Books for Preschoolers that don't make me want to gouge my eyes out with a...

We have a lot of children's books in our house. A LOT of books, period. I lug them around every time I move. I wish I could part with more of them, but this is my hoarding achilles heel.

Many children's books bore me. They make me want to read them quickly to get them over with, especially after the umpteenth reading. There are a few books, however, that stand out from the crowd. The boy loves them and I love reading them to him, over and over again.

Spoon. Written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal with illustrations by Scott Magoon.

My best friend and I discovered this book at Powell's when we spent a weekend in Portland during the summer of 2009. It made such an impression that she was sure to order it for the boy last Christmas. From the Powell's website:

"Young Spoon lives a fairly happy life with a large extended family (including a ladle and a very fancy Aunt Silver), but he can't help being a bit jealous of some of his friends. Knife, for example, 'is so lucky! He gets to cut, he gets to spread.' Not to mention Chopsticks: 'Everyone thinks they're really cool and exotic! No one thinks I'm cool or exotic.' Spoon's mother doesn't try to change his mind, but reacts neutrally. Outside conversations let readers know that Spoon is being envied right back: 'Spoon is so lucky!' sigh the Chopsticks. 'We could never function apart.' At bedtime, Spoon's mom offers encouragement ('Your friends will never know the joy of diving headfirst into a bowl of ice cream') then invites him into the big bed — to spoon, of course. The talented Magoon (Mystery Ride!) gives the utensils plenty of personality, with wide eyes and expressive antlike appendages, and Rosenthal's (Little Pea) skillful storytelling moves along briskly. The humorous but earnest message about valuing one's own talents comes through loud and clear. Ages 2 — 6."

I simply love that he is invited into the big bed to "spoon" at the end. It never fails to make me laugh. The humor is clever and the story is endearing.

Instructions is a book that grew from a poem by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by Charles Vess.

I adore Neil Gaiman. I read American Gods several years ago, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite books. The book is based on the premise that the old gods still walk among us, and that they are organizing to fight against the new, modern gods--like the Internet, television, credit cards, etc. That book was written for grown-ups, and if you haven't read it, you should. Especially if you like folklore and Norse gods in particular. But this isn't about American Gods.

Gaiman also writes books for young adults and preschoolers. Instructions, based on poem by Gaiman,  is my favorite book that he has written for young children. It's rapidly becoming one of my favorite books, period. Gaiman has described it as a how-to-survive-should-you-ever-find-yourself-trapped-inside-a-fairy-tale book. You can read the poem here. You can watch a fantastic video below that shares many of the illustrations and features the author reading the entire poem.

Even after watching this enchanted video, it's still worth it to buy the book. After all, it offers damn good advice to live by:

"Remember your name.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have
helped to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story."

And these last few words make me weepy each time I hear them or read them aloud:

"When you reach the little house, the
place your journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem
much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden
gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
Or rest. "

Crazy Hair. Also by Gaiman, with illustrations by Dave McKean.

This book is just plain silly. And it rhymes! I love the cadence and the illustrations are funny, fantastical, and just a tad creepy. I have fun reading it every time.

Me I Am.

When I read this book, I am struck by the depth of its poem. Seriously. It's a deep poem, no?

I am the only Me I Am  
Who qualifies as me,
no Me I AM has been before,  
and none will ever be  
No other Me I Am 
can feel the feelings I' ve within,  
no other Me I Am
can fit precisely in my skin  
There is no other Me I Am  
who thinks the thoughts I do,  
the world contains one Me I Am
There is no room for two
I am the only Me I Am
this earth shall ever see,
that Me I Am I always am
is no one else but Me!

This book is based on the above poem by Jack Prelutsky, the first winner of the Children’s Poet Laureate award. The poem is beautiful, and the illustrations that accompany it are great fun to look at with your child because there's a lot of "stuff" going on in the picture that they can ask questions about. In searching for more information about him, I discovered this section on the scholastic website, and he offers great tips (I think) for writers--child and adult alike. I also like that this book will serve as an early reader book because most of the words are simple.

Chip Wants a Dog.
This book is weird, but fun. The photographs and story are by William Wegman, who apparently luuurrrves weimaraners. Chip (who is, very obviously, a dog) wants a dog, but there are barriers to this goal, such as the fact that his parents (who are also dogs) won't allow him to get a dog because dogs are a lot of work, and his mother is a cat person. In the end, Chip realizes he doesn't need a dog--HE IS A DOG. I'm not sure what the "moral" is, but I think it's something about not needing someone to make your life complete. The photographs of the beautiful weimaraners (dressed in clothes, reading magazines, etc.) are hilarious.

The Human Body: A Magic Skeleton Book. Written by Janet Sacks. Illustrated by Jan Smith and Peter Bull.
When the boy was potty training, he wanted to know where poop comes from. It wasn't enough to know that poop came from food--he wanted to know how food turned into poop. I tried showing him images online, but they are confusing for a little guy. I looked at several books before finding this one. Most of the children's anatomy books are either WAY too detailed for a 3-4 year-old, or they are (in my opinion) just plain stupid. I was really excited when I found this book. You can't tell from the Amazon images, but each page has a slide-out tab, so that you can first see the skeleton (or digestive system, or brain, etc.) and then when you pull the slider out, you see where that particular organ (or skeleton) resides in the body. The book includes pull tabs for the skeleton, the brain, the heart, the lungs, and the digestive system; simple information about cells, teeth, and nutrition is also included. The boy loves it, and when he took it to show-and-tell, his teacher wrote the information down to order one for the classroom because she had also had difficulty finding something that was both appropriate and informative for young children. You do have to be a little gentle with it because if you pull really hard the tabs will come all the way out or get torn, but overall the book is sturdier than I thought it would be. The book will grow with him because there are sort of layers of information in the book, so that we can move from just enjoying the pull tabs to reading more of the details in the book.

Frog and Toad stories, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.

These are by no means new books. They were published in the 1970s, but I didn't read these books as a child. Now I feel like I was deprived :) If you were similarly deprived, buy them now so that you can enjoy them with your child. They are simple, sweet, and funny stories about two best friends--Frog and Toad. I would probably read these by myself even if I didn't have a child, now that I've discovered them.

Santa

The boy visited Santa today. When we got there, there was no line (SERIOUSLY, NO LINE! I wasn't sure how to react), and I asked him what he was going to ask Santa for. He said he couldn't remember (even though he's been reciting the same two things for several weeks), so I reminded him of the first thing--an R2D2 robot. Once I reminded him of that item, he generated the following list:

1. R2D2 robot (already purchased on Ebay)--He saw a remote control R2D2 robot in the store last May, and has been mentioning it ever since. Please don't ask how my almost 4-year-old knows who R2D2 is. I still can't decide if that's parenting win or parenting fail. Instead, I refer you to this video:



3. Journal from mama**--A few weeks ago I asked what he would like from me for Christmas, and he said he would like a journal like the one he has at school, which is basically a tri-prong folder with blank pages.

4. Water bottle from daddy--When I asked what he would like form daddy, he said another water bottle. He already has a couple of stainless steel water bottles, and he keeps one next to the bed, takes one to school, etc. Since he hasn't used a sippy cup in several months (after I decided that I really wanted to minimize the degree to which our food touches plastic***), I think this is a prudent and endearing request.

Then, he turned to me and said, what else?

I suggested play-doh, because he is out of it and I already bought more.
 
5. Play-doh

When he got up to Santa, there was no way he was sitting on his lap, but he did bend in and whisper his list, in that exact order.

I try to not go overboard on material things for holidays and birthdays, but it's hard because I LOVE TOYS and holidays in my house growing up were riddled with tension and strife. I know that you can't buy your way to happiness, and have tried to stick to a fairly rigid list this year. The last few years I bought more than expected, and ended up doling things out for subsequent holidays or other random days of the year. Case in point--we just opened the majority of the play-doh that I bought last December. He created an army of creatures with it and refused to put them away so they dried up. He continued to play with them until I'd had enough of finding crumbs everywhere, so I slowly threw them away one at a time so he didn't notice. Hence the need for more play-doh.

---

*I don't mind giving a shout-out to Ebay because a few months ago, I ordered a Wall-E costume from a seller on Ebay (because boy was very definite about what he wanted to be for Halloween and I couldn't find the costume here). The costume that arrived was not the one in the picture, and I had taken a lot of time to find that specific costume. Had I wanted the costume they sent to me, I could have found it far cheaper and with less hassle on several other sites. When I tried to contact the seller, they had disappeared. I couldn't email them. I couldn't go to the seller's store. I contacted Ebay. After a week passed and I was still unable to contact the seller, Ebay refunded my money. All of it. In the past I have been hesitant to order anything online, but this earned my confidence. I like that I can order used things, and even though many items are not local, I feel like that reduces my carbon footprint. If I were to buy something new locally, my options are limited, so I'd end up giving my money to a chain store that shipped the stuff here anyway and sends the profits back to a corporate office.

**I could have explained that he didn't need to tell Santa what he wanted mommy and daddy to get him, but that would have been confusing.

***I know that the plastic stuff is BPA free now, but I still don't trust the plastics industry and feel it is only a matter of time until we learn that some other chemical in plastic is making us sick. I try to store everything in glass. Especially if it will be reheated in a microwave (we don't own a microwave, but I take leftovers to work).

Birth and Death and Ear Movies of Snow

Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson died this morning at the age of 55. He was, in my opinion, on of the most influential artists of the last few decades. The contribution he made to experimental music, sampling, and general f*cking around with sound cannot be overstated. I don't usually get choked up about celebrity deaths, but this made me feel like someone had just head butted me in the chest, and then I started crying.

Sleazy was a member of the bands Throbbing Gristle and Coil, and an early member of Psychic TV, and contributed to several other musical projects. Additionally, he was a music video director and an artist. I have a special connection to the music that Sleazy produced as part of Coil. First of all, I think the albums that he and John Balance created were freaking brilliant, though sometimes challenging to listen to. Some have referred to their work as "ear movies" and I think this is an great description. Peter himself said that said that he composed Coil songs visually rather than muscially:

"As long as I can remember, I've approached music from a visual point of view. Any technique that you can apply to a film, you can also apply to a piece of music. Our tunes that start off with a sort of film script or filmic picture are much more successful than the songs that start with a riff or bass line or conventional musical cue."

His music blew my mind and expanded the boundaries of what I now like to call "auditory art". When we think about visual art, we have film, paint, sculpture (although that can be tactile as well), etc. But most people only think of music as music, rather than the potential for something more.

The Snow was one of the albums on my birthing playlist, and it happened to be the album that the boy was born to. He was born towards the end of the album, and it was actually a great album for that particular point in time because the last half an hour or so of labor was hard for me to get through. Had I not been so caught up in GETTING A BABY OUT, I probably would have asked someone to skip past it when it came on, because I would have thought it "unbirthy". We were in the bedroom, and the music was playing in the living room, and I was at a point where there was NO WAY that I would have asked anyone in the room at that time to leave my side for even a second. The album is upbeat and electronic, and I was dimly aware of it playing in between contractions, but not bothered by it. It was exactly what I needed to find the energy required in those last minutes. Something more ambient and dreamy would not have been quite so effective.

After the boy was born, I wrote to Sleazy and told him my son had been born to his album. He responded and seemed delighted. I was touched that he had replied.

It was only months later when Hym and I were listening to the album again that I realized that the second to last song--the song that was playing while the boy was stuck and then likely still playing when he came flying out--was Answers Come in Dreams II. 

Because the music was playing in another room and because I was deep inside birthland, I didn't hear these words that are spoken more than once in the song:

Get ready to be delivered, and delivered in a hurry.

Indeed. What could be a more appropriate song for the end of a hard labor that culminated in a shoulder dystocia?


It was only tonight, as I listened to the song again, that I took notice of these other words, spoken only once:

Man has given a false importance to death. Every animal, plant, or man that dies adds to nature's compost heap.

RIP Sleazy. You gave us so much while you were alive, and now you'll return to the earth. Thank you.

Academic Phone Interviews

A friend who is still in grad school contacted me for tips on academic phone interviews. He's interviewing for a psychology instructor position at a decent sized university, so not all of my stuff was relevant in this case. He specifically asked if I had prepped any questions and answers prior to the interview. Why yes, I had--I still have the document and I sent it to him. I have posted these questions and answers below, because they were fun for me to read and because maybe someone, somewhere, will find them useful. My actual notes were more concise and written in short-hand--I've expanded them here a little into something resembling complete sentences.

I do have to say, after being on the other side of the hiring process, that the thing that most often hurts a candidate is a lack of research about the job they are applying for. When we talk to a candidate who knows nothing about the institution, the people they would be working with, or the classes offered, it really hurts their chances of being invited out for an on-campus interview.

1. What is your dissertation topic and time line for completion?

• My dissertation is a secondary data analysis focusing on abortion and mental health, and how early risk factors and exposure to violence may explain the association that has been reported between abortion history and mental health.
• Because it is a secondary data analysis, the data has already been collected. I have recoded most of the data and conducted some pilot analyses. I have extensive familiarity with the data set at this time.
• My prospectus meeting is scheduled for the beginning of the spring semester and I plan to graduate in May.
• My committee members all agree that this is a reasonable time line for completion.

What I would say now about this answer: 
That was totally not a reasonable time line for completion, but I got it done anyway.


2. What is your teaching philosophy?

• I emphasize critical thinking and the scientific method in all of my courses
• I believe the goal of a liberal arts education is to create well-informed citizens
• I try to provide a solid foundation for future researchers, while ensuring that other students get useful information for their daily lives
• I try to present material in a wide range of formats
• I utilize different modes of assessment whenever possible

What I would say now about this answer:
I feel pretty much the same way. My objectives haven't changed, but I continue to acquire new tools to achieve them. If you have experience with different methods of teaching, you should talk about this. Specifics are helpful.


3. What undergrad courses do you want to teach? 

• Top choices: Introduction to Psychology, Research Methods, Social Psychology, Advanced Social Psychology, Any other social psychology course, Gender, Psychology of Women
• Comfortable teaching, but not top choices: Statistics, Health Psychology, Personality Psychology, History and Systems, HumanSexuality
• Could do if necessary: Cognitive Psychology, Learning
• Absolutely not: Physiological Psychology, Neuroscience, Biological Psychology, Sensation and Perception

What I would say now about this answer:
This was a great answer and it was tailored to a specific institution because I had done my research. When they ask you what you want to or are willing to teach, they really want to here "anything". I went to their website and found out what courses they offered so that I could speak directly to those courses. I tried to craft an answer that was was honest about what I'm absolutely not qualified to teach, but also showed that I was open to stepping in to fill a need. I like teaching things that are outside of my comfort zone because I learn more in the process.

4. What graduate courses can you teach?

• Top choices: Any social psychology topics, research methods, courses on gender/psychology of women
• Could do with prep: History and systems, Univariate statistics, Brown-bag "crash courses" on quantitative psychology topics

What I would say now about this answer: 
I think these are still accurate. At the graduate level, you should really only teach what you are an expert in. I'd still like to do brown-bag seminars on statistics topics, but will all of my other service commitments, it would be hard to find the time.

5. What are your research interests?

• Aggression, especially gender differences and evolutionary influences. I am particularly interested in the role status plays in aggression for men versus women.
• Violence against women and early childhood risk factors on sexuality and reproductive health; abortion and mental health
• Stereotypes about pregnancy and motherhood
• Stereotypes about gays and lesbians 
• Gender identity

What I would say now about these answers:
These were great answers at the time. I just created a short blurb for my faculty listing on the psychology department website: Social and personality psychology: gender roles; gender identity; stereotyping and prejudice; aggression; evolutionary psychology. Not much has changed.

6. What experience do you have with grants?

• I applied for National Science Foundation funding as a first-year graduate student; it was unfunded.
• I applied for grants through the Graduate and Professional Student Association, but these were also unfunded.
• I successfully obtained a research assistantship through the university. This was a short application, but it required a budget estimate and a description of research to be conducted; this was funded.
• I applied for a pre-doctoral fellowship through the National Institute for Health (NIH) with the National Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA) as the funding agency; this was funded.

What I would say about this now:
That's pretty much all I could say at the time, and there's not much more to say about grants other than you either were funded or weren't.

7.  What do you think your vita (resume) will look like in 5 years?

• A handful of abortion and mental health studies that utilize structural equation modeling
• A program of research that focuses on stereotypes about motherhood and pregnancy and the implications for quality of medical care and employment opportunities
• A few aggression studies that are follow-up studies to my Masters thesis
• Collaborative projects on gender identity
• Potentially some projects about gay and lesbian stereotypes
• Greater breadth of courses taught
• Additional extramural (grant) funding

What I would say about this now:
This was too many answers, even if it was the truth about my goals. I was trying to play up my strengths and show that I had some big goals and some more manageable goals, but it was still too much. The emphasis on teaching was important for the job that I was particularly interested in, so that was good. If I could do this question over, however, I would split it up into what was most promising (the aggression stuff) and what I would like to put more time into after establishing a publication record (pregnancy and motherhood stereotypes) in a way similar to the way I split up my teaching interests.

8. What skills do you bring?

• Broad training in social psychology
• Familiarity with learning, developmental psychopathology, clinical psychology
• Background in Women's studies
• Strong quantitative background
• Experience with secondary data analysis of large scale data sets
• Integration of social and clinical psychology--early risk factors that influence life-course trajectories
• Openness to work with students who have a wide variety of interests; enjoyment of student-led projects
• Openness to collaboration

What I would say about this now:
I would emphasize that I really, really, love working with students. If you are applying for a Research 1 job, that's a bad answer. They want to know that you have a line of research ready to go, and that your students will be working on it. I, however, really enjoy student-driven research even when it's outside of my main areas of interest. This is a major plus for liberal arts jobs, or the unique position I have at UND where research does happen, but teaching is valued. It also turns out that I have way more statistical knowledge than the average faculty member, so I am perfectly happy to analyze data, write up the results, and take a 2nd author position. This may not be a plus in some interviewing situations (like an R1 job), but it's a plus to other faculty once you have arrived (especially in smaller departments).


9. What makes you unique/diverse?

• Non-traditional educational trajectory
• First generation college student; comfortable working with a diverse range of students
• Raised in rural area; sensitive to needs of rural students
• Background in Women's Studies and social psychology with a heavy evolutionary focus has enhanced my ability to consider diverse perspectives
• Training in experimental methods, survey methods, quantitative methods, large-scale data sets, some qualitative methods

What I would say about this now:
I made sure for the interview with UND to mention that I came from a rural area because I had done my research about their student population. This may not be a plus for some jobs, but I think it was a good thing to mention for this job. I would now add that I am approachable--students seem to be comfortable with me and I think that's a good thing, and it probably stems from me feeling like an "impostor" in academia :)


10. What are your weaknesses?

• Physiological/biological/neuropsychology
• Passion for teaching--it's often easier to focus on the immediate gratification of teaching at the expense of finding time for writing

What I would say about this now:
These are still my greatest weaknesses. My love for teaching and the fact that students approach me means that if I am not careful, teaching and working with students sucks up all of my time. I still struggle to get writing done, which is why I don't mind taking a 2nd or 3rd author position on a paper if it means that I just wrote little snippets and analyzed data. However, if I ever want a promotion, I will need more first-author publications. Publish or perish. Publish or perish.

11. What is my theoretical orientation?

• Broad interdisciplinary framework
• Multi-level approach that integrates the power of the situation and the broader social context that gives meaning to a particular situation
• Background in psychology of women as well as social psychology and evolutionary psychology

What I would say about this now:
I'm not even sure what that answer means. After being out of grad school for a short period of time now, I have to say that the theoretical framework that I find myself most often bringing up in conversation is an evolutionary social psych framework, but that's in part due to the fact that I'm the only person in our department with any real expertise in evolutionary social psychology. When I was surrounded by evolutionary psychologists at ASU, I often brought up sociocultural perspectives. I don't think they are at odds with each other--I think they compliment each other. The big trend that's surfacing now is how to merge evolutionary psychology and cultural psychology. Maybe my personal theoretical orientation is "devil's advocate" or "shit disturber".

12. What is your teaching experience?

• Instructor: Research methods lectures and laboratories; Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Statistics
• Teaching assistant: Social Psychology, Introduction to Psychology, Introduction to Statistics
• Tutor in high school and as undergraduate

13. How do you engage in student mentorship?

• Recruit research assistants from courses taught
• During first semester, research assistants have light duties to prove they are reliable (pass/fail grade)
• Increased responsibility with experience--supervisory roles, training on data analysis, etc.
• Willingness to mentor student-driven projects with students who are motivated and interested in doing so.

What I would say about this answer now:
I would now emphasize that even though I could probably get most of my research done with very few research assistants, I will work with almost anyone who wants research experience. I start the questionable students out on tasks that are less important so that I can determine whether they are reliable. I think one of the greatest things that happens in psychology departments is that undergraduates get research experience--that's where they really learn about psychology. In this regard, I try to make research a teaching activity. I would now emphasize the importance of training a chain of leaders and delegating responsibility. If you have a job where you are supervising grad students, you can pretty much put them in charge of your lab. If you are using undergraduates, you need to find the real stars who function as well as grad students, get them trained, and then delegate. The delegation part is hard, and it takes some time, but hopefully it means that they will then train their replacements. If you are applying for a liberal arts job or a teaching-intensive job, they want to know how your research is an extension of your teaching. I cannot help but make my research an extension of my teaching because I cannot help but want to teach students how to be researchers. Even if they don't pursue careers that have anything to do with psychology research, I hope that they at become better consumers of information and better citizens as a result of the time they spend in my lab.

Ani DiFranco - The Atom (03.11.2008) Tampa

Lest you think that my last post was too flippant or too creepy, or that I don't take nuclear power seriously, here is one of my favorite songs EVER. As if nuclear weapons aren't bad enough, we use the same technology to create electricity, and politicians want to create more nuclear power plants. Seriously?



These are my favorite lines:

human beings are a cross
between monkeys and ants
you can see us from your spaceship
melting the polar ice caps
with our arrogance
summon a congress of angels
dressed in riot gear
we've got ourselves a serious situation
down here

i have this great great uncle
who worked on the atomic bomb
he got a nobel prize in physics
and a place in this song
and i bet there were no windows
and no women in the room
when they applied themselves
to the pure science of
boom

Here's a nice, clean, audio recording.


Nuclear power is stupid. I have heard, and really considered, the arguments in favor of it. It produces so little waste. It's "cleaner". It's cheap. (Or not). We can generate nuclear power without depending on other countries. I get it.  But unless you can find a solution--a real solution--to that minor toxic waste problem, how can we possibly consider MORE plants. And even if that was worked out, what about the risks associated with "minor" accidents? It's not even something that we should be discussing.

Rather than fucking around with nature in order to run all of our electric shit, why don't we USE LESS energy and focus on alternatives, rather than burning shit or splitting atoms? We can create a mushroom cloud, but green energy isn't really feasible? Pfft. 

How I (didn't really) learn to stop worrying and love the bomb (in a creepy, dark, fetish kind of way)

I was fascinated with atomic bombs as a child. Terrified and fascinated. When I was 8, I wanted to write a letter to the President to express my concerns. My mother convinced me to write a letter about some national scholars program, but I wasn't happy about it.

I watched movies about the bomb. I watched news footage from WWII about the bomb. I listened to audio documentaries about the bomb.

Did anyone else see the movie Nightbreaker? I LOVED IT. I wish it were available on DVD because I just can't bring myself to order VHS tapes that may or may not work. After I (repeatedly) watched that movie, I had a whole new fascination with nuclear testing and the conspiracies lies and abuses associated with it. I dreamed about nuclear testing--that I was hiding, running, whatever. These weren't nightmares. I wasn't scared, just fascinated. Eerily fascinated. I was kind of a strange girl anyway--I frequently had dreams of being in wars, war games, war simulations, etc.

I still can't look away from footage of bombs, even though it makes me queasy. All of that RAW POWER. We did that. Humans did that. It's amazing. Of course it's horrifying. Of course its an abomination. Of course its blasphemy against nature. But it's also unbelievable. We split nature in two. Wow.

My (step) Grandpa was a physicist back in the day and worked with nuclear stuff. I'm not sure exactly what he researched and if he was a part of all the testing that went on. I don't know if the things he knew were things he learned from being directly involved or things he learned from being a voracious reader. He once told me that pigs were used for nuclear tests because their organ structure was similar to ours and their skin, in particular, is remarkably similar. He told me about tests where they would put pigs in mailboxes and different types of shelters and set off bombs. For years, I thought maybe he was exaggerating or just plain crazy (you never could tell with him). Now, I can read about it on Wikipedia or elsewhere. I found this video online, which is fascinating, but not for the faint of heart. This quote is from a website about nuclear testing in Nevada:

"Experiments on mice, dogs, and other animals were conducted during atmospheric testing. The animals were subjected to the atomic blasts and then analyzed by biologists, veterinarians, and medical personnel. In 1957, for the Plumbbob series, pens were built near the Mercury highway to keep 1,200 swine that would be used for various experiments. They had been specially bred due to the similarities in pig and human physiology. For some experiments, pigs were outfitted in various types of clothing material, including military uniforms. For the thirty-seven-kiloton Priscilla test on June 24, 1957, more than seven hundred anesthetized pigs were placed in stations at various distances from ground zero to better understand the effects of atomic weapons on human beings."

I wish Grandpa were alive today so I could ask him more questions. At the time, I didn't know what else to ask. Today, I wouldn't know where to stop.


Because of this sordid fascination with evil, I was admittedly excited when I found out that I would be visiting a decommissioned missile alert facility as part of the new faculty bus tour this year. I mean, I was already stoked that my hubbie could come with me this year, but husband + nukes = uberexcitement.

Did you know that at the height of the Cold War, North Dakota was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world? Or so the tour guide gold us. Russia and the United States (minus North Dakota) were #1 and #2 (though I'm not sure which was first and which was second) and then there was the state of North Dakota.

North Dakota had two missile fields with 150 missiles in each. If I remember correctly, each of the fields contained 15 missile alert facilities, so that each alert facility controlled 10 missiles. We toured the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility (now named the Ronald Reagan Minutemen Missile Site). It was part of the Grand Forks Missile Field. Do you remember the movie War Games? Grand Forks was one of the first targets in the game. Um, yeah. That's where I live now. Voted one of the best places to raise your kids. Minus the nukes of course. Why so many nukes in the Nodak? I have heard a few different reasons. First of all, the big target when these silos were built was Russia, and the shortest distance to many Russian cities was over the arctic circle. Second, since it's landlocked, it could be harder for weapons to be stolen, or accessed in the first place. Third, land was cheap and the population scarce, so there were less people to object to having nukes in their backyard. The fourth reason seems to be simple math. The current population of the entire state is 646,850. This means less collateral damage. If the missile fields were attacked, fewer people would be killed than if the fields were located elsewhere.

The facility was closed as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991, and then opened a few years later for tours. Touring the facility was simultaneously anti-climatic and overwhelming. It really looked like the props that would be used in a 70's sci-fi movie, but it was real. I actually have a picture of myself in that chair, but I got in trouble for it. Turns out, you're not supposed to sit there, and I wasn't listening when the tour guide told us that. I was too busy taking pictures and tripping out. She could have confiscated my camera, but instead made me promise not to post it online somewhere. I took a lot of pictures that I will upload another time.

The Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Field is still active. It is composed of 150 Minutemen III missiles. Each of these missile has three warheads, hence the III as part of the name. From Wikipedia, "The current Minuteman force consists of 450 Minuteman III missiles^[1] in missile silos around F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB, Montana; and Minot AFB, North Dakota." That means that there are 450 nuclear warheads in North Dakota, and 1350 warheads total among these three states. I don't know what else to say after that.