Benton the Younger

Parallel posting at Dirty South Beer Club

Recently the Dirty South Beer Club pursued its second home brew project, again with the help of the pros at East Atlanta Brewery. The first one was a Russian Imperial Stout that was named for the arrival of the the Breed's first child, Frederick. The making of that brew was freezing and arduous, but the results were delicious. We enjoyed that beer for over a year and it kept getting better.

This time we sought to recreate what has often been referred to as one the best beers in the world: Russian River's Pliny the Elder. We got the recipe from this site which published a Russin River recipe for a home brew Pliny clone. We brewed it on Nov. 19th and were able to enjoy it in the first few weeks of the new year. This time, the group once again decided to mark the arrival of a new member by naming the beer in his honor. The beer is great, but still probably a runner -up to the original. However, I think the new label knocks the original out of the park.

2011 Year in Review

2011 was an eventful year for us. Lauren and I spent last New Year's Eve in a cozy B&B in Woodstock Vermont. This year we were home with our new son and all our pets. Both nights were low key and mellow but a lot has changed between those two nights. A year ago, we were just revealing the pregnancy to family and friends. Now, we are managing jobs with day care and beginning solid foods. Benton is an obvious difference, but a lot has changed in a year so I thought we could look back on what else happened in 2011.

JAN | FEB | MAR | APR | MAY | JUN | JUL | AUG | SEP | OCT | NOV | DEC

JANUARY

At this time last year most everyone in Atlanta was holed up in their homes for a week as the city was coated in ice. People were skating on the city's main thoroughfare, we were sledding in the park, work was cancelled. It was an interesting time when people walked much further than they were used to. Roads were slow and quiet. Everyone flocked to the bars that were able to stay open - and they soon ran out of food and beer since deliveries couldn't make it in. January also introduced us to the first scare of the pregnancy when we fell into a high risk group following an NT scan. All that means is that the measurement of the back of the neck appeared larger than normal and we had to go through more testing. The next day Lauren had a procedure called a CVS and that week we found out we were negative for any of the suspected chromosomal abnormalities. We also found out that we would be having a boy.

FEBRUARY

In February we made the annual trip up to a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains with friends we made through Georgia Tech. We took the gathering as an opportunity to announce the baby and had the chance to find out about another friend who was expecting. Rebecca and Miguel came in from Boston and had similar news that they couldn't keep a secret for long. In a matter of weeks we'll do it all again this time with two kids in tow. During the trip last year we took a short hike on the Benton MacKaye Trail and for the first time we tossed around the idea of Benton as a name.

MARCH

In March we made a trip up to Cloudland Canyon State Park. This was our first camping trip while Lauren was pregnant and Ben G. came along to join us, presumably while Katy was in some far off land doing good. We were happy to welcome them back this month after their detail to California. We hiked in to some of the 'back country' sites and went to Rocktown the next day for some bouldering. A highlight of the trip was making our own grill out of aluminum foil and sticks and cooking over an open fire. A super highlight of the month occurred at the very end when some of our best friends had their son Bazlo. It was good to have someone close go before us and great to see everything go well. Back in Atlanta, we prepared for our own son's arrival with the help of my dad and Floyd who painted Benton's room (and the living room and the bathroom and fixed the back door and...)

APRIL

In April we were back up near Blue Ridge to celebrate my birthday in conjunction with Liz who, like Lauren, was pregnant at the time. We did a little fly fishing in the Toccoa and revisited the BMT. I turned 32 and am not sure how I celebrated. One event I am sure I attended in April was the 5th(?) annual(?) Lobsta Fest at Scheaf's in Decatur. The most lobsters you will ever see in one place at one time (at someone's house). March and April also saw the departure of a few good friends. In March Laurel headed off to Germany for a postdoc. We gathered at Manuel's to wish her a fond farewell. She returned after 6 months before leaving to go study Spanish in Ecuador. Where are you now, Laurel? In April, Danielle took off to get married and start a life in Dallas. The climbing gym has not been the same, but neither has the Dallas Art's Scene. She got sent off with a real Atlanta "thanks for stopping by" when she and her fiance got held up at gun point the day before they left. What a town. On the brighter side, in April my friend Thura welcomed another healthy baby boy to the world. I hope to see him again soon.

MAY

In May, I got to meet a local public broadcasting legend with Brennan. We were invited to the studios of Atlanta's WABE to meet Lois Reitzes. Everyone in Atlanta knows her voice and her Second Cup Concert Program. We had a good time even if the picture didn't come out that well. Also in May, Lauren and I made another camping trip, this time to Lake Allatoona with friends from Decatur. This was a more posh trip with gas grills, coolers, flat pads, restrooms and the like. As always with this group, it was a blast.

Matt and I also headed out to Utah one more time in May to make a grand trip. Not really knowing where we were going to end up this time, we stopped at a local REI on the way out of town from the airport and talked to some workers about places to head. We ended up in Zion National Park for some of their rainiest weather of the year. It had the makings of a country song. We spent one night up on the West Rim in snow, one night in a Cedar City motel with Dave, and we ran into too much snow going over the pass to the route we intended to take and had to turn back. Dave and Liza have since left SLC and so the next year's trip will not be in that general direction.

JUNE

At the beginning of the month there was an Atlanta Baby Shower to compliment one that my mom threw while we were up in MI in May. A lot of family came in and it was one of the last times we got to see everyone before the birth. In June we began to feel the pressure of an impending child and the heat of an Atlanta Summer. One particularly hot day, on the way to pick up Lauren for a doctor's appointment and the car stalled while in the queque on Briarcliff, near Ponce. I had to get out and push it to the side of the road where I waited a bit, tried to figure out the new insurance policy, and eventually got the car to start. Not long afterward, before I could get to Lauren, it dies again and was not looking good. We moved quickly to procure a new vehicle, something that would fit all of the dogs we now house as well as a child and gear. It's funny how families seem to take on some of the bigger ordeals in life all at once. Not that buying a car is that big of a deal but it is not something you do every month. I remember when some friends were about to have a child and they tore their house down to the foundation and began rebuilding it. I was stuck trying to figure out if it was the greatest idea ever or unnecessary worry. For our part, I'm glad we decided to seek out a new ride in haste.

JULY

When you get close to the due date you don't do too much. Sure enough, most of our July was taken up with waiting. If you read this blog regularly, or if you've tuned in at all in the last 6 months, you already know what happened in July. Benton was born and I'm not sure what else. I remember the women's World Cup, but most everything else is hazy. I think someone told me about a Christian fundamentalist in Norway going violent, the space shuttle program ending, a new country being formed near Sudan, and another thing about Amy Winehouse but I could be making all this up. It was a super exciting event for us and you can read all about it here.

AUGUST

Much like when you're waiting for the kid, you don't schedule too much in the first few weeks or months while you are taking care of him. So our August didn't include that much outside of the home. We did get some more visitors. My sister came in the first week after his birth, then my mom in August and then Lauren's mom and sister came to visit and help. At the same time I took my first trip away from the newly expanded family. I went to a planning PhD writing workshop in Chicago for a few days. It was the first (next) step in moving closer to finishing my degree, after taking the comprehensive exams almost a year prior.

SEPTEMBER

September saw more grandparents come to visit. First my dad came on a birthday plane ticket and then Lauren's dad and Becky came for a weekend. Benton saw so many grandpas this month he nearly turned into one; telling me about the War and offering me seasoned advice from his armchair.

We also made our first 'trip' with Benton and went up to Rabun Gap for the day. This was an opportunity to go on our first hike with Ben as well as some other friends. We experimented with the best way to carry him for the next time. Trouble is by the next hike he'll be too big or in a different state of mind. We found this out a month later at Arabia Mountain. In any event, it was a short hike and a long trip.

OCTOBER

In October, Benton took his first flight when he went up to New England with his mom. He did a great job and benefited from so empty seats in his row. Next my parents came down to visit again. They left at the beginning of the week that Lauren had to return to work. That same week I went out of town to SLC, but this time for a conference presentation. It was a hectic first half of the month with everyone running around, routines being reset, and Benton being introduced to daycare. All of us really like it though. At the end of the month we celebrated Halloween by dressing him up and taking him around to a few homes.

NOVEMBER

November found us again on the road, or in the air rather. This time we all flew back to MI for the Thanksgiving holiday. We got to visit and introduce him to all of the family up there as well as many family friends. We finished the visit with a blessing at the church up there. Another very important thing that happened while we were up there was Benton's first Michigan - Ohio game. He wore this cool shirt that someone from Penn State gave him (seems that everyone hates OSU) and it brought the Wolverines some good luck. They won the meeting for the first time in several years. May he never witness a Michigan loss at the hands of the Buckeyes. Also, in this month I was able to move forward and defend my dissertation proposal and move on to 'candidacy'. Now, I just have to write the thing. It's about how climatic events, like heat waves, interact with land uses that influence local climate. For example, if we know a parking lot is much hotter than the stand of trees we cut down to build it, we may wonder how this changes during periods of extreme heat. A friend suggested this working title and here it appears on an early working draft of the proposal, though I don't think I can stick with it.

DECEMBER

We spent our first Christmas with Benton at our home in Atlanta. We made dinner and opened presents with our families over the internet, as they were all home for the holidays as well. It was a great day. Very relaxing and peaceful and happy. Though we didn't have any visitors for Christmas, the rest of the month brought a lot of people to town. It started with the Bakers coming down from Ohio - Liza and I have started a running bet on the OSU-Michigan game; when we visit each other next, the loser travels. Later that month, Ajay came through. He was in town for the annual Dirty South Beer Club Holiday gift exchange but also made time to stop by Emory's 150th Anniversary where he was included among their 150 great alumni. Later in the month Jorge came up from FL to stay a night with us, meet Ben, and say goodbye to his girlfriend who was here studying. On Christmas night, Ajay stayed over again on his way to conduct research in India. Then the next day my dad and sister came down to help us for a week, and my cousins rolled through from NC on their way to Tampa.

That pretty much brings us up to New Year's Eve where Lauren and found ourselves in much the same situation as the previous year. We were in bed as the calendar rolled over a new year. Though this year we were not in a quaint Vermont hideaway where candles adorn the window spaces of century-old bridges; we were in East Atlanta where they welcome the new year with errant gunfire. This year it was not just the two of us; we had the dogs and cat and our family had grown by a member (human this time, sorry pets! - and permanent, sorry Jorge!). Still we lay there, everything different and still familiar, looking forward to an exciting new year with plenty of expected changes and many unexpected.

Merry Christmas

Leafblowers

If you know my, you know I hate leafblowers. I see no way that these devices do more good than harm. They are noisy (and dangerous? users are advised to wear personal protective equipment, yet they are used without barrier to others), dirty (polluting from combustion, kicking up debris), and inefficient (they most often serve to push one person's undesirables onto someone else's property - or public property).

I recently discovered that Adam Carolla is on my side in this one. He has a really good rant on the Dec. 7th show. In an earlier podcast he mentioned this old New Yorker article about the contentious issue in California. In the latest rant he mentions this recent test of the emissions from a leafblower against vehicles. Guess what they found. Buy a Fiat.

Happy Halloween

Benton's first Halloween.

Breezy the Breeze Card

MARTA, Atlanta's transit service is having a contest to promote the agency. It is part of a national competition called I <3 my card aimed at drawing attention to the uses of, and affections for, our local transit services. And... we get to pick the winners. You can vote by 'like'ing the video with the thumbs up button and you can watch all of the MARTA entries here. Below is my favorite.

Transit Oriented Development

October 10, 2011 12:01 PM
Transit Oriented Development

2 months

I may seem like all I post about, however infrequently, is now related to having a child. Maybe true, but it really is almost the only thing I have been taking pictures of lately, and today was his 2 month check up. It is so fun to head out to the doctor's and get some feedback on how the kid is doing. You get to have a special outing with your child, see other parents and kids, and hear super positive things from the doctors. They always make you feel like you are the greatest parent in the world and that everything you are doing is perfect - I think that is half the job with new parents. Lauren and I always try to take the same picture of him now to compare how he looks to the last visit. We also prepare a bunch of questions that we always forget once we get into the exam room. At the 2-month check up you being the vaccine schedule. It is the first time the kid has any reason to associate the doctor's office with anything bad. They let you nurse while the shots are given which helped to calm him down but must've have felt weird for Lauren. There is a lot of screaming and crying, but he settled down pretty quickly and then he and I went to get coffee and a scone which I think cheered him up. Later I got my flu shot and tried to make less of a scene than Benton did with his shots.

Being a parent

I am a dad now, but am still able to be on the laughing end of moments like this (for now).


via smartphOWNED.com

Maternity Leave

We're almost a month in now and things are going pretty well. Routines are being developed and we are taking on more activities outside of the house, and we've had two grandmas and two aunts visit. Lauren is home until sometime in October and I am getting back into my work schedule.

As we began to think about having a kid, figuring out what to do about child care was immediately an issue. Prior, I had heard of many people staying home with the children for three months and then going back to work. Others decided to resign from their jobs after the initial 3 month leave and stay home with the baby for at least a year. We knew that staying with the child beyond the 3 months is desirable and that the time provided to new mothers we knew just wasn't enough for them. We assumed we'd have our 3 months to test out for ourselves how comfortable we were heading back to work after that short time. Once we started looking into our options with Lauren's employer, the CDC, we were surprised to find out that we might have even less time before we had to send Ben off to daycare. The CDC, an agency whose responsibilities include promoting maternal and child health, does not, however offer paid maternity leave. Employees must instead use their saved holiday and sick leave to be paid while taking care of new infants. Sick leave can also be donated from other employees for days in the first few months. This is not uncommon in the US, but is noticeably different than many other countries in the world. The US has very short mandated leave for new mothers and is last in terms of paid leave.

But if you can't count on the national agency for health to advocate for the types of entitlements that almost no one can disagree with, who can you count on? Oddly, the answer seems to be Fox News. I love that this sort of pro-social program banter is coming out of their camp. Maternity leave, dare I say healthcare, for all.



This is from a recent story on the AP:
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans often take pride in ways their nation differs from others. But one distinction — lack of a nationwide policy of paid maternity leave — is cited in a new report as an embarrassment that could be redressed at low cost and without harm to employers
"Despite its enthusiasm about 'family values,' the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families," said Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women's rights division of Human Rights Watch. "Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this."
Human Rights Watch, based in New York, focuses most of its investigations on abuses abroad. But on Wednesday, with release of a report by Walsh on work/family policies in the U.S., it takes the relatively unusual step of critiquing a phenomenon affecting tens of millions of Americans.
The report, "Failing its Families," says at least 178 countries have national laws guaranteeing paid leave for new mothers, while the handful of exceptions include the U.S., Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. More than 50 nations, including most Western countries, also guarantee paid leave for new fathers.
Past efforts in Congress to enact a paid family leave law have floundered, drawing opposition from business lobbyists who say it would be a burden on employers.
Instead, there is the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which enables workers with new children or seriously ill family members to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. By excluding companies with fewer than 50 employees, it covers only about half the work force, and many who are covered cannot afford to take unpaid leave.
"Leaving paid leave to the whim of employers means millions of workers are left out, especially low-income workers who may need it most," said Walsh, citing federal estimates that only 10 percent of private-sector workers have paid family leave benefits.
With prospects for federal legislation considered dim for now, advocates of family-friendly workplace policies hope for progress at the state level and are looking closely at California and New Jersey, the only states that have paid-leave programs.
Both states have severe budget problems overall, but the leave programs — financed entirely through small payroll tax contributions by workers — are flourishing. Both offer six weeks of paid leave for workers taking time off to bond with a new child or to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent.
Human Rights Watch, which interviewed dozens of parents for its report, said lack of paid leave has numerous harmful consequences — fueling postpartum depression, causing mothers to give up breast-feeding early, forcing some families into debt or onto welfare.
Cathy Frazier of Mendota Heights, Minn., and her husband, Joe, believe that her severe bout of postpartum depression could have been avoided or at least eased if he had been able to take paid leave after the birth of their son six years ago.
The boy was born two months early, spent five weeks in the hospital, and remained in frail health after he went home. The couple said Cathy had to provide most of his care single-handedly while Joe was working long hours at a local public-access TV station.
"If Joe had been around, it would have been better," Cathy Frazier said in a telephone interview. "I might have gotten sick, but not like I was."
The depression was so severe that she was hospitalized for a week, and went into debt paying for therapy with a credit card because her insurance didn't cover it. Six years later, she said she still struggles with depression, taking medication and unsure about her prospects for accepting any job that would involve working outside her home.
Conversely, Jennifer Shankman of Malibu, Calif., was grateful to benefit from her state's paid leave program, which helped her take off a total of five months — three paid, two unpaid — after her son was born in September.
"It helped me to not feel as stressed," said Shankman, who's now back at work as a youth camp director. "It made a big difference mentally."
The Human Rights Watch report urges other states to emulate New Jersey and California by adopting paid leave programs. Any takers might get federal help — the Obama administration, in its recent budget proposal, proposed allocating $23 million to help states with startup costs for such initiatives.
One possible beneficiary could be Washington state. A paid leave measure was passed by lawmakers there in 2007, but never implemented due to lack of funding.
New Jersey's program started in July 2009 and its balance as of Dec. 31 was $39 million — robust enough so the state recently reduced workers' contribution by half. The maximum annual payment is now less than $18 instead of more than $35.
Through December, New Jersey had approved 44,972 claims — 91 percent of those filed — and paid out $105 million in benefits at an average of $471 a week.
California's program began in 2004 and is run by the State Disability Insurance plan, which collects 1.1 percent of pay from 13 million eligible workers. In 2009-10, the state paid out $469 million for 180,675 claims, with an average weekly benefit of $488.
In New Jersey, men make up about 12 percent of the parents seeking paid leave to bond with a new child. In California, men's share of the leave has risen from 17 percent to 26 percent since 2004.
In each state, some business leaders remain unenthusiastic, though there is no clamor to repeal the programs.
Michael Egenton, senior vice president of New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, said the impact had been relatively modest thus far. He attributed this to the recession and the desire of most workers to take paid leave only after conferring with their bosses to ensure the absence wouldn't be disruptive.
"With the tough economy, people are feeling, 'I'm glad I have a job,'" he said. "We'll be interested in seeing where the program goes when the economy improves."
In California, Chamber of Commerce policy advocate Jennifer Barrera said the leave program — combined with other policies — "creates a significant administrative burden on employers, increases costs, and minimizes the ability of companies to expand hiring and create new jobs."
However, Eileen Appelbaum of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank, said she and a colleague reached a different conclusion in a recent survey of 235 California businesses. She said the vast majority of employers found the leave program had a positive or neutral effect on productivity, profitability, turnover and worker morale.
Appelbaum contended that business associations, rather than individual employers, were the main obstacle to paid-leave proposals in Congress and state legislatures.
"Employer associations in other countries help their companies be successful," she said. "In this country, employer associations largely exist to resist anything that might be good for workers."
In the European Union, paid parental leave varies from 14 weeks in Malta to 16 months in Sweden, which reserves at least two months of its leave exclusively for fathers. Most EU countries have maintained the provisions of their programs despite the recession.
Ellen Bravo of the Family Values at Work Consortium, a 15-state network working for family-friendly policies, said the bid to expand paid leave in the U.S. was hampered by the clout of corporate lobbyists and the relatively weak status of the labor movement.
"Family values often end at the workplace door," she said. "What we're fighting for isn't just modest — it's meager compared to what other countries have."