I just went out there and gave it 110%

No surprise: New research indicates that women in labor are not helped by having staff and loved ones coaching them to "push!" during delivery. As a three-time L&D veteran, I think "coaching" is evidence that a woman cannot be the prime mover in her own drama, no matter how dramatic, because then other people might not feel "useful."

Researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas say in a study published today that women who were coached to push during labor fared no better or worse physically than those who were simply told to "do what comes naturally."

That's not to say there aren't useful things a husband or the OB crew can do during delivery, like catch puke or massage the perineum. But yelling at a woman to do something her body is going to do anyway is not one of them. No one follows women around yelling "chew! chew!" while they eat, or "you can do it!" as they walk into the grocery store. While complex in their own right, masticating and walking are familiar, boring, and lacking in athletic glory.

While "coaching" is irritating, I was surprised to learn that it may be physically harmful.

Further, the Texas researchers say in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that coached women were more likely to have bladder problems. The topic is ripe for a follow-up to see if the urinary trouble is permanent, they said.

The Dallas team stopped short of recommending an end to such coaching but said the findings that it causes no harm "might be pre-empted if it is confirmed that coaching has deleterious long-term effects."

Because a short-term bladder problem is just taking one for the team. It's one thing to play hurt, but we don't want any career-ending injuries.

In the meantime, they hope their work will cause obstetricians, midwives and others to think twice about a practice they traced to a 1950 textbook, said the lead researcher, Dr. Steven Bloom, interim chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at UT Southwestern.

"Data such as ours suggest we may need to rethink that traditional teaching," Bloom said. "A better approach is to allow the woman to do that which makes her feel more comfortable."

Only in America could an institution-mandated practice from five decades ago be described as traditional.

And God bless Bloom. I understand what he's saying, but the way he's saying it still makes it sound like laboring women are in the employ of the delivery-room staff rather than the other way around.

Maybe I'm just not a team player. That might be why my OB didn't dump a bucket of Gatorade on me after Hurricanehead was born. All I got were those little cups of ice water, like marathoners get. Hmmm.

Save the date

Just 4,147,200,000 milliseconds (and counting) 'til Rocketboy's birthday.

Pure genius

the motorized, Lego ball-winder, via MamasInk

This Day in History

A year ago today I had the flu, the kids were knocked out on prescription cough syrup, and I decided to undertake what a friend of mine had been encouraging me to do for many months: I started a blog.

I tried to keep the scope narrow enough to prevent total diffusion but wide enough to emcompass ny interests: liberal politics, homeschooling, organic gardening. I've been remiss with the victory garden updates lately, partly because of politics, partly because this is an insanely dry winter. There will be an update soon, if only because I think food and politics are linked.

I have enjoyed blogging more than I thought I would, much more than I ever enjoyed magazine and news writing. I like the editorial freedom and the instant gratification (or vilification, depending) of the post-and-response routine.

Most important, though, is the number of good writers and sharp thinkers I've learned of since I entered the blogosphere, along with the supportiveness of the blog community. I've tried to give everyone their props on the spot, but I must extend a heartfelt thank you to my fairy blogmother, Dru, who urged me to get started and who has been a friend and mentor to so many bloggers. Mil gracias.

Something for everyone

As evidence of malfeasance mounts against the Bush administration, some loyalists cling to Bush's tattered robe, claiming that the end justifies the means and that Bush should be able to do whatever he thinks he must in the "war on terror" as a practical matter to keep us safe.

But there are practical benefits to keeping one's nose clean. Avoiding scenarios like this, for instance:

Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say. [emph. mine]

Sometimes the means preclude the desired end. Following the Constitution and the law is not just about walking the moral high road or protecting oneself from partisan attack. It's pragmatism in its most basic sense -- covering one's ass in order not to have one's work unravel. Surely even the most amoral pragmatist can get behind that.

'Twas the week before Christmas

And lots of New Orleans was still wrecked. Memphis Saltos has her photos from December 23 up here.

The real war on Christmas

Forget "Happy Holidays." The real battle is joined as you and your in-laws are seated around a lovely formal dinner table on Christmas Day, with a series of thumps and yelps from upstairs followed by your six-year-old son yelling at his seven-year old cousin, "I'm gonna kill you, you shithead!"

Everybody wants to be Shrek on the Playstation.

When it skeins, it pours

It's about holiday time, folks. The party last weekend was just the warm-up. Tomorrow we put all of Hombre's people together and stand back while the kids express their berserk genes.

After last-minute erranding this morning, I hit the LYS and got a couple of skeins of Kureyon and some ribbon yarn to keep myself occupied in the car. The mailman brought an even greater delight: a skein about the size of my head of worsted, undyed wool.

Who would send me such a fine tribute? Hombre's cousin in the frozen north, Eco Queen, who had the yarn spun from her own lawnmowing sheep. Some day I may regale you with the tale of Eco Queen's hand-hewn, historical, hippie home, but for now just know that she is a woman with excellent taste in gifts.

Happy Holidays!

Another excuse down the drain

BushCo and apologists keep harping on the joint resolution Congress passed after 9/11, saying it granted Bush the authority to do whatever he damn well pleases. It's sort of a compelling argument ("I have the legal authority to ignore the law!") except for the fact that the premise is false.

To wit, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle writes in today's Washington Post about specifically rejecting domestic-front language BushCo tried to wedge into the resolution at the last moment:

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The Post has a summary story here. Stay tuned for the next fatuous justification from Bush and Company.

While you're freeping polls

Go hit Lou Dobbs', too: Do you believe the Patriot Act should be extended?

WSJ Question of the day

Would you feel more vulnerable to terrorism if the Patriot Act expires?

Depends upon who's doing the terrorizing, I suppose.

FISA court head judge wants some answers

WaPo:

Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who also sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, told fellow FISA court members by e-mail Monday that she is arranging for them to convene in Washington, preferably early next month, for a secret briefing on the program, several judges confirmed yesterday.

Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Kollar-Kotelly expects top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Disband it? Yikes. On the other hand, it sure sounds like FISA placed an undue burden on the Bush brigade:

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."

Holidays minus one

I wept while the boys watched Winnie-the-Pooh this afternoon, and it had nothing to do with current events, Eeyore's worldview or my newly diagnosed bruxism. Most of the year I'm not a crier, but the holidays are hard. I miss Baby D, and it still hurts like hell that the world goes merrily on its way without him. Also, the new issue of Brain, Child arrived, featuring Elizabeth Uppman's essay "Minus One." It was so well-written and familiar and painful that I had a hard time breathing as I read it.

In my experience, the only question that's harder for a bereaved parent to answer than, "How are you doing?" is the innocent query from strangers and new acquaintances, "How many children do you have?" Uppman, who lost her son, Gabriel, shares her evolving answers to the how-many-kids question and the shifting sense of discomfort or betrayal that is bound to accompany any response. It's comforting to read how she's made peace with her replies:

...it's okay, now, if a stranger walks away never knowing that I used to have a little boy and that he's gone. He's still mine. I'm keeping him safe.

I have, however, begun performing one tiny public ritual in Gabriel's honor: I make it a point to acknowledge the losses of others who are brave enough to speak of them.

Hombre and I honor D every year by making a donation to the local Mothers' Milk Bank, in the hope that remembering him can help other babies. Who do you miss at this time of year, and how do you remember?

FemCarn5

The new Carnival of Feminists is up at Scribblingwoman. Buen provecho!

D'oh!ver

Laura Quilter hella fisks the Dover ruling.

Get up, John

Here's a fine example of Texas macho for you.

Senators launched new salvos in the battle over national security and civil liberties yesterday as recent revelations of domestic spying continued to color the chamber'’s stalemate on an extension of the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act.

"“None of your civil liberties matter much after you'’re dead,"” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Cornyn, I know you've spent time in San Antonio. Remember the Alamo? Ever read the names on the cenotaph there of all the men who didn't cave in to their fear and capitulate? Maybe you've grabbed lunch at La Margarita a few blocks away and seen the big painting of Emiliano Zapata there with his money quote engraved beneath it: "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

If we surrender our civil liberties then the terrorists, as the old saying goes, have already won. Get off your knees, Senator. You're disgracing yourself and your state.

This holiday season, give your loved ones the gift of liberty

With the new, handy-dandy Redneck Mother Impeachment Toolkit! It's in the sidebar and growing as time allows. Please feel free to suggest links via comments, read up and do your part to make sure our country follows the rule of law instead of the whims of individuals.

Happy Holidays!

If you're gonna ride a llama from Peru to Texarkana*

Make sure you've got your documents in order and watch out for narcs.

Llama hatching nefarious plot to confuse American investigators re: fur vs. fleece, take over world


It might be time to renew my ACLU membership, after seeing what they dug up via FOIA. While the FBI says the records on these domestic groups are bycatch as they go after larger fish (or a white whale), I find this item almost as funny as it is alarming:

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

This rattles my confidence in the investigative capabilities of the feds. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Andean ungulates (or, for that matter, a Heifer International gift catalog) knows that llamas are fiber animals. What they provide us is properly referred to as fleece, not fur. They are shorn like sheep, not skinned like mink. Our security must not depend upon those who cannot differentiate between a fleece and a pelt. Or a constitutional act and an illegal one, for that matter, but I digress.

Have you written your Senators today?

*Gracias, Hombre

Bush spied. Freedom died

Things are double plus ungood here in the Republic. Bush is cornered and defiant, as any narcissist would be, on his domestic spying activities. Why should you care if you haven't been phoning up your cousins in Al-Qaeda? As John at Americablog illustrates, if the President can ignore the Constitution or Bill of Rights on one point and get away with it, we're one wild hair away from homegrown dictatorship:

What Bush has just done is to say that the Constitution no longer dictates what he can and can't do as president. That means your rights under the Bill of Rights are no longer absolute or guaranteed, they're no longer the law of the law, they're now just simple "suggestions" without teeth, that can be brushed away by the federal government whenever it sees fit. If the Bill of Rights no longer give us absolute protection against our government, and can be overruled at a whim by that government, then the protections they afford no longer exist - they no longer exist.

John also links to this step-by-step action plan by smintheus for urging the Senate to get to the bottom of this PDQ:

Back from the abyss: an overview of this campaign

The first diary here tried to start a network of support (go there for further background). There is an urgency to this campaign. We cannot allow Congress to recess without even trying to confront the President; we cannot allow weeks to be lost in dithering, the outrage to subside, the spin to rise like an evil tide engulfing us all. The moment is now. Bush's speech on Saturday showed he is shaken by the revelation. His surprise speech tonight is another token of how dangerous this constitutional crisis appears to the WH. (If we are lucky, Bush will provide us with a "I am not a crook" moment. Look for it.)

More needs to be done to expand the network created today, though it is already becoming large. We especially need to make the jump outside blogtopia, to link up with local groups. (I'm slowly building a coalition with my local Pennsylvania contacts; have you done the same in your own state?) Also, let's work to ensure that the jolly giants, like MoveOn, are fully behind it. Meanwhile, many thanks to all who've taken the initiative thus far. I think this campaign touched a nerve; people are ready to help if we just ask. The single most important thing is to maximize the impact we have on politicians and journalists on Monday. We want to create a firestorm they'll remember.

A word about tactics. When you build a fire, you don't smother it with fuel too quickly. Most of us agree that the President's actions are impeachable offenses. Does the rest of America agree? Can Congress bring itself to address the constitutional crisis head on? Our first job is to make backsliding and excuse-mongering as difficult as possible. That is the thinking behind the goals I outlined yesterday. These are not meant as an end in themselves, but as a first step along the right path. Because these goals are reasonable, and the members of the administration are not, it should be possible to wrong-foot Bush from the start. A firestorm is not very useful to us unless it leaves the President isolated.

GOALS (slightly modified from yesterday to take account of comments)

As far as possible, our declared goals must be as clear, straightforward, plausible, and uncontroversial as possible. I have no illusions that it will be easy to achieve these goals; George Bush and friends stonewall almost as a matter of course. But our declared goals must throw into stark relief the illegality of the administration's policies and the nature of the constitutional crisis.

I propose that we ask each U.S. Senator on Monday to demand that President Bush:

* immediately reverse this directive on domestic spying

* promise to desist in the future from warrantless spying on Americans

* cooperate fully with a bi-partisan investigation of the policy

* release the texts of the directives along with the legal opinions they were based on

* immediately petition the FISA court to grant warrants for all such surveillance conducted by this administration since 2001

* identify the number of residents of the US who were targets of unconstitutional surveillance between 2001 and 2005, and report to all appropriate Senate committees the name of any of those residents for whom the FISA court refuses now to grant a warrant

Contacting your Senator

Please contact both Senators whether they are a Feingold or a Roberts. The main thing will be to maximize the impact on D.C. on Monday, so that all 100 Senators know that Bush's use of the NSA has created a firestorm of protest. The most effective means of getting their attention are, in order:

(i) Faxing a letter

(ii) emailing the Senator's chief of staff. This address is unlikely to be widely advertised, but you can probably discover it by doing a few minutes of googling of fairly obvious strings. For example, if his name is Winston Smith and your Senator Duckspeak's general office phone is 202-432-5455, you might try searching for "wsmith@" plus "202-432" plus "Duckspeak". If you don't know his name, you could try "chief of staff" plus "@duckspeak.senate.gov". I've done this many times with success. For example, the address for Senator Levin's Chief of Staff is (or was) david_lyles@levin.senate.gov

(iii) phoning the general comment number for the D.C. office

(iv) sending a letter to the Senator's general email or webmail address.

There is no reason why you should not do several of these things.

Many of the main issues are outlined above, including specific requests you can make. There are many more points raised in comments on the first diary, and in various diaries at dKos and other sites. If you need further ammunition, consult John Aravosis at America Blog, who's been all over this story. Also, the diary by ybruti provides a good roundup.

Do not fail to put your Senator on the spot, as necessary. You might indicate that if the Senators do not take a decisive stand about holding Bush accountable before the recess, you'll consider it a dereliction of duty and you will try to build public pressure to force the Senate to reconvene immediately after Christmas to address this constitutional crisis. The Senators are sworn to defend the Constitution, not the President. It would not be unfair to warn that you'll organize protests outside their houses or district offices unless they act immediately.

Here is a gateway for contact info for all Senators: link

There is more to the plan here. I'll do a weekly accountability update here every Monday until Bush is either impeached and removed from office or censured and brought back into line with the law of the land. Please spread the word and let me and fellow readers know what you're doing to help.

Too sick to blog today

It's a bad cold, on top of current events. Watch out, folks. That cornered rat may bite.
















(shamelessly lifted from EditorMom)

What I'm reading today between naps and cups of tea:

John's theory about the domestic spying thing. Sounds plausible to me.

Lynn directs us to an effort by a South Texas county to use eminent domain to swipe a wildlife preserve.

Sivacracy's little tale of my alma mater's wonky web filter. Because "Love Canal" does sound dirty, and not just in the environmental way.

And of course, I am the last blogger in America to discover the Wizard of Oil.

Take the Money and Run

Or
My Wedding: A Cautionary Tale

Twelve years ago today, I took two huge risks: I got married -- a bold move on its own -- but the way I did it was the real gamble. I got above my raising. While I had long dreamed of being wed in Vegas by an Elvis impersonator, I found myself strolling the lawn of a Victorian farmhouse in a tacky dress to Pachelbel’s Canon.

What happened? For starters, I’d foolishly declined my mother’s offer of a bribe a few weeks before. I’d been at her house tying birdseed into scraps of tulle, nagging her about the champagne that needed to be ordered because the caterer didn’t have a liquor license. She’d been paying bills. Perhaps she was tired of hearing about the wedding, or maybe she saw a chance to save some bucks. She regarded her checkbook for a few moments.

“What if I just write you a check for $2000,” she asked, “you two go to Las Vegas, and we just forget about the rest of this wedding business?”

“Cool,” I said. “But let me talk to Hombre.”

Hombre was unmoved. It was he, a young man from a refined family, who had wanted the storybook wedding in the first place. And he had a specific reason for declining Mom’s offer. His grandmother had terminal pancreatic cancer, and he wanted her to be able to attend his wedding – something nice, not in a drive-thru chapel. I had a pretty good idea that G'ma would not live to see the wedding and sadly, I was right. But I didn’t have the heart to tell Hombre to let go of that hope and I was trying to follow what seemed like good advice from my mom.

“We like Hombre so much,” she’d said one day on the phone. “And when you’re married, well, it’s – just don’t crush his spirit.”

I knew that working in a TV newsroom had made me callous and ruthless, but this plea from my own hardass mother stunned me. What had I become?

Elopment funds spurned, I awoke twelve years ago today with a 103-degree fever after a night spent coughing so hard I saw stars. I wanted nothing more than to offer everone a raincheck, but thousands of nonrefundable dollars had been spent by everyone involved. And I had a 7 a.m. hair appointment for myself and my maid of honor.

After explaining to my MOH, a free spirit who had never even attended a wedding before, that we would not have time to go to the mall before driving 90 miles to the wedding site, I let my stylist curl MOH’s long hair and sculpt my pixie-cut into an Ann-Richards style helmet complete with a dent to accommodate the head band on my veil. Thus tricked out, we loaded my dilapidated, wood-panelled Grand Wagoneer with wedding finery and headed to the farmhouse.

If you are planning an elegant wedding but run into everyone in the wedding party at the truck stop nearest the farmhouse, quit. Also, cheez crackers will leave orange stains on everyone’s fancy attire.

There were problems at the farmhouse from the get-go. I had expected both a heated tent for the reception and one for the guest seating during the wedding if the weather was chilly, which it was at about 50 degrees. (Don’t raise your eyebrow like that. It often gets up to 70 or warmer in December in central Texas. I’d been hoping for some of that.) But all the chairs for the ceremony were out on the lawn unsheltered.

As a result, arriving guests crammed into the downstairs of the tiny farmhouse for warmth, making it almost impossible for my mother to locate people for corsaging and boutonnierring. The flowers were not quite what I’d requested. I suspect that was because the planner’s mind had been blown during our flower meeting a few weeks before. Her assistant had swept into the room and announced somberly, “The goat has died,” causing the planner to burst into tears while I sat there, baffled.

While I was applying layers of gaudy satin clothing, one of my slew of cousins came upstairs to announce that my father had fallen over the picturesque and historical carriage stone out front. Dad was downstairs in the tiny bathroom, duct taping his torn tuxedo trousers and appealing for help from a man who introduced himself as a doctor. But the doctor in question was the minister, just there to use the head.

Later, everyone would say how brave my dad was to walk me up the aisle and dance at the reception with his shinbone crushed and one of his forearm bones snapped clean in two. But he just doesn’t like doctors, and it was four days before he consented to see one about his mangled limbs.

At least he made it up the aisle. I’d known there was a chance my 2-year old cousin would bail on his ringbearing duties but I’d figured his four-year-old sister was a safe bet with the flower petals. I didn’t anticipate his screaming like a burn victim when it was his turn to go, scaring his sister so badly that she halted, then panicked. The two of them whinnied and thrashed like a pair of startled horses, around the corner of the house from the rest of the guests, who could only imagine what had prompted such horrible cries of fear.

I can’t know what effect their screams had on my grandmother, who was deeply demented and thought that she was at a child’s birthday party and that the usher who escorted her to her seat was trying to steal her purse. I imagine the yelling didn’t help set her at ease.

The ceremony itself was an of out-of-body episode, possibly due to the inhaler and antihistamines I was on. In the pictures, the guests look cold, Hombre and I look giddy, and you can’t see the foot-long layaway tag dangling from the bustle of my dress. MOH yanked it off my ass as we headed for the reception tent while my flower girl dumped her basket in our path.

There’s no need to go into all the details of the reception – whose pants-seat ripped, who couldn’t dance to save their lives, who brought a date with active, untreated tuberculosis. The important thing is that Hombre and I were able to depart for the airport in our penis-festooned car before the sheriff’s deputies set up their roadblock, the better to expand the manhunt they’d been conducting on the adjacent property all afternoon. Some of the guests had been wondering about the small plane that had been circling overhead, drowning out the ceremony with the sound of its engine. Mystery solved.

By that evening, Hombre and I were at our honeymoon destination, a city we hoped to return to over the years to recall that feeling of romance and excitement: New Orleans.

Measured by wedding-industry standards, our nuptials were a flop. By the only measure that really matters, though, the hoodoo worked. Hombre and I really have been through richer and poorer, sickness and health, great good fortune and losses that seemed at the time like they would be the death of us. Would it have worked out the same if we’d gone to Vegas? Sure. But we would have a different story to tell. And more money in the bank.



My favorite coda: Nine years after our wedding, my brother was in culinary school, learning from a chef who now worked at the farmhouse. The place had changed owners and its entire staff over the intervening years, but when my brother regaled the chef with a summary of my wedding tale, he gasped and said, “My God. That was your family?”

Damnation

Haven't you dreamed up your own version of The Inferno?

fools who offfer to host large gatherings at the last minute
Circle I Limbo

offerers of unsolicited advice
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

horse thieves, fashion designers
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Creationists
Circle IV Rolling Weights

George Bush
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

zealot pharmacists
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

infant-formula marketers
Circle VII Burning Sands

Tom DeLay
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Karl Rove
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Brought to you all the way from Sweden!

Flog your friends

It's nomination time at Wampum for the 2005 Koufax Awards. Have fun!

We're number 6!

It would be nice to see the US in the top ten for, say, infant health scores or science education. But instead we get this:

The US has been ranked sixth with Burma in an annual list of countries that jail journalists, compiled by a New York-based media watchdog...

The report lists six journalists currently in US custody - four of them at detention centres in Iraq and one at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The detainees in Iraq include reporters and cameramen working for Reuters news agency and US broadcaster CBS.

This seems, to me, to be of a piece with the DOD spying on Quakers and Bush's remarkably self-unaware estrangement from reality. But now I have to go get fixins for red beans and rice for two dozen people, so instead of listening to me, tell me what you think.

One for every hour of the day

Because of a scheduling conflict, there will only be twenty-four people here Saturday. Which makes me a piker. For years my mom has hosted Christmas parties for thirty or more people.

I'm not worried about the appearance of the house and I'm not too worried about the food. I'm a little concerned, though, about how to entertain eleven children on a day when it's forecast to be 46 degrees and raining. Maybe they'd like to play buffet-server?

I agreed to what?

Things will be light here for a while. I agreed at the last possible minute to host a holiday gathering for my extended family on Saturday. My calendar tells me that Rocketboy may or may not have a dental appointment this morning, and I need to glue a horn back on to one of the animals in our nativity set.

While I'm bringing all that to heel, consider this: Does the government really consider Quakers a threat?

Dishonoring their sacrifice

Forget the lip service the Bush administration pays to the service and sacrifice of the ever-growing number of troops killed in Iraq. The administration's actions speak louder than its hollow words:

Dead heroes are supposed to come home with their coffins draped with the American flag -- greeted by a color guard.

But in reality, many are arriving as freight on commercial airliners -- stuffed in the belly of a plane with suitcases and other cargo.

John Holley and his wife, Stacey, were stunned when they found out the body of their only child, Matthew John Holley, who died in Iraq last month, would be arriving at Lindbergh Field as freight.

Matthew was a medic with the 101st Airborne unit and died on Nov. 15.

The video is here. If the Holleys were not veterans themselves, they might not have known that their son deserved better. They deserved better, too.

I used to think the current regime was populated by mean-spirited people. Now I suspect they're a bunch of folks with narcissistic personality disorder who have no capacity for empathy.

h/t: TGW

Wise men sold separately

Update on the Hundred-Dollar Holiday: We're not gonna make it. Presents aren't the dealbreaker. Between my knitting, Hombre's mix CD burning, and careful spending, keeping the gifts under the limit is easy. The problem, as Robert foreshadowed, is food. Fine. I can get behind spending money on a good meal with family. That's what I like to focus on at Christmas.

But if making memories at the dinner table is worth spending money on, why not make more holiday-magic memories by throwing bigger bucks at the kids' presents and one of those awful inflatable snow-globes Rocketboy wants for the front lawn? Four words, friends: wise men sold separately.

I loved the nativity set I had when I was a little girl. It was surely the tackiest portrayal of Christ's birth, with palm trees swaying over the brown plastic stable and everything dusted with silver glitter. I set it up on my dresser each winter and imagined what it would be like to be surrounded by angels and glittering sheep. When Rocketboy was small, I almost bought him a Playmobil nativity set one December on a whim. I was on a frugal spree, and this would have been a crazy expenditure for me, but I thought he would like having his own nativity. I had the box in hand, moving it cartward, when I saw that the wise men were not part of the set. They came in their own little box for a few bucks more. The Magi had been monetized. Never mind.*

That's why I don't go nuts at Christmas even though I could. I resent the cravenness of the marketing. I tire of the way merchants try to wring every last buck out of the holidays. If you want to create real "holiday magic" (a phrase that should only be used as an emitic), sit down and eat with people you care about. If you reach the end of the meal with more insight and shared laughter and love, without a fistfight, a political shouting match or anyone passing out, that's real magic. Voodoo, even.

*Playmobil later read my mind and started selling the wise men with the nativity set. So Rocketboy has his own nativity after all.

Child of the corn

Hurricanehead has learned to shoot corn kernels out of his nose, a trick that delights him and his brother and terrifies me. It was bound to happen. He loves corn and he loves to stick his finger up his nose.

Another new thing -- I'm not sure we can call it a trick -- is to hold up a plastic horse and insist vigorously that it is a cow. Over and over, with great earnestness. Without ever cracking up. If you didn't know him, you'd think he really believes the horse is a cow.

Presidential material, that one.

Instant hush-up

When Rocketboy was a baby, I half-joked with a medical-student acquaintance that if she invented a drug to safely and quickly get children to sleep, she'd get richer than Bill Gates. She blanched and looked horrified, but then she had children of her own. Then she understood, I'm sure, but it was too late. Bwahahahaha.

Instant hush-up is the elixir parents seek on colicky days and the tail-end of long road trips -- something to calm a distressed child fast and ease the strain on everyone's nerves. And it's different for each child. Infant Rocketboy was a guaranteed napper only when Hombre waltzed him around to Merle Haggard's Jimmie Rodgers tribute album, Same Train, Different Time.

The Hag has no effect on Hurricanehead. His silence on road trips comes at a terrible price -- endless repetitions of this tune from Hee Haw:

Where oh where are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over and thought I'd found true love
but you met another and pffft you were gone.

I'm not proud of it, but it works. What works for you?

What the kids are listening to

It's music linkin' time, juvenile style.

Rocketboy's tunes: I'm Not that Kat Anymore, Texas Tornados (he thinks it's about an actual cat); American Idiot, Green Day; Six Little Ducks (Kimbo version)

Hurricanehead's tunes: Six Little Ducks (see above); Old McDonald, Mommy version

Rocketboy's websites: SFSKids (great for music theory and general goofing around); Let Them Sing It for You (addictive)

Everyone's show: The Biscuit Brothers. If your PBS affiliate doesn't offer this, you must inquire as to why. Any time you flip on your TV to find men in overalls doing a Talking Heads-style video for She'll Be Comin' Around the Mountain, you'll understand.

It's always carnival time somewhere

The Happy Feminist hosts the current Carnival of Feminists. Go.

Survey says...

WPE. Not that I needed any more confirmation after watching my own world for the past five years plus my own informal poll, but apparently even a few historians are, in their own careful way, tossing caution to the wind.

Brrrr

The threatened ice pellets did their dirty work overnight. I awoke to a gleaming metropolis that was, and in many places still is, slicker than greased owl shit. This being Austin, everything ground to a halt -- schools, businesses, even my internet connection. The cops took more than 500 accident reports yesterday. I'm back online now, obviously, but can't stay long. Hombre needs the machine for some of that crazy paid work.

The animals are enjoying their indoor time. I can't say as much for the kids. The good news is that even if it doesn't get above freezing this afternoon, it's supposed to tomorrow. I think.

Stay warm and watch out for falling icicles.