The Mommy Brain Blog

april fool's day is approaching -- are you ready?

2011-03-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

As my favorite holiday of the year is almost upon us, I wanted to share an article I wrote for the sadly defunct Tropic Magazine out of Miami nearly 20 years ago -- about me, my mom, and April foolery....

The two occasions each year on which my mother is most vividly herself are Yom Kippur and April Fools' Day.

On Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, she fasts and
weeps, haunts the synagogue, and self-effacingly makes sandwiches for my situationally agnostic father. On April Fools' Day, she reminds my father and, most of all, me, that self- effacement is her choice, and it doesn't mean she isn't smarter than us both.

Bernice Bender never defied her generation's expectations. At 19, she dropped out of college to marry a medical student and bear him four children. She stayed home to raise us, a closely tended brood of three future doctors and one future newspaperwoman, until I, the youngest, was old enough for high school. Only then did she return to school herself, and then spent 10 years coaching children with learning disabilities in one of San Francisco's poorest neighborhoods.
She is now in her 60s, and her life remains a portrait of cheerful self-sacrifice. Her friends praise her consummate tact and consideration. But few outside our family have witnessed the brilliance of her wicked genius, which appears, like a rare flower, just once a year.

My mother and I have almost always been close, yet in our life choices we are far apart. At 35, I'm married but childless, focused on my job as a foreign correspondent. A few years ago, I moved to Mexico for work, and this year even farther, to Brazil. All the while, I have noticed my mother's April blooms grow more exotic, as if to compensate for all the miles between us.

In the first spring of my absence, for instance, I was shocked to find among my mail a neatly printed bill, on professional letterhead, for $1,200. The sum represented the cost of a couch that one of my mother's friends, an interior decorator, had loaned me three years earlier.

Not only had I taken the couch with me when I moved, I had recently paid a couple of hundred dollars to have it re- upholstered, a little detail I may have mentioned to my mother. Guilt, shame and financial anxiety washed over me as I stared at the invoice, which arrived April 1 -- or so I thought, unwilling, at least at first, to imagine my own husband conspiring with my mother to plant it in my mailbox.

The next April Fools' Day fell in 1990, during a week when I was visiting my parents in California and drafting an article about Fidel Castro for The Atlantic Monthly. It was my first assignment for such a major magazine, and I was full of
apprehension, though I felt sure of my argument. Castro, I maintained, would stay in power for years, despite the then- conventional wisdom that his fall was imminent.
On the critical morning, I strolled in to breakfast, fully conscious of the date and determined to remain on guard. That didn't stop me from screaming, however, at the three-inch, front-page headline in what looked at first exactly like The San Francisco Chronicle: CUBAN REVOLUTION! CASTRO OUT!!!

Another year passed, and with it, my conviction that my mother's natural reserve would keep her from recruiting the aid of total strangers for her tricks. I was vacationing at a rustic hotel in the Pacific resort of Zihuatanejo that April when my editor at The San Jose Mercury News in California reached me with an urgent message. He had spent nearly an hour trying to get through on the hotel's one line, he told me later, but persisted, a man with a mission. He wanted to beg my apology: Through no fault of his, some other editor had put the wrong byline on a long series of articles to which I had devoted several weeks.

At this point, the reasonable reader must be wondering why I did not rage at my mother for crashing in on my professional life, for violating boundaries with impunity, for infantilizing me with my bosses. And in fact, I did rage. I did. But quietly. To myself. To my husband. Never to my mother. I was stopped there by habit, and by awe.

To explain the habit first: The convergence of trickery and affection, which goes along so well with almost never saying anything directly, is an abiding pattern of my family's life. My older brother, a Massachusetts psychiatrist, recently courted a young woman by rigging a tiny explosive beneath her toilet seat. He's the first to concede the tactic was hardly your Hallmark- card kind of expression of affection. Yet neither he nor I nor even the young woman ever doubted its romantic inspiration.
My mother's yearly tricks carry their own fierce and distinctive signals. They are aggressive: She will not be excluded from my life. They are provocative: Do I really think my choices -- my pride, my work, my paycheck -- are beyond her challenge? And they are proud: Look how clever she is; she could have been anything she wanted, if she had only wanted it enough.

Yet just like my brother's small bomb, my mother's pranks express as best she can her desire for an intimate connection -- which surely is love, gritty and complicated as it may be. I see that more clearly the older I grow, and the farther I go away from her. And that is where my awe comes in: awe at my mother's peculiar mastery.
For April Fools' Day, as she well knows, is an opportunity for true art. Its best tricks manage to tweak but not insult, stun but never terrify. At its best, it gives Foolers the chance to show how well they know their prey, while also creating, if only for a moment, a private and supremely sheltered world where all fear is short-lived, and -- thanks, of course, to the Fooler -- everything always turns out OK.

lost gems

2011-02-07T08:20:00.001-08:00

When I was about 16, I worked all summer, baby-sitting, to earn the money to
buy a ruby ring I’d seen in a store window and couldn’t get out of my mind.
The ring had five dark stones that twinkled among tiny golden branches. I
used to fall asleep thinking about it.

But just a couple weeks after I finally owned that ring, I misplaced it,
never to be found again. Today, nearly 40 years later, I still sometimes
think of that ring late at night.

A few months later, my brother came back from Finland with a special gift
for me: a delicate silver bracelet of such original design that I got
compliments each time I wore it. I wore it while swimming in Lake Tahoe, and
somehow the catch opened up, and it sank down to the lake bottom. I can
still clearly see it flickering as it slipped from my grasp.

For many years afterwards, I had a recurring dream of swimming to the bottom
of a deep lake, and finding there, in one place, all the beautiful things I
couldn’t manage to hang on to: the ring, the bracelet, and various earrings
and necklaces, together with various keys, sunglasses and twenty-dollar
bills. Always in the dream, I’d be flooded with relief, and that rare
satisfaction of a perfect resolution to a story that at first seemed to have
no end.

When you lose things just occasionally, it’s really no big deal. But when
you lose things all the time, you start to worry, secretly, that you have
somehow also lost your self-control, or that maybe you never even had that
in the first place.

At the age of 49, when I was diagnosed with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder, it felt like one of those rare resolutions: the moral of a story
that had seemed to have no end. By understanding and addressing my
condition, I came to understand the corollary of Joni Mitchell’s famous
line, that you don’t know what you’ve lost ‘til it’s gone. I didn’t realize
my greatest lost until I’d found it -- recovering something just as sparkly
as my beautiful, lost ring: something like childish self-confidence.

Today, I take an improv class each Sunday. One of our rules is to applaud
mistakes, which we learn to consider as gifts. Nothing is lost; everything
is transformed. And better late than never.

need a laugh?

2011-02-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

I just got emailed this -- it's wonderful--

A father passing by his son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up. Then he saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to ‘Dad…’

With the worst premonition he opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.

Dear Dad:

It is with great regret and sorrow that I’m writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with Mom and you.

I have been finding real passion with Stacy and she is so nice.

But I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercing, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes and the fact that she is much older than I am. But it’ s not only the passion…Dad she’s pregnant.

Stacy said that we will be very happy.

She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.

Stacy has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn’t really hurt anyone.
We’ll be growing it for ourselves and trading it with the other people that live nearby for cocaine and ecstasy.

In the meantime we will pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Stacy can get better. She deserves it.

Don’t worry Dad. I’m 15 and I know how to take care of myself.

Someday I’m sure that we will be back to visit so that you can get to know your grandchildren.

Love,

Your Son John

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I’m over at Tommy’s house.

I Just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than a Report card That’s in my center desk drawer.

I love you.

Call me when it’s safe to come home.

Il Cervello Delle Mamme!

2011-01-27T14:52:00.000-08:00

The Mommy Brain was published in Italy today! Me piace moltissimo!

Please join the Buzz!

2011-01-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

With my new facebook page

just in case you haven't read enough of the Tiger Mother backlash...

2011-01-19T14:11:00.001-08:00

....I will just point out that, at least in my experience, the approach can be disastrous for some cubs.

I was certainly determined to foster excellence in my two sons, even if they hated me for it. After all, some of their same genetic material had produced three physicians (my siblings) and two well-educated, devoted journalists (their parents). Thus it was that my instinct, on hearing my first son's excellent Apgar scores, was to think: "Harvard, here we come!"

Then life, as it so often does, intervened. Nine years later, my verbally gifted, adorable son was diagnosed with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, with a side order of Oppositional Defiant Disorder, the latter of which I suspect at least in part arose from my relentless efforts, and his teachers', to get him to do quite a lot of things that were in truth beyond his ability. With our family in constant conflict, and my son so chronically angry that we could barely get him to school each day, I learned the hard way that I needed to back off of the mandatory music lessons and homework tutors, and even to let him fail academically if need be, rather than keep up the pressure.

It has been one of the hardest challenges of my life, this balancing act between efforts aimed at external and internal success.

Yet with more than 5 million US children now diagnosed with ADHD, motherhood for millions of women has become just this sort of test of coping with ambiguity. How much does personal happiness count, compared to someone's net impact on the world? Where is the line between explanation and excuse? And will I have succeeded as a parent if my son ends up never fulfilling his considerable potential -- as long as he stays on the right side of the law?

In my own quest for answers, I sought out mothers I respected who had gone through something similar. One of the wisest of these was Lyda Rose, whose son Todd had dropped out of high school as a senior, with a GPA of .09, and narrowly avoiding juvenile hall, after which he got his teen-aged girlfriend pregnant and sold fences for minimum wage. Today he teaches education neurosciences at – you guessed it! – Harvard.

As a teenager, Rose, who had serious learning challenges, was scolded by teachers and brutally bullied by peers. He didn’t tell his mother about any of the worst of it until years later, but she soon realized on her own that he needed her warmth and acceptance much more than high expectations. “Todd was dying inside, and for awhile, I would never get that,” Lyda told me. “But I finally decided that this kid cannot be attacked everywhere. I have to change at least what happens between him and me.”

She began paying less heed to Todd’s teachers and principal, instead coming up with her own plan to help him survive adolescence. When he brought home his report card with all F’s and one D, Lyda recalls, “I looked at the D, and said, what did you like about this class?”

Another wise mother I've talked to much more recently is psychologist Wendy Mogel, the best-selling author of “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” who told me that she herself was diagnosed with ADHD, as an adult. While her main message for parents involves encouraging independence and resilience, she advises parents of learning-challenged children not to worry so much about overindulging them. “These kids are battle-weary,” she says. “They get post-traumatic stress disorder of confidence, of their intrinsic pleasure in learning and trying new things.”

Aristotle, who might agree with Amy Chua, wrote that happiness is the realization of "unimpeded excellence." Yet modern science has shown us that happiness may more often rely on healthy human connections. Ultimately, in my home, I had to make sure that at least my son's connection with me remained strong. So today I tread that line between high expectations and nurturing. It's never easy, but I guess that's one reason they call it a job.

techno-tizzy

2010-05-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

My wonderful advisors at my new publisher, Hyperion, suggested I twitter about my pending book about ADHD and mother-son conflicts. et because so much of this book is about my personal and the broader cultural struggle to focus on what's important, I just can't see it. Even though I just read that even the Dalai Lama has been tweeting away!
Anyway, to be honest, I can't even maintain two running commentaries while also doing my best to feed the kids, avoid housework, and commit journalism. SO if anyone reading this wants to continue to check in on my still-only-occasional unpaid reports,they can now be found on the new Facebook page for "Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention." I hope to see you there!

dolphin season

2010-02-23T08:39:00.000-08:00

I have a story on dolphin therapy in today's Washington Post, and have already received one outraged letter from a man whose daughter has benefited and who said that from the tone of this article, I couldn't possibly be the parent of a "special needs" child....There is a lot of fascinating stuff that didn't get in this story. Like the fact that Betsy Smith, the founder of the therapy, has since become a Zen Buddhist, increasing her objections to subjugating other "sentient beings," and that "The Cove," an amazing documentary on the slaughter of 23,000 dolphins a year in Taiji, Japan, starring ex-Flipper trainer Ric O'Barry, has been nominated for an Oscar -- and deserves one.
I was motivated to write this story by yet more evidence of this humongous, multi-faceted and completely unregulated industry that has grown up to cater to/exploit desperate parents of disabled children. In some cases, the entrepreneurs are clearly well-meaning, but that doesn't change the fact that fortunes are being spent, and in this case, animals cruelly exploited, for usually dubious results.

an immigration "island of niceness"

2010-01-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

I have a story in the New York Times today about a humanitarian exception to our immigration laws...with an amazing photograph by the talented Theo Rigby.

California's climate change war

2009-12-31T10:07:00.000-08:00

Having finished my book on ADHD (due out in Sept. 2010) I'm now back to freelancing for awhile, focusing on my other obsession: global warming. Here's the latest, a blog item for the New York Times on the new attempts to overturn California's historic climate change law....

neurofeedback story

2009-12-15T06:29:00.000-08:00

My stories on neurofeedback's promise and pitfalls appeared in today's Washington Post.

It has already engendered several comments, most of them, alas, expressing the all-too-common pooh-poohing of whether ADHD is "real" or God's judgment on inept parents and our video-gaming culture. I hope the tone improves as today goes on and that at some point we can accept that ADHD (like global warming) is a genuine cause of suffering that should be addressed in more thoughtful ways.

the ones that got away -- the decline of local seafood

2009-12-11T08:30:00.000-08:00

I have another story in the New York Times today -- about the decline in local seafood in the SF Bay Area....

turning the idea of "self-medicating" on its head

2009-11-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

I have a story in yesterday's New York Times about doctors prescribing medical marijuana for adolescents with ADHD.

The advocates' view is that marijuana is medicine -- that it relieves suffering and should be allowed for a wide range of maladies, physical and mental. What I found from extensive reporting, however, is that the known issues with the drug, particularly the heightened risk of dependency among teens and people with ADHD, outweigh the immediate benefits.

There's gotta be something better....

rally for change on climate change tomorrow!

2009-10-23T09:55:00.000-07:00

Deeply depressing news today -- the number of Americans who believe in global warming has dropped to 57% (a drop of 20 points in the past year) and the percentage who believe that we are causing it is now only 37%!

What is going on? I think it's a lot of denial and distraction. And, man, I wish Obama would get out in front on this issue.

Tomorrow, however, there are more than 4,000 demonstrations all over the world to call for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to get to 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere (we're already more than 20 points past that, alas.)

Check out 350.org and be there or be square...

goodreads

2009-09-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

I was so happy to see in the New York Times book review section today that Michael Greenberg has a new book out I can't wait to read it. I'm in the middle of his last book, "Hurry Down Sunshine" about his daughter's bipolar illness, and, having become by necessity a minor expert in the sub-genre of parents writing about their challenging children, think it's one of the best -- sharpest and truest -- of the field.

dopamine

2009-09-22T06:38:00.001-07:00

Fittingly, I'm sure I had a dopamine surge from writing this article about the biology of people with Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, which appeared in today's Washington Post....

Lost at School

2009-09-21T06:24:00.001-07:00

I just broke my weakly self-imposed rule against using Amazon's one-click ordering option to buy a copy of Ross Greene's recently published book, "Lost at School." It sounds so much like my recent experience guiding a child through the nightmare of middle school -- the so-called "Bermuda Triangle of education" where so many kids indeed get lost, or maybe just wounded forever. Ross Greene is the Harvard psychologist who wrote the hugely compassionate classic, "The Explosive Child" . His theory is that all children basically want to be good, but some have a harder time than others. This new book is overdue, and I can't wait to read it.

power surge

2009-09-20T20:39:00.000-07:00

Today's New York Times reports how consumer appliances are accounting for a huge amount of the energy we use. And they're just talking about electronic energy. On this bright Sunday morning I wasted 90 minutes trying to add one song to my iPod -- and still didn't get it right; I'm going to have to bribe my son to help, because Apple makes you pay $29 for a single call to their support desk! How much time do we waste on a typical day with our so-called labor-saving devices? How many unnecessary calls do we make just because we have cellphones? How much work are we willing to do to be entertained?

defriending mcneil pediatrics

2009-03-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

With my book on attention issues still many months away from publication, I couldn't resist writing this op-ed, which appeared in today's LA Times:
Opinion
ADHD's Facebook 'friends'
Parents should be skeptical of a drug company's Facebook page on the disorder.
By Katherine Ellison
March 30, 2009
I'm the mother of a child diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. What this often means is I feel lonely and stigmatized, and turn to the Internet in search of support.

In other words, I'm just the kind of mom for whom McNeil Pediatrics, manufacturer of the popular, long-acting stimulant drug Concerta, is offering "practical, credible information" on its ADHD Moms Facebook page, launched last July.

"Our research is telling us that these women feel very isolated," company spokeswoman Tricia Geoghegan told me. "We saw these moms going on Facebook. They're going on WebMD late at night." The Facebook page was designed to "put the information in their comfort zone," Geoghegan said.

Naturally enough, this Facebook page, with its atypically non-interactive content, is especially comforting about the use of stimulant medications to treat ADHD. At a time of a growing national backlash against the $250-billion drug industry, parents taking this route -- even as a painful last resort -- can feel like pariahs. But McNeil, a division of Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc., assures us we have lots of company -- and furthermore, that the outcomes can be fabulous.

"After dinner one night my son sat and played with Lego for hours it seemed, he looked so happy, peaceful, and I turned to my husband and said, 'We did good,' " wrote Michelle Goodman-Beatty, a mother of four, a recent medication convert and one of the page's more than 8,000 "fans." Another mom boasts that her daughter has made the honor roll and "become a more focused dancer."

I'm not against medication per se. Concerta helped our family during a crisis, allowing us the emotional wherewithal to make difficult, time-consuming changes in our behavior.

But that doesn't mean that McNeil Pediatrics is my "friend."

Check out, for instance, the "advice" about drug holidays -- periodic breaks from medication. Federally sponsored researchers in a follow-up phase of the largest ADHD study to date, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in August 2007, found this common practice to be supported by clinical evidence that the initial benefits of medication "completely dissipated" for many children as they matured.

These authoritative findings aside, Washington pediatrician Patricia Quinn, a paid consultant for McNeil, declares in a podcast conversation with a mom named Laura Willingham that medication breaks aren't a good idea for "a good number of children," including Willingham's third-grader, Jackson.

(Willingham, in a telephone interview from her Texas home, described herself to me as an "average-Joe mom," but also acknowledged she'd been recruited to the Facebook page by McNeil's Chicago public relations firm, drawn by her musings on Cafe Mom, a social networking site. McNeil also paid Willingham a fee and expenses to attend a New York conference on adult ADHD.)

Kids like Jackson "really do need to continue on their medication because their ADHD symptoms are continuing to interfere with their functioning," says Quinn, who characterizes such interference as "problems with organization or listening or following directions or even interacting with other children."

Whoa, that describes quite a lot of kids, don't you think?

Quinn, herself the mother of three ADHD children, continues, in a tone that sounds urgent: "It's important for the family interaction. I know that by keeping my son on medication after school and on weekends and on holidays, we could have family vacations. We even went to Disneyland in an RV!"

My two Facebook friends then proceed to allay listeners' worries about reported side effects of the stimulants with some artful misinformation. "I did my own research," says Willingham, "and found that children who did receive treatment, whatever the path, typically have lower rates of addiction."

In fact, this long-lived claim was disputed in a peer-reviewed study last year in the American Journal of Psychiatry, which found there was "no evidence that stimulant treatment increases or decreases the risk for subsequent substance use disorders" in young people with ADHD. But Quinn doesn't correct the record.

Willingham goes on to say she'd feared the drugs would stunt her son's growth, until she talked the issue over with her pediatrician. "He told us we could expect some weight loss or no weight gain," she says, "and we talked about how to pad his diet."

Now, here's what I mean by "artful." My Facebook chums don't mention height, which you can't make up by "padding," unless you "pad" with growth hormones. But height is indeed an issue, according to that federally sponsored study, which found children on meds lose on average about three-fourths of an inch after three years, apparently permanently.

When I asked Geoghegan, the McNeil spokeswoman, why the company didn't make sure its podcast was accurate, she said, "Patricia Quinn is a doctor. I'm not. It's her medical opinion. Plus, she's a mom. Remember, this is moms talking to moms."

Oh, right! Shame on me for forgetting!

We ADHD mothers are really in a pickle. There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there about brain disorders and drugs and how best to cope with the difficult children we love. There is so much that even top scientists still simply don't know. What's more, a few of these top scientists have been revealed by recent congressional investigations to be taking questionable payments from ... yep, pharmaceutical firms.

The difficulty of doing our own, independent research when we're feeling panicked, isolated and stigmatized makes it all the more tempting to rely on people we feel we know, like the smiling Facebook moms or the site's former paid celebrity hostess, Deborah Phelps. (Phelps, mother of Olympic champion Michael Phelps, left the page in January, for reasons she and Geoghegan say were unrelated to the dust-up arising from a photo published that same month of Michael with a bong.)

Alas, there's still no such thing as one-click parenting. Our choices about how to treat our children's emotional and mental travails surely shouldn't be as lonely, painful, costly or shaming as they are today. But virtual "friends" aren't the answer.

Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent. Her latest book, "Hotheads: A Mother, a Son, and a Year of Paying Attention," will be published next year by Hyperion Books.

olga's girls

2009-02-12T08:48:00.000-08:00

I am in awe of 83-year-old Olga Murray, featured in a wonderful San Francisco Chronicle story Sunday (and yes I know it's Thursday). You have to read this story. Murray lives in Sausalito, but travels regularly to Nepal, where her extraordinarily successful program, the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation gives goats and other domestic animals to families in return for a promise that they won't sell their adolescent girls into slavery. Then the foundation pays for the girls' education. Reading this story is inspiring -- and a kick in the pants for all of us to think more and harder about the world around us...

random cheer

2009-02-08T11:29:00.000-08:00

...while worried and outraged about the fate of the stimulus package and Obama's depressingly short honeymoon, I've been finding little bits of joy and interest worth sharing:

A bellydancing class last week with the fabulous Julie Flynn Siler , the highlights of which were learning, from the master teacher,Dhyanis how to "polish your jewel" and practice drawing an exaggerated alphabet with your upper rib cage, while driving. (There will soon be a law against this in California.)

Belatedly reading a wonderful piece on animal assistants , including a parrot that helps talk down a guy given to homicidal rages ("You're safe, Jim. I'm here, Jim.")

Discovering an old, lovely song I'd somehow never heard before by Gil Scott Heron called "I Think I'll Call it Morning."

And, more on the bittersweet side, watching an amazing 2002 documentary called "Refrigerator Mothers", about the women who were blamed for their children's autism from the 1950s-70s.

While of course I should have been working on my book, sometimes distractions are essential...

no wonder we're doomed

2009-01-29T07:54:00.000-08:00

How many Nobel prizes does Al Gore need before he can get some respect?
Knowing he'd testified yesterday before Congress but not seeing anything in the New York Times, I went online, only to find the snarkiest, most empty story in the Washington Post, just making fun of Gore, pulling out all the old cliches from the 2000 election. This is one day after Gristreported that global warming ranks at the bottom of a long list of concerns -- war, the economy, Social Security, health insurance, education, and you name it, whereas none of these issues will mean anything if we get swamped by changes in climate. It's one more bit of evidence of the ferocious power of denial -- that, and the sad decline of newspapers.

the perils of parenting research, at home

2009-01-18T08:32:00.000-08:00

This morning, the New York Times , with that arresting photo of a baby with a camera strapped to its head, raised an issue I've been grappling with, in its story on research scientists who use their children as subjects.

For the past year, I've been working on a memoire/reportage on Attention Deficit Disorder, a glitch I share with one of my sons, and am using our lives to illustrate issues that millions of parents are coping with, since ADD, most of the time, is a shared family trait. The project has been almost completely a blessing, giving me the time to more fully understand a disorder that has long threatened our family's equilibrium, and to seek out and apply the best treatments among a confusing array. But it has also brought up some ethical issues, some of which are raised by the Times today. Is this kind of scrutiny fair? How much should be revealed; what must be kept hidden? The photographer Sally Mann took nude pictures of her own children -- were there any larger issues that justified that?

One way I've coped with these dilemmas is by, from the start of my work, assembling a Brain Trust – a group of psychiatrists, close friends, and relatives with whom I check in frequently for judgment calls and readings of early drafts. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that a parent's vision of his or her own child is almost always obscured by memory, fear, and desire. Sometimes –maybe even most of the time -- it takes a village to see clearly....

raising the motherhood bar

2009-01-16T12:12:00.000-08:00

Last night I read the last page of "The Grapes of Wrath"
to my ten-year-old son, with whom I've been steadily progressing through several classics I missed growing up. My worries that some of Steinbeck's material might be a bit too intense have been counterbalanced by the facts that:

a) He's learning about a world outside our privileged 'burb;
b) He has been sleeping through some of it anyway;
c) I just can't bring myself to keep rereading Roald Dahl, much as we both love him.

What drove me to blog, however, is more this question: How about that Ma Joad? Of all the literary portraits of mothers, was there ever a more haunting, complex icon? Haunting, especially, in the sense that she, absolutely alone, and by pure emotional force, kept her "fambly" going?

"She's a fictional character, mom!" my son said, when I expressed my admiration.

He's right, of course. So why is it that I've already gotten in the habit of imagining Ma Joad wagging her stout finger at me when I give way to anger or crave solitude or forget to put the gravy in the corn pones....?

p.s. Does anyone think Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" would give my son nightmares?
p.p.s. Thank you, Jennifer! You made my day!

their parents' hell

2009-01-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

It couldn't have been a better night to see Revolutionary Road -- on the last day of a loooong winter break in which my obviously bewitched laundry hamper and kitchen sink were continually overlowing, and the bickering over Xbox-playing limits was like being stuck in an elevator with hyenas. Towards the end, I was one of the few people in the theater smiling -- not just at the amazing performances but at the thought that maybe, at least in some ways, things have gotten better...

changing the present

2009-01-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

I was watching my husband watch "The Twilight Zone" marathon yesterday when I happened to see an ad for an inspiring new organization called Changing the Present . The idea is you can give a gift, such as fishing equipment and training for a village woman in a developing country, or school meals for 60 children for a month, instead of body lotion or another tie. The gifts support causes as diverse as global warming and animal welfare, via reputable foundations, and are promoted, smartly, with customized cards. You can search for gifts tailored to the interests of children, mothers, older people, etc.
This is a little late for holidays past, I know, and may take a year or more of expectations-managing for kids who'd much rather get "Call of Duty 5" (dodged that bullet, just barely, this year) but I'm optimistically keeping it in mind...

pooch therapy

2008-12-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

It's a crazy time to bring a dog into our family.
The economy is tanking; the planet is burning, and we still haven't trained our kids.
But last Friday, desperate for some holiday-weekend diversion other than video games, and after spending, I'll confess, months of staring at Labradoodle sites and visiting the wonderful Guide Dogs breeder program, of which I'll write more at some point, and of course also of tuning in to Pres.-elect O's pooch dilemma , because it really is hard to justify spending a couple thou on a designer dog, even if shedding is a problem, we visited the Marin Humane Society and there, in the second cage on dog row, was Daisy, nearly three years old, and giving us this look like, "What part of CUTE do you not understand?"
She's enjoying the backyard and squirrels and extra snacks and a great deal of cuddling from all four of us, but I don't know yet if she realizes how much work she has in store. I expect a lot from her, chiefly including: diverting my kids from their cursed electronic habits, and from fighting with each other, getting my sedentary husband out the door to walk her, keeping me company as I slog through rewrites on the five wordy chapters I should be working on RIGHT NOW, continuing to be non-shedding (thank goodness) and apparently (fingers crossed) house-trained, and, oh yes, being perfectly obedient in every way and not waking us at night. Talk about your audacity of hope!

momification? give me a break!

2008-11-24T13:16:00.000-08:00

Are you keeping up with the latest and most inflammatory battlefront in the "mommy wars," the questions raised about Michelle Obama's decision not to quit her lawyer's job to be...um, First Lady? Is the implication that she'd be advancing civilization to stay in Chicago? I hope instead that as First Mom, she helps direct some attention to the increasing price we all pay by trying to outsource childcare, and the forces in our culture that attempt to make this seem like a healthy option.

day of the dead

2008-11-22T18:41:00.000-08:00

"I hope you die," my 13-year-old son said to me last night, after I told him he had to stop playing his x-box.

We can leave aside for the moment the whole topic of what these *&^%$ games are doing to our children's brains -- and of who, exactly, was the negligent parent who allowed the xbox into our house.

Let's just limit this blog to what he said, and what I did.

My son has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, which, as I'm learning, is a major glitch involving what are known as executive functions, including self-restraint and thinking about consequences.

At times, ADD can resemble Tourette's Syndrome, that disorder that makes people shout out curses and racial epithets, against their better judgment.

"You wouldn't punish your child for having Tourette's, would you?" a therapist asked at a seminar I recently attended.

Nope. But the devilish thing about being the parent of an ADD child is that the limits aren't always that clear. The line continually shifts between explanation and excuse.

I've gotten into a habit of ignoring a lot of epithets and insults in favor of trying to strengthen a bond between me and my son that weakened alarmingly during a couple of years in which I didn't understand how he was struggling. I've made a vow to substitute appreciation and understanding for punishment and trying to win.

But last night was really too much!

So I took the pair of boxer shorts he wanted me to mend and placed them gently in his lap. "I love you, son, but words matter, and for the next 24 hours, I'm going to let you see how it might be if you got your wish." And then I stopped talking to him.

I didn't make him breakfast, lunch or dinner, throttling down that maternal instinct that really likes to watch him eat healthy food. (He cooked himself Ramen; I tried not to watch.) I made myself scarce for most of the day, and at home, drifted by him in the hall like a ghost. I didn't drive him anywhere, and when he called from the mall with his friend to ask for money, (the chutzpah, huh?!) I gently reminded him of his wish.

It's now early evening, and he just came into my office and said, "Mom, I understand why you did what you did, and I'm really sorry for what I said."

"Ok," I said, and left it at that. This was the most articulate apology he's ever delivered to me in his life. It's a step forward, I guess....

the "clean coal" bedtime story

2008-11-09T10:52:00.000-08:00

A mother's heartfelt thanks to Al Gore today for illuminating the illusion that has haunted the past election -- the idea that "clean coal" is going to help America confront climate change and dependence on foreign supplies. He rightly points out that, to date, there's no such thing -- not even a single demonstration project that captures and safely stores greenhouse gases. The one thing that worries me about President-elect (and I so love writing that in front of his name) Barack Obama is his pandering use of that stupid phrase during the debates. Let's hope we get some "straight talk" on energy during these crucial next weeks......

O

2008-11-05T05:47:00.001-08:00

It didn't seem possible until the last minute -- and then, what a world of possibilities! Starting with America's astonishing new ability to elect someone who speaks directly to the best of us. It's enough to make you believe in evolution.....

hopeful about Obama

2008-10-30T14:53:00.000-07:00

I write this with great trepidation, but I've finally decided to take my kids, aged 13 and 10, to an election night party. Anything could happen before Tuesday, heaven forbid, but I am encouraged enough by the polls and by the candidate to believe there's a chance that they'll have reason, right into their young adulthoods, to remember the night as a historic and so-necessary turning point for our country. It bears being with lots of other like-minded people.

In my own life, justifiably wary of politicians and in any case necessarily on the sidelines, as a journalist, I've never before been as engaged in a campaign as I have with this one, as much as I wish I'd done more. I've spent hours making calls to swing states, written letters to other mothers in Missouri, watched every single debate, even worn (eek!) an "Obama Mama" t-shirt. Worried, cautious, skeptical, doubting, I nonetheless appear to have moved past the point of praying that he'll get elected to praying he won't let us down.

teachable season

2008-10-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

I talk to my 13-year-old son almost every day about temperament, self-restraint, self-control and yada yada but never have I come across a teaching aid like this week's TV split-screen images during the debates.

We were driving to his middle school today when he casually mentioned he's getting a lunch detention for calling a classmate a "bitch."

"I don't think it's fair," he said.

I took a breath and asked him if he'd noticed the difference between Sen.s Obama and McCain during the debate -- specifically Obama's cool composure compared to McCain's impulsive, irritable, blinking and blurting.

"Which one looked better to you?" I asked, deciding on the spot I probably didn't need to go into the details about how McCain has been overheard calling his own wife the c-word. "Which one would you rather be like?"

He looked like it was actually sinking in. Which kept me smiling all morning. Along with the powerful subcontext of our conversation, which is that maybe, oh maybe, the guy with the good character is actually, finally going to win.

For more context on the character issue, make sure to read the amazing recent Rolling Stone profile on McCain.

And don't forget to vote. And help call swingstate voters if you can! It's for our children's future, in so many, many ways...

p.s. "The Mommy Brain" was recently referenced in a column in The Washington Times . The columnist, with whom I'd exchanged a couple brief emails, suggested I thought Sarah Palin was smarter for having all those kids. To quote T.S. Eliot, "That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all..."

david foster wallace...

2008-09-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

...wrote the best commencement speech I've ever read, and here's the site for it...

hopeful news on climate

2008-09-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

...but also a sign of how urgent things are. Nasa scientist James Hansen, who until now to the best of my knowledge has not played an activist role, is now helping toorganize young voters to demand action on the climate from this year's contenders....Let's hope they listen.

yes, ask sarah palin about childcare

2008-09-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

I do realize Judith Warner probably wasn't referring to my humble blog today when she made fun of women who, considering Sarah Palin, are so eager to know about her childcare situation.
But I thought I'd answer anyway.
Granted, we're at war. The economy stinks. Terrorists lurk. Our natural environment is collapsing. These are obviously priority issues. But that doesn't mean that any future U.S. leader should diss childcare, just because government after government has done so. It's not a luxury item.
After leaving my job as a foreign correspondent eight years ago, with two babes then under 4 years old, I chose -- because I'd worked long enough in a good enough job to have the choice -- to stay home but keep working. And I could write a book -- some day I may -- about my childcare nightmares. All the while, I'm always painfully aware that what I've had to go through is cotton candy compared to what millions of U.S. women who haul themselves to fulltime jobs each day because they have no economic alternative must endure. Including paying small fortunes for the privilege of knowing their babies are not quite safe, or perhaps spending the day staring at a TV screen.
This isn't "just a women's issue," as so many early feminists have disparaged it. It's one of the most basic human issues, directly effecting the emotional, mental, and physical health of the next generation.
Childcare belongs high up on our list of priorities, which is why it's not just okay but really mandatory that we talk to Sarah Palin -- and of course Barack Obama, too -- about policy ideas and personal examples.

palin's choice

2008-09-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

When I was making the rounds of radio stations promoting "The Mommy Brain," I used to get calls, quite a few of them from Utah, asking, "So do you get smarter the more kids you have?"

That was a tough one.

And frankly, I doubt it.

There's a limit, isn't there, to what one person can do, the responsibilities she can take on without dropping a ball? I'm talking, of course, about Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin, the presumptive Republican vice-prez. nominee.

To be absolutely clear, I whole-heartedly support a woman's right to choose whether to become a mother. Whatever benefits accrue to a mother from having children depend enormously on whether she's on board in the first place about the life-changing commitment, and whether she has even the minimum means to support her child without intolerable stress. It is stressful enough to be a parent in the best of times. Not to mention the stress for an unwanted child.

That aside, Sarah Palin's predicament brings up the knotty question about just how much a working mother can handle before sacrificing her children's best interests.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen any coverage to date about just how she does it. Is her husband caring for the five kids, including the infant? Does she have a grandma ready and able, like Michelle Obama? Sure, these questions wouldn't be asked of a man. But let's get real. It is the woman who gets pregnant, breastfeeds (if possible) and most often notices the runny nose, untied shoe, the sadness after school. You can out-source these jobs, but there's a price. And so much more if a child has any handicap, such as Palin's 4-month-old infant's Downs' syndrome.

"A learning disabled child is a career-killer," an editor recently told me. I've been thinking a lot about her comment in the days since the Palin announcement. It implies that a mother who has the resources to do so will sacrifice professional ambitions, because, to be blunt, the buck stops here. This isn't Palin's choice. And it throws light on a difficult and fascinating question unanswered so far in both feminist and anti-abortion debates. Does being "pro-life" stop at birth? Or is it a life-long commitment?

p.s., here's something funthat just came in over the transom....

end of summer reading

2008-08-18T06:54:00.000-07:00

What with taking on far too many projects this summer, I haven't had nearly enough time to read, but there are two books I must recommend in the few days before school starts.

One is Foreskin's Lament, by the genius memoirist Shalom Auslander . I zipped through this in one night and one Boston-New York train ride. Auslander writes of being "raised like a veal" in an orthodox Jewish family in New York.

The other, which I've barely begun, but which is almost unbearably gripping, is "Love You to Pieces," a collection of essays by mothers raising "special needs" children.

What most of all unites both books is a breathtaking honesty. I can't get enough of it...

a swami in tecate

2008-08-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Serendipity? Or a sign from the universe?

Each year for the past decade or so, I've been taking my mother to a wondrously offbeat spa in Mexico called Rancho la Puerta, where I talk about books or writing to help pay our bills.(This year I've introduced a three-day workshop called "Cardiac Writing" which has been the most fun of all.) Together, we indulge in a unique combination of food that somehow manages to be both decadent and vegetarian, hikes on the purportedly sacred Mount Kuchumaa, the kinds of mother-daughter talks you can only have when you're sharing a room together for a week, and, increasingly, meditation. This year, our visit completely accidentally coincided with an unprecedented program involving a Hindu meditation group called the Himalayan Yoga Tradition, one gift of which is that I just, this morning, witnessed my 81-year-old mother sit through an hour-long meditation followed by an inspiring lecture based on the Upanishads, one of the main points of which was that we may think we are parts of individual rivers, but we all flow into the same ocean. You get the idea... "He's got such a sweet face," my mom said later of our teacher, Swami Veda Bharati. "He looks a lot like my brother-in-law."
As I work on my current project this year, a memoir of raising a child with ADD, all roads uncannily seem to be leading toward the ashram, or if not that, the kind of insight that might help me, finally, tone down my lifelong hotheadedness. Little did I know I'd be taking not only my son along but my mother....

Rahm Emanuel wins this month's Mommy Brain prize

2008-06-18T20:25:00.000-07:00

...for finally treating oil companies like the spoiled, naughty children they are. Objecting to George Bush's effort to open offshore drilling, the NY congressman pointed out that they have 68 million acres of onshore permits that they haven't used. "It's just like I tell my kids," Emanuel said, with wonderful wisdom, "You're not going to get dessert until you finish what's on your plate."

distracted again

2008-06-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

I found the time last night -- not sure how -- to watch "Distracted" author Maggie Jackson being interviewed by a Business Week editor. She was terrific! I went back to the book, on my overloaded nightstand, and read it with new focus. Jackson offers some very important reflections on the nutty, fractured way most of us are living our lives, and particularly the way most of us relate to our friends. Our chronic split focus has become a cliche: the two dear friends meeting for lunch and talking to other people on their cellphones, or the teenager talking to two people at a time with a split screen and instant messaging. And as Jackson rightly points out, it is robbing us all of emotional nourishment. And we need to work to cultivate awareness to stop.
Earlier this year I made a pledge: with the exceptions of my siblings and a few longtime friends I adore who all live far away, I'm not conducting my emotional life by email. I figure if I have time to message someone local several times a week, I have time to meet them for a hike or coffee once a month -- that is, if they're worth the investment to begin with. It was hard at first to be tough about it, but it was soon liberating. I think we tend to fool ourselves about just how much of our lives can be "virtual" without doing damage that we only realize down the line...

not hot enough?

2008-06-09T11:58:00.001-07:00

CNN today broadcast a list of the top issues on Americans' minds. The economy, Iraq, health care, and education were all high on the list, and, to an extent, rightly so. But quite unfortunately, there was no mention at all of energy or the environment, which eventually, if ignored, will surely trump the rest. In my inbox today is a message from a new organization called 1Sky, which is bravely moving ahead to draw more attention to this issue. The email says that now that the "Climate Security Act" -- deeply flawed, primarily because it doesn't move nearly fast enough -- has failed in Congress, it's time to focus on a truly science-based approach. For our kids' sakes, I hope that sometime soon Americans start connecting the dots between, say, the disastrous recent weather in the midwest, the skyrocketing gas prices, and the need to rapidly overhaul our increasingly dangerous energy habits....

porn, porn, porn

2008-06-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, just one more post for this week, and then I'm putting on the virtual handcuffs -- I went to see Sex & the City last night, joining the biggest movie mob scene I can remember since the early Star Trek openings, and, yep, there was a lotta, lotta porn -- heavy doses of the traditional kind, about which I'll say no more than "Dante," combined with fashion-porn, and even closet-porn -- but underlying it all, and of course the reason both the TV show (which I never really watched much) (honest!) and this film have been so popular, is what boils down to friendship porn. Like who among us these days has anywhere near the kind of relationship portrayed in that wonderful scene where Carrie Bradshaw traipses across a snowy Manhattan on New Year's Eve to share Chinese food with her lonely single friend? It made me blue -- until I realized, with deep gratitude, that I was sitting with a group of seven increasingly exceptional friends, members of my writing group, North 24th, who thanks to a series of small miracles (we numbered 7 mothers and 1 doctor in the middle of a 12-day grueling schedule) honored a pledge to each other to stay out late on a Sunday night, even without the blue jeweled Manolos...

continuing saga of the TV lock

2008-06-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

So just a quick post to warn that I'm returning the plug locks I ordered from "Family Safe Media" because they lasted less than 5 minutes, alas! Not kid-proof! At least not in my determined household.
I called them today and they were great about taking them back and told me that they expect to have a stronger model sometime this week. I will keep you, literally, posted.
I googled some more this morning and found a cheaper lock that looks a bit more sturdy -- I like the description -- that it will "prevent a dangerous machine from being plugged in" -- but am giving this Family Safe Media group one more chance...will keep you posted...

power grab in hot tubistan

2008-05-29T05:10:00.000-07:00

I have an op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle n a Marin County effort to provide its own renewable power.

the key to peace?

2008-05-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

This three-day weekend pushed me over the edge. Too many arguments about the kids watching TV on sunny afternoons! And so I have finally carried out my old and until-now empty threat -- and ordered a gizmo to lock our TVs. It's pretty impressive -- there are in fact a whole bunch of devices you can try. Take a look at the site I found,called "family safe media." I'm trying the cheapest solution: an actual lock you can put on the plug. But I splurged on the three-day rushed delivery....who knows? Maybe it's an alternative to paying fortunes for summer camp.

half-full or half-empty, continued

2008-05-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

After filing that last post, I kept thinking how Panglossian and Pollyannish it may strike some...and yet I keep being hit on the head with examples of how the Internet pulls us together in meaningful ways as much as it can keep us in front of our screens. One of which is an upcoming meeting about the proposed pesticide sprayingover the Bay Area, in which concerned mothers are bringing together experts to brief us on what is really going on. I'd been pushing this issue to the back of my consciousness while trying to meet an editing deadline, but kept getting emails and links until I had to pay attention, and now I've not only committed to attending the meeting but pestered a bunch of friends via email to accompany me. The same thing happened with the disasters in Myanmar and China -- I couldn't get on my computer without somehow seeing some viral plea for contributions, and finally contributed. Sure, this kind of thing is splintering our attention. But it's also building our sense of connection and maybe also compassion.
For another aspect of what Internet culture is doing to us, however, make sure to read Emily Gould's hypnotizing article in the New York Times Magazinetoday. The kids had to wait until about 11 a.m. for their breakfast, but hey, it's Sunday...

half-full or half-empty?

2008-05-22T16:00:00.001-07:00

On my bedside (it's a big stack and getting bigger)(because I'm distracted) is a new book entitled "Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age" by Maggie Jackson. It is all about how technology is splintering our focus and making us all seem as if we have ADHD.
That's certainly a valid problem, but reading the book, I wonder about the subtitle. I do agree we all have to work harder to find face-time these days, and that this is sad, to say the least, yet I'm increasingly convinced that the Internet is pulling people together in ways we've never been before. And that this has tremendous potential for helping to repair the world.
One thing the Dalai Lama said in Seattle that struck me as so inspiring is that despite all the truly frightening news in the world, "people are getting better." Violence is going down, many kinds of cooperation are increasing. Consider the explosive recent growth in non-profits that are channeling people's best intentions, the fact that Silicon Valley gazillionaires aren't waiting until the Pearly Gates are in sight to start distributing their wealth.... I spoke today with Steven Swig, the founder of San Francisco'sPresidio College, who said that when he founded his school, which now offers an MBA in "sustainable management," he was "swimming against the tide." There were only two similar programs in the United States. Now there are more than a dozen. And half of this year's class chose the sustainable business path even though they had a choice of a more major business school.
Swig is convinced America is moving back to "community values" after a long period of individuality that didn't make anyone truly happy. He says there have been similar shifts in the past -- for instance from the Robber Baron days to Roosevelt's caring-government era. I asked him why he felt so convinced of this, and he answered: Obama!
A sentiment with which I can't help but agree. I just hope we all evolve sufficiently in time to cope with global warming...

wired

2008-05-20T08:34:00.000-07:00

Almost every morning I commute to my office, a remodeled tool shed about 20 yards from my kitchen. (Just one of the cool things about this setup is that even after June 1, I can do this while putting on makeup or talking on my cellphone, without violating California law.) Two days ago, en route, I've started crossing paths with two single-minded little birds -- they may be chickadees -- flying back and forth to build a new nest in a tangle of jasmine against one a bedroom wall. I've never actually watched birds build nests before, and it is dramatic. It's like they're on automatic pilot, working soundlessly together, little twigs in their beaks. They're on a tight construction deadline.
It makes me think, not for the first time, about the forces that govern human lives, and how we construct these elaborate, often transparently comic narratives over the most simple survival imperatives. Reminder to self, and to anyone who wants a major treat: reread John Barth's mind-boggling 1960s short story, "Lost in the Funhouse".....

beautiful books

2008-05-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

On this Mother's Day, I want to appreciate a dad -- David Sheff, the author of "Beautiful Boy" -- which I just finished reading last night. I don't think I've ever read anything so honest and touching by a father -- and a lot of it seems to echo what mommy-brain scientists have found: that the more time either parent spends with a child, the deeper the bond and the more each of you transforms the other. Sheff, who divorced when his son was young, spent years as a part-time single parent, which may well account for how devoted, engaged and sometimes, as he says himself, too-enmeshed, a father he became. It seems fairly clear that he ended up saving his meth-addicted son's life. A few times.

Also, in my blog about children's literature the other day, I made the terrible mistake of not extolling Rick Riordan's wonderful series based on Greek myths, starting with The Lightning Thief. The other day, we got a copy of the latest, "The Battle of the Labyrinth,", and first my 12-year-old and then my 9-year-old gulped it down within a several-hours marathon. The peace in the house was an early Mother's Day gift...

You can be truly feminist and mad at Hillary

2008-05-09T08:47:00.001-07:00

My husband says a colleague at his office is angry with Barack Obama for "not waiting his turn" and blocking the chances of what might have been the first woman president.

I've considered myself a feminist since my teenage years, which, to date me, came at the height of the feminist movement. I fought my way, tooth and un-manicured nail, into what was still a very male-dominated world of foreign correspondents, and stayed there for 15 years, battling many insults and wage-discrimination along the way. Today, I confess, I'm the kind of feminist who is home when her kids return from school and makes their breakfasts and picks up their towels from the floor (but I'm going to do something about that soon, trust me) and frequently cooks for her husband. Life is full of ambiguities.

I'd love to see a woman in the White House one day, but the more important thing is to have someone that men and women alike can trust. Our equal-opportunity problems of war, environmental disasters and recession are too serious to risk the alternative. Hillary is not trustworthy. Her comments about getting more votes from white working-class men is just the latest example. Her stooping to racism, pandering (with that gas-tax holiday idea) and innuendos throughout this campaign make her unworthy of women's allegiance. We can do better -- much better -- than that.

one of the best parts about last night...

2008-05-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

...was hearing Tim Russert on MSNBC saying that Hillary had hurt herself with voters by the pandering "gas tax holiday" idea. American voters CAN be underestimated!

sadder and more real than the death of Bambi's mom

2008-05-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

I've finally gotten around to reading The Golden Compass with my boys, who are now 9 and 12, and am amazed by the poignancy of so much it -- especially, of course, the parts concerning the daemons. Those, for all my fellow late-comers, are the usually warm and furry creatures that live with humans in the mysterious world Philip Pullman has created: separate but somehow united so as always to give solace and companionship. We have just reached the point where Lyra (stop reading now if it would ruin the suspense) abruptly encounters a boy who has been "severed" from his daemon, and is as horrified and repulsed, Pullman writes, as if she'd seen his insides spilled out. This boy is so utterly alone and bereft and incomplete -- and reading this brought home in an entirely new way to me how lonely it is to be human. We haven't yet finished this first book of the series, but I like it so much more than Harry Potter....Reading aloud has been one of the great joys of motherhood. Before this, we actually finished Great Expectations and, on a three-night binge during the last rainy season when we lost electricity, Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper. Huckleberry Fin, before that, was one of my favorites, and I'm wondering if anyone reading this blog has other suggestions, now that the summer is approaching?

where's the outrage?

2008-04-20T15:36:00.000-07:00

In honor of Michael Pollan, I just spent a sunny hour in my garden. It was so nice! The sun was out, the roses are starting to bloom; I chatted with a neighbor over the fence; there may even be hope for my tomatoes.

Like most people I know, I'm a big Pollan fan, inspired by how much he has single-handedly done to encourage us to eat more wisely. Still, when given the amazing platform of a front-page story in today's New York Times Magazine, I cannot imagine how he couldn't dedicate a single paragraph to highlighting how much our governments need to do to combat climate change, like yesterday. He even disparages this idea, in defense of his point, saying "to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking -- passive, delegated, dpendent for solutions on specialists -- that helped get us into this mess in the first place." Like Voltaire, instead, he urges us to tend to our gardens.

I do agree we all need to pay more attention to the way we're consuming. Yet I can't see how leaders, experts, laws, money and grand schemes aren't going to be the main priority, and, like yesterday, to give us any prayer of avoiding snowballing climate disasters. Climate change is an emergency, one that will require diplomats dealing with China, enormous investments in technology, construction crews putting up windfarms, local legislators cracking down on utilities, draconian campaign finance reform, and much, much more. And I wish Pollan hadn't used his bully pulpit to dismiss this reality.

holy rolling

2008-04-16T19:51:00.000-07:00

So, what was my 12-year-old son doing delightedly AWOL from school yesterday? Taking an impulsive journey to Seattle to see the Dalai Lama on the last of the five-day Seeds of Compassion conference. This is the son who was celebrated in Psychology Today Magazine
last year for calling 911 after I took away his Gameboy, and, frankly, I felt that the peer pressure of some 60,000 people in the University of Washington arena listening to stories of compassion from the DL and Desmond Tutu, and others, might help advance his moral education. True, we shared the same sheepish expression when we had to chant repeatedly, "We are the seeds of compassi-onnnnn; we're ready to sow the seeds of compassion, right now!" But it was nonetheless -- I suspect -- a transformative event for him (though he may only realize that decades from now!) and felt so right, in the non-hokey moments, to be turning our attention for a day onto the subject of human evolution. Or its potential, at any rate. I also really like the fact that the DL said repeatedly over the week that his first teacher of compassion was -- you guessed it! His mom.

My kids got a double-dose of role models this week, as my husband and I dragged them to the Goldman awards on Monday. This was the first time in the 5 years we've gone to this amazing ceremony that we dared to bring them, and they actually did us proud, not spitting on anyone from the balcony, and even discussing the heroic achievements of the half-dozen recipients afterwards.

...And, because it's getting impossible for me to wind up a blog without mentioning global warming, I just have to add that as ambivalent I've felt at times, living in Marin County, with the Priuses in the driveway and hot-tubs in the back yards, I was so proud this morning to see my home featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle as potentially the first big US county to opt for independent power. By the end of next year, the county and several other co-conspirators, may break away from our very profitable electric utility,

PG&E, which may well be one of the greenest power firms in the US today, but is nowhere near where we need it to be in terms of breaking away from fossil fuels.

Off to watch the debates...hey, maybe the kids will join us! Kids?... Kids?????

lifting depression

2008-04-12T20:25:00.000-07:00

Kelly Lambert, the scientist much-cited in The Mommy Brain for her pioneering work in investigating maternal smarts, has just come out with her first trade book, Lifting Depression. Her insights are just as enlightening and original in this important topic.

company when you need it most

2008-04-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Even more -- frankly, much more -- than I worry about global warming, I worry about the seemingly infinite variety of accidents, illnesses, spider bites, car crashes, or any other type of catastrophes that might strike either of my boys while I'm still living. I can barely imagine the kind of courage it would take to survive such a loss, and yet every year in the United States, some 2 million parents are faced with that challenge. Several years ago in Palo Alto, I lived next to a wonderful woman, Suzy Redfern, whose life exemplifies grace under these impossible circumstances. After losing her daughter, she joined with other grieving mothers in support groups, out of which has come a new book, "The Grieving Garden," co-authored with Sue Gilbert. Isabelle Allende, who lost a daughter, calls it, "a fearless, compelling, and ultimately healing glimpse into the heart of love and loss." I know, from knowing Suzy, that the book will offer generous helpings of solace and compassion.

we interrupt this silence for...

2008-04-03T12:15:00.001-07:00

I know, I know, I could be a better blogger.

But I don't want to take anybody's time for anything less than meaningful. And I still haven't figured out how to insert links -- there, I've admitted it. And as I delve into writing my new book about attention, I'm progressively hyper-aware of how much precious time I lose every time I let myself get stuck in the Web. (By the way, the wonderful writer Katy Butler (www.katybutler.com) told me a great trick for managing email. It's powerful in its simplicity. You don't open the program first thing in the morning. This works so much better than my ridiculous promising my self I won't check it every five minutes that I had to share it. But I digress.)

I had to check in today because of two things. One is to convey the shock, but, sadly, not surprise, of reading recently (while stuck in the Web) how a chunk of ice the size of Connecticut just fell from Antarctica. Another is the email I got today, despite my valiant attempts to ward off so many random attempts to grab slices of my limited capacity for focus, that does merit attention.

It's from a group called 1Sky (www.1Sky.org) with an invitation for thinking mothers to use the upcoming Mothers Day to make a statement about climate change. Check it out, in your copious free time. I'm putting it on my to-do list and hope you do too.

nbc nightly news

2008-03-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Just to let you all know that I'll be talking about the Mommy Brain yet again on TV tomorrow -- this time on NBC Nightly News, which is doing a piece apparently sparked by a USA Today report of "Momnesia."

John Edwards, we hardly knew ye

2008-01-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

Anyone who cares about the climate must be sorry to see John Edwards bow out today.
Of the top three Dems, he was the only one to come out early with a comprehensive energy plan (last spring, versus last autumn for Clinton and Obama)and took much bolder positions than the other two. (No new coal plants without carbon sequestration technology, period. And no nukes.) He was also the only one to put "global warming" on the front page of his website, right there, number-one on his to-do list. The only one to keynote an address of the wonderful Step It Up rallies to demand stronger action. And etc.
There's a terrible disconnect in this campaign, with apocalyptic environmental news almost daily that's completely unreflected in debates or on the talk shows. Reporters aren't asking and the candidates aren't offering views on how they'd move this country to the huge changes and sacrifices that will be necessary in the next four years to reduce the chances of weather, disease and food-supply catastrophes related to the climate. Edwards came closest to providing the kind of leadership we've been so desperately lacking on this issue, goading the other two to take stronger positions. It still wasn't enough. But I'll still miss him.

2008-01-23T11:22:00.000-08:00

For anyone tuning into this blog, thank you for your mystical patience!

I've been terrible about keeping it up lately, so many things have been going on.
But before it gets too much longer into 2008, I want to say (Happy New Year, by the way!) I've finally got a new book project. In December I signed a contract with Hyperion for a journalist/memoir/comic tragedy tentatively titled "Hotheads: A Mother & Son's Quest for Focus in a Distracted World." It's about a year in the life of raising my ADHD son in the midst of coping with my own flickering brain. I fervently welcome comments/stories/encouragement along the way. The due date is May of 2009.

moms rising

2007-11-21T15:15:00.001-08:00

Last Sunday, I took a walk with Joan Blades, the formidable co-founder of MoveOn.org and a powerful new group called Moms Rising . It was something we'd emailed about for weeks, a single hour snatched from the jaws of overscheduledness. In between periodically swatting down my rambunctious two boys, who'd been cooped up too much of the day and were squabbling, nagging and occasionally running into the street, I heard tell of just a few of the things Joan is doing.

The main crusade on Joan's mind that day has to do with flame retardants, for reasons I soon understood. As she explained, California law actually requires furniture manufacturers to use these potentially toxic chemicals, including Chlorinated Tris, a suspected carcinogen which was removed from children's sleepwear for safety reasons 30 years ago.

One group of fire retardents, PBDEs, has been implicated as a potential contributor to a variety of neurological and developmental deficits -- and has been found to have increased 40-fold in human breast milk since the 1970s.

The good news is Moms Rising has already won a round with the powerful lobbyists promoting these dangerous chemicals in the name of fire safety. Last month, the group helped encourage national lawmakers to remove a section in the Consumer Product Safety Commission Reform Act that would have increased the quantities of toxic flame retardants in home furniture.

Meanwhile, the group is fighting hard for other long-delayed reforms including children's health insurance and family leave. As Joan said -- I'm pretty sure she said it; I was brokering a sibling peace accord at the time -- there's no reason why these issues shouldn't be non-partisan. And it's heartening to see mothers using their precious "free" time to defend our stake in the future. As soon as I find a good sitter, I mean to join them....

tune in saturday for presidential candidates forum

2007-11-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Please excuse my copying this from a Grist email, but it's worth passing on. I am so glad this is being done!

This Saturday presidential candidates will gather in Los Angeles for the first presidential forum on energy and global warming. The event will be a critical opportunity to hear from the candidates on their positions and to further elevate our issues in the presidential election.

More than a thousand people will fill the theater to watch the event, and due to overwhelming interest, we are giving everyone the chance to tune in!

You can watch the live webcast at www.grist.org/webcast

The event, which is sponsored by Grist and Living on Earth, will start at 5:15 EST with a welcome address from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Each of the candidates will then get 30 minutes on stage to talk about their vision for solving our energy problems and answer questions on their policies.

Here's the schedule:

5:30 EST-Congressman Dennis Kucinich
6:00 EST-Senator Hillary Clinton
6:30 EST-Senator John Edwards

Head over to www.grist.org/webcast to watch the presidential forum on energy and global warming.

hilary's energy plan

2007-11-13T07:52:00.000-08:00

Announced yesterday, it's being hailed as ambitious (Grist gave it an "A") but alas, isn't bold enough to include a carbon tax. In fact, none of the candidates so far has dared to propose such a tax -- they're all talking about "cap and trade" programs, which are much less straightforward and have many more opportunities for shenanigans and misfires. Hilary's plan now matches John Edwards' energy policy, announced last March. I wish someone would break out of this timid pack.

al gore and the media

2007-10-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

A friend sent this recent story in Vanity Fair about the media's treatment of Al Gore -- that would be the pre-Inconvenient Truth, pre-Academy Award, and certainly pre-Nobel Gore, but including post-presidential winner Gore. It's extremely depressing to read, but I urge you to do so. In retrospect -- and why not at the time? -- it's just outrageous to consider the ad hominum and often erroneus attacks reporters published and editors allowed against Gore, in opinion pieces and "straight" reporting alike. Will it happen again with the current crop of Democratic candidates? NPR reported today that voters are leaning toward Democrats by 13 percent but that there's only a 3 percent gap between Hilary Clinton and Giuliani........

against despair

2007-10-04T08:02:00.000-07:00

I read today's new op-ed http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/38889F4B-19E3-4307-8835-D5B19F4ACB60/ by Thomas Homer-Dixon in the Times on global warming and feedback loops, and once again thought of climate scientist Stephen Schneider's recent warning that we have to avoid an "On the Beach" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_%28novel%29 mentality -- i.e. nihilism, about global warming.

Homer-Dixon calls on mothers to mobilize against further greenhouse gas emissions escalations. The basic problem is that to decide to work on this issue, you have to know enough about it to potentially thoroughly depress yourself out of any kind of action at all. I think about and write about climate change enough to have to periodically remind myself that it's not doing any good for my young kids for me to mentally inhabit a future full of food-supply problems, epidemics, heat waves and authoritarianism.

So what's a mother to do? The op-ed reminded me -- again -- that at very least, I want my kids to know I didn't ignore this threat. So I'm making a new pledge to a) compartmentalize my feelings sufficiently so that I can enjoy my son's violin practice without thinking "what's the use?" and b) take three steps a day to be on the right side of what Al Gore rightly has called the moral issue of our time. One of my three steps today will be to plan some kind of way to participate in Bill McKibben's next Step It Up http://events.stepitup2007.org/ demonstrations in November....

greetings from beijing

2007-09-20T13:36:00.001-07:00

I'm writing this from "primitive" China, where women get three months off work with pay after giving birth (four months if they are "late" mothers -- i.e. over 25). Sigh. I've climbed up to a glacier, watched the Yangtze River splash through Tiger Leaping Gorge, and breathed more than my share of Beijing's smog, but the most heart-stopping part of this trip has been watching all those babies on their mothers' backs or in their fathers' arms, healthy and obviously doted on. Lacking siblings may not be that bad in a culture that gives you such a good first start...

yay for the Speaker!

2007-08-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

This is truly good news -- though, I'm sorry to add, still not good enough -- about the House energy bill. It includes a rollback -- finally! -- on tax subsidies for big oil companies, and a provision requiring power utilities to deliver at least 15 percent renewable energy. Nancy Pelosi is a heroine to have done this, but bigger thinking is required. Remember, scientists tell us we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent as soon as possible.

to the best of our knowledge, sunday

2007-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

I just taped an interview about The Mommy Brain with Jim Fleming of "To The Best of Our Knowledge," the Wisconsin Public Radio show. It's for a program on the malleable mind, to air this Sunday. I've long been a fan of this show, but Fleming's fabulous mellow voice and delightful questions re-inspired me all over again.

a global warming petition

2007-07-30T21:12:00.001-07:00

The House votes this week on a bill, HR 969, that would require utilities to have 20 percent renewable energy. It's by far not enough, but it's something, so let's support it!

Can you sign this petition today? Clicking here will add your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/cleanenergyfuture/o.pl?&id=10885-4074013-ZCJSz7&t=3

world without us

2007-07-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

I went to see Alan Weisman, http://homelands.org/producers/weisman.html, an old friend from Mexico, talk about his book, The World Without Us, last night. It is an amazing work of art, politics and spirituality and is doing very well, as it deserves. (Who says environmental books don't sell?) I say spirituality because it's almost Buddhist in its serene acceptance of constant change, and its weirdly hopeful look at the resilience of life, with or without humans. If you get a chance, see him. And read it...

Yay, John Dingell (Whether he deserves it or not!)

2007-07-09T09:50:00.001-07:00

I wrote a blog yesterday praising Rep. John Dingell's proposal for a carbon tax http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/07/washington/07carbon.html?_r=1&oref=slogin without realizing the politics of it until some helpful friends pointed it out. In chagrin, I deleted the post. But then, thinking it over, I find it's still hard for me to believe any ethical politician would champion something so clearly necessary with the intention ascribed to him -- i.e. that he simply wants to get the idea out so it can be shot down, once and for all.

That's why I just called Dingell's office http://www.house.gov/dingell/contact.htm to give him my support. I left a message with the young man who answered the phone, and said I'm a mom, and because of that so heartily agree with his brave stance on this issue. I encourage other moms to do this too --- today. Let's get it started! I do think politicians have been underestimating the American public for years. It's time to show them just how much.

more on carbon offsets

2007-07-08T11:47:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Thomas Friedman for the nice nod in today's column regarding my Salon piece on carbon offsets.

shopping for carbon credits

2007-07-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging from a family reunion in Mexico this week in the wake of a poop-storm of comments on my recent piece on carbon credits in Salon.com http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/07/02/carbon_credits/index.html?source=rss . I'd been warned about Salon letter-writers but never expected they'd focus such an intense debate on the eco-sin of having had children. (For the record, I'm at peace with that decision, and my children are my main motivation to continue writing about the energy crisis.)

Many of the other comments focused inanely (no, really, I'm not mad!) on when and how I should use umbrellas or froth my lattes, which neatly emphasized my point that we are at a really wacky time in human history when individuals are going after each other for who's the greenest (shopper) of them all (the New York Times piece Sundayhttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/fashion/01green.html on this theme was excellent) and losing sight of the very very short timeline in which we must take serious action if we are to have a fighting chance of curbing climate change.

What makes the issue more serious is the corporations who are taking advantage of the delays and even making money on them -- I use PG&E, northern California's utility, as an example.

I recommend everyone tune in to the Live Earth http://www.liveearth.org/ show July 7, by the way.

mainstreet moms

2007-06-13T13:45:00.000-07:00

Belatedly...because everything is belated as this last week of school closes in, and every time I turn around I have to go bring a watermelon somewhere, I wanted to note that I went to a terrific presentation a week ago in Mill Valley put on by Mainstreet Moms --http://www.themmob.org/ --those ladies who provide soup and bite-sized political activities. It was all about Community Choice http://www.local.org/ and the movement by northern California communities to pull away from PG&E. It's a fascinating story and one I hope to follow -- in the absence of federal laws, local communities may actually make a difference with climate change....

that carbon-neutral hummer

2007-05-17T14:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, Jill (see comment) -- that could be true! Of course there are biofuels & biofuels, but that's another subject!

I have just been doing some research on "carbon offsets" (I'll post the story soon) and was already thinking if I'd heard the phrase "carbon neutral" one more time I'd scream, and then seeing it on a Hummer was too much. Why didn't the guy just say this car runs on biofuels?

sign of our wacky times

2007-05-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

On highway 101 Sunday, I trailed a Hummer with stickers on the back that said: "My vehicle is carbon neutral. What about yours?"
Yargh!

Delaware's offshore wind

2007-05-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

An update on the situation in Delaware -- this pertains to my recent story, "Gone with the Wind," in Salon, which is accessible on this site. On Tuesday, the Public Service Commission approved the bid for offshore wind -- a tremendous victory for this zer0-emissions, promising technology. It seemed like very welcome news for a state where the wind option is extremely popular -- until Gov. Ruth Minner, who has previously backed a "clean coal" project by NRG Energy, issued a press release yesterday that seemed critical of the wind choice that her own commission had reached and again seemed to back "clean coal." Three more state bodies have to weigh in on the choice in the next two weeks. Stay tuned....

and meanwhile, Happy Mother's Day!

optimism

2007-04-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

From Ignition, just published by Island Press, a quote by Jared Duval, national director of the Sierra Student Coalition:

"Global warming is probably the biggest threat that has ever faced humanity. That is what is most scary about it -- and also what is most exciting. A problem of this scale presents an opportunity for grand solutions: more just and sustainable ways of life that will not only stabilize the climate but also reinvigorate community, restore environmental and human health, and give us a secure world far more hopeful and fulfilling than the one we live in today."

In this spirit, I'll be joining the nationwide Step It Up rallies tomorrow, and hope to see you there!

mother: the job

2007-04-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting website, just forwarded by a friend:

http://www.motherthejob.org/events.html

what rough beasts

2007-04-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

If ever I needed justification for my opinion that that horrible Internet phenom, Happy Tree Friends, http://happytreefriends.atomfilms.com/ is a sign of our culture's decline, I've gotten it in the emails that have continued to come two -- count'em -- years after my op-ed in the Washington Post. For some reason, three or four have arrived just this past week, swearing and ranting and threatening me with a fate worse than that of the bloody cartoon bears/rabbits/squirrel victims, in defense of the writers' favored entertainment. I haven't been responding, but here's a blanket answer to these hot-blooded correspondents: the cartoon promotes savagery, ipso facto (look it up.)

stepping way up

2007-03-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

I just signed up to join a hike up Mt. Tamalpais on April 14, as part of the national demonstrations to call for our government to take sensible action to confront climate change. And bringing the kids. Check out http://www.stepitup2007.org

biased brains

2007-03-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

There is so much work needed to counteract the prejudice against moms in the workplace -- so thank goodness Shelley Correll is doing some of it.

In this month's issue of the American Journal of Psychology http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/ajp.html , Correll describes pioneering research exploring the "motherhood penalty" -- the reason working moms are still earning just 70 cents to the working man's dollar, compared to 90 cents for childless women.
Correll and colleagues from Cornell Univeristy sent fictitious job applications out, with similar qualifications varying only by parental status, and found the moms received significantly fewer callbacks. Evaluators also rated them less competent.

From what I've researched, this is the first major project to actually test employers' impressions of working moms vs. non-moms.

Here's some of the press release from the University of Chicago, which puts out the journal:

The researchers performed both a laboratory experiment and an audit of real employers. In the laboratory experiment, the researchers had volunteers rate a pair of equally qualified, same gender (either male or female), same race (either African-American or white) fictitious job applicants. The resume for the parent member of the applicant pair listed “Parent-Teacher Association coordinator” under the heading “other relevant activities.”

The evaluation showed significant and substantial penalties for motherhood among both white and African-American women, among them:
- Participants recommended 84% of female nonmothers for hire, compared to only 47% of mothers.- The recommended starting salary for mothers was $11,000 less than that offered nonmothers. - Mothers were rated as less promotable and less committed.- Fathers were offered the highest starting salaries.

“When the resumes for the two applicants were pretested without any parental status manipulations, no significant differences were found in how they were rated,” write the researchers. “Since the applicants being evaluated were equally qualified by experimental design, we conclude that employer discrimination is responsible for the disadvantages we found.”

Over an 18-month period, the researchers also submitted 1,276 resumes and cover letters for entry- and mid-level marketing and business job openings to 638 real employers. Childless women received more than twice as many callbacks as equally qualified mothers. Interestingly, childless women were also significantly more likely to receive a callback from employers compared to childless men, the researchers found.

“As the two studies reported here show, when women “behave as men do,” giving evidence of being a parent, they are discriminated against, while their male counterparts are often advantaged by their parental status,” write the authors. “That parental status disadvantaged only female applicants is strong evidence of discrimination.”

2 random thoughts

2007-03-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

I am actually drinking "Red Bull" this morning (I hear it's a "well-being" drink) to try to finish 2 stories on deadline but want to share 2 quick observations:

1. Friends in my wonderful writers' group came up with this great idea: Put New Yorkers and other challenging mags in the bathroom so your kids can't help but read them.

2. After a spate of unusually fun and absorbing work, after which I found I have been infinitely more patient and kind to my kids, I remembered interviewing the amazing neuroscientist Marian Diamond for "The Mommy Brain." The one thing she said that so struck with me -- after several minutes of talking about how good kids can be for your brain -- was that the thing her children remember best about her motherhood was how much she complained. These two things can exist at the same time. Women with active brains need to use them in many ways; I would never and have never argued that raising kids can be sufficient alone. It sure isn't for me.

serendipity

2007-02-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

I was standing in front of a clerk's cubicle at the Marin County courthouse this morning, getting a court date to protest a traffic ticket, and feeling the way you feel when you're getting a court date to protest a traffic ticket on a rainy morning when the first thing you did was clean your poor feverish 11-year-old's barf off the bathroom floor and when the work is never-ending and the roof is leaking and you're thinking a large scone might help, but not enough. Then I noticed that one of the clerks had xeroxed a 1200-year-old quotation from Li Po and taped it to her wall. "The mountain and I sit together until only the mountain remains," it said. Somehow, it did the trick. But I still ate the scone.

climate options

2007-01-10T09:57:00.000-08:00

....arms healing, kids back at school -- hurray! and not much time to blog, but wanted to get the following out asap, from the environmental newsletter Grist:
Step It Up
Introducing a brand-new, mass-protest climate movement for 2007
Bill McKibben is a scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College. His next book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, will be published in March.
?
Monday, 08 Jan 2007
MIDDLEBURY, Vt.
The most important question about global warming right now is: what do I do once I've changed the damned lightbulbs?
And one small answer is StepItUp2007.

This is the first of 12 dispatches I'll write, one a week through mid-April, that will chronicle the first nationwide do-it-yourself mass protest, and by far the biggest demonstration yet against global warming.?
If all goes well -- and by "all going well," I mean "if you help" -- then on Saturday, April 14, we'll kick off the approach to Earth Day with hundreds upon hundreds of simultaneous rallies all across America, designed to start pressuring Congress to take decisive action on climate change.
Americans will gather in iconic places across the country. Some will be familiar at a glance: the top of the Grand Teton, underwater off Hawaii's coral reefs, on the levees above the Ninth Ward, along a blue line on Canal Street in Manhattan that marks the city's possible new beachfront. Others will be less famous: the steps of your church, the picnic grove in your city park, the biggest barn in your county. But everywhere people will be saying, loud and clear, that it's finally time for serious action from Washington, D.C., on the mightiest problem the world has ever faced.?
All you need to take part is a crowd -- small in small places, bigger in big places -- and a digital camera. By nightfall we'll have a cascade of images for everyone, including local and national media, to look at. We'll have proof that Americans care deeply enough to act. It should be lovely in every sense of the word.
We're not an organization. There are seven of us: six recent college graduates earning the sum of $100 a week for their labors, and me, earning only the chance to exorcise some of the ghosts that have been haunting me since I wrote The End of Nature in 1989. For almost two decades, the few of us working on climate change felt like we were trapped in a bad dream, unable to get anyone else to see the monster looming behind them. In the last couple of years, that's begun to change. Thanks to Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Gore, public opinion has turned. Polling shows people know there's a problem, that they want action. And we have the scientists to tell us exactly what's wrong, the engineers and the economists to offer useful solutions. There have been dozens of good books in the last two years, and fine documentaries. Every Rotary Club in America has seen An Inconvenient Truth.
We have, in other words, all the parts of a movement except the movement itself.
Earlier this year, a few of us led a march across Vermont for global-warming action. By the end of five days and 50 miles, we had a thousand people marching. That was sweet -- it was enough to insure that all our state's candidates for Congress pledged to support 80 percent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050. But it was also sad. Because that thousand people was the largest global-warming demonstration yet held in this country.?
We could change that with a march on Washington. But traveling to Washington spews an immense amount of carbon. And anyway, for the first time in history, we have the tools to do this a different way: to assemble in the places that mean the most to us, the very places that will be wrecked as the planet warms, and make our point there. With digital video cameras and YouTube; with cell-phone pictures and Flickr. With the tools to let our political leaders know that people back in their districts care, that this isn't a second-tier issue -- something to deal with far in the future -- or with penny-ante compromises.
Anyone can play. Some of the day's actions are being organized by Sierra Club chapters and NRDC offices; many more will come from local groups who know that the cove or wetland or inner city or community garden that they've worked to protect and nourish is threatened by drought and sea level rise. Many more still will be organized by people who aren't official activists at all, just so concerned about climate change that they're ready to do something. We're using that same goal we used in Vermont: 80 percent cuts by 2050. But the numbers are less important than the intent -- it's time to finally start doing something, and something on the same scale as the problem we face.
We have most of the tools you need to make a rally work: banners, pointers on working with reporters, and more. And you have the most important tool: your list of friends and their email addresses. All you're asking is that they assemble for an hour on a Saturday to hoist a banner and take a picture. And each of them has a list of email addresses, and ...

ps

2006-12-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

neglected to mention name of my blessed writer's group, who filled the fridge and brought the software....

It's North of 24th, and while we don't have a website yet, you will undoubtedly soon be hearing more about my very talented fellow members, with great books coming out by Julia Flynn-Siler, Frances Dinkelspiel and Susan Freinkel and inspiring essays by Lisa Okuhn, Sharon Epel, Leslie Crawford, Jill Storey and Katherine Neilan....

i may keep the bandages on a little longer

2006-12-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

I have two broken arms, and my husband still can't remember to put the toilet seat down!
On the other hand, my kids are finally doing more chores, and I have never been so in touch with friends, some of whom have done the most generous things, such as filling up my refrigerator with meals and even giving me voice recognition software so I don't need to completely defy the doctor's orders. (The software, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, has worked out pretty well except for the times when it's like talking to a hard-of-hearing relative...)
One inspiring thing I managed to do last week was here a Murray love and speak no aim or read aloud than, oh I'm just going to type: I got to hear AMORY LOVINS speak at a benefit. He is the main brain behind the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is consulting with carmakers and even the defense industry to help get this country on a safer energy future. I highly recommend checking out their web site!

brkn arms

2006-12-04T18:57:00.000-08:00

If 1 more person tells me the universe = tryg to tell me something, i'm going to swat them w/my casts......

duh!

2006-12-04T16:35:00.000-08:00

Study Finds Working Parents Concerned about After-School Care, Companies Losing Billions in Job Productivity

One-third of labor force, including substantive numbers of both men and women, could be affected, adding to very costly workplace stress

NEW YORK, NY (December 4, 2006) – Millions of working fathers and mothers are less productive at work due to concerns about what their children are doing in the after-school hours, according to a new study released today by Catalyst, the leading nonprofit research and advisory organization working to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. The report, entitled After-School Worries: Tough on Parents, Bad for Business, was conducted in cooperation with the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

The study outlines many factors that contribute to employed parents’ concern about the after-school hours (called “PCAST,” for Parental Concern about After-School Time) and the consequences both for parents and their employers. Though a majority of working parents are faring well, the report finds that both men and women are vulnerable at significant levels to the negative consequences of PCAST, which potentially affects one-third of the labor force, based on census data.

“PCAST is an equal-opportunity issue, cutting across gender, race, and rank, from factory floor to executive suite,” said Ilene H. Lang, President of Catalyst. “Ultimately, reducing PCAST is a win-win proposition. Businesses can increase productivity and retention in today’s round-the-clock work environment by cultivating an agile, results-focused workplace, where work and life responsibilities aren’t mutually exclusive.”

With over 52 million working parents in the United States, PCAST contributes to worker stress that costs businesses between $50 billion and $300 billion annually in lost job productivity. This loss in productivity is manifested in a range of indicators, from minor disruptions to lower overall job satisfaction, according to the report. The study indicates that potentially at least 2.5 million working parents are overly stressed by PCAST and are particularly likely to bring their concerns to the workplace. These concerns, according to the study, are exacerbated for parents who have more responsibility for childcare in the household, who work longer hours, and whose children are older (grades 6 – 12) or spend more time unsupervised.

According to the report, based on a survey of 1,755 employed parents (44.7 percent fathers, 55.3 percent mothers) who work at one of three Fortune 100 companies across the United States, there is much that companies can do to protect employees against PCAST. When employees have control over their work schedules, for example, they are less likely to experience high levels of PCAST. Over three-fourths of the respondents said that the flexibility to arrive at work later, leave work earlier, or take off part of a workday when necessary significantly reduces general levels of PCAST.

Yet workplace supports are only effective if employees know they exist. The study found that many working parents are not aware that certain supports are available. The fear that taking time off for family reasons and using flexible work arrangements could jeopardize opportunities for advancement further prevents many working parents from taking advantage of available supports. Other Catalyst research shows that even women and men in leadership positions feel that using flexible work arrangements could jeopardize their careers.

Work programs and policies that reduce after-school care stress are often not costly to implement and offer a great deal of “bang for the buck,” the study asserts. Such supports are not targeted solely to parents of school-aged children; almost all employees rate flexible work programs as helpful.

Catalyst believes that employers of choice can prevent unnecessary worker stress and instead invest in productive employees and a more effective, agile workplace – the key to a sustainable organization. Strategies include:

Developing “The Agile Workplace,” placing emphasis on more job control enabling employees to “work smart” and perform better, focusing on goals and results, and granting all employees access to flexible work programs, including flex-time, telecommuting, and flex-space
Expanding supports that are specifically related to after-school care and investing in community services that support after-school care programs
Transforming workplace culture by better educating supervisors and managers about the benefits of an agile workplace and how they can support working parents
Actively communicating the availability of supports
Openly addressing misperceptions about any consequences of their use

Catalyst recommends that working parents better educate themselves about current or prospective employers’ policies. According to the study, they should inquire as to whether a company offers supports like the ability to telecommute on a regular basis, subsidies for after-school care, volunteer leave, back-up after-school care, and bankable hours, among others.

The study notes that preventing and reducing PCAST is supported by a compelling business case that, in turn, supports the health and well-being both of parents and organizations.

This study was sponsored by Citigroup, Fannie Mae, and Pfizer corporations.

Please visit Catalyst’s website, www.catalyst.org, for the full report.

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2 brkn arms

2006-12-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

on friday as i was racing to bring my 2nd grader his violin, in the babyseat of my bike, i braked suddenly & flew over the handlebars, landing on my outstretched hands & fracturing both of my radii. doc sez i shdn't type for a week but here i am --obviously part of what the universe is trying to tellme to stp doing-- becuz the webmaven just told me this site, i don't blve it,but he sd the site is getting 100 hits a day. ...
which seems like an obligation.
i know i shd probably be sitting back & just trying to take in this powerful message,whatever it is! maybe the world **doesn't** need me, or anyone, to be doing quite so much....
on the other hand, when i got to the class w/the violin (not on bike anymore) another mom, a saint, took me to the ER & spent the next 5 hours w/me. we talked the entire time. and whn i got home another mom who;d had my 2nd grader on a playdate had cooked both me & the saint dinner. so i also feel inclined to interpret the universe's message as to do **more** --once i get my arms back--for other people, becuz that is such a glorious m.o.
i'll kp trying to figr it out. stay tuned...

freeze that mood!

2006-11-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

Ok, on the basis of an inspiring 90 minutes last night, I am ready to (drum roll) endorse a product. As I've mentioned (a lot) I have very high-spirited (what my parents used to call aggravating) kids, who have issues with impulsiveness, self-restraint, and poking, kicking and yelling. Yesterday the Freeze-framer neurofeedback program I orderedarrived and instead of saving it for Hanukah as I'd planned (I have impulsiveness issues too) I installed it and both boys got right into a competition as to who could be most calm. What a concept! Instead of shooting missiles at enemy invaders, they were wrapping a sensor around their fingers which measured the "coherence" of their heart rates as they tried, just by determinedly relaxing, to move the image of a hot air balloon across a field.

What was especially moving for me about all this was watching the learning process in action. At first I saw them trying too hard to be calm -- brows furrowed, teeth gritted -- but when they started to get it right, a soothing bell would sound, and I could see the reinforcement taking place. By the time they got into bed, they looked amazingly peaceful.

We'll see what they choose tonight -- the balloon or enemy invaders, but the endorsement stands. I think Freeze-Framer's distributor, HeartMath, should donate this to middle schools.

anti-impulsiveness training?

2006-11-26T17:46:00.000-08:00

Like many moms I know, I'm distressed about my kids' irresistible attraction to computer games that as far as I can tell quite efficiently train the brain to be impulsive -- by shooting guns, firing missiles, etc. And I've been frustrated by the usual busy/guilty mom's dilemma: is it okay to cave and let them play for an hour (or, sigh, two) if it means I get to read the New York Times? So I've finally hit on an alternative idea, and I promise to file a report later on to let you know if it works. I just shelled out nearly $300 for a neuro-feedback program called Freeze-Framer. It measures the regularity of your heartbeat as you concentrate on getting a hot-air balloon to go over a field and not get knocked down by various low-lying obstacles. I tried my brother's version when he visited from Massachusetts and loved it. I'm planning to give the program as a Hanukah gift to my 11-year-old with a lot of hooplah about how it's a contest of mastering your mind. Time will tell if it's a good investment, but I'm optimistic....

holiday reading for kids

2006-11-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

I am NOT saying this just because she's a great person and dear friend.
Jill Wolfson's new book, Home and Other Big Fat Lies, is terrific. She writes with such perfect pitch and humor about the ADD-addled young heroine, Whitney, and her encounters with loggers and the forest, that both my 8-year-old and 11-year-old and the very mature 11-year-old neighbor were enthralled. Me too. Don't wait for the paperback on this one!

reason to believe

2006-11-08T13:16:00.000-08:00

I'm floating on air today, like a lot of other mommies who are nervously looking to their children's future, seeking some reason for hope.
Just one thing holds me back from breaking out the champagne. Will the Democrat win mean we'll actually get a saner energy policy and some chance of holding back climate change? That truly remains to be seen. A great disappointment for me last night was watching California's Prop. 87, which intended to raise money for alternative fuels, go down in flames. It wasn't just the YES folk being outspent -- they were devastatingly out-messaged. The proposition was characterized as a "gas tax" and a project of "starlets" (that last thanks to the snarky LA Times). Both the LA Times and SF Chronicle recommended a No vote, based partly on the notion that some of the money would go to profit alternative-fuel investments by backers. To put it bluntly, I think it's just stupefyingly wussy to bring up this "conflict of interest" when the oil companies are running federal energy policy.
But for just today -- let's float a little more...

scarlet begonias

2006-11-04T07:09:00.000-08:00

"Once in awhile you get shone the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."
Doesn't that Grateful Dead line fit bringing up kids? The other afternoon my so-often so-difficult son was sitting at the kitchen table and said, "Mom, the kids in my class were teasing (X) and I told them not to." What seemed like years ago, I'd told him about X's difficulties in life, and was sure, like most things I say, that it went in one ear and out the other. But here was a small, sudden rainbow, reminding me that ideal motherhood is a state of mind -- the more patient and dogged and unattached to immediate results you can be, the more little gifts may come your way....

moms rising

2006-10-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

Reporting belatedly on the Litquake event Oct. 14th -- it was wonderful, chiefly including sharing the virtual stage with such inspiring fellow writers. It was particularly great to meet oan Blades, a co-founder of one of my favorite groups, MoveOn.org, and author of The Motherhood Manifesto. She has recently formed a new group called MomsRising.Org, which definitely bears watching. One very encouraging sign: Blades told me she is seeking partnerships with many of the already-established pro-parenthood groups, like Mothers Ought to Have Equal Rights.

stop ironing the diapers!

2006-10-11T12:17:00.000-07:00

That's a quote from one of my favorite authors, Barbara Ehrenreich, which I thought of today after I called another mom just to make sure she didn't mind that while her 8-year-old son was over on a playdate, my 8-year-old's 11-year-old brother sold him a bunch of Pokemon cards. For the probably inflated price of $3. I felt responsible for making sure she knew and didn't think we'd entrapped him -- but hanging up, realized we both have lots better things to do. Paying older brothers for probably worthless Pokemon cards is part of the price of growing up, after all, isn't it? Among activities actually deserving our attention, try: Making a Difference Day is Oct. 28th. If you haven't gotten your kids involved, there's still time!

attention to intention (and vice versa)

2006-09-24T15:34:00.000-07:00

In these Days of Awe between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, I'm thinking a lot about what kind of year I want to have -- and finding inspiration in some reporting I've been doing.

While working on the recent story about Buddhism for Psychology Today (you can find it on the Mommy Brain home page), I came across this quote by William James:

"The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will. An education which would improve this faculty would be the education par excellence."

More recently, researching a story on neuroplasticity, I read about how UCSF neuroscientist Michael Merzenich and students, in 1993, repeatedly exposed monkeys to particular sound frequencies. When the monkeys were trained to pay attention to the noise, the result was clear in the reorganization of their auditory cortexes. But when they were distracted, there was no such neuroplasticity. This led Merzenich and his student, R. Christopher deCharms, to write: “Moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on our material selves.”

We create ourselves, and our reality, by what we decide to pay attention to. This implies we have to be the kind of people who make good decisions. So how do we start?

One breath at a time....

remarkable climate news

2006-09-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

Thisis really getting interesting!