When Our Supreme Court Goes Rogue

To say I am disgusted with the five conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court would be a gross understatement. Candidly, I am repulsed by their thinking, utter lack of humanity and complete misinterpretation of the language used in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights intended to guarantee our freedoms and due process.

I imagine when these five men were born their mothers had the same great hopes for them I shared for my son. On the surface these men are wildly successful. After all, they don't call it the 'supreme' court for nothing. Yet it makes me sad that five mothers bore children who were such great disappointments. They spent countless hours raising men only to discover they have no hearts, no sense of fairness and no decency. This Supreme Court has already done incredible damage to the delicate fabric of our laws and they continue to undermine the meaning and intent of our founding fathers.

Perhaps I sit here in judgment of those mothers because I blame myself when my own children make mistakes. Or perhaps it is because we women do hold the power in many ways, even if we choose to abdicate it to some 'higher' authority.

We are simply wired to be good. We risk our health during pregnancy and childbirth. We forfeit our beauty sleep to the point of exhaustion caring and nurturing for the tiny beings who innocently depend on us. We share our food with our families, care for our grandchildren, and function as short stop, pitcher, catcher and right fielder and community volunteer. In a word, most of us are eff-ing saints with our children and others. And all the while we worry about and care for our elderly family and friends.

At work we rarely take full credit, even when it is our due, and we work as a cooperative team, rather than the top-dog-down model. And yet so many there misinterpret our kindness as weakness or gentleness as lack of strength. If we dare to call out mistreatment, we are whiners, bad team players, bitches or even the c word uttered behind our backs. Some of us are even worse off with domestic partners who beat us when we try to defend our children. The police know it is incredibly dangerous for them to interfere in a domestic dispute, so imagine how the women and children victims perceive the situation. Unless these monsters seriously injure us, we are still encouraged to try to get along. Otherwise, he may come back and kill us, they warn. How is this tolerated?

And then there are the cases of rape that the courts see as 'he said/she said', again, unless we have tearing, bruises, broken ribs or acid thrown into our face prosecutors don't want to bother with pursuing a conviction. And then there are the mistakes that prosecutors do make when they vigorously pursue the wrong people, eager for a conviction, letting the real perpetrator wait out the statute of limitations because their department needs some better stats.

With the rarest of exceptions we women are not the serial murderers, the child pornographers, the pedophiles or the rapists. Oh, I know we have some women who are cold and distant to their children, and others who abandon them. If we do, there is no evidence of the acceptance or cavalier attitude with which the courts treat the negligent father or the father who abandons one family to devote his resources to the new one he irresponsibly makes.

And this five-man gang on the Supreme Court wants to take away the power over our own health, and keeps us barefoot and pregnant, even if we are teenagers or have been raped. I am ashamed of these men for their mothers and their fathers. They are collectively a disgrace to themselves and our country.

Ah, by now, many of you are calling me names and claiming I am a man-hater or a damn liberal. The latter is true, but I love men, including my father, husband, brother, son, cousins, nephews and grandnephews and many male friends. Compared to my women friends and family you guys are decidedly low maintenance, but you are among the many good and brave men we have in this country. Thankfully, you are not the five conservatives on the Supreme Court.

Those men represent the proliferation and societal acceptance of men who see life as 'us' and 'them'. Them being defined as those whose luck may not have been the best, as they have ended up incarcerated for a crime they may or may not have committed. 'Us' as the ones who have gone rogue and used their ultimate power to dominate both the Executive and the Legislative Branch of government to overturn our personal freedoms.

This gang-of-five has now given domestic, multi-national and foreign corporations the right to buy candidates and mount campaigns against the ones who refused to be bought with unlimited amounts of money. In fact, these five justices have effectively given these corporations everything but the actual right to cast a vote. Let your senators and representatives know you support their efforts to legislate this interpretation away, as it will be the ruin of our country if we don't.

And here is the latest of the problems. The incarcerated who have lost all freedom are being denied their right to DNA evidence that may prove them innocent. This is as barbaric as the Salem Witch trials or the murders of the Royals that plagued some of my ancestors and their families. This is feudal thinking that has invaded our highest court and, frankly, is a national disgrace.

If you want to take action to give prisoners the right to have a certified independent third party examine crime scene DNA, approach it on the state level. I do not understand why our Supreme Court thinks that justice is less important than the extra expense or work a prosecutor may have to perform to determine the guilty from the innocent. There are 46 states with laws that allow at least some access to DNA evidence, but prosecutors are using all sorts of maneuvers to prevent or delay their access. Four states do not guarantee their citizens any rights to have examined (at their own expense)DNA evidence that could exonerate them. Write to your state legislators, please, if you live in Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts or Oklahoma.

I feel for those mothers of this Gang-of-Five, but I feel more for the mothers and families of all those innocent people who have been incarcerated for rapes and murders they did not commit. I feel for the victims whose attacker is still at large or the others who will be attacked in the future because of a reluctance by the State to have to manage more paperwork. If we allow a state prosecutor or a supreme court judge to turn back the clock on justice, what kind of people are we?

So please tell me, where is the outrage?

Can I actually be psychologically ... normal?

There are some very smart new doctors and psychologists who are blowing the definition of neuroses and personality disorders out the window. They are making the case that if 84% of the people living in Manhattan (or Kansas or Greece) have been analyzed and labeled as having some sort of personality or psychological disorder, this is actually... normal!

I hate to further hit you over the head with this, folks, but it looks to me like they are absolutely right. Everyone I know has a family member who is a drunk/addict/other-sort-of-ingrate and certainly we share a propensity for high anxiety, depression, melancholy, elation, exuberance, talkativeness, introversion, extroversion, hoarding, spendthrift behaviors, distraction and everything else under the sun.

And our children? Why some of them talk just about at birth and the others not until they are four or five, but most of them eventually do talk. And then we have our family weirdos. One walks with their feet splayed out, the other is ding-toed, some have extraordinarily long tongues, others have short fingers. Why I've seen infants' heads so large I wonder how their necks avoid collapsing... and it all seems to be in the range of normal. Redheads could be about the only class of humans who are actually quite rare.

So as I embrace my anxieties, mourn for the pet who died or the parent, thrill at the sight of my grandchildren performing on stage whether they can dance or not and enjoy the company of my very 'neurotic' friends and certainly introverted husband, I will sing the praises of general humanity.

Monetizing as an Amazon Affiliate

Becoming an Amazon Affiliate is incredibly easy, even for non-technical people. Actually I just signed up for an account on this blog. Now that I have officially joined the Amazon group, it means that anything you want to search and buy through Amazon can be done from my site and I will get a teeny, weeny commission. Or at least, that is the rumor.

Blogging is a really entertaining pastime - who doesn't love the sound of their own voice - but why not monetize it? Realizing that retirement is a luxury mostly available to the upper classes, government employees and union members, I need to create some income. Of course, this blog really is an outlet and I make no attempts to promote it, so joining Amazon's Associates program is probably more like buying a lottery ticket. I could win, right?

Well, I was curious how this would play out and what their widget looks like, so I'll publish this and sign off. Before I do, though, I would encourage all of you to check out things like Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliates. What have you got to lose?

Outside Loos? Men will pay extra... really.

Today I was stumbling through the people I follow on Twitter and came across one tweet that connected me to another website called TreeHugger. Okay, so that site wasn't the deal, it was just a one page article on Outside Bathrooms, or maybe I should just say it like it is. Outhouses.

Yes, my friend, there appear to be a great number of Britains - and other Europeans - who regard their outhouses as valuable amenities. Granted, America still has lots of woods compared to other continents, but this one floored me. I suppose because, like most Americans, I am very impressed when I hear an elegant British accent. Yes, I've been to Europe, but even Madison Avenue knows that if they use anything that we think is a British accent - could be Australian or South African for that matter - we are programmed to believe they are telling the truth. Maybe even that they are smarter... and richer and sexier.

Oh, come on. This isn't news. If we hear a Spanish accent or Italian, we think of lovers ... and if we hear a joyful island lilt we can feel the sun. Okay so my husband has a slight accent which I find particularly engaging, but you would too. Admit it. And if you hear a French accent, don't you think of mistresses,heartbroken spouses retaliating with an affair, a passion for book clubs (not so much reading them but pretending to) and miserably lacking resolution in final scenes in all their movies. I freely admit I have some built-in stereotypes I carry around with me, but impulse stereotypes are not really anyone's fault.

As a matter of fact, if you are out scoping the singles world, fake a foreign accent (but fake it well, of course). You are likely to gain a lot more interest than with a Philly, New York or Boston accent. (Exceptions to this are southern accents, which I find deliriously engaging when they drawl away about sustainability and the importance of keeping our civil liberties.)

This I proved when I was 17 and my girlfriend and I were running around flirting and pretending to be French exchange students. As I had studied French for several years by then, the only challenge I ever got was "Really? Sing Frere Jacques."

Of course, any idiot can sing a children's song, but I could really lay on the thick French accent. Besides, there are oh so many ways to say things like, "Mon dieu! Boujour. Bon soir and of course, au revoir." Hey, it freaked my mother out enough when I started practicing at home to forbid me to do it. It was okay, I had sort of lost interest by then anyway.

So back to the subject of outhouses. I will say that there are some compost toilets on the market now that are highly effective and conserve our water resources, but the article did not indicate if this was a honey-bucket attempt or sustainable. If you know something about this I would love to get your comments. It appears that although in the 1950's this was a source of embarrassment to middle class families in Britain, men have always 'loved them some outdoor loos'. It appears that their gender is also the one maintaining these structures - and willing to pay more for properties with one, so perhaps this is why the women don't object vigorously enough to abolish them. The men appear to actually regard these outdoor enclaves as 'getaways'. (I'll stick with art supply stores, thank you.)

Ah yes, men will always surprise me with one exception. There is absolutely nothing we women can do that will ever truly domesticate our counterparts.

Is Obama Brilliant or Grasping for Straws?

President Obama is in a fix these days. The truth is he doesn't have to run for re-election if he doesn't want to run, but I think he is a man with purpose. For the last few years now I have come to accept that he is a rational man as well. Oh, I imagine he and Michelle light it up once in a while with a few FU's here and there - they are both strong personalities - but he is one of those intellectual jocks who are essentially unflappable. They don't get frustrated, they get determined.

But I get frustrated. I could never possibly have the kind of self-control he does. I was probably self-employed way too long. I generally think I have a better way to do things - I am incredibly efficient in fact - and I hate people to waste my time. Even if they are paying for it. So I can guarantee that I will not enter politics as I do not have the right nature.

Still to listen to Obama attempt to show that he will consider any good idea - regardless of the source? I have to believe it is a slick strategy. He is showing the American people that he is open to ideas, but will not accept rhetoric also spelled this way: b-u-l-l-s-h-i-t. Actually he is coming after the Republicans in a way, but he is doing it like as a gentleman with his gloves on his lap... for now.

This is either a brilliant strategy or it isn't. We'll have to wait and see how the American people deal with his out-there, talking to the crowd persona. He is a great man, that's obvious, but the republicans are determined to obstruct any kind of actual governing while he is in office. It is amazing he has accomplished so much already - stem cell research is back, gays may soon be able to serve openly in the military and so many other things. Still health care and no jobs and the housing market - all inherited from Bush - weigh his administration down terribly.

Well, that's about all I thought about today.

Vitamin D, Sunshine & Better Health

The newest health phenomenon and miracle cure appears to be Vitamin D. Like everyone else, I want to feel great and be able to handle the winter months as I don't live in the tropics. The sun is shining magnificently today - and expected to hang around for a few days - but I know better than to trust our local weathermen. I can look outside and predict the weather almost as well as they do. Really.

So vitamin D is what our bodies make when we get at least 15 minutes of sunshine every day. This is virtually impossible in the northwest or New England where I grew up, so now I take supplements. What do researchers think vitamin D does for us? Here are quotes and links from some of my favorite sites:

Mayo Clinic:

The major biologic function of vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, helping to form and maintain strong bones. Recently, research also suggests vitamin D may provide protection from osteoporosis, hypertension (high blood pressure), cancer, and several autoimmune diseases.

Rickets and osteomalacia are classic vitamin D deficiency diseases. In children, vitamin D deficiency causes rickets, which results in skeletal deformities. In adults, vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteomalacia, which results in muscular weakness in addition to weak bones. Populations who may be at a high risk for vitamin D deficiencies include the elderly, obese individuals, exclusively breastfed infants, and those who have limited sun exposure. Also, individuals who have fat malabsorption syndromes (e.g., cystic fibrosis) or inflammatory bowel disease (e.g., Crohn's disease) are at risk.

When I read this piece I was very grateful my children were born in sunny climates as they were 100% breastfed until they were about six months old. For those of you without mal-absorption problems, foods that contain vitamin D are butter, cheese, cream, fortified milk (all U.S. milk is fortified), fortified cereals, oysters, fish (cod liver oil is an excellent source) and margarine.

The kinds of problems a vitamin D deficiency causes are osteoporosis in adults and rickets (yes this still exists) in children. Please don't ingest mega-doses of this vitamin without your doctor's permission as too much vitamin D causes the body to absorb too much calcium. This raises the amount of calcium in the blood which can then lead to calcium deposits in your organs (heart, lungs, kidneys) and hurt their ability to function as designed. Some people absorb too much calcium naturally, and this can result in kidney stones, muscle weakness and even vomiting.

One size does not fit all, by the way. Older people need higher quantities of vitamin D, which also helps strengthen bones. There are some naturopaths prescribing megadoses of vitamin D but this is still a controversial practice. However, if you are taking calcium supplements make sure you get enough vitamin D to help your body absorb it.

My big argument with burkha-style dress - beyond the obvious domination complex of those who enforce it - is that women forced to cover themselves completely are at great risk of absorbing inadequate amounts of this vitamin. Sunscreens can also exascerbate this problem, as they screen out the UV rays that make absorption possible. This is a big concern for darker-skinned African Americans, by the way, as their skins tend to block the absorption of vitamin D.

By the way, health guru Andrew Weil, M.D., has this to say about Vitamin D:

Our bodies make vitamin D in response to exposure to the ultraviolet B rays of the sun, but if you live in an area where the sun isn't strong year-round (anywhere north of Atlanta), or if you rarely venture outside or always use sunscreen, you could be deficient unless you take supplements. It isn't easy to get enough D from your diet. The best sources are fortified milk and cereals, eggs, salmon, tuna, mackerel and sardines. (Unfortunately, most fortified foods provide vitamin D2, a form which is less well utilized by the body than D3.) To make sure you get adequate amounts of vitamin D, I recommend taking a daily supplement of 2,000 IU of D3. Always take it with a fat-containing meal to ensure absorption.

Andrew Weil, M.D.

Anyway, as I said, we've got a few days of sunshine, so I'm going to go soak up some rays and then I'm going to find some Vitamin D3 and stock up.

Dogs Always Make Me Laugh, Air Hugs & Other Meanderings

Our dog is a smooth-haired fox terrier who runs figure eights in the yard and plays soccer and with actual headers. Truth. My friend thought her new llasa apso was digging for cat droppings only to find the pup had discovered those tasty delights, earth worms. Honestly? I simply adore puppies, kittens, dogs, cats, horses, wild animals (with the exception of bears and sharks) and children. Their natural innocence and wildness and sense of adventure also never ceases to amaze me.

Candidly, I am one of those over-sensitive people who wakes up already over-stimulated. Rollercoasters? You would know I was out of my mind if you saw me get in line to ride one. Okay, so when my kids were adolescents I did go with them at Disneyland not because I wanted to, but because I wanted to demonstrate that it wasn't about fear. It just hate that kind of physical stimulation. Give me a hug and we'll get along just fine, of course, you'll need to initiate it unless I know you fairly well.

Okay, if I just met you and like you I might hug you as we said good-bye, but I have learned to always just open my arms wide. That way I have given you fair warning, and if I suspect you are the least bit uncomfortable, I'll make it a joke and give you a Hollywood 'air' hug. (Six inches of separation sort of thing for those of you who've never been to Southern California.)

We Americans are all so love-starved since Bush was in office. Hell, we used to be treated like the sweet, overweight people we are, but now? We're bad because we consume so much (poor sustainability behaviors) and bad because we can no longer consumer so much which has created a huge economic slump around the world.

In Europe a few summers ago my son and I were fascinated to see lovers passionately making out in public in Madrid. He was in his early twenties and thought it was 'super' and candidly? So did I. Of course, PDAs are probably more important there as extended families of several generations often live together, providing little privacy, but I think that's great. Children and old people should enjoy seeing affection between each other, couples and within families. Although teenagers find their parents' behavior disgusting as a rule, younger ones smile, giggle and laugh. That can't be bad, can it?

That's all for today, amigos. Enjoy life while it lasts.

Breast pumps suck... no really!

Whether it was O.H. Needham (1854) or L.O. Colbin (1863), when I find out who was the real inventor of the breast pump well I’ll…..! Really, folks. Who had this brilliant idea that a working mom’s breast milk could be drained like that dairy cow we exploit?

The pump is supposed to stimulate the let-down reflex - rather than pry the milk from our bodies - but nobody bothers to tell women that the manufacturers have different sized nipple tunnels ranging from 24mm to 36mm. If you happen to use the wrong size it can be excruciatingly painful... which I can tell you will not stimulate that let-down reflex. We’ve got 30 different bra sizes and yet nobody thinks to mention this?

The necessity for breast milk pumping is just one of an assortment of problems in a society that doesn’t value motherhood. We just don't think what moms do really matters until someone becomes a juvenile delinquent or an ax murdered and then suddenly... it is all Mom's fault. Whenever I hear this routine I want to ask them if they believe that dads have no influence on their children or are they just not held responsible?

Okay, so there's an old joke about a man who routinely calls his boss on Fridays or Mondays claiming this relative or that died and he has to attend the funeral. One day it's his grandfather, than an uncle, an aunt or a father. Then one day the man calls up and tells his boss his mother has died, and his boss responds, "You're fired!" Why? Well,it appears that the man had mistakenly said another time that his mother had died. His boss continued, "You can have lots of aunts and uncles, several sets of grandparents, why you can even have multiple fathers, but you can only have one mother." I don't know why I wanted to share that joke with the punch line out of whack, but it's my blog, gabiche?

Many women around the country feel victimized by a system that expects them to produce 100% (after that generous 3 to 6 weeks of mostly unpaid maternity leave) when they come back to work. Maybe there were women out in the fields birthing their offspring for generations, but they were not also expected to keep their breasts pointing skyward, their upper arms as toned as Michelle Obama’s and their tummies defined like an infamous six-pack. They were also not expected to bring home $100,000 a year.

Nope, those women were allowed to be slowly devoured by the needs of their children and grandchildren, all the while without a word of complaint on their parts. Yessiree, those were the good old days when the only 100% effective method of birth control was to already be pregnant or slowly poison him. Yet when the mother was finally all used up that woman could die knowing she had truly given her all. And she was secure in the knowledge that everyone would worship her memory.

So what is it with today’s outlook on moms? It has been a battle since the hay day of Gloria Allred. Over three-quarters of Moms work, so let’s start with those luckiest of the lucky – stay at home moms. What do they really think about us working moms? Working moms cannot budget. Working moms don’t volunteer. Working moms don’t reciprocate play dates. Working moms are self-indulgent. Working moms don’t love their children unconditionally. Working moms are materialistic. Working moms are arrogant and condescending. Working moms use stay-at-home moms.

That's an awful lot of resentment and baggage and some of it is true for some of us. The rest of us feel insulted, by the way. Of course, there are the fathers of these children. You know all those complaints if you watch any of the soaps, so I’ll move on.

And then there’s the business community. Unlike male employees - whom they traditionally paid more because the men needed to support their family - working moms are perceived as only needing to earn ‘secondary’ income for all those luxuries. This is completely true, of course. We work because otherwise those things we call food, medicine and clothing are luxuries on a single income.

Plenty of subsidies go to the dairy industry, but adolescent orthodontics get no such benefit. Daycare for infants can be over a thousand a month, which means most women work that first year just to keep their job. Maybe we are lucky to still get hired given the myths that circulate about a working mom being a ‘lesser-than’ employee. There is always grumbling among the childless and empty nesters about how unfair it is when one of us gets to leave to pick up our children from daycare. After all, the kids have already been there for ten to 12 hours, what’s another few? Obviously a working mom is a flake if she can’t find a way to work in some unexpected overtime and has the gall to put her kids’ welfare above that of the opinion of her coworkers.

Let’s give moms a break. Early childhood doesn’t last forever. That's the end of my rant.

Conserving our delicious water

There are so many things to think about when it comes to our lovely, sweet ground water.  Today a friend was concerned about her dogs eating dirt. Her husband usually has a commercial service maintain the lawn and he was not a happy camper when she wanted to cancel the winter weed-killers out of concern for her pets.

I suggested she switch to organic lawn maintenance as a way to satisfy them both.  She just called to say a 'green' landscaping company will now be doing their lawn, although it is a bit more expensive.  Another marriage saved.:)

Now if I could just convince her to get rid of the lawn.  Here's an article (the Sacrificial Lawn) I wrote on the subject for greenlandlady.com.