journal features

cards and gifts

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2008.02.18

I really can't believe how well we've made out with showers of cards and gifts. It reminds me of a story that my grandfather told.

He was a doctor, and had just delivered a baby girl. The father told my grandfather, "I'll never buy clothing for her."

As my grandfather put it, it was "in the days when we were supposed to start watching for signs of child abuse." So he asked, "how do you mean?"

The man told him, "This is the first girl on either side of the family. They'll be showering her with clothing for her whole life!"

The family's been bombarding us with gifts and clothes for much the same reason, I suspect. It's the first grandson on my side, and one of only a very few kids in the recent generation (I'd have to go to one of my second cousins -- a woman I haven't seen in 20 years -- to find some blood relations of my son's generation!).

Here's the text from a card from my dad & wicked step mother.

To Welcome Your New Baby Boy

Start every day with a kiss and a hug.

Make sure that he's feeling all cozy and snug.

Smile at him, tickle him, cuddle and coo,

And soon he'll be smiling and laughing with you.

Share his discoveries, join in his play,

Watch how he changes with each passing day.

Enchant him with lullabies,

stories, and rhymes.

Delight in the closeness of these tender times.

Give him encouragement,

kindness, and praise,

And he'll grow in so many wonderful ways.

Teach him and guide him, and you'll find it's true...

That the one who'll be learning the most will be you!

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)