Oregonian-ness

The visit to Oregon was wonderful, busy, yet relaxing.

Getting to OR, however, was not so relaxing.

We left on the 25th via the Milwaukee airport. This involved driving there, dropping the car at a remote parking location, & taking a shuttle. All was well, the plane boarded on time, etc. Only complaint was crowdedness. The next leg of the journey was wretched. We boarded the plane in the midsummer heat, and, clever monkeys, they didn't/couldn't put on the air conditioning.

And then... (wait for it)

We didn't leave on time.

Shocking! (And yet not.)

Andrew & I found ourselves in the very back of the plane, positioned in the seating area between two (yes, two) sets of stinking box-toilets. Everything smelled like pee. When I bent to get stuff out of my bag, I could have sworn someone had peed on the wall at some point. Oh, and it was about 100 degrees, and there were about what, 200 people on the plane? And we sat there for an hour and a half. Oh yes, it smelled delightful.

The cause of the delay? One of the infamous "mechanical problems." You know, the type that mysteriously sets in after the previous problem-free flight, after everyone is already freaking boarded. The kind that equally mysteriously clears up after an hour or two of some supposed professionals staggering about somewhere out of view. Heaven forbid the plane be cleared of problems BEFORE loading hundreds of people on it. F*#% you, NW Airlines.

So. We did make it to Oregon. Found Mum & Mer waiting, hugs & stories relating the trip. Almost crying with laughing so hard. Ate on the way home.

Weds: Much activity. Scorching weather. Mer, Andrew, & I took a very long float down the canal -- walked to Aubert's bridge & floated to the end of Miller Road. Andrew wanted to try our smaller green floatie (easier to paddle about in), and we traded him for the larger River Rat tube. Andrew sat down in the green floatie, and immediately flipped over. One moment he was sitting down & getting settled, the next, somehow, his feet contrived to go up, as his head went under, and then the entire Andrew was lost into the canal -- rather like an accidental backwards somersault. Luckily, he came up laughing and with only one abrasion on his arm. I'm afraid I have no pictures.

Anyway, after our peaceful float, we had dinner, and then the fair. We waited in line forever (the Hood River fair of Odell was unexpectedly busy). Eventually, got in and saw the wild animals -- rather sadly caged. Amazing cats, including a rather playful bobcat. Awesome African porcupine. Large tortoise. Many unappealing snakes and spiders.

We had our share of fair fare. We split an elephant ear. Unlike other people, who walk while eating, we shuffled off to a corner and stuffed ourselves, getting greasy and sugary. Needed napkins -- so we got water & a snowcone, and the vendors gave me a single paper towel. Then Merrie bought cotton candy, and kindly shared. It was yummy.

We had a quick spin through the barns -- the sheep were baa-ing back and forth, and we got many a picture of one that had an old-man-goat voice.

Late night shopping trip to Rosauer's.

Thurs.: Busy day! Andrew made pesto from the basil bushes in Mom's garden. Then Mum, Mer, Andrew & I went up to Kingsley for a swim. We went the wrong way, so we had a scenic and bumpy detour. Almost stopped at the lower reservoir... perhaps should have stayed, but I rather wanted the real lake. Kind of windy, but I still wanted to swim. I ended up getting in, and once you do that, you're warmer in the water than out. So I paddled about, and eventually we all swam (even Merrie!) After, we went down the hill, and we took Mer's car to the wildlife rescue clinic in Mosier. I syringe-fed a baby bat, Andrew bottle-fed a fawn, and Mer fed a flicker (which died -- flighty little things). The young screech owl was my favorite. It bobbed about and dilated its pupils and I was rather worried it was going to attack me. I'll try to post a photo, because it was that cute. The eagles were hopping about, and the fawn frolicked a bit in the meadow.

Home -- pesto for dinner (ate outside w/ the mountain view), watched some America's Got Talent, and Scrabbled. Slept outside on the porch: many stars, some shooting.

Friday: Also super busy day. We made it up to Lost Lake, and took the trail around the lake. I waded a bit, and grazed on blueberries and huckleberries. Then we took the road to Wahtum Lake; along the way, we saw a mountain beaver on the side of the road. We stopped, and the mt. beaver went about its business as if there were no large jeep with five people idling next to him. He chomped off some brush, and proceeded to carry it under the jeep, and across the road. Somehow he managed to drop said brush, which Tim took as a memento. Very strange little rodent-fellow. The lake was windy and chilly. What is it, 254 stairs down to the lake? We took them, and ate our reward (cookies) by the lake. Explored around the shores -- salamanders and crawdads. After going back up the stairs, I was quite warmed up. For dinner: Feta/pasta/kale concoction. Slept out on the porch again.

Saturday: Family picnic! We took Tim's '56 Chevy, and arrived fashionably late. First time I'd seen so many cousins gathered in one place since Christmases of a decade ago or more. Very cool to see Janel (she's been in Turner's Fall, MA and doing poetry at Umass) & Mark (who's living in Santa Cruz). And I finally saw Debi's young children -- we ended up playing frisbee with Timmy for quite a while. Luckily, Andrew, who has camp counselor experience, tossed it back and forth with him -- and with Tim joining the game, I think Timmy was quite happy. Andrew became Timmy's favorite, although Delina favored me with a cup of "coffee." After sandwiches and wonderful cake (it had all the cousins' names on it -- I didn't eat my name, however, as I preferred a side piece with lots of frosting), we kids headed to Hood River. Went to Artifacts, and Andrew's Pizza for dinner. Dog River for coffee -- I had a nice Mexican chocolate frappe. And it was good.

Some errands after -- Wal-mart for sweatpants, etc...

Sunday: Portland day. We went to American Eagle (Mer was in need of staples, and the sales rack was as fruitful as I expected), Powell's books (got a stack of quals books, including the ever-elusive "Studies in Classic American Lit." by Lawrence), Everyday Music (my one selection was to share a Zombies hits CD w/ Mer), and Thai Orchid for dinner (sweet and sour stirfry w/ pineapple was OK but overly sweet; pad thai was pleasing as usual; Massaman curry which was my choice and, in my opinion, the yummiest). Quite a nice trip to the city.

Monday: Read in the morning (Wuthering Heights), and then went with Mum, Mer, & Andrew on a hike to Elk Meadows. Many legs to the journey: First a jaunt through the mild mountain forest -- quite level. Then crossing the river on a precarious bridge made up of various logs haphazardly thrown between the banks. This leads into the switch backs straight up a hill, which eventually get you to the levelness at the top. Then about a mile around the meadow (which was devoid of elk, and unfortunately clouds obscured what would have been a lovely view of the mountain). We stopped along this final loop to snack on potato chips, cookies, and apples... and were munching, when our snack-site was ransacked by camp robbers. Of the avian variety. Apparently they're also known by the slightly more dignified (but infinitely less accurate) description of grays jays. It was clear that these little beggars wanted food, and would do about anything to get it. So I had the bright idea of putting potato chip crumbles on my sweatshirted arm. They took the bait. I was quite nervous, God only knows what birds will do for food. Mer & Mum joined me, and we got some awesome photos & video. Voracious birds. Never had seen such things before. Right out of the Hitchcock movie. And since that soundtrack in entirely composed of bird noises/flapping of wings, the noises were reminiscent of the film as well. The birds were a highlight, and the chipmunks which seemed to perch in blueberry bushes and eat the litte unripe berries.

In the evening, we took a trip to Rosauer's & prepared for our camping trip. Tuesday morning we left -- it was awfully cold and windy at Lost Lake. Andrew set up the tent while me and Mer went to the general store for our camping pass, and then we set up camp a bit. I was cold, and went in the tent to read a bit. Shortly, I decided to nap. The others followed. We got up around 4 pm, snacked, and I urged everyone to at least do a bit of exploring before dinner. Went on what we assumed was the huckleberry trail. Ran into a scuzzy pond (but it did have redeeming water lilies). Mysterious combination of stand up grill, precariously leaning next to a tree, empty beer bottle, and discarded underwear. On the other side of the scuzzy pond, a condom wrapper. Andrew wisely observed: "I hope nothing bad happened here."

Ended up toward a trailhead into the Pacific Crest trail. Found a gravel road. Made Merrie and Andrew agree to take a drive out here after dinner in return for not hiking further. Had tofurkey dogs for dinner w/ canned corn. It was delicious. Everything made on a campfire is strangely good. Took our evening drive on Sentinel Rd... gravel road, leading to nothing. We got out, picked some huckleberries, and I killed many a mosquito (had to hit Andrew rather hard to kill some of them, but, what can you do?). We passed another mysteriously blocked off road, and I asked that we also explore that at some point when I had proper shoes on. Back at camp: S'MORES! We had a nice campfire, and warmed water for washing hands/ faces (it feels so luxurious when everything else is cold). S'mores are excellent. Slept quite well, and decided to sleep in.

Andrew made breakfast -- pancakes w/ huckleberries & chocolate chips. So good. We got ready pretty quickly, and made our way to the Lost Lake Butte trail. Switchbacked about 2.5 miles to the top, where we could see Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood intimately, and Mt. Jefferson hanging behind. Other hikers greeted us at the top. We made, I kid you not, tuna fish sandwiches w/ cans of tuna, a jar of relish, and the condiment packets we took from the store. And they were relished. Hung out for probably 30 minutes, listening to pikas beeping on rocks below the cliff, watching the little bits of clouds clear away from the mt., and taking pictures. Going down was much faster and easier.

I wanted to go swimming right away -- to feel clean and to make up for the hot hiking. Took our chairs and floaties to the lake, and claimed a little wooden dock. We read a bit, and then paddled about in the water: I alternately swam and clung to floaties. Mum arrived, and we had jambalaya (w/ leftover tofurky dogs, canned green beans, and squash), grilled squash, and salad Mum brought. Only problem: no forks! Andrew improvised with two spoons, and we washed old plastic forks. Then, as it was getting dusky, Mum headed home, and we headed up to Turner Rd. for a little exploring. This didn't go too far: We heard some sort of snoring/exhaling noise, definitely from a large animal. Mer and I predicted bear (Mer's prediction, however, was much more convincing). I quietly picked some berries, and eventually Andrew & I went to a nearby meadow-like area while Mer patiently listened. There, we had a view of the mountain against twilight, and the moon rising. Bats flitted. We heard their calls, but then we also heard one of the snorting sounds, frighteningly close (or so it seemed). I got rather freaked out, and we went back to find Mer. She came back with us, and we kept hearing the noises. Later, we got Tim's confirmation that we'd had a real bear experience! Probably two or three were ranging about, eating huckleberries and locating one another. We decided to come back in the morning, as Mer was shivering with cold and it was getting late. Back at the campsite, we had a roaring fire (Mum had brought more firewood), and we roasted many marshmallows and ate s'mores. Finally got to bed.

Thurs. we got up earlier, had more yummy pancakes thanks to Andrew, and set off to the Turner Rd. area again. We hiked along it quite a while, mainly due to my curiosity. It seemed we were in forested area -- saw an anthill -- but we eventually heard water & found that the road was emerging over a valley. Quite steep sides down, too. I kept urging us onwards, but Mer at some point turned back. I knew we'd get a view of the mountain soon, as we were rounding the bend... and we definitely got the payoff viewpoint. Picture perfect view of Mt. Hood, the sides of hills, and the valley beneath. Andrew & I took pictures. Headed back then, and caught up with Mer. Andrew & I took another exploring trip up a gravel road, stopped when it got overgrown and didn't seem to be going anywhere. I picked some more berries, and then we rounded up Mer and headed back to camp. We got out of our site right before 2 pm, as directed. And lucky, as another van-load of campers wanted to claim our place. So we took our tuna fish sandwich makings (round 2) over to the day use area, and claimed the lovely site with Mt. Hood over the lake, and flat rocks and a bench to sit on. Ended up floating a bit, and I swam. Deliciously cold. A pine squirrel tried to steal our cookies. Mer and I yelled from the water for Andrew to defend our baked goods. Andrew packed up the edibles, but the squirrel came foraging back. Incorrigible rodent.

Drove back home... We took turns taking showers. I sat on a blanket by the garden reading a bit, Andrew joined me. Then, we went to Crazy Pepper for dinner... Mer and I were quite strong against the chicken fajita burrito, and had the vegetarian version. Andrew alerted us to the yumminess of his chicken, and we were like, "we know." But I will relent and have a free range turkey when I come home for Thanksgiving. Somehow we all finished our dinners, and then staggered about Hood River trying (pretending) to work it off. Then another shopping trip, and home to watch V for Vendetta (which was awesome).

Friday we packed, and kept busy, as we were also leaving. Took a drive with Mum & Tim up to Umbrella Falls & Teacup Lake (Andrew was none too impressed with our scummy lake, but it was fun to visit the old berry picking grounds). Then Andrew, Mer & I went floating, from Hess Rd. down to our house. Quite cold! Showered, and dressed, we headed down to Hood River for First Friday. I purchased some lotion, soap, & face mask (pumpkin and apple, it smells so good I want to eat it). We went to Dog River once more, and I quickly finished my chai. Visited the new bookstore -- which had no Norton anthologies I could see. Listened to the homeschoolers' marimba band. Got a great view from the library park of the river w/ windsurfers. Ahh, Hood River.

Back home, we ate Santacroces pizza on the deck with the mountain view, and then listened to our Zombies CD while finishing up with packing.

Very sad to leave! And I didn't remember to properly say goodbye to the Prissy cat, who will undoubtedly remember and act even more haughty when I see her next.

Driving to the airport we had Strawberry Shortcake memories, and Andrew thought we were crazy.

The flights back were rather exhausting. Red eyes -- the first about 3.5 hours, with a break at what, to us, was 3:30 in the morning, followed by another short 1.5 hour or so flight. Very interrupted sleep. Who on earth books a red eye flight with a freaking BABY? Airlines should have a warning when you book a flight between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am: "WARNING: Children 3 and under not welcome on these flights. Consider other options if possible."

Southern WI is indeed the flatlands, after the mountainous NW.

I'm leaving on a jet plane...

Andrew & I are off to the airport -- it's been a long time since I've updated though. I'll sum up:

- County fair: Lots o' bunnies, bengal tigers, stuffing myself with an "awesome blossom," snow cones, hypnosis show (I think it's all a sham), & a spin on the ferris wheel.

- Going to Andrew's office to read. Because I require supervision to stay on task.

- Annie's house for dinner & an amazing chocolate tart. Sitting around in the dark (but it was light when we came in...!)

- Mallards game. We won! But it went into two extra innings, and there were about 4 innings in which no runs were made. I was getting bored, and started to read my Samuel Johnson. The fireworks, however, were amazing -- put on by Thundercats. It was probably the best show I've seen (not counting Boston's).

- Devil's lake and frisbee. I covered this, I hope... If not: it was perfect.

- Reading. I'm done with the 18th century novel finally. Read Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, A Sentimental Journey, & Pamela. Now after a bit more poetry, I'm onto Victorian novels. Familiar territory.

And I'll leave you with an Andrewism:
Yesterday morning Andrew said: “I had a weird dream about cows playing football.”

1st Veto: Anti-Existing Life

So. Bush vetoed a bill for the first time today. Guess what it was? A bill supported by Democrats, many Republicans, and most of America, which would go toward saving lives (you might even say, it was a pro-life bill). It would have allowed further stem cell research. But, as usual, political pandering to the far right won the day. Sorry scientists of America, it looks like we’ll be watching other countries surpass us by leaps and bounds in the pursuit of finding cures for fatal and debilitating diseases.

I’m beyond frustrated.

“But Democrats, citing opinion polls showing that most Americans support the research that could lead to new treatments for conditions ranging from diabetes to paralysis, said that Bush's stance may alienate centrist voters.

Iowa Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin called the veto a "shameful display of cruelty, hypocrisy, and ignorance" that crushed the hopes of millions of suffering people. He vowed to reintroduce the legislation next year.

Even conservative Republicans who generally oppose abortion are split. Some prominent anti-abortion Republicans including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah championed the legislation but most of Bush's fellow conservatives shared the president's view.”

Ignorance, yes. Pretending that fertilized eggs deserve personhood is ridiculous. Equating said egg in a Petri dish with a seven year old child is disingenuous at best, and disrespectful to women’s role in reproduction at worst. Said fertilized egg will NEVER develop into a person without a woman volunteering to develop it. And that’s the fate of most embryos frozen at fertility clinics. What, less than 130 such embryos have been “adopted” by couples for implantation, out of 400,000? So what do we do: learn from these abandoned embryos that no woman wants to implant, or do we let them get freezer burn and then throw them out? Let me be bold: If I were such a frozen embryo, and somehow magically could learn the cultural apparatuses (e.g., language) and social contexts to weigh in on the debate, I would far rather go toward helping someone in a wheelchair walk again, than languish in storage until I was beyond use.

My favorite Bush comment:

"It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect, so I vetoed it," Bush said of the research that involves tiny human embryos.

I can’t help but laugh at this. Bush is trying to instruct us on morals? Seriously? After Katrina, the Iraq war, all the blunders? After feeding into the hate and discrimination against gays? While trying to take a woman’s right to choose away, and pretending that he knows best what individual women should do with their bodies? And while it’s perfectly acceptable to sacrifice the innocent lives of many Iraqi women and children for the “greater good” of the war, it’s totally morally reprehensible to use unwanted and doomed embryos for medical breakthroughs. So, embryos = human life we must respect, but already living people (especially women) = expendable. The doublespeak is mind boggling.

Now I’m going to end with some points that I was thinking of while debating this recently…

1. I’m confused as to why conservatives point to the fertilized egg as the definitive make-or-break moment in a very long and complicated process. You can claim that life begins at conception, but you’re already treading theological ground. Why? Because the medical community and our government agree that pregnancy (ie, the beginning of the development of life) begins at implantation — not the meeting of sperm and egg. Next thing you know, the extreme right will say that life begins with the egg, which is simply a person without a complete genetic code yet. This would feed in wonderfully with the Washington Post’s coverage of the CDC’s “pre-pregnant” status for ALL women between puberty and menopause.

2. Some conservatives see the embryo-in-utero as equivalent to that in a Petri dish. This stance overlooks the fact that in order for a fertilized egg to mean something, to have the potential to gain personhood, it *requires* a woman’s womb. This isn’t just a simple change of place, this is asking a fully realized human being to use her physical, emotional, and financial resources to grow an develop a human being. Embryos don’t become people outside of the womb, period. Until they’re in a womb, I don’t see how we can possibly grant them anything that even resembles rights. And even once it’s implanted in the womb, I would argue that a woman still retains the right to her own body, and can act in self-defense against the fetus. (Believe it or not, there are people who want to outlaw abortion who are against even the health exception of the woman’s life.)

3. Another huge moral quandary: If you think it’s A-OK to keep intelligent, conscious, sentient beings in cages (i.e., primates), while giving them diseases and testing out experimental meds on them, for the human good, then you should really re-consider your stance on using frozen, destined-not-to-be-used embryos for scientific study.

4. Our technology is bringing us closer everyday to allowing even infertile couples to produce their biological offspring (in a few years, even same sex female couples may be able to use this technology). So why, exactly, would anyone think that these thousands of frozen embryos are going to be desired by, well, anyone? Right now, there’s not enough demand for said embryos, and that demand is only going to lessen over time with advances in technology. Most people who go to fertility clinics want their biological children (otherwise, why not adopt?). Given the much more compelling case of living, breathing, homeless children, I think that most couples who want to do something good will adopt those children, rather than implant someone else’s frozen embryo.

5. Back to that whole embryos-have-personhood thing. If no woman wants to develop that embryo (which is quite common right now, as fertility clinics struggle with an “acceptable” way to dispose of unwanted fertilized eggs), how exactly does that embryo have any rights? It doesn’t. We can’t confer rights to an embryo by taking away the rights of a woman. The idea of “right to life” doesn’t make sense to me: we owe a tremendous debt to our mothers (and the men who act as fathers). I’m lucky and thankful that my mother chose to have me (maybe you’re reading this, Mum!), but I don’t see how I could possibly fault her if she chose not to have children. I think it’s bizarre to act as though a fertilized egg has some compelling rights over the living. Most of these embryos exist because a couple was trying to give life to their children; these are unfortunately what is left after such processes. I think it’s better to use these embryos to help the living, than to pretend that they’re actually going to be adopted through an embryo adoption program. A few will, but we’ll still have many left over, so why not let scientists do what they can to advance our ability to save already existing lives? And while many want to adopt children, these embryos clearly need a woman to volunteer to carry them first (not a lot of women, understandably, want to do this). Further, last I checked, we aren’t exactly suffering for want of people on this planet. Overpopulation is one of our most pressing problems as a species. We’ve added what, 4 billion people to the world population since WW2? Imagine, 2 billion to 6 billion in about 50 years. And that growth isn’t expected to stop anytime soon. So logistically, no, not every would-be combination of DNA has a “right to life,” and I don’t see why we should be worrying about finding ways to develop unwanted embryos when we have people dying of disease that we hope to learn how to treat.

And that’s all I have to say.

Except, again:

Bush, THIS is what you veto? This is seriously the only thing you’ve vetoed since coming into office? (Well, not counting line-vetoes…)

Wait, and they say liberals have no sense of humor?

In case you've been hiding under a rock for the past couple of days, here's one of the funnier moments brought to us by the wonder of the internet: Pete, who thought the Onion article "I'm totally psyched about this abortion!" was for real. Yep, he thinks "Miss Weber" is a real person, who is indeed psyched about her abortion. He somehow took these passages literally, and then blogged about the article:

So, to all of you pro-lifers who are trying to rain on my parade, keep it to yourself, because I don't have the time for that kind of negativity. I've got an abortion to plan, and I just know it's going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!

...I wouldn't be looking forward to induced dilation of my cervical opening and suctioning of my uterus, either. And I sure as heck wouldn't get the chance to have a doctor insert a metal instrument into my womb to dislodge tissue from my uterine wall!

...I seriously cannot wait for all the hemorrhaging and the uterine contractions. This abortion is going to be so amazing. I'm definitely taking lots of pictures so I can remember every last detail of the whole experience for years to come and share my great memories with all of my friends, family and co-workers. What an easy decision this was!

I realize there are people who will criticize me, calling me selfish and immature because I took "the easy way out." I realize there are those who will condemn me to hell for what I'm about to do. Well, I don't care what they say: It's worth it for all the fun and laughs I'm going to have at the clinic. So listen up, world: I'm pro-abortion... and I love it! See you at my post-abortion party, everybody!

Wow, right? The stupidity boggles the mind. How could you think this was real? Although it's hilarious, it also points to a real problem within such extreme pro-life groups as that which Pete apparently belongs to: they're totally out of touch with the real world. Not getting such obvious satire suggests one is working with an intellect a few steps below your average bear. And to think that any woman is this flippant about getting an abortion,http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif would seek out an unintended pregnancy (wait, that wouldn't be unintentional), and would then have a party... well, it speaks volumes about his stereotypes of women and particularly of women who choose abortions. He's all about saving babies, but doesn't seem to distinguish between a zygote and a 6 year old child, nor can he fathom that women might want to have a say over how they use their bodies and resources. And despite all the rhetoric about doing something, I don't see Petey pushing for better healthcare for impoverished women, or advocating for better access to birth control, or adopting the babies of these women that he's trying to convince to carry to term.

I checked out some of his other posts, including a particularly disturbing one on Plan B. I've got to quote, because :

This is what we are talking about. 100 million dollars and counting. Planned Parenthood is in it for the money & doesn't care about the health of women in America. The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists said "the FDA is wrong, motivated by politics" & added a comment about "the despicable treatment of women at the hands of the FDA over this issue".

Um, so, Pete doesn't seem to understand this very simple news story that he saw on TV. See, first he goes after PP for wanting money (which is ridiculous here, as their aim is to offer family planning services, including making sure that poor women have access to birth control). But then he says they don't care about the health of American women, despite then quoting experts and doctors who say that the FDA's politically motivated decision was wrong. So... what?? PP is in it for the money, but they also are carrying through the wishes of those who care about women's health. By stringing these sentences together into a single paragraph, Pete seems to suggest that PP and the FDA are in league on this decision (they're not). Someone has missed the boat.

Accident? She was referring to "accidents" like broken condoms & forgotten birth control pills. The last time I checked, sex wasn't an "accident". I think it falls into the category of "on purpose".

In Pete's imaginary world, people only have sex when they want to reproduce. And he can't seem to empathize with a situation in which one might want to prevent pregnancy (a mistake of impaired judgment, a rape, a simple "equipment failure" with a condom, etc.). Nope, if you have sex, you're clearly a slut (because he's really talking to women here, right? Despite the fact that he can't get pregnant and clearly can't imagine being in that situation), and you should therefore be "punished" with an unwanted pregnancy.

The problem is that people just don't get what sex is for. Okay, so millions of people are calling me an old fuddy duddy right now! In my opinion, the contraceptive mentality is damaging & is what causes our inability to deal with sex and procreation. Everyone is constantly trying to figure out how to have sex without having babies...until they're "ready" for them.

Whoa, not a fuddy-duddy, an authoritarian lunatic. If contraception is messing up how you deal with sex, then fine, good luck finding a woman with similar views. But don't go trying to fix how I deal with it (don't fix what ain't broken).

My favorite part, is that Pete seems to be advocating that people not want till they're "ready" for babies. Either that, or he's suggesting that people should have sex like, twice in their lifetimes (when they want to have children. Oh, and never mind the LGBT community, or those who don't want children, ever). Great idea! I can't wait to see what happens when society cranks out children that belong to unready parents. (Oh, Pete, that's sarcasm.)

Some say it causes abortions, others say it doesn't.

Oh, Pete. The only people who say it causes abortions are those who don't agree with the medical community and the government that pregnancy begins at implantation. Do you mourn for the 50% of fertilized eggs that fail to implant? Are you against douches because who knows, maybe those interfere with implantation? Stop obsessing over women's uteruses and use a little common sense. Your personal ramblings are not what good FDA policy should look like.

Who's right? Simple point for us to consider. People say it will guarantee the reduction of pregnancies. Okay, so why doesn't it eliminate them? So they mean that some women will still become pregnant?

Uh, I think that they mean it will reduce the number of unintended pregnancies OVERALL. They're not saying it doesn't always work. When it's possible to prevent the pregnancy, Plan B works quite effectively, by suppressing ovulation.

Can they guarantee that Plan B will not cause an abortion like the birth control pill? I doubt it. They say "scientifically" but offer no scientific fact that no child will ever be killed by Plan B.

OK, Pete, if you're this obsessed with uteruses, shouldn't you know how difficult it would be to figure out if Plan B might ever, ever, in .0001% of cases, cause a fertilized egg not to implant? It's rather difficult to figure this out, since, um, uteruses are inside of women and all, and 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant even under normal circumstances. Next thing you know, Petey will be advocating that women avoid walking after sex, because wait, that might prevent implantation, and then you're a baby killer!!

Sheesh.

And let's not even try to equate Plan B with the abortion pill -- these are two COMPLETELY different medications, that do COMPLETELY different things.

But my favorite part, which is so good it bears repeating:

They say "scientifically" but offer no scientific fact that no child will ever be killed by Plan B.

Isn't this perfect? How unhinged is this guy? So he admits that scientists say "scientifically" that it won't disturb an existing pregnancy. And then he says they "offer no scientific fact." What the hell do you want, Pete? A stone tablet from God assuring you that "Plan B does not harm existing pregnancies. Thou shalt relax, Pete, and let women make their own decisions!"? Scientists also don't go around saying that never, ever, in a million years, will any fetus be harmed by eating such and such, or taking such and such a medication. We deduce what we can "scientifically," and for those of us who believe that medical science is pretty reliable, we'll let that guide our decision making process over a too-thick-to-recognize-satire-or-construct-a-logical-argument blogger's ramblings.

You'd think that for someone so worried about preventing abortions, Pete would be MORE in favor of Plan B (even if in .0001% of cases it interfered with implantation -- although the science right now points to it not interfering at all), rather than in sitting back and watching as far more women became pregnant unintentionally and resorted to abortions. Overall, however you cut it, Plan B means fewer abortions. And even if you think that life begins when sperm gets into egg, regardless of whether or not it's viable to implant onto the uterus, I'd imagine you'd still be more in favor of a woman ending a pregnancy before implantation, rather than two months into fetal development.

But, as Pete demonstrates, such pro-lifers are more interested in debating the rare "what-if's?" than in actually supporting policies that reduce the number of abortions.

Post July 4th

Where does the time go?

I've been immersed in books -- mostly British Renaissance, Restoration, and now 18th century. Was steeped in Shakespeare for quite a while -- I still have one more non-Shakes play to read at some point. I discovered a love for Milton's Paradise Lost: oh the drama! The horrid bristling spears of the fallen angels, the incestuous love child of Sin and Satan, and the hairy sides of the hills of Eden. I insist that Eve was onto something with her division of labor, and wanting to go her own way in the garden... leading her right to the snake. But it's so appropriate considering the Tree of Knowledge and humankind relying upon making their own discoveries, losing the supervised crib that was Eden. Then there was Pope -- particularly loved "Eloisa to Abelard." Congreve's The Way of the World is hilarious, and I love those happy endings (and wow, Millamant & Mirabell actually made a prenup together). Wycherley's The Counry Wife was the most enjoyable experience so far: will never assume that shopping for china is an innocent activity again. Now I'm well into Gulliver's Travels. And yes I get the fuss, but I'm looking forward to moving into the 19th century.

As to real life: today it rained. All day. But tonight promises some amusement: sushi making & a new Last Comic Standing. Josh Blue is my hero. I've never laughed so hard in my life, and at freaking advertisements for the show!

Not too much to report... this quals reading definitely gets in the way of my becoming completely lazy during the summer:

Did I mention having people over for dinner? Best idea ever. Makes me feel like I really am a 20-something. We had the group over for a sushi instruction night about a week and a half ago. Everyone was quite good at it, too -- yummy stuff. I also tried saki for the first time. Good saki is good, and bad saki is very bad. We ended the evening with watermelon up on the roof, watching the sunset.

Unfortunately, our 4th of July plans didn't go, well, as planned. Fate seems to be saying I'm never to watch Madison's Rhythm and Booms. Last year my flight plans meant missing both Hood River's fireworks (which were on July 4th, and I left earlier), and Madison's fireworks (which were early in order to be over the weekend). This year, the fireworks were supposed to be on Saturday. So everyone came over, bearing beer & snacks & desserts, and we went up to the roof to wait for the fireworks to start. It was a bit cloudy, and it seemed it might rain. But the city isn't supposed to cancel unless in the case of extreme storms, so we thought all would be well. Not so: Andrew heard that they were canceled due to some thunder, and then it sprinkled a bit so we had to cram into Andrew's apartment. Now Andrew's apartment is a fairly spacious and well laid out studio, but it was definitely not intended for 14 people to sit around there at once. It was interesting -- awkward silence as we suddenly had to make new plans for the evening, eventually dissolving into many conversations, spills, and DJ-plays. Naturally, it stopped raining within an hour and a half (Come on, Madison, get some courage! You totally could have done the fireworks as planned). So back out on the roof, where we ended up getting into a back-and-forth Liza Minelli trivia match with the (very flaboyent) neighbor on the roof across the street. Turns out, Annie has a secret store of knowledge of these things, and she kicked ass. The only stuff I knew had to do with Gone with the Wind, since I had that movie poster forever and daily saw the names of the actors/actresses. Eventually, the group across the way (including the flamboyent gentleman) came over to our roof. Complete with their wine glasses, advice on hair styling, and "darlings." I kid you not. Final jeopardy ensued. I think they were pretty much equally matched. And Annie's like 20 years younger, so just imagine.

Anyway, the next night we missed out on the actual Rhythm and Booms display, as we had tickets to see Dave Matthew's Band. Yes, I still love DMB. Not so much the new stuff, but after loving them devotedly throughout high school, and periodically rediscovering their early material ever since, and never having been to a concert, I wanted to see them before they get any further away from their best songs. So we drove to Alpine Valley, which is a beautiful place for concerts. The lawn is a huge hill that turns into a party scene. Unfortunately, the DMB fans are horrible, horrible people. Phish fans are much more chill, and actually care about listening to the music. DMB fans these days are mostly under the age of 16, and are at the concern strictly for the chance of getting the occasional beer or ("oh my God!") smirnoff. Basically, they go to concerts because their parents won't let them party at home. Every girl in attendance, by some unspoken rule, was wearing at least 3 layering shirts, or a halter top (the tighter the better). Even better, of course, were those who couldn't be bothered with tops, and only got so far as putting on a bikini. These pinnacles of teenage intelligence primarily wore skimpy shorts or skirts (preferably paired with a halter top long enough to cover said shorts, making the girl appear pregnant and/or only partially clothed). This strategy seemed to backfire, as the evening concert meant standing around in the chill evening air with half a million mosquitoes. But I guess insect bites are sexy these days. But by the time it got chilly, most of our teenagers were far, far beyond feeling any pain. No, many of them were lying on the ground passed out, or blindly stumbling (or falling) into others. Others were drunk enough off their one or two smirnoffs to scream loudly upon every encounter (or re-encounter) with their high school friends. It became clear, quickly, that no one was really there to listen to Dave. Except, of course, for sentimental me. I had one drunk girl run straight into my back, a guy crash into me (no pun intended) from behind as he ran drunkenly down the hill and I sat on a beach towel, and another zombie head straight toward us as his friend led him through the crowd. And, whether because I'm allergic, or simply have enough intact brain cells to know that smoking cigarettes (and esp. getting the smoke second-hand, filter-less) is not good for human health, I had a raging headache from all the smoke. Apparently, 80% of teenagers in WI are chainsmokers. DISGUSTING. Concert venues need to get a clue and do what restaurants were doing for decades: create a non-smoking section for those of us who don't want to breathe carcinogens simply because someone else got addicted and can't bear to stop smoking for two hours. Or better yet, do what most progressive cities have done, and ban it in these areas where people are forced into close spaces. It seems so damn obvious and SIMPLE.

The music, however --at least what I could hear of it -- was great. Lots of old stuff that I like: Satellite, Rapunzel, Don't Drink the Water (great opener for WI, since the water is so hard you get mineral deposits from just boiling water for tea), Proudest Monkey, The Song that Jane Likes, Everyday, etc. We missed the encore (they were off stage for nearly 10 minutes, and with my headache, I couldn't take it anymore), which included Stay.

We did get some fireworks on the Fourth of July though: We went out to Sherwood Hills for the fireworks at their country club, and they were wonderful. We were in basically the front row, right under them. The highlights were their contraptions for the kids (a low to the ground setup with spinning dolphins on fire over a lit "stream" of fireworks, and a flag with appropriately colored sparks), a bombardment of high white sparkly fireworks (it went on and on, catching us off guard), and a grand finale. So exciting to be right under the explosions. And better than Rhythm and Booms, in that we arrived twenty minutes before show time, and were free from the slow moving traffic in under 10 minutes. And fireflies at dusk after a bright pink sunset. Back home: Andrew's homemade applie pie w/ vanilla ice cream.

Lately, basically reading, going to parks to read, and buying books. Looking forward to the weather improving so we can go to Devil's lake!

Wisconsin time

So... lots to update.

Getting out of CA was complicated. I got less sleep than during any finals period, ever. But unfortunately, planes and move-out days wait for no woman. I think I got about 13 hours of sleep over 3 nights. Packing was horrible -- you have to take all your stuff, which was perfectly organized and placed just as you liked it, and cram it into boxes, forcing you to realize just how much crap it really takes to make life "comfortable." Turns out, it takes a 5x5x5 cube of material to keep me going. During the wretchedness that is moving out, I kept somehow having these wonderful moments. Dropping by Jill's, dinner with Lupe & Marissa after a day of storage trips, a late night visit with Jessika.

Friday morning was particularly crazy. I slept on the couch with my beach towel and hoodie (everything else was packed), and got up after about 4 hours of sleep. Finished packing, ran to Jill's apartment to give Jesse one last part I forgot for the espresso machine, negotiated with the cleaning crew to make sure I could leave my luggage in my room for another hour past my official move out day (turns out there was no problem), went on one last trip to the storage unit with Lupe and Marissa, got back just before my super shuttle to the airport was supposed to arrive, dropped off my keys at the office (after propping the apt. door open with frozen tamales, which I had to clear out of my freezer), was late for the shuttle... The driver gave me a hard time at first, with the "your pick up time was 9:30," but finally calmed down when he saw how flurried I was. We even made up on the drive -- he offered me gum.

The flight.was.ridiculous. The plane out of SF was packed -- they had like a hundred stand-bys vying for spots. And, since I used a free ticket voucher, guess what seat they gave me? You got it: a middle seat toward the back. I hate sitting in the middle for a number of reasons. First: Since I'm small, people seem to think it's OK to invade my seat space. Come on folks, give a girl an armrest! Second: Because when you're as sleep deprived as I was, you really want to sleep. But guess what?? You can't lean your head to the right or left, and the seat backs were designed for tall people, so the head rest is just NOT comfortable. And thirdly, because if you want to use the restroom-as-coffin, you still have to bother someone. In Chicago, I had to take the usual 5 mile walk from terminal B to C, involving the under-ground trippy light show. I was pretty hungry: Eating mainly leftover stuff from my cupboards (rye bread, an apple, trail mix, you know). But I figured instead of eating crappy fast food (and heaven forbid a single restaurant carry a single vegetarian meal besides a salad featuring iceberg lettuce), I'd have a nice Starbucks drink (because heaven forbid a coffee place that's not a national chain get a spot in an airport). Merrie recommended the blackberry green tea frappaccino (which was pretty good), and so I figured I'd make it to Madison without collapsing from hunger.

Well. Of course, the flight was late. We saw our boarding time come and go, much as every other flight from Chicago to Madison was delayed. Something about an "aircraft arriving late." So we finally got on board. And guess where our friends at United had me seated this time? In the LAST row, RIGHT BY THE BATHROOM. Which stinks even when no one's in it. And not even in the middle: in the aisle, even closer to the stink pot. Oh, and our like 30 minute flight time? We didn't get started on that for another hour after finally boarding. We sat, on the f*&#ing plane, in a line of like ten aircrafts, for a freaking runway, for an hour. That's TWICE OUR FLIGHT TIME!! Seriously. The goal of airlines should be to take less time to get you from one place to another than driving. (And in this, they completely failed me. Andrew could have driven to Chicago for me and home again in LESS than the total time that I was there.)

Anyway. Very happy to be in Madison with the Andrew! Eating real food again -- pad thai and mango fried rice and home-made chili and veggie lasagne and stuffed zucchini and portabellas and tilapia w/ mashed sweet potato and challah french toast... Catching up on sleep. Going to the farmer's market every Saturday. Eating ice cream. The first couple of days were spent in grading -- one afternoon at the terrace, one evening during Andrew's ultimate frisbee game... then finally sat down and finished them. Then I took another day or two off... Visiting used bookstores, shopping for new clothes and flip flops, journeying through the mega-supermarket that is Woodman's...

Then I started the quals studying.

So here are my general concerns:
1. Middle English. Especially in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Our list SAYS "to be prepared in Middle English," but it's written in a northern dialect... not in Chaucer's London Middle English (which became the predominant form, and fed into our modern form), but a form that is difficult enough to warrant translation in the Norton anthology. So... yeah, I don't know what I'm supposed to do there.

2. When the list says "selections," does it really mean I only have to read 5 pages from the Norton's excerpt? Especially when the actual work is like 100 pages? Confusing. And further, when it DOESN'T say "selections," but the Norton has basically all of it, can't I just read that??

3. Early American Lit. Not a fan. Maybe I'll like it once I get to it?

4. 18th century, in general. Never took classes in it, never really studied those early novels, never read Restoration plays. Oops.

That's about it. So far, I've re-read Beowulf (it never gets old! Grendel eating men in the Mead Hall, Beowful diving into the swampy pit haunted by reptilian monsters, the dragon guarding the treasure hoard), and read through my Chaucer Canterbury Tales. Next I'm onto Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (woohoo). The experience of re-reading is intriguing... the bits I remember from Mrs. Jackson's class in high school, and Prof. Brownlow's survey course at MHC, and studying for the Literature GRE last year...

Other big news: Finally saw Brokeback Mountain. I get the fuss, but it wasn't my favorite movie. Dropped in on Annie's study group, and got some sense of where I should be in a month with my reading. Went with Andrew, Annie, Greg, & Emily to see Rogue Wave and The Stills (so good! And Rogue Wave played the song Lindsey gave me on a mix CD!). And last night we had Andrew's friends John & Katie over for dinner -- we had dinner out on the rooftop for the view of the Capitol.

Impeccable timing

So last night -- as I was packing, grading, and finishing my final seminar paper -- I thought, hey, maybe I should stay up late as I feel alert, and get as much done as possible before tomorrow. As a result, I stayed up till 4 am. But the night's the best sometimes, completely silent, easy to concentrate... OK. So it's finals period, right? And everyone in the studios has to move out by 8 am on Friday. Many of us are TA's, meaning that we have to not only do our own research, but also grade (seniors' grades are due tomorrow at noon), and pack. So what do the geniuses at the grounds maintenance office decide to do before 10 am this morning? You guessed it! YARD WORK! Because if you're going to run trimming machines that rival chain-saws in their incessant and ear-assaulting din, you OF COURSE DO IT IN THE EARLY MORNING DURING FINALS!

Jeeezus.

Value of women's lives in Ohio: very low

Before I settle down for an evening of paper-writing, I've just got to pass this along...

From the Beacon Journal (via Feministing):

Tuesday has been on Roberta Aber's calendar for some time now.

What she terms ``an extreme piece of legislation'' -- another hot button issue popping up in the middle of this election year -- is scheduled for a Tuesday hearing in the Ohio House, and it has the full attention of the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Summit, Portage and Medina Counties.

House Bill 228, as proposed by State Rep. Tom Brinkman, R-Cincinnati, would criminalize all abortion -- whether to save the life of the woman or to end pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

OK. So I get that they're trying to mobilize the Repub base with this ridiculous posturing over social issues (see: gay marriage amendment failure, abortion bills cropping up in every red state). But this has gotten out of hand. When Ohio lawmakers have decided that the life of a fetus -- and mind you, they're calling even a fertilized egg pre-implantation a "baby" -- is more important than the life of an adult woman, we have MAJOR problems. This is the most draconian abortion ban attempted -- they've outdown SD (people seem to be wondering if that's the goal). That's fine if some women want to risk life and limb in order to have a baby: I'm not one of them. If I had a life-threatening pregnancy, I'm going to act in self-defense, just as the law allows for any other member of society (read: men). What sort of society are we living in where, by reason of having a uterus, you are expected to sacrifice your life for the chance that a zygote MIGHT develop into a person within your body? Can you imagine if this bill was actually law, and you were faced with the realization that even a fetus likely not to survive the pregnancy is more important in lawmakers' eyes than your own life?


This is a "pro-life" policy? I beg to differ. Only if you've decided that women's lives down count.

AHHH

OhmygodIneedtobedonewiththispaper.It's not due till Weds but... my back hurts from shlepping books and my laptop back and forth between my apartment and study spaces... and my attention span has decreased to about all of five minutes... and I'd rather be grading papers and packing than writing... and it's freaking JUNE and I shouldn't be in school... and I want to just magically be transported to WI.

That is all.

June & Finals

This whole quarter system -- we need to rethink this. Seriously. THREE final periods? I'm done with writing papers. I'm done with shlepping my laptop to the library, turning up my ipod, and trying to drown out the coughing/shuffling/whispering of the undergrads. I'm done with trying to cram research into my weekly schedule of reading/preparing for class/ TA-ing. It's freaking JUNE and I'm in freaking CALIFORNIA. The last thing I should be doing right now is sitting in the library trying to construct an argument for how curiosity cabinets relate to Venus's curiosity/taxidermist shop in Our Mutual Friend. But then: that's exactly what I should be doing. The pity of it all is that I would love to be doing this research, if I could work at my own pace. (Which isn't a possibility, since if I took an incomplete to work on it over the summer, then I'd be cutting into my studying time for the qualifying exam.) Woe!

It's been awhile since I've updated. And I actually DID stuff last weekend.

Friday: Highlight of the evening was dessert night in the studio building. Chocolate sorbet is surprisingly good. But I'm sticking with my high-fat premium ice cream.

Saturday: Read all day, in anticipation of an evening out. Our CA took a group of us (we're beginning to actually get to know one another, right as we're also beginning to move out) to see Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

Side note: This movie is freaking incredible. It's even more incredible because Gore has actually been traveling around the world trying to raise awareness (he even visited Stanford last fall). Cuz we know the oil companies (oh, and the puppet government that serves them) ain't gonna take global warming seriously. In fact, the Competitive Enterprise Institute would have us believe that CO2 is so "natural" and "essential to life" that it's A-okay to release as much of it as possible into the atmosphere, without worrying about the fact that we're at drastically higher levels of CO2 than ever before. There's a huge difference between the past balance of CO2 to other atmospheric gases, and the current f-ing up of that balance by burning fossil fuels.

And the logic behind this ad campaign boggles the mind. So... lead is naturally occuring, so that must make lead... GOOD FOR US? (You might also substitute: smallpox, bear attacks, earthquakes, etc.) And um... red wine in moderation is beneficial to our health... so we should drink AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE? (You might also substitute: basically any food, even water, as about anything in excess can be detrimental.)

Anyway, Gore's movie is a must-see. It's nice to get the facts...after all, there are no articles being published in peer reviewed journals that don't take global warming seriously (In other words, no respected scientist is claiming that global warming doesn't exist). But it seems controversial, because you get these organizations and businesses arguing for the right to do whatever the hell they want without government interference. They fund these campaigns to make global warming seem like "just another theory." And Bush of course employs people affiliated with oil industries in his environmental agencies. Really good idea, right? Because that's totally unbiased.

OK. End of side note.

After the film, we went out for ice cream. I got the same thing that I always get at Coldstone: cake batter w/ yellow cake smushed in & whipped cream on top. DEAR LORD. So good.

Sunday: Busy day!

I woke up early -- earlier than I ever get up unless I'm traveling -- in order to go on a kayaking trip. Monterey Bay again, and I met another awesome CA, who was my kayaking buddy. We were out in the actual bay this time. The sea lions were lined up on the rocks barking and flopping about, the seals were balancing precariously on the tops of pointy rocks, and the pelicans were periodically diving into the water. I felt very muscular afterwards, especially as the wind was against us on our way out (making our return trip incredibly easy, on the plus side). The highlight was seeing the sea otters though. They were wrapping themselves up in kelp (so as to stay in one place), and M. and I drifted close to three groups of them -- some off in the distance floating, and the closest sea otter holding her baby on her stomach. SO CUTE. The cuteness kills you. You just want to pet them and hug them (for no apparent reason, except that their fur looks so soft, and their noses are so round, and their eyes so close together... it's completely inexplicable).

Afterwards, we tried to find the fried artichoke stands we saw on the way in, but missed them. Unfortunately, this was a chance for the other girl in the car to insist on going to Santa Cruz for tacos. OK. So this bothered me, because I needed to be home early for Jill's birthday dinner. And I said on the way in, that I needed to be home early. And yet... Ok. So this woman is like "oh yeah, it's right at the juncture of the highways..." leading us to believe that the place is easy to get to. You know, because that's what you do when you're trying to get home in a timely manner: you stick to food places along the highway. So we get off the highway, and we hit TONS of traffic. For the like ten mile drive through downtown SC to get to this place. And the woman is like: "Oh it's never like this... really? why would it be like this on a Sunday afternoon?" OMG. It's a beautiful, sunny day in June. It's freaking Sunday afternoon -- when people go home from vacationing. AND YOU DIDN'T THINK THERE MIGHT BE TRAFFIC??? Just like, maybe the slightest chance that it MIGHT be a bad idea? People astound me.

Anyway, so Las Palmas Taco Bar isn't a bad place (in fact, they have a pretty amazing veggie taco for the price), but it totally isn't worth going 45 minutes out of your way. Especially when you have to inconvenience others in order to get your freaking beef tongue burrito (*I kid you not*)

So. After that debacle, I hurried through my preparations for Jill's potluck dinner. I set the sushi rice to cook as I showered, and got I think 9 rolls of mango/ mango & avocado sushi. Always fun!

We had a lovely evening -- It was kind of a bookend event, as we had our first cohort love event (also a potluck) back in October in the same place. And EM made her famous cake!!

The rest of the week... not quite so exciting. I was reading one of those lost Victorian classics, Self-Help by Samuel Smiles, while trying to do research for a final paper, as well as reading about the grotesque for class... The best part, was watching Spirited Away over at Will's co-op -- Incredible film, awesome group, and yummy pizza.

Actually, I've been eating tons of pizza lately. Pizza Monday night with that film screening, pizza on Weds as I was ordering lunch for our final lecture, and pizza again tonight for our meeting with the second years about the quals exam. Which was also noteworthy. We were actually meeting again, as a cohort, in the room we had our Intro to Grad Studies class in. We sat in the same places -- I had the warm fuzzies. Those bookend moments... when you're like, whoa, I totally HAVE changed since then.

And then, it was rather reassuring to talk with the second years... Although I wasn't expecting to hear that I'll be reading nearly all day everyday. I refuse to miss out on actually living life this summer, in order to prepare for quals. There's got to be some balance between Andrew & family time, enjoying the outdoors, spending time with friends, and, of course, reading. I can't help but feel that there's something really wrong about shutting oneself in the archives to the detriment of every other relationship/passion that one has.

Well. On that note -- I think I should probably do a tad bit more work before bed!

But I thought I was Elinor...

Which Classic Female Literary Character Are You?


"You're Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen!"

The End of the Day

What I did today:

- Woke up at 8 am for a doctor's appointment. I'm switching off of Alesse due to major concerns about my sudden increased propensity for acne... back to orthotricyclen, but this time LO... I want my d@#* skin back!! As the doctor told me, this isn't an exact science.

- Back home for a quick nap, then 2nd breakfast and off to Victorian class talking about In Memoriam.

- Home again, for lunch and a moment of rest before...

- TA section, in which we talked about The Birds

- Home once more for a touch up & readying myself for...

- Identities workshop, which was great! Prof. Sandahl is brilliant, and I got my questions out. Really great discussion! A wonderful high point to end the year with.

- Highlight of the day: Dinner with amazing people.

And now for my typical dinner entry:

We went to Bistro Elan... and I had:

Chilled cucumber soup as an appetizer

Halibut with pea puree, apple, and a pistachio vinagrette.

A Thai influenced layer of coconut wafers and coconut custard, with spiced blueberries and pineapple.

Almost Finals

As Karuna has noted, I haven't updated in a while. This is true. Last week, was bad times. We had Denny dying on Grey's Anatomy (STRANGELY parallel to a scene in Our Mutual Friend, which I was finishing that day), Marissa getting killed in a car crash on the OC, and then on Desperate Housewives, we had the fake-out death of Carl, and the real(?) death of Mike. And poor, poor Susan.

In real life, I was stressing about final papers. Oh yes, it IS that time again! Because with the quarter system, you have not 2, but THREE finals periods. Great. For the first time ever, I'm not sleeping through the night as well. Last week I got on a bizarre schedule of waking up at 7 am, going back to sleep till around 8:30, 9 am, and getting up around a quarter to 10 for class. Not good. All these disruptions mean that I'm remembering my dreams (since you usually remember them only if you're woken up during a REM cycle). And folks, they haven't been the most pleasant dreams ever. I think the combination of finals, anticipation for moving all my crap into a storage unit (I'm going to need help!), and worries about studying for quals this summer, have influenced the old subconscious. I often wake up angry at someone and then realize it was a dream, or in a sweat worrying about a presentation that I don't have to make.

OK, example time. So my most noteworthy dream came over the weekend. I dreamt that we were having department awards, and Jill got something for "holiday spirit" (like being at camp or something!). Anyway, for some reason a professor I had last quarter, who will remain nameless, was going to cut my hair. He got about halfway through when I realized it was a disaster. For some reason he had assumed I wanted really short hair, and chopped much of it off in a really messy, unfixable way (Freudian, right?) Anyway, so then we heard wolves or wild dogs, and we were out in my backyard and I was calling for Merrie to come see. Then everyone disappeared and went to some villa for a ritzy brunch, but I got left behind. So I was horribly upset at being left behind with a bad haircut, and even moreso when I arrived at the restaurant and no one seemed to get why I was upset. Which is really strange for a number of reasons, but perhaps most so in that I'm actually really happy with my shorter haircut post-Spring Break.

Anyway, the weekend redeemed the week. Friday EM, Lupe, Marissa, and Jennifer threw a pinata party. Nothing like a bunch of drunk people wildly swinging a bat while other drunk people keep the pinata safely out of harm's way. We had our first English dept. Shut Up and Dance Party. Then Saturday I had a beach trip through the Village (ie Escondido Village Housing). We had a BBQ (yay veggie burgers), and I walked on the beach and collected shells (including a full sand dollar, just with a hole in it!), and sat on the beach doing some grading. It was good times.

I've got one more hurdle before I start digging into my final papers: Tomorrow I'm a respondent for a speaker who's coming to our How Do Identities Matter Workshop. Excited to meet our speaker, who is also from Hood River! Everyone raves about her, and her essays are wonderful. And I'm looking forward to going out to dinner afterwards!

So I guess I should go get on that response!...

Review of: Grey's Anatomy Season Finale, Part 1

OhmyGodIzziewhatdidyoujustdo?

Wal-Mart & 7-UP: Going au natural?

This should be filed under "You know it's big when..."

Wal-Mart has announced plans to stock organic food. When your head stops spinning, consider the sorts of products Wal-Mart is aiming to sell. From the NYT, May 12th, by Melanie Warner:

Most of the nation's major food producers are hard at work developing organic versions of their best-selling products, like Kellogg's Rice Krispies and Kraft's macaroni and cheese.

So I guess this is good? It's good for organic farmers, and its good for the land, but it seems unlikely to do a lot for human health. The problem with Rice Krispies isn't that they aren't organic, it's that they're Rice Krispies! And therefore loaded with empty calories and fat. But I will say that I am anxiously awaiting the natural/organic version of Mac & Cheese. I'm sorry, but the Trader Joe's and Annie's versions are just not the same. I can't wait for Mac & Cheese stripped of artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives... to have you know, once in a blue moon to fulfill that craving.

Wal-Mart says it wants to democratize organic food, making products affordable for those who are reluctant to pay premiums of 20 percent to 30 percent. At a recent conference, its chief marketing officer, John Fleming, said the company intended to sell organic products for just 10 percent more than their conventional equivalents.

Admirable intention -- even though we all know the real reason Wal-Mart is getting into organics:

While organic food is still just 2.4 percent of the overall food industry, it has been growing at least 15 percent a year for the last 10 years. Currently valued at $14 billion, the organic food business is expected to increase to $23 billion over the next three years, though that figure could rise further with Wal-Mart's push.

I'm glad they're getting on the bandwagon & at least trying to respond to the emerging zeitgeist. But I sympathize with the critics:

But Wal-Mart's new push worries Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy group that lobbies for strict standards and the preservation of small organic farms. He said Wal-Mart did not care about the principles behind organic agriculture and would ultimately drive down prices and squeeze organic farmers.

So overall... this could be a good thing, but I hope "organic" doesn't just become a watered down version of what began as a radical new movement. It would be amazing if people actually began to care not only about their own health, but also about the health of our environment & our farmers.

In further "you know it's big when..." news, 7-UP is rigorously marketing their soda as "all natural." Yep, they took out the sodium benzoate (which when mixed with citric acid tends to form benzene, not good for you!) and the artificial flavors. Laudable move -- if I feel like drinking pure empty calories, I'll be sure to pick up a 7-up. Being less cynical for a moment, I would actually drink the new 7-up before I took so much as a second glance at a Pepsi or Coke.

I'm not the only one questioning the use of the word "natural" here -- turns out the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) is suing the soda company for false advertising.

Let's look at these "all natural" ingredients...

1. Water. OK, sure.

2. High fructose corn syrup. Eh -- not that natural. Turning corn into corn syrup is a highly industrialized process, and it yields a calorie-rich substance that recent studies suggest our bodies don't even recognize. Problematic because you've just drunk 200 calories of sugar, and you don't feel it.

3. Citric acid. Sure.

4. Natural flavors. I refer you to Fast Food Nation. Although my response to "natural" flavors is still more positive than toward artificial (as illogical as it may prove to be).

5. Potassium citrate. Sure, whatever.

So maybe it's not looking tons healthier, but it's a step in the right direction.

I love seeing the huge soda companies and Wal-Mart respond to consumer demand for natural and/or organic products. Makes me get the warm fuzzies all over.

Reasons to love CA

I just got back from the first Palo Alto Farmer's Market of the season. People asking one another if they had a good "off season," Democratic groups registering voters, an older man handing out petitions & US flags for revisions to workers' rights laws, a musician sharing the history of the market (apparently it used to be in the Wells Fargo parking lot, and has been in its current location for nearly 20 years), and, best of all, food straight from the farmers.

I think I spent about $14 on 3 squash, a basket of strawberries, organic spinach/dandelion mix, 2 bell peppers, 7 or 8 peaches, a few tangerines, and some sugar snap peas. I'm still not over the amazing growing season here. Next week I think I'm going to trek to Menlo Park though, as it seems like they have more vendors, and I know the people there better (as far as what's pesticide free, what's organic but not certified, etc.)

And I can't wait for Madison's farmer's market this summer!

Every time Bush opens his mouth...

Crooks & Liars has this great video up from the Daily Show. Apparently Bush is saying the same thing about his new CIA apointee as he did 2 years ago about Goss. Goss was "the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment of our nation's history." So is Hayden in 2006. Should we start writing the headlines for 2008 now, or hold off a few months? This reminds me of the "Henny Penny the sky is falling" comments about both Iraq and Iran... Are the speech writers on vacation or what?

Thank God someone is watching Bush & Co. I love Jon Stewart.

Actually, I agree.

In an interview with a German paper, Bush said his best moment as president was catching a large fish. And, not surprisingly, Bush wasn't speaking metaphorically.

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

"You know, I've experienced many great moments and it's hard to name the best," Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

This pretty much sums up our president. So his best moment was one of the many, many vacation days he allots himself, fishing in his presumably stocked lake (very sportsmanlike, no?). OK. So if a professor asked me this about my time as a grad student, I would realize that he/she was expecting an answer related to my job/studies. Bush? Not so much.

Or maybe Bush was being a realist for once: I would actually agree that this is probably Bush at the pinnacle of his abilities as president. Let's evaluate this moment. Not causing destruction to human life? Check. Not misleading the American people into preemptive war on bad intelligence? Check. Taking a break from paying off big business with taxpayer dollars? Check. Refraining from destroying eco-systems? Check. Not weakening environmental protection measures? Check. All in all, I agree, this probably is his best moment.

Via Shakespeare's Sister.

The conservatives attack birth control

The right to choice... and not even the choice to have an abortion, but the choice to use birth control.

Since when was my choice to use birth control under attack? Ahh yes -- with Bush's religious regime.

So I was going to bed, when I saw my NYT email... and I just had to read this story. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep till I did. And Russell Shorto does an INCREDIBLE job with this topic: "Contra-Contraception." The republican right is no longer content to attack a woman's right to choose abortions; they are now threatening our very right to choose to use birth control. This shouldn't even be an issue -- it seems pretty d#$@ clear to most of us that women have the right to choose to halt or impair their fertility. Not all women want to have a baby every year, right? But the conservative/religious right is trying to take the country back to pre-Griswold vs. CT days.

I'm going to quote massive portions of this article that y'all should read:

Many Christians who are active in the evolving anti-birth-control arena state frankly that what links their efforts is a religious commitment to altering the moral landscape of the country. In particular, and not to put too fine a point on it, they want to change the way Americans have sex.

Whoa there. 1st problem. If you want to change how YOU have sex, that's great, but leave me out of it.

It may be news to many people that contraception as a matter of right and public health is no longer a given, but politicians and those in the public health profession know it well. "The linking of abortion and contraception is indicative of a larger agenda, which is putting sex back into the box, as something that happens only within marriage," says William Smith, vice president for public policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Siecus has been around since 1964, and as a group that supports abortion rights, it is natural enemies with many organizations on the right, but its mission has changed in recent years, from doing things like promoting condoms as a way to combat AIDS to, now, fighting to maintain the very idea of birth control as a social good. "Whether it's emergency contraception, sex education or abortion, anything that might be seen as facilitating sex outside a marital context is what they'd like to see obliterated," Smith says.

Sex outside of a marital-reproductive context, you mean. Since when is it the government's role to decide how its citizens have sex? I thought republicans/conservatives were into that whole limited government thing. And this is sounding eerily like both 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale.

The Guttmacher Institute, which like Siecus has been an advocate for birth control and sex education for decades, has also felt the shift. "Ten years ago the fight was all about abortion," says Cynthia Dailard, a senior public-policy associate at Guttmacher. "Increasingly, they have moved to attack and denigrate contraception. For those of us who work in the public health field, and respect longstanding public health principles — that condoms reduce S.T.D.'s, that contraception is the most effective way to help people avoid unintended pregnancy — it's extremely disheartening to think we may be set back decades."

It's also disheartening for those of us with uteruses, whether or not we work in the public health field.

The hope many people had for the drug [Plan B] was tied to an ugly number: 21. That is the number of abortions in the U.S. per year per 1,000 women of reproductive age, which puts the country at or near the top among developed nations. Put another way, according to a study released this past week by the Guttmacher Institute, there are 6.4 million pregnancies a year in the U.S., 3.1 million of which are unintended and 1.3 million of which end in abortion. In the seven years since the last such study, the overall unintended-pregnancy rate has remained unchanged; for women below the poverty level it increased 29 percent. If women had quick, easy access to a backup contraceptive, the thinking of Plan B proponents went, those rates — and thus the abortion rate — would drop. "I saw it as a win-win situation, something that everyone on both sides of the abortion issue could support," says Dr. Susan F. Wood, who was at the time director of the Office of Women's Health at the F.D.A. "I still don't get what happened."

Neither do I.

One thing that happened, which Dr. Wood and many others may have failed to notice, was the change in conservative circles on the subject of contraception. At a White House press briefing in May of last year, three months before the F.D.A.'s nonruling on Plan B, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked four times by a WorldNetDaily correspondent, Les Kinsolving, if the president supported contraception. "I think the president's views are very clear when it comes to building a culture of life," McClellan replied. Kinsolving said, "If they were clear, I wouldn't have asked." McClellan replied: "And if you want to ask those questions, that's fine. I'm just not going to dignify them with a response." This exchange caught the attention of bloggers and others. In July, a group of Democrats in Congress, led by Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, sent the first of four letters to the president asking outright: "Mr. President, do you support the right to use contraception?" According to Representative Maloney's office, the White House has still not responded.

The president can't be clear about a couple's right to choose to control their fertility? WTF???

Dr. Hager said he feared that if Plan B were freely available, it would increase sexual promiscuity among teenagers. F.D.A. staff members presented research showing that these fears were ungrounded: large-scale studies showed no increase in sexual activity when Plan B was available to them, and both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Adolescent Medicine endorsed the switch to over-the-counter status. Others argued that the concern was outside the agency's purview: that the F.D.A.'s mandate was specifically limited to safety and did not extend to matters like whether a product might lead to people having more sex. Meanwhile a government report later found that Dr. Janet Woodcock, deputy commissioner for operations at the F.D.A., had also expressed a fear that making the drug available over the counter could lead to "extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B." In May 2004, the F.D.A. rejected the finding of its scientific committees and denied the application, citing some of the reasons that Dr. Hager had expressed.

So... rather than listening to science, we listened to Dr.-my-wife-alleges-I-raped-and-sodomized-her-Hager and this nutjob Woodcock? (I'm still getting ironic laughter over that name, especially in this context). Does Woodcock make a habit of inventing cults? Because I think that little Plan-B-sex-cult idea says a whole hell of a lot more about HER state of mind than teenagers'.

The drug's manufacturer reapplied two months later, this time for permission to sell it over the counter to women ages 16 and up, seemingly dealing with the issue of youth. Then, last August, Crawford made his announcement that the F.D.A. would delay its decision, a delay that could be indefinite. The announcement made headlines across the country. Dr. Wood, the F.D.A.'s women's health official, resigned in protest. Democrats in Congress asked for an investigation into what they felt was politics — the anti-birth-control agenda of the politically powerful Christian right — trumping science. The Government Accountability Office conducted a study of the events and issued a report last November concluding that the decision to reject the findings of the scientific advisory panel "was not typical of the other 67 prescription-to-O.T.C. switch decisions made from 1994 to 2004." Currently, Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray are holding up the nomination of Andrew von Eschenbach as F.D.A. commissioner until the F.D.A. issues a verdict on the drug.

Yet again: religious conservatives claiming they know better than science. Say what you will about Dems, at least they have their heads screwed on straight when it comes to supporting birth control. And they're doing more than Bush to lower our abortion rate.

What's more, Dr. Trussell added: "There is evidence that there is a contraceptive effect of breast feeding after fertilization. While a woman is breast feeding, the first ovulation is characterized by a short luteal phase, or second half of the cycle. It's thought that because of that, implantation does not occur." In other words, if the emergency contraception pill causes abortions by blocking implantation, then by the same definition breast feeding may as well. Besides that, the intrauterine device, or IUD, can alter the lining of the uterus and, in theory, prevent implantation.

Next conservative target: breastfeeding. I can see it now: "Come on, women, don't try to limit your fertility, feed your baby formula instead of breastfeeding! So what if it's not as healthy! It's all about having as many children as possible before you die in childbirth!!!" I can see that going over REAL well.

Zenarolla told me she converted to Catholicism two years ago: "I tell people I became Catholic because of the church's teaching on contraception. We are opposed to sex before marriage and contraception within marriage. We believe that the sexual act is meant to be a complete giving of self. Of course its purpose is procreation, but the church also affirms the unitive aspect: it brings a couple together. By using contraception, they are not allowing the fullness of their expression of love. To frustrate the procreative potential ends up harming the relationship."

Um, that's fine. But why the hell do you feel the need to push that mentality off on everyone else? I assert my right to have loving, fulfilling sexual relationships without having some mental block over the use of contraception. I guess some of us CAN conceive (get it?) of having loving "unitive" sex that allows for the "fullness of [our] expression of love" without worrying about constant pregnancies. And why the need to speak so condescendingly of others' sexual lives? How the hell does anyone else know what "harms" another's relationship? I think worrying about how to support 20 children is more harmful to a relationship than my taking a pill each day.

"I think the left missed something in the last couple of decades," says Sarah Brown, president of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, which positions itself as a moderate voice in the heated world of reproductive politics. "With the advent of oral contraception, I think there was this great sense that we had a solution to the problem of unintended pregnancy. But that is a medical model. I think the thing that was missed was that sex and pregnancy and relationships aren't just a health issue. They are really about family and gender and religion and values. And what the right did was move in and say we're not just talking about body parts."

Yes, but Repubs error on the other side, refusing to see the science behind sex. They insist on redefining pregnancy as fertilization rather than implantation, for example, which makes little sense when you consider the fact that 50% of fertilized eggs fail to implant on the uterine wall. And I beg to differ even on the left's view of family and values. The left realizes that a woman's quality of life is bound up in her ability to control her fertility. This is something that the right seems to completely miss the boat on. Conservatives are clearly using birth control: are you really going to tell me that Bushie & Laura haven't had sex except for their two children? Come on. We all know they use it, so why are they trying to tell the population to do otherwise?

The abortion pill, which has been on the market since 2000, is under attack, with a group of Republicans in Congress calling for its suspension, in the wake of the deaths of five women who took it.

Um, FAR more men have died of Viagra than the abortion pill. And even these abortion pill deaths are often linked with Toxic Shock Syndrome, as the suppositories introduced bacteria. So... why isn't the right attacking the sale of Viagra, or the use of tampons? Because it's all about getting control over women's choices.

Democrats, meanwhile, have had their difficulty with the abortion issue, and their new hopes are pinned to a strategy that focuses on contraception as a way to reduce unintended pregnancy. Last month, Senators Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton — an anti-abortion Democrat and an abortion rights Democrat — introduced legislation that would require insurance companies to cover contraceptives. In part, the idea is to force Republicans to support contraception or be branded as reactionaries. The conservative counter was that giving even more government backing to emergency contraception and other escape hatches from unwanted pregnancy will lead to a new wave of sexual promiscuity. An editorial in the conservative magazine Human Events characterized the effect of such legislation as "enabling more low-income women to have consequence-free sex."

And now it all becomes clear. Why is Bush's administration & the right warning of the evils of contraception while clearly using it themselves? Because it's all about what Shakespeare's Sister calls the "sex for me, but not for thee" mentality. It's OK for THEM to control their fertility, but those lower-class women, it's not OK for THEM to do so. And we should do everything possible to limit lower-class women's access to family planning. Sorry to be a cynic, but is anyone else wondering if this is all part of a scheme for a cheap labor & army source? Or, possibly, to keep the poor dirt poor? Why else would we have a problem with helping lower-class women afford birth control? Why do we feel the need to saddle poor women with pregnancies they can't afford? Why is it OK for middle and upper class women to have access to these contraception devices, but not for the poor? Insurance SHOULD cover birth control, especially as it frequently covers Viagra.

Under President Bush, spending increased significantly: the 2007 budget calls for $204 million to support abstinence programs (up from $80 million in 2001).

The idea of promoting abstinence over comprehensive sex education (which includes information on various forms of contraception and how to use them) gets to the core of the expanded conservative approach to birth control issues. It really is all about sex. "There are two philosophies of sexuality," Rector told me. "One regards it as primarily physical and all about physical pleasure. Therefore, the idea is to have lots of physical pleasure without acquiring disease or getting pregnant. The other is primarily moral and psychological in nature, and stresses that this is the part of sex that's rewarding and important."

So what's the "this" that makes sex rewarding and important? Having lots of babies? Explain to me why lots of babies is better than lots of safe sex? With 6 billion and counting, I'm gonna have to go for the latter. And what is with the right constantly attacking the left for having a broader idea of what counts as loving and uniting sexuality? The left is often just trying to get the science out there, especially in an era when that seems to be the right's lowest priority. Trying to lower the abortion rate through better sex ed and access to birth control, for example, isn't saying that sex is all about pleasure -- it's just not legislating morality in the same way as the right. Maybe because we see sexual morality as being more appropriately taught in the private sphere, by parents or churches, rather than the government.

Abstinence education, meanwhile, gets withering criticism from the other side. "There is still not a single, sound peer-reviewed study that shows abstinence programs work," says William Smith of Siecus. Peter Bearman, director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University, who has analyzed virginity pledge programs including Rector's, says: "The money being poured into these programs is out of control. And the thing is this is not about public health. It's a moral revolution. The goal is not stopping unwanted pregnancy but stopping sexual expression."

Anyone else have red lights flashing? Stopping sexual expression? Are we in the Victorian era or what?

A December 2004 report on federally financed abstinence-only programs conducted by the office of Representative Henry Waxman, Democrat of California, charged that the major programs presented misleading information about health (one curriculum quoted in the report stated that "condoms fail to prevent H.I.V. approximately 31 percent of the time"), state beliefs as facts (the report cited a curriculum that refers to a 43-day-old fetus as a "thinking person") and give outmoded stereotypes of the sexes.

Maybe because the religious right is trying to take us back to a time when those outmoded stereotypes were a way of life?

All parents struggle with how to shield their children from the excesses of popular culture, and not surprisingly, surveys show that most want teenagers to delay first intercourse. But by wide margins they also say kids should be taught about contraceptives. A poll released in 2004 by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found, for example, that 95 percent of parents think that schools should encourage teenagers to wait until they are older to have sex, and also that 94 percent think that kids should learn about birth control in school.

Um, 94% is kinda a lot of people. That's... what, 3 times the number of people who approve of Bush currently, right? So why aren't we doing what 94% of people want? Why aren't we teaching our children the facts of life, that they're going to need to know sooner or later, even if they DO abstain till marriage?

The dark side of this, according to some commentators, is the declining birth rate in Europe. It takes an average of 2.1 children per woman to keep a population constant. Italy and Spain are tied for the lowest fertility rate in Western Europe, at 1.28. Even Ireland, the country with the highest birth rate, at 1.86, is suffering a population drain. (The U.S. rate is 2.09.) From 1994 to 2004, the average age at which European women became mothers rose by about 16 months, to 28.2. This, according to social conservatives, is the black hole into which the contraceptive mentality is drawn. As the Canadian priest Raymond J. de Souza wrote in National Review in 2004, "If children are a sign of hope in the future, Europe — and to a lesser extent Canada, Australia and the United States — is losing its will to live."

It sounds to me like our policies are therefore trying to force women to have more children than they want. If European women are choosing to have fewer children, might that be because they have the tools to control their fertility? So the right is afraid that, given those tools, women in the U.S. will also choose to have fewer children. Solution? Don't give women those tools. Right. Maybe more women in the world are awakening to the fact that the human species is doing just fine, and they don't need to have more than one or two children. Why is that so bad? Because it makes it harder to find a cheap labor source? Sorry, but that's NOT a good reason to limit family planning.

This would seem to be a bind, because the benefits of family planning are profound: couples can organize their lives, financially and otherwise, when they are able to choose when to have children and how many to have. And, around the world, countries in which abortion is legal and contraception is widely available tend to rank among the lowest in rate of abortion, while those that outlaw abortion — notably in Central and South America and Africa — have rates that are among the highest. According to Stanley K. Henshaw of the Guttmacher Institute, recent drops in abortion rates in Eastern Europe are due to improved access to contraceptives. The U.S. falls somewhere in the middle in rate of abortion: at 21 per 1,000 women of reproductive age, it is roughly on par with Nigeria (25), much better than Peru (56) but far worse than the Netherlands (9).

You know you're doing something right when your abortion rate is equal to Nigeria and Peru. Oops, maybe not. So... if we want to lower our abortion rate, we should concentrate on making them "safe, legal, and rare," and making sure women know how to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the first place. Funny how that works.

So here's my wrap-up rant:

In a nutshell: birth control has done amazing things for women. Rather than being forced to constantly worry about our fertility, we now have the choice to actually get our lives together before we have children. And we can even regulate our fertility within marriage. This is an extremely obvious social good: women can have careers AND healthy sexual lives (within or without marriage -- last I checked, the bedroom is NOT the government's domain). And let's face it: children are a blessing when they can be supported and cared for (financially and emotionally). When you're essentially forced to have more children than you want, your quality of life is probably not so great. And in a society that requires immense investment in its children for said children to succeed, it's frankly a wise evolutionary choice for women to invest more resources into fewer children. Unless you're a millionaire (and not many Americans are), it's pretty hard to give 5 to 15 children the educational and emotional support they need... try paying Harvard tuition for 15 kids. Further, in a time when our planet is already crippled under a burgeoning human population, I think it's irresponsible, and morally questionable, to have significantly more children than the replacement rate. We DO need to think about how our choices will affect the next 7 generations. I would want to do everything possible to leave my children a healthy world in which to live -- being pro-life means thinking about how human life will support itself in the future.

Yuck.

I just saw Burger King's commercial for their ridiculous artery clogging "Texas Double Whopper." It's basically in the style of a musical -- one man decides he can't eat "chick food" (apparently "chick food" includes everything healthy and not "meaty") and decides to head to Burger King. En route, he picks up a bunch more beefy guys and they all head to fill their stomachs with, literally, sh*t.* Guess they don't call them meatheads for nothing (play the bu-bum bum sound effect for corny jokes). What's with this trend of equating meat/fast food with "manly" eating habits? If "manly" = unhealthy, overweight, and sure to die early, then fine. But that's sure as hell not attractive or intelligent. The feminist blogosphere seems abuzz with such examples, I hear Friday's has got a similarly offensive commercial playing.

Conveniently for BK, their website doesn't yet list this new Whopper incarnation on its nutrtional info. page. But let's just assume it's AT LEAST as bad as the regular Double Whopper. OK. So that has a "whopping" 900 calories, OVER HALF of which come from fat (510). So you've got half your caloric intake in one sandwich, with a percentage of fat that is truly difficult to achieve. Oh, and some of that fat is trans fat -- good luck with that. And you're getting your recommended protein allotment for the day (Americans typically eat WAY more protein than is necessary, or, as some suspect, healthy). Why on earth would anyone eat this crap?

All I can say is, thank God for Andrew. (Happy birthday, honey!) Tonight I had Jill, Jess, & her beau over for dinner, and we followed Andrew's recipe for the yummy (and relatively healthy) mango fried rice.

*By the by, if you haven't read Fast Food Nation, do. You'll never look at meat the same again. The meat industry in this country depends upon agribusiness that treats its workers poorly, and its animals inhumanely. And, as Schlosser puts it, "there's sh*t in the meat." It's no accident that the country that eats so much of this meat is so unhealthy. Not surprising that vegetarians live longer. Oh, and beef production is one of the worst things we could be doing environmentally. Their -- ahem -- gas is incredibly polluting, not to mention their waste products. It takes a lot of water, grain, and energy to produce beef, and its nutritional "payoff" is a negative.

McIntyre: Apology from a Bush voter

Highly, highly recommend the transcript from McIntyre in the Morning. I had a hard time pulling quotes -- the whole thing is very well done. Just to be clear: McIntyre is a conservative Republican talk show host, and he's here admitting that he was wrong to vote for Bush, and that in the name of realism, it's time to call Bush for what he is: the worst, and most dangerously incompetent president the US has ever seen. Good stuff. He also calls out the two party system as nearing a collapse: the Democrats need to either be the real opposition and offer a positive alternative vision to help lead America, or step aside and let a third party in to do the job. So here are some of my favorite bits, but do read the whole thing!:

But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into Iraq, and fumbled the good will of the world and the focus necessary to catch the real killers of September 11th.

...

It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake. Bali was bombed. Madrid was bombed. London was bombed. And Bin Laden is still making tapes. It’s unspeakable. The liberal media didn’t create this reality, bad policy did.

...

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

...

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s rights.

...

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

...

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point whose buying the act?

...

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

Via Crooks & Liars.

This just in: Blue states DO have values!

Pandagon's Pam has got this amazing write up of 1) the problems with "covenant marriages" which are being promoted in many conservative states, and 2) the fact that blue states actually have LOWER DIVORCE RATES!

1) These covenant marriages are f-ing scary. It basically just makes it harder to get a divorce -- judges won't hear your plea for a divorce until you've had two years of counseling, and it's VERY difficult for those in abusive relationships to get the hell out. Why? Because if one partner wants to stay married, you're stuck. And their idea of abuse seems to focus almost solely on extreme physical abuse, completely ignoring more subtle psychological abuse (and having HAD that, I can see how it would be almost impossible to get the necessary divorce). Here's a scary story from About.com:

The law is so ambigious that most courts will not even HEAR any cases concerning covenant marriages WITHOUT a two year separation AND counseling. Even though the law states you have 3 "outs" (abuse, adultery, and felony conviction resulting in JAIL TIME, it is NOT the case. If one member of the marriage does NOT want "out", the court does not even have to hear the case. That is how scary the covenant marriage is, especially when faced with what I was faced with. Abuse has to be proven, and it seems only physical abuse is acceptable AND only IF the spouse is beating you up in court. Adultery, the courts will just mandate counseling for two years, and even after the counseling, if one spouse doesn't want a divorce...guess what? You must stay married...

The guy I was married to informed me that as long as he doesn't hit me with a closed fist, it is NOT abuse. And it would not result in a felony arrest. And even if it DID, as long as HE didn't want to divorce, guess what? I would not get a divorce. And this is how the courts here are interpreting the law. It is scary and frightening...

I personally think the covenant law should be removed entirely as even a "choice". These are my thoughts on a covenant marriage, having recently just gotten out of a living nightmare. It is a BAD idea. "They" say there are loop holes, such as spousal abuse. Do you consider it a "loop hole" when a RESTRAINING ORDER has been filed (and not a temporary restraining order, but a PERMANENT ONE) and even THEN a judge says, "sorry, you still have to wait after a two year seperation"????????

2) This website (scroll down to Nov. 4th entry) has an awesome entry on blue vs. red state values. Not surprisingly, red states have higher percentages of teen pregnancies and divorces compared to blue states. Around 5 divorces per 1000 in red states, compared to 3.6 in blue states. In red states, up to an average of 14.2 teen pregnancies per 1000 as compared to 9.8 in the bluest states. Intriguing. So basically, blue states have a better track record with the very "moral values" that Bush's regime supposedly embodies... Kind of like how abortion rates have actually gone up under Bush.

OMG The OC is falling apart.

Sandy's had a huge ethical conflict and only narrowly come out on the other side. Kirsten's had a relapse w/ her huge bottle of vodka. Seth is smoking pot for no apparent reason and accidentally set fire to his father's office. (I have a huge problem with how marijuana is being portrayed in this show, but that's another rant.) Summer got drunk off her ass and exposed Seth's lies. Marissa has now had how many bad break ups? Let's see -- Luke slept with her mother, Ryan started dating that Oregon chick and fell out of love with her, Johnny slipped off a freaking cliff and died, and Kevin decided it would be cool to smoke and make out with some other girl at prom. Ryan beat up Kevin, bad -- so bad I thought he was dead at the end of last week's episode. And now Ryan's indebted to him for not (yet) turning him in for assault... and was therefore involved in Kevin's attempt to steal a car. And now, they end the episode with: "In two weeks, the season finale... one of them may not survive." WTF??!!

If they follow through with that threat, I bet it's to reconcile the geographical difficulties involved with half the group going to New England for college, and the other half to Berkeley.

The weekend, & a NYT article

Weather has been gorgeous. Friday was our Tamalada, Sat. a BBQ, Ed's engagement celebration, & a TV Funhouse SNL. Sunday I read beneath a tree while waiting to go grocery shopping.

Just had to post a link to Jill's take on the NYT article (Feministe) on the need to provide contraception to women in the US.

So it should be a no-brainer that we increase access to contraception, and in particular make the “morning after” pill available over the counter. That would be the single simplest step to reduce the U.S. abortion rate, while also helping hundreds of thousands of women avert unwanted pregnancies.

...

President Bush’s Food and Drug Administration has blocked that, apparently fearing that better contraception will encourage promiscuity. But unless the libidophobes in the administration mandate chastity belts, their opposition to Plan B amounts to a pro-abortion policy.

One study, now a bit dated, found that if emergency contraceptives were widely available in the U.S., there would be 800,000 fewer abortions each year. And even though they are generally available only by prescription, emergency contraceptives averted 51,000 abortions in 2000, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

That’s one of the paradoxes in the abortion debate: The White House frequently backs precisely the policies that cause America to have one of the highest abortion rates in the West. Compared with other countries, the U.S. lags in sex education and in availability of contraception — financing for contraception under the Title X program has declined 59 percent in constant dollars since 1980 — so we have higher unintended pregnancy rates and abortion rates.

Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium have abortion rates only one-third of America’s, and France’s is half of America’s...

That broad availability is the global pattern. While American women cannot normally obtain emergency contraception without a prescription (by which time the optimal 24-hour window has often passed), it is available without a prescription in much of the rest of the world, from Albania to Tunisia, from Belgium to Britain.

One thought that paralyzes the Bush administration is that American teenage girls might get easy access to emergency contraception and turn into shameless hussies. But contraception generally doesn’t cause sex, any more than umbrellas cause rain.

The reality is that almost two-thirds of American girls have lost their virginity by the time they turn 18 — and one-quarter use no contraception their first time. Some 800,000 American teenagers become pregnant each year, 80 percent of the time unintentionally.

So we may wince at the thought of a 15-year-old girl obtaining Plan B after unprotected sex. But why does the White House prefer to imagine her pregnant?

...


The administration’s philosophy seems to be that the best way to discourage risky behavior is to take away the safety net. Hmmm. I suppose that if we replaced air bags with sharpened spikes on dashboards, people might drive more carefully — but it still doesn’t seem like a great idea.

So let’s give American women the same rights that they would have if they were Albanians or Tunisians, and make Plan B available over the counter. It’s time for President Bush to end his policies that encourage abortions.

The awesome-ness! Nick Kristof is my new hero.