About Our Family

Life happens. It happens and it ends, and other lives go on. Somewhere in that chain we tell each other stories of what was, who was, and how we came to be here. Sometimes those are big stories, like Ken Burns documentaries. Sometimes they are small stories, like how your family, and by extension, you came to be where you are right now. 

My family is lucky in that we have a lot of that history written down. On my mother’s side there is a scroll that traces our lineage back to the early 400s. One of my great uncles had it translated from Japanese, and then later wrote a book that updated the family tree up to about my brother. When I was in middle school I read that scroll translation over and over. It’s the official record of our family from the time our oldest traceable ancestor moved from China to Japan, to when our happy band of half-breeds extended our deep roots into my hometown. That’s the for-real story.

There’s another version though, probably more than one, possibly as many as there are living family members. The version I tell my kids is based more on what I remember my mother telling me than it is on that scroll. My mother’s version is based on what her mother and grandmother told her. The general story is the same, but the details are probably very different. The stories shift and change like folklore handed down within very small tribe. Each generation wraps it in a little more color, a little more romance. 

The version I tell, and that I believe to be true as much as I believe anything that doesn’t have scientific research to back it up, goes like this:

My great grandfather left Japan shortly after feudalism ended. He had been a Samurai, but since he was not the oldest son he didn’t stand to get an inheritance. With no lord to serve, he made off for America like so many other hopeful Asian men. While he was here, he worked in a bicycle shop, but refused to handle money as such things were beneath his station. He later helped to organize farm workers in California’s central valley. I imagine him like a Japanese Cesar Chavez whose work was lost to history, wiped away when white farmers seized Japanese land and businesses during WWII. In between, he was sent a wife in a marriage arranged by their families. My great-grandparents settled in San Diego. My grandmother told me a story about making jam sandwiches and loading them into her red wagon to take to the Okies camped next to the stream near her house. She said that when the men would knock on the door looking for work, or for food, it was the first time she knew there were poor white people. 

That house is gone now, the subject of a mystery that was never fully resolved. By the time WWII started my great grandfather had died. I’m told it was just as well, that the indignities of internment would have killed him. My great grandmother and her children were sent first to the racetrack at Santa Anita where they lived in horse stalls they were forced to clean out themselves, and then to Poston III in the Arizona desert. The house was left empty with neighbors agreeing to keep an eye on it. The house was fine. Then there were G.I.s living in it. Then one day, it was gone. Just gone. Lifted off the foundation and carried away. The government denied there had ever been a house there. When I graduated from college in LA (from a school that used to be an orange grove where boys took my grandmother on dates, she told me) we all took a trip down to where the house had been. The street corner is now on the naval base. The annexation of my family’s house, and now much of their neighborhood seems to be complete.

My grandmother and a few of her brothers were able to get out camp. One joined the 442^nd all Japanese American regiment, another was already enlisted on that day that shall live in infamy. My grandmother moved to Utah to attend college and live with her brother in a converted mortuary. She bathed in the corpse tub and worked in a Chinese restaurant, as they were the only ones willing to hire Japanese. She took her degree in journalism to occupied Japan as the editor for the Stars and Stripes Army newspaper. While there she interviewed Tokyo Rose and Helen Keller. She also met an enlisted reporter named Kelly Roberts. She was his boss. They got married. After leaving Okinawa for Chicago and then spending a couple years in Pakistan while my grandfather was definitely not working for the CIA, they moved to Berkeley because they felt it was the best place in 1950s America to raise mixed race children. 

And that’s how it came to be that my kids’ school interviewed me for a family history project. They wanted to update some of the murals around the schoolyard with stories of how students’ families came to Berkeley. The kids in the class chose our family as one of the mural subjects. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t sure how much of what I told them was 100% accurate. I remember trying to verify some of the details years ago. “Is that what I told you? Gosh, I don’t remember.” was my grandmother’s response to most of my questions. Grandma is gone now. She never saw the mural her great grandchildren helped paint. I fretted over the details for a while, but in the end I decided that the story as I know it is true enough. It’s the one I think I was told and the one that I tell my kids. As family stories go, that’s close enough. 

Review: The Backyard Cafe

I don't do a lot of reviews. You can find a couple album reviews here, which I enjoyed but found I couldn't keep up with the volume of CDs being sent my way. But I felt compelled to write about a new spot in my neighborhood after I was presented with a coupon for a free brunch for three. There was no explicit quid pro quo in terms of trading the brunch for a review, but it was a unique dining experience and I believe it deserves a few inches of print. 

The coupon was delivered in person by the proprietor, a young man (well, not really) who had admittedly just recently learned how to cook enough dishes to be able to present an actual menu. As you can see in the photo the coupon was originally for four people but was amended after a new policy allowing children under six to eat for free. The run up to our reservation was a little out of the ordinary. Due to scheduling conflicts, we were not able to get to the cafe for a few weeks after the coupon was delivered. During this time the owner approached me several times to ask if I would be coming in that weekend. I got the impression he was holding off the soft open of the place for a time when I could attend, which is sweet but also a little unnerving.

I'll cut to the chase here. The owner, who is also the head chef is very green and I think in a bit over his head. I get the sense he's never worked in a restaurant, and neither has his one staff member who I found out is also his sister. When I first arrived at 8:00am, the waitress insisted that I sit down and order right away and I was shown to a table that had been set up for us. The table was out on a sunny deck and included a name placard, which was a nice touch. 

I took a look at the menu and placed my order. From the kitchen I could hear an argument between the waitress and the cook. They hadn't agreed on a shorthand for orders. He insisted that she write everything down completely, she said that would take too long since she wasn't really good at writing yet. Having worked in food service in both the front of the house and the back of the house I offered to help them settle on a system. That wasn't the end of the commotion in the back though as the cook saw my order included three items rather than two. "You can't order three things!" I heard him exclaim. Unable to help myself, I poked my head into the kitchen, "At a decent cafe I should be able to order what I want. Even if it's a little extra. But I don't think it should be too much to ask for eggs, meat and potatoes."

I didn't think I was being harsh so I didn't expect his anguished response of "Fine!" followed by a complete breakdown into tears. I felt bad so I tried to console him. We went back to his office, neatly appointed with bunk beds but no desk. (He's really all in on this venture.) "What's the matter?" I asked. "Does it all feel overwhelming having to cook so many different things?" He replied that if everyone ordered everything he'd have to do SO much cooking. I assured him that he could do it. "Besides," I added, "I'm patient. No one's rushing you through this." He returned to the kitchen where I noticed an older woman standing in a corner surveying the scene. When I say older, I don't mean old, just older than the children running the cafe. She seems to be some kind of consultant brought in to help with the soft launch. She noted the lack of food in the prep area. "I can't start before I have the orders. I won't know what to cook." said the young man. "OK, but you haven't done any prep at all. If you wait to start chopping potatoes until after the order is in it'll take you an hour to get anything out. That's why most restaurant staff show up hours before opening to prep. They're not sitting around watching cartoons waiting for orders." At this point I realized I wouldn't be eating for a while. Lucky for me I was able to take my coffee to a cozy lounge area that had wifi.

Sure enough, I wasn't served until around noon. When the food came out there was further confusion about plating, and the waitress didn't know who had ordered what. Her first plan was to have us all come to the kitchen to pick up our plates. After having intervened more than I'd wanted to already, I asked that my order be brought out to me. The food was good. Though the options were limited and I tried a bit of everything I have to say it all came out quite tasty. The general theme seems to be to use less seasoning and let the flavors of the fresh food speak for itself. The bacon, which came as either pork or turkey, was crisp. The the eggs were cooked perfectly; medium for the scrambled, over easy for the fried. I ended up dining with the consultant and found her company quite lovely. She provided French toast she had prepared herself as an opening day special. The cook, clearly a bit frazzled from his first day, sat at an a nearby table with the waitress and another young lady I didn't have a chance to meet but who I presume was another sibling of theirs. 

My visit to the Backyard Cafe was unlike any experience I've had dining out. Parts of it were downright bizarre. But the food was good, and I suspect the service will improve as they get more experience. I'm definitely going to go back.

Inventing Cereal Day

Look, it’s getting silly. It is. It’s too much. There’s now a “National _______ Day” every damn day. And I swear there’s several days dedicated to both donuts and biking to work. (Come to think of it, those two should come in equal proportions.) March 7^th is National Cereal Day. It’s one of the few National Days our family observes. The thing is, we've been doing it since the mid-1950s. According to NationalDayCalendar.com no one can “identify the creator of National Cereal Day.”  Well, I would like to remedy that.

This is what love looks like

When I was a kid my mother told me about a glorious day. It was a day to be anticipated and revered in the same light as Christmas or Easter. This was Cereal Day. It was 1982 and I was going to be introduced to a family tradition. You see, my grandmother wasn’t interested in feeding her family the sugary cereals that were coming to prominence during the Mad Men era. My mom and her siblings grew up on Cream of Wheat and Corn Flakes. But grandma wasn’t made of stone. She designated one day each year, March 5^th*, as Cereal Day; a day when each member of the family could choose any cereal they wanted. 

My mom was tie-dyed in the wool socks hippie. I was raised in true Berkeley fashion on a diet of sprouts and whole grains. I choked down Mueslix with goat’s milk or granola and soymilk. But my mom was a fool for tradition, so once each year on March 5^th, I was allowed to choose any cereal I wanted. I went through phases. I drifted from Cocoa Krispies to Cap’n Crunch with brief forays into Lucky Charms and Froot Loops. As a young adult I continued to celebrate Cereal Day. Even though I was living on my own and could have had any cereal at any time, there was something special about maintaining the discipline and singular joy of waiting for that one time each year.

You need to get the one with the most sugar

As a dad it was a no-brainer that Cereal Day would continue for my kids. Luckily, even though my wife evolved into being an even bigger hippie than my mom, she doesn’t totally hate fun. So Cereal Day lives! My kids look forward to Cereal Day like they look forward to Halloween. They revel in it. They talk about it and plan for it for weeks ahead of time. They have even started their own tradition, mixing all their cereals together into a chocolaty, fruity, marsh mellow morass that makes my teeth hurt as type. None of it would have been possible if not for my grandmother inventing cereal day. Long before the Internet, long before the proliferation of 365-special-interestdays-a-year, a single mother in Berkeley invented a holiday in order to control her children’s diets. I have no idea how the cereal industry got wind of the date, but I can’t entertain it as a coincidence. I'm sure they moved it by two days in order to avoid a controversy, but I'm on to them. My grandmother invented Cereal Day. Your welcome.

(Video) Beyond the Call: Raising Children with Special Needs

I still feel like an imposter here. Not in the imposter syndrome way, but like I really don't belong here. "Here" is the disability community, specifically as someone who has been out here talking about raising kids who have special needs. I didn't set out to be a public voice for raising kids who have disabilities. I started writing about this topic as part of the writing I do about being dad. Then in 2016 I submitted a piece and was chosen to read at the Dad 2.0 conference in Washington D.C. Outside of that, I have had a long association with various disability communities, mostly through my work as an ASL-English interpreter and as an academic specializing in sign language.

With that in mind, I was honored and little surprised when I was invited back to Dad 2.0 as a panelist to discuss raising special needs kids. When I realized I was moderating the panel I was nervous. Who am I to be leading on this issue in any capacity when I know that there are other parents who are far more knowledgable and qualified? I think the best answer is that I'm decent with words and I can keep people on topic and keep conversations moving.

The panel was intimate and became more of a conversation with the audience, than a traditional panel. The panelists and audience brought a range of perspectives and backgrounds from active bloggers and activists, to people working in social services, to dads just now learning about and dealing wit their child's diagnosis.

Some of the conversation revolved around dealing with that initial diagnosis from both an emotional standpoint, and how we spring into action as parents in those early days. We talked about navigating the continuing journey, including some of the things people don't often consider when they think of raising kids with special needs. For example, we don't often talk about how much time parents miss at work and how much instructional time special needs kids miss with pull out time (i.e. speech therapy) and doctor's appointments. These are some of the hidden costs of special needs parenting. Finally, since Dad 2.0 is a bloggers conference, we discussed how much and why we should or shouldn't write about our kids. The consensus is that if you are writing about your special needs experience, it has to be about you and your journey rather than about your child. You need to be telling your story, not theirs.

I hope you'll give the video a listen/watch, and let me know what you think on the Facebook page. Also, please follow our panelists on social media.

Home Birth: A Conversation with Dads

Home birth dads!

This is another of the content pieces that came out of Dad 2.0 in New Orleans earlier this month. The great thing about Dad 2.0 is it can be so many things. If you want to network with brands, you can do that. If you want to network with other writers, you can do that too. One of my favorite aspects is simply meeting other dads and talking about being dads. It's funny, because I would think that in Berkeley I'd end up having more of these kinds of discussions with dads, but in the wild, I still find that I'm not sure how to approach the dads I encounter. I can't always tell who's a gung ho dad, and who's just out with their kids. I guess the distinction shouldn't matter, but I get nervous with new people, so it does.

Which brings me back to Dad 2.0, where you can absolutely geek out over dadding and know for sure that you're going to met with enthusiastic nods and high fives. Which is how I ended up doing a spontaneous Facebook Live conversation about home birth with four other bloggers, Mat York, Anthony Griffin, Glen Henry, and Eli Lipman. Over the course of the last two Dad 2.0 conferences we had all met and talked in different capacities and at different times. Mat and Eli had done a series called Demystifying Home Birth. For me, this was the first time I'd had a chance to sit with other dads and talk about this topic.

The video below is mostly geared towards encouraging other dads to be open about home birth. We each talk about how we came around on wanting to do home birth with our partners. Each of us had different reasons, from bad experiences at hospitals, to not having set foot in a hospital. I think there's something in the conversation for any parent, or prospective parent. So click play and let me know what you think in the comments.