Monday, February 23, 2009

Random Thoughts, Random Images





How Did She Know That?

It was my turn to take her to the bathroom. The men's room at the Slow Club at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning looked a bit too much like it undoubtedly did at 1:00 a.m. I was therefore struggling to change her Huggies without allowing her feet touch the floor when she broke out in a chant of O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma.

As you know, we have a huge Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster in our kitchen. Li Na delights in pointing to it and chanting "O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma." Indeed, whenever she sees that image, be it on a fading poster on the side of a building or on a t-shirt worn by a very embarrassed adolescent at Nordstoms, she breaks out into the chant.

I quickly scanned the men's room and saw no image of Obama. I did notice an "Obey" sticker, emblazoned with Shepard Fairey's original iconic image of Andre the Giant. How Li Na made the association between "Obey Giant" and "Hope" is a complete mystery. Perhaps she knows more of Fairey's work then we gave her credit for.


But Can She Get Me Out of a Parking Ticket?

Most days, driving daddy to work is a part of Li Na's morning ritual. Our route takes us past a paint store which is a magnet for day laborers. Each morning they congregate on the sidewalk in front of the store, wearing their white painter's coveralls and calling out to passers by.

Some are undoubtedly good hard working guys. Others, well, not so much. Members of the latter group are as aggressive in their solicitation of drivers as the working girls of the Tenderloin. We therefor assiduously avoid making eye contact.

One morning we were stopped at a red light in front of the paint store, avoiding eye contact as usual, when we heard a knock on the passenger window. Not a solicitation from a would be Michelangelo, but a uniformed woman gesturing for to us to roll down the window.

Our seat belts were bucked, we had come to a full stop, and no one was on a cell phone. Still, a traffic cop knocking on the car window inspired some trepidation.

But no traffic citation was in the offing. Instead, she informed us that while we waited at the stop light, Li Na began waiving to her. She was so amused that she just wanted to tell us how cute our daughter is. Not a bad start to the day.

Preserving the blog

Blogs, like the impressions they seek to memorialize, are both immediate and ephemeral. We can post our photographs and narratives of Li Na's progression in real time if we so desire, but in time, the blog will disappear forever.

The original intent of the blog was to chronicle our trip to China to bring Li Na home to San Francisco. Those are the memories and images that will be the first to fade into the immediacy of our new day to day life with her. We therefore decided to preserve that portion of the blog.

We added a few previously unpublished photographs, cleaned up the text, came up with a title and pulled it all together using a free software program to create a simple hard bound volume.

The Li Na Blog
By Gale & Mei Ling C...

Monday, February 9, 2009