MotherPie

Take Your Baby to Work? Not.

When I saw this, I thought: Oh, It's Take Your Baby To Work Day, it's about time, but the baby on the lap of Morning Joe Co-Host Mika Brzezinski yesterday when she interviewed Senator Jim Webb with a baby on her lap wasn't quite what I thought. The baby is not Mika's but Executive Producer Chris Licht's child.

The Palin Punt...

That gal can kick. Go mama.

Political Wives Stand (in writing) By Their Men?

Stand By Your Man plays out yet again but now with a twist in our American social story: the guy stands alone. The plot has variations in this scenario and more complications and is now writ different in the political playbook:  1) the guilty guy denies being a baby daddy elsewhere; 2) the wife  stands by her man in writing, not in front of the cameras, puffy downcast eyes, playing the supportive role of being there, pumping the party line, even though... The National Enquirer, not the mainstream media, put the question out there originally when he was still in the presidential race and didn't let up when the mistress became pregnant.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards' wife Elizabeth, who comes across as a genuine lady, didn't humiliatingly stand by her man in front of the cameras when he admitted to his guilt for having an affair. She didn't stand by The Man, as other political wives have done, most recently Mrs. Spitzer (see MotherPie's Wife, Thy Name is SUPPORT), gruelingly demonstrating public political/marital loyalty and put on the public face for all to visually see. Maybe because Edwards has nothing left to lose, politically, his suffering wife who has devoted the last years of her life to his political amibitions can pen her note to the world and forgo letting the world see her stoicism, yet again, when facing terrible things? "Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now," Mrs. Edwards wrote about her husband, "when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him." 

Mothers, we ponder these things.  What factors would lead to a line crossed with no point of return?  Note Mrs. Edwards said that he 1) stands alone and 2) has his family waiting for him.  Deconstruction: Family is defined as a mom and dad with the father listed on the birth certificate line. Very calculating as he pushes the line that he is not the father of his mistress' child (and would gladly do the DNA test to prove it) while she, supposedly getting payments from somewhere, then says she won't do the DNA test. All lawyers, wives and husbands both, in these stand-by-your man cases that I think of: Spitzers, Clintons and now (baby is born to this mistress, though) Edwards.  Lots of word public word parsing in such political lawyer-esque caculated statements.  Truthiness. Two women stand by a storyline. 

He preened on his hair video (Hair Matters) and Maureen Dowd writes about the narcissistic factor of the Ken doll candidate. "Even when confessing to preening, he was preening," she wrote.  Ken had a straight expression which makes Ken-the-doll more trustworthy.   

About a year ago I wrote about Uneven Expressions, Neurology & Politics and how uneven facial expressions lead to distrust. Edwards and his unbalanced exaggerated expressions? A perfect example of the persona putting forth stories that stretch or paint a truth.  His realness is masked.  He admits he lied about the affair. Even Edwards Neuroscience can show us that true emotions play on one side of the face and masking on the other.  Mrs. Edwards wrote her position.  Her face, in expressions, generates trust.  Interesting, then, isn't it, that we don't see that supportive wife face in this situation and she stands by her man in writing and he "stands alone"?

I wonder about the long-suffering wife and the stress of it all and what mothers will do for the sake of their children.

photo

Women and Fashion...

Bill Cunningham of NYTimes and his piece on Pencil Skirts on "women going to business" in NYC was another media riff of magnificence. Cunningham dissects the street fashion in print but it is his online takes as opposed to his print pieces in the paper version, with his personal commentary that I've discovered, after I left NYC, is just divine. He discusses the new thing on the streets of NYC: The pencil skirt -- "A saucy, sagacious look worn with high heels... The French cut skirt that is cut to cup under the derriere...Skirts work on the body as "second skin"...  For men, it is very sexy... I've seen it everywhere this summer."  It is a great look.  At the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market (in its fifth year this year) women were wearing everything artistically, I noticed, as I strided around in my soaking bootcast in the rainstorm on the preview night.  Santa Fe, unlike NYC, is not a business city.

And now I'm in Hot Hot Humid Houston in a boot cast - the city that wears shorts everywhere in the summertime.  My youngest daughter, when she attended high school in Manhattan at an IB school, thought the classroom discussion on fashion (it was a business class she took, no less) was interesting.  They referred to places, such as Texas (we had lived in Houston for 11 years) where people wore "sports clothes" as everyday attire.  This was (aha, gasp! GASP!!) such news to discuss in the NYC classrooms where women only wear sports attire to workout.  True in lots of places around the world. 

The fashion rage, for men and women, is designer sunglasses and I can attest to that with two of my children who love to spend their money on eyewear.  While the average handbag price has declined 14% in the past year, but sales figures for handbags are still up, it is the designer sunglasses that keep going up in price and perhaps it is men driving the sales, it is said.

I'm schlepping around, offline, in the soaring heat of Hot Houston, which is not as hot as Hotlanta where I lived for four years before Houston, where everyone wore Talbots.

And Houston: still freezing indoors.  The pencil skirts would work well here.  Believe it or not, Houston was my favorite fashion shopping place above NYC  and Atlanta.   Women, aging, boot casts, fashion and "cuteness" -- all on my mind, post-50. Sweatin' it out in Houston in July.  In pants cropped just below the knee.  Suitable for bootcast walking. Mais oui, seeing the girl friends that are on my life-long friend list.  ;)

Ramble: Media, Political Images & Bye-Bye Baby...

As Hillary is waving bye-bye to her baby of an idea (or is she -- she's hanging on to those delegates?), I've pulled out a few of the most interesting political media/communication issues. 

But first - a seguey..."It's Her Baby" -- Such a female idea, right? This illustration, from the May 5 New Yorker cover, says a lot about working women and motherhood, especially from a NYC perspective when mothers-to-be wait for years to start a family.  The puppy farming that puts darling, cute puppies in pet shop windows on every block on the Upper East Side, makes this idea of baby farming/postponed mothering culturally relevant. Really, I'm thinking about politics and media, but am also buying a Navajo-made silver rattle to take to the newest baby in the larger family here in New Mexico.  There is nothing as exciting as a new baby!

Meanwhile, my mama instincts got raised today over the heat being given to McCain and his lack of spiff.  Time's Mark Halperin had a list up of what McCain underestimates, including this one: In modern America, perception is often reality and style often beats substance.  Markos Moulitsas writes:"It's amazing seeing the party that gave us Ronald Reagan's and George W. Bush's stagecraft is now so amateurish that they've given us green screen backdrops in major speeches in half-empty gymnasiums and -- yes -- yellow teeth."  YELLOW TEETH??? 

My mother hackles want to put Kos in the time-out chair for stooping low and writing a tacky disrespectful post about McCain's teeth and their dingy color.  He received peer correction: McCain's teeth were bad due to his experiences as a tortured POW with many of his teeth broken at the gum by the Vietnamese. But the larger picture is this: We are used to packaged presentations at the same time that we yearn for real.

Yes,  McCain does need more style help (his speeches are painful to watch, he can't do well on the teleprompters) but in the same way that Obama sells his narrative of hope, McCain's real-ness and under-staging might benefit him.  We can't be fooled as much as we once could. 

AdAge analyzes Clinton vs. Obama in media and marketing campaigns with the two candidates spending about $120 million in the past 12 months.   Obama's new media savvy strategies served him well.   Obama  had a significantly larger media budget and a more successful fundraising effort with a bang-up online presence and a social-network-style campaign website. Most notable: Obama's mass-media strategy to build personal relationships. "After Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million, the Obama team responded by sending out an e-mail to its supporters the next day that read, 'We need to match this quickly, can you help?' Within 24 hours respondents donated $8 million." 

Launching as a new brand with little consumer awareness, Obama finessed the narrative.  (A Pew media/political study of found the "dominant personal narratives for Obama were ones he tried hardest to project, a sign that he largely succeeded in controlling his media message, particularly early on. The most common of all was the notion that he represents hope and change. This was followed by the idea that he is a charismatic leader and powerful communicator. Obama has also succeeded in getting substantial coverage that refutes one of his greatest possible vulnerabilities, the idea that his appeal is too narrow or limited to blacks and elites. These three impressions permeated the coverage of his candidacy." (Also noted: "for McCain, one master narrative stands out above all in the coverage—that he is not a true or reliable conservative.") Now the rebranding will begin in earnest with McCain portraying Obama as an unknown rookie politician, while simultaneously distancing himself from President Bush more explicitly than he has done before.  That, my friends, will be the new narrative. 

Does McCain Twitter?  As for new media strategies, that might be a big divide - it is an influential new audience that plays (non-Facebookers but into social networking).  According to one interested advertising person noting Twitter use: Hillary has 4,019 followers and Obama has 33,069 followers. That in its own right says a lot, but that's not the big stat.  The big stat is that Obama is following 33,960 people and Hillary is following 0. Literally 0. That's not an "o" that's a ZERO."  Maybe McCain doesn't Twitter, but he reaches out to conservative bloggers in conference calls: Senator John McCain: ' I admire [Obama’s oratorical] skills and ability but I think Americans are going to want the details.' 

McCain comes down hard on the idea that substance is more important than style.  Update: Stephen Colbert has challenged viewers to enliven McCain's Tuesday night speech staging by adding humorous backdrops.  Colbert "spiced him up" by putting a lion on the "green screen" backdrop to add more drama. Look for more remixes.  Meanwhile, McCain updated his website last night and his "green backdrop" is for golf gear.  My Dad would love that Golf Gear for Father's Day.

Well, the baby I'm off to go meet is named Owen.  The baby of the political fight is now turning into a teenager for this next stage while the new media is also getting longer legs. Mama non-Twitterer Cheers.

Graze Animals on the Median?

The work of mothers and families may be different in the future if we need to go back to growing part of our own food as our ancestors did. Passing yet another abandoned north Texas farm, subsumed almost completely by modern monocultural agriculture, the only green thing growing was the grass along the highway and a wee bit around the crumbling, dilapidated farmhouse and outbuilding which was in stark contrast to the vast ocean of empty dirt surrounding it.

Common areas used to part of community lifestyles.  In Santa Fe the old agricultural tradition lingers on, faintly, in the Hispanic acequia system where water is diverted in community-maintained canals for shared usage - water that is now being legislated for diversion to the larger cities rather than the rural farmers.

Is it too far-fetched to think of grazing animals on these medians, these public spaces? 

Hiking in the Sangre de Cristo mountains here I tread on paths that were once the footpaths for the shepherds.  Herders would take sheep into the mountains which were considered open land.  The sheep industry has changed substantially.  Backroads sometimes take me past cows that have grazing rights in steep mountain pastures and I ride horses that are turned out to pasture on public land.  But sheep I don't see.

Nooks and crannies here still support oldways.  Perhaps oldways can teach us how to do newways. 

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.