Iron Felix: a tender soul

When I lived in Moscow I regularly frequented an antique shop on Malaya Nikitskaya Street that had a small selection of English books. A lot of the stuff was awful, but they had a good selection of volumes from “Progress”, the USSR’s foreign language publishing house. Progress specialized in works by soviet authors and bad translations of the Russian classics. My favorite Progress book however (which I found in the shop) was Words from the Wise, a selection of Russian and Soviet quotations.

Some of the words within are wise, others are banal while many are flat-out lies. My favorite quotes however come from Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Polish Bolshevik who founded the Cheka, embraced Lenin’s policy of terror and established Russia’s first concentration camps. A bad man? Certainly. But he knew the human heart.

I discovered this while searching for quotes from Stalin on love. Nothing doing, but Felix, he had a lot to say. For instance:

“Love is the maker of all that is kind, exalted, strong, warm, and bright.” [Read more →]

Tags: advice, family & parenting by Daniel Kalder
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I’ll be straightforward: I was not told I would spend most of my dad life turning off lights that my kids had left on. I never knew it was going to be like this.

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Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I grew up with hobbits and trolls thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien. So, although I had read and heard some polarizing views of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, I was eager to see it, which I did. I liked it a lot. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I enjoy the holidays. Years ago I vowed to resist letting any of the hoopla get to me, as I know can happen. But oh there’s pressure, tinsel-draped, gift-wrapped pressure. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I recently attended a fundraising event for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). This event was sponsored by the Kevin Turner Foundation. Turner, a former Philadelphia Eagle, has ALS, and through his foundation he supports research about the disease. The Foundation also seeks to raise awareness about how brain trauma is related to contact sports. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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In a recent article in The Atlantic John Tierney took a hard, unsubtle look at AP courses, straightfowardly titled, “AP Classes are a Scam.” [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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“Friend” is a suggestive word, loaded as it is with warmth, intimacy, harmlessness. Having a friend is always a good thing. The word was a shrewd choice to represent Facebook connections, because the word itself lulls you past any critical perspective about the relationships you clickably create.

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Tags: technology, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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If you read between the lines in this space — or sometimes just read the lines themselves — you know that my now teenage daughter is not always the easiest person to get along with. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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I don’t know if you guys have been following the story of Canadian teenager Amanda Todd, but for those who haven’t I will give a brief summary.

Just about a month ago, Amanda posted this video explaining in detail what happened to her. When she was twelve years old, Amanda exposed her breasts to a man she was chatting with online via webcam. A year later he (or another man, it is unclear) threatened to send a topless screenshot of her to everyone she knew if she didn’t put on a private show for him. She refused and he made good on his threat. He sent the topless picture of Amanda to her parents, teachers, friends, and neighbors. She was humiliated and depressed, began using drugs and alcohol, and attempted suicide several times. This past Wednesday, October 10th, she finally succeeded in taking her own life.

The reaction to Amanda’s death seems to be focused on two themes: 1. we should make sure children never use the internet unsupervised, and 2. we have to impress upon our kids the permanence of the internet and make sure our girls value their bodies enough to be more selective about displaying them.

I think they are missing the point.

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Tags: family & parenting, race & culture by Jessica Alfreds
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You don’t need research (although it’s easy to find) to tell you that children are sending thousands of texts per month, sometimes hundreds per day. And you don’t need to be a news hound to know that, communications-wise, this has widely been viewed as a sign that all that we know of as good is coming to an end. [Read more →]

Tags: language & grammar, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Yesterday on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, author Jessica Valenti discussed her new book Why Have Kids?. I haven’t read the book, which sounds like a good one (that’s the level to which I’ve sunk as a book critic). But the conversation got me thinking about my own life.         [Read more →]

Tags: advice, family & parenting by Jeff Scheuer
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DAZS — In a finding full of surprises, scientists have discovered key factors for one major aspect of childhood corpulence. One surprise: A gene with an auditory behavioral trigger. Another: You must be on vacation. Surprise #3: The gene resides not in the children, but in their parents.

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Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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You don’t know nothin’ about raising kids, and then one day there’s a child in your house. Then another. For some, this familial accretion goes on for some time. What do you do? You stitch and paste some values together from somewhere – parents you’ve known, cartoons, strangers you meet on the bus — and off you go, bringing up humans. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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This year a family beach vacation overlapped with the Olympics, so I was able to get a huge dose of the events from London. I am one of those people who loves the summer games, and I was able to indulge that passion more than any year since probably 1984. [Read more →]

Tags: sports, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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Two months ago I was told by my doctor that I would never be able to have children.

But let me back up a little. Nine years ago I married the love of my life. When we first got married I thought that in a few short years we would have a house full of kids… rambunctious, adorable, smart-ass little kids just like their parents. I was wrong. After 4 years of fertility drugs, acupuncture, surgery, herbal medicine, praying, begging, and pleading, my doctor called me in June and told me that I had to give up and go on with the rest of my life. It was not going to happen.

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Tags: family & parenting, health & medical by Jessica Alfreds
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There have been many high-profile child sex abuse cases lately. A recurring aspect of the legal side of these stories has been the victims’ silence. People try to shed doubt on accusations by asking of victims, “Why didn’t you speak up earlier?”

Let me tell you about my own close call. [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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The lost childhood I speak of is yours, and mine, and that of our children. It is the loss of a foundation to what little civilization we have gained in the last ten thousand years. Most essentially, it is the loss of ourselves, our past, and our future. It is in our childhood that we first realize ourselves, come to recognize who we are, and learn to understand our individual being within the social context of other human beings. This is what has been lost. [Read more →]

Tags: family & parenting by Vincent McCaffrey
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So, how much will your children read this summer? How attached are you, emotionally, egoistically, to that question’s answer? [Read more →]

Tags: virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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In the 1970s, we’d met Grandpa Andy before, on a trip or two to his government-subsidized apartment. It was on a high floor among a cluster of pale brick buildings—the standing tall but defeated housing projects of Newark, New Jersey. I’d learn years later that he was worried enough about the “bad element” living there—what he no doubt saw as young men with darker skin—that he’d ride the elevator with a butcher’s knife in his belt. If anyone enjoying the ride looked menacing enough, Grandpa Andy would contort to reveal the weapon hidden under his trench coat.

He finally appeared in Philadelphia at my father’s house in University City in 1976. [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, family & parenting, travel & foreign lands by Alex Kudera
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As it turns out, “Mommy Tattoos” are a “trend.” Even among celebrities. So, I made a little comic about it.

Tags: art & entertainment, family & parenting by Ricky Sprague
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