Rice Daddies
Posts on fatherhood that were also cross-posted to the Rice Daddies blog.
-
Recently, I suffered my children’s fierce complaints about having to go to Chinese school over the summer. All of their other friends had the time to themselves – they traveled and played and filled scrapbooks (or hard drives) with tokens from their adventures. My kids were frustrated that they were spending the summer sitting at
-
Father’s Day always makes me think of that Harry Chapin song, “Cat’s in the Cradle” – More so now that the kids are getting noticeably older. As the kids get older, I get older, so maybe it is just me getting old and sentimental but Chapin’s Cradle seems to have more resonance now. It’s like
-
Andy Warhol from The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s The most beautiful thing is Florence is McDonald’s Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet. In 1990, Moscow became beautiful. Beijing (formerly Peking) didn’t become beautiful until 2007. America is
-
Recently Turner Classic Movies played The Good Earth and The Bitter Tea of General Yen back to back. I caught the former as the locusts descended upon the crops and continued to the latter as a “Chinked up” Nils Asther rode away in “Yellow Face” without care or concern for the rickshaw driver his car
-
I pulled a real Chinese parent move recently. My eldest’s piano teacher told me he was playing very well but instead of turning to my eldest and saying: “Hey! Did you hear that? That’s excellent! Good Job!” I said: “Hey! Did you hear what your teacher said? If you concentrated and practiced more, you could
-
There’s this story I like to tell about my introducing “literature” to my children. It involves my eldest. He must have been two. I had bought a copy of Maurice Sendak’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are, to read to him at bed time. I was so proud of myself, suddenly eligible to join the
-
Listening to Rosanne Cash speak at the Times Center got me thinking about what “The List” I give my children would look like? What kind of intellectual/cultural legacy will I leave for them? What legacy will I be able to forge for them? My father and I do not talk about music though we have
-
I remember our first Christmas together. I had gotten her one of those hand-held electric back massagers (which she asked me to return). She had gotten me a DVD player (which we had to buy a new TV to accommodate). And we had a live tree that we bought from a reformed drug addict who
Vincent Young 