Victims of our own what now?

Victims of our own what now? Success. Yes. Success

Let me explain. In the last week, I’ve read/seen three news items that have led me to examine more critically my tendency to condemn the modern and to romanticize the past.

You see, the phrase “Mo’dernity, Mo’problems” has always wrung true to my ears. I’m quick to point out all the ways in which new technology robs us of our possible virtues and to look towards “indigenous” cultures for guidance on how I’m supposed to be living my life – how I’m supposed to parent and eat and commune with something larger than myself.

On Monday I read an article in Foreign Policy arguing that the organic, local, slow food movement is the wrong answer for most of the world’s poorest. In fact, we should be grateful for the newer and safer fertilizers and pesticides, whose antecedents sparked a food revolution making it possible to feed the world several times over and to endure the inevitable periodic droughts and floods. The author points out that the poorest of subsistence farmers couldn’t eat more organically, locally or prepare food more slowly than they do but that this is thankless, arduous and sometimes fruitless work which cements their place at the margin of existence.

Last night I saw a PBS special on the vaccine controversy. Despite protecting the population from 16 known diseases, many of them killers, vaccines have recently become a bogeyman for the more organically inclined and parents of autistic children looking desperately for answers. And these outcries have been stubbornly resistant to an overwhelming preponderance of evidence contradicting their assertions.

On Tuesday I read an article in Harpers about the cadre of die-hards dedicated to uncovering the science showing that EMF waves, mainly from cell phones, are leading to a proliferation of brain tumors.

We make all these arguments: pesticides bad, cell phones bad, vaccines bad, from a place of relative comfort and near total amnesia about the original problems that these advances made disappear. The terrifyingly indiscriminate nature of the polio scourge and the physical ache of hunger are simply not a part of our collective consciousness. Cell phones certainly haven’t helped feed the hungry and heal the sick, but they have connected us in a way that is easily taken for granted. Gone are the days of wondering why your dinner companion (or even child) is late or stopping long distance phone calls before they get “too expensive.” Would we go back to a world without cell phones?

This is not to diminish the very real concerns with the environmental impact of chemical agents on our food and therefore bodies and the unknown long-term threat of new electronic technology. The fear of vaccines causes autism is probably the best example of outsized concern with a perceived threat compared to a proven benefit. But even here, consumer vigilance has steadily made vaccines safer.

I guess I’m just taking time and see the world through an antique monocle and to be grateful for all those things which I now have the luxury to complain about.

Wondering about Weaning

My son is now nearly 15 months old; technically, no longer a baby but a toddling toddler with a toothy smile and a growing vocabulary of, well… not exactly English, but he gets his point across. It’s kind of a baby-English creole. “Ka” is cup and “ga” is milk and “ka ka” is cracker. He calls me “pa pa,” but I know what he means. Point is, he’s a little person now.

Maybe that’s why I’m starting to feel a bit sheepish about the fact that he’s still nursing.

He loves it. I love it. It’s great for him and a sure fire way to help him sleep. I don’t see it ending any time soon as he hates milk (of the non-human variety) and has never soothed himself with either a pacifier or a bottle. That boy is a purist.

But he’s the only kid over 10 months still nursing in his daycare, and when we nurse in public, people are starting to make comments. “Oh. So, he’s still nursing?” (attempt at self-censoring, but ultimately...) “He’s getting kind of big for that, huh?” My husband looks at me worryingly now when we nurse and tells me that “we” don’t want him to be nursing past 2 years of age. I nod reflexively in agreement. It does seem weird. But why?

Is it because breasts are so sexualized in this culture that when our little ones start acting more childlike than babylike, breastfeeding just seems a bit odd? Is it because we’re simply not accustomed to the image? Or, alternatively is it because nursing toddlers is not what we humans are meant to be doing? Stripped of our cultural taboos and expectations, what would be the “natural age” of weaning anyway?

I did a little digging and comparisons with our closest genetic relatives, who we can assume are freed of our cultural constraints, seems to indicate that the “natural” age of weaning is actually quite late by our standards. Here are some of the arguments:

• Larger mammals nurse their offspring until they have quadrupled their birth weight. In humans, quadrupling of birth weight occurs between 2.5 and 3.5 years, usually.
• For chimpanzees and gorillas, the two primates closest in size to humans and also the most closely genetically related, nurse their offspring for six times the length of gestation. In humans, that would be: 4.5 years.
• Non-human primates (monkeys and apes) are weaned at the same time they were getting their first permanent molars. In humans, that would be: 5.5-6.0 years.

For those who balk at inter-species comparisons, other research has found that in societies where children are allowed to nurse "as long as they want" they usually self-wean, with no arguments or trauma, between 3 and 4 years of age. I found one study that looked at American women who practiced extended breastfeeding and “child-led” weaning, and it found that the average age their youngest child weaned was 3.0 years old (older children were weaned earlier due to the arrival of a baby sibling).

But this is clearly not the norm in the U S of A. The American Academy of Pediatricians officially recommends breast feeding until the age of one, even though the World Health Organization recommends at least two years of breast feeding for women worldwide. Could it be that Western cultural expectations and practices are out of sync with the natural order of things? Most likely.

But maybe that’s OK.

We generally don’t live the lives of our more nature-dependent ancestors and global cohabitants. Earlier weaning allows women to assert themselves more freely in the workplace and to socialize more flexibly with friends and family, and the science shows that the health benefits of breast feeding taper off as the baby gets older. I guess at the end of the day, it should just be a choice.

But it doesn’t seem so much like a choice to me. My sister, who breast fed her son for 26 months, suffered serious derision, disdain and disgust from people, including those who are meant to support and love her unconditionally most – her family. And she’s fortunate enough to live in a community of yoga-practicing, organic baby-food making, co-sleeping moms, who generally support the practice.

So, where does that leave me? People ask me when I plan on weaning him, and it makes me feel like a bit of a flake, because I don’t have any “plans” per se. But I can’t really picture doing it anytime soon. Complete strangers will interfere in very few aspects of your life, but the decision to, or not to, and for how long to breast feed, like so many parenting decisions, is treated as fair game for intervention. I have to admit, I fear those interactions.

I guess I should ignore all that noise and make the best decision for my baby and my family. But, as my frantic search for parenting guidance from friends, books and the Web indicates, I don’t always have a good handle on what that is. I like to trust my instincts, but it’s hard to ignore the loud and pervasive messages, which seem to contradict my gut. It’s hard to swim upstream. But I guess that’s what your kids look for you to do sometimes.

Teaparty Like It's 1953

I was thinking of taking the month of April off from writing on this blog. I’ve been uninspired, underwhelmed and under the weather. But yesterday I had a truly blog-worthy experience observing a tea party rally on the Boston Commons over my lunch break, so brace yourself for a long one!

While it wasn’t exactly the Neo-Nazis marching in Skokie, a tea party rally in the heart of Boston was a little like marching into enemy territory. So, I wasn’t surprised to see a thriving counter-tea party presence made up mainly of left wing college students from area universities. Some of my favorite signs from this camp: “I Hate Taxes and Government so I’m Moving to Somalia”, “bla bla bla SOCIALIST bla bla bla FASCIST” and the oh so subtle “MIT Nucular Engineers for Palin.” But it made for an interesting mix.

I was pleasantly surprised not to see any patently racist signs from the TPers. I know there’s been an effort to discipline that element or at least tone it down for the Boston run. In fact, there was a defensive posture against claims of racism and I saw one sign reading, “I’m not a racist. I just disagree politically.” Fair enough point.

I went to observe the rally out of intense curiosity and attempted an open mind. My political opinions aside, this movement has gained serious traction and I wanted to see who these people who take time from work and travel across the country and protest things like health care for all really looked like and what they thought.

I missed the headliner, Sarah Palin, but was in time for a rousing tirade by former SNL comedian turned nutjob Victoria Jackson. You remember her. She generally played a ditzy blond in the sketch comedy show, a role she has apparently adopted in real life. Palin’s rants against “Left Coast” celebrities staying out of politics notwithstanding, they’ve accepted Jackson into the fold as long as she parrots Limbaugh and Beck and sings songs with her ukulele (I wish I were kidding) about the communist takeover of America. Her speech had a “throw out the crooks” theme and she riffed on Barack Obama’s myriad communist connections and mimicked the outrageous claims that "Obamacare" would end up euthanizing grandma. It was a lot more laughable than anything she did with SNL.

But most of my time was spent in the middle of a heated debate between an earnest and not totally crazy TPer. He genuinely seemed willing to engage in a debate and conceded plenty of points and I did the same. He agreed that fiscal imprudence was also the providence of the Bush administration and I agreed that Social Security and Medicaid were on an unsustainable path.

But in the end, he had a surprising amount of detailed information on the evils of communism, a history lesson which seemed entirely beside the point. Yes, communism bad. And??? He wasn’t able to convincingly articulate how any Obama policies are taking us into that direction, despite that being the general conclusion of the TP movement.

The TP/Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck argument seems to rest on two points: 1) Obama actually is a communist, a claim supported by tenuous connections of friends of his grandfather’s, his study of Saul Alinsky, his work helping poor people in Chicago as well as some outright lies. 2) His policies, such as “taking over” the banks and the auto industry are the stuff of communism. This, despite the fact that Bush propped up our steel industry and the bank bailout was initiated under Bush and supported by economists on the right. But that doesn’t matter. It’s the fear and passion that such associations arouse.

And this is a smart strategy. Re-fight the cold war, since that really energized people, especially those on the conservative side of the culture wars. Let’s just make the new villain Barack Obama. Effective, but absolutely and entirely surreal. The “down with Communism” refrain was so pervasive that I wondered out loud if this rally was somehow happening in 1953? I thought the country was on to the War on Terror era, but apparently we are still fighting the Red Menace 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Anyway, back to my attempt at a civil debate. This was going well until two clearly incensed lefty college students entered the fray. One walked up to this guy screaming, “Oh, yeah? You don’t want taxes and government!?!? Why don’t you go to Somalia? They don’t have roads and everyone walks around with AK-47s. Looks pretty good there, huh?”

While I agreed with her on substance, the tenor of her argument actually made me want defend my hapless TPer. But he defended himself quite well asking her not to use sarcasm to make her point. This calmed things down enough to have one of the craziest debates I’ve ever heard.
These sides were so far apart on issues they cared about that they found themselves in large part talking over one another. I guess this shouldn’t be too surprising. People go to these rallies to shout and be heard, not to listen patiently to the argument of an opposing side.

Here’s an exchange that exemplifies this dynamic: TPer mentioned a recent TV ad in which Pepsi, Coke and Dr. Pepper proudly announce that they are pulling sugared drinks from schools. He used this as a weird example of the encroachment on our freedom of choice. His argument seemed to be that it all starts with these little infringements and pretty soon we’re living in a Communist state. Another TPer who had entered the fray to help tip the scales added her outrage that trans fats have been banned in New York and now she doesn’t have the freedom to eat an Oreo! It’s an outrage! (I reminded her that Oreo now makes a trans fat free cookie, but that didn’t seem to help.)

Lefty started with a reasonable counter that an individual’s choice to gorge on sugar results in the rest of us paying for their eventual diabetes treatment, so it’s not as “individual” of a choice as it might seem. But she heard the word “Coke” and couldn’t help herself from asking the TPers if they knew that Coke was now displacing 3 million people in China by building a damn. And, by the way, people are being raped and enslaved in the cobalt minds of Democratic Republic of the Congo so we can have cell phone batteries. Did you ever think about that?? Huh? It’s the corporations you should be fighting, not the government! TPer paused and said, “Well, I didn’t know that. Maybe I won’t drink Coke anymore...” This response really took me aback and I give him credit for an open mind. Maybe there’s an alliance in the making here?

But that was a blip. In general, crazy assertions that the environmental movement is bent on euthanasia and population control on one side dove unwittingly into diatribes on access to contraception in developing countries. Assertions of the coming cultural genocide in Europe due to Muslim immigration were met with discussions of unchecked corporate greed. Each side quickly turned into a predictable parody of itself. I guess I shouldn’t have expected any better.


On my walk home, I contemplate my original question: What animates these Tea Partiers? Other than their constant attention to the provocateurs at Fox, what is it about these arguments that ignites their passions?

Clearly the bad economy is fertile ground for scapegoating and finger pointing, and those in power are fitting targets. But the broadest underlying theme of their complaints appeared to be the following: We, the hard working Americans, don’t want to foot the bill for people looking for a handout. And that’s what “socialism” or “communism” means to them: taking away my freedoms or income so that some lazy undeserving poor person can get something for free.

This is really the only way you can argue against a basic right to health care (in essence, life itself) for all: if those rights somehow infringe on what you already have and those new beneficiaries are underserving. And if they don’t look like you or share your experiences, it’s even easier to make assumptions about their worthiness of “charity.” It’s this underlying belief in America as a pure meritocracy, in which people get what they deserve from an even playing field, that makes things like progressive taxation and securing basic needs for all so odious to the right.

That is, until those on the right start hurting and their argument falls on its face and the logical contradictions become head spinning. I saw one sign that read: “We want jobs and income, not bailouts for banks” Really? You want your government to ensure jobs and income? Then move to Russia, commie.

Outraged over the outrage

ARGH. I’ve been home sick for the past few days which has allowed me time to stew not only in my flu-like symptoms, but in my outrage over the outrage coming from (to borrow from M. Colbert) the Teaparty Foxpublicans.

Part of what makes this country great is that we do have a free and unfettered public forum for debate. It’s a big diverse country and we have principled ideological differences in how it should be run. All this is messy, but healthy and good. I’m a liberal, but I truly believe that real conservatives have a lot of good ideas about fiscal and personal responsibility and the importance of ensuring free markets to create growth.

However, these are not the loudest arguments coming from the right anymore. What’s coming from that camp is not reasoned debate, but fear mongering and hyperbole tinged with racism or fear of the “other.” And it’s increasingly being regurgitated and amplified by even the main stream media. I’m not an historian, but I can’t think of another time when such a vocal and sincerely angry political group has been so blatantly misinformed.

Let’s take some of their major fears/criticism:

1. We’re mortgaging our future to an unsustainable fiscal path. Here is their strongest point. In fact, I agree. We are on an unsustainable fiscal path – largely because of Social Security and Medicare. Fair enough. What I don’t understand is why there is such vehement outrage about this now? Bush started his tenure with the first surplus we’ve had in decades and then ran record deficit for most of his years in office. Where was the outcry from these supposed fiscal purists then?

True, we’ve increased spending during the current economic crisis, but that’s because the two levers you have at the federal level to spur economic growth is cutting interest rates and spending. We couldn’t cut rates any lower than zero, so were left with only the option of spending. Economics from the left to right agreed on this point. So, while concern over fiscal unsustainability is a fair point, the timing and vehemence from this group is suspicious to say the least.

2. Health care (“Obamacare”) entails a government takeover. Hardly. There are valid criticisms of the bill from all sides. It’s long, complicated and the result of a highly contentious parliamentary process. But a “government takeover” is far from the truth. Here’s a newsflash: This bill closely is pretty much what the Republicans proposed in 1994 as an alternative to Clinton’s attempt at health care. There is no public option, but a free market “exchange” of health insurance plans. These mischaracterizations and lies started with “death panels” and just kept spinning out of control until the whole conversation was poisoned and serious criticisms were lost in the shuffle.

3. Obama is a Socialist who wants big government and is soft on terrorism. This one really raises my hackles. Let’s just look at the facts. He increased our presence in Afghanistan. He has kept military commissions and extraordinary renditions to the ire of human rights activists on the left. Despite promises to close Guantanamo it remains open. He implemented a large tax targeted finally to the middle class. In fact, unlike his predecessor, he risked alienating his base in many of these decisions. He has taken unpopular but pragmatic decisions and sought consensus on a range of issues. Any reasoned analysis of the guy would find the “socialist” moniker laughably preposterous. But, still, there’s a broad swath of the population that seems to sincerely believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Obama has some secret plan for a Socialist takeover. The extent of this misinformation and the fury it inspires is plain dangerous for our democracy.

And these people are seriously spitting mad. Just this morning I heard that at least 10 Democrat Congressmen have received threats from people filled with rage over the passing of health care reform.

What did Congress do to inspire this venom? Did Congress decide to send your children to war? To take away your precious guns? To even raise your taxes? No. They passed a watered down health care bill that requires insurance companies to do what most have long wanted and to eventually require everyone to enter the risk pool to lower costs. There’s no public option. There’s even an effort to contain costs and control the deficit. So, yes. I can see why you’d want to shoot your Congressperson over such a thing.

This is serious insanity.

I hope you’re proud of yourself Roger Ailes.

St. Patty's Day in Beantown

St. Patrick’s Day forces you to contemplate such questions as, “Who was St. Patrick, and what should we learn from him?” and “Why do we celebrate St. Patrick’s day on March 17th?” to which Boston loudly answers “Who the hell cares? Pass the Guinness!”

I don’t want to paint a characterture of the place, but outside of Ireland, Boston is a pretty swell place to celebrate the Irish (or whatever it is we’re meant to be commemorating on St. Patty’s day). Coming from Chicago, where we literally paint the river green and have an epic annual parade immortalized by Ferris Beuller (thank you John Hughes), I’m accustom to a bit of a celebration. But Bostonians seem to take this a bit further, and a bit more personally.

It’s not the city-sponsored events, but the general “spirit” of the holiday expressed by a steadily drunker population. By 9 AM the larger of the Irish bars had already opened the taps, and by noon stray celebrants could be seen stumbling into the street. And this is in the normally quite staid business district, so I only imagine the scene in the more “fun” parts of town.

Almost to a person, my entire office donned at least one green item of clothing, the purists were green head to toe. There was a leprechaun loose in Caleb’s daycare who had been leaving little green footprints all over the tiny tables and chairs for days, and for whom the pre-schoolers excitedly set an elaborate trap. Boston natives warned me that the afternoon T trains were sure to be full of liquored up party-goers (and comers), and one person told me she was opting to just walk home to avoid the ruckus.

For some reason all of this reminded me of a Simpsons episode that parodied the typical St. Patrick’s day parade as a day where we pay homage to the Irish by getting drunk and fighting (an ironic “Irish Need Not Apply" sign hangs subtly in the background of the celebration).

Rantings of an old coot

Having a baby forces you to think a lot about all the ways that the world they will inhabit will differ from the world you grew up in. I was looking at Caleb’s toy telephone complete with a banana-shaped receiver resting on a large box and attached with a long cord, baring no resemblance to the cell phone that now covers its duties. I’m sure when he learns to talk he’ll ask me what it is. When he gets older he may even shake his head pityingly at the thought of his young parents carrying on conversations strapped to that corded instrument like some kind of leashed animal.

But while our corded phones kept us to a 10 yard radius, they also kept us from multi-tasking and allowed us to cultivate an ability to focus and pay attention. Cell phones, easily used while doing just about anything – shopping, driving, or (thank you Paris Hilton) even having sex – contribute to our shrinking attention spans.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how amid all the increased convenience, we are losing some of the “soft skills” we used to have when navigating the world wasn’t so easy. At the risk of sounding like an old coot, here are some of the things our world taught us, but that Caleb may not know as well how to do:

1. Wait. This one is obvious. Our modern world is practically defined by attention grabbing conveniences that promote multi-tasking and instant gratification. Fast answers, fast friending, fast news cycles, fast forward through commercials… I recently heard that today’s 5 year old has the attention span of a 3 year old from the 1970s.

2. Not know something. How many conversations meander their way to some question that no one seems to know the answer to. (When did daylight savings start? Where did the expression “mind your ps and qs come from?...) only for someone to whip out an ipod, link to Wikipedia, and declare the response. What on earth did we do when questions hung out there unanswered? Were we more comfortable with not knowing? More creative in finding the answers or remembering them ourselves?

3. Fold an awkwardly sized newspaper to a readable size or wash newsprint off his hands.

4. Know how to get anywhere. With the advent of GPS and mapquest, we really don’t need a mental map of our surroundings anymore. I was always astounded when, as a kid, we took family vacations to places my parents visited years before and they would correctly remember that Broad Street cuts the city in half and the numbered streets go north to south, while the tree-named streets go east to west.
We spent a good part of our driving vacations gazing into Rand McNally maps of the United States and figuring out that we had just crossed to the half way point in Ohio. No longer. Whether on foot or in a car, GPS can tell us how many miles and minutes to go and we scarcely have to look away from whatever else we are doing.

5. Use Wite-out. Ah, the acrid smell, the tiny bristles, the tap tap tapping of your index finger to test for dryness. All a thing of the past, along with typing anything or writing anything formal by hand. No need.

6. Stare out the window. I have fond memories of staring out the window on a Sunday morning, contemplating my young life, while I waited for mom to scramble some eggs. But between hyper-scheduled childhoods, interactive toys and video games, multi-paned internet explorers and ubiquitous TV screens, we’re simply becoming less comfortable with doing nothing. The other day I got in a taxi looking forward to some unadulterated zoning out, only to find that a small screen had been installed to run cable news shows, heaven forbid we find ourselves with nothing to do.

7. Make small talk with adults. Growing up when I wanted to talk to my friends I would have to pass a gatekeeper, “Hi Mrs. Berger. Is Melissa there?” Cell phones cut out the middle man and the practice in politeness it created.

8. Get mail on the weekends. See http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2010/0302/US-Postal-Service-no-more-Saturday-delivery

9. Memorize phone numbers. In high school knew the telephone numbers of my ten best friends as well as I knew their eye color. Today I barely know my own cell phone number. That responsibility lies with my cell phone itself.

10. Fix things. Our parents grew up around a thriving industry of repairmen. You could have your shoes resoled, your camera fixed, your vacuum cleaner repaired. Today, if something breaks, we just replace it with an equally destructible alternative.
Also, our “stuff” is a lot less intuitively fixable. You used to be able to tinker with things like radios and cars and, through trail and error, figure out how they work. Try that with an iPhone.

I fully appreciate that each generation laments the losses that the changing world brings, glorifies the past and disparages the new. I’m sure the advent of the TV, radio, and even butter churner were cause for similar hand wringing. And I’m sure there are unseen and unappreciated benefits to the new. I just want to pause, stare out the window a bit, and contemplate my own small family’s transition into the new….

Stayte

With a small baby at home, little disposable income for babysitters, and the nearest relative a plane ride away, Colin and I spend most of our weekend nights at home. We do the bulk of our socializing during the day and have the occasional dinner party after Little C goes to sleep, but romantic dinners out are a thing of the past. Or so we thought….

Taking inspiration from the recession-inspired “staycations” Colin and I have instituted our own new necessity-inspired ritual: a stay at home date, or “stayte.” Now, this is more than just ordering a pizza and cuddling on the couch while watching a movie. We did that, but it started to feel like both of us relaxing at the same time in the same room. It did little to inspire romance. So, we instead decided to recreate the whole going out experience.

Instead of ordering pizza or Chinese food, we pick up food from a bonafide date-y restaurant, the kind that uses caramelized onions and exotic cheese to good effect. We dress in flattering attire, not pre-bed sweats. We clean the living room and do the dishes to avoid distractions of jobs left undone. We dim the lights, light a candle, set the table and the ipod, and eat our dinner in actual courses. We make horrible jokes about the service being slow and the waiter rude and laugh despite ourselves. After dinner we play games, make out, and even dance if we’re inspired. No one’s looking.

Baby or no, chez nous has some obvious advantages over a dinner out. There’s never a wait, parking and braving the elements are non-issues, no one will stare if you have heated debates or make out sessions, the music is always good, no one rushes you out, and you can have a long luxurious dinner and still be in bed by 10 AM (a definite advantage these days). Granted, there’s a bit clean up involved, no one brings you your plate, and there’s always the threat of a cry from Caleb bursting our well crafted romantic atmosphere. But the advantages greatly outweigh, and so the stayte is here to stay.