Hey! It’s Father’s Day, and this is my dad, Bill, or as I like to call him, Dadelstein.

There are a lot of excellent things that I could tell you about him in honour of the day. But having pondered what to highlight, I realised that amongst the best things about Dadelstein is something that many people probably don’t know about him, and certainly wouldn’t assume about him. But as his daughter, I feel particularly qualified to make the following unequivocal statement: Dadelstein is a feminist.

When I was growing up, he made a real effort (alongside my mother) to make sure that my sister and I were not smushed into the little boxes that so often entrapped American girls; as a result, this meant that oftentimes we were not very cool, but I think it made us far more well-balanced women when we grew up. In particular, he always made a point to be extremely engaged in our education - though he was a physicist, he has always been excited about my literary inclinations and he read every essay I wrote through high school (and, um, well into graduate school) and offered constructive criticism (and added commas, which I usually then struck out). And not just our education: for example, in the late Eighties when my brother was ten and there was only one girl in his advanced math class, my dad complained to the school that they were discriminating against female students.

And now, when some women’s fathers would be mumbling things about MRS degrees, my own dad has never done anything but offer consistent support of my lifestyle and career.

And that, my friends, is the best kind of a father for a girl (now woman) to have.

Here is my new table! It is solid wood and styled in a convenient pedestal fashion in case you want to pull up some sweet little chairs and have tea on it, and it has a nice Eighties look, I think. While walking to Battersea Park from Clapham Junction, bearing vegetarian treats, Lauren and I happened upon it outside a terraced house, with a ‘FREE’ label taped to it.

‘Take it,’ said the lovely man who owned the house. ‘We’re having a clear-out.’

‘But we’re going to the park,’ we said.

‘I’ll save it for you,’ he said. ‘Come back later.’

Isn’t that lovely? That is particularly lovely. Thus, after a couple of satisfying hours of picnicking and looking at dogs (and dog owners who looked like their dogs) we picked up the table. And then carried it back to Lauren’s. And then discussed how to get it back to Stepney Green.

It’s not really bigger than a large-ish pram, but people on the tube were still astonished.

‘In all my years of travelling on the tube,’ declared one man, in something like awe, ‘I have never seen a table.’

I am glad that I gave him a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I am also glad that I have a nice place to put my computer.

I am little bruised, however.

I do not recommend hauling furniture on the bus, overground train and tube, therefore, if it can be avoided.

marklow:

Bay Street, Sag Harbor, NY. That, my friends, is $5/ gallon gas.

Amazing. When I left the Oosa back in ‘99, which was coincidentally my first summer of proper driving, it was $.99/gallon. Perhaps I shan’t return ‘til it reverts.