It feels weird that the contemporary meaning of “politics” is what it is, when the original meaning is about the ways in which we make collective decisions and share power. Politicians today feel, in the abstract, so isolated and self-serving that it is easy to forget the many civil servants who are in fact out here trying to push and pull their way through the hard task of serving a community, a city, a nation, a world.
How do you provide for the sustenance and happiness of the people who live on your block and look like you without sacrificing the lives of the people who live in a faraway neighborhood? What does it mean to consider not just your own community but the ways in with your community is inextricably linked with those around you—even those that are seemingly very different from you?
I explained politicians to Kina in this way, possibly hoping that by naming it, I could make it so.
kid points out that hide and seek worth only one day of being liked, and wouldn’t it be nice to be liked for two?
Reader, I decided I would be liked for two days, and I ended up having both to find Kina in one of her many nooks, and also to pretend to use Kina as ingredients for “chili lasagna”. It all took about half an hour, and I would like to point out that she already didn’t like me by this afternoon, when I told her I wouldn’t listen to one particular twee decade-old ballad in the car multiple times.
This has been hopefully the best news you hear about children today. I really hope the other news about children gets better.
She seems confident in the profit margins in lemonade stands in 2024
Kina sometimes wonders why we do not own a house, which is reasonable when you understand that she only a passing familiarity with money, real estate, and the notion of a million dollars. So, when passing a cute little pink house in Greenpoint the other day and asking what it might cost for us to move into it, she didn’t understand that 2.7 million dollars worth of real estate is not easily acquired by the average New Yorker on a whim.
Later that day, as we were walking through Brooklyn Bridge Park, she mused out loud that she would get rich just to buy us that house to live in together, and that she reckoned that, on a hot day, you could sell quite a lot of lemonade and slime. Far be it from me to disabuse her of the notion, as long as I can sit in the fabulous sun room out back.
The house entered contract later that evening. Maybe next time, Kina.
student athlete rises early for best day of entire school year
Astute readers will recall that there was no field day last year, due to wildfires, so it’s no wonder that Kina rose early to have a special field day just for her class. Kudos to Mr Ortiz for going above and beyond. Yet again.
Over the last four years of writing this newspaper, I have enjoyed every little opportunity I can get to use copywriting tricks like [square brackets] that clarify quotes. It just scratches that itch I always had from when I dreamt of being a real journalist, without all the drama and excessive smoking.
Kina is selected to stand on stage with visiting Chinese dance troupe, presumably (she says) because she is Asian.
I came home from work yesterday to find Kina engaged in an elaborate Kung Fu exhibition in our living room, having spent all of five minutes on stage with a local Kung Fu school. I’m not an expert in the form, but I would say that Kina has made considerable progress, given the extent of her training so far.
“They put me right in the middle,” she said proudly, “because I am Asian.”
Happy Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month from the girl you least want to sneak up on.
“One, face paint; two, paint nails; three, bouncy castle w/friends”
Kina knows that face painting is always the longest line, and so she shows up early. The bouncy castle, however, is forever. And ever. And ever.
Yesterday’s schoolyard festival was, as you might imagine, a fundraiser for Kina’s school budget—gutted, as I am obligated to remind you, by our city’s current administration. I thought of you all as I forked over cash for face painting and bouncy castles. This is all worth it.
If you have been thinking, “oh hey let me fix public education by reading The Daily Kina,” you still have a fighting chance at funding this month’s donation drive (currently at $15, which can buy around two reams of copier paper) by upgrading to a “premium subscription” at this button I just learned that you could put in an email:
Sits on Daddy’s lap while he holds a sweater over her head; young ballerina transfixed by groups dancing bachata, modern, Memphis Jookin’, and tap.
I wrote about the NYC Dance Parade two years ago, when it was not raining. Last year, it rained, and we did not go. This year, it rained again, and we went. This year was the best year.
I guess it seemed like a promising opportunity, with Mommy and Daddy out for a date and a movie on the TV, but Kina is ultimately our daughter, and this family sleeps.
Argues with Daddy, art collector, about the term “glaze”
She insists that the shiny coating on her ceramic cat is called “a white glue that turns clear”, and she insists so vehemently that I am questioning if this is even actually clay or some weird new, 21st-Century clay-adjacent material that got invented sometime in the four decades after that time I made my grandmother a Star Wars-themed landspeeder ashtray.
Given how upset Kina gets when we interrupt her long story setups, I am honestly glad to honor this request when she makes it. It’s a good reminder that stories don’t always end the way we expect.
dad
p.s. The Daily Kina’s public school rescue drive is afoot, with $10 raised so far! Can we get to $20 by this weekend?? Mash the “Sign up for a premium subscription” link in the footer today!
Kid and the other Maple girls build multi-layer, ranked-choice bus seating system for class field trip
Kina loves roasting the boys, who seem totally uninterested in which boys sit with each other on the field trip buses. Meanwhile, Kina has a five-level fallback for her bus partner and is excited to see the sea lions.
In other news, Kina’s school is doing a fundraiser, and while I haven’t taken a direct approach with you readers for helping to raise said funds, it is worth noting that the current mayor of New York City has made substantial cuts to public education in a system that supports over a million children. This has led to shortfalls at every school, and while I have very specific thoughts about mayoral control of the New York City Public Schools, the immediate impact is that parents are filling the gap.
How can you help? Glad you asked. I’ve decided that every paid subscription we get this month will go to Kina’s school as part of their Spring fundraiser. If you have not already (and please, Kina’s Lala, do not increase your monthly rate), you can head on down to the bottom of this here email and hit “Sign up for a premium subscription” and donate whatever you wish—even a dollar is fine. All subscriptions this month will go directly to Kina’s school and earmarked from “Readers of the Daily Kina”.
Child discovers one of the central struggles of identity
It must be odd, the first time you realize that you’ve never actually looked at your own real face, and that most of the time, the face you see is backwards from your actual face. I also still think about it all the time, and I’m 42 years older than Kina.
Sometimes I think this newspaper is just a safe way to talk about how being a kid is basically like being wildly stoned.
bedtime child lukewarm on Daddy’s heartwarming tale of Puppy going on a hilarious bender in San Francisco
I dunno, I just thought it would be funny to imagine her stuffed puppy out carousing in San Francisco circa 2018, after that one time we lost him on the playground in the Mission and I had to get another one express-delivered to our AirBnB, and Kina asked why he was so… clean.
They exchange notes on “clock time” and “event time” in an attempt to convince her to brush her teeth
As the most clock-oriented person in our household, Laurea often has a difficult time relating to the meandering flow of her roommates’ morning routines. Kina responds with frustration when Laurea tells her she can play for five more minutes before brushing her teeth, no matter how kindly her mother delivers the ultimatum. This often prompts Kina to simply start her dawdling anew, in an effort to reach whatever state of calm she was seeking in the first place—which just brings Laurea back to the timer, which restarts the whole process.
The other day, Laurea brought to me the notion of “clock time versus event time”, which seemed like a revelation to both of us in some ways but is actually a fairly well-documented differentiator of social structures.
In short, Laurea is on clock time—driven by schedules that are locked to a globally-agreed-upon and highly specific thing we invented and that Kina and I have never fully understood.
child deploys favorite new phrase of deep disappointment
What makes it extra funny is that she mutters “aw shoot” just milliseconds after she is disappointed, which suggests that she uses “aw shoot” when she already knows it’s gone south.
End of Spring Break means she gets to see Mr Ortiz
It has become something of a tradition for us to forget to plan an actual vacation during Spring Break, and this year was no exception. It is also typically the case, though, that Kina’s break is eventful and pleasant—and again, this year was no exception. She saw her little cousin Otis, her Lala, her Yeh-yeh and Grandma; she visited her Daddy’s real newspaper job; she gave me a high five at my first half marathon; she saw the Cloisters with Hannah; and she picked a bunch of tulips she ought not to have.
And despite all that action, she was thrilled to go back to school yesterday, if only to see her favorite teacher in the world, Ricky Ortiz, who celebrated his birthday just as his entire second grade class returned from the rest of the world (or, in Kina’s case, various local playgrounds). She had prepared for him an elaborate card with chocolates and modeling clay taped to it—things she said he would love, and when we dropped her off at the school gate, she bolted towards the gym as fast as she could, so that she could be the very first kid in line.
Kina is lucky to love school; not every kid gets it. I’m glad we have been able to instill a love for community and learning in her, but I have to give credit where it’s due. The teachers she’s had have been astonishing, inspiring, and loving; Mr. Ortiz stands tall among the giants, and Kina adores him. Thanks and Happy Birthday to Our Publisher’s favorite second-grade teacher. She could not stop talking about you.
publisher rushes late edition to press after Daddy leaves early for race
Daddy had to leave the newsroom at 7 AM today to run the Brooklyn Half Marathon, where he was showered with high fives and flowers by a rogue spectator.
on a stroll with Mommy and Lala during workday, child addresses imaginary Daddy to be more inclusive
Sometimes, Kina slips and calls me “Mommy”, or calls Laurea “Daddy”, as she did yesterday—but now she allows herself the possibility of having a conversation with the invisible version of the missing parent. Is Air Daddy me? Is Air Daddy my mortal enemy? Let’s not find out.
for “Take Your Kids To Work Day”, Kina lays out her very own A1, writes opinion essay titled “Parents Should Not Have To Go To Work”
I am not sure what Kina liked most—the activities they scheduled for her at work, including exclusive interview opportunities with famous journalists, the morning bike ride to the office, or the chance to wear matching outfits with me in public. She spent the morning today interviewing Laurea about her job, so the activities must have made an impact. Journalism forever!
Upon correctly ID’ing Daddy, Child observes that “Mommy’s just not that hairy”; hairy-pheromoned Daddy objects
When I, a super-smeller, identified notes of burning rubber on Kina’s wrist, it led to a cascade of tears and apologies that lasted nearly twenty minutes.
daddy puzzled by soft-serve-averse gymnast; a highly unusual case!
One of Kina’s famous 4-hour fevers forced her to delay eating ice cream until after a nap. Also: her main beef with the first ice cream was that it was too crunchy.
Kina, born performer, holds up letter “A” in “EARTH” with gusto
Kina has developed a really charming habit of standing on stage while people applaud for group performances, just soaking it all up for herself. Give it up for “A”!
two families gather to give thanks for the woman who shepherded three babies into childhood; we eat cake—not too sweet
Hannah is probably the closest non-blood-related family that Kina has—or that I have, for that matter. She has raised this kid to be a fantastic human being in her own image, and I am profoundly grateful for her. She also shares a birth year with me, and so we spend lots of time complaining about various aches and pains and talking about how we like desserts that are not too sweet. Happy birthday to you, Hannah, and may your cake be none too sweet.
In section discussing whether dolphins are extinct, researcher notes, “It’s hard to say,” blames sharks for eating them
I hesitated to mention in this edition the kid who approached Kina and her other Asian-American classmate at gym class and just lobbed a mindbogglingly racist slur at them. I also hesitated before googling the specific linguistic formulation of this slur, and my stomach sank when no results turned up, because it suggested that this kid heard it from somebody, somewhere, who recited it from memory. I hesitated when she came home after school with Laurea and we sat on the couch to talk about it and tell her that we are bigger than the words the people use to hurt us; I hesitated as I considered what I wanted to tell her to do in the future—to tell an adult, sure, but to get in that kid’s face? To shout? To snarl? To spit? I hesitated before telling her she was strong, because I feel more conviction about the weakness of people who use these words, and the tragedy that little Asian girls have to be strong specifically to meet this weakness. I hesitated because the kid is also seven, and white, and has never had to hear his parents talk about being demeaned or passed over or dismissed because of the color of their skin, never had to see somebody who looked like them at work—somebody who has risen to the top of their field—called out by a senior leader not for their actual work but for the food eaten in the country of their birth. I hesitate to say that the kid might simply have found the language of the slur exciting and curious and was literally just telling Kina and her friend about the slur because he thought they might be interested to hear it—and because nobody, when it was said in front of him, suggested that it was a horrible thing to call a person. I hesitated to be angry yesterday, because Laurea was angry and I couldn’t afford to be angry. I was angry all day today, instead, unable to shake the memory of Kina telling me she got a couple math problems wrong “because the thing had happened just before and I couldn’t focus”. I hesitated to put this in the top slot because I think the dolphins are the thing that I want her to remember about yesterday, but at the end, I put it in the second slot, because I want her not to forget.
She’s fine. She’s safe. She has a good teacher and good friends. She has parents who are ready for this and who know it won’t be the last time. She loves dolphins, but it’s hard to say if they’re extinct.
Child turns to the kaleidoscope of her eyelids while she walks with Daddy to get the bike on a cloudy morning
She closes her eyes and tells me to let her know if anything is in her way. She walks alongside me and calls out the colors behind her eyelids: blue, violet, blue, burgundy. She turns left with me, and I tell her the the road ahead is straight and clear, and it is burgundy. Blue again, then left into the parking garage and down the ramp, violet.
Child peers into Daddy’s memories and reveals that he ate a cheeseburger for lunch, defying reason and mental science
Just a minute before this, I stunned her by guessing that she had eaten a beef patty for lunch. I have never seen her so gobsmacked, and it was almost a tragedy that I had to tell her I just looked at the school lunch menu. She would want me to tell you that she had no such study aid when she guessed, accurately, that I snarfed down a cheeseburger for lunch.
