Monday, June 27, 2005

Tuesday's Radio Show

If anyone's interested . . I'll be on the radio tomorrow, Tuesday June 28th, from 11 am to noon. It's a live interview/call in show Philadelphia's "Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane," WHYY/91 FM, which is Philadelphia's NPR affiliate. It streams at Radio Times for out-of-towners.

And thanks for all comments, and welcome new visitors. I've just returned home from the final stretch of this spring's book tour. Though I'll continue with speaking engagements throughout the fall, I have the summer off, and I'm looking forward to a month where I can reflect and read and write, in other words, get back to what I love to do best. My daughter's in daycamp--she woke this morning bright and early, running around the house screaming "First day of camp! First day of camp! before flinging herself on top of me in bed." July--the extended month of July--is always a quiet month for me. The teaching and project writing I do during the school year is over, and usually needs just a few hours of tinkering here and there. July has been when I can really focus on writing. Last summer I was hunkered down writing the majority of The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars. I'm looking forward to this long, devoted month, to it's slower rhythms, to days that might begin with some weeding in the garden, a swim at the Y, and still have enough good hours to get some writing done. Personally, since I don't have a huge book project to be lost in the middle of at the moment, I'm looking forward to seeing what emerges.

I'll also be thinking about what I've learned these past few months, traveling around and talking with people about family life and how we need more support than we're getting. I've had inspiring moments--meeting people who shift their lives around because they want to make public change--and heard stories of institutions and businesses that are trying to make life easier for working parents, or for parents returning to work after childraising. But I am left with wondering how more change happens faster, and this is a big topic for me to think about, and for me to learn from others, in the weeks ahead, so send me your thoughts. Are we just stuck in all this? Could real change happen from all it's different directions? I wrote about acts of playground revolution in The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars, but can we depend on these? Is it enough? Is talking and learning part of what we need to do now, to reassure ourselves that the problem really exists, that it's not just personal failure, to see how widely it's shared? What's next, where's the real anger, what's more?

No comments: