MotherPie

Turning Pages: Mother's Reads...

Motherhood by example: As a bibliophile, my earliest memories are of books and reading with my mother, going to the library weekly and always having a book in hand.  Visiting my mother, we traded our current reads.  I left Julie Andrew's biography, Home, with her after I finished and she sent me off with Vikas Swarup's Q & A, a gift to her from our relative.  I'll read it and pass it back.  Swarup's book is the best one I've picked up in recent memory and I'm half-way through.  It has been critically acclaimed, is an international bestseller being translated into 32 languages, was shortlisted for the Best First Book by the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won South Africa’s Exclusive Books Boeke Prize 2006, as well as the Prix Grand Public at the 2007 Paris Book Fair.

Remember my new test for literature is the last line of the book.  Swarup's Q & A's last line: "I won't need it (my lucky coin) anymore.  Because luck comes from within."

Books my mother has read in 2008:

January

1. Isabel and the Miracle Baby – Emily Smith Pearce
2. Diamonds in the Shadow – Caroline B. Cooney
3. Good Dog, Stay – Anna Quindlen
4. Escape – Carolyn Jessop
5. Undaunted Courage – Stephen Ambrose (CD)
6. Playing for Pizza – John Grisham
7. Miss Manner’s complete book of dog etiquette – Charlotte Reed
8. Wild Fire – Nelson DeMille (CD)
9. Atonement – Ian McEwan (CD)
10. The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett (CD)
11. T is for Trespass – Sue Grafton (CD)
12. A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking (Video)
13. Unholy Alliance – David Horowitz
14. Voices from the Heartland – by Carolyn Ann Taylor et al
15. Night Fall – Nelson DeMille (CD)
16. Day of Reckoning – Patrick Buchanan

February
17. World without End – Ken Follett (CD)
18. Don’t Never Shoot Short – Kent Frates
19. The Charm School – Nelson DeMille (CD)
20. Real Change – Newt Gingrich
21. Home to Holly Springs – Jan Karon (CD)
22. I Saw the Lord – Anne Graham Lotz
23. People of the Book – Geraldine Brooks
24. Eye of the Needle – Ken Follett
25. The Septembers of Shiraz – Dalia Sofer
26. Twilight at Monticello – Alan Pell Crawford
27. Christ the Lord – Road to Cana – Anne Rice
MARCH
28. Basic Black  - Cathie Black (CD)
29. Their Eyes were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston (CD)
30. Double Cross – James Patterson (CD)
31. Cash Flow Planning – Dave Ramsey (Cassette)
32. Plum Lucky – Janet Evanovich  (CD)
33. The Darkest Evening of the Year – Dean Koontz (CD)
34. A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle
35. The Firm (The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor) Penny Junor
36. The Audacity of Hope – Barack Obama
37. My Enemy’s Cradle – Sara Young
38. Women and Money – Suzie Orman (CD)
39. The Appeal – John Grisham (CD)
40. No Country for Old Men – Cormac McCarthy (CD)
41. Stop Whining, Start Living – Dr. Laura Schlessinger
42. Reclaiming Conservatism – Mickey Edwards
43. 7th Heaven – James Patterson (CD)

APRIL
44. The Invention of Everything Else – Samantha Hunt
45. Strangers in Death – Nora Roberts (CD)
46. Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin (CD – 36)
47. Trudy’s Promise – Marcia Preston
48. The Birth House – Ami McKay
49. Morning on Horseback – David McCullough
50. The Shack – William P. Young
51. Change of Heart – Jodi Picoult (CD-12)
52. Amazing Grace – Kathleen Norris

High Heels, Fashion and Common Sense...

Fashion is not style. What leads women to dress so absurdly? Are we objects meant to perch and be put on display? Where would you ever wear a dress like this, from the recent fashion shows?  Why don't designers hear what women want?

I couldn't believe how many women in New York City strutted everywhere in high, high heels.  The frenzy for Manolos and other high-end shoes led to many foot surgeries for women who had damaged their feet.  Yet the trend continues.  My cute Atlanta shoes didn't translate well to the hard concerete of everyday life and the constant pounding.  One of my friends who had been in NYC told me to have rubber things put on the bottom of shoes... it cushions the impact.

Now I'm in Santa Fe and you hardly see a high heel anywhere.  Of course the population is older, but fashion isn't as big here and there is more common sense to some things. Plus, a lot of surface is not paved.

My  mother would wear high heels and walk a long distance to and from her work and years later had to have foot surgery.  Teachers, stay-at-home moms and those who are on their feet alot seem to develop a healthy sense of what works.  Style has to do with self presentation and personality and expression.  Fashion?  A tool to sell feathers to birds?

Why does fashion push the high, high heels?  I wonder if it is sexist and objectifies women.  Why do women do this to themselves?  Why do women allow fashion to dictate these things?  Designers who fetishize women...they don't see women as whole human beings but as symbols.  Forget the idea that clothes must be wearable.  Women are complicit in this and an article on this from WashingtonPost is pretty good.

Birds of a feather...buy...

photo: Maria Valentino for the WashingtonPost

Are You Left or Right Brained?

It matters how you approach your work and life.  Take the test and see which direction you see the dancer spinning -- I see see her moving mostly clockwise but can also see her spin left.  That means I'm mostly right brained. I bet my husband is left-brained. (link thanks to left-brained Lauri).

Do you think you could predict the way your family and friends could see the dancer spin?

Baby Slings & Sitters & Networking...

Now that I'm in empty nest, seeing things on the mom  blog sites makes me think how networking online has socially changed us.

My new mom friends and I would, at in-person meetings, talk about our favorite baby things. If you had asked me for the one thing as a new mother that I couldn't live without, it would have been the baby sling I had.  After work I would walk off my pregnancy weight and keep a fussy baby quiet.  I loved having her close and I think it was a better way to mother, keeping an infant at the heart beat of mom.  So I saved it to pass down.  Now I come across online these darling baby slings that are so fashionable and it makes my old thing look downright uuuugggly.

Finding a babysitter?  Checking out Cool Mom Picks, which one of my younger blogging friends, Nancy out of WDC supports, I found SitterCity -- A way to find babysitters in your zip code.  I was surprised to find a good number of options in Santa Fe.  They also have pet sitter listings, fyi.  One of my nightmares as a new mom was finding a sitter when I returned to work six weeks after my oldest was born.  Sourcing and networking had to be really worked hard, person-to-person.

Face-to-face time with friends or phone calling was a long and tedious way to network to find the best baby things and names of babysitters.  We are changing, certainly and here is an example. New York University's Assistant Dean, David Schachter, talks about the "live networking" undertaken as part of orientation for this year's freshmen.  It was called "Facebook in the Flesh" and he had to describe to students the benefits of live interaction. If you are interested you can read more about it in Michael Schulman's September Social Study article in the New Yorker.

The more things change, the more they remain the same?  Maybe even that phrase needs an update.

Oh so cool?  Who needs cigars to announce the new baby's arrival? Robert Scoble caught his baby's first cry and saved it as a twittergram and wrote how he did it with links. And to think I waited six weeks for engraved invitations to arrive. 

Aprons & Meal Plans

Do you even own an apron? In anticipation of having all three of my children together for just a few weeks, I'm pulling out old recipes.  Like most women, I've lost the art of serious meal planning. And no, I don't have an apron and can't remember if I even really put one on but am I alone in wanting to regress?  Mom Puts Family on Meal Plan in the NYTimes got a lot of attention.

Documentary photographers were hired by the Farm Services Administration to document the poor farm families and to study agriculture policies that had impacted much of America's rural population after the Great Depression.  This photo, taken by Lee in 1940, is of Mrs. Faro Caudill, of Pie Town, New Mexico, ironing in her kitchen (click to enlarge). These photographs show details of rural farm life and are now available to browse digitally via the Library of Congress.

How different our lives are today.  Canning food, ironing, wearing aprons... 
 

Working Women...

WWII saw many women enter the workforce and Mrs. Marcella Hart, a mother of three children, was one of them. She was employed as a wiper in a roundhouse in Clinton, Iowa when this photo was taken by Jack Delano in 1943. Delano was born in Russia and trained in Pennsylvania in the art of illustration.  Can't you tell that an artist visualized this as he set it up?  It does look like an illustration with the contrasts of the black and white and color.  A blogger captured a photo of Marcella and her co-worker Viola as they wiped down one of the trains.  It was a dirty job yet she looks beautiful (and tired) with this coloring and light.  This blogger link is to Shorpy, a site interested in life 100 years ago as depicted in old photos.

We have in our mind the iconic image of Rosie-the-Riveter when we think of these 6 million women who worked for the war effort in industrial jobs, these pants-wearing women. However now Rosie is the iconic image for feminist power and we've forgotten that Marcella is probably typical of women who had children at home to feed and a hard job during the day. Marcella didn't look like she was full of power and verve. She looks dirty and drained. Which is more true of women today? Do we capture it?

This image and others, part of the collection of the Office of War Information are available via the Library of Congress online.  The Rosie Riveter poster says in our minds... female power?  Well, June Cleaver was the mom-at-home (although she lacked verve) and The Beaver just made his debut on Broadway in Hairspray.  I like hearkening back to these things.  They make for trenchant fodder.

Priority List Repair...

My priority list needs a repair.  It is a little frazzled and worn and doesn't seem to be in good order.  What we think might be important and sometimes what really is important can be quite different.

Wayfinding through life.  Sometimes being wise is not the same as being smart.  Resource allocation, energy distribution and time management -- all things that mothers excell at inherently -- are important tools of the trade, all trumped by flexibility and adaptation to change.

Just when the end of the mother tunnel seems in sight, we've a wedding to plan and two kids underfoot.  Don't you know that when you have a child in the senior year of high school, you shouldn't add on anything that year? Keep a clear calendar.  Right. Didn't work for me.  When it rains, it pours and when it does, get an umbrella and keep on moving on.

My plans to publish my blog research project need a rethink.  My mind can't wrap around a super duper thesis-type rewrite at the moment.  I'll publish here in driblets and drablets which is just fine with me.  A little dab will do it here and there which is about all that can be sqeezed in between other priorities and goings-on. We have three getting degrees at the end of this semester.  That includes me.  Finito.  Then what?

So let go.  Revise.  Rethink. Rework. Restructure.  Breathe. Live. Smile. (and blog).

Politics: The Mom Factor...

Motherhood in politics has moved beyond The Soccer Mom.  The NYTimes wrote yesterday, "motherhood and a focus on children can become one more political asset to be showcased — a way of humanizing a candidate and connecting with voters, especially other women."

Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have hit full stride and neither is toting a child on the hip but each is using the mother brand.  How motherhood is used to attract voters will be interesting. 

Suddenly motherhood packs power.  How is that power understood?  I think it is still evolving.  There used to be nothing more American than a politician with a family gathered around him on the podium.  How will political women define their familial authority? 

Hillary Clinton wore the pants to the Senate Floor and in so doing, she broke the dress code.   But why is this Hillary-as-Rosie -the-Riveter image on the Hillary-For-President campaign store product site (advertising union-made products) touting (potential) President-as-worker?

How will moms be wooed?  How will motherhood be branded?  How will the work of mothers be defined?

The platform has cultural as well as political power.    MotherPie and Applehood.

The Poses of a Mom...

So...watching the movie stars posing for the cameras like they did last night at the  Golden Globes, showing off the gowns, flashing the jewelry, plugging the designers when possible... how would the pose of motherhood today be illustrated, I wonder?

What would the perfect pose of the motherly saint be today? Baby on the lap like the Madonna?  Cryptic smile like Mona Lisa, sloppy baby on the hip like Britney?  Diversity and working for the world, in motion with the people in need of attention, like Angelina?

The ideal mom once looked like those that artist Mary Cassatt chose as her subjects. It was a female peek into the world of mothers. Languid, doting, sweet, calm -- painted with child enveloped in the lap or arms, often in the domestic setting.

Are we influenced such that our images we try to call to mind are all advertising images? (A person living in a city is bombarded with about 5,000 advertising images each day).  I contend that the conversation of the mom blogs is a healthy reality injection into the conversation of our female culture.

Nobel, Wealth and Starbucks...

 Men rock the world, women rock the cradle, debt is soaring so go have a cuppa joe and enjoy the experience.

Big Prizes: The Nobel Prize for Literature (awarded by the Swedish to "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealistic tendency") is due to be awarded at the earliest on October 12. Only six women won the Literature prize through 1990.  Since 1991, four women have won the prize.  So.  Will a woman win?  This is the category featuring the most women winners.  (Only two women have won in Physics, three in Chemistry --no women have won in either category since the early '60s -- and only seven women have won a Nobel in Physiology or Medicine.    Marie Curie is the only woman of the four people who have won two Nobels.  Neweek had a good article on Science and the Gender Gap.  Is that it? The 2006 winners so far have featured men.  10/13 update: no women won Nobels this year.  All men.

Big Bucks: Four of the richest states are in the Northeast.  New Jersey, last year had nearly twice the median household income of the poorest, Mississippi: $61,672 vs. $32,938   --according to the latest Census figures and published in AdAge.  Loudon County, Va. is the wealthiest county (of at least 65,000 and it is the second fastest-growing county).  Seven of the ten poorest states are in the south, but that area is expected to experience growth. For the nation, median household income last year reached $46,326.  Other stats: "Consumers kept spending by borrowing with credit cards and home-equity loans and using past savings. Consumer debt soared 11.7% last year (mostly because of rising mortgage debt), according to the Federal Reserve Board. BEA data show the nation's personal-saving rate went below zero, in April 2005, for the first time since the Great Depression, and it's stayed negative every month since." 

Big Place to Go: Starbuck's Anne Saunders, vp of global brand strategy and named an AdAge Innovator, described an event that inspired her.  In the AdAge article, Meg Mitchell Moore wrote that a drive-through server prepared the wrong drink at a Starbucks outlet.  The Starbucks staffer prepared a second coffee and offered it to the customer for free.  The customer not only paid for the drink, but paid for the car behind.  That car continued the kindness and this went on for nine cars.  Nice acts have repercussions and Saunders says that Starbucks is more than a coffee company and she has worked to build loyalty (the average customer goes into Starbucks six times a month).   Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz built Starbucks to be a "third place" to hang out after home and work.  Brand Autopsy blog notes that the Fortune top 100 companies to work for spend time marketing to employees as well as to customers.  Employee experience matters.

And just remember... the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.  Buy a Starbucks gift card and pass on the good feeling.