Anne Sexton’s poem “Welcome Morning.”

There is joy in all:

in the hair I brush each morning,

in the Cannon towel, newly washed,

that I rub my body with each morning,

in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning,

in the outcry from the kettle that

heats my coffee each morning,

in the spoon and in the chair that

cry “hello there, Anne” each morning.

All this is God, right here in my pea-green house,

each morning, and I mean, though often forget,

to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table

in a prayer of rejoicing as the holy birds

at the kitchen window peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, let me paint a thank-you

on my palm for this God,

for this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

In Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture Orenstein sets out to discover the origins and ramifications of this cultural shift. “I didn’t know whether Disney Princesses would be the first salvo in a Hundred Years’ War of dieting, plucking, painting (and perpetual dissatisfaction with the results),” she writes. “But, for me they became a trigger for the larger question of how to help our daughters, with the contradictions they will inevitably face as girls, the dissonance that is as endemic as ever to growing up female. It seemed, then, that I was not done, not only with the princesses, but with the whole culture of little girlhood: what it had become, how it had changed in the decades since I was a child, what those changes meant and how to navigate them as a parent.” With the keen perceptions of a seasoned journalist, the emotional investment of a mother, and a wittiness that’s all her own, Orenstein ventures to the land of Disney and American Girl Place, visits the toy industry’s largest trade show, even braves a Miley Cyrus concert. She talks with historians, marketers, psychologists, neuroscientists, parents, and children themselves. She returns to the original fairy tales, seeks out girls’ virtual presence online, and ponders the meaning of child beauty pageants. In the process, she faces down her own confusion as a mother and woman about issues that rearing a girl raise about her own femininity.

An intelligent, candid, and often personal work, Cinderella Ate My Daughter offers an important exploration of the burgeoning girlie-girl culture and what it could mean for our daughters’ identities and their futures.

April Fools’ Day makes for Internet silliness

Google HQ, as rendered in the style of the Nintendo Entertainment System. (Credit: Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET) Fakery on the Internet?

April 1, 2012

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Google HQ, as rendered in the style of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

(Credit: Screenshot by Edward Moyer/CNET)

 

Fakery on the Internet? You’ve got to be kidding.

No, no; it’s true. Especially on April Fools’ Day, when the World Wide Web and mischievous geeks all over the planet celebrate leg-pulls and pushovers.

This year, Google kicked things off a day early with a supposed port of Google Maps to Nintendo’s 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. What follows is a rundown of other 2012 Fools’ Day shenanigans, in case you foolishly missed them. (We’ve tossed in a few related stories for good measure too.)

We’ll be updating the list as April Fools’ Day rolls along.

 

• CNET took a look at how to punk noobs on the special day – including driving people nuts with an unlocatable beeping noise, and stealthily “borrowing” a friend’s iPhone and setting it up so Siri calls the unsuspecting user an unsuspected name.
• Not all pranks turn out to be pranks. What happens when you get fooled by reality? Take a walk down memory lane with this piece from the vaults, in which CNET’s Josh Lowensohn takes a look at six April Fools’ stories that turned out to be legit.
• Google got things rolling for April Fools’ 2012 with a fake 8-bit port of Google Maps to the Nintendo Entertainment System. A bogus promo video set the tone, and a link on the Google Maps page let people try out a simulation.
• Renowned for throwing things out on the Web to see what sticks, Google also suggested a dashing new turn for Gmail — imagine a two-key keyboard that turns GMail into Morse code.
• Our own colleagues at ZDNet Australia present a story written by one “Avril Primera” that considers the possibility of China’s Huawei buying Sydney Tower and the Harbour Bridge as a consolation for not being able to tender for National Broadband Network contracts.
• CNET UK, meanwhile, posits The Pirate Bay getting a whole lot more literal with the launch of an actual submarine to host its servers off-shore. And it spots a strange, yet strangely familiarGoogle Doodle.
• Google strikes again! This time it’s Google Racing, an almost plausible partnership with Nascarthat would see Google’s self-driving vehicles compete in the world of stock car racing.
• Roku is shaking up streaming and your remote control with the new Shake Remote, an innovative remote based on the much-lampooned exercise device. The device promises to launch a “Roku-lation” in TV streaming while you cut flab.
• Media mogul Conan O’Brien announced that he had acquired the tech blog Mashable and ousted site founder and CEO Pete Cashmore. O’Brien explained that the move was motivated by a desire to correct the “atrocious” job Mashable does in covering tech news.

 

We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more – to be on top – no matter what it is the top of that’s admired. There’s nothing recent about the temptation. It’s the oldest sin in the book. The one that got Adam tossed out of the garden and Lucifer tossed out of heaven. What is new about it is the general admiration and approval it receives.

~ Eugene Peterson in A Long Obedience
Last week, I spent a couple of days listening to Eugene Peterson share stories and precious wisdom from his 80 years on this little blue planet.
It was a blessing of unparalleled riches to sit at Peterson’s feet (literally — I was in the front row and he was on a stage that put me at eye level with his black tassel loafers) and learn.
For the uninitiated, Peterson is a retired Presbyterian pastor and prolific author perhaps best known for The Message, his para-translation of the Bible and titles such as Practice Resurrection and A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
A native of Western Montana, Peterson and his wife of more than 50 years, Jan, returned to Big Sky Country several years ago to the home his father built on the shores of Flathead Lake when Eugene was a child.

Undoubtedly, it will take me many months — or years — to digest all that Peterson shared with a smallish group of youngish Christian leaders at the Q Practices gathering in New York City. But I can say I was most indelibly struck by how at ease — content, yes, but more than that — Peterson is in his own skin. Fully present. Mellow but absolutely alert, energized, fascinated by the world and the people around him.

Relaxed — that’s it.

Surely eight decades (and counting) in this mortal coil has contributed to Peterson’s deeply chill vibe. And yet I am convinced it’s more than simply a matter of age.
It’s spiritual.
The Petersons have cultivated, with great intention, a simple life. They live in a place that is natural, beautiful, majestic. They eat locally, cook their own food, and regularly ask friends to join them for meals where conversations linger for hours. They read good books by writers and poets whom they find inspiring. They keep their life (and their calendar) uncluttered. They pray. They keep a Sabbath. They walk in the woods and they listen. To the rustle of the leaves, the cry of a hawk, the wind, and the still small voice of God. To the silence. Eugene Peterson was a pastor for 30 years and for a good part of that time, he was not content, relaxed, or mellow. He had to learn how to let go and recalibrate his life to what he calls the “rhythms of grace.”

“Competitiveness is in my DNA,” he told confessed. As a young pastor, “I worked hard: Get a lot of things going, set the goals, meet the goals … It was energizing. Money to raise, a sanctuary to build,” he said. “Then, when we were finished, people quit coming to church.” An advisor in his Presbytery told Peterson that congregations needed a challenge, a goal to work toward, something to achieve to keep them engaged in the life of the church. Start another building fund, the man said, even if you don’t intend to build a building.
Peterson was flummoxed. The competitor in him wanted to do something to change the situation. But he recognized that to do so would be to enter a never-ending cycle that would be unhealthy for him, his congregation, and the faith of everyone involved.
So he stopped. He did nothing. He slowed down, simplified things, and waited.
“By doing ‘nothing,’ I think I was slowly being cured,” Peterson told us. “It took a while. But by refusing to do anything…I learned to live a life that was contemplative, not competitive.” In New York City, Peterson’s audience of 99 included about 90 pastors — many of them in the early or middle years of their ordained ministry. They wanted to know how to have a successful pastorate (in myriad ways), how to live an intentional life in an era of epic distractions, how to love mercy and walk humbly with their God and their congregations. I was a bit of a square peg among the pastor-set, but as Peterson told his stories (he’s a marvelous storyteller, the kind you want to lean in closer to listen to — a Norwegian Presbyterian Yoda patiently guiding the would-be Jedi toward a fuller understanding of The Force), I quickly realized that his wisdom wasn’t just for pastors; it was for all of us.

“One of the things the monks used to say: ‘Stay in your cell. The cell will teach you everything,’” Peterson told us in a conversation about simplicity. “I took that personally in terms of my congregation. ‘Stay in your congregation. Your congregation will teach you everything.’ I was always thinking about projects, but I kept coming back to that until I was content to be just with these people. Receive from them. Not always thinking up ways to make their lives more interesting, or godly, or whatever.”
I took Peterson’s translation of monastic slogan and reimagined it again as, “Stay in your life. Your life will teach you everything.” Stop looking for the next adventure, challenge, hurdle, drama, or excitement. Be present. Be here now. Stop trying to change people. Stop trying to do anything. Just be. Be in your life. Your life will teach you everything.
“Pay attention to what’s there, not what isn’t there,” Peterson said. Go about the journey of faith — the Christian life, the Way — relaxed, he said, “not feeling so guilty, not having to prove yourself all the time.”
Providence has a great sense of timing — one that’s oriented by kairos not chronos. My time with Peterson fell during the first full week of Lent.
Before Ash Wednesday I already had determined not to do the usual thing — give something tangible up: chocolate, caffeine, wine, fried food, etc. I decided instead to forgo saying negative things about my appearance out loud. I thought that would be healthy, helpful, a meaningful practice to honor God’s creation (me) and the Creator.

It lasted about 36 hours. I determined to start again. And again and again and again, if necessary.
After listening to Peterson, I stopped trying. I stopped, full stop. For Lent, I am doing nothing. I am just going to be.
Feel the rhythms of grace and let God do the doing.

EUGENE PETERSON 
Professor Emeritus of Spiritual Theology, Regent College. BA (Seattle Pacific), STB (New York Theological Seminary), MA (Johns Hopkins), DHL (Hon.) (Seattle Pacific)

Eugene Peterson was for many years James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College. He also served as founding pastor of Christ Our King Presbyterian Church in Bel Air, Maryland. A prolific author, he is probably most well known for The Message, his translation of the Bible in the language of today. Now retired from full-time teaching, Eugene and his wife Jan live in the Big Sky Country of rural Montana.

You had to be there