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Remember a while back when I posted a rough illustration of a Penguin playing a double bass? Of course you do! Anyway, I have just (right now at a quarter to ten at night) finished that illustration in the book and I thought you may want to see how it turned out - well part of it. This is a scene where Rosie is singing with her band at her only gig in town which just happens to be at the very dilapidated and not so popular anymore establishment, 'The Mangy Hound Jazz Club'. A large bear plays the drums, Rosie sings and this Penguin plays his double bass. There is only one animal in the audience and that is a duck who is reading a newspaper. See you soon.

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By Elvin Lim

Mitt Romney must be the happiest Republican in the world. His political rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, seem to be trying to out-do the other in terms of whose campaign can implode faster.

Let’s start with Rick Perry’s campaign. Now we know why his campaign advisors were telling him to skip upcoming debates. Perry’s “oops” moment in Wednesday’s debate will enter into the political hall of infamy because that was the moment when his sponsors will realize that he is just a bad investment. If Perry cannot think just one sentence faster than he can talk, he will be demolished by a law professor when they debate next year.

Perry’s gaffe’s was probably a godsend to Herman Cain, but it would be little relief in the worst week of his campaign yet. It doesn’t matter if the accusations of sexual harassment are true because they are now distractions to Cain’s message, which he was already struggling to explain. And then he had to go call former Speaker Pelosi “Princess Nancy.”

Sarah Palin wasn’t an aberration in a line of competent Republican candidates from Eisenhower to Nixon. She is the new rule. The thing about modern conservatism is that it has become so anti-establishment that it now happily accepts any political outsider as a potential candidate for the highest office in the land. Political outsiders aren’t tainted by politics, by Washington, so we are told. But, by the same token, they can therefore also make terrible candidates.

The irony, of course, is that the slew of debates being held this year was meant to give voters greater choice and knowledge of the candidates’ positions. But all this is doing is reinforcing the front-runner status of the establishment candidate. There is a reason why Mitt Romney and his perfect haircut has coasted through the debate without any oops moments. He’s a professional politician! Tea Partiers are going to have to come to the uncomfortable realization that it takes one professional politician to beat another.

One relatively unmentioned reason why Mitt Romney is still hovering at 25 per cent is because in 2010 the Republican party changed the nomination rules away from winner-takes-all so that states (except the first four) would allocate their delegates proportionately to the candidates at the national convention. This has the effect of giving less-known candidates more of a chance of lasting longer in the race than they normally would, but the unintended consequence is that Republican voters will have to watch their candidates battle it out, and even suffer the potentially demoralizing conclusion that in choosing their candidate, they must follow their mind, not their hearts.

It is far from clear, then, that 2012 will be a Republican year. Conservatives have yet to explain away a fundamental puzzle: if government is so unnecessary, so inefficient, and so corrupt, why seek an office in it? This is possibly why the very brightest and savviest would-be candidates are in Wall Street, and can’t be bothered with an address change to Pennsylvania Avenue. Except Rick Perry and Herman Cain, of course.

Elvin Lim is Associate Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual

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By Susan Herman Post-9/11 surveillance measures have made it far too easy for the government to review our personal and business records, telephone and e-mail conversations, and virtually all aspects of our lives. For example, Under the so-called “library provision” of the

Author Kevin J. Hayes has been very busy writing American Literature: A Very Short Introduction, but he needs your help. Find out what you can do below. Check out his past posts here.

My previous blog took for its topic the genre of autobiography, which will be the subject of Chapter 3 in my forthcoming book, American Literature: A Very Short Introduction. This topic generated less comment than my earlier blogs, which surprised me somewhat. To me, autobiography is an exciting genre for critical exploration. I still welcome comments on autobiography, but for this new blog I am moving on to the subject of my fourth chapter: the short story. And I have come up with a question certain to generate some lively discussion: what are the five greatest short stories in the history of American literature?

Before anyone answers that question, perhaps I should establish one or two ground rules. Were I to answer it myself, the top five short stories in American literature might all be stories by Edgar Allan Poe. No doubt others feel the same way, too. But if all of you submit lists consisting solely of Poe stories, your responses will not really help me very much. Let’s make the following rule: only one story per author allowed in the list.

Top five and top ten lists have been around for a long time. In 1928, as I noted in The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville, Edward O’Brien made a list of the top fifteen short stories of all time, putting Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” at the top of the list and claiming that it was “the noblest short story in American literature.” Does O’Brien’s claim hold up eighty years later? The short story is a product of the nineteenth century, and many of the best writers of short fiction in American literature emerged then. But what impact did the twentieth century have on the development of short fiction? Have there been any good short stories in the twenty-first century? I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

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I first saw the "Did You Grow Up Privileged" Meme at E. Lockhart's blog. And while there are definitely some weaknesses to it, c'mon, it's a 31 Question meme. Given that, it's interesting.

And it relates to children's literature (and story) because it ties in to the discussion about poverty and class in literature; and I think how a person grew up affects many things that they never realize. I think that's why I look at books and movies and TV to not only be needed mirrors, but also needed windows, because the person who grows up thinking the way they grew up is the ONLY way; and all others are "less", grows up very narrow. And that is dangerous.

At the same time, whenever I do think of poverty/class lit, I also fear the danger voiced in the song Common People: the person who views poverty as some type of place to visit because "you think being poor is cool." (For the record: I adore William Shatner's cover of this song. Seriously.)




Ahem.

Time for the meme:
From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.


(note from Liz: like others, I'm commenting on the statements, using italics. . So, this is probably a bit different from the original meme.)


Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college

2. Father finished college (and grad school)
Actually, I am not sure about grad school. He may have.

3. Mother went to college

4. Mother finished college (and grad school)
Here is one of those examples where, due to the limitations of the meme, it's not very nuanced. My mother dropped out of college when she got married; which meant that when my sister and I were little, she was balancing being married, a mother of two small children, working a job at night to help pay tuition, going to school part time, and also teaching full time at a local Catholic school that so needed teachers that it was OK she didn't have her degree, yet.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
I believe there is second cousin or some such who graduated law school a semester or two before me; and there are those who did so after me. But in terms of growing up, did I have or know of family with these degrees? Nope.

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
Probably "same". Definitely not higher. But I'm not sure, especially since we had some financial reversals around this time.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.

9. Were read children's books by a parent.

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
Not nuanced enough. As a child, I had a summer of swimming lessons; around 8th grade or so, a year or two of art lessons; and, depending on where we lived, took advantage of summer rec programs such as pottery, etc. Music lessons? No; because having or renting an instrument was too expensive (that was what my mother said when I asked for them.) My sister had ballet lessons, and I know it was a sacrifice. And ended for financial reasons, not because my sister lost interest.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
While answering yes, I think this is not nuanced enough; that I had swimming lessons at age six and art lessons from ages 11 to 13 hardly is the same as a child who each year has swimming, piano, dance, etc.

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
I'm trying to remember this as a child; has the "Jersey accent" always been mocked? With the whole big hair thing? Yep; but as I never had that accent or that hair I wouldn't say "like me." Ditto for the often ridiculous and sometimes insulting portrayals of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and Catholics.

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
Scholarships and loans which I am still paying off. If I were doing this meme, I would also add a bit about parents giving money towards a home purchase. Because these two factors are not just about how one grew up, but one's current lifestyle, and what one can give to their own kids. Why? Because it's about the amount of debt one is carrying. Put two people in the same job, one who has no college/school debt and a down payment from their parents, and who is paying college debt and rent so cannot save for a down payment and cannot expect that from their parents, and you see the consequences beyond one's own childhood.

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

16. Went to a private high school.
I went to Catholic high school. Which is not quite the same as private high school. As an aside, both my sister and I went to Catholic grammar schools for part of our K-8 schooling; at one point, the sacrifice my mother made to meet tuition was moving in with her parents and living with them.

17. Went to summer camp.
For three years I went to a one week long sleepaway Girl Scout camp. Fun, yes; but not some summer long expensive thing.

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
One thing my mother valued was vacations, and being together as a family. Plus, financially, some things changed upon her remarriage. So, from the time I was about 5 to 13, my mother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins went to Myrtle Beach, staying at an inexpensive motel, one block from the beach, several people to a room. My grandparents took me to Ireland when I was about 12; we stayed with family or in B&Bs. For my stepfather's business trips, we went to Disneyworld.

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
Some new, as I was the oldest; but others were handmedowns from older relatives.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
Hell no. Bought my own car. However, the family attitude, and mine still, is better to buy a new car than someone else's problem, so I have always bought new and once the repair/upkeep exceeds what a car payment would be, buy another one. New.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
For some reason, this makes me giggle.

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
I moved 13 times in my first 18 years; at times living in apartments, rented homes, rented condominiums, and grandparents. Looking at it averaged out, most often I lived in a single family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
Not nuanced enough. For the years we rented, I can tell you that other kids (even those who are friends) are bastards. Often told, even by friends, that it wasn't my real house because we didn't own it. (The things that were said about my mother being divorced? Such as of course someone would think twice about marrying me because of the bad example? Another meme. But still, being the single working woman renting in a neighborhood of SAHMs? Not pretty.) We owned one home for a year when I was in 8th grade, thanks to my mother's remarriage, but for family reasons (the death of my grandfather) sold that home and moved in with my grandmother; a new home was bought right before I left for college.

25. You had your own room as a child.
It depended on the place we lived at the time; I'd say more than half the time my sister and I shared. During high school, we shared.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course
Wow, this is a big one. I grew up thinking these courses were for kids who needed it; didn't realize the game was you took it to make a good score better.

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
Nope. And I am a firm believer that TVs do not belong in kids bedrooms. But I think I'll save that for a "how to watch TV" post.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16

31. Went on a cruise with your family
In college, we (and another family) rented sailboats as a vacation. But that was after 18.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
Part of the benefit of living close to cities like Philadelphia and NYC; and part from a divorced Dad looking for things to do on weekends.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
Again, not nuanced enough. Unaware of heating bills. But aware that at one point we needed to move in with grandparents because of finances; aware of how much clothes and shoes and coats cost; aware of how much food cost.

So that is 17.

Bringing it back to books for kids and teens. In the books I read, sometimes people lived in apartments but more often they lived in homes. That the family owned. I cannot recall reading about renters. Even now, the default, I believe, is a family living in home it owns; oh, sometimes it's "the city" and apartments, but how often is it apartments in the suburbs? Or a renter?