All of which is a big preamble to tell you that I am about to write a post about my daughter.

She will turn two this winter. Like all parents, I am completely smitten. I am constantly amazed and amused by her antics and accomplishments. But the most magical part for me is her language development. Since her birth I have felt like we were in one of those sappy movies where the characters, although besotted with each other, speak different languages. We developed rudimentary ways to communicate. (The first time she pointed to the cupboard, said “ca-ker” and made the sign for “please” I felt like I had made contact with Mars.) It worked. We got by. But now that we speak a common tongue, our relationship has progressed to a whole new level.

Words are important to me, so I guess that this should come as no surprise, but I am completely blown away by watching this little person learn to speak. I’m talking about open-mouth, wide-eyed wonder here. The kind you associate with childhood Christmas mornings, or disturbing astronomical phenomena, or religious experiences.  I know that the process of acquiring language is mundane and universal, but I cannot shake the feeling that there is something miraculous about it.

Being a word geek, I am fascinated by the pure mechanics of it—watching when verbs started to show up, and prepositions, and when she graduated from two-word sentences to three. I’m intrigued by the things that are confusing (pronouns) or physically difficult (the ‘L’ sound). I love that vocabulary grows exponentially—she acquires new words too fast now for me to even keep track. And I love what her language tells me about her mind. When she busts out a classic like “No, this MINE polar bear,” I think about all the concepts that went into forming that little sentence and I stand amazed.

Here are three things I love about being able to converse with this daughter of mine:

1.  Practicality–It is indisputably useful to be able to ask her what she wants to eat for breakfast, or where she put her shoes, or which part got hurt when she fell down, and expect to receive an answer.

2. Play–Words have opened up whole new avenues for amusement. We take turns singing songs now, and while away the hours consuming endless combinations of pretend cake and coffee. She is often intentionally silly. Asked what her toes (which were in her mouth) tasted like, she giggled and replied, “Bananas!”

3. Politeness–It’s funny how hardwired we are to respond to polite verbal cues. Some of her more civilized expressions are surely rote—“Salud!” for a sneeze or “Thank you, Mommy!” for more snacks—but they evoke genuine gratitude all the same, and smooth out the edges if we’re having a hard day. And some of them express things that I don’t actually need to be told—things that we covered way back in our non-verbal days.  But “Love you, Mommy,” still gets me every time.

I recognize that this is Hollywood, but what a tale–ordinary girl has a good idea, starts a blog, writes for a while, and is suddenly inundated with calls from big reporters and offers of book deals. Her life is later made into a blockbuster movie with famous actors.

The key, of course, is the idea. (And also the cooking, I suppose.) Julie Powell’s year-long project of tackling all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her tiny apartment kitchen was surely a gimmick and a stunt, as it has disparagingly been called. But it was a good one.

My favorite description is one by food writer Michael Pollan writing for the New York Times. He describes Powell landing on her winning idea while “casting about for a blog conceit.” Though conceit has some less-than-savory connotations, I don’t actually think he’s being critical. According to Merriam-Webster Online, a conceit can be “a fanciful idea” or an “elaborate or strained metaphor,” but it can also mean “an organizing theme or concept.” All three definitions are applicable here.

So as other people have been dusting off their Julia Child cookbooks and no doubt boosting butter sales nationwide, I have been wondering: Does a blog need a conceit? Does mine have one?

I know some of the things that make a blog compelling: snappy writing, timely topics, an endearing author. (I will leave it up to you, dear readers, to decide whether this blog meets those criteria.) But I wonder whether that is enough. If I put some thoughts up here a couple of times a week about whatever is rattling around in my brain, will that draw people in and keep them reading? (Forget about a book deal.) If not, what would?

I think a blog conceit might be kind of fun, but I am still in the “casting about” stage. If I happen to hook a good one, you’ll be the first to know.

President Obama has been excoriated by the right for expressing his preference for empathetic judges. Even the left has been wary of wholly embracing the term in this context.

Here is the definition of empathy.

empathy
Noun
the ability to sense and understand someone else’s feelings as if they were one’s own [Greek, empatheia-- affection, passion]

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006

How can this be such a terrible quality for a judge to possess?