My dad, as many of you know, died in 2009, killed by pancreatic cancer just a few weeks after his diagnosis.

This Thanksgiving was the first time since then that we’ve had a chance to stay in the house that he and my mom had built for their retirement outside Fayetteville, Arkansas.  So perhaps that’s why I was struck so thoroughly last week by how very present he remains in that house.

Some of that is just the ordinary emotional ephemera left by memories — even though they’d only been in the house for a half dozen or so years when he died — but some of it is the physical presence of the notes he left, pictured (in part) below.

I suppose his notes go back quite a while.  I remember a note — probably futile, probably written knowing it was futile — pleading with us not to leave stuff on top of what we called alternatively the “plant cage” or the “alligator cage” (a structure he built for my mom to grow plants inside) in Oklahoma, probably 35 years ago.  I still have trouble resisting flat surfaces that just plead for stacks of stuff.

I think there are more notes in the Arkansas house than either our Minnesota or Oklahoma homes, maybe in part because it was a new house with more than its share of problems, and maybe in part because his ataxia made communication more challenging — and mostly because he wanted to make the house a safe and comfortable place for family and friends.

He wanted guests (and my mom) to know how to use the toilet efficiently, and how to make the guest rooms comfortable, and how to use the electrical panel safely, and where my mom’s wedding gown was, and why guests don’t need to worry about the light in the bathroom (it’ll turn itself off two to three minutes after the last motion).  He also (politely) wanted the mail carrier to firmly close the mailbox (that mailbox got repurposed as a garden tool holder).  And he wanted guests to know how to use the HVAC system (as my friend Emily points out, the fact that the fifteen-point list of directions is identified as instructions “in brief” speaks volumes).

Our family when I was growing up wasn’t a completely organized and coherent thing all of the time.  I don’t say that to be critical (at all), or to suggest anything bad, but just to observe.  Our family now, with Dena and Ella and Liam, isn’t a completely organized and coherent thing all of the time.  I think that’s actually a good thing; some chaos and surprise is good.

As much as my dad had an organized mind, I mostly think of him in his later years as having a slightly bemused look of delight at the chaos that results when you have a bunch of grandkids running around doing what a bunch of grandkids do.  He might not have been as delighted with the chaos that we (okay, mostly I) introduced to his life earlier in life, but I think he (mostly?) found it more interesting than infuriating.  I hope my kids remember me mostly being delighted with the changes in directions that we have experienced, even if I’m not always sure how to approach them.

I don’t leave a ton of notes around the house (though I do have Welcome to Nightvale-themed lunchbox notes).  And my brain isn’t as organized as my dad’s was — far from it — so maybe I won’t.  But I am grateful that — a few weeks from four and a half years from his death — I am still getting guidance and love from my dad.

A few weeks ago we had The Doubleclicks on the  show (you can see a video here) in support of their kids’ record Worst Superpower Ever.  Prior to their visit, I’d listened to that a few times, along with their non-kids’ stuff, and enjoyed it all plenty.  And the in-studio was super fun — the songs were of course witty and a nice change of pace in the kids’ world, as were the band members (sisters Aubrey and Angela), but what was maybe the best was watching them talk with Ella off-air.  Grownups who spoke her language.

A week or so later, the band was kind enough to send an advance download of their new (not-for-kids) record, Lasers and Feelings.  And it is, well, pretty great, and it made me pay closer attention.

Easy stuff to talk about first: They’ve added way more instrumentation to their guitar-and-cello core setup, and it sounds great.  (As usual, I think many sax solos would be improved with trombone, but the sax solos on here largely work, and clarinets are great.)  That’s not to say I don’t like the usual setup — it highlights their voices and lyrics nicely, and is certainly a nice change of pace from your standard band lineup — but it’s fun to hear some other instruments in the mix too.

Like I said, that’s the obvious stuff, and that — along with their usual witty lyrics and a growing nerd fanbase — is presumably why they just announced that they hit the Billboard Top Ten for comedy albums.

Here’s the thing though: Lasers and Feelings is not just a comedy album.  I think it’s a (very funny) feminist album.  (And putting it in the “comedy” category tends to distract from the fact that they’re excellent songwriters, both lyrically and melodically.  This is not a novelty act.)

Sure, the album is funny — very funny at times — and there are certainly songs that are primarily for laughs (“The Guy Who Yelled Freebird,” “Rock Star Life,” etc.).  And every song has humor at its creamy nougat center.

But I like to think of Lasers and Feelings as the sequel to Science Fair.  (Granted, Angela and Aubrey didn’t have Science Fair until I handed it to them, and I’ve no idea if they’ve listened to it.  Presumably they didn’t listen to it, travel back in time, and make Lasers and Feelings intending it to be a sequel.  But stay with me here.)

Science Fair was (for me, and for I think all of the producers and artists) about giving girls power, to emphasize that there is no part of society where they don’t belong — about being themselves without being mocked, about feeling not just okay but awesome with being smart.  That basic idea — everybody gets to be in every room — is what a lot of Lasers and Feelings is about too, albeit at a slight angle.

Consider the core song representing that idea, “Nothing to Prove.”  (The video for it, featuring clips from fans all over, is supposed to be up soon.)  In it, the band sings about finding their way into the nerd community — on much the same path that Ella is on right now — only to run into the notion of “fake geek girl tests”:

I know it feels good to have a contest you win; it would feel better if I wanted in.  So women aren’t geeks, is that your conclusion?  That this is some secret club based on exclusion?  Twelve-year-old dorks would say that you’re being selfish, and then go and write in their journals in Elvish.  * * * I’ve got cred but honestly I shouldn’t need it; this world needs all kinds of folks to complete it. You’ve got gamers and aritsts and comic subscribers, cosplayers, crafters, and fan fiction writers.  You can stop – never say ‘fake geek’ again.  Our club needs no bouncers; all who want can get in.  But go ahead, if you want to own that role fully – I’ve got nothing to prove to a bully.

That is, I submit, the next step from Science Fair, especially the Nields’ song “Butterfly” and Rachel Loshak’s lovely “Oh Girl.”  The former acknowledges how much it can suck out loud to be a smart (nerdy?) girl:

I know metamorphosis means you have to go to pieces first; things will not get better, ’til they get a whole lot worse.  They are laughing in the girls’ room — they think they’re tearing down the sky.  When I come out, finally find me, you’ll see a gold flight as we fly by, as I fly by…

And it’s not just The Doubleclicks’ “Nothing to Prove.”  “Oh, Mr. Darcy” provides a nice reminder not to get distracted by a British accent  (“If a boy treats you with tasteful indifference, if he is handsome but bristly and cold, don’t be intrigued just because he’s ignoring you — not every asshole has a heart of gold.”).  “The Mystery’s Gone” points out how much one’s online presence can differ from their reality.

My point?  Here, I’ve got one: If you’ve been listening to the show since we started (eight years in a couple of weeks!), you may well have a kid (boy or girl) who could use some of what’s on this album.  (You’d probably like it too.)

It would be easy to get distracted by the plentiful laughs on Lasers and Feelings, and then you’d miss what is a really strong record with a resonant message.  I cannot wait for Ella to get back from camp to hear it.  I am positive it’s going to hit the spot for her.  It is not a kids’ record — as you can see above, it has some language you might not love and some themes that aren’t aimed at the younger kids.

But it absolutely reflects much of how I want my kids to grow up: smart, funny, and — most importantly — being who they are.

(Also: writing in Elvish.)

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my brother and sister-in-law Mike & Jenn for introducing me to the band.  They saw (if I remember right) their first public gig!

Rev-105 and 97x were intensely important to my love for and thinking about radio, and both are gone (and have been for years).  Both stations managed to be both commercial and interesting, programmed and eclectic.  There are some great stations still around, including of course our home for years 93.9 The River, plus The Current in Minneapolis and KEXP in Seattle.

But I — perhaps avoiding some real work — thought I’d create a little bit of imaging for the show based on the long-gone liners and promos from Rev and WOXY.  Thanks to some former staffers for providing the 97x files, and to whoever owns Rev105.com for the Rev-105 sounds:

(Sorry for the Flash player — you can also get the MP3s here: Rev-105 Liner; 97x Liner)

You can listen to my farewell (grownup) show here (the show starts about 30 seconds in):

The playlist is here.

Early in the planning for Science Fair, Molly Ledford was considering writing a song called “Raised By Scientists” for Lunch Money to perform.  That didn’t happen (yet?), but I really like the idea of it — it is a very specific way to be raised.  To give one hint of what it was like, at least in the Childs household, I’ll direct you to a piece I wrote three years ago about having a chalkboard in our dining room.  (Incidentally, I just repaired that chalkboard, so it will again have a place of prominence after our move to Austin.)

But for the song of my childhood to be complete, it’d have to be “Raised By Scientists and Feminists.”  To give a hint of that, as I’ve also mentioned, and as the Deedle Deedle Dees memorialized in song, I chose Susan B. Anthony as the subject of a book report, and then dressed up as her to present it — that, along with the fact that I am reliably informed that my first question to potential preschool friends was, “Are you for the ERA?,” should give you a sense of that side of our childhood.

Thus came Science Fair.  The CD, as the liner notes indicate, was inspired by the lives of my parents, Ves and Holly Childs.  My dad (an electrochemist and feminist) died three years ago today — on the summer solstice, which, that year, was also Father’s Day.  I chose today for the Paste Magazine-hosted premiere of the video for Mates of State‘s contribution to the record in part to honor the date.  And then I also asked my mom, whose background you can read about below, to write a little about being a feminist in science and engineering.  Here’s what she wrote:

I was slow in coming to the realization that I was drastically underpaid and disrespected compared to my male coworkers. It was 1964 and I was in my second year of my first off-campus job, at Phillips Petroleum Company. I was using the company’s new IBM 7094 mainframe computer to model and optimize nonlinear systems like gasoline plants, a somewhat harder group of problems than those most of my coworkers were working on.

I knew that my job title (engineering aide) was different from those of my peers (research scientist, computer analyst), though my job was similar; I thought that was because I had been hired more recently than everyone else. I was grateful to have been hired at all, though I had a solid BS degree with a double major in math and chemistry and had done better on the pre-interview tests than anyone else who had ever taken them. The matrix algebra courses I had taken, expecting them to remain entertaining but useless, had actually given me a head start on understanding the project I was hired for.

Two things happened about the same time to open my eyes. First, the project my boss and I had been working on was ready to be written about and published. Second, the company hired another “engineering aide” in my department.

I learned that my boss was hiring another person to work on our project, primarily by writing a journal article; he and my boss would coauthor the article, and I would not. I got to figure out most of the computer coding and engineering simulations and to draw the illustrations for the paper. The article was so long that there was no room even to express thanks to me.

The new engineering aide was a young man with a high school diploma and a drafting class. His job was more clerical than technical. He was paid slightly more than I was.

Because I was a woman, I was classified as a low-paid, low-prestige employee and I was not eligible to publish technical work that I had done. I was enraged. But there was nothing to be done. Sex discrimination was perfectly legal, and, indeed, expected, by everyone except me.

Starting in college, I had worked on “desegregation,” as civil rights activities were then known. I hadn’t realized that women needed protection for their civil rights too. I knew that women in the sciences were regarded as “cute” or as interlopers; a physics professor referred in a class I was in (50 men, two women) to “girls in college looking for their M.R.S. degrees.” I knew that not many women actually worked in science or engineering. But my parents had encouraged me to pursue chemistry, though my high school had offered no science at all – my mother always told me that I could do anything I wanted, and that the women in my family were strong achievers. It had never occurred to me that I might be underpaid or disrespected at a fairly won job that I was doing exceedingly well.

Partly in reaction to my own experiences, soon after our third (and last) child was born, I started working for the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have forbidden having different laws for men and women (excepting obvious areas like privacy and wet nurses). I spent ten years as a full time volunteer; another woman and I ran the field organization in Oklahoma. We lost the last legislative vote by one vote (that of a legislator who told our lobbyists he was going to vote yes, walked onto the floor, and voted no). I believe that, even though we lost, our ERA work made gender discrimination less socially acceptable.

Women still do not have constitutional protection, and job and educational discrimination continue, albeit in more subtle ways. I would really like to know for sure that my children and grandchildren will be treated fairly in school and on the job, regardless of their gender. I would particularly like to be sure that any of my beautiful little granddaughters who wanted to be a scientist or engineer, like me, would have a full opportunity to do so, and to be published when deserved and to be paid equitably. Perhaps this record will contribute toward that end.

– Holly H. Childs

I’m so grateful to my mom, and my entire family, and so proud of all of their work.  It’s not done: One, two, three.

You can pre-order Science Fair now, if you don’t have a local retailer that will be carrying it on its release on July 3.  Proceeds will benefit Girls Inc.’s science education programming.

As I announced a while ago, we’re moving to Austin this summer.  Our house, in the center of Florence, is now on the market and I think it’s just lovely.  So maybe you should buy it?  I think yes.

You can see a description and a bunch of pictures of it here, and there will be an open house this Sunday (April 15) from 1 to 3.  We’re represented by Natasha Yakovlev of The Murphy’s Realtors; e-mail her for  additional information or call 413-320-9864.

Seriously, we adore the house and the neighborhood.  We wish we could move both to Texas.  If you’re potentially in the market for a house in the Pioneer Valley, it might work for you.

In  more show-related news, I hope to have more specifics about how the show will continue after the move.  Soon.