Breastfeeding in America

Okay, so until recently I was living in Eugene, OR; which I think many will agree is not "America" per se. In Eugene, if I'd happened to pump and was feeding a bottle in public I wanted to wear a sign assuring everybody that it wasn't formula in the bottle. :)

Once again public breastfeeding is getting some publicity because Beyonce was breastfeeding in a restaurant, which is really the first thing she's ever done that made me have any respect for her. The comments on the facebook post where I first saw the article had a lot of discussion about covering up. Personally, I seriously begin wondering about people. There's a huge baby head covering the "not for magazine covers" bit and it seems like doing something like I did in the photo above is much more subtle than the "hooter hiders" and other such nonsense, which, to me, seem to be around simply to announce "there is a naked boob just under this cloth". I'm all for every woman doing whatever it takes to make her comfortable feeding her baby wherever she may be but I wish every woman could feel confident and comfortable enough to not feel she has to go to such lengths. I also can't imagine Willow's ever increasing volume as I got a contraption like that in place.

One of the other comments in the post linked to this site, which reminded me of some information I'd forgotten since I first read it when Willow was a newborn. Even though the American Academy of Pediatricians (about as mainstream as you can get) recommends breastfeeding through the first year and breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months, only about 44% of American infants are still being breastfed at all at 6 months and about 15% are being breastfed exclusively at that age. I can only imagine how difficult pumping is for working moms and I think this probably accounts for some of the statistic; I'm extremely grateful for my situation. Even for me the past six months have not been a fairy tale nursing story. I have had mastitis twice, many sore nipples and plugged ducts and spent the first six weeks of Willow's life dealing with an SNS (supplemental nursing system) and a nipple shield as she learned to nurse. That said, I believe it's one of the greatest gifts I can give her in these early months to set the stage for a healthy life and I've never once even thought of stopping in the last six months.

We starting playing with giving her a few bites of pureed banana and peaches over the last week (she was 6 months old on February 24) but after some initial enthusiasm she hasn't really shown a great deal of interest in more than a couple of bites now and then. Rereading the recommendations, I've been reassured that I shouldn't be feeling this push from some invisible force to try too hard to get her "eating". She's a healthy, chubby baby and we'll just keep playing with food here and there until she's ready to lead the way to more regular forays into solids. I feel like this is really the new frontier of the breastfeeding revolution - continuing past the first few weeks or first couple of months and letting babies get the full benefits that more extended breastfeeding can offer. Who knows, maybe Americans will someday even get to the point where the WHO's recommendation of breastfeeding up to 2 years won't seem unusual and "weird".

So ends the latest rant, which is good because I've got to get an hour or so of sleep before my baby wakes up for one of her nighttime feedings. ;)

(Pretty much a viral image at this point but I copied this one from here.)

My nod to politics...

Occasionally I catch a light case of politics. I try to make day to day choices that reflect my beliefs and figure that if enough of us do what is wholesome and healthy and share that vision with our neighbors, the big picture will sort itself out. I realize that this is optimistic and short-sighted and I'm able to live like that because I am fabulously lucky. Many people are unable to even make the choices I make because of certain challenges - economics, health, education, etc. Regardless, it's what allows me to move through life doing what I can and being exceptionally happy.

Okay, for any of you who haven't figured it out from my lifestyle choices combined with my geographic location, I tend to lean left. Depending on what you're used to, some say far left. ;) For Eugene, OR, it's pretty gently left as I've got a pretty strong streak of "do what you've gotta do" personal responsibility thrown in.

That said, I started singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in the shower a few days ago because I've been a serious Bob Dylan fan for over 2/3 of my life and it sometimes pops into my head. Then I started thinking about the lyrics and for the first time since I first heard them 20+ years ago, they seemed vitally relevant to the current state of society. I started thinking about the genius of the lyrics, since I can easily picture that song being sung at Occupy Wall Street. (I later confirmed that it is.)

In the weird way of coincidence, today I heard the new folk anthem that has just been created for Occupy - Makana's "We Are the Many". It's a fantastic song and remarkably reminiscent of Bob's, which is going on 50 years old now (!). If you are a singer/guitarist, here are the lyrics and chords, I'm sure they'll be popping up in a million more places but this is where they are now.

So ends my overt reference to politics for a while. Back to the baby, chickens, cooking and creating (while occasionally rocking out to songs I can believe in). :)

My Magic Seven Household Supplies

I've always thought that Mexican restaurants really had the right idea. For the most part, their dishes are created from the same few ingredients. Corn and wheat tortillas, oil, meat, rice, beans, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, cheese, and lettuce allow a patron to order hard tacos, soft tacos, tostadas, burritos, or chimichangas. Five menu items, 11 ingredients to have prepared. Not bad. From there, minor additions make whole new meals - add one ingredient (enchilada sauce) and enchiladas get added to the menu.

As I pondered this more, I realized that most traditional cuisines work on this principal. It makes sense, there are only so many things a person or village can produce in any given climate.

All of this came to mind today as I went down to the usual cupboard and pulled out the borax, washing soda, and soap to make laundry detergent. It's the same cupboard where I keep the white vinegar, citric acid, and pickling salt. Throw in baking soda from the kitchen I realized that I've got my own household needs "traditional ingredients" list.

Dishwasher detergent - citric acid, borax, washing soda, salt
Laundry powder - borax, washing soda, soap
Baking soda for any abrasive scrubbing (think Comet)
Vinegar for grease removal (I've also heard it works great on windows - but I don't do windows ;p) and yucky laundry (immediately removes any mildew)
Citric acid baths prevent oxidation as I prepare fruit for canning
Borax mixed with powdered sugar is great ant bait
Salt, baking soda, and vinegar for cooking and preserving

Eight uses on the "menu", not bad for seven ingredients!

Now I've just got to get soapmaking under my belt to I can just keep lye in the stash and use all that rendered fat from stock. (No, I don't believe I'll ever feel the need to try to make my own lye from wood ash - yuck.)

It really is amazing how many times I look up some household trick for this or that little problem and it comes down to some combination of those few ingredients. Presto! It's a taco! No, it's a burrito!

It's funny how the more you understand how things work it allows you to simplify and need fewer and fewer types of things. Clothing follows the same progression. When you get right down to it, with the right tools and skills, it would not be tricky to reduce your materials down to fabric, yarn, and some thread. (Wood and leather if you wanted to include shoes.) If you want to be one of those really obnoxious people with WAY too much time, I guess you'd even just need a flock of sheep and a field of cotton. :)

Somehow, the versatility of those substances soothes me. It gives reinforcement that the world works in understandable, predictable ways. My more practical side is also grateful that, despite what advertisers say, I don't need laundry soap, dish detergent, floor cleaner, stove cleaner, counter cleaner, sink and tub cleaner, window cleaner, and so on. Think about how much space grocery stores would save. Think of how much money corporations would lose. It's a very silly thought.

Clearly, the first outside laundry drying of the year has gone to my head! (Yes, it's late. It's been a really rainy spring.)

Frivolous Post Unscientifically Maligning Air Conditioning

There was a mistake in timing for a renovation at the college dorms in Atlanta where I'm staying. That means that several of us have been given rooms without air conditioning for a night until some other guests check out. Yes, daytime temperatures are in the 90s, nighttime temperatures are in the 70s and humidity is currently at 75%. We are staying in the "hot dorm" and have been given repeated apologies and little consolation gifts for our understanding.

We were told in the conference information to remember a sweater. Air conditioned buildings are kept so cold that we need jackets to stay comfortable. Wait, I thought air conditioning was designed to provide comfort.

My room is kept quite comfortable by a fan and an open window, through which I can hear highway traffic but I can also hear breezes through the trees and night insects. In air-conditioned buildings it is commonly known that an open window is a cardinal sin.

To play devil's advocate, I have been in Sacramento during a heat wave (over 100 degrees) and been in a position where I had to stay outside for an afternoon due to locked buildings. Even in the shade it felt almost unbearable. I was grateful for air-conditioning then and it rapidly cured my heat induced headache. My question is, does it really have to be set so low?

It seems like most people attempt to keep a steady year round indoor temperature - somewhere in the low 70s or high 60s. We've ingeniously invented machines that allow us to do that. We don't, however, maintain a steady year round wardrobe. Anybody with a whit of sense wears sweaters and coats in winter and lighter clothes in the summer to keep themselves comfortable outside. It would be nice to extend this common sense to the indoors and allow interiors to be a little warmer in summer and a little cooler in winter because people are able to dress for that variation (and already do). The potential energy savings seem staggeringly large to me.

That's my head argument against the state of climate control. My gut argument is that I never feel well in these super heated/super chilled extremes. Since I've been in Atlanta the heat has been a presence but I haven't really been in heavily air-conditioned locations. It's been perfectly bearable wearing a light sheen of sweat until the sun disappeared and the night cool came.

I'm contrasting this experience to so many other summer conference experiences. I can so clearly remember freezing for an hour during a seminar then rushing through what seemed to be the blazing heat so I could enter another building and start over again. It makes me feel clammy and I rapidly grow irritable and feel a little sick and headachy. My allergies start acting up which then starts the road to mild asthmatic wheezing. I have come to the unscientific conclusion that these constant adjustments must be extremely stressful for my body, which has to constantly adapt to new climates.

It will be interesting to see how thoroughly air-conditioned the classrooms are tomorrow. Maybe I can perform some unscientific testing since the heat and humidity will be constants.
Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

The Internet is a Weird Place

Yes, this is one of those irritating philosophical posts. More interesting stuff (by my reckoning) - bees, gardens, cooking, sewing, and knitting- will return soon. I'll try to get a post up this weekend on our latest creation - The Snickerdoodle Cheesecake!

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Today Q posted a link to one of my old posts on a relatively well-read site in the comments section of an article about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. Google analytics registered 655 hits for my site today. I'm well aware that the only people who usually read this blog are my mom and a few friends. Therefore, 652 more visitors than usual was a novel occurrence. :)

I was struck by the fact that that many people came through and the only person who bothered to comment just made sweeping negative generalizations about my character. I was upset at first (oh my gosh, I'm a horrible person) and then just angry (my rebutting comment still has a little snide tinge of this, I admit) and now I've kind of stepped back from overreacting emotionally, regained some equilibrium and am letting my head, instead of my heart and stomach, start digesting this phenomenon.

This has led me to two potential ideas, neither of which is probably right but I do find them intriguing. The conflicting hypotheses both center on Thumper's mom's advice, "If you don't have anything nice to say...".

1) People, for the most part, still hold that to be true, and the majority agreed with the comment poster but didn't feel the need to say it out of courtesy.

2) People don't really bother saying anything if they aren't angry or offended. It's sort of a weird reverse, "If you don't have anything negative to say, why post a comment?" I, of course, on a personal level am rooting for this one to be accurate since it assumes that most people don't agree with the poster.

I also realized that I tend to live more closely in line with the second way of being but it leaves me wondering if I should start pursuing a third path. Currently, if it's not meant merely to impart information on a given topic, my rare comments do tend to be critical, question-asking sorts of things, not "right ons". (Although, I've never understood the nonconstructive personal attacks and name-calling.) My actions are not in line with my beliefs though, since I'm more often thinking "right on" when I'm reading things. I've now realized that I tend toward being a silently supportive lurker. ;) Unfortunately, in internet land, this doesn't express my appreciation to the many people whose work I read and admire on a regular basis.

As usual, it's the negative stuff that provides the richest food for thought and the strongest push toward different actions.

The Thought: I can see little bits of myself in the mean comment. I also need to remember that that is not the usual predominant characteristic reflected back by my friends and family - people who I assume know me better than any anonymous internet poster. I know that I will always be completely full of flaws but, thankfully, the people I surround myself with in the real world are kind enough to look past that and see who I would like to be, am striving to be.

The Actions: I will try to be a more active, balanced presence in the blogs I follow. A positive comment takes only a moment of my time and may bring a little bright spot to someone else's day.

If you got to the bottom here, thanks for reading. If you find me to be insufferable, don't bother commenting. If you disagree with my ideas, by all means start a dialogue. I will keep trying to take everything, the good and the bad, with more equanimity. I know there's something to be learned in all of it - even if I don't like it!

The Jamie Oliver/State of American Food Rant

This link appeared in my comments today after I mentioned that I'm a bit addicted to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. It's a thought provoking, excellent article and links to several other good ones.

I should start by saying that I don't really watch reality TV. I admit that I was suckered into The Sing-Off (although we muted it every time Pussycat Doll simpleton opened her mouth). Besides that, I avoid it like the plague because they are all created drama, heavily scripted "reality" which is edited to create a certain picture. I have been working on the assumption that everybody on the planet knows this. Apparently the author of the article (and perhaps many others) are taking this entertainment really seriously. Does anyone actually believe that Jamie Oliver was truly planning to change a city's or even a school's or even a family's eating habits in the course of four months? He doesn't seem that stupid.

Change is only something that happens due to inner resolve. Speaking from personal experience, it takes a whole lot of exposure to new ideas from many different angles before I really commit to changes. Then there's a spark, a single moment - some factoid from a news article, an arbitrary weight on the scales, meeting a certain person - where everything coalesces. The time is now and all the halfway waffling is just done. It happened when I decided to run marathons. It happened when I committed to buying only local fruit and vegetables. It happened when we started buying only local, ethically raised meat. There are many other things but it all boils down to the difference between knowing one should do something and just doing it.

I will give Jamie Oliver's critics full agreement that he's a bit of a prima donna, a posturing drama queen, going teary the moment something doesn't go his way. That's part of what makes him good entertainment - everybody likes feeling a bit superior and there's no guilt involved when you're laughing at a man whose net worth is more than I would make in several lifetimes. America and a lot of the rest of the world is now constantly on the hunt for amusement. He provides that as a remarkable showman. Hundreds of pound of fat? A tarp full of chocolate milk? P.T. Barnum would be so proud.

Similarly, the tear-jerking absolutely most horrible stories that he can find of people struggling with their health or eating truly repulsive diets are more showmanship. These people are willing to participate, everything is edited to the most poignant edge of pathos and we all get a nice empathy moment. Does the audience know that the people he has found are not "everyman? I certainly hope we do.

So, here I am, proclaiming my love for a show that I freely admit is a circus run by a charlatan which claims to be a serious piece of "revolution". Why? Because we love a circus and the circus is starting a new level of consciousness. We can be smug as Jamie's magazine is caught out showing a "healthy" lunch recipe containing over 1100 calories. But it makes us think. Maybe that memory, "I know what kids should eat", will stop that overworked parent the next time the reach for the Lunchables because it's just so easy. This show is opening up a new awareness about food issues to a new audience. People who look up information on the show because it intrigued them will, through the magic of the internet's endless links, get led into a deeper understanding of current food issues than a TV show could possibly provide. And then they may stop the next time they're driving by the local farmer's market.

I know I live in Oregon, which may sometimes be quite far left of normal, but I get really worried when this appears in an article linked from the previous one.
"One promo shows a bewildered Oliver as he tries (and fails) to get a room of healthy-looking elementary students to correctly identify tomatoes, a beet, an eggplant, and a cauliflower. (Never mind that the latter three are obvious ringers many healthy adults couldn’t identify in their raw forms...)"
Really, many adults can't recognize eggplant, beets or cauliflower? And this is okay? How far removed from our food are we? It seems like somebody who had ever even walked through a normal grocery store's produce section should have picked up the names. It's not like he was holding up bok choy or kohlrabi.

I agree with the article that focusing on the schools is not the way to actually solve our food problems but, again, as far as a great place for sound bytes and captive audiences it will make the best entertainment. And, again, it's a great place to wake parents up. As a parent, I would be running through the checklist - do my kids know how to use utensils? Have my kids ever seen a green vegetable? Are my kids so overindulged and spoiled that they only eat pizza and french fries?

By the way, when did we start constantly worrying that kids needed to "like" what they're served, even when they're 4 or 5. Best moment of the most recent show - Jamie: "Why are you getting white milk?" Kids: "Because our teacher wants us to." Kids thrive when the adults around them are right authority figures - people who love them and care enough to shepherd them through the world, not just letting them have what they "want".

Here's the alternate picture - a picture given to me by the engaged, thoughtful parents of the students in my class. The kids I know discuss what their favorite salad dressings are and love making them. They occasionally get a bit of fun by rolling veggie sushi. They mourn when the frozen blueberries from last summer run out. And they sure as hell know what an eggplant is and that eggs come from chickens and milk comes from cows. They have had sensible parents teaching their bodies what to eat by not giving options from the time they were small and now many of them, even if they like the taste (which not all do), will only eat small amounts of junk food if given the opportunity. They don't like the way it makes them feel. And many of them are already more accomplished cooks at the age of thirteen than I was when I went to college. (Note - I grew up on home-cooked meals made from conventional groceries in a suburban area - no visible local food web. I know that my upbringing did save me from truly being part of the first junk food generation, despite my age.) These are the kids that we could easily be raising all across America. What does it take? PARENTS!

I appreciate the struggles facing many families when it comes to getting food on the table. I know that I, and most of the people I know, are extremely fortunate to have so many fresh food options available and be able to afford them. I can't even imagine the "urban deserts" that Michelle Obama is calling awareness to, places where people need to buy all of their food from convenience stores because the grocery stores are so far away. In that way, I really agree with the article when they say that the idea of choice is a construct and not a viable reality for many people.

That said, the lack of true choice has less to do with any of those outward circumstances than it has to do with a lack of education. Somehow, children need to be inspired to retain their natural inquisitiveness into adulthood and be given the skills to allow them to be self-directed learners. And we need to provide a rejuvenation of those facilities in the many adults who have currently been numbed into corporate obedience. Wake up, Hot Pockets are not food and being able to eat a "meal" while skateboarding was not really a need waiting to be filled! This is what I hope junk TV like Jamie Oliver combined with education efforts of the "Let's Move!" federal campaign will do - inspire people to ask questions and educate themselves. So what if I live in an "urban desert"; if I want to change, if that spark of urgency to "do it now" is lit, I can easily find plans for putting a planter of lettuce on the window sill - $2, endless greens. Or a few pots of tomatoes on the fire escape. I can learn how to cook and season food so this statement (again from the article) is proven to be untrue - "Many people opt for flavor-intense, highly processed, calorie-dense food because it's cheaper, easier and more fulfilling than cooking healthy foods from scratch." Huh? I've been known to make a delicious dinner for two of us (with lunch leftovers for the next day) on less than a dollar a person. Is it organic at that price? No. Is it more time consuming? Yes, but the hour it often takes is far less than most people spend watching TV each day. Is it less flavorful or less fulfilling than processed food? Absolutely, unequivocably no.

Okay, rant's done. At the end of the day, we need to reconnect to the fulfillment of our most basic physical need - food. And a cocky Englishman with a huge budget and a huge ego is helping push that dialogue out to a much greater audience than it previously had - great, whatever it takes. I truly believe that through reconnecting to our body's needs we will reconnect to our other, more ephemeral, needs as well. Maybe being able to recognize an eggplant is the Prozac nation's first step toward actual happiness and spiritual fulfillment. Maybe it's just a step toward every American being fit enough to take a walk on a fragrant spring day. That would be enough.

Yearning for Homemade

We went browsing in stores today; stores that don't carry food, yarn, or fabric. This is a rare occurrence anymore. Since Circuit City is closing we went and browsed to see if there were any good deals. So far, not so much, although people were snapping things up at 10-30% off. I went and browsed movies and CDs and realized that anything I wanted I could download or rent from Netflix.

The funniest part about this is that I now look at the packaging for anything I buy. Any hard copy of music/movies comes with a box...a box I don't use, even for storage. We just gave away literally hundreds of jewel cases from CDs we've had for many years and store in big binders. Bless Craigslist for having someone who could reuse them. Funnily enough, we rarely listen to the CDs themselves anymore now that we have digital copies.

So ends part one of the shopping saga - I don't like shopping any more because I will have to, as responsibly as possible, dispose of yet another box of some kind.

We next went to Target while we waited for the movie to start (BTW- Quantum of Solace is an excellent Bond movie, with enough chases, crashes and intrigue for the most enthusiastic spy fan). As we walked by the children's section, a dress caught my eye. It was made of a simple checked cotton weave fabric, cut as a simple sack dress, a ruffle at the neck its only ornamentation. A yard of fabric and a couple of hours and any competent amateur seamstress could make it. And make it better - the cheapest fabric store fabric would feel higher quality, the checks would be matched at the seams, but Target is selling not just a dress. They are selling the idea of simplicity. They are marketing the warm feeling of homemade - indifferently made commercial products mimicking "homespun" through inferior products. I find it incredibly ironic that any craftswoman who takes any pride in her work would never settle for the shoddy workmanship that marks such products. Clearly, most people have forgotten (or never knew) what homemade really looked like.

It is for this reason that I've become enamored with Etsy. After opening my shop there about a month ago, I've religiously trolled the "Alchemy" portion of the site, bidding to make handmade items that people request. These people are looking for the high quality that marks truly handmade goods. They're seeking relationships. They want to talk directly to the person that sewed their little girl's new dress or knit their new sweater. I'm sure that most other sellers feel the same way I do- when we sell something there it is as personal as making a gift for a loved one. When that is the standard, only our best work will do.

That is truly handmade. I hope that those who see the ghost echo of it on Target's racks will think about what they are truly seeking when their eyes wander to that little dress. I hope they will then walk out of the store and go to the local craft fair or onto Etsy or, better yet, pull out the sewing machine and return to truly handmade.

And so ends my latest rant. :)