Since I'm going to be out of town again for a few days, I thought I would take the opportunity to update the links and or otherwise annotate a few that I had earlier put up without comment. There is some chance I may do this in a discursive manner. Like the following:
One of this summer's proud moments happened during one of our flights back from the West Coast. A mother (with a child around the age of daughter L.) was walking up and down the aisle of our Airbus trailing behind her toddling son. They stopped at our row and she looked at my napping daughter and wife. The woman then began to speak to me and I suddenly felt as though I had stepped into one of those dreams where everything has suddenly slipped beyond my comprehension.
Noting my look of befuddlement, she stopped and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were Dutch."
I may have momentarily fooled her, but I am nowhere near as honorary cool, Euro-type guy as the design-conscious Greg at daddytypes. This is the guy who had a hard time finding a changing table that would not give him aesthetic cramps when he and his wife were expecting their baby. But,
Then one day at work, my wife realized the steel lab carts they used to move satellite equipment around (she works at NASA) might make a great changing table. Things we took into consideration, besides coolness: decent work height (between 32"-35"), child safety (watch for sharp edges and corners, exposed bolts), and compatibility with some kind of standard changing pad (including enough of a lip around the top shelf to hold the pad in place).
Another blogging dad worth a read is Frum Dad. He's frum. He's a dad. He's enthusiastic. He's entertaining. He's given to thoughtful meditations on breastfeeding as metaphor for religious experience:
For all the other items that were moved in that manner, when it was time to set up the Tabernacle again, the staves would be removed (and presumably stored). For the Ark, the poles stayed in. A curtain (the "Parochet") was hung around the Ark, such that the curtain would hang down over the staves, but the staves would rest against the Parochet, causing two protrusions in the curtain.They look like breasts. I wouldn't say this if I didn't have legitimate rabbinical authority backing me up. They're supposed to look like breasts.
The idea is a beautiful one. We are humans, and live in a physical, limited world. But we yearn for (and are obligated to pursue) connection to Hashem, which are transcendent, unlimited, super-physical things. The universe as conceived of by Hashem is too much for us; if we tried to interact with it directly it would destroy us.
So Hashem gave us the Torah, which serves as a sort of interface between us and Him. The Torah (represented by the Ark, which contains the Tablets) interacts with the "true" universe, and then frames it and gives us a construct through which we can deal with it.
That's why the breasts. It's to explain that the Torah is serving the same function at one level that a mother's breasts serve at another.
Another update includes John Paul Davis's Celebrating Colum site. Thoughtful and worth looking at. It, um, celebrates his son. Colum. But I mean, check out the birth announcement for Pete's sake. My suspicion is that he and Greg from daddytypes would just as soon see our ugly umbrella stroller thrown on a burning pyre. Reading these guys is like having Walter Pater looking over your shoulder while you are shopping at Babies R Us.
In a good way, natch.
There's another dad out there blogging, though he isn't really running a dad blog. Martin Kelley is just your friendly neighborhood Post-Liberal Christian, Hicksite Conservative Friend, and Emergent-Church curious Gen-Xer. He has also adopted plain dress, which recently caused someone at FGC Gathering to compare him to a Cosmic Possum. But for someone mucking about (as I have for several years) in a liberal Friends monthly meeting he makes good reading. I suspect that would hold true for those who have done their mucking elsewhere.
I'm hoping k. over at a bomb regardless begins updating again. In part because I like to read her stuff. In part because I think she knows Elmo's lawyer. And that could come in handy someday if I find myself in a muppet prison.
There are more I want to add but I am feeling a little guilty that wife B. is bustling around and packing while I wile away the hours. I will make some further updates when we return from Illinois at the end of the week.
I don't know how to do a trackback ping.
So:
http://frumdad.blogspot.com/2004/07/blog-to-blog-other-way.html
ping.
--FD
Posted by: FrumDad | July 20, 2004 at 11:38 AM