Thursday's Haiku

A bleached, cloudless sky
We make rain in a box for
Tomato seedlings

We interrupt this Haiku Week

to share this episode from yesterday, tentatively titled Clean your ears, kid.

We were rocking out in the van to the middle-eastern pop on my bellydance practice CD. Rocketboy asked if he could come to bellydancing class with me next time. I said sure.

"So what do you do?" he asked.

"Mostly," I oversimplified, "we shake our butts."

"OH MY GAWD!" he hollered. "Gross! That is disgusting! I can't believe that! I would never do that! Ack! Blech!"

When, I wondered, had my bodily-function-obsessed boy become so prudish?

A few moments of silence and then Rocketboy's small doubtful voice: "Shave?"

Tuesday's Haiku

Pee near the toilet.
It counts as enough progress
To make Mom happy.

Break out the beer. It's Haiku Week

It's time for a week off. Between Hombre being out of town most of last week and me trying to follow the thimerosal story (Anita has an excellent critique of the NYT piece here) plus doing all the other things that comprise my life, I need to get away from the computer for a few days. Children and knitting beckon.

However, since there's nothing (ever, anywhere, really) worse than a blog that sits idle, this week will be Haiku Week, inspired in part by the Mamakus at Austinmama. I'll be posting one per day. Feel free to critique, mock, discuss, or -- hey -- add your own!

Monday's Haiku

How’s this for vapid?
I spent my inheritance
On lawn furniture.

The chicken shouter

Giving us the birds
c. Rocketboy 2005

No horse- or even dog whisperer here. Just two little boys who really like to follow chickens around in near-hundred-degree heat. And me.

The first evening was interesting. I'd let them roam the entire veggie garden, but they couldn't spend the night outside. Luring them to the shed with feed, calling them and showing them where to go didn't work. And they were pretty damned fast. Throwing an old crib sheet over them seemed like a great plan, except that the sheet got lots of loft, allowing the birds ample time to scurry off before the cloth hit the ground.

When I thought they were too tired to outrun me, they went to Plan B: Hide in the fence corner behind an enormous, thorny rosebush.

A call to Jennifer revealed the chicken-whisperer's secret: Herd them with a stick. I used one in each hand and got both hens put away. The roosterlet, however, decided to fly over the garden fence into the larger yard and run behind our 6-foot tall, 20-foot long brushpile. I poked into the pile with the stick, and that is when I got to resume my running workouts.

The birds are all now happily penned in one of the big garden beds I want them to weed. I know where they are, and Hurricanehead can't sneak up on them again with packing tape. I have a crate in there I can herd them into and then slide the whole thing over to the shed. No more chasing. But at least I know my knee is up to speed again.

Bassackwards

Another reason I homeschool: a fine example of our state education system's insistence on making the individual fit the system rather than making the system serve the individuals.

All the parenting advice you'll ever need

Read it while you can, because grrl doesn't keep her archives online.

Name that chicken

We're about to go get the chickens. Jennifer and Jon are lending me a couple to fulfill my chicken-tractor dream. Woo hoo!

We've got a wire tractor, a fenced garden and a place for them to sleep at night which should be secure from cats and raccoons and, of course, Dogzilla. Still, I don't plan on becoming too attached to these critters because eventually they'll be going back home; I don't think it's a good idea to get the kids thinking of them as pets.

Which is why I was appalled when Hombre asked Rocketboy for hen-name suggestions.

And why I was delighted with Rocketboy's innocent but case-closing reply: "Pecker."

This is more like it

I've already carped today about people justifying bigoted or criminal actions as "Christian." Carla has something more positive. I like it:

[M]oderate Christians see ourselves, literally, as moderators. Far from claiming to possess God's truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth. We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.

For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people.

Thank you, Sen. Danforth.

Top ten threats to the sanctity of my marriage

Not that my marriage is particularly fragile. Anyone who can stay married to me for a dozen years is either serious about it or too demoralized to run away.

But if my marriage were threatened, perhaps it would be by:

1. ennui

2. kids who stay up past their bedtimes

3. flatulence

4. Rick Perry, who told gay Texan veterans that if they don't like the state's anti-gay measures, they can live somewhere else. Now who's gonna defend my marriage if shit goes down?

5. Every politician who had anything to do with Terri Schiavo's case, because they meddled in a private, spousal decision-making situation.

5. commuter traffic, because it eats up precious time

6. Thanksgiving

7. the Internet, q.e.d.

8. credit-card companies who will only talk to one spouse or the other about an account but not both of us unless we sign a ream of permission slips to prove that our jointly held account is as sacred as our love for each other

9. Christmas

10. bigoted strangers who use feigned concern for my marriage as a shield from behind which to launch attacks on other people. Don't hide behind my skirts, pals. It's disingenuous, not to mention ill-advised (see #3 above).

It's about the cover-up

There's been much comment in the wider blogosphere the past few days about RFK Jr.'s article detailing the CDC's suppression of research supporting a link between thimerosal in vaccines and an upswing in the number of cases of autism.

Unfortunately, most of that commentary has been emotional rants, ad hominem attacks and desultory quoting of conflicting studies as the whole discussion devolved into a debate over the real causes of autism.

The larger point is that the CDC went out of its way to hide data out of concern for vaccine makers:

"We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared flatly that the study "should not have been done at all" and warned that the results "will be taken by others and will be used in ways beyond the control of this group. The research results have to be handled."

No one knows for sure what causes autism. And when a government agency charged with protecting public health hides data and stops publication of research, it gets harder to find out.

That said, and this is just my opinion, when something looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and a government agency tries to hide evidence of duck-like characteristics, there's an even chance that the thing in question just might be a duck.

(June 23 note: Corrections to the article are up at Salon, along with a letter from the head of IOM and a response from RFK Jr.)

Not my Christianity

Nope. Neither murdering 'possessed' nuns nor lobbying against gay marriage is part of my belief system. Enough with the crazies and bigots using my religion (or anyone else's, for that matter) to excuse their craziness and bigotry.

Putting the poo in pool

E. coli and its little friends worry me. Not enough to keep me and the kids out of the neighborhood pool yet, but maybe soon.

Last week there was an "incident," and everyone got to leave while the lifeguards closed the pool for three hours and shocked the water with chlorine. The line for the showers was very long.

I thought that was unusual enough in itself. I've been going swimming for decades and never seen anything like that before.

Today another member told me there have been five such incidents this season, and the pool has only been open since mid-May. Someone's kid, it seems, (Lord, please let it be a child and not an adult) is serial dumping in the pool. Which may explain the new giant sign informing the clueless that swim diapers are required, posted just above a box of said diapers free for the taking.

Everyone wants to find out who it is and get it stopped. It's like David Sedaris' "True Detective." I find myself eyeing all the preschoolers suspiciously. Every underwater leaf warrants a closer look.

Rocketboy has finally taught himself to swim, and Hurricanehead loves the water. But I'm not sure how much more of this crap I can stand.

Enough said.

In case you were wondering whether ABC News would actually promote the RFK Jr. thimerosal coverup interview on their site, here are the top health stories on their front page at 8:20 central this morning:

• Highest and Lowest Rates of Marijuana Use
• New Blood Vessels Grown From Older Cells
• Surgeons Construct New Penis for Cancer-Stricken Man
• Companies Argue Over Whole Grain Standards

And here is their lead science story:

• Study Finds Climbers Face Diarrhea Risk

(Note as of June 23 -- I've searched ABC's site repeatedly, and the only reference to RKF Jr.'s story at all that I've found is at the tail end of the June 17 edition of The Note.)

Mouse tries to stuff cat back in bag, gives up

The Huffington Post reports that execs at ABC (owned by Disney and, I must shamefully disclose, a long-ago former employer of mine) ordered ABC News to kill three interviews with RFK Jr. on his smoking-gun thimerosal-vaccine report but have, as of this evening, relented.

Why kill such a big story in the first place?

A 2001 Emory University Study watched ABC, CBS, and NBC in the Atlanta area for one week and found 907 advertisements for over-the-counter drugs and 428 advertisements for prescription drugs.

Huffington Post

I like money, too, but not as much as I like being told the truth and not having my kids poisoned to save a few bucks.

First do no harm, or at least conceal it

I've long thought the folks asserting a link between autism and thimerosal-laced vaccines were barking up the wrong tree. As Anita says today in her post on the article below, there really didn't seem to be the research to support it. Only there was. It was just hidden by our government to protect vaccine makers and control costs.

If you've got kids born between 1989 and 2003, you might want to read today's Salon piece by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reporting on a secret CDC/WHO/Big Pharma meeting five years ago and unearthed by FOIA request. (You can also find the article at Common Dreams.)

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children...

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening...

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data...

And who is helping them 'handle' this little public-health disaster? "Doctor" Bill Frist, the same guy who said that blind Terri Schiavo was responding to visual stimuli:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who has received $873,000 in contributions from the pharmaceutical industry, has been working to immunize vaccine makers from liability in 4,200 lawsuits that have been filed by the parents of injured children. On five separate occasions, Frist has tried to seal all of the government's vaccine-related documents... "The lawsuits are of such magnitude that they could put vaccine producers out of business and limit our capacity to deal with a biological attack by terrorists," says Andy Olsen, a legislative assistant to Frist.

But with a federal response like that, who needs terrorists? Not that this issue won't create more enemies abroad for us:

[T]he government continues to ship vaccines preserved with thimerosal to developing countries -- some of which are now experiencing a sudden explosion in autism rates.

Why is this happening? Why was it allowed to begin at all? Because the powers that be are pennywise and pound-foolish:

Thimerosal enables the pharmaceutical industry to package vaccines in vials that contain multiple doses, which require additional protection because they are more easily contaminated by multiple needle entries. The larger vials cost half as much to produce as smaller, single-dose vials, making it cheaper for international agencies to distribute them to impoverished regions at risk of epidemics.

Ah, sweet logic. So these cash-strapped nations can afford to treat and care for the neurological fallout from these vaccines? Yes, vaccinations have spared many children from polio, meningitis and other horrid diseases. But to say that it's worth poisoning millions of babies and children to achieve these results on the cheap is the coldest, most morally vacant calculus I've encountered.

We're the United States. If we can't figure out a cost-effective way to vaccinate children without poisoning them, then we might as well turn in our superpower cape and call it a day.

Cheep gardening ideas

I want to rent a couple of chickens for my vegetable garden. I don't want to make a chicken-lifetime commitment, and I have a big garden filled with not only veggies but more weeds than I can ever control on my own. The Bermuda grass is even giving me the finger (the blade?) by rooting on top of the weed cloth. Grr.

If you've seen the bare dirt in a poultry yard you know what chickens can do to vegetation given enough time and creative control. Plus their poo is excellent for the soil. And if you happen to get eggs, hey, bonus.

My plan is to build a small chicken tractor to keep the birds off the veggies and let them take after the weeds. So I asked my friend Jennifer if she would like to rent me a couple of her many chickens. I think I freaked her out.

But I'm not the first person to have this idea. Google couldn't translate most of this site, and I don't speak German so caveat lector. But with the slogan "Better Eggs for a Better World," how can you go wrong?

"Everything was going really well. Now we're going backwards."

Don't you hate it when you create jobs and prosperity but big government swoops in and mucks it up? Just ask Texas's Tigua tribe about the fortune their casino was making before W. got involved:

The casino had been open five years when Gov. George W. Bush campaigned for re-election in 1998. One of his main themes was his opposition to gambling and, in particular, to the Tigua casino, which by then was one of the biggest businesses in El Paso.

"There ought not to be casino gambling in the state of Texas, any shape or form of it," Governor Bush said then, taking a stance that put him in line with Christian conservatives and that he repeated in his presidential campaign. Mr. Bush said the casino violated the law, since Texas did not permit casinos. To the Tiguas, the 1988 law allowing Indians to open casinos and the 1991 referendum permitting gambling gave them legal authority.

It's worth noting that for more than a decade Texas has been flogging its lottery on every billboard not advertising the casinos just over the line in Louisiana, where plenty of Texans go to play while keeping our home-state soil pure and our coffers empty. Why, we even gamble each time we get into our cars. But let it never be said that our politicians are logically consistent thinkers.

Profits from the casino made the Tiguas political players, giving them money to make contributions. In 1998 they gave $100,000 to Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent, Gary Mauro. It was the logical choice, since El Paso was the last Democratic stronghold in Texas, and the Tiguas enjoyed a close relationship with President Bill Clinton, said Tom Diamond, the tribe's lawyer.

After his re-election as governor, Mr. Bush got the Legislature to appropriate $100,000 for the state's attorney general, John Cornyn, now a Republican senator, to take legal action against the tribe. Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said there was no connection between the Tiguas' campaign contribution and Mr. Bush's stance.

Indeed. Kinky plans to allow casino gambling here and use gaming money to help fund the public schools. Let the good times roll.

Spelling bee or spelling bug?

I find it odd that Blogger's spell check considers blog, blogger and blogging to be misspelled words. Doesn't that seem like an oversight?

Fire in the belly

You might think a great-grandfather in a sarong wouldn't have much to teach you about belly dance, but you'd be wrong.

My friend Angela dared a bunch of us mamas to try belly dancing, and I went along last night to see if I could still move without using one of my kids as a counterweight.

I had reservations about having a guy as an instructor. Being provincial, I'd never seen or heard of a male belly dancer. Meeting our teacher, with his cosmic-cowboy long hair, stubble and local drawl set off by his paisley leotard, blue sarong and gold toenails, was a cognitively dissonant moment.

But the man can dance. And he led the group (mostly but not entirely women) through all the wiggles and turns with a sense of fun and optimism -- a sharp contrast to the competition I remembered from my days as a ballet student. This was a workout, a challenge, a cultural lesson and a whole lot of fun.

Rocketboy returns!

He's been here physically all along (usually at my elbow, nagging me to let him use the computer), but his weekly recommendations for the under-10 set are back at last.

This week, why don't you kids try

a suction-cup dart gun? "It gives you something to take your mind off stuff," he says.

a swim set (snorkel, mask and fins)? "It helps you swim and helps you cool off. It might be a lot of equipment, but at least it allows you to breathe underwater and swim better above the surface."

eating hot dogs for breakfast? "Because they taste good."

Here's to another week of living well with kids.

A real uniter

I've spent my adult life canceling out my mother's votes. It's been years since we had any political discussion, let alone one without hysterics and name-calling. But this week we talked issues for the better part of an hour and found ourselves to be in agreement about the embarrassing state of Texas politics, our ridiculous legislature, and our hopes for the future.

Who has brought about this dialog between right and left, NRA and MSF, braunschweiger and organic peanut butter? Kinky Friedman. Lord willing and the petition drive succeeds, Mom and I will help vote him into the governor's mansion next year.

Why? Why not? He's got common sense ideas, he's entertaining, and he's no hypocrite. I suspect he'd be able to clear out the partisan gamesmanship so we can drag our state into reality. But I'd give him my vote based on this alone :

To solve Texas'’ problems funding education, he suggested eliminating all public funding of school sports, handing the burden off to corporate sponsors like Nike and Wilson and freeing up that money for other necessities.

Galveston Daily News

It's such a forehead-smacker. Why haven't we done this already? Use school funding to actually help educate kids, and let the sportcos pick up the tab for the frills. They'll need a mop for all the drool as Nike contemplates sponsoring the Texas high school football market.

Would-be pundits say Kinky can't win. I think the largest obstacle to his success is the small window to get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. No one who votes in one of the party primaries can sign the petitions, so we have to save ourselves for Kinky and then sign PDQ when the time comes.

Beyond that, anyone who can get me and my mother talking politics without rancor is bound to draw from both sides of the aisle. Almost as if he were a uniter, not a divider.

You know you're a real redneck mother

when your toddler eats dill pickle slices for breakfast.

Thanks, Hombre.

Highlander for a day

My knee works again, and we needed to get out today so we hit the trail at Inks Lake. We also went to Buchanan Dam and saw various water critters living in harmony:

That's not a shadow. It's a carp. Don't they make a nice yin-yang?

Blanket statement

You crafty do-right types may already know about Project Linus but if you don't, it's worth looking into. What a great outlet for creativity and kindness. And I promise you your work will be appreciated.

Victory laps

I've whined before about how few things one can actually walk to in my new neighborhood (we moved in last August) but I learned over the weekend that we have a pool half a mile from our house.

Before you roll your eyes and call me an unobservant dolt, understand that it's off the main drag, hidden by houses, meadows and a creek, and that it is not owned by our neighborhood association but, oddly, by one south of here.

It's a good walk for me with the kids, and the swimming makes naptime and bedtime so much easier on them (and us). Plus, of course, we're not burning gas to play in the water.

If I'm this cranky, it must be hell week

Poor Barbara Walters. One little remark about how upsetting it is to have to see a mother nurse her baby in public, and the lactivists raise a stink.

Instead of complaining about it (public breastfeeding, that is) on her show, why didn't she just do as I do when I see a tired pseudo-journalist trying to wring a few schmaltzy tears out of a celebrity? Don't watch.

Who says the GOP isn't the party of progress?

Out with the old:

A specter is stalking the Western world, and it looks a lot like Grandma. As President Bush has repeatedly put it, the problem with Social Security is that "baby boomers will be living longer." Not "too" long, he's careful to say, but long enough to create a fiscal catastrophe...

Here is the contradiction in the tiny, dark heart of American conservatism: Its values are solidly "pro-life," but its economic policies lean toward death. While upholding the right of each stem cell to blossom into a human, conservatives have curtailed the lives of all multicellular citizens ‚— by weakening environmental regulations, for instance, and cutting social programs.

-Barbara Ehrenreich, LAT, 6/6/05

and in with the new (unless, of course, you're gay and want a 'snowflake' baby):

If a frozen ball of human cells not visible to the naked eye and a thinking, feeling, fully potentiated person are even remotely equivalent, I'll eat Abe Lincoln's moldering stovepipe hat...

I do know that my failed embryos weren't people, no matter how hard the Christian right tries to convince me they were. If they were people, they'd be here now. If they were children, I'd have a houseful.

Julie, A Little Bit Pregnant, 6/2/05

I'll say again: When Republicans say they are for smaller government, they mean a tiny government that fits inside your uterus, because apparently even an omniscient and omnipresent God can't be everywhere judging and smiting everyone at once.

And that 'honor thy father and mother' crap? Whatever. If the people who raised us from blastocysts want to get old, they shouldn't come around crying about it. Unless the estate tax means we'll get less of their money when they finally step off.

Coming soon: my long-festering rant on the mechanistic view of the female reproductive system that gives rise to conservative policies on sex, pregnancy, abortion, stem cell research, etc.

Texas schools to successful students: Go home

How I missed this is beyond me. Probably because I don't have kids in public school. So it was up to Prufrock's gifted education blog to inform me that if Texas public-school kids pass the state's standardized test, then the school can wash its hands of them.

The gist is that in 2003 our dear Lege passed a law letting districts give students who are likely to pass the test ten days off from school. The state education agency recently set aside restrictions that were holding up implementation so the fun can soon begin.

According to this kind of legislation, if your children can pass the state's skills test, we don't even pretend that public school holds any educational value for them. They can just go home.

At least they're finally admitting it.

Victory peach

This pic is from late May. The good news is that peach is almost ripe now. The less welcome news is that it's the only one. I blame tree biology and myself for this state of affairs.

Two of our three peach trees are grossly overgrown, and peaches are only produced on tender new growth, so we'll have to keep cutting those trees back every winter until they put out new shoots and get with the program. The third tree I thinned per my instructions, removing about every other tiny peach so the rest would have room and nutrients to grow. I didn't think about hail, squirrels and other things that contribute to peach attrition.

Frankly I feel lucky to have this one peach.

In other victory garden news, the blackberries are almost finally ripe. And, thanks to the coffee we gave them per Cookie's suggestion, they get more done at the office, too. Basil seedlings have hatched and are thriving on my neglect. The cayennes are producing nicely, although the bell peppers are lagging behind. One of our volunteer squash vines has baby butternuts on it, although I'll have to fight the squash vine borers for them, I'm sure. And we have green tomatoes everywhere. It's just a matter of time.

The least wonderful time of the year

If I were pregnant I would skip this post, just FYI.

Today's the beginning of what we call Hell Week. Monday will mark three years since the death of D, our second child. Thursday would be his third birthday. It's odd that his birth and death days are out of order, but that's stillbirth for you. It's quite the head trip. (Hell Week kicks off today because it was his miscarried sister's due date, but let's not overwhelm ourselves.)

In memory of D, and in light of the fact that an estimated 68 babies per day (one out of every 115 births) are born still in this country, here's a mini-tutorial on stillbirth, grieving and support groups. May you never need it or know anyone who does.

The Wisconsin Stillbirth Service Program has a good explainer.

Silent Grief outlines why I'm such a weepy bitch the first two weeks of June: anniversary grief.

Support groups abound if you know where to look. God forbid you should ever need one, but if you do, I offer a couple of tips:

Face-to-face support can help anchor you in reality during an unreal time. I found the hospital's monthly meetings warmer and more useful than anything I found online, where petty fights tended to break out, and more realistic than the flowery, poorly written and cherubim-laden newsletters that were available. That kind of thing may comfort some mothers, but I'm with my friend B, a fellow bereaved mama: "If I see one more 'Angel Baby' reference I'm gonna puke."

That said, not every face-to-face group clicks. I left one meeting feeling worse after listening to a room full of deeply distressed parents wonder aloud why God had done this to them. I let that one go.

There's also a lot to be said for the services of a trained professional. I leaned on mine quite a bit. Older bereaved parents recommended it, too: Find a counselor experienced in grief issues. It's worth the time and money.

If you've read this far please reward yourself with a beer or a doughnut or a new handbag for bearing with me while I vent. I will return, soon, to our regularly scheduled programming.

Booty for life

Seems my ever-broadening butt may save my ass. BBC reports on research that curvier women are healthier than their rail-thin counterparts. Having been both in my time, I have to say that curvier is certainly easier and more fun, even if I do have to deal with weight-related snark from "well-meaning" relatives. Living well and long would indeed be the best revenge.

All Bases Covered

I was tending to my own knitting, literally, this afternoon at the park when a ponytailed mom unloaded her two cute little girls from their SUV onto the playground. Mom and the older child headed for the sandbox while the toddler dawdled.

"Come on, Kennedy," the mom called back. Then she turned to the other girl, who was taking off for the sand pit.

"And you wait, Reagan."