2007, nine years old, dressed for the Midnight Magic book release party for "Harry Potter and the Goblet Of Fire" by J.K. Rowling (as if that needs to be said.) Wand out.

My son was born the year the first book was published. It turned out to be the first book he read to himself. The first three books were the first three books he read. He had to wait for the fourth to get written and published, before continuing with the series. My daughter, right along behind him, has heard each book on tape many many times, usually quietly crafting in her lap as she listened. Both attended every book release party, the one in 2007 being the first time either one stayed up until midnight. Can you remember how much adult conversation was generated by "The Sorcerer's Stone"? Everyone loved the book, everyone was talking about the book, and everyone was astonished to discover that one children's book could generate so much adult conversation. That buzz was a phenomenon of that time, mostly forgotten now.

What can not be forgotten is the deep mark Rowling has made in the social psyche of this generation of kids. They are truly the Harry Potter generation. They were shaped, intellectually and morally, by these stories. Using enchantment, literary device, and sheer repetition extending over years of their childhood, Rowling has managed to permanently illuminate issues of race, gender, and social consciousness for a whole generation. In a final back twist of love she even managed to bitch slap homophobia. No mere O.W.L.s work, that takes senior level wizardry. If Voldemort marked his follower's arms, she has marked their minds. Every generation hereafter can read these books at a gulp. This group of kids read and reread these books one at a time, year after year, over and over, as they grew up.

Last week I had to step between and child and his mother, who was worried and angry, to explain where we were and why. Surely because she was worried and angry, this mother began our conversation with astonishingly inappropriate concerns. We got it worked out. I think I buffered her anger at her kid. But I shook my head about it for a day or two. Until my daughter explained it all for me. "I've met her. She is a lot like Petunia Dursley. She's a muggle...ya know?" That was the moment I saw Rowling's legacy. This generation of children has a brand new archetypal mythology through which they can sort the world. And its a fine solid one. Which is a pretty slick trick for a series almost devoid of religion, with no one leader, no messiah, and no ultimate guiding power source.

Mother Love is given nearly religious reverence in this series. But as we all know, that's no fiction. I am grateful to Rowling for the back up and for all the good parenting she has made available for children. Often through an ageing gay queen:

“Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, Harry felt a kind of chill emanating from him and noticed that the Dursleys drew very slightly closer together.

“You did not do as I asked. You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you.”

Rowling has giving these children plenty to think about, while entertaining them nearly the whole length of their childhoods. Thank you, J.K.!

Dear girl and friends goofing around at a party this week. The two in front are both wearing Harry Potter t-shirts. You can't see hers well, but its the Gryffindor crest.

My girl can tear Up a burger. She's much faster than either of these guys. Not necessarily a goal, but I think sleeping till noon, through breakfast, must make a person extra hungry at dinner? Eat eat, eat!

Back in 2008 a mother in our homeschooling group snapped these pictures of me and the kids down at the river for our weekly group hangout time. We were there again yesterday. What a difference five years makes. Not clinging to my elbows, the kids were off in an Orca pod of teenagers swimming in the middle of the river until it was time to leave. Doing, basically, exactly what they do on dry land, but in the water. Sometimes I miss the baby days. But I never miss them when we're at the river. Independence, capability, and skill are in all ways beautiful to behold, never more so than around deep water. Still, look at 'em. They were so young way back then. Note: sun safe, even in those days.

She's also getting into fabric painting. Its so fun for me to watch these kids be who they are.  

      We go to bed early. The kids stay up late. I love to find their projects laying around in the morning.

In North Carolina right now there is a huge political movement, called Moral Monday. Republicans are cutting funding for services for poor people---presumably because they don't want to fund perceived laziness. They think funding too much for the poor has dragged down our economy. At the same time, they are eliminating taxes for the wealthiest folks in our state because they think its bad for the economy for our government to take too much money from rich people---money they won't have to spend. Yes this exactly, taking money from the poor and giving it back to the rich. Democrats are in a panic over these cuts---presumably because cutting funding to the most needy cuts our economy off at the knees and drags us into ever deepening spirals of dysfunction as a society. Increasing poverty is very bad for our economy. The idea is that feeding, educating, and healing the poor at the expense of the rich is a proven way to elevate society as much as possible.

The dichotomy turns on the question of who is broken enough to justify (in a just way) society's help? Who can be the judge? Can you judge? Can a preacher judge? Can a police officer judge? Can a school teacher? How about a mother? I think Republicans believe the line of judgement is way too soft. And Democrats believe it could be a lot softer. Neither would leave an infant, truly and justly helpless, crying alone in a dumpster without stopping to help. But what about a drug addicted teenager? A strong looking 25 year old who was raised in poverty? The line gets very murky. Who is broken and who simply lazy? What is fair?

Think this is simple? The predominating message throughout all time and all recorded history, through every single culture of all people is that some kind of manifestation of God through compassion matters. For our culture and history the predominating message is that God gave his only son to die (really, to die, our greatest fear) because we are all pathetic universally busted-ass and broken. Each one of us is flawed, broken, and truly incapable in some way. Thank goodness we are all broken in different ways so at least we can help cover each other.

Think this is political? What do you do at work with that one totally fucking annoying person who sucks? They suck at their job, perhaps in a way that makes everyone's job harder? When I worked for my father, as a teenager, I asked him why he continued to employ the person on his staff who sucked the most. He explained that he had 3 truly great employees. 3 who were good in a steady way. And 1 or 2 that were barely good enough, but consistently so. He explained that it would be impossible to run a crew with 8 truly great employees. So he tolerated the sucky ones as best he could.

Why? Because of the math of the universe. We can't all be truly great. We can't all even manage to be consistently good in a steady way all the time, perfectly. If my father was going to try to run a crew of 8 perfectly, it would not be possible and he would not have time to get his actual work done. Running the perfect crew would be its own full time job, and there would be no other work for them to do. A paradox. Wait, what did God say? We are all broken? All of us?

Think this is emotional? What about the person in your family who sucks, who just can't love you the right way, who did it all wrong, does it all wrong, isn't loving enough? Wait, what did God say? We are all broken? All of us? Each one of us will encounter failure to love. That is universally consistently true because we are all broken.

But be fair. Do we still have to do our (flawed) best to help the poor, to forgive our broken parents, to love our neighbors, to be kind to each other? Society is a fact. We have society because we have more than one person living on the planet. I think that's a realistic working definition of society--more than one living on the planet. Since society is a fact and everyone in society is broken, how can we do our best to help each other in a fair way? Its a difficult situation.

Are we broken because of nature? (Because God made us this way?) Or because of nurture? Because we weren't loved well enough or because we lived in poverty or because someone in the family was a psychopath or an addict, or what?

It turns out that the expression of our DNA, even if our own DNA happens to be perfect, is mitigated by methyl-thingies. In fact, Grandma's Experiences Leave A Marker On Your Genes. To paraphrase, stress in early childhood will fuck you up at the level of your DNA. So even if you happen to get born perfect by some freak of nature, the moment you encounter stress your perfect DNA will begin to be corroded. If you live in a high stress situation---say, poverty, for instance---your DNA will get seriously corroded. Which will make it nigh-unto-impossible for you to "rise above." Who here thinks they can rise above their DNA? Can we ask that of people? We can ask they try, we can offer to help them to try. But we probably ought to plan for a lot of failure.

And finally, consider this. What is the single most stressful thing children encounter in our society, across the board? Take out the children living in poverty, with addicts, and with psychopaths. What generates the most stress for our smallest children? Being separated from their mothers and being put in school. And its exactly this kind of stress that influences the expression of our collective DNA, in ways that might be incidentally helpful, but that also make us demonstratively more aggressive, more depressed, more "jittery", and less likely to nurture our own babies as measured by maternal willingness to breastfeed. I'm talking about science here. Really. Read the article. Its a sock knocker for sure with ramifications for all of us across every political, social, familial, and educational strata of life in an inner connected way.

Wow, huh? Anyone noticed how many mothers are not even willing to try breastfeeding their own babies these days? We have the number. 86% of new mothers don't breastfeed these days, past the first few weeks.*

We are making more worse people faster than we can fix them. And we were broken to start with. We better get a plan for helping each other out of this mess.

*CDC data on breast feeding. Thankfully, the numbers have improved since I last looked.

A visit from Grandmother today. She needed help with her computer. These two ended up commiserating, trying to understand pintrest. Fun to see their heads bent together, figuring it all out.