Four month bragathon

Graham is four months and two days old, and he is also undeniably, fiercely and shockingly awesome! Here are some of the specifics of his awesomeness:

• Graham's first stretch of sleep is consistently lasting seven hours, and often he'll sleep another two or three after eating six or seven ounces. I have measured out my nights in formula ounces and hours slept, and both figures keep improving, along with my energy and sanity levels.
• Graham smiles almost as much as he makes his parents smile, which is a lot a lot a lot, and even often more than that. 
• During the day, Graham can only nap if he's on top of me, which makes me feel loved and needed and happy ... and incapable of doing around-the-house chores. I have no instinct or desire to be a Holly-homemaker, and while I'm immobilized by the napping Graham, I have plenty of time to read for school. I figured I'd be constantly behind in my school reading assignments this semester, but so far, I've only been ahead. On the downside, we have two massive and ever-growing laundry mountains, one of clean clothes and one of dirties.
• I was determined to guide Graham through the Essential History of Art book, but before we even made it to the Bayeux Tapestry (page 22 of 249), I was yawning and wanting to yank my hair out, and Graham likewise seemed antsy with ennui. (He stares endlessly at Annie Leibovitz's Women, so the issue is not a general dislike on his part of looking at book pages.) To avoid boredom and maintain our picture-book delight, I decided to forego distant art history and instead peruse MoMA Highlights, whose cover image is Lichtenstein's Girl with Ball. It's cartoony art, and we both love it. And what isn't cartoony is still infinitely more interesting than Byzantine art. Graham agrees and doesn't seem to mind that I'm offering him an incomplete education. And the text interpretations accompanying each art piece are so insightful.
• We're only two days into month four, but already Graham has gotten his radical activism on.

baby's first protest

Today we went with Graham to a demonstration that took place outside Athens' City Hall and that was hosted by People for a Better Athens, the advocacy group leading the fight against the development of a downtown Walmart. At first I felt like a real phony for being there, because to hate Walmart seems so hip, as hip as Target flip-flops and swimsuits.

Maybe Target isn't as hip as I think people think it is, but it's relevant. Some of those most morally compelling arguments made against Walmart apply to its aesthetically superior counterpart, Target, a store that doesn't seem to be hated with anything near the intensity with which Walmart is hated. (Many Target products are produced by sweatshop labor, though I'm pretty sure that Target isn't nearly as union-squashing as its aesthetically inferior counterpart.) I'm not defending Walmart, and I don't want a Walmart downtown. But hate for Walmart can be so mean. There's a website called People of Walmart that mainly features pictures of heavy men and women whose clothes don't cover their bodies; bums and boobs are prominent in these pictures, but the bums and boobs of People of Walmart are mocked rather than eroticized. (It's not worse for them to be mocked than for them to be eroticized; it's just a different kind of mean, I think, the way boobs on fat women earn derision while boobs on skinny women earn, I don't know, lusty looks. Neither is too nice, but one body type is more popularly regarded as an asset than the other. This is a complicated moral math problem.)

Walmart is so often characterized as a trashy store, but what's so trashy about Walmart is pretty much the same as what's so trashy about most of (at least) American retail. And so many companies in the American market attempt to appropriate ethics:  nevermind that TOMS shoes are made in China and often of leather--buy a pair and a pair will be given to a child in need; Ethos water ("water for the world") gives a whopping five cents from each bottle sold to help provide fresh drinking water to places in need of it; suddenly the paper towel/toilet paper aisles of grocery stores are looking more green than white. With all this false altruism and insipid environmentalism, it's sort of nice that Walmart doesn't put too much effort into pretending to be good. But of course the fact that Walmart indeed is no good is a very big problem, one that its not pretending not to be cannot make up for. Yikes:  a quadruple negative, not unlike Walmart's business model.

So we went to the anti-Walmart demonstration, and as soon as we arrived I saw:  a man painted as a zombie, probably 100 tattoos, at least a dozen hemp purses, and five dogs so ugly that only a liberal could love them. (I loved them. Every dog deserves love. Every liberal knows that.) I was afraid of what I saw, but several local business owners, as well as a professor of history and women's studies (and author of To Serve God and Wal-Mart), gave compelling, principled arguments against Walmart.

There was this frustrating thing, though. One business owner who spoke objected to being regarded as a radical socialist for opposing Walmart; she said that she felt that her opposition to Walmart simply made her American. I don't know why she wouldn't admit to being a socialist, or at least a little socialistic. All-American non-socialistic opposition to Walmart must be aesthetic or self-interested opposition, and I find that incredibly lame.

But overall I think the demonstration was interesting and convincing, and I like the idea of taking Graham to gatherings of that sort, even though it might mean that during his rebellious teenage years he'll experiment with young republicanism. If that's as bad as it gets, I guess that's not too bad.

My baby is four months old!