I'm furiously packing up for a photo session in a graveyard with my class this morning. Apparently, there are beautiful flowering trees at the Hackensack cemetary. I plan on taking pictures of the graves. So, no time for real blogging this morning. I'm just going to throw out some links of articles and items of interest that caught my eye yesterday. More blogging this afternoon.
Jeremy S. sent me two links to the latest in the mommy debates. From Slate, a nanny says that she prefers working for rich moms, rather than working moms. Rich moms have less hang ups about hiring help. (I read The Help
Xeni Jardin, a blogger for Boing Boing, started a great conversation about the lack of health care coverage for cancer patients. Check out her twitter feed.
An autistic child is distruptive in a cafe. How do people react? Extremely well. My Jersey friends on Facebook are passing this link around. We're very proud of the fact that if you mess with an autistic kid, we'll tell you to STFU.
Apt. 11d 
If anyone asks why you are taking pictures of graves, be sure to respond with a cheerful, “Voter registration drive.”
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Re: the traveling moms article, I’ve noticed lately that the media seems to be really out of touch with many of these lifestyle issues and I LOVE it when the readers make sure the media folks know how offended they are.
Yesterday I was listening to NPR and they had this DREADFUL retired Secret Service dude who must have been in his sixties who was talking about the events in Columbia. He referred to it as “fooling around”, and explained that many men who were athletes in high school have very high testosterone and THEN (the clincher!) he used the phrase “boys will be boys.” Every single caller berated him for being a sexist pig (I tried to call and do the same but the phone lines were busy), and called him out on his language. (When a MAN commits a crime against women, we call it “fooling around”? Really? Boys will be boys? Has the man ever heard of date rape?) Do we need more women in high places in the media for the norms to change. (IN the meantime, I like to think that’s ONE NPR guest who will never be invited back!)
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Rich moms have less hang ups about hiring help.
Also, one assumes, more money. If that meant more pay, I might also rather want to work for them.
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I’ve mentioned before my cousin who worked on the personal staff of a billionaire you’ve heard of. That family had three nannies taking care of two kids.
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Regarding three nannies, I don’t know those particular facts, but providing round-the-clock childcare certainly requires more than one nanny. We had a friend (well, acquaintance) who was a high-level investment banker, expected to travel and/or work all night at the drop of a hat, who had three nannies (day, night, and weekend). I’m not sure how else you could manage that sort of schedule.
Interestingly, when her kids were young, she went home at 6 every night and had dinner with them (or at least sat with them while they had dinner), then went back out to client dinners and networking events.
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My sister had a friend who spent his summers as a a nanny to an Austrian prince. The prince (age 4) had two other nannies, but they were both middle aged women and the parents wanted a young man to serve as a role model/companion for their son. He spent the summer hanging out at a country club in Newport, RI. The most responsibility he had was once, when the other nannies were occupied, he unwrapped a rice krispie treat for the kid (normally that wasn’t his job). It paid very well and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed the work immensely.
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The family spent a lot of time on their yacht, so it might have made some sense from the point of safety. (I personally would be totally freaked out at the thought of having small children on a boat for long periods of time.) I think I remember hearing that there were times when the three nannies were falling all over each other. There was a trophy wife in the picture, too. (That’s what I think of as genuinely rich. Having just one nanny is SO upper middle class.)
(By the way, I think the book The Nanny Diaries is a minor classic. You might not want to let your daughter catch you reading chick lit, though.)
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(I personally would be totally freaked out at the thought of having small children on a boat for long periods of time.)
True. What if the boat hits a Hapsberg.
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You’re throwing strikes today, MH.
Re photos in a graveyard: My husband went through a phase of doing this and he found that shooting headstones in a mirror was actually helpful in terms of catching the best light. He also got pretty involved in doing Find-a-Grave stuff for a while.
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Back when Otto von H was in the European Parliament, one of his staff asked if he was going to watch the football game that evening.
OvH: “Who’s playing?”
Staff: “It’s Austria/Hungary.”
OvH: “Against whom?”
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I totally get why one would need at least a nanny/child (though the extra nanny seems a tiny bit superfluous, if you also have a cook and housekeeper). How else do you drive the kids to hockey, riding lessons, basketball, two different schools, playdates with different friends (or pick up the different friends). After all, optimizing the world for each child means that they can’t possibly be doing the same things at the same time with the same people.
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Sometimes I learn things that are too good to google because I don’t want to know if it is a joke or not. Otto’s tale is one of those.
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Does that story even work in German?
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