Emily Rapp is the author of “Poster Child: A Memoir,” and a professor of creative writing at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means “little seal” in Irish and it suits him.

I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He’ll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.

How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?

NY Times: Notes From a Dragon Mom

Sugar; partially defatted peanuts; partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (palm kernel and soybean oil); corn syrup; dextrose; contains 2% or less of: artificial color (yellow 5 lake; red 40 lake; yellow 6 lake; blue 1 lake); salt; resinous glaze; soy lecithin; modified cornstarch; carnauba wax; vanillin; artificial flavor; milk.

Wow. My favorites in that list are partially defatted peanuts and resinous glaze. Turns your stomach, don’t it? BTW, they’re delicious.

• The Human Torch replaced by a floating robot?
• Wonder Woman needs a husband?
• Wonder Woman is a ninja?
• Spiderman fights giant monsters in his giant robot (of course, only in Japan.)
• The Brady Brunch spun off a Brady Kids animated show with pandas and a magic-wielding bird?

The clips are priceless, so please, view the clips. My favorite is the Fantastic Four clip featuring a bizarre Magneto. Please, please, please. Otherwise, Magneto will get angry!

This is the ratchet that went into our tire

During the week that I was in Dallas, my wife was driving the kids home and got a flat tire somewhere between Princeton and our house. She didn’t know what it was, but last week when I took it to my local Toyota dealership’s servicing department, they and I were both shocked to find it was a large ratchet tool. They were so amazed, they gave it back to me to keep. You can see a picture of it in my hand on the right. Maybe someone was doing some auto repair, and lost this on the road at some point.

I asked Toyota if they could patch the tire, but they said they couldn’t. Furthermore, they stated all four tires were in bad shape and should be replaced. All four tires? The car is less than two years old, and we’ve accumulated only 42K miles on these tires. Depending on the variables, I would expect tires to last at least 50-60K miles. This is highly questionable. I’m sure Toyota is more than willing to sell me unneccessary services and parts, and that includes overpriced tires, but I asked for an initial quote.

Oh geez, that’s when I got my second shock of the day. The 2008 Highlander Limited originally comes standard with Toyo Open Country P245/55 R19 light truck tires. Fantastically expensive, four new tires would run me $1178. The only other option are Bridgestone Dueler H/T 400′s that will cost about $868. It’s not just the cost that’s shocking — these are the only two options, albeit expensive ones. In the past, I could  go to any tire shop and get a reasonable and comparable model. It turns out that nowadays, you’re going to find more cars/trucks with odd-sized tires that are not carried by many shops.

I went online, and there are numerous complaints from current Highlander owners that you are locked into these limited choices that aren’t readily available at Toyota or Firestone locations. Oh yeah, that’s right. Toyota doesn’t even stock the Toyo tires, and has to special order them. Furthermore, Highlander owners complained that both Toyo and Bridgestone tires will last you 40K miles or less, and you’ll see uneven wear-and-tear. Again, these are my options?

Here’s the next surprise. The Highlander comes with a fantastic feature where a sensor detects a low tire pressure. Nice feature, right? I knew that, and sounded good to me, nor did I have to pay extra for that. Guess what? Every time you have to change a tire, you have to throw the sensor away, and buy a new one, and pay to install that. We all initially like how sophisticated our cars/trucks are these days, but when you have repairs, there are so many more expensive parts to either replace. It’s incredible. Talk about a double-edged sword.

Although I was nervous about driving around with no spare, I wasn’t going to throw money away without price comparison shopping. I tried a few Toyota and Firestone locations, and my Dad helped me as well. I also decided to limit myself to only two new tires for now, with the intention of replacing two more next month. Spreading that cost out over two months is a little easier to swallow. In the end, I went back to James Toyota where we originally purchased the Highlander. They offered us $460 on two tires plus a free car wash. I made a 7:30am appt on a Wed, waited in their nice customer lounge for about 90 mins, and then got on my way to the office. They also highly recommended that we change all four tires at once, but I wasn’t interested. I’m sure we can squeeze out another few weeks without the world ending.

$460 later, I have half of the new tires that I need, but it will have to be good enough for now. There’s no way we’re going to plunk down nearly a thousand dollars on tires in one month.

Guatemala is in a state of crisis today after twin natural calamities struck: First, on May 27 the Pacaya volcano (just 19 miles from the capital) woke up in a bad mood. Lava flowed, black sand and rock and ash spewed everywhere. A newscaster covering the news near the volcano was killed by flying rocks.

Two days later on May 29, tropical storm “Agatha” struck, destroying homes, causing floods, and creating tens of thousands of internally displaced. Infrastructure in this country—where the majority live in poverty—is very poor, and ill-equipped to handle such a double blow. As of last night, official numbers on storm: about 30,000 “refugees,” close to 120,000 evacuated, 93 dead and rising. Guatemala’s one international airport has been has been closed for days, and just as it prepares to reopen today, there’s word of new volcanic activity.

Sinkhole in Guatemala City

The World at War (1971)

It is the most in-depth series of documentaries about World War II that I have ever seen. Stretching over these 26 episodes, there are no recreations or CGI graphics. It is 100% actual footage from newsreels, battlefield video, and other footage from the era. To see people’s faces, to witness actual battles, and to see what it must have been like to have lived through that time. In addition, the producers interspersed footage with interviews with actual combatants and people in power back then. Actor Jimmy Stewart who described his time as a U.S. bomber pilot, to Averell Harriman as U.S. diplomat, to chiefs of staff, commanders, generals, from various countries who fought in the war. You watch interviews with Luftwaffe commanders as they described their missions to bomb London and the English countryside, the German people who survived bombing, the Polish people who survived the Warsaw uprising, etc. This series of documentaries was put together over two years starting in 1969, and these people were still alive at the time, and tell you first-hand what it was like.

What I also find fascinating are the background information and footage describing how the world got to the point of war and what happened behind the scenes, not just on the front lines. It was very interesting to watch how Japan slowly became a fascist state run by the military, and that their quest for expansion was to acquire the necessary natural resources that they lacked on their series of home islands. To watch footage of the common British citizens walking around rubble after the bombings, doing their best the next day to continue life. Having studied WWII before, these documentaries have brought the whole period from the 30′s to the mid 40′s to life for me.

Lastly, from Europe to Africa to Asia to the Pacific, there were so many atrocities committed by so many nations against others. The amount of people struggling to survive with limited food, no clothes, living in bombed out homes. I remember one anecdote where a Japanese woman interviewed spoke about how originally Japanese were reluctantly forced to work in factories. She tells in the interview how she worked from sunrise to late in the evening, and due to the rations, and her only meal would be the late dinner — a bowl of soup with one noodle. The people of Stalingrad who survived the Nazi invasion had no food, so they would mix sawdust into their version of bread. The number of people who died in these battles and bombings. We talk about the wars these days and how 10 or 20 people were killed in an attack. Back then, thousands of people at a time were dying  in bombing raids or on the battlefront in a day. The scope of the carnage is mind-boggling.

I don’t buy DVDs any more, since I’ve found it much more economical to simply rent a film as needed. However, I’m very interested in purchasing this series and adding it to my DVD collection. It’s worth its weight in gold.

Joel Ipe, Danger Seeker!

1. We took a road trip to Florida. In Florida, I saw my first MTV music video — Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
2. My parents subscribed to Cablevison;s cable tv. With that, we got a a whole bunch of channels (and HBO.)

The original MTV logo

It was the 80′s, so lots of people were getting into cable television. It was interesting. HBO, MTV, Nickelodeon, CNN –all the classic pioneering networks. Do you remember how MTV evolved over the course of the 80′s? The veejays, the fun and cool music videos, the performances, and the award shows. There was nothing for me like coming home after school and watching kids shows on Nickelodeon and music videos on MTV. Music videos rose in the 1980′s, and they were so huge. I still remember getting an A for writing a term paper in 1993 on the history and influence of MTV.

Nothing lasts forever. Nowadays, MTV rarely shows music videos. Turns out, it’s the same with VH1 and BET. Heck, MTV announced they removed the words “Music Television” from their iconic logo. I was reading this article on CNN, Who killed the music video star? Times have changed, and the music video is no longer “it”. You can still watch them on Youtube, but artists don’t have to make on.

Music videos were the soundtrack of popular culture, but over time, a younger generation demanded us to evolve.

I haven’t watched MTV in a long time, nor do I have time to watch music videos. I think what surprises me the most is that an art form as monumental as the music video came and passed into near obsolesence during my lifetime. I’m 34 later this month. I grew up on MTV. I’m a child of the 80′s. I’ve grown up and the music video is nearly dead. How strange.

Read more in Wall Street Journal writer Julia Angwin’s article How Facebook Is Making Friending Obsolete. You know, the common advice is that one should be careful what you post on FB and other social networking sites (and blogs.) You never know who is reading it, even among your friends.  If your data is now discoverable via search engine, it’s even more out there.