GET IN TOUCH
Sharing a few family portraits from our first weeks together as a newly minted family. My phone seems to be the easiest camera that I can operate while simultaneously feeding or holding baby. And the pictures from the phone so far are pretty great. Captured, with my DSLR, some images but loving particularly the image below of The Engineer playing music for us in the afternoon sunshine.
We’ve been in a daze. A soggy and sleepy daze. Nearly three weeks into parenthood, it’s more of everything than I thought it would be. The Engineer recently shared this quote with me. It brought us both to tears. With all the uncertainty that’s swirling around us, both in our own space as new parents and in our nation as a whole, we found comfort in this sentiment.
Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy at University of Kansas, March 18, 1968
