Lessons from Our President

I originally published this here because it started out as a post about buying Al Capone new books. It got picked up in a trending topic on Twitter last night and I got a couple hundred hits in ten minutes, 3 pieces of hate mail (two were really nasty, but my favorite was "You call me ignorant for keeping my child home and you named your kid Al Capone."), lots of positive comments, and probably some really confused people who ended up on my other blog thinking it was about censorship, Obama, children's literature, etc and discovered that really it was an isolated post buried among 1 million reasons I think I have the cutest baby on the planet. So I'm reposting here as well...

Those who know me, know that I feel very strongly about discussions of appropriateness and children (and their books). I write about* children's books for a living. I can honestly say that I have one of the best jobs in the world, yet on days like today I get very frustrated.

This morning President Obama spoke to school children directly. Our local newspaper ran an article about the speech and posted the entire text of the speech online and still parents went ballistic. They called school board members, they kept kids out of school, they declared it propaganda, they demanded alternative assignments, they filled the newspaper comments section with hateful and racist comments. All of this name calling and hate speech because the President of the United States wants kids to stay in school, pay attention, live up to their potential, ask questions, watch less tv, work hard, and never give up. If this is brainwashing, I'm okay with these messages.

What I'm not okay with is parents who try to take over the schools because they don't like the President. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to skip school if you don't like the person who is talking. I'm not okay with teaching kids that you don't even have to listen if you don't agree with a person. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to make up your mind before you know the whole story. I'm not okay with teaching kids that it's okay to disrespect the President, their teachers, or other adults role models. I'm not okay with teaching kids that there is only one right way of thinking or one right answer to a problem. I start every semester by telling my students that I will never ask them to agree with everyone's point of view, but I will ask them to listen and treat each other with respect. It makes me sad when I see parents who use children as an excuse to perpetuate intolerance, disrespect, and hatred.

If Al Capone was old enough to understand and watch television, I would have hoped that he would have watched in school and we would have watched again as a family after school. Since he's not old enough and won't be any time soon, I went online and bought books that are often banned or challenged by people who feel that they have the obligation to protect children from the harmful ideas like diversity. Unfortunately, he won't be able to grow up and say that he remembers when he listened to President Obama at school, but maybe he will grow up being open minded enough that when classmates or their parents try and close down conversations with narrow minded, ignorant rhetoric, he will fight back. Hopefully he will never call our President by hateful slurs because he doesn't agree with his ideologies. Hopefully, he will never make fun of a classmate who's skin or family or religion or ability is different from his own.

We can't afford to buy Al Capone all of the books that I would like him to read, but today I added a few more to his library. Here's what I got him in honor of all of the ignorant parents who think it's okay to breed hatred and intolerance in children.

• The Family Book--because families come in all different shapes and sizes
• And Tango Makes Three--because some of those families have two mommies or two daddies
• The Lorax--because recycling is a good thing and we should take care of the environment
• In the Night Kitchen--because naked baby butts are not bad
• Halloween books--because Halloween is not the work of the devil

Obviously, this is a mishmash of books. Diversity and tolerance cannot be taught in a single book, but when children grow up with images of diversity, hopefully they do not turn into close minded adults.

*For those who don't know me well I do NOT write children's books, I write about them. I teach critical analysis of children's and adolescent literature to future teachers.

Identity, Holden Caulfield, and Flavor Flav

I think I might just create an Eng 101 assignment around this video.

No YouTube, I'm Screwed!

I think I might finally be outed as the teacher who does lesson plans on the way to class and puts everything off until the last minute. So far I've managed to fool people up until this point, but I think I may be in trouble this semester.

I just got an email that informed me that one of my students this fall is hard of hearing. It was a very nice email explaining that they are notifying me ahead of time because some of the modifications may impact my class planning.

Most of them I'm good with...

• wearing a voice amplification system
• not standing in front of the interpreter (if they send one)
• not giving oral exams (as long as she doesn't mind reading quizzes on post-its, I'm good)

Some I'm a little leery of...

• audio recording to be transcribed later for student. It's not that I don't want people to know what is said, but I'd rather not have a permanent record of the times I sound like a total idiot. On the upside, this should make writing the list of terms for the exam much easier.
• repeating/summarizing comments and questions by people not wearing the mic. I know I'm going to forget to do this.
  

And then I read this...

Closed-captioning is required for all videos, internet videos and self made videos when being shown in class.

Um, last time I checked YouTube isn't usually captioned. I can't teach without YouTube. I'm all about disability accommodations, but no YouTube, this is going to be a serious problem.

So I email the Disability Concerns person and explain my issue and include lots of really good reasons why I need YouTube to teach.* She agrees that it is a integral part of my curriculum and notes that occasionally professors include videos that aren't and that Disability Concerns will be happy to caption any YouTube video that is part of my curriculum.

Problem solved! Not so fast; there's a catch. I must submit all videos I want captioned at least ONE WEEK before I plan on showing them. One week; is that a joke?

So this week's task, scour the internet for any YouTube video I might show this semester and start submitting. I wonder if I can get the university to pay for my Netflix for the semester in order for me to have real clips with real captioning?

*None of which were "what am I supposed to do when I don't have lesson plans?"

Things I Can't Say

So in the interest of keeping the peace, I have to keep my mouth shut this weekend. I've realized this is slightly easier with a baby because I can hide in a back room while pretending to nurse, rock, or just "check on" said baby. Here are some of the things I've thought but couldn't say in the last 24 hours.

• Clearly being retired is so much more work than being a grad student with a baby. What was I thinking?
  
• Pee on her!
  
• Am I supposed to apologize for buying food in a grocery store?
• You're not supposed to do Tummy Time after a baby eats, but what the hell, it's not my carpet.
• I really have to go to the bathroom (while pretending to be nursing a baby in the back room)
• Why didn't I bring snacks and a drink in here? (while pretending to be putting a baby to sleep in the back room)
• Holy Shit! Did you just say "there's some really good wine out there?"
  
• I should have packed a bottle of wine.

So far, I think I've stayed out of trouble. And since the ancient CD player is broken, we have to play B's lullaby off of their laptop. Yay for internet access in the baby's room. Someone remind me to stash our laptop in B's room the next time we have visitors.

Twilight Irony

When I went to buy the second book in the Twilight series for my book group, this is what I found on the display. Leave it to a "lost" book to explain the meaning of vampire metaphors.

Patron Saint Cake

I may have to name all of my children after saints who also have their own brand of liquor. Al Capone* is being Christened this weekend and we are having a party. Every good party needs desert. Enter St. Brendan's Irish Creme Cake. We discussed using the bottle as a baloon weight, but decided that might be a little much.

Our first child will grow up with a Patron Saint Cake.

1 (18.255 ounce) box butter cake mix

1 (3.4 ounce) box instant vanilla pudding mix.

4 eggs

½ c. vegetable oil

¾ c. Saint Brendan's® Irish Cream Liqueur

1 (18.255 ounce) box chocolate cake mix

1 (3.4 ounce) box instant chocolate pudding mix.

4 eggs

½ c. vegetable oil

¾ c. Saint Brendan's® Irish Cream Liqueur

Frosting:

2 cans cream cheese frosting.

4 Tbs. St. Brendan's Irish Cream

Combine with electric mixer

Preheat oven to 350˚.

NOTE: Prepare each cake mix recipe sepatately

In a large bowl, combine cake mix, pudding mix, eggs and oil. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add Saint Brendan’s®. Spoon into 9 inch round cake pans. Bake 25-30 minutes or until top is golden and sides pull away. Cool on wire rack.

Alternate layers of chocolate and butter cake mixes and frost with cream cheese frosting.

*To learn more about Al Capone click here. I promise I didn't really name my child Al Capone.

Confessions

I never realized how anti-censorship I was until I realized how much age (in)appropriate material we give our own child. Here's this week's list:

• I read Harry Potter 1 and 4 aloud to him last week.
• Last Friday, we had a prolonged discussion (okay more of a lecture) about road trip metaphors.
  
• Rakicy read Once a Runner to him. New words include: bastard, shit, etc.
  
• I told Rakicy to turn on the television as background noise. An hour later I realized that the background noise was Sahara.
• Rakicy turns on the radio or plays music on the computer when Boutros if fussy. Yesterday, I discovered them listening to Lil' Wayne's Lollipop.

Clearly, all of this exposure has had no lasting effect.*

*I say this had more to do with being a First Friday baby then being exposed to older reading material.

Paradox

I'm toying with the idea of taking my blogs down for a while. Theoretically, I could just not publish anything, but I'm actually thinking that I might just move them all to password protection and not give anyone the password.

I started blogging with the idea that among other things it would also give me a place to express my feelings. This was more true with the baby blog than this blog, but over the last several months, I've felt less and less free to honestly express my feelings and more and more like I'm carefully constructing posts with the feelings/reactions/judgements of a handful of readers in mind.

Part of me realizes that my impulse here is entirely emotional. I've been in non-progressive labor since Wednesday and possibly may stay in non-progressive labor for another 10 days (long story). Part of me really wants to write about these experiences, but the realistic part of me knows that I really can't handle even the slightest judgemental or gossipy reaction to those posts.

I'm not sure what to do about that. I could move the blog to private and only allow a handful of people. If I go this route, I run the risk of seriously offending some family members, not to mention that I would have to hide the posts once I opened the blog back up after the baby was born. I could just not blog and write elsewhere. Although one of the things I like about blogging is having a supportive audience. Journals don't come with supportive audiences.

The best solution (for me) might actually be to write a blog post about what I really need at this point. For example, I don't need you to call me early in the morning to see if I'm in labor. I don't need to you tell me that my doctor just wants to make money. I don't need you to tell me when it would it would fit best with your schedule for me to have the baby. I don't need you to tell me what you think of my choices to breastfeed, use cloth diapers, get an epidural, etc. I don't need you to compare the exhaustion of me having contractions for the last 3 days to you not getting a status update for several hours. I don't need you to tell me that your really quick labor/painless/easy labor was because you prayed. All of things, however, are directed at a handful of people who will either get really upset by a post like that or will assume that I'm talking about everyone but them.

So, in the meantime, I draft a post for that blog that I likely won't ever post and I vent on this blog because I feel slightly more free to say what I want.

Not my Hero...

Last night was our last childbirth class, and the last hour was supposed to be devoted to teaching relaxation techniques. I'm actually a fan of relaxation, but last night wasn't exactly what I would call relaxing. Here's why...

Having very pregnant women lay on a concrete floor (okay, I realize this can't exactly be helped) is never really the pinnacle of relaxation. To make it a little more awkward, the substance abuse meeting across the hall decided that watching childbirth class through the door was more entertaining than anything else they could do on their break. I'll admit that by this point I was seriously questioning my ability to pretend that I was completely relaxed and lying on a beach somewhere.

The true deal breaker, however, was not the floor or the rehab audience, but when the instructor talked about music and then turned on Mariah Carey's Hero, I was done. It didn't help that we'd just finished a cheesy 80s Lamaze video that featured the dad changing into a muscle shirt for the delivery, but I'm pretty sure if their had been a exam, Greg and I would have failed. Here's to hoping that Michael J. Fox (circa 1980s with lots of hair gel and a muscle shirt), Mariah Carey, and local substance abuse support groups stay far far away from my hospital room.

FAQ

Q: Do I need a works cited for my (insert assignment here)?
A: Yes, if you are asking this question, then the answer is probably yes. Clearly you have some item that you think might go on such a document, so you should probably have a works cited page. If you don't know what you would put on the works cited page, then you probably wouldn't be asking this question. I promise you that you will not get in trouble if you create an works cited page that your instructor doesn't want, but if you repeatedly ask this question for every assignment, you're grade might actually start to suffer.

Boots

Another reason it shouldn't snow in April...I'm stuck wearing my snow boots. It was icy this morning and it seemed like a really good idea to just wear my snow boots for extra traction. Um, I can't get my snow boots off now. So I sit on the couch grading watching tv and wearing my red snow boots. I forgot that I had be able to pull my boots off at the end of the day and that that would require being able to reach the bottom of my feet. I'm glad it didn't snow on Friday when Rakicy was out of town or I might of had to sleep in my snow boots.

Child Actors: Terrorized or Talented

The Today Show did a story this morning about a recent controversy over a NYC public service announcement about smoking. The controversy, according to the article, isn't about the message of the psa as much as it is about whether or not the boy in the ad is really acting or whether producers actually made him cry. Here's the full psa.



I really wish this had happened back at the beginning of the semester when we were discussing Shirley Temple and child actors, but I still find the arguments really interesting. Personally, the ad is very had to watch, but then again a lot of the stop smoking psa are hard to watch. According to the story, viewers were flooding DHS with calls about the appropriateness of the ad. Most of these complaints claimed that the ad was more too emotional, both in the sense that it "manipulated viewer's emotions" and the sense that the boy's emotions were too powerful to be acting.

This begs the question how old does someone have to be in order to act and/or manipulate their own emotions. I've babysat for plenty of toddlers who are quite capable of turning tears on and off. If we are going to make the argument that this child is too young to act in this way, then theoretically, he would be too young to be acting in another (happier) situation as well.

I find it interesting that while crying or upset children appear in movies and on television shows, the real objection here seems to be to the use of the child body to manipulate adult behavior. No one seems to be concerned about the welfare of the child actor when the child cries over the death of a pet in a movie. So why is this child actor so much more traumatized?* The comments about the story reveal that maybe this isn't really a case of a traumatized child or the impossibility of child actors.

The newsvine comments on this story quickly shifted away from outrage about the kid crying and toward outrage about the ideological content of the psa. One person noted:

So, if I don't have kids, I don't have to stop? Thanks!

And several other objected the idea of the psa in general:

What the hell is the government (any level of government) doing wasting our tax dollars to advertise! Friedman can kiss my a**! I dont need a nanny from the government taking care of me based on his vision of what is best!

I'll spare you the couple of other thousand comments about whether or not smoking (first-hand or second-hand) really causes cancer, what the government should or should not spend money on, and what products should or should not be taxed. There were even some comments that made a case for legalizing marijuana.

While I'm not sure that I can quite defend Donny Deutch's claim on the Today Show that

“Kids are very good actors. Maybe sometimes they make a kid cry, but if it saves 20,000 lives for five seconds of crying, I’ll take it.”

The outrage, at least from the internet comments, seems to actually have little to do about the actual child. The outrage instead seems about using the child in an ideological way.** Nearly all of the adults who have commented on the psa talk about the manipulation of the adult audience through the image of the crying child. While I will admit that the narrator does address the ad at parents, a think are far more interesting discussion would be about the manipulation of child audiences through images (however constructed) of children, but that will have to be a blog post for another day.

*The comments that objected to the child being made to cry, claimed that this would traumatize the child actor. I don't think I buy this extreme either, as by that theory any child who was ever told no or had something taken away would be forever traumatized. A television producer (stranger) who takes away a toy to get the child to cry might actually be less traumatizing than an older sibling who takes away a toy.
**Clearly the people who raised such objections have never taken my children's literature class or they would have realized that the child is always used ideologically.

Banned for Doping

According to Google, I am currently ineligible to participate in the Olympics (or any other professional sport) because of doping.

I'd admittedly really bad at "staying off my feet" and since I don't watch soap operas, I tend to only manage to follow these instructions if I can surf the internet.* Yesterday, I got put on Terbutaline to stop my contractions and when I was googling this drug, I was amused that articles about the this substance being banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency** routinely include the factoid that it is used to stop labor as well.

Given that Terbutaline isn't even usually prescribed until the third trimester of pregnancy, I'm wondering if this is a case of Wikipedia providing a little too many random bits of information for newspaper reporters or if there is a large number of women who are 7 and 8 months pregnant and also competing in professional supports. Clearly this news means that my plans of becoming an Olympic gymnast must be put on hold until I receive my Theraputic Use Exception.


*In December I had to stay on my left side for about a week which was extremely inconvenient for web surfing even on a laptop.
**It's primarily an asthma drug that increases your lung capacity by relaxing the smooth muscles in the lungs.

Superheros

I'm a little disturbed that this guy just happened to have a Spiderman costume on hand, but this is a very cool story.

Earth Hour Paradox

We try to be ecologically conscious, so while I applaud the idea of Earth Hour, I'm also a little frustrated by the whole "turn off the lights for an hour and save the world" message. Really I'd rather people try something (for more than an hour) that they can incorporate into their everyday lives (recycling for example).

Anyway, all that said, we (unconsciously) participated in an Earth Hour paradox at our house. I totally forgot that Earth Hour was tonight. Most of our lights (out of habit) were turned off, but all evening I was doing laundry in hot water and drying it on high heat. Why might I be doing such an environmentally unfriendly activity you might ask, because I was prepping cloth diapers (unbleached cotton has to be stripped of its oils in 6 prewashes before it becomes absorbent). We aren't only using cloth diapers because of environmental reasons, but I do have to admit that when I realized that I'd spent all of Earth Hour running our washer and dryer at maximum carbon output, I felt a little guilty. Not guilty enough to abandon cloth diapers and throw a disposable diaper in a landfill for 500+ years, but still a little guilty. At least I was consuming large quantities of electricity during the ultimate off peak time.

Keys

I'm really glad that no one measures fitness to be a parent by the ability to keep track of one's car keys and/or not lock one's self out of the house/car/office/all of the above.*

This morning I lost my car keys, then found my car keys, then 15 minutes later walked out the back door and shut the door (which was locked) with my keys in their new "safe" spot. B was on her way to come get me, when I remembered that I had been messing with the egress window that morning and likely did not lock it back. So I broke in my house, got the keys, and hurried to school.

Both of my classes were working on activities today that didn't require me to provide any materials, so I decided to leave everything in my office while I taught 170. Um, my office door locks automatically. Repeat above situation, this time with college secretary.

Is it wrong that while I was walking through Meijer this afternoon, I saw one of those pacifier attachers and instantly thought that maybe next fall, I will leave my keys attached to the baby? I mean, theoretically, I shouldn't lose my keys and the baby.


*Actually, there is a really good reason this story is appearing on this blog and not elsewhere. :)

Baby Disrupts Student Learning

I get lots of weird student email that I find amusing, but I may have to print this one out for the baby book.

Dear Mrs. XXX,
I wanted to know if it would be okay if I switched seats in your Eng XXX class. I know it's really late in the semester and everyone sits in the same place every day, but I'm having trouble paying attention. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that your baby really moves around alot and sometimes it makes it hard for me to pay attention to the class. I hope this isn't a problem and I'm sorry I called your baby it I don't know what to call a baby when you don't know the gender.

Thanks,
XXXX

For the record, I don't have assigned seats in my classes. I probably wouldn't have even thought that much about it if she had switched seats. Clearly it's not texting during class that is disrupting student learning, it's kicking babies.

A Canned Response

I cannot help you determine if your article was peed reviewed, peet reviewed, or pier reviewed, but if you are trying to determine if your article was peer reviewed please see the assignment sheet.

Thanks!

Blog Help

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of the phantom "bubble" behind the "links to this post" in my post footer? I can't seem to find the problem in the code.

Spring Break Guilt

Monday I told myself that I was going to spend the day working on comps and/or grading papers. I stayed in my pjs and played on the internet. Tuesday, I told myself that I deserved a day off and I could just get started on Monday's plans and not feel guilty about it. I got a hair cut, went shopping, and played around with new blog templates. This morning I woke up and felt incredibly guilty for not having accomplished anything for school (or really anything on my To Do list*).

I know that my students are not working on projects for my classes, so I shouldn't really feel obligated to have graded all of their papers over the break.** My advisor isn't working during the break, so I shouldn't really feel obligated to finish everything for comps. All that said, I still do. I feel like I've wasted my break if my only accomplishments were uploading new blog templates, watching tv, shopping, and getting a hair cut.

I'm not sure quite when this guilt developed. I know that as an undergrad, I did not feel guilty about escaping school during breaks. Is this something I learned in grad school orientation? Can I sue for pain and suffering if I find the source of this guilt? I know that my students are not sitting at home wondering if they should be working on something for school.

So, halfway through Spring Break, I have not finished the baby's room or cleaned out the closet or written lesson plans or graded anything or worked on my sythesis statements. I feel guilty about all of these things, but not guilty enough (as of yet) to give up doing nothing. Maybe I'll start being a grad student again tomorrow, but I think I'll pretend like I'm an undergrad for one more day.

As alway, PhD Comics understand this dilema...

*Maybe I'll start feeling more successful if I include items like "play on Facebook" and "stay in pjs all day" on my lists.
**For the record, they turned them in the Friday before the break.

Google This

My post about beer pong and herpes generated more web traffic in one day than I have ever had before. When I checked my Analytics this morning, the keywords really amused me. Here's some of the funnier things people googled to find yesterday's post.

• getting herpes at college
• dirty fudge herpes
• getting herpes on spring break
• herpes in Mexico
• Do I have herpes
  
• herpes on road trip
• herpes from fox
• beer pong road trip
• Stephen Colbert has herpes
  
• lungs for sale*

I'm not sure that any of these people found what they were looking for, but they provided me with a source of entertainment. I <3 Google Analytics

*okay, this one wasn't related to yesterday's post, but was a link to my post about my crappy lungs and sinuses.

Fox Spreads Herpes

I'm not a huge fan of the Colbert Report, but last night I was waiting to take my next dose of cough medicine and watched part of an episode. I probably would have changed the channel, but Colbert was doing a story on how herpes was being spread quickly on college campuses due to the prevalence of playing beer pong. Colbert's "report" was actually not about herpes or beer pong, but really about how the whole story was a college newspaper joke that got picked up and spread by the national media (aka primarily Fox News). Here is Colbert's take...

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Beer Pong Herpes Outbreak

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
Joke of the Day

I'm always a sucker for ways of using pop culture to "teach" source evaluation, but I'm also really interested in the ways that some stories get spread while others don't. One blogger who talked about the spread of the article notes that it is probably the combination of adolescent, sexuality, and alcohol. He correctly points out that these three things are included in many urban legends, but are also strong enough social concerns that can lead people to miss the urban legend in badly written satire.

Sadly, Fox News won't allow me to embedded their original newscast, but thanks to the miracle of Youtube, here's their story. My favorite part of this is that they offer tips for "safe beer pong" while on Spring Break.



In addition to being a much funnier and more current example of evaluating sources,* I really like it as an example of the anxiety we have over adolescent sexuality, specifically as it relates to travel. You'll note that Fox News seems to be working under the assumption that beer pong is something that only happens in the tropical, debauchedness of Cancun or Daytona Beach. This story is in fact not much different than the numerous warning of violence linked to drugs and prostitution threatening Spring Breakers in Mexico. The original State Department advisory warns primarily of drug related violence, although when discussed by the media this story generally takes an advisory against frequenting areas of known for prostitution and morphs it into a warning about females being sold into prostitution.

I'm really intrigued with the ways that both the beer pong and Mexico warnings place risky adolescent behavior in remote locations and use the "holiday" to talk about taboos that are clearly issues the other 51 weeks out of year. I write a lot about how these taboos are so strong that they often have to be dealt with in the adolescent road trip novel in order to physically, geographically, and emotionally distance the behavior from adolescence, but I find it even more interesting that this pattern seems to becoming common for the media as well.

*My previous example is a series of stories about Al Gore inventing the internet and the ways that narrative was spread and expanded by "reputable" sources. Sadly, for most of my composition students, this example is too dated for it to be funny.

FSOT

For Sale or Trade:
One set of seriously defunct sinuses and lungs. Introductory supply of Tylenol, Sudafed, Robitussen, and Kleenex provided at no additional charge.

Are Adults the Problem?

This morning on the Today Show, I caught the last part of a story about British parents objecting to a new kids television host who has a physical disability. The disability--Cerrie Burnell was born with an incomplete right arm. The accusation--Burnell would scare children and shouldn't be a children's television host.* One father claimed that the host gave his child nightmares and another parent claimed that her daughter refused to watch the program since the addition of Burnell because of her disability.

The video clip focuses more on explaining the controversy, but I really like that the article asks whether or not a television host will actually "scare" children as some parents claim or whether this is a case of adult being the ones with the problem. Most notably, one expert said,

I think what's happening is a number of adults do have prejudices, do have very negative views about disabled people, and instead of admitting the views are their own, they're projecting them on to their children and saying the children are doing this.

Ironically, the article does imply that such a parent outrage would be unlikely in the United States where "Kids are going to school with people with different abilities. " As much as I like say that I agree with that idea, I'm not sure that's fair. If we go with the logic that adults are the ones who are truly bothered by difference, then it shouldn't matter how much exposure children have to difference, parents are still likely to complain. I wish the article included more on the connection between parent objection and child reality, but I think I'll use it in my 170 class nonetheless.

If you're interested in the clip from the Today Show, here's the video.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And because I think that everyone should run out and support texts that are banned in the name of ignornance, here is the show's website.

*There were also other complaints regarding the BBC and Burnell "forcing" parents to talk about disabilities with children before parents were ready and accusations that Burnell "flaunts" her disability and the BBC has "caved" to political correctness.

Bad Mothers: Media Edition

It makes me really sad that while the media seems obsessed with still talking about Nadya Suleman and her worthiness as a mother/person/woman, this was buried in the news. I only saw it because I subscribe to several feeds about pregnancy issues.

I'm guessing that her death is probably related to the availabilty of health care, as the article does note that Nigeria's maternal death rate is the second highest in the world. I really wish that maybe instead of obsessing about whether or not Suleman is or is not getting government aide, they would spend more time talking about women who are so limited in their health care options that they lose their lives in exhange for getting pregnant in a country that doesn't have the healthcare system to support them. Or better yet, why don't they talk about the taboos women who choose egg donation face.

Okay, I'm stepping down off my soapbox. Here's the whole article if you want to read it.

Nigerian woman dies after birth of sextuplets - Women's health- msnbc.com

Adsense Irony

Today, I've had a really crappy day. I went to bed annoyed because I am trying to find a reasonably priced, safe, and gender neutral car seat and Target doesn't seem to want to keep any in stock or be helpful at all. So I literally spent hours researching whether or not I could use a convertible infant-toddler car seat and finally gave up and went to bed frustrated after I read numerous website/message boards which all told me I was a bad parent for thinking of skipping the infant carrier and being a parent isn't about trying to save money.*

I woke up in a bad mood and then discovered that the grad forum event that I am in charge of planning for tomorrow seems to be unraveling at lightening speed because the university email system arbitrarily eats emails. Since I didn't know what kind of mood my advisor was in and didn't think I could handle getting in trouble for anything, I sat on the couch and sobbed for a good 15 minutes while contemplating career changes.

Rather than deal with university drama, I decided that hunting down the car seat we were looking for would give me a sense of accomplishment.** Long story short, I called Target. They were rude. I asked to speak to someone else who suggested that I was overreacting and that the car seat was scheduled to be back in stock by June 1 which shouldn't be a problem since first babies are usually late.***

By the time, I wrote the weekly update for the baby blog, I had moved from overwhelmed to pissed and instead of talking about the baby's development this week, I basically vented about Target's incompetence. When I went to check my Google Reader a little while ago, this is what I saw. Please note the sponsor of today's blog post...

*Actually, I think it is about being responsible. Do I really need to spend $300 on an Eddie Bauer car seat. Wouldn't an investment in a college fund be a much more beneficial use of the money?
**Because Google can find anything right? Wrong there are some things that Google cannot make appear in stock and I do know that you aren't supposed to buy used car seats, so Ebay is out. BTW if any of you happen to see a Graco Stylus Morocco Travel System, will you please buy it. I will send you a check.
***I'll give him that I probably overreacted to the email situation this morning, but considering that I'm due May 24th (probably about to be a week sooner), I don't think it's really unreasonable to want a car seat before I have the baby, especially considering that I can't leave the hospital with the baby is we don't have one. As much fun as it would be to send Rakicy or M to the store to find one on the excitement plan, I don't think that trying to avoid that situation makes me unreasonable or irrational.

I <3 John Green

John Green is a YA author with a blog, but it isn't aimed at teachers or parents or some idealized version of the American teenager. If you ask a dumb question, he tells you what he thinks, and I really enjoy that.

Example from today's Q and A blog:

Q. What is your view on Jessica Simpons' weight gain?
A. When I look deep down into the very core of my being, into the darkness which is me, I truly do not give a shit.

He also vlogs, which I'm secretly envious of.

Lost Post-It

Someone left their post-it note To-Do list on the floor of my classroom today. It made me laugh way harder than it should have:

1. Read Research
2. Go to library
3. Do laundry
   
4. Stay awake during Calc

iPhone for Teachers

I really hope this means that someday (soon) the University will buy me an iPhone or at least give me a really good discount. Otherwise this email was just mean and cruel.

iPhone Development for Education
Wed, Feb 18 2009 - 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Central
Join Apple for an engaging introduction to the tools and techniques
used for building native and web-based iPhone applications.

The iPhone Development for Education Seminar will be presented by
Steve Hayman, a National Consulting Engineer with Apple's Education
Team based in Toronto. Steve specializes in Apple's developer tools
and UNIX core. Prior to Apple, Steve worked with that other Steve at
NeXT Computer, where he first fell in love with the combination of
powerful object-oriented development tools and a great Unix core;
before that he was Network Manager at Indiana University; before
that he picked up an M.Math at Waterloo, and before that he had a
summer job painting construction equipment. Steve is delighted that
Apple's blend of Unix and OO is reaching many more users than NeXT's
tools ever did, and although he enjoys a good "vi vs. emacs"
argument as much as any Unix geek, he's even more intrigued with
what you can do with strong OO tools and libraries. Steve is
particularly fond of the WebKit open source objects included in Mac
OS X 10.5 and has built and thrown away dozens of different web
browsers as a result.

Google Made Me Do It...

A few weeks ago, I posted a status on Twitter about how I was vowing to never abuse my drafts folder ever again. I abuse my Gmail in many ways, but probably my worst Gmail habit is using my drafts folder as an electronic junk drawer. Rarely are any of the items in the folder actual drafts that need to be sent, but I recently I was looking for a copy of a Eng 101 handout and found an email that I had actually drafted to send out months ago that had been buried in my drafts folder and had never actually gotten sent.

While I will take full credit for many of my less than productive and organized habits, I blame this one on Google. They make it too easy for me to abuse my Gmail and use it for non-email related purposes.* In some ways I miss the lack of functionality and limited storage capacity of Missouri State's old Bearmail system.** With that email account, I literally ran out of space a couple of times a semester, so I had to be vigilant about deleting old emails and prioritizing what I really needed to keep. I couldn't email myself multiple drafts of a paper and store them all on my email.

Somewhere along the way, I got a Gmail account and instantly fell in love. I didn't have to worry about Bearmail being down or getting overrun with spam. Most of all, though I didn't ever have to delete email or empty the trash ever again.

I instantly developed some bad habits. I stopped distinguishing between important and unimportant email, but more importantly, I began using Gmail as a replacement for disks and flashdrives. Early on this wasn't really a problem because I didn't have that many documents that I had emailed to myself and digging through a handful of emails was so much nicer than having to constantly regret deleting something because of space concerns. I liked that the drafts folder was a convient place to put attached files without cluttering my inbox, so I started putting stuff there and never really stopped.

Fastforward 6 years... Same bad habits as above, plus add:

• emails that I drafted but never listed a recepient because they were responses that I knew I could never send
• hyperlinks that I'm sure I'm going to need in the future
  
• reminders for everything from meeting times to grocery lists
• files that I emailed to myself for later access but failed to include a specific subject line***
• emails that I used as templates for things like responding to student proposals
• nearly 100 blank emails****
  

When I went into my drafts folder to look for something a couple of weeks ago, I knew that I had to work on cleaning out my email. Even Google's wonderful search capabilities were being hindered by the sheer volume of email I had kept. My problem is how to tackle this reorganization of email without becoming completely overwhelmed.

I haven't gotten my email completely organzied yet, but I did make some progress. I completely deleted nearly 6,000 emails in the last two weeks and created some filters and labels to help sort the new mail, but I'm still quite a ways away from undoing 6 years of abuse. I really wish I could set up a feature on Gmail that would say things like "is this really a draft?" or "do you really mean archive?" or better yet, I need gmail to create an option to have all email that I create but don't send to self-destruct in 30 days.

I know once again relying on Google to fix my problem isn't really fair, but seriously 7,000+ MB of space is not helping me be a more organzied person.

*Yes, I realize that it is not Google's responsiblity to keep me organized, and that they create many other tools that could theoretically help me get more organized, but if my students don't ever have to take personal responsiblity, why should I? :)
**To clarify here, I mean the one that couldn't automatically empty the trash, didn't have a spam filter, and often ran out of space if you emailed too many Word documents (pictures were not even an option). That system didn't even warn you that you had run out of space, you had to verbally tell people that you tried to email them and got a message back that they were out of space.
***I have tried to stop doing this in the last couple of years, but have since found that I my solution (i.e. 170 handout) is not much more help.
****seriously, I guess when I hit compose and then get distracted or decide to do something else and Google asks if I want to discard, I subconsciously save them all. Sometimes, these have an addressee, but no subject line or message. Most of them are just blank.

Blog Death

I feel like my blogs are dying a slow death. I'd love to say that it is because I have been too busy to blog, but in reality it's because I haven't quite figured out where the boundaries between my 3 blogs are. When I separated out my blogs, I did so because I didn't want to clutter this blog with recipes and then later with baby news.

The recipe blog sadly still gets lots of traffic despite the fact that I haven't added new recipes in months.* I have a stack of recipes sitting on my desk waiting to be added, but I never got around to taking pictures, so I haven't messed with them lately. As I started reading more recipe blogs and following recipe bloggers who discovered me, I was so overwhelmed by the fact that most of these people average 4-6 *new* recipes each week that I kinda let this one go. I don't even try one new recipe a week, except maybe in the summer time, and quite honestly I don't have the time or desire to make that kind of commitment right now.

This blog faired slightly better, but has still been slowly dying. Part of this is becuase I told myself I didn't want to put baby news here and the line between baby and non-baby is incredibly blurry for me right now. As a result of not knowing where my own boundary was, I kinda just quit posting.

The baby blog is the only blog that is getting regularly updated at least once a week at the moment. Part of me thinks that I should have combined the baby blog and this personal blog, but in all honestly I like the freedom of having this blog to write about things that aren't exactly aimed at my family. We are also using that baby blog to replace emailed pregnancy updates for family and friends scattered across the country, so I feel like it would overwhelm this blog.**

At the same time, I miss this blog. I rarely feel like I have to censor myself or my thoughts on this blog, which I can't say about the baby blog. Frequently, I find myself wanting to blog about something and then opting not too because of the potential to offend or "start something" with opinionted family members. I never have that feeling here.

So, in short, I'm going to work on trying to rediscover that balance. It may mean that you may start seeing more baby stuff here (my apologies to those who aren't interested in baby updates), but please bear with me as I try and figure out how to reorganize these three blogs into something that works for my readers but also for me as a writer. I'm not ready to kill off any of the three blogs, but I'm working on finding a division that works.


*In my weak defense, my relationship with food since I got pregnant meant that I haven't cooked as much. I will admit that neither cracked pepper Triskets nor baked potatoes contain carrots, but I feel bad about posting carrot-free weird pregnancy cravings on that blog when its primary audience is people looking for allergy-friendly recipes.
**We're also using it help smooth out issues (like using cloth diapers) that some of our family members might take issue with. Since we have wide variety of opinions and cultural perspectives in our family, it seems like I spend quite a bit of time defending decisions and trying to make sure no one is suprised and no one is offended.

Gmail Prez

I love Gmail, but apparently so does the current administration.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

Oddly reminiscent of the move back into the-not-quite-completed-Stevenson-Hall move we experienced August, I can't even imagine trying to run the country with outdated or non-existent technology. Clearly they only way to tackle the bureaucracy is to call on Google.

officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.

New staff find White House in tech Dark Ages - Washington Post- msnbc.com

History

I don't know that I even have words to talk about what I just watched. I've spent the morning watching the live coverage of Barack Obama's inauguration. While I will admit that the last couple of days have seemed a little excessive in terms of 24 hour news coverage, I can't believe that in a matter of minutes we went from time filling factoids (Obama hates coffee, but collect comic books, etc) to a truly monumental time in history.

It seems surreal that less than an hour ago, a man that would at one time not have been allowed to vote was just sworn in as President. This election has been momumental in many ways and it struck me today that when our baby is born in May, he/she will never have a concept of a time when the office was an office that had only been held by white men. The fact that our country embraced diversity in terms of ethnicity and gender in this election season is one of the most valuable parts of this election for me. I agree with Obama on many of his policies and visions, but I am even more proud to live in a country that fought so bitterly of policies during the primary and election, yet came together to support a historic transition.

Part of me is sad that I spent this historic moment at home alone watching what seemed like a very global moment. At the same time, even when my internet kicked me off Twitter and Facebook, I still felt an odd sense of the country standing still. Even moments before the ceremony was set to take place, I was contemplating running up to campus so I could experience this moment with other people. I was too afraid of missing it to actually go anywhere, but I was shocked at how connected I felt even alone in my living room. I hope this sense of unity is something that doesn't wane in the coming hours and days.

I know that there are still those who will fail to recognize the true value of this moment or will fault President Obama regardless of what he does, but I was moved by the humbleness and greatness of what I just watched.

News Overload

I'll admit that I enjoy being able to follow every step of the election and inauguration as it happens, but this might be a sign that the news outlets are running out of things to talk about.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm not sure which is more disturbing that MSNBC reported this as actual news or that there is a college professor out there who specializes in port-o-potties.