No, not on the edge as in excitement and fun. More on the edge of sleep about 24 hours a day. Never really awake, never really able to sleep well. Living with a baby, and the brain suffers.

So there we were, ready to get ready to dress up to go to the special reception to meet John and Teresa Heinz Kerry on their book tour. We had told our son, Jacob, that we were meeting John Kerry and he was excited. He has no idea who Kerry is, but he remembers meeting Bill Clinton and he LOVED that. So he was excited. "We are go-ing to meet John Ker-ry...going to take a TRAIN." Yeah, taking a train was also part of the excitement.

So we were all ready to meet Kerry.

Until I saw Michael Bouldin's diary describing the very event we were about to go to...which actually happened yesterday.

D'oh! Only that is the polite version of what I said upon realizing I had gotten the day wrong.

Sleep deprevation is par for the course when you have a baby. And sleep deprevation is cumulative. It has been well over 2 years since I routinely got a good night's sleep and the cumulative effects show...memory declines, motivation declines. About the only thing that can get us to Manhattan in the evenings these days is Bill Clinton or John Kerry. I can assure you Hillary or Chuck wouldn't be enough to inspire us to make the trek and give up even a small amount of sleep.

As someone who not only suffered as a child the trauma of a bad marriage but also the trauma of my parents awful divorce, my heart goes out to Andrew Giuliani. In an interview this past weekend, the always candid son of the Rudester, talked about the strained relationship he has with his father :

New York Daily News - Politics - Rudy's son: 'I got my values from my mother':

"I got my values from my mother," 21-year-old Andrew Giuliani told ABC in an interview quoted on "Good Morning America" yesterday, the same day the Daily News spotlighted the rift between the former mayor and his only son.

"She's a strong influence in my life," Andrew Giuliani said of his mother, Donna Hanover, seemingly drawing a contrast between her and Rudy Giuliani. "She's a strong woman."

The NY Times aptly points out, Giuliani's children are nowhere mentioned on his campaign site, an omission that has not been missed by GOP contenders like Mitt Romney, who is vying for the conservative-est of them all. But Giuliani, in trying to be hip has just declared to news wires that it's just a normal problem facing blended families : "I believe that these problems with blended families, you know, are challenges — sometimes they are," he said. "The more privacy I can have for my family, the better we are going to be able to deal with all these difficulties."

Yeaaaaaah. Riiiiiight.

I, Liza Michelle Sabater-Tirado, am the father of Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, Dannielynn.

It was a freak accident of telepathic autogenesis that made me the father of Anna's daugher. Seriously. Since the father of my children doesn't want more kids, I was using all my mental abilities to immaculately conceive the baby girl I want so much. Unfortunately my powers got transferred to Anna Nicole.

'Tis been the season of home-made, gluten-free and cow-dairy-free goodies like kashkaval and manouri cheese pizza, vegetarian lasagna with chevre, virgin mojitos, soy nog, pumpkin cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and chocolate sprinkle butter cookies.

'Tis been the season of 10 hours straight of Halo, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, Happy Gilmore followed by Monster House, a round of Life game a-la Pirates of the Caribbean, new digital cameras, a scooter, Bionicles, felt reindeers and my son learning how to knit with needles.

'Tis been the season for the guys first shopping experience for me wherein they wisely chose a "Hello Kitty" bathrobe because I'd look cute in it (and they know I like all things Hello Kitty).

'Tis been also the season of explaning to the kids why we enjoy so much the mythology of Jesus even though we don't believe in the christian concept of god.

All in all, 'tis been a good, calm, quiet season (but for Tara's story, crickey).

I guess it helps that I've given my kids the biggest gift of all ...

In school your payoff comes from giving up your personal responsibility, just doing what you're told by strangers even if that violates the core principles of your household.
Shocking Origins of Public Education, John Taylor Gatto

I will be coming out soon from a gag order I've been on about anything having to do with education. I have been reticent about writing on the subject for a whole variety of reasons. When we were homeschooling, or may I say "unschooling", life became our learning platform and as many of you know by my writing there's not a lot I write about my private life, especially when it comes about my kids. It's hard to write without including massive details about the spawnage. I do believe children have a right to privacy.

Now that my kids have been in school since September, I am ready to explode. I have been biting my fingers and tongue because, grock, I hate the culture of schools.

Homeschooling in New York is a double full time job for secular parents with no church groups to pick up the slack of classes, workshops, study groups or just plain old playtime and baby-sitting. If you are one of the thousands of evangelicals, mormons or conservative jews homeschooling in New York, you will have a church, tabernacle or temple as a support system that's got your back. If you are an atheist like us, good luck.

We've gone to town with the news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy. We are so full of cheer we went ahead and created a whole cornucopia of baby shower gifts for the happy mom, her out-of-law wife and their baby to be.

Have the baby wear his or her mommies love and
their dissent with this most political of onesies.
It's never too early to learn how to slap one on
republicans and gay marriage haters.

There's more stuff at our Mary Cheney Baby store, but it's just a start. Would you like to add to the fun? Then go to town with your photoshop!

What are the rules for playing?

Maybe it's a slow news day, but the simmering controversy over a practice called metzitzah b'peh is again surfacing on the local political blogs, with both The Politicker and The Daily Politics weighing in.

Metzitzah b'peh (Hebrew for "oral suction") is a practice of some ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, whereby the blood resulting from an infant circumcision is orally sucked up by the person doing the circumcising. This practice, claims the City Department of Health, potentially exposes infants to herpes and has in fact fatally infected at least one child. In consequence, the NYC DoH is seeking to impose strict limits, up to a ban, on the practice, while Hassidic groups are seeking an accommodation with the less assertive (and politically malleable) State Department of Health.

The State DoH has now issued protocols regarding metzitzah b'peh, which the City DoH and its commissioner, Tom Frieden, have rejected as inadequate. Brouhaha is the natural fall-out, with some arguing that a practice that can kill infants should be banned, others saying that it is an open-and-shut case of free exercise under the First Amendment, and probably a majority wishing that they had never even heard of this ickiness.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is an orthodox (modern) Rabbi who has a new show on The Learning Channel called “Shalom in the Home”. It is a cute show where, inspired by his own childhood loneliness due to his parents’ divorce, travels around the country trying to help families find “Shalom” (peace).

My wife and I have watched a few shows and find it endearing and a cut above the average voyeur show. Reb Boteach is compassionate and insightful and is able to cut through bullshit without angering the people he is counseling.

Last night’s show the Rabbi dove wholeheartedly and intentionally into controversy raising the quality of his show from “cute and endearing” to pretty damned cool.

What we had was an orthodox Rabbi counseling a lesbian couple on how to raise their two daughters in what looked like Park Slope Brooklyn. Rabbi Boteach used this as an opportunity to COMPLETELY demolish the morality of religious attacks on homosexuality.

He came right out and said that they knew this show would be controversial and that was one reason why they wanted to show it. They even had an unusual segment where the crew and the lesbian couple discussed whether the show should even air of if it might be misinterpreted as criticism of the ability of a lesbian couple to raise children. Again, the Rabbi made the point that the message is the exact opposite—that he is helping one of the most compassionate, deep and caring families he has known.

Orthodox Judaism condemns homosexuality in pretty extreme terms, but it does so in a far more complex way than right-wing Christianity does. This complexity can be seen, for those who are interested, in a film called "Trembling Before G_d (sic)" which I found amazing despite being neither Orthodox nor homosexual. It is a great movie about people who are honestly trying to resolve two contradictory sides of their lives.

Rabbi Boteach made only vague references to gay marriage. He gave me the general impression that he opposes it. But, in his words, a person’s view on gay marriage is irrelevant when counseling a family. He clearly stated that a person’s view on homosexuality should NEVER get between a parent’s unconditional love for his or her child and that one’s views on homosexuality should NEVER make one lose sight of the fact that EVERYONE is one of God’s children (in his words) and EQUALLY deserving of love and respect. He admits the negative view of homosexuality in Orthodox thinking, but vehemently condemns those who use a negative view of homosexuality as an excuse to treat homosexuals as unequal before God. If I caught it properly, he said that God hates people who do that. His condemnation is for those who hate rather than for those who love in a manner that he may not approve of.

It seems clear that he chose to air this show specifically so he could make these statements regarding homosexuality. The families he has counseled in the past were in fairly dire need of help with some major issues that needed resolving to avoid divorce and misery. The lesbian couple had no such dire problems but rather had a far subtler negative dynamic with one of their daughters over schoolwork. The problem was certainly important and took some subtle counseling to help resolve, but it wasn’t the kind of dramatic television that the problems of his previous families provided. What provided the drama was the direct and clear condemnation of a society or a religion that condemns a person for the manner in which they love. Rabbi Boteach in no way condoned homosexuality since his views on the matter seemed more complex than simple condoning or condemnation. He did not come out for or against gay marriage. He did not say people had to be comfortable with homosexuality. What he did was say that you deal with homosexuals in exactly the way you would any other people and you view them as equals before God whether or not you like what they do.

I have to say that Rabbi Boteach made me proud to be Jewish. Viewing the world and life as complex and leaving judgment to God may not be a characteristic of all Jews, but it is a more common characteristic of Judaism than it is of many religions. Embracing complexity and controversy and leaving judgment aside is a lesson we all should learn from Shmuley. Kudos to him and to TLC for a wonderful show.

Join Congressman Major Owens at a special forum on "Education as a Civil Right"

Agenda:
Report and Proposals of the Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission

CFE report on collecting funds ordered by the courts

Roll call of elected officials

Appreciation certificates awarded to 11th CD PTA Presidents

Summary Remarks and Recommendations by Major Owens

Refreshments will be served

Parents to Begin Telephone Campaign to Seek CFE Money.
Tell NYC's Four Republican State Senators to Fund Our Schools.

Please join AQE, Cynthia Nixon, Public Advocate Betsy
Gotbaum, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer,
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, City
Council Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and
others to kick off 1-866-KIDS-NYC, a new hotline AQE
is setting up.

The hotline will be available for anyone to call and
will direct calls to the four NYC members of the State
Senate Majority. We will also be launching a new web
campaign on www.ourkidscantwait.org to generate faxes
to these four senators. We hope that calls and faxes
generated over the next week will push the Senate to
build a CFE solution into this year's state budget to
be voted on by April 1st.

Please join us to launch this exciting new campaign!
Thursday, March 23, 11:45 - 12:45 PM (*please note
slight time adjustment)
Steps of City Hall
Take the R/W to City Hall, 4/5/6 to Brooklyn Bridge -
City Hall, 2/3 to Park Place, or A/C/E to Chambers
Street