Bringing up baby

When my mother in law decides it’s time to let us know her opinion, I try to restrain myself. Her latest op-ed began with the time-honored incipit, “Feel free to ignore me, but…” She then swiftly descended into a tirade about how we’re damaging our daughter by speaking to her in two languages.

I replied, “So you think it’s better if we wait 10 years, then pay for expensive private lessons with an English tutor? What planet are you living on?” I might have expected some opprobrium of the traditionalist variety (“What do you mean you’re raising her without any religion?”), but I hadn’t anticipated this kind of nitpicking. Since when is a learning second language considered hazardous to cognitive development?

I didn’t grow up bilingual. My parents spoke three languages between them, but I was raised speaking — and understanding — only American English. There was a half-hearted attempt to offer some Italian, but it mostly boiled down to the kind of language one uses in conjunction with a stubbed toe. I got pretty good at the bad words, at the expense of all the rest.

In my twenties I began to bemoan my status as a monolingual American. I’d taken four years of Spanish in high school, but had just gotten by with a C average. I wondered what had happened to that other language I’d almost learned, and which was closer to home — Italian. I might still learn it, I thought.

So I found an Italian language school a few blocks from my Manhattan apartment, dropped the cash and began studying. Immediately I decided to memorize the first canto of the Divina Commedia — in Italian. Without really knowing what I was saying, I recited the first 20 or so lines before my class one evening. “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…” The teacher — a bold Florentine beauty — listened, stunned. (Now that I understand the words, however, I can no longer recall the verses.)

After a year or so I stopped going to classes. I desperately needed to save money. My then-girlfriend and I were breaking up after a quarrelsome four-year relationship, and I was set on living alone (for the first and last time in my life). Not long after, I left for Italy; my Italian has improved dramatically ever since.

I’ve now taken four years of Hebrew, and studied Yiddish independently. I speak neither language well, but I do have a general grasp of both, which is more than I’d have thought possible a decade ago.

When my wife and I decided we were ready to have a child, we had varying opinions on all aspects of child-rearing — all, that is, except the desire to raise our daughter as bilingual. And that’s a point on which we won’t cede ground to anyone: not family, friends or the public opinion that governs so much parental decision-making in Italy.

It’s taken some discipline, but I’ve gotten in the habit of speaking to our daughter Melissa primarily in English. When we’re alone, that’s all she hears from me. And, after three weeks in the United States, she’s begun approximating the English names for preferred objects: duck is “duh”; water is “wawa”; cantaloupe is “catabu.” She’s now added “nonno” and “nonna” to her repertoire, in perfectly pronounced Italian. That’s bilingualism in action.

I remain perplexed by my mother-in-law’s cavalier attitude. When I asked her to explain her resistance, she went on about confusing messages. “It’s like one of you is saying ‘yes’ and the other ‘no.'” When I asked her about the sources of this insight they turned out to be predictably nonexistent.

Maybe she should meet some of the people we know who were raised bilingually, and who are raising bilingual kids. When I sent out my feelers on Facebook, I got a bunch of very enthusiastic responses — not one of which expressed the least bit of concern that we were “confusing” Melissa.

One friend even told me about her son, who was born deaf. Her Italian doctors — who had cured her son’s deafness through an implant — instructed my friend to speak only Italian to her son, saying two languages would only confuse him. She’s convinced the advice was a needless setback. Now her son is learning English, slowly but surely, with the help of his younger brother.

On a different note, another friend observed that her daughter not only started speaking later than other kids her age, but understands less. She attributes this to her bilingualism. I’ve heard from others along similar lines.

A quick Google search yielded a treasury of articles with a recurring theme: “People used to think bilingual children were slow/confused/challenged, but new research shows…” Basically, it seems to show that some children are slower than others in certain things, but likely not for reasons related to their bi- or multilingualism.

That sounds like good news to me.

From The American

Science vs. religion

I just wanted to get this down before I forgot it:

• Science is like walking into a pitch-dark room with a small, powerful flashlight. You may not see much at first, but it may stop you from stumbling. Slowly, painstakingly you’ll begin to form a pretty good idea of where you are.

• Religion is like walking into that same room with a glow-in-the-dark Lightsaber. Sure, it feels cool, but you keep swinging away at invisible phantoms. And the light cast is too weak to actually see by. May the force be with you!

All are not equal before the law

The Italian Chamber of Deputies decided it didn’t want to dignify homosexuality by approving a law that would make hate crimes against gays punishable. On. Fabrizio Cicchitto of the PDL explains:

We’re not homophobic. Our position is basically this: we consider gays citizens equal to everyone else. For precisely this reason we contest every legal attempt at differential treatment which would thereby admit and accentuate diversity, which is in substance unconstitutional.

Which isn’t true at all. They don’t consider gay citizens “equal to everyone else.” It’s for this reason that gay marriage is still illegal here (among other forms of discrimination). They’re taking cues from the Vatican, of course, which has perfected the art of discriminating while playing the victim. They cry out about the tyranny of minorities, about how if you give them an inch they take a mile, that the majority (read, “Catholic heterosexual majority”) are somehow in danger of a rabble that wants wants wants…equality.

It’s always the same story: Italian politicians will not risk going against “Catholic values” for fear the Vatican will…what, exactly? What are they afraid of? That they’ll ask a nuncio to come home from his plush quarters down the street? That they’ll get “serious” – always a sign that someone has managed to piss off the Privileged Few? That the Catholic masses will be mobilized to take action against them? And when has that ever happened?

The Italian Constitution has this to say:

(“All citizens have equal rights and are equal before the law, without distinction by sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, or personal or social condition.”)

All of which sounds great, but isn’t true, either. (Notice, for instance, it doesn’t mention “sexual orientation.” Maybe that’s grouped under “personal/social condition.”) That’s why in every courtroom in Italy there is a huge wooden crucifix above the words, “The law is equal for everyone.”

But we know this is a lie, too. Just ask Judge Luigi Tosti.

How do you say “facepalm” in Hebrew?

h/t R.S.H.T.

Yaakov Swisa, founder of FaceGlat – an ultra-orthodox Jewish version of Facebook – has this to say:

“People who are God-fearing and care about their children’s education – cannot tolerate the ads and pictures one sees on the regular Facebook. I personally know people who have deteriorated spiritually because of all kinds of things they were introduced to there.”

You mean people who believe in a neurotic, psychopathic deity can’t deal with ads for, say, vacation houses in Croatia? (I just took a quick look to see what Facebook was offering me.) What’s wrong with them?

As for their children’s education, does Swisa really think Facebook offers tutorials on the theory of evolution, the age of Earth or any of those frighteningly atheistic things normal people learn about in school? No worries!

If people can’t have fun on FaceGlat and meet some interesting folks – or even converse with their own spouses – then what the hell are they doing there? Aren’t there enough morality police in Mea Shearim already?

Postcard from Ectoville

Spooked out

In June we made our first trip to the United States with our baby daughter. After a trying week at the beach, we settled into a rented cottage immersed in the lush green of Hanover County, Virginia. Cows grazed next door. A family of chickens wandered over the grass to visit us each morning. In the evening, an industrious spider materialized on the porch, spinning its web anew, only to vanish by dawn.

By the standards of small town Virginia, we immediately became local celebrities. (My sister compared us to Jennifer Aniston, who is reportedly dating a man whose mother lives nearby.) A buzz built up around us: “The Italians are here!” We brought them real Parmigiano cheese (compare with “parmesan”), olive oil from Umbria (compare with “Goya”) and taralli laced with fennel (incomparable). We didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

The pinnacle was Ashland’s July 4th parade. My brother-in-law was named honorary parade marshal, giving him and his family had the right to ride in a horse-drawn carriage with the mayor — an exciting prospect for my 10-year-old niece.

The whole town — except the misanthropes, if there are any — gathers yearly along Main St. to watch inventively named “brigades” march from one end of the township to the other. We saw the Lawn Chair Brigade composed of people doing a kind of Full Monty routine with, well, lawn chairs. There was also a Latin brigade, whose members mouthed the Roman greeting “Salve” and sported white togas. A man pedaled an old-time penny-farthing and an eccentric doctor marched on stilts. Then there was the patriotic dog contest…

The next day, my sister gave me a copy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Look,” she said, “you’re in the paper!” And there I was, looking on as the antique Big Wheel rolled along, part of the annual crowd. It’ll make a nice clipping for the family archive.

But it was a meeting at the barbecue the night before that most struck me. Over a plate of South Carolina peach cobbler, in an enormous, white antebellum home, I met a woman who introduced herself to me as a “ghost-buster.” I soon learned that she had cleansed the place where we were now standing of ectoplasm. It was a perfect setting for the conversation that followed.

I kindly probed as to just what is was that she did. Given the choice between a rational, materialistic explanation and a paranormal one, she told me, one should always choose the latter. “Why close oneself to the possibilities?” she said.

As I patiently listened to tales of angels and spirits I began wondering if there was anything she didn’t believe in. I proposed unicorns. Maybe they were making the strange puttering noises that came from the attic. She dismissed the thought. Given her credulity, I wondered how she could shut out unicorns.

It was a weird conversation, hung with dusty spider webs, creaky staircases and relics of haunted house lore. She even spoke of a mysterious “third” dimension (spooky!). But when she knocked on a wooden bookcase we’d both been leaning on and announced, “This isn’t real,” I decided that further inquiry was pointless. Where do you go from there?

To save any embarrassment, I came clean. I told her I was skeptical, that I didn’t believe in angels, demons or the paranormal in general. I told her there was not a shred of evidence for any of the things she’d described. As she’d been frank with me, I’d return the favor. We parted amiably, returning to our respective beer coolers.

I love visiting Ashland. It’s like some long lost town in an America that probably never existed except on celluloid and the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. An overwhelming feeling of innocence, of childhood, creeps up on me.

Now that I have a daughter I’m coming to better appreciate innocence. Think about it: here is a human being with almost no sense of danger. She trusts people. She’ll put anything into her mouth. We, her parents, must keep watch over her lest she tumble down a flight of stairs or swallow a tack. I’ll be happy when Melissa is a jaded cynic, though; innocence is dangerous. It isn’t meant to last.

This observation illustrates the way I look at Ashland. Every time I visit, I wonder if it will still be the same. When will it morph into just another Richmond suburb? When will it shed that special cocoon of simplicity that so fascinates me, and which Ashlanders work to protect?

The moment we move into town, no doubt.

Published in The American

Spousal advice

My wife ripped this off and handed it to me. “You’ll appreciate it,” she said. I think she meant I might learn something from it.

The Italian Parliament is not secular

Italy’s Northern League wants a crucifix in Montecitorio, the Italian Parliament. They’re taking the Lautsi vs. Italy decision as carte blanche to impose their religious views in every angle of Italian life. The problem is, according to Cronache Laiche, they’re right:

Hanging a crucifix in Parliament is an act of coherence. The opposition, istead of lashing out, should have approved – even raised the bid – asking to hang a crucifix, a huge crucifix, in every angle of the Chamber and Senate as a warning to anyone who still thinks that the secular State functions independently of religion. A provocation? No, just the unavoidable truth. So that Europe and the entire world can see who we are, not that which we pretend to be.

Seriously, I thought they already had crucifixes in Parliament. How did they not get them on the walls before now?

A poison apple

Today my wife is attending a funeral for a young man – twenty five! – who recently died of a brain tumor. He was diagnosed only a month before.

My aunt died of cancer a few years ago, after a four year struggle. She was a very religious Catholic, went to church, kept statues of Padre Pio in her home and pictures of the Virgin Mary on the wall of her bedroom. She took trips to sanctuaries. She counted priests among her friends. And yet…she withered away to almost nothing. She lived in tremendous pain. Then she died.

So where is this great God believers speak of? Either he is fucking with us – in which case he is an evil God – or he just plumb don’t exist. Why it would give anyone solace to have faith in  such a thing baffles me. Even some atheists I know talk of the “gift of faith” with not a little nostalgia (that they never received it.) All I can think is, What’s wrong with you people? We can do better than this!

We all suffer, atheist and religionist alike. No one is exempt. Life will end in death for all of us, with no regard for our belief systems, education, successes and failures. We all know this. It does no good to pretend that there is a benevolent being who is looking out for us, who is amenable to prayer and flattery, and who will save us when the going gets rough. It does no good because this is quite obviously not true.

Let’s stop pretending it is, and that faith is a gift. It’s a poison apple if it’s anything.

Of sacred cows and sacred unicorns

Meet Paisley, my pet unicorn

Ophelia Benson wrote a post yesterday about sacred cows. In it she asks readers what their cows are, and the responses are fairly typical of what one would expect from skeptical rationalists: democracy, the “golden rule*”, equality, etc…of course no reader of B&W holds actual cows to be sacred, or Jesuses or golden calfs (or is it “calves”?). That’s what you get when you ask a question like that to a gaggle of atheists.

My understanding of the term “sacred cow” is something beyond question, a thing we know is probably undeserving of intellectual protection yet which is protected, shielded from inquiry. It’s not necessarily something which we have fairly good reasons for holding dear, such as basic human rights or hygiene. Those make sense under even the most severe scrutiny (unless you are a sociopath or a pope.)

“David” – perhaps the one who sparked Ophelia’s post – posted a comment along these same lines:

I have a friend for instance who is a skeptic in almost all things but she wants so bad to believe in life after death so that she can think her mother is still somewhere that [sic] she believes in ghosts. She wont discuss it with anyone she does not go ghost hunting or anything but she simply will not consider any evidence against it.

Which is kind of funny because I’ve been thinking about ghosts lately; so I mentioned on Facebook that I have a sacred unicorn.

Here’s a little background:

Last week I had the opportunity to meet a ghostbuster at a 4th of July barbecue in Virginia. After a while of patiently listening to her tales of ectoplasm on walls, angels, spirits and other dimensions (she spoke of an imperceptible “third” dimension…spooky!) I mentioned that maybe what she thought were ghosts were really invisible unicorns. She let slip a telling smile, as if to say, “Nonsense!” I thought, “Gotcha!” Why are unicorns, invisible or not, any less plausible than what she believed were the real causes of unexplained noises in an old wooden house?

This woman was not a skeptic in any sense. In fact, she told me straight out that, when given the choice between a rational, materialistic explanation and a paranormal one, one should always choose the latter. “Why close oneself to the possibilities?” she said. Then why chuckle at unicorns?

So that’s how my sacred unicorn came into this world. She grazes imperceptibly with all those cows in a field of golden wheat somewhere beyong the horizon. If you see her, do me a favor: shoot.

* The “golden rule” is appropriately ridiculed in the comments section of the original post.

Ahh, freedom

That’s me at the Ashland 4th of July parade (standing, with baby carriage). Dressed to the nines, as usual. We struck up a conversation with the photographer, Eva Russo, who grew up in Turin. Perhaps she ran this photo out of solidarity, or pity, I’m not sure which.