MotherPie

Life's Trails...Best Advice to Graduates

When graduates are getting ready to trot out and live their own lives and make something out of themselves, the advice they receive can resonate or it might be something that is immediately forgotton.  The most notable advice to graduates (including good ol' Hoss sense):

"We never know where life is going to take us," First Lady Laura Bush said this May to Vanderbilt's  graduating class.  She said that right after admitting that she could not remember who gave the speech at her graduation from the University of Texas in 1973 (and it was George Bush Sr. and she married his son four years later).

"Hair matters," is Senator Hillary Clinton's most memorable line from Yale's 300th commencement in 2001.

"Call your mother..." was the most important lesson the founder of Nextel passed on to Wake Forest graduates this May.  Former Virginia Governor Mark Warner also said in his speech that shallow posturing dominates our media and graduates should wrestle with the complex issues and be respectful of those with whom you disagree. 

"...you can't connect the dots going forward; you can only connect them looking backwards," Steve Jobs said to Stanford grads in 2005 which is by far the most notable speech in its entirety.  He also added this advice: You've got to find what you love.

"...you wanna decide which way to go," is ho ho har de har har advice to high school graduates from 75 year-old Hoss, author of the blog Old Horsetail Snake.  His post, And Boy, You Have Earned This, made me laugh when I was working so hard trying to do serious research on the most profound advice to graduates. 

The words from Hoss were a reminder that we shouldn't take life so seriously and maybe there is better advice out there given by nobodies publishing blogs than from big somebodies behind the platform of the podiums.  His humor is consistently funny...and it is true: life is "not always peaches and sour cream," he wrote.  For that, I submitted Hoss' post, And, Boy, You Have Earned This, as a Perfect Post for June.

Momma K at the blog Petroville coordinates these Perfect Post awards which highlight some of the best posts from bloggers, awarded by bloggers.  June's awards are announced today on her site.  Go check them out for some good reading and discover what other bloggers are saying that are considered to be worthy of note by their peers.

Breast Cancer/Breast Friends...

Breast Cancer.  No one ever plans on getting it.  When it happens it is so traumatic, stressful and disrupting.  When it happens to our mothers and sisters, we are more at risk.  When it happens to us, our daughters are at an increased risk.  When dealing with it and living with it, best friends are often Bosom Buddies and Breast Friends.

Susan G. Komen had just died of breast cancer and Nancy Brinker was making her sister's death her cause when my mother was first diagnosed.  Until then breast cancer was an unmentionable.   My mother had cared for her aunt through her bc illness and death and had hosted her sister-in-law when she came to the city for bc radiation treatments.  Everyone she knew with bc had died.  One of my best friends' mothers, years and years past bc, came to visit my mother.  My mother then discovered that bc was something to live with, not die with.  That was 22 years ago and at a time when my father ran out of the surgery waiting room to pick up my brother from camp, leaving me to tell my mother of her diagnosis. 

Breast cancer is and was a scary thing.  My mother is still nurturing others who are diagnosed.  Her best friends are many of her Breast Friends and Bosom Buddies.  They celebrate milestones and share bonds of experience.  They learn that it is just a speed bump.  They are more than their breast cancer.

When my mother was diagnosed, I spent hours at the library trying to learn what we needed to know to understand and deal with the treatment options.  Information is more easily available and support so easy to find, compared to the early 1980s when the volunteer ladies came to her bedside with brochures of bra-stuffing options and my father had only his brother, recently widowed, to console him.

Breast Cancer Sources/Resources: There are two links in the left-hand column of MotherPie's site under "We Think Links" for BC.  The top one, MotherPie's Breast Cancer Board (Password Free) has easy access for a bunch of links and here it is if you want to check it out: MotherPie Breast Cancer Board (Password Free).  The second link, Breast Cancer Resources, needs the password "PieinSky" (type it just like that with the caps) for access.  This is a collaborative site where you can help add to the resources and edit the information provided.

MotherPie's BC links include: the Harper's Magazine article that mom writer Caitlin Flanagan found to be very helpful, Welcome to Cancerland, by Barbara Ehrenreich;  an article on a study about tamoxifin (with which my mother was treated) and raloxifene; a new gene discovery that could lead to breast cancer treatment breakthroughs; links to the Komen Foundation and Race for the Cure, and blogs by women who have been diagnosed with bc: Two Hands (diagnosed two years ago) and Well, it's not going to kill you, (just diagnosed and entering treatment); and this... Marjory and Gordon Cameron have come up with a unique way of coping with Marjory's breast cancer - they're blogging their experience in the hope that sharing their cancer story will help both themselves and others to deal more easily with breast cancer treatments. Their website is Beating Breast Cancer.  If you face bc or other illnesses, Caring Bridge is a non-profit site that lets you create an onsite platform to keep friends and family informed.   Attu writes about a performance that supports bc research.  All of the above links are posted on MotherPie's breast cancer board - both links.

My friends who suffer through bc... my heart is with you.  Since one of eight women will be diagnosed with bc, it is nice to see other women like Amy of Gazelles on Crack who care to do the Race for the Cure.  We work and run the Race for the Cure -- and my husband runs with the name of my mother on his back and my daughters work the water tables and donut tents.  I am forever grateful for the doctors and friends who have supported my mother these 22 years (and many more, hopefully) that my mother has lived beyond her diagnosis.     The surgeon told me this, right before I had to tell my mother her diagnosis: "There is good and bad news.  The bad news is that the lump is cancerous and you are at a higher risk, too.  The good news: advances are happening very rapidly in this field."

Claude started blogging to take her mind off of her breast cancer and treatment.  She now walks every day in Paris and posts her photographs on Claude's Daily Snap.  What an inspiration to see (as my mother would say) how one person made lemonade.  How she looks at the world and what she sees and how she shares her life... my words won't do it justice.  Go see.  The illustration of the surreal face, sinking in the water, seems to symbolize the sudden loss of self and identity crisis that a bc diagnosis seems to bring.  It is one of Claude's  Parisian photos, the Fontaine Medicis.

That surgeon was right.  We are lucky.  These are better times.

Flickr images: Fontaine Medicis from Claude.

Ramble: Bareness of Blogs...

Today is just an effort to cover the page (barely).  Yesterday's post said it all.  Grin and bear/bare it as you blog it. yuk yuk. yawn. blog. yawn. sigh.

(((((((((((((Blog Bear Hug))))))))))))))

Grrrr Cheers!
P.S. Quick mama links:
New test for detecting genetic defects in embryos announced in Prague, according to a Reuter's story -- this will help more couples at high risk to ensure healthy embryos in in vitro fertilization.
Coffee may cut diabetes risk and may be a protection against type 2 diabetes, with decaf coffee providing the most protection, a cbsnews story reports.
Stress and fertility: A Emory University study showed that a combination of stress management therapy and diet and exercise coaching restored ferility in 80% of women who took part, compared to 25% in a control group, indicating lifestyle factors are important to fertility, according to a cbsnews report.  Pregancy Loss Resources information on the cbsnews site.
Save That Lock of Hair...(DNA Testing)

Blogs are Stupid? Affect/Effect of the Personal New Metaphorical Pen?

Exposing friends and family to the world, skin bones and all, either surreptitiously such as  Mrs. Pyg's blog, or blatently (such as the blog thumbscrews, discussing her Plan B in terms of marriage and philandering) .  Fact or fiction, truth or lie? Or continuing autobiographies by nobodies?  When everyone has something to say, will saying it become less meaningful?  Just a modern form of looking at (lost) time?  New eyes/ways to see? Or just a lot of something in nothingness? Or new social constructs for friendships?

Life being lived with a special lense... is this experience food for thought or fodder for the blogger? Private or public? Is the moment changed when cameras are around and the event becomes less in the "here and now" and more as something to document?  When a journalist covers an event as an assignment, it is viewed through a different lense  - in light of what the editor wants and what the audience will be interested in reading.  Most children today automatically become performers and poseurs in front of a camera and many elders are not quite sure how to act or "be" in front of the spotlight. 

Today's experience is tomorrow's blather, refracted. Here and now, there and then.  Tomorrow blends with today in the living of it.  The physics of time.  The art of the sublime.  The power of the pen to realign.  I write, therefore I am. (Decartes and a new Enlightenment?) I think, therefore I create, smell and remember. Blogging (and other web 2.0 social media) are the most intriguing and socially disruptive new media phenomenon since Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1447.  Really.  What does it mean that 45.9 million blogs are out there and time spent online and the number of blogs continue to increase?  Jamie Dawn calls her blog Mindless Blather.  Is it? MotherPie on Mindlessness and Information Overload noted that the blogsphere is 60% bigger than it was three years ago.  Everyone can now write the equivalent of a Proustian feat (his was 3, 500 pages and 7 volumes...) but who will read it? Prattle, or the integral writing of the soul?  Orgies of the selves?

Reality remade, reinterpreted, reframed.  My husband is so wonderful.  My children are angels.  Or are they?  What is the truthiness of life and the living of it?  My children rarely check out this MotherPie site.  My husband is a regular reader.  Empty nest is coming, I'm in a city with few friends yet, a husband whose working hours are horrific and I find myself writing about motherhood on this blog, vacationing mostly without him, caring for children who become saucy and sassy as late teenagers and thinking of my identity and how and what to write on this blog.  I put myself *out there* in a poem and my husband's comment makes me think.  (?)  How much to reveal (vulnerability), how much time to spend on this (and to do it 'right' does take time), building and discovering an audience (when I write about media, based on my interests and studies which take me out of the mother role, media people flee from a site called 'MotherPie' yet my role of mother is diminishing while my mother audience here is building...) Start other blogs for different interests to have tighter niches? Do a thesis on this? Or go in a different direction?  Blogging is not my life but it is taking a lot of time.  The Viral Garden blog talks about how important it is to be a part of a community (this is a marketing tip blog).  Time spent writing, time spent researching, time spent on other blogs reading ("lurking") and commenting. Time spent learning the rules.

Virtual friendships.  How real are they?  (Antique Mommy left her son for the first time to go meet her blog buddy friends in another city.) Linked relationships online? Virtual conversations.  Really? Relationships built link-deep, chat-deep, comment-deep, text-deep, email-deep.  Blackberry deep.  Real deep. Quick, short and snippet-deep. Who face-to-faces when text is rich and talk is cheap and writing is the way to go?  Deep thinking, deep sharing. Not for this format?  Shallow and short -- the new deep? Already, according to online eyeball statistics, I will lose a majority of my readers' attention by writing past this point if I haven't already (this, in the 312th MotherPie article).  A new reader will judge this site in less than 11  seconds.  How can you say anything meaningful/relevant in eleven seconds? Every day? A Proustian Questionnaire way of entertaining/being entertained?  Memes and play, (with Proustian Moxie) and memory, memory and public moments (or moments made public).  Minutia made profound. Je l'ai lu.

Amy Sutherland writes on modern love in the NYTimes about what she learned about love and training her husband from her studies/research into exotic animal training.  Reward behavior you like and ignore behavior you don't.  Duh.  But she does have a point about looking at your spouse (and I would say children, too) as though they were a different species, entirely. Study them.  Try to really understand them - what makes them unique, what motivates them;  Sutherland gives an example of how elephants are herd animals (so are bloggers, I would contend) and respond to hierarchy.  My husband values a good reputation and integrity and relates to the gallantry of medieval barons, lords and knights.  Actually he is a Lord.  Should I say that?  Should I delete his comment, talk to him about it or talk about it here?  I heart you, dear and I've said it here. Email me so our relationship can be more private?  Blackberry love is not real (both love for a Blackberry and love shown through one).  Is it? 

I like these illustrations by T. Marie Nolan as they reference the power of exposure and narrative.  Anyone can now produce content and put it out to the public - in fact, the whole world.  Think of MySpace.  Transparency, trust, ethics and two-way relationships make information and content production, dissemination and consumption disruptive and chaotic.  Everything is shifting as controllers, mediators, producers and consumers work with tech and content.  Blogs. Blogs are Stupid is the title of a blog and a domain site. Are they?  Another blog, also named Blogs are Stupid, claims to write about "random crap."  Google "blogs are stupid" and get over 44 million links.  Is this a new form of  reality life? Just play, not real? Blogrolling and friends.   IzzyMom  talks about it in her post, The Politics of Blogging. Mommy blogging is a game, Martinis for Milk writes.  Just something to play?  Entertainment? 

The blogger Dooce got fired from her job for writing about it on her blog.  She doesn't do comments or blogrolls now on her blog and claims that it economically supports her so she doesn't have to work anymore and can say whatever she wants.  The blogger Hoss, 72, has his "formula" down pat and a stable group of online friends. Some blogs make for interesting and fascinating reading.  Will we become more literate?  Less self-censoring? Does my family worry about what I might write as I worry about what I write/email to my mother (she's likely to forward it to all her friends)? Where are the boundaries for bloggers? (MotherPie's post on No Boundaries for Virtual Youth noted the shift with kids). What will happen when the money follows the eyeballs? Studying blogs and new media is one thing.  Blogging in order to learn is another.  

What does all of this mean?  Where will it lead?  We are all naked in the new world and playing with our identities (very postmodern).  We are naked and exposed through data-mining. (Just writing *naked* will bring skuzzbos to this site who google *naked* girls). Will there be no boundaries anywhere? What is an exposed and refracted life? This is more than scrapbooking and old fashioned book autobiographies and journals and letters filed away.  If I can mark a time of the shift of autobiographies by nobodies, it would be Mary Karr's book, The Liar's Club. (Or a we're just in a resurrection introspective mode with new media frameworks a la Marcel Proust). MotherPie's post on Online Driveling Diaries noted the process of looking at blogs as relevant or irrelevant.

Perhaps I'll go back and edit my so-revealing poem to contain the words "Wife Me".  Then write more about the mommy wars and career moms versus stay-at-home moms and my role as wife and mother.  And please my audience? The Happy Housewife.  What are we doing? Esoteric?  Existential? A philosophical perfidy, nefarious or beneficial narcissim, secrets of truth and beauty half-sensed or something truly profound? (On Proust and profundity, revert to French and read this, then think about blogs.)  The translation is culturally relevant.  Vivre dans un monde ouvert.

What am I doing? I have other things to do.  I do.

Artist information for illustrations: Flickr images: resurrection, (top left), lucky lotto angel (right) by T. Marie Nolan, an artist living in Missouri who defines herself as an "outsider folk artist."  You can check out her work at Hoodoo Mo Gallery.  Her work sells on e-bay under the seller "Metrolux6."  Her work is not stupid.  It is great.  I think.

Ramble: Horned Frogs and Health...

Sometimes you don't realize that things have changed until you see the present through the eyes of another. Rambling through the mountain wilderness in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range on horseback, we stopped to find a horned frog.  All the Fire Ants (an invasive species or 'implanted' species) in Texas have minimized the lizard's territory by at least 30% as their primary food source is Harvester Ants.  My youngest daughter had never held one, didn't know how you can pet them between the horns at the back of their head and put them to sleep.    This one she learned to hold and pet didn't squirt blood from its eyes.  We mapped the territory of Horned Lizards in the Texas Hill Country for several years as a volunteer project. I used to be able to easily find them in my childhood stomping grounds in Oklahoma. Wanna be a Frog? Go to Texas Christian University in Ft. Worth, home of the Horned Frogs.

Here are some fun things about getting older and doing so with good health and cheer:

A key to long life may be mom's age at birth, according to a 6/23 Reuters Health story.  People are more likely to see their 100th bithday if they were born to young mothers. The chances of living to 100 are nearly double for a child born to a woman before her 25th birthday. It is the young age of the mother, rather than the birth order, which is significant to longevity.  Other factors: being born in The West and on a farm were also important.

Happiness and getting older... Research shows that older people are happier, according to this article from the Univ. of Michigan Health System.

Good Thoughts: "In Character" magazine is a recommend by KChristieH...with a focus on everyday virtues. She gives information and a link -- looks like something that if it doesn't help you live longer, you might live happier -- or at least more contented thinking of these things...  This Southern California "soccer" mom (industrial engineer by training, PTA president in mother role) always has good things to think about.

Eggs and Chocolate: Eat an egg a day to stay healthy?  What a fertile thought.  Jill Fallon writes about it in her Business of Life blog with some fun egg trivia.   A Dark Chocolate a Day Keeps the Doctor Away  is an article about how dark chocolate is good for the heart and loaded with flavonoids.  Dark Chocolate has been a buzz on Yahoo! searches  and dark chocolate has health benefits; it lowers high blood pressure and has antioxidants. Godiva Chocolate is so good!

Horse Trail Ramblin' Cheers!

Flickr Artists....

Artists are using new media in a very very exciting way.  Flickr was started as a way to share digital photos.  Photography is still the basis for the functions of the site (now owned by Yahoo!) but something very very interesting is happening as new media and producers of creative content find and make their way using collaborative/social content venues.

Probably one of the most exciting things I've discovered in recent months in my new media studies is the way artists are using Flickr and I've only bumbled into this in the past week or so.  Flickr is fundamentally a photo site.  Searches are photo- based but artists have found a sub-community on Flickr and post their work and reference the works of others and comment ferociously.   I am excited to showcase some of these artists' works as if you are not a Flickr member, you can't access their work through links.  You might want to join Flickr --even if you have no plans on posting or sharing the digital images -- just to see the work of these artists who are building a community and audience via the Flickr site.

The artists that I have found are phenomenal. Now you don't have to leave your keyboard to access unbelievable creative productions.  Flickr is a tool that allows artists to develop an audience beyond the former limitations of galleries, exhibits and museums.  Geographical boundaries are made null.  The burgeoning capacity for cutting out the middle-man venues for creative productions is a huge phenomenon.  It is happening for artists on Flickr just like it has been happening for musicians who have been able to introduce themselves and build an audience on social online spaces such as MySpace (ranked #2 behind Yahoo! on the internet, based on the amount of time spent on the site online and number of pages viewed).

In developing relationships with these artists, exploring their works, and in obtaining permission to use their work as illustrations with my pieces, I have found that because Flickr requires memberships (a mix of paid and free), it limits me in sharing their work or directing my audience to further works via Flickr links.  It is an inhibition to sharing (and provides an on-line gatekeeping barrier) and causes link-back frustrations.  Behind-a-wall access is one of the reasons I (and other online writers) hesitate to ever link to subscriber sites such as Wall Street Journal articles.  When confronted with providing information from constrained contained resources, writers hesitate to use those sources at all, or just put limited information.  I will quote a WSJ article and name the source information but hesitate to provide a link that will only frustrate readers when they hit the limited-access barrier. Information behind subscriber walls frustrates my audience so I use them only minimally. 

By just referencing a Flickr artwork with its site on Flickr, non-Flickr members who visit my site are not able to freely link and see the work or other works that link might open up.  Some of these Flickr artists have off-Flickr sites and you can freely follow that link to their work.   For example, in the MotherPie post, Three Little Chickies,  you will see the fabulous artwork by Green Kitchen, a creative woman from California.  The links within that MotherPie post take you to her Flickr site where she posts photos as well as artwork.  In working with these artists, I have found that I am shortshrifting my readers by giving you only Flickr information.  For Green Kitchen's work, if you are not a Flickr member, go check out her  non-Flickr blog - Green Kitchen and you will see there that she is a stay-at-home Mom interested in crafts.  Check out her blog and her creativity!  She has a new precious baby and is working on renovating the cutest little house in California.

The gum artist that I referred to in an earlier post last week is quite interesting.  Unfortunately if you're not a Flickr member, you can't link to see these artworks, actually made of real gum.  I would like to direct you to my Flickr Favorites and my Flickr Contacts but I don't want to frustrate my non-Flickr member audience.  These Flickr friendships and social networks are simply amazing.   Online networks and sites are upending gatekeeping mechanisms for information and creative content production.

Even if you are a Flickr member, as I have been for quite awhile, you may not even realize that the creative content digitally has moved way beyond just the "aim and click" photos of yesterday.  Digital images and digital content has a field of players beyond amateur and professional photographers.

Flickr artists are a sub-group within Flickr.  Flickr Community Guidelines is referential to photos : "upload photos that you've taken"  ...."and yes, Flickr is for photos...with some exceptions, it's OK to post other images, but if your photostream contains content other than photographs (like illustrations, screen shots, diagrams, etc.) it's very likely that your account will be marked Not in Pulic Site Areas (NIPSA). "

Many artists have their work  Flickr "nipped" ( NIPSA) meaning their  photos won't show up in photo searches but are visible on their own Flickr member pages and their way of obtaining visibility is through the networks that are developed socially on the Flickr site.

Thanks to the Flickr artists and photographers for allowing me to showcase their works on my site. I will try to give you more information and links beyond Flickr for reference to these artists and their works when possible.   If you are a Flickr member, check out my new artist contacts, my favorites, my tribute and their works and search out artists in these forums.  Follow their links to their own networks. These artists and the forum provided through Flickr for viewing their works are simply amazing.  For artists, putting their work "out there" on Flickr makes them very vulnerable in this new media arena.  Some have had their works freely used by pornographers.   

Everyone is feeling their way through this new "web 2.0" world. (Nicholas Carr talks about companies "making it up" as they go in the new world of Web 2.0 in his article, "There's something here"  based on an interview in Financial Times with e-Bay's Meg Whitman and e-Bay's Skype venture-- a wider look at how things are being upended beyond the artists with these new online ventures).

Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp. (owner of MySpace) said, "...we are at the dawn of a golden age of information - an empire of new knowledge."  For gallery owners, publishers, museums and others who benefit from having art in a controlled and mediated market, this is a new disruptive road... 

Portraying Females in Media...

Can you imagine a culture where photos of women are banned?  Can you imagine what the grocery check-out lines would look like without all the magazines, many featuring models with altered photos? King Abdullah of  Saudi Arabia has called for a ban on photos of women saying “one needs to think if he would want his daughter, sister or wife to appear like that. Of course, no one would." Newspapers in Saudi Arabia had recently broken with tradition and published photos of women that showed their faces but with their hair covered.

In the U.S., a site on Sexual Relationships in the Media notes that the pressure put on women through ads, television, film and new media to be sexually attractive—and sexually active—is profound. 

Wendy Shallit writes in Modest Extremes: Why an Observant Jew Understands Sexuality Better Than Hugh Hefner:

It all begs the question: If doing away with modesty was supposed to be liberating, why is the sex now so bad? Why should men and women be further apart than ever?

To me, the essential confusion comes down to mistaking modesty for shame. If you think sexuality should be private, goes the prevailing view, then you must be ashamed of it. You must be a prude. Conversely, if you are “comfortable with your sexuality,” then you should be “cool”…

In truth, the real reason for sexual modesty is not shame, but an awareness of how precious we are. Smirk at that statement if you will, but the fact remains: It is a rare dog that desires a candlelit dinner before mating. On the other hand, it is a rare human who can have a one-night stand without feeling at least a twinge of guilt afterward. And, howls of protest from vested interests notwithstanding, most men know that their most intimate relationships should not be with their computer browsers.

The media and cultural expectations/portrayals of women... The power of the media and its messages...

Little Chickies...

Three little chickies had I...
I wonder why...

I thought once I would have none...
I thought once I would have ten...

Or really maybe four...

Three little chickies had I...
Pie in the Sky, I wonder why...

Mother Hen, Mother Hen,
Who ever wonders
What might have been?

Three little chickies had I...
And now, for them, it is time to fly.

All that's left to rule the roost
is Mr. Pie and I will fly away to be...
me.  Mother Me.

Flickr image: 3 French Hens by Green Kitchen

Those OtherMothers...

Madonna morphed into something different once she became a mother.  She began to veer towards the more spiritual (and now she's on the cross? the ultimate female sacrifice?). 

Britney Spears shows herself to be a bad mother. Louisiana Low-Life, the most popular home-schooled kid.

Brangenlina's motherhood is the talk of the town. (Google Angelina Jolie and get over 25 million mentions).

Paul McCartney's split from Heather -- and who gets the kid?  Is she motherhood-worthy?

I perceive myself to be a snob, culturally, and like to think that I'm above cultural pop and into more deeper philosophical and cultural discussions.  But I find myself, when among other women, having these issues crop up.  Madonna -- gross at mid-life? Britney - rich and tacky (money doesn't make you classy)? Trailer trash mother chewing gum publicly? Brangelina... what is it that rivets us (and she, Ms. Angelina Jolie Voigt,  is ALL OVER the media)? "She's already talking about adopting #4 and she's not even reveling in the new one she birthed?"   And poor Paul.  The Beatle we all loved.  He needed an Earth Mother and maybe thought he had one.... What. happened.  "Here, take my People and read about it."

WaPo's mother blog On Balance talks about the attraction Britney has to the Mother Police (Author Leslie Steiner Morgan seems to have a radar for the controversial/cultural issues out there).

I helped my sister-in-law move this week.  I HATE MOVING.  And here, again, the conversation turned to our American cultural associates, those OtherMothers in the news (in England, it is the royals who titillate and give the conversation a common denominator).  The common mass conversational topic (like 'where were you when JKF was killed' and 'Dead White Girls') that no matter where our different lives are, geographically, career, lifestyle or whatever, we can all revert to a good conversation on these women and the issues they raise.   Media trends: gossip rag circulation continues to increase while other magazines are suffering circulation drops...).

Do career women feel the heat when mothers chew these women up with criticism?  The Virgin Mary/Mary Magdalene iconical dualism (or something spiritually deeper?)  Or is it our vulnerability, all of us, to being "Good Mothers" however we slice that up?  Or just a way to gossip??

Art fun: Check this art piece of Britney Spears made out of chewing gum!  Here is another by the same artist called Britney is a gum blonde. Chew it up Mama!  More gummy slummy art: Paris is a gum blonde.  Well, she's not a mama yet.
 

Learning About Motherhood from Cats...

Ting-a-Ling had multiple litters. She was the best teacher on how-to-mother, absolutement.  She nested.  She was attentive and caring and nurturing.  She was a teacher.  She was healthy, protective and, probably most important, she used feline instincts.  And thinking back on it now, she taught how not to be a helicopter parent because she taught how to let go and let her children move on without her.  Instinct and letting go.  Are we missing something by moving away from nature into more constructed lifestyles?

Lady Godiva was her name, kitten in this photo, (one of the most viewed photos on MotherPie's Flickr).  She might not have been the teacher that Tinkerbell was for my youngest child but maybe the teaching was modeled inadvertently.  Lady Godiva's mother was a rescued feral cat and her birthing environment had been a cage.  Lady Godiva's birthing environment was not the garage, as Ting-a-Ling's was and Lady only  had one litter before being fixed.  Ting had the door cracked and a feral instinct very intact.  Ting-a-Ling's lessons came from later litters. 

There is a sad ending for both cats but that is for another writing.  The significant model for mothering my daughter had could have been the weekly five hours we spent each Saturday together over two years caring for babies and toddlers that otherwise would have been warehoused in hospitals.  Supplementing the 24/7 nursing staff, volunteer care helped these little ones readjust to a drug-free, non-abusive and loving world.  Caring for others beyond our own litters...sometimes that is the most important nurturing and modeling our young could ever have.

Eeeewww meow: Toxoplasmosa, the parasite that cats carry (and pregnant women should avoid), was the topic of a recent NYTimes article linking possibly to schizoprehnia. Miss Cellania has a wonderful post with a bunch of links on cats here if you want more cat stuff.  Scientists have now bred an allergy-free kitty using a technique called genetic divergence, physorg.com reports and they cost  $4,000. Wow meow.