Sit Down Dinners Good for You ?

We all remember the sit down dinners. Dad and mom at the ends with you lodge somewhere in the middle between sisters and brothers. Mom is usually stressed and dad is preoccupied and you scarf that food like an Olympian. And the dinners were MANDATORY. In my house they were. You did not skip the sit down dinners. Your only hope was to eat fast and vacate but even then you couldn't just leave. You had to sit until mom or dad were finished.

Well it turns out that those dinners were good for you. A new study shows that families that eat together are healthier. They eat more healthy food. They get sick less. Their kids are more well adjusted. Less depression. Able to interact more effectively. All this from those hellish meals where you had to recite what you learned at school or what you did or have it pointed out that you spoiled your appetite with that cereal you ate before.

But yes. It is true.  The family that eats together eats more fruit and vegetables and less junk food. Makes sense. Home cooked meals are better than Big Macs and pizza. No revelation there. But the sociability of the sit down dinner apparently translates across the board. Teenagers feel more support. Younger children learn how to interact. Information is conveyed. The family unit is strengthened. The tribe is stronger.

I remember a woman coming over while we are all eating. How cute. A family dinner she said. We looked at her like...this is cute? To us it is just normal. Good to know normal has some benefits.

 

Rocket Man...the American Dream upside down

http://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Man-William-Elliott-Hazelgrove/dp/1938467582/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359822181&sr=1-4&keywords=rocket+man

 

 

The Corrections-- a novel of a world gone by

I reread Franzen's The Corrections as a warm up to Freedom. I have to confess I couldn't stay with The Corrections years ago when I took a shot at it. I just wasn't ready for all that back story. But this time I was. Maybe I was more determined, maybe I just a better reader. I don't know. But I finished the book and of course I had a very strong reaction to the ending chapter which to me was the book.

To me it is a Midwestern novel. No surprise here since the Lamberts are from the Midwest and the  novel pivots around getting together for a last Christmas before Albert the father goes permanently insane and general implosion occurs among the Lambert siblings.  The majority of the novel takes place in the East where the Lambert children struggle through their lives. Like The Great Gatsby we are watching that essentially Midwestern morality bang up against the early twenty first century decadence of America before 9/11. In this way we have an unfair advantage, we know about the planes to come.

But the novel circles back to St Jude and here is where the novel shines. The last days of Albert Lambert and truly the last days of twentieth century America play out in the Lambert household as a movie that has become old, sentimental, and horribly dysfunctional. Nothing fits anymore and the ragged warmth of the Midwest is much like the warm ragged center of the world  for Nick Caraway when he returned from the war in Gastby. The house and the rituals are all in place but they are vestiges of a world that no longer exists. Truly, the horror of the last pages is no one has any place anymore in the world. The stage is set for that fateful day in September

The Corrections is a perfect snapshot of our pre 9/11 World . More than that it pegs that WW II generations fierce devotion to ritual at all costs and shows the futility of those rituals in a world that no longer is anchored in the American century. Lets see where Freedom picks up.

William Hazegrove's novel Rocket Man is due on in the fall.
A Catcher in the Rye for the forty something generation
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/