Roe V. Wade, 39 Years

I DO NOT think that abortion is good. I DO believe that there are many other options to be considered before that one, but I also know that for the time that it was illegal in the US many, many women kept their pregnancies secret, didn’t discuss what their options might be with ANYONE, took great risks and, all too often, lost their lives to terminate a pregnancy.

There has been and will always be girls and women who will do anything to end a pregnancy. This is a fact. Are these women’s lives worth less than the babies they produce?

I don’t think so.

You can argue until you’re blue in the face about when life begins and what is morally reprehensible or acceptable, but there will never come a time when everyone agrees. I have my own beliefs and, to be honest, I’m not likely to change my mind anytime soon.

Making abortion illegal shuts off all conversation. A girl or woman who is scared and wants to terminate her pregnancy will keep it secret and pour all her energy into following that path. There is no way to keep her safe, there is no way to help her make a responsible choice.

Let’s keep conversations open. Let’s talk about this often, especially with the women we love. Let’s provide support. Let’s keep women safe. Let’s save as many babies as we can. Let’s work for a world where abortion almost never happens, not one where it is illegal.

2012 TBR Pile Challenge

You’d think I’d have been able to finish reading twelve books in 2011 that I’ve been meaning to read for a year or more, but… maybe in 2012.

Even if I didn’t actually finish the 2011 challenge, I was able to knock a few books off of my “To Be Read” pile. I guess that’s what matters–I made more headway on my TBR pile this year than I have for a long, long time. Honestly, those books really just would have continued collecting dust if I hadn’t joined the challenge in the first place. And, even more importantly, the challenge got me following Adam on Twitter, Facebook and his blog. You should check him out. He blogs at roofbeamreader.net and I think he’s pretty darn cool.

Oh, well. Putting my loss behind me. Onward and upward! Or downward, I suppose, as my TBR pile decreases! I’m going to try again with the 2012 TBR Pile Challenge.

An upside to my failure to finish the 2011 TBR Pile Challenge is that I should have a pretty easy time choosing most of my books for the 2012 TBR Pile Challenge.

In the year 2012 I (and Roof Beam Reader) challenge myself to read:

1. Candide, by Voltaire
2. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
3. Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
4. Reservation Blues, by Sherman Alexie
5. Into the Forest, by Jean Hegland
5. Nineteen Eighty-four, by George Orwell
6. The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman
7. The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace
8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson
9. Dune, by Fank Herbert
10.  Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan
11. The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy
12. Faith of the Fallen, by Terry Goodkind

Alternates:
1. Bucking the Sun, by Ivan Doig
2. The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch

35 Things Before I’m 35

My twenty-fifth birthday was not a great one. To begin with, I was feeling a little behind in the game and wasn’t quite ready to hit the mid-point of my twenties. I wasn’t married, engaged and I didn’t even have a boyfriend. I hadn’t graduated from college yet, in fact, I’d just changed my major and I was living by myself for the first time in several years.

Early in the morning the winter sky opened up and dropped two feet of snow on the unsuspecting world, which meant that my car got stuck as I was leaving for work at five o’clock in the morning– yes five o’clock. In the morning. On my birthday. I walked.

I worked in the circulation department at the newspaper and two feet of snow made it very difficult for, well, almost any customers to get their papers on time. My job was to answer the phone and offer explanation, apology and credit or redelivery to everyone who called. A lot of people called. And most of them weren’t very happy or understanding.

I ended up working later than normal. My wonderful co-workers who were out delivering papers in the snow brought me breakfast in a styrofoam box. That was nice, but my car was still stuck in the parking lot of my apartment building and all my friends were out of town visiting family for Christmas. There was only one person I knew of to call to help me get my car back in it’s spot. My ex-boyfriend.

We’d broken up about two months before and (of course) agreed to remain friends. He had a truck and I knew he was in town, so I called him. He came, but right after he picked me up he told me that, after granting me this favor,  he couldn’t talk to me anymore because it upset his new girlfriend and she didn’t want him to. That was a blow. I don’t think anything could have made me feel more alone than that. It wasn’t like I wanted him back, but he’d been an important part of my life for a long time and I wasn’t quite ready for him to be no part of my life.

I cried. We got my car out of the way and I went inside and laid on my floor and cried some more. Then I picked myself up, walked down to the movie theater and watched Peter Pan by myself. I didn’t want to grow up, but here I was: suddenly solidly in my mid-twenties and as alone as I could be. It was a bad birthday.

Yesterday was my thirty-third birthday and it was great, but I have the slightest worry lurking inside me that I’m going to feel a little bit down when I hit thirty-five. I won’t feel alone this time. I have a lovely little family now, but the next few years are absolutely going to be a time of transition in my life. I want to feel like I’ve gotten something done when I hit the middle of my thirties. I’m not sure if I’ll know where I’m headed when I get to that point, but I’d like to at least feel a little like I belong where I am. So, I’ve made a list of thirty-five things I’d like to do before I turn thirty-five and, even if I don’t mark everything on my list off, it’ll feel good to get some of these things done.

Most of these things might seem simple and silly, but most of these are things I’ve been meaning to do for ages and ages and just haven’t gotten around to. Some of my things are pretty vague and that’s by design– I don’t want to feel bound to traveling a path I don’t want to be on. I reserve the right to edit and refine my list as needed. My goal isn’t just to get a bunch of stuff done; my goal is to feel good and I think that doing these things will make me feel good.

I’m including the list here, but over the next couple of months I’m going to explain each one of the things on my list in more detail and maybe report on my progress as well. Also, I should mention, I’m totally open to comments or suggestions.

So, without further ado:

35 Things To Do Before I’m 35

1. Work on my memory project

2. Read Proust

3. Become a Trekkie

4. Learn to tie many and varied knots

5. Memorize poetry/monologues

6. Practice make-up design

7. Write letters-lots of them(Anybody want a letter? Let me know where to send it.)

8. Take a real vacation with Mike(and only Mike)

9. Design myself an autograph-worthy signature

10. Learn sign language

11. Learn Shorthand

12. Re-learn cursive writing

13. Learn Caligraphy

14. Regular charitable giving– $ & time

15. Better financial okay-edness

16. Concerts/Plays/Opera/Art–two of each per year

17. Heightened Political Involvement

18. Themed parties

19. Make the onion Sam drew for me into an honest-to-goodness, on-the-wall work of art

20. Get a CSA share

21. Garden

22. Try rock climbing

23. Get a job with a non-profit

24. Read 24 new NEW books

25. Get to/maintain a healthy weight

26. Learn to sew well enough to costume a show

27. Do costumes for a show

28. Religiosity/Happy Habits

29. Write a book

30. Finish my second degree

31. Attend a book club

32. Learn more about my home state

33. Travel my home state

34. Familly History/photos/stories/videos(Past and Present)

35. Get Married(or Not Married-but work for it and celebrate it)

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Years ago, I heard an excerpt from The Things They Carried on public radio’s Selected Shorts. It was such an incredible story that, as often happens when I listen to Selected Shorts, I just stopped and listened with my full attention on the radio. The title and the author were cemented in my memory and a couple of years after that I picked up a copy in a “buy two, get the third free” sale.

And a couple more years passed. I knew it was a book that I wanted to read, but it became one with my bookshelf.

When I finally got around to reading it the book had all the power, and then some, that had captured my attention as a performance. It’s full of tension and repetition, always building and deepening until the truth of it all is inescapable and embedded in you.

It’s horrible.

The book kept grabbing me by the throat and I kept telling myself it was all just fiction, just stories made up to illustrate a war. My attempts at minimizing its effect were foiled by the author, who frequently appeared to remind me that is was all fiction, but–and I’ve long known this–fiction is often more truthful than truth. Tim O’Brien tells true stories.

There is a terrible beauty in his words that makes me want re-read and re-read and re-read, but I can’t. I need a break from this book and I’m grateful that I’ve finished it.

Memory Theater

I was listening to NPR’s Morning Edition this morning and heard a story that I found very interesting: Improv For Alzheimer’s: ‘A Sense of Accomplishment’.

Researchers in Chicago want to know if improv will improve the well-being of newly diagnosed Alzheimer’s patients. My immediate thought was that, duh, improv can improve the well-being of anyone, but one quote from the story especially made sense.

“Improv is all about being in the moment, which for someone with memory loss, that is a very safe place,” says Mary O’Hara, a social worker at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “Maybe thinking about the past and trying to remember makes the person a little anxious or even a bit sad because their memory is failing. And maybe thinking about the future too much is also anxiety-provoking. So being in the moment is such a safe and a good place to be.”

As someone who’s been involved in theater for a little over twenty years now I’m well aware that what you learn doing improv doesn’t just make you a better actor, it really does make your life better all around. To be honest, I hate doing improv. I’m shy, I don’t see myself as being particularly creative or funny and it can be really hard, but I know that all those times I’ve been oh-so-uncomfortable have made me a little less shy, better at communicating, and better able to handle stressful situations. Improv has helped me envision the consequences of my actions, imagine other points of view and made me more likely to take risks. I live my life a little more in the moment because of it. Improv is good for me, it’s good for kids, it’s good for grown-ups and it’s certainly good for Alzheimer’s patients.

Sure, it’s hard and you won’t catch me saying that I actually like it, but there’s a very real sense of accomplishment and a feeling of being centered when it’s all over that makes it worth it.

Anyway, what I want to say here is take an improv class(even if you don’t have Alzheimer’s) and SUPPORT THE ARTS–they’re important and for everyone just like reading, writing and “rithmatic.”

Why I Still Like Netflix Even Though They(Gasp) Raised Their Prices

I got my e-mail from Netflix yesterday that said they’re raising their prices.

At first I was a bit miffed, but then, after a moment of thought, I decided it wasn’t such a big deal. After all, it’s likely that their costs for streaming content are going up now that streaming services are becoming more common and they’ve got to pass some of that on to their customers.

Shortly after I got my email, Twitter and Facebook began to echo with the cries of the masses and their declarations of disgust and I almost got sucked into that whirlwind. For a moment I thought “How dare they raise their prices! The economy is bad! I can get entertainment for free!”

But the price increase is perfectly reasonable. It really is.

First, I remember a not too distant time past when I paid something like $15 a month for two DVDs at a time from a far more limited collection and no streaming at all. $15! Fewer options! No streaming! What?! That’s crazy! Not to mention, it took longer for the DVDs to get to me.

There is more than enough available to me streaming. I can watch a documentary or a little trashy reality tv. An old tv show or a new movie. A kid’s show or an obscure B movie. The point is, I always find something good and I can watch just about whenever I want. All I have to do is sit on my couch and use my remote. Or lay on my bed with my iPad or iPod. Or sit at my desk and switch on my computer. Compared with my other options, like cable, this is amazingly convenient, legal and inexpensive, even at $7.99 a month.

Yes, some of the best stuff is only available on DVD. (I’m not convinced that this is entirely up to Netflix–remember: they have to pay for and acquire the right to what they’re selling us.) If I only get one or two DVDs a month $7.99 is a little steep. But with a two day turn around I could pretty easily consume eight DVDs a month. Not so steep. Utterly reasonable, in fact.

Now I’d like to talk about service. Netflix is constantly asking me how my service is–they keep track of what their customers think. If there is an outage of the streaming service they send me an email offering me an apology and credit. If there is a delay in the availability of one of my DVDs they send me the next one on my list immediately AND they send me an email to tell me that. The DVDs are generally in good condition and Netflix is continually adding new content. I am confident that I will consistently experience good service.

Netflix started small, offering something new and wonderfully convenient, and they’ve grown because they’ve changed what they offer and worked to keep their customers pleased over the years. Netflix is a good company offering something I want and I’m willing to pay what they’re asking.

2011: Halfway

Noon today marked the halfway point for the year 2011. 182 1/2 days down, 182 1/2 days left.

So, how are those resolutions coming along? Are you accomplishing the things you set out to accomplish on January 1st? Is it time to add some new resolutions or maybe wipe the slate clean and start fresh?

For my part, I’ve stuck to my goals pretty well. I’ve made a recipe(or two) from one of my magazines each month, the whole family has visited our local Indie bookstore each month, I’ve written more, I’ve completed my first class toward a second degree and I’ve dutifully been reading books for the TBR Pile Challenge I signed up for in January. Also, I’ve kept my children alive and the laundry done for six whole months.(That last one wasn’t a resolution, but I think it’s something to brag about– at least it feels that way most days!)

My resolutions to make magazine recipes and visit the bookstore each month have been really fun ones to stick to. I’ve expanded my culinary horizons, made those subscriptions seem a bit more worthwhile and it’s really great to see the three-year-old Nathan get excited about a new book every month. Easy-peasy and so worth it!

I need to catch up on my reading challenge– I’m only a quarter of the way through the books in my pile, but it sure does feel good to read some of the books I’ve been meaning to read for years. I just finished one that had been on my shelf for fifteen years. ‘Bout time, eh?

I have been writing more, but I may need to up the ante on that goal. I write a blog post here and there, I wrote for school, and I wrote a journal entry and a poem every day in April, but I think I may have to set some formal goals for the second half of the year. I enjoy it. I think I do a decent job of it. It makes me think better. So, yeah, I should work on that.

I’m signed up for two more classes before the close of the year. If I complete those as planned I’ll be solidly on my way to that second degree. I really enjoyed the whirlwind summer class, even though it was a lot of work and most of the time I was terrified that I wasn’t doing well. My goal here was just to get started on a new “me” chapter, one that didn’t totally have to do with my role as mother, and I’ve gotten started. I think the biggest hurdle was the first class. Now, I just need to relax more and keep on learning.

I’m not sure what my mid-year resolutions are going to be yet… I’m going to mull that over while I’m out of town on my Independence Day vacation. Who knows? Maybe “lose weight” will make the list this time. And maybe not.

 

Circumcision–My Opinion

We hate to make the wrong decisions when it comes to our kids and I think that’s why circumcision is such an issue. Don’t worry– this is not a life or death decision. Whether you choose to circumcise or not, your kids are going to be okay, so let’s just breathe and talk about this like grown-ups, okay?

We chose not to circumcise our boys and this will mostly be about how we came to that decision.

Looking Like Daddy Or Brother Or Everyone Else
We’re all different. Nobody is the same as anybody else. For crying out loud–I grew up as the only blonde in a family of brunettes and nobody decided it would be best if my hair were dyed to match the rest of the family. Not to mention we don’t do a whole lot of going around and comparing penises… although I have heard some stories…

Lower Risk Of HIV Infection
I plan on teaching my sons about responsible sex. Circumcision doesn’t obliterate the risk of getting HIV, it lowers it. Condoms come much closer to obliterating it. Also, if your son still has his foreskin when he’s a teenager you can tell him you’ll get him circumcised if you ever find out that he’s not been safe. That should light a fire under his ass when it comes to protection.

Religious Reasons
I don’t have much to say about this because I’m an atheist. We just looked at the facts when we made our decision. Religion is personal and circumcising for religious reasons is your personal decision. If you have a religious reason for circumcising your baby, that’s fine, but please think about it very hard before you do it simply because of religion. Keep in mind that religious interpretations are constantly changing and be sure that it’s actually really important to you. Question your faith and it might become stronger. At the very least, your justifications for your choices will become stronger.

Cleanliness
We expect little boys and grown men to keep all sorts of body parts clean. I just don’t think it’s too much to ask…

Uncircumcised Doesn’t Look As Good
Any woman who doesn’t want to sleep with my sons because she thinks their penises aren’t pretty isn’t good enough for them anyway. Besides, I’m totally okay with them choosing to get circumcised when they’re adults if the way their penises look bothers them that much, but I got used to my nose after all that adolescent insecurity and I bet they can get over it too.

We didn’t do it and I don’t think you should either. That’s my opinion.

I Heart NPR Music

I love music and NPR has had a huge influence on that, especially over the last couple of years. I religiously listen to the First Listen’s and All Song’s Considered. And, you know what? The more music I listen to, the more I want to listen to more music.

I used to be afraid to buy music–scared I wouldn’t actually like it much, but now I often fall in love with entire albums when they’re available as a First Listen and I’ve learned how to listen to music more deeply by hearing the All Songs gang talk about it. I’ve also gotten to know my tastes and many artists better, so I can choose music I’m likely to love without even hearing it. NPR has educated me and I’m thankful.

Right now I’m listening to Eddie Vedder’s new album… for the second time. At first I wasn’t sure about it, but now I’m falling in love with it. Probably going to buy it.

No Driving for Dropouts

This morning Montana legislator Mike Miller tweeted a link to a USA Today article about the attempts of several states to make driving a privilege unavailable to those who drop out of school. His comment that accompanied this link was, “Montana spends many millions on social benefits for dropouts.”

I agree wholeheartedly that we should do all we can to diminish the dropout rate in our state, but I don’t think that this is the route to take in Montana.

Representative Miller and another Twitter friend pointed out that the tactic had worked well for them, but there is a difference between a parent applying appropriate consequences to their child’s behavior and the government applying a consequence to all who drop out of school, whatever the reason.

Teenagers have many and varied reasons for dropping out of school. Some just don’t like it and don’t want to go. Threatening them with a loss of driving privileges would probably work, but many drop out due to drug addiction, difficult school situations or a difficult home life. Students who drop out due to drug addiction aren’t likely to be swayed by the possible loss of their license. In fact, I think we can safely say that addicts are seldom able to stop a detrimental behavior because of consequences– the number of repeat DUI offenders in Montana is a good clue to the truth in this supposition.

Young adults who leave school because of difficult situations, whether at school or home, are likely acting emotionally rather than rationally. They have more important things to think about(at least in their minds) than school and driving is going to be even lower on that list. That comes from my own personal experience: when I needed a change in my situation the fact that I didn’t have enough money for gas didn’t stop me. Sometimes I walked across town to school, sometimes I begged a ride and sometimes I didn’t go, but my rent was paid.

Another problem I have with this idea is that it’s simply a punishment and exists as only that. People do not need a high school education to be able to drive. Driving is just not connected to education in any real way. Losing driving privileges isn’t a reasonable consequence for leaving school and it’s redundant: students already suffer a consequence when they drop out– they don’t earn a diploma.

I’d also like to point out that without a diploma and the ability to drive a young adult’s prospects in Montana are very dim. Sure, there will be fewer dropouts, but the kids who do will be an even greater burden on society without a car in this state of great distances, harsh weather and few public transportation options.

Let’s find ways to encourage young adults to stay in school instead of trying to discourage them from dropping out. Before we talk about taking licenses away from dropouts let’s discuss taking licenses away from people convicted of DUI– at least there’s a clear correlation between driving and driving drunk.