The boy, the doll and the Sunday School Teacher

Question: What do you get when you cross a four-year-old boy, an anatomically correct (boy) doll, and an (older, female) Sunday School teacher?

Answer: a future comic, a dedicated following, and a hassled old lady.

My husband went to pick up our youngest at Sunday School today. When he walked in, our son was surrounded by the other children, who were laughing uproariously at something our son was saying. The teacher, however, was saying, "I don't think that's a good idea."

My husband: "Hi! What's going on?"

Teacher, whispering, but upset: "Your son is pretending that the doll has a poopy diaper!"

Husband: "Oh."

Teacher: "I mean...the doll is ...anatomically correct."

Husband: "Isn't that great?!"

(Meanwhile, husband overhears son say: "And then he had a BIG poop!" Kids laugh hysterically.)

Teacher: "I mean, he needs to cover the doll up...the doll shouldn't be left like that, without clothes on."

(Husband overhears son say, "See! That's his penis!" Kids roll on the floor with laughter.)

Husband: "Don't worry. I'll take care of it. I'll make sure we leave the doll with its clothes on."

(Husband overhears son making sounds of farting and peeing, much to the consternation of the teacher and the delight of the students. Son then runs up to teacher, doll in hand and basically shoves doll toward teacher, making a peeing sound.)

Teacher: "I mean, he really shouldn't be doing this."

Husband: "Well....if the doll is in the classroom and available for play, at this age, this is kinda par for the course."

Teacher: "Oh."

I never heard the rest of the story except that my husband and son put the doll's diaper back on before they went home.

Our reaction? An anatomically correct doll is the PERFECT prop for a future comic. And if you can't handle little kids talking about penises, farts, poop and pee, you need to teach older kids -- MUCH older kids.

Poor lady, however -- she appeared so shocked that we think she needed a drink RIGHT after church. Hope the brandy was handy.

The Wool, Our Eyes, and "Truth"

Full disclosure up front: I am not as pure as the driven snow.

Nor did I ever claim to be.

I got myself into a heap o' trouble the day before yesterday by responding to a friend's facebook status line about WorldWide Vegan Day (it was Nov 1). She had used a Simon R quote about vegans' pledge not to eat or use animals, including wool. (There was more to the quote than that, but that's what's relevant here.)

I responded that "I still think the no-wool thing is misguided, but I am otherwise with you." SO naive of me to think that was a non-confrontational response.

A flurry of responses ensued about podcasts exposing the cruelties in the wool industry, about websites and books claiming the same, etc. The not-so-thinly-veiled message was that a) I can't claim to be vegan if I use or wear wool (technically, that's true, I hadn't fully realized that), b) I need to read more, and c) I'm selfish.

HOLY. CRAP. I responded, off and on, to the responses, making the following points.

ONE, from what I've read sheep NEED to be sheared; not doing so is actually harmful (more on that in a minute).

TWO, it is possible to do this without harming them.

THREE, there is a difference between the INDUSTRY -- which I have no doubt has some major problems, as ALL big businesses do, particularly those that use animals -- and the PRACTICE of sheep shearing and the practice of raising them to use their wool. I could have added, though I didn't:

FOUR, wool is a sustainable resource (at least in theory). It WILL disintegrate in a landfill, whereas many manmade fibers will not. I would rather wear something biodegradable than something that will be here forever.

I also made the point (and later tried to amend it) that I'm probably not the only vegan (diet-wise) who also uses some wool, but I may be one of the few who will admit to it. I was fileted on the internet; in my humble opinion, far more than I deserved to have been.

This post could take one of two directions: complaining in detail about what was said to me and what I said back or detailing what I think I know about both "sides" of the wool debate. I'm choosing the latter. The first, while it would be somewhat satisfying personally, wouldn't accomplish much.

While this debate was raging (and the originator of the debate participating and putting out another status line claiming she *loved* the debate and that her "vegan girls" were great "warriors" who showed a lot of "love"), I asked my own Facebook friends (meaning people who actually KNOW me and/or who I know were raised on sheep farms) to tell me what they know about sheep, shearing, and wool. I truly wanted to hear the "other side" and I, truthfully, wasn't feeling a lot of love from those supposedly loving vegans.

Not surprisingly, my friends' (all non-vegans) responded in ways very distinct from the other post I was currently involved in. Their responses ranged from "I would rather argue about child abuse than this," to "I oppose the personification of animals and the ethics of considering animals and people as similar for treatment," to "to each their own, but I won't criticize you and expect you not to criticize me." No doubt the vegans would have a field day with those responses, particularly the last two, but I'm not going there.

The friends who put the most thought into this issue said the following (they are quoted here verbatim):

"I'm sure there are mistreated animals in that area as well, but I think of wool as a renewable resource....We don't wear much wool, however, because of the scratch-factor..."

"It's an interesting dilemma. Products which the animal has to die to produce (i.e., meat, leather, etc.) are obvious. Products which it is possible to harvest from the animal without killing or even harming them (e.g., eggs, dairy, honey, wool) are a whole other category....I would say that if you know for sure that the sheep are raised in a cruelty-free environment that you are within your ethical guidelines to use their wool....Of course some people will say that any form of animal husbandry is a form of slavery and thus cannot be ethical no matter how kindly the animals are treated."

"I really don't know much about animal cruelty and the rules that govern this area of modern-day living. But one question that pops into my mind is that in the future, will we start questioning why we harvest our crops? Perhaps it's painful for the plants to be cut. Anyhow, according to Islamic teachings, the animals have been created to serve the purpose of human life but at the same time, animals should not be mistreated. This is my two-cents worth."

"OF COURSE IT'S ETHICAL. The sheep need their hair cut or they will not be able to move around. You ever see one of those babies without a hair cut? We're not killing them for clothing like we do with leather....I guess the dilemma comes if you are a vegan. If you don't eat food that comes from aminals, should you wear it? I'd like to hear what they have to say."


The two most in-depth responses were from two friends who have had, relative to me and to my other friends, direct and extensive experience with sheep and shearing.

Friend #1:

"Having grown up raising sheep, I have a bias(ed) perspective. I find no problems, ethical, spiritual, logical, etc., sheering sheep for wool production or animal husbandry. I have shorn sheep and have, like many sheep shearers, even accidentally cut an animal while sheering. Cuts during sheering can occur when the skin is not drawn tightly against the body - several wool breeds have large skin folds, (skin folds were initially a natural defense to predation that has been exploited through selective breeding yielding greater surface area for wool) or cuts to the animal can occur if the sheep is not properly restrained and moves unexpectedly during sheering. Having sheered my fair share of sheep, if I cut the animal, I care for the wound that I inflicted.

Also, many domestic sheep breeds will develop "wool tags" if not regularly shorn. A wool tag is an area where feces has adhered to the wool. If a sheep has diarrhea, which can naturally occur if animals graze around fruit, they just love apples, or are sick, their feces will gather on the wool growing around the haunches or rump and if left unattended will form firm balls of poo that pull the skin. More serious are bot and blow flies that can lay eggs in wool soiled with manure. If untreated a disease called flystrike can occur. Flies will lay their eggs into warm manure and fly larvae, maggots, burrow their way into the skin. Untreated animals will die from flystrike. I have never met a sheep farmer that does not want the sheerer to remove wool tags.

Many farmers will "crotch" their ewes, that is sheer the wool from their haunches, before lambing season to ensure that flystrike does not occur after giving birth. I did this as a kid, and found that most ewes had an easier time licking themselves clean after giving birth. Occasionally, wool will grow around the utter. We always removed these small bits of wool so lambs had an easier time suckling, though I never knew of a lamb that couldn't find the teet.

Other wool diseases result from insects. Sheep keds and lice do tremendous damage to skin. I have read about sheep that have gone unshorn develop the most horrible skin lesions and scabbing as a result of mites and lice repeatedly biting the animals. Wool parasites can cause awful damage.

Lastly, wool is like hair in that it always keeps growing. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not a vegetarian. I eat lamb and wear wool."

And from friend #2:

"I hesitated to comment...but then I thought of this: We humans get our hair cut. Are we being cruel to ourselves? And, secondly, I lived on a farm for five years and we had sheep. OK, it wasn't a commercial sheep farm but we had sheep and we sheared them. They did not cry out in pain and, in fact, they used to jump around and stuff after being sheared -- like they felt light and free. I also saw what happens when you DON'T shear them. It involves maggots and it's not pretty -- it can also be deadly to the sheep. Cruelty comes in many forms. I'm just sayin'"

What these last two friends said above is virtually identical to what vegans say, too, about reasons to shear sheep (most see that it NEEDS to be done). However, vegans feel that you shouldn't use the wool because the sheep didn't "grow it for us." (See farmsanctuary.com "Shearing Rescued Sheep".) Some naively claim that sheep, left to their own devices, will naturally shed what they don't need (See vegsoc.org/info/sheep and veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/wool).

I've read conflicting sources -- some saying this is true FOR SOME BREEDS and others saying that it is NOT true. For instance, you can consult the UMass Amherst Outreach on the web; their first line in their piece on sheep shearing is "Nearly all sheep require shearing." Similarly, a blog called farmjournal.blogspot.com -- about a family who took in sheep out of the goodness of their hearts and not for meat -- says that they shear sheep because "Sheep have been domesticated and are not able to be turned loose and not have basic care. Feet, shearing and FEED are critically important. Shearing is NOT cruel; it is a short, painless process that protects the sheep from parasites and the heat of the summer." They, of course, say more than that, but their opinion (and mine as well) is that sheep LIKE ALL DOMESTICATED ANIMALS require HUMAN care, and in the case of sheep, this involves shearing them. Since we shear them, it's not illogical to use their wool.

The (usually vegan) position that we can't use the wool because "the sheep didn't grow it for us" is a bit nutty, though I think other practices in sheep raising (crowding, mulesing, tail cropping) are at the very least debatable, and probably HIGHLY unethical and cruel.

Of course, the problem is, at least from the vegan perspective: most sheep are not raised purely for their wool, and mulesing (removing wool-growing skin parts near the butt so that flystrike is less likely to occur) and tail cropping are commonplace. IF you are against these practices, and particularly if you are against sheep being raised for meat, then you will be, by definition, against sheep being raised for wool (eventually, sheep who aren't wool-producers end up as meat...).

I did a lot of reading on this after my run-ins with the vegans. Here's a brief summary of what I found: ALL vegan websites and animal-rights websites claim that the wool industry is cruel and that people shouldn't wear or use wool (this means rugs, yarns, etc.). This is what you would expect them to say, given their worldviews. Similarly, every other website I found (except for the blog mentioned above)-- by googling "sheep shearing," "wool," or "raising sheep" -- were websites with industry connections. Those websites, not surprisingly, emphasize the nature of wool (water-resistant and warm, for instance), and have mind-bogging amounts of information on laws and data on sheep farming. What they hope to convince you is that farmers go to tremendous lengths to take care of their sheep, to shear them without harming them, and to deliver a quality product. Of course, one of their products is also meat (often shipped to countries with higher lamb consumption than ours).

I also found several websites (this time, on both "sides" of the issue) explaining that the US relies heavily on imports of Australian wool to satisfy our demand. Australian wools are mixed with US wools, for instance, in most yarns. (I tried to find a wool yarn that was 100% American, and though I found 100% American-made, I found no yarn that could tell me that ALL of its YARN comes from the US -- I am waiting, however, on a few companies to answer my emails.)

The point of bringing this up is that a few years back, PETA investigators found that Australian farmers were dragging sheep and cows off trucks by their ears and legs and leaving them to die in "...barren feedlots. They were bound and thrown into trunks of cars, and they were slaughtered in prolonged and cruel ways that are illegal in the United States, Europe, and Australia" (PETA, "Inside the Wool Industry"). While I cannot, personally, vouch for the veracity of this claim, it is obvious to me that if you believe that (I see no reason not to) boycotting Australian merino wool would be a logical action.

Problem? The US only produces about a quarter of the wool it uses and imports a LOT of wool from Australia. So, boycotting Australian wool would basically mean boycotting ALL wool. If you think, as I do, that it is POSSIBLE to raise sheep ethically, then you SHOULD boycott a product where there is ugly evidence that some producers care so little about their animals.

Though I think that factory farming of ALL KINDS is, ultimately, unsustainable (one of the reasons I am attracted to a vegan diet in the first place), I still maintain that it may be possible AND IMPERATIVE to raise domesticated animals in small-scale farms for such things as wool, milk and eggs. (I no longer consume dairy for health reasons, though it is logically possible to raise a cow and milk her without hurting her; in fact, if you read my blog on cows and goats, you know that certain breeds will suffer horribly if we DO NOT milk them.)

I TOTALLY agree with my friend that "animal husbandry" that involves the death of an animal is arguably unethical, but that "use" of animals where it is possible not only to allow them to live, but to live WELL, is arguably, ethical.

This last reason is why I will continue, even with a vegan DIET, to wear and use some wool. Conveniently, I now live in a warmer climate than I used to; it is hardly a huge sacrifice for me to use LESS wool, which I think would be a good starting place for anybody who cares about animal welfare. At the same time, I'll continue to learn more about raising sheep and about pressures that consumers can exert on the wool industry to clean up its act.

Finally, I have learned, hopefully once and for all, that it's safer to decide what YOU believe and give it your own label than to adopt one that somebody else promotes. So, I'm not a vegan. I wear some wool. I occasionally knit with it (three pairs of mittens last year). Sometimes I use honey. I still care about animals, the environment, and health. I still eat a vegan DIET. But I am not a vegan.

And I don't think the sheep care.

The Swine Flu and You

Panic. Frankly, I've had enough of it. Media hype. Enough of that too.

Now, I don't want anybody to think I'm some sort of definitive source of info on H1N1. I am not. However, I've been doing some reading on the virus, and talking to my friends who are doctors and nurses, and also to my own doctor and my kids' pediatrician, and here's what I *think* I know.

1. The VAST majority of cases of H1N1 are actually quite mild. Now, of course, that is absolutely no comfort at all to you if you've been sick enough to be hospitalized with this, or if -- God forbid and God bless you -- somebody in your family has died from this. But, it still doesn't change the fact that most people recover from this virus with little more than ibuprofen, bed rest and plenty of fluids. MOST people need to take a gigantic chill pill, and do what they should have always been doing with any illness: stay home if you are sick. Wash your hands. Don't share cups and utensils or food from the same plate. Throw your used tissues in the garbage right away. Become a friend to Lysol and hand sanitizer. Drink plenty of fluids. Exercise. Eat healthy.

2. Flu has always been an illness with a known variable presentation. Some people are mildly ill; some are very ill. Those who are the most ill generally have some sort of underlying condition that compromises their immune system (obesity, by the way, can be one all by itself, because overweight people have a harder time moving their lungs). All of this is still true with H1N1.

3. HOWEVER, there have been alarming numbers of otherwise healthy young adults and children who have ended up hospitalized with this. My heart goes out to them. I hope "we" figure out soon why those who are usually the most resilient are somehow particularly vulnerable to this virus.

4. According to some research I read last week, this week is the peak week for infections in the United States. This means that more people will become infected this week than in previous weeks, and that slowly those numbers will fall in the coming weeks. Now, this is based on a mathematical model, but if true, the silver lining, at least as I see it, is this: we may be done with swine flu by Christmas. Now of course, that may mean that the regular flu will take over just about then. That's not such good news. But hey -- the regular flu vaccine is easier to get ahold of than the H1N1 one, so if you get vaccinated now, maybe you'll at least avoid the "regular" flu. As it turns out, getting the H1N1 vaccine may be a moot point, because many people will have already had the virus by the time the vaccine is available. (Ask your doctor anyway if you should get it, even if you have been sick.)

If you're one of those that doesn't "believe" in vaccines, I have a lovely bridge to sell ya'. Let me know how much you're willing to pay for it, 'kay? The science is overwhelming in its evidence that those who get flu vaccines are less likely to get the flu. And the risk of becoming autistic or brain-damaged from the vaccine (any vaccine) is about one in a million. End. Of. Story.

5. My kids' experiences with the virus are typical: 72 hours of a fever, cough, chills, body aches, congestion, followed by just the cough and the congestion. To be on the safe side, I kept each sick kid home for a full five days (48 hours PAST the end of the fever). Of course, they were not sick all at once, so I've been home an awful lot lately. Sigh.

6. Is it a "national emergency" as Obama has declared? Hmmm...it is indeed causing congestion in hospitals and clinics. There ARE a lot of sick people. (Over 22% of my child's school was out last Friday; one class was missing 17 kids and the teacher!) It IS an epidemic in the sense that so many people are infected (or will be). However...the percentage of people dying from this is actually identical to the percentage of people who die annually from the "regular" flu. So...yes, more people are infected, which logically explains why more flu cases than "normal" are in the hospital and why more deaths in actual NUMBERS are being reported. BUT, the overall percentage of people dying (among those infected) still remains about 1-2%.

If I told you that you have a 99% chance of surviving the swine flu, would you feel better? I hope so.

Why I Love CSI

Here's the blog I warned you about: the CSI one. So, if you don't give a rip about CSI, or TV in general, you can skip this one. Though, from a purely self-centered perspective, I hope you don't. And of course, I'd love your comments.

For the few of you who live under a rock (or don't own a TV or never read anything about it), CSI is, in the lingo of TV these days, a "scripted procedural." When it first debuted, in 2000, it was a new kind of program -- rather than being simply about crime or police officers or lawyers (standards of TV for a L-O-N-G time), it is about HOW crimes get solved, and all of its main characters are criminalists.

For me at least, it is a totally refreshing break from the ga-zillions of reality TV shows out there. Do I really need to know how one guy would fare with somebody else's wife? Or how much weight somebody lost last week? If I am going to park my ass on the couch in front of the TV for an entire hour, I want to be entertained and learn something, not watch somebody step on a scale, do a rotten job cooking the scallops, or fail to get their kids under control. I can see all those things in my own house anyway.

I didn't start watching CSI until somewhere in its 4th season, after my husband and my in-laws convinced me to give it a try. (They were -- and are -- avid fans as well.) Initially, the concept -- a show about gory crimes and lab work, full of autopsy scenes and realistic-looking corpses -- didn't appeal to me.

The truth is, not only do I generally not watch a whole lot of TV (or movies), the few shows and movies I do see are virtually never scary, depressing or terribly realistic. I love comedy. I love escapist plots. I love happy endings. I don't even mind predictable storylines. I do have space in my head for documentaries and historical dramas, but I never go for frightening, depressing, bloody stuff. So WHY, on God's green earth as my mother would say, would I EVER end up claiming that CSI is my favorite show?

WRITING. That's the answer. Not to minimize the actors' talents, but frankly, can even a great actor really do much with a bad script? I doubt it. The writing is fast, SMART, full of scientific trivia and double entendre. Fans know enough about each character to be attached to them, yet the focus is always on the case, and only rarely on a particular character. (Predictably, if you read fansites, you discover that fans of one actor argue with fans of another over who has been slighted or neglected in the writing and who has had "too much" air time. I don't take sides in that battle, and think that the evidence is pretty solid that the writers consistently focus on cases more than on characters. The CASE is the main character and that, in and of itself, makes the show unique, week after week.)

If you don't listen closely to the show, you'll miss something important. It's a fascinating take on a world (forensic science) that I knew nothing about prior to watching this show. The episodes also appear to be incredibly well-researched. It's not stupid TV. (I totally fantasize about being a researcher on the show. Maybe my next lifetime.)

And, as it turns out, there IS comedy in this show, though it would hardly be termed one. My favorite episodes, in fact, are the ones where the writers were quite intentionally comedic with their plots -- "Rashomama," "Lab Rats," abd "Fur and Loathing" come to mind. Particular scenes or lines, even in episodes that aren't funny at all, often make me laugh. From last week: "If the bullet is in his ass, then his ass is evidence." Or, a scene where a self-conscious, single, grey-haired lab tech is caught putting black marker in his hair. Realistic enough to be believable, funny enough to make me laugh out loud.

In case you're wondering, no, I don't know the titles of episodes from other TV shows. I don't remember lines from other shows. I've never liked a show enough to care. I surprise myself with the amount of CSI trivia currently in my brain.

The camera work and the special effects on this show are impressive too (shots of bullets making their way through bodies; slow-motion work of necks being snapped; blood spray on walls; corpses with removeable body parts, etc.). However, to be totally honest, I'm a fan who often spends a good part of every show with her face behind her hands, asing her husband, "Can I look yet?" I love Robert David Hall (who plays coroner Al Robbins), but I have to admit, I rarely watch his scenes. But I do listen to them.

*****

The two most recent arguments, among CSI fans, are whether the return of Jorja Fox (who plays the super-intelligent,troubled, former foster child-turned-CSI Sara Sidle) and the addition of Laurence Fishburne (professor-turned-CSI Ray Langston) are overshadowing the cast members who have been there since the beginning. In addition, William Petersen's decision to leave the show and return to Chicago theater has left fans obsessively mourning the loss of his quirky, brilliant, socially awkward, Shakespeare-quoting forensic entomologist Gil Grissom. I've never seen another character ANYWHERE that is as original as Gil Grissom, and I bet it'll be a long time before I do. Emmy people -- Billy Petersen deserves one!! Get on the ball already.

The other actors -- notably, Marg Helgenberger (single mother, former drug addict and exotic dancer-turned-CSI Catherine Willows who also managed to survive a date rape attempt, rescue her child from a sinking car AND later from a kidnapping), George Eads (Texan, all-around good guy, former athlete, son of a judge, peanut butter-hating, almost buried alive Nick Stokes), Eric Szmanda (the rock-loving, Vegas history buff, sometimes kid-like CSI Greg Sanders), Marc Vann (the despicable but perfectly played lab head Conrad Ecklie), and Paul Guilfoyle (lovable, scruffy, divorced Dad with a drug-addicted daughter, police detective Jim Brass) -- hold their own on the show, week after week. I absolutely love every character -- even the ones I haven't mentioned. There simply is not a weak link in this cast. Frankly, I'd give 'em all an Emmy. But not before I gave the writers some of those statues first.

I intentionally gave you all just enough info about the main characters for you to be asking me, "Oh, come on! A former foster child becomes a CSI? And an exotic dancer as well?" Yes, I'm well aware of how statistically unlikely it is that, in real life, foster children and exotic dancers would end up pursuing enough education to end up as CSIs. It's a testament to the writing that I am consistently able to suspend disbelief while I watch the show.

I could go on and on...but I've said enough. If you haven't watched this show, you really should give it a try. It's worth your time; you might learn something, and you'll probably laugh as well.

CSI, Seventh-Grade Style

CSI is my favorite TV show, so it's probably inevitable that I would dedicate an entire blog to it sometime. However, this blog is actually about my kid's 7th grade extra credit science project. The blog on the show itself will have to wait (but it is coming).

My daughter's science teacher requires kids to do TWO extra credit assignments each quarter if they want a chance at getting an A or a B. He is a one-man crusade against middle school grade inflation, and I respect him for it. (Not surprisingly, he's not so popular with the students.)

Despite that, so far, she has 100% in all assignments, that only gets her a C without the two extra assignments. So...among the options for earning A/B credit was to attend a four-hour seminar, hosted by the local PD, on crime prevention, one part of which was on forensic science.

Now, when I heard of this, *I* wanted to go. She did not. "You just want me to do this because you like that show," she told me. Well, yeah.

Since she wasn't interested, I basically forgot all about it until, in true 12-year-old form, she informed me the morning of (yesterday) that "of course" she was going. By then, I'd committed myself to taking our youngest to a gymnastics birthday party and meeting up with another mother, so my chance to hear a talk on forensics was out. So, while I watched four-year-olds bounce off walls and fly through the air on trapezes (literally), my husband had the joy of taking our oldest kid to the mini-CSI session. He signed her up, told her where to go, and took himself to a talk on burglary prevention.

She, however, ended up in the wrong class and was too shy to tell the police officer that she needed to leave and find the CSI class. So, she sat through a lecture on internet safety -- a topic that has been covered ad nauseum in school, so she learned very little. Not to mention, it also has zilch to do with science.

The deadline for handing in A/B assignments is tomorrow, so she started filling in the form her teacher had provided for her, without (of course) having heard the talk. Oooo...NO. "What kind of education would a person need to be a CSI?" Her answer: "At least a high school degree."

A bit of understatement, I'd say.

Can't wait to read the final report. :)

Getting My Goat; Having a Cow

A lot has been on my mind this week, much of it related to comments on my last blog, or to a conversation with a friend (in person) about the blog prior to that. I'm going to address each here. As such, this is a meandering thought piece. It's a blog, people, not an editorial. :)

My last blog ("Points of View") prompted a few responses -- most of them positive, but one of them from somebody who took some offense at what she interpreted was my doing nothing more than complaining about the predicament of parents needing childcare for those noisome half-days, no school days, furlough days, etc. In her response, she said two things (in particular) that really got my goat:

1) "Your friend may not be a parent, but as a teacher, has more experience with children than you do."
2) "When I became a parent, I accepted the reality that I was giving up any and all free time." This commentator then went on to say that she's sick of parents expecting the schools to raise their kids...

OK, so you probably do not have to have read my blog, or even know me in the least, to guess why those two statements might get under my skin. Let's examine each, shall we?

First, my blog was never about whether parents or teachers have more experience with children. Honestly, I don't have to say more than that. I could go into details about my background, however. For instance, I could tell her that I was RAISED in a house where a parent did in-home daycare; I've babysat more than any human being I know; I've taught Sunday School, Children's Choirs, and Church Youth Groups; I've been a godparent since I was 19; I studied Human Development in college and worked in a rehab center for disabled kids; I stayed home with my kids (using only part-time daycare) for over a decade; I even considered elementary school teaching as a career and was in an M.Ed. program for awhile before deciding it wasn't the career for me; I've struggled with a kid who has a mild disability and have worked with IEP committees, therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, vision therapists, and tutors, among other specialists. I've even chosen a career that IS part-time (I said as much in the blog). But, saying all that makes me appear just a wee bit defensive, and in no way says anything about the considerable experience with kids that my friend also has as a teacher.

The POINT IS that comment was nothing more than a gratuitous low blow, completely irrelevant to the issue I had written about and it assumed a whole lot about me that she had no way of knowing was accurate. Bugged the hell out of me.

The second comment: does parenting really mean that parents give up all free time? Hmmm...boy, that is NOT the paradigm of parenthood that I've EVER worked with. In fact, I think it's terribly important that kids know that their parents' lives do NOT always revolve around them. I think it's important for kids to see that their parents enjoy their jobs (or at least feel very committed to them). I think it's important that parents have hobbies, friends, and interests that don't involve the kids. I'm all for saying, "I'm busy now, please go find something to do." My mother used to refer to proper parenting as involving (her words) "some benign neglect". We could debate the proper amounts of such neglect -- the point is, parents have lives separate from their children's, or at least that's the paradigm of parenthood I'm working with. After reading the comment on the blog, however, it makes me wonder if there's a dramatically different paradigm of parenthood that is assumed by the schools and/or some or most teachers. Is there? It would help if I knew that up front.

But, how does benign neglect -- or the opposite, no free time for parents whatsoever -- relate to the need for parents to have affordable and easy-to-access care for kids (particularly older kids) on no school days? I think, in my commentator's mind, parents aren't SUPPOSED to have free time -- or, apparently, a job that conflicts with kids' school schedules. Such parents would not "complain" about the no school days, because if they did, it must indicate that they expect the schools to "raise their kids." For the record, I've never heard a parent say that they expect that -- or even WANT that. But I've heard many parents express frustration over what schools appear to expect from parents in terms of job flexibility.

Enough on that blog. The previous blog (about the dairy industry, rumors and the internet) has also been on my mind. I had dinner the other night with a friend who was raised on a dairy farm. I asked him about his knowledge about cows. I learned a few things about cows, and these facts raise some interesting issues concerning our responsibility toward cows, regardless of whether or not we choose to consume dairy or beef.

1. Holsteins have been bred for the QUANTITY of their milk. By their nature, they are big milk producers, and since farmers keep careful records, they keep breeding the "good producers" such that now, the average Holstein produces enough milk a day to feed something like eight calves. All of Jon and Kate's kids, fed exclusively from Kate.

Now that you have that image in your mind...

2. Jerseys have been bred for the QUALITY of their milk. By their nature, they produce very rich milk. Over time, they have been bred in such a way that their milk is actually TOO RICH FOR THEIR OWN CALVES. How sick is this: a Jersey calf will die if it nurses from its own mother; the milk is literally too rich for it. So, to keep a Jersey calf alive, a farmer has to milk the mother, mix the milk with water, and then feed it to the calf.

I find that fact sickening, but no more than the well-publicized fact that most turkeys no longer know how to reproduce because farmers have been doing it for them for so long. Yes, you read that right. Turkeys no longer know how to have turkey sex. Don't you feel sorry for them? I do.

Seriously, these two facts about Holsteins and Jerseys make me consider the issue that's been nagging me for several months: EVEN IF PEOPLE STOP EATING MEAT AND DAIRY, most farm animals still depend on people for survival. It's part of the reality of being a domesticated animal. The cows NEED TO BE MILKED. Or, in the case of the Jerseys, the calves need to be hand-fed. So, what is the logical thing that vegans -- who care so much about animals, the environment and health -- should advocate be done with cows? If we don't milk them, they'll suffer (ever had mastitis?) and could die from infection. If we don't feed their calves, the calves will die. It's naive and terribly uninformed to think that the cows could all just be put out to pasture. What stand, logically, should vegans take on taking care of cows (or turkeys or goats or hens or other domesticated animals)?

I don't know the answer; I just know that human greed for milk has created animals that now depend on us for survival. Cows need us for their survival, even if, in reality, we need neither their milk, their meat, nor their hides for ours. Poor cows.

Points of View

This past week, I lectured on social science paradigms. (Don't worry, I'm not gonna do that here.) Paradigms are basically points of view -- and the point of telling you the obvious is that we are, as a college English teacher was fond of saying, "constrained by our biography."

That is, it isn't always easy to be aware of what we assume, or what other people assume about us, until we (often mistakenly) say or do something that really pisses somebody off. THEN we're REALLY aware of how we are coming from different places, or, in social science speak, operating from different paradigms.

What I did this week was (unintentionally) run my paradigm smack-dab into a friend's paradigm, unwittingly making her really furious. See, I'm a parent (of three kids, two school-age) and she's a teacher (of fourth graders). She isn't a parent, though if she were, she might still have a different opinion of what I was so incensed about, due to her professional point of view. That's normal.

Here's the deal: many of us parents (particularly parents who work outside the home) are increasingly irritated (the polite word) at the number of half-days, no-school days, and in-service days in our kids' school schedules. We already rely on a carefully-planned arrangement of aftercare and coordinated "it's-your-turn-to-get-the-kids-today" schedules as it is. The family schedule is in a precarious balance, but most days it works pretty well, as long as the schedule isn't changed.

But, when schools throw us these odd days (no matter how much in advance), it leaves us scrambling to arrange care that is often hard to find. Few people want to commit to taking care of your kids when the number of days is so few and so random that it isn't financially fruitful -- or logistically possible -- for them to do so. And, for reasons I absolutely do not understand, a frighteningly large number of parents are comfortable leaving their middle school-age kids alone at home all day. I'm not in that camp.

To be perfectly honest, not only do I wish schools had a more consistent schedule (like kids in school 8:30-3, M-F, most weeks except for a week in Dec and a week in the spring), I'm all for shorter summer breaks and fewer holidays too. Schools still run as if there is an available family member in the home, able to care for the kiddos when school is not in session. They also seem to assume we're all farmers, too. Why else do our kids have these ridiculously long summer breaks?!

There are an awful lot of us without nearby relatives(or nearby relatives who also do not work). We have no family within 100 miles, for example. And the two family members we have (the ones who live 100 miles away) are a) ill and b) work full time and have their own three kids. It's hard enough (and expensive enough) to pay for all that summer camp and regular aftercare, let alone these additional days. And I can't rely on family for help.

So, I mentioned on Facebook how irritated I was at this predicament. This month, for instance, I have a kid home EVERY Friday (the middle schools here have different no-school days than the elementary schools). To top it off, my district has early release Wednesdays EVERY Wednesday -- something I find annoying as hell and wish so they would get rid of. It means EVERY Wednesday I interrupt my class to make sure that my middle schooler got in the house, locked the door behind her, and is OK. If she were actually in school like a "regular" day, I'd be able to get home before her and wouldn't have to interrupt my class. Aggravation!

In addition to those October changes to the regular schedule, my other child's aftercare program has an inservice day on a Monday this month -- so no aftercare that day (his Dad will have to take the afternoon off, because I teach Monday afternoons). All in all, SIX of my work days this month involve trying to find alternative care and/or not work (theoretically, I work M, W, F). I think I have more than enough justification for being irritated at the public schools. It's doubly ironic, since schools (and aftercare programs) are largely staffed by working women.

But my venting my frustration made my friend mad. True, in hindsight, I wish I had been a bit more diplomatic in my wording. In my defense, we are talking about a Facebook status line here...a place well-known for inflammatory wording intended to get people to respond (and that it did).

Anywho...she felt that I was venting at her expense, that I was not supporting public schools. She said I should either send my kids to private schools or not complain. She went on to mention several things that, indeed, many parents are not sufficiently aware of: her lunch break is all of 30 minutes; she deals constantly with kids with pretty terrible problems; she spends her "free time" calling DYFS or helping kids with homework; she annually spends more than $1000 of her personal income for school supplies that are not provided by the district; she works 10-12 hour days. She DESERVES these (often unpaid) days without the kids, so that she can get caught up on the latest changes to the curriculum. Indeed, if we parents think the constant changing of curriculum and testing is nuts, think of trying to change your teaching style or lesson plans every year or so. Indeed, teachers are "on" more than most of us are, and they are confronted with a bucketful of problems (everything from social work to curriculum changes to credentialing) all while having to maintain a professional demeanor in front of our unruly children. Yep, it's job I wouldn't want. But I'm so glad other people love the work (as my friend does) and that they do it well.

But my concerns (needing the schools to be in session for more days, and longer days at that) are not hers (needing more breaks, more support from parents, fewer additions to her teaching expectations, fewer hoops to jump through, fewer kids with problems). Her assumption about my problem ("your child care problems are not the school's concern") and the proposed solution ("go find out what is available in the community, or get together with other parents and establish it yourself, either be part of the problem or part of the solution") belie her simplistic interpretation of what is involved (and an assumption that I haven't already been looking for options). Sure, I'd love to part of the solution, but, frankly, this is a large-scale STRUCTURAL problem with our public schools, and it's gonna take a lot more than an occasional backyard camp or jumbo craft session with my kids and their friends to solve it. Similarly, my "Parents work! for God's sake! Why not teachers!" was just stupid, but also indicative of how deeply in my own world (my "paradigm") I was at the moment I wrote that.

But the interaction gave me a great opportunity to think of how ironic it is that the interests of parents and teachers are often NOT in sync. How unfortunate, because the ultimate goal -- raising the competent, confident leaders of tomorrow -- is. Time to get us all at the same table and find a paradigm and a structural solution that can benefit us all. Wanna come to the meeting? I make great coffee. But you gotta find the childcare. :)