Sophia Raday's Blog

Perhaps I should give up apologizing for the long spells between blog posts. I do now have an iphone, thanks to techno-savvy son. Now I just have to ask him to set it up so I can blog from it like from the former antique. He's probably moved on to bigger and better. I'll ask about blogging from my brain. Actually, you guys don't want to see all that.

Okay, in writing we call what I just wrote above "clearing my throat." Ehh-hem.

The exciting news is I've been taking a class on "Metaphor" with George Lakoff up at UC Berkeley. Unbelievably exciting stuff. Makes my head spin. I recommend all his books, but perhaps the best one to start with is "Don't Think of An Elephant." Then there are many more if you are as into it as I am.

I wrote my first piece incorporating the teeniest bit of cog sci for military.com. It looks at the polarizing effect of the Oscar Grant shooting and subsequent trial, and suggests that the very different interpretations/reactions to the event make total sense from a cog sci perspective. From that insight I find a ray of hope as to how we might be able to use these different reactions to learn more about ourselves and to come together with people who are different. You can read it here.

I thought of a new feature for the ol blog called "Dove/Hawk Nightstand" where I'll share the reading going on at my house. As I've said, I'm reading a lot of George Lakoff. Also I am revisiting The Hours by Michael Cunningham and a bit of Shakespeare. Barrett is reading "Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine" by Robert Coram. He says it's pretty good, if "way too anti-Army."

My young son just set things up so I can blog from my cell phone! Will I be blogging more often? Well to my son's great consternation, my cell phone is an antique and not that easy to text on. Is an iPhone and more blogging in my future? Only time will tell.
#avg_ls_inline_popup { position:absolute; z-index:9999; padding: 0px 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; width: 240px; overflow: hidden; word-wrap: break-word; color: black; font-size: 10px; text-align: left; line-height: 13px;}

Hello there,
I wrote a few months back that I had pitched a column at military.com. Well it took awhile for them to respond but...I am now in the company of Ollie North and many others as a regular contributor there. (To be accurate, Ollie is a so-called "Hard news" columnist, whereas I am a so-called "Lifestyle" columnist.)

I made my debut last week. My overall theme of "Purple Marriage, Purple America," is also the title of my first column. I plan to write "underneath and around" politics, d...

Making Space

Hi All, time swirling faster and faster it seems. I am reading a book, slowly, as is appropriate, called In Praise of Slowness. Actually, it was my reader present from my recent reading at Pegasus Books in Berkeley (thank you to all who made it). While waiting for people to arrive, I spied this little dark book. When I read the title, a strong feeling of relief washed over me. I think it came from realizing that the very existence of this little book meant there must be many other...

And other meditations on Overcoming Differences, Relationships, Politics, Fear, and Peace.

I'm starting up blogging again with a vengeance. This is the new me. The blogging me. The blogging without fear me. I am going to try something new for the rest of 2009. I'm going to get over my need to polish my work before I publish it, if only for a blog. I know it might seem odd to y'all that someone like me, who has published a book about her personal life, would be reluctant to "reveal" herself, but

Oh what a bad blogger I've been. Too many ups and downs. Too many urgent small things to attend to. But more than anything, I've been too busy desperately trying to crank my actual experience of publishing my first book over to the fantasy experience I've been subconsciously tending lo these years as an emerging writer. You know the one - where I go on Oprah and the book rockets to the top of the best seller list?

I had such an amazing launch party: Kitty at Books Inc is a totally class act; ther

I feel like my family is beginning the healing process from the shock of the police shootings in Oakland. Of course the families of the fallen have infinitely deeper trauma and our first thoughts and prayers must go to them. But still, 3/21 hit B. and me hard, harder than when people he knew were killed in Iraq. That makes sense, of course, because everything that happened on 3/21 was “closer to home” in all senses of that phrase: B. was there, on duty when it happened, B. was close friends with

You have all probably guessed the reason I have not blogged for a rather long time. Let's just say it wasn't the ski trip I took with my son on March 19th and 20th, which was lovely Mom-and-Niko bonding time. That ski trip seems like a hundred years ago now, in a totally different era. Which of course it was, the pre-3/21 era, before four Oakland police officers were shot and killed. My husband knew all four men; even I had met two. Erv Romans was an old friend of B's; Dan Sakai was one of B's p

In an earlier post I talked about one of my seven-year-old son’s drawings, a picture of his father, which his teacher had criticized, saying “Does my torso look like that?” The drawing was an in-class assignment to illustrate a homework project called “the personal timeline.” For every year of my son’s life, he wrote one sentence describing something important that happened.

My son’s drawing is on a small white paper, about two inches square. Back in January, when he first showed it to me, he un

Hi All
I thought I'd post some photos of Mommy Sophia and how she skis now, which is to say, backwards on telemark skis. Not to be fancy, but just so I can see the little one behind me is faring. Above is a shot from a few years back as I was getting him ready to go.




And here's how we'd travel down the hill in those days. When I had to hike uphill to rescue him, it was (and still is) a lot easier when my heel is free. ("Free your heel, free your mind," we telemarkers like to say. "Half a binding,