My morning is pleasantly…

My morning is pleasantly filled with Big Bird, Ernie, and Cookie Monster -- I'm babysitting Roshani's daughter Zoe today. This isn't actually stopping me from working, because I'm shamelessly relying on the educational television to keep her entertained for the most part. Though we do go on periodic expeditions to the laundry room, and in a little while, we may actually go outside to the grocery store. We need juice. :-)

Not much else to report -- had a decent travel day coming back yesterday, reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which is very readable and quite thought-provoking; perhaps it should be required reading for the Tiptree jurors -- she's remarkably comprehensive and smart. Kevin likes her too, and we long ago decided that any book that both of us liked was probably a very good book.

Somehow, the combination of reading that book and catching bits of the news broadcasting as I travelled through various airports (Cincinnati's is surprisingly nice, full of cute little shops), has been making me feel a funny urge to actually do something about politics, about our culture, about the war. I keep having conversations, with David, with Kevin, where we try and figure out in what way we could actually, most effectively, create social change. Kevin thinks his best bet might be as something like a political analyst (the job of Leo on West Wing, for example), advising the actual politicians. It's tempting, to think about actually going into politics, but I suspect I wouldn't be any good at several essential aspects of the job. My best bet for making the world a better place is probably still writing...a combination of fiction and nonfiction, I suspect.

Something to keep in mind, and perhaps to help keep me going when I feel like I'm drowning in work, or that I'm never going to publish mainstream lit. I'm not just writing to advance my career; I'm writing, in some sense, to effect social change.

Hopefully not in a painfully polemic way.