I just finished watching an incredible and heartwarming video about a painting elephant. Watch the following video and feel glad you are able to witness (through the magic of modern technology) at least one elephant in captivity (and in the background, several more) being permitted a positive outlet for its experiences. If any of you wonderful readers decide to visit this elephant (I believe it lives in Thailand), and if you decide to actually give the elephant a rose, shave the thorns off first. I think it might appreciate that.

More elephant paintings and additional information can be found on The Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project page.

…For what you have. Right now you could be a starving orphan in Iraq. Or one of millions of Iraqi refugees, half-forgotten by the world. Be grateful that you are not a newly hatched and vulnerable tropical baby bird in a nest up in an old-growth forest that’s about to be demolished in order to make way for “progress” and “civilization” somewhere in Central America. Thank God you aren’t a caged zoo animal that exists solely for the bored amusement of others who pay to ogle you somewhere, anywhere, on this globe.

Be grateful. Be grateful. Be grateful.

I am. Or at least, I try to be.

One of my daughter’s all-time favorite books is Global Babies. It is a book about babies around the world. Strangely enough, it has two pictures of babies from the United States (out of a total of 16 babies in the entire book), but I guess it’s a silly way of appeasing the now-dominant Imperial power (the new Rome, if you will, which = United States of America)??? The publisher is located in the United States, so I guess that’s part of it too. Other than this minor little detail, the book is truly wonderful, and my daughter asks to have it read to her over and over and over again. I highly recommend that you either borrow it from your library or purchase it to have for your family’s collection. Its virtues and peaceful teachings are numerous.

Here’s a picture of the cover:

What I really want to do here, though, is include a picture of the Iraq baby:

This baby is loved (as are all the babies in the book).  I can’t tell if the Iraq baby is a boy or a girl (I’m guessing boy), but it doesn’t matter. I wonder about this baby a lot. I wonder if this baby is safe, if this baby is being fed. I wonder if this baby has a mother and a father now, after this long and unnecessary war has waged on for so long. More than anything, I wonder about other babies like this one, other babies born and now being raised in Iraq. Are they safe? Who is taking care of them? Who is making sure their mothers and fathers are safe? Do they have clean water to drink? Are they safe from radiation from U.S.-made weapons? Who is making sure these Iraqi families feel peace? What are we doing to make sure these children and, more importantly, the caretakers of these children, are safe, clean, comfortable, at peace? Who is caring for the mothers and fathers of Iraq so that they may care for their children?

Think about what life may be like in Iraq for these families.  I dare you to complain about anything in your life right now.

I visited Mothering.com today (Hi, Kimber! :)) and discovered a gem of a video entitled “Substitute Abuse” from South Africa. Kudos to the iThemba Lethu Milk Bank (founded by Anna Coutsoudis and run by Penny Reimers) for putting their energy to good use!

This humorous take on breastfeeding education has an audio track that doesn’t aways synchronize with the video, but it is worth watching and listening to the message and intent behind it. Beautifully done. Thanks for uploading it to YouTube, pokenny.

Tanya Lieberman over at Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog (and a reader named Stu — HI, Stu! :)) just informed me that the fledgling Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England will be receiving $10,000!!

Remember when I posted about the New England Mothers’ Milk Bank and the contest over at Ideablob.com? Well, according to Tanya, we WON that contest!!! Woo-hoo!!

So, now the HMBANA Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England will have $10,000 as seed money to help get their facilities get set-up (I’m guessing). It does take a little bit of an investment for freezers, space, and so forth. I wish them the best, of course, and hope HMBANA continue to remain helpful to all the preemies and sick infants of North America.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all.

I just noticed that The Lactivist’s Tuesday, June 05, 2007 post on The International Breast Milk Project accurately reflects the current reality with the IBMP and Prolacta now (Hm. I recently noticed Prolacta.com looks different — different colors and different pictures and different overall format — kind of annoying since before it was more technical and straightforward — though woefully incomplete — and now it’s more “soft” and “vague” and “wishy-washy” — and still missing a lot of really important information. When someone’s primary motivation is making a profit, you gotta wonder about these things…).

I want to thank her (The Lactivist) personally for updating her original, breakthrough thoughts on the IBMP with this thorough post: Thank you, Jennifer.

Please read her post. She has captured a lot of the concerns I’ve been writing about with regard to Prolacta and the IBMP. As a recipient (Jennifer is writing from the perspective of a donor), I can agree with most of what she has to say. I am not a capitalist at heart. I have learned to work within The Patriarchal Machine, and I do it really well, but I really do believe in a true democracy, where money doesn’t really matter (and everyone is equally important). But that information is not really that relevant to this particular post of mine. It’s really important that y’all read what Jennifer has to say regarding “What This News Doesn’t Change” and “Where Does This Leave You?” if you’re thinking of formal milk donation (unlike informal milk donation — like MilkShare, which for me as a mother who has desperately needed breastmilk for my child on numerous occasions and gotten it through there, has been a Godsend).

Please read her post. It’s very important. Don’t miss it.

Thank you. The International Breastfeeding Symbol Website and Blog thanks you.

I am not surprised. I am disappointed, but I’m not surprised.

“The United States is not ready for a female president,” I kept hearing… I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t want to let myself believe that. (”It’s not true,” I kept telling myself. I still do.)

And then. A female contender for the presidency demonstrates that she is human, that she contains within her the vast range of human emotion, just like all of us do, like we always have (though we may not want to show it, for fear of…?) … And… The same old, tired, familiar misogyny rears its ugly head up again.

I don’t watch t.v. I dedicated a whole post to that, once upon a time. So, you see, I don’t experience the fullness of that hatred like a lot of people do. I don’t allow myself to internalize it. And, lately, I haven’t really been reading the news online either, because the truth is politics is so much illusion-making that it’s really quite tiresome for me, and it’s hard to escape the bullshit even on what is supposedly called “news.”

I’ve been focusing on other things. On my life. On growth and renewal. On making the world, my world, our world, better, …one person, one moment at a time.

But.

Something really troubling happened today. The man I love and have loved for so long shared with me an opinion that I cannot avoid, ignore, or pretend does not exist in the world. …Because it’s in my home, my sacred space. It’s in my very safe (I thought) Bear Cave.

I am not allowing this negativity to take over my safety. I am still safe, and I will continue to be. But I feel the need to share this moment with you. It is … very troubling…

My hope is that whoever attains the position of Presidency (and Vice Presidency) of the United States, that that person be a good person, a truthful person. I know no person is all good or all honest all the time… But our current Vice President is an imposter, and a corrupted man… Some would (and have) say that he is evil, and honestly, I can’t disagree with that sentiment. He has affected our nation’s very naive President in a very damaging and horrible way. And they both know it. They did nothing to stop themselves from committing treasonous act after treasonous act, so betraying to the people of this great land that they felt the need to create lies to cover up more lies… Maybe they can’t help it? I don’t know. I CAN’T know. There is no crystal ball for this. They were both wrong then, when the worst happened (9/11, and all the pain that propagated from that horrible tragedy) and they’re both wrong now. And now, even if they’re different, changed people, even if they’ve learned from some of their mistakes, it’s too late for them (thankfully), to do much more. I am grateful for that, that their time is coming to an end. It is time for a change. A change for the better.

So, back to the present time, to now, and to the impending, hopeful future… I feel very cautious about who I will vote for (make no mistake about this: I WILL be voting), and I am screening very carefully the kind of information I let into my life. I have always been very cautious, and will continue to be. It has served me well. In fact, you could say it has never let me down. I hope you, too, are cautious about the sort of influences you let in your sacred spaces. I urge you to be cautious about the kind of information you let into your hearts, dear readers, because sometimes… Sometimes it’s all you have to keep you safe.

Oh, and I feel the need to say this, too… It really is o.k. to cry. I think anyone who tries to bully someone for crying is not to be trusted, at least for that moment.

Peace to all of you.

Years ago, when I had the freedom to take off wherever I wished without having to be accountable to anyone for it, I took a trip from Houston, Texas to London, U.K. Alone. I had no one waiting there for me. No hotel or hostel reservation. No car rental. No business meeting. No secret rendezvous with a mysterious lover. No friend or acquaintance, internet or otherwise. No pretense. Nothing. I had a plane ticket, and that’s it. I knew no one there. Not one soul. And I wanted it to be this way. I decided I wanted to see London, so I did. I was in my mid-twenties, so I figured that’s what you do when you’re in your twenties: you travel. You see the world freely, as it is, no frills and no distractions (no other people along for the ride, no other opinions interfering with the impression you receive from the travel itself).

To make things more interesting, I almost didn’t go. I had a non-refundable ticket, and I was torn, just before leaving. I was torn because I was a little afraid of traveling this way, not knowing what would be there or what would happen when I got to my destination. I was in denial of not wanting to go. I had spent maybe $600 on the ticket, and I was seriously considering waiting until the date came and went and pretending I’d forgotten if anybody asked about it (which I figured nobody would anyway, so it was a moot point).

But something really cool happened. I met a fella. He found out I had this ticket, which I almost didn’t tell him I had. When I told him I had this ticket, the date for which travel was going to occur within a short time from the time I told him about it, he urged me to go. I think he could sense that I was seriously considering not going. Once he realized I was serious about this, about opting out of this solo trip, he spent his time reassuring me that it would all be o.k., that this trip would be good for me, that I would learn a lot of good things… And most important of all, he told me not to fear it. “I think you’ll get a lot out of going there,” he told me. So, tentatively, I believed him. I trusted him. But I didn’t pack any bags.

When I boarded the plane, I carried with me a light backpack, an Eastpak I had since college. I couldn’t really say I’d packed, yet what I took was more than sufficient. In the backpack, I had: my passport, my ticket, my ATM card, my new-fangled (at the time) digital camera, a pair of flip-flops, and maybe 2 changes of clothes (one for warm weather and one for windier conditions). No toiletries or other details. I remember buying a toothbrush at a chemist when I got there, along with some inexpensive, plain Colgate toothpaste. I didn’t take any United States cash with me, of course, because that would have been silly. An ATM card is sufficient for a big city like London, where you can withdraw what you need in the currency of the country you’re in rather than going into a special building and taking the extra step of currency exchange. I’d already done my fair share of traveling to other parts of the world to know this much at least, so that was good.

So… What happened after I arrived in London? I didn’t stay very long, not long enough to really put down roots. I think it was a week or two. But I… Somehow I … …found my way in London. I guess that’s the best way to put it. I found my way there. And I loved it. London is a very forgiving place, at least in my experience. I had no one there, no one I’d ever met before. I was completely anonymous, just another face in the crowd. Yet the city was mine. I felt like everyone there was just another friend I’d yet to meet. And it was so. It was very interesting meeting people who were in groups, and most people there, even those who were travelers like myself, belonged to one group or another. Group dynamics were and always are quite fascinating.

I met Australians there, and learned from them that for many Australians, it is a rite of passage to make a trek to London, to the U.K., at least once in a lifetime. I had no idea before my trip there that that was the case. I met South Africans there, too. I met Indians, and Pakistanis, Canadians, and so many other really nice people. So many other things I learned, too, some which surprised me, but most didn’t. The most important thing I learned from that trip, though, is this: people are what you make of them, and they are essentially the same everywhere. We all have the same basic hardware… The software that’s loaded up inside us isn’t always the same, but if we choose to, it can be compatible with other people’s… Because we are not machines. We are so much more than that.

I have to say that there were moments during that trip when I wasn’t sure if I could tolerate the loneliness… …though I was in a crowd of people most of the time, whether at the Tate Modern or at the Globe Theater. I walked that city, rode the Tube (LOVE the London Underground), walked down the winding stairs of the tallest underground stairway in London (which I was reminded of as I watched the end of Atonement recently — btw, incredible movie; if you’re on the fence about it, don’t be — it’s worth your time)…. Alone. I watched the people all around me, talked to them if they talked to me… Sometimes even if they didn’t. Got to know a few. I think a part of me knew I wouldn’t be seeing any of them again, but it was worth getting to know them, if even for the short time I did. They were, all of them, wonderful, even when they weren’t, if that makes any sense.

I remember a moment in time, captured forever in my memory. It was only a moment, probably lasted a grand total of fifteen seconds, but for some reason, I remember it. There was a guy, my age (maybe older, maybe younger — I really don’t know). He looked like he really wanted to get on The Tube, but he couldn’t afford a ticket. I had a day pass, because that’s something you can do in London (I learned that the first day), you can buy a Tube ticket for the day or you can pay for individual trips. Since I was people-watching, I bought a day ticket ’cause it gave me more freedom to roam. Well, at the end of my people-watching and roaming, I wound up at the Earl’s Court station, which was my stop, my home base (for the time I stayed there, anyway — and that is a story in itself). Anyway, there was a guy there in the darkness of the station as I walked out. He was … It looked like he was panhandling. And I remember there were signs on the walls there discouraging the giving away of Tube tickets to random people, with some lame excuse about increased crime and whatnot… But I thought then (and I still think now) that that was because it decreases revenue for the London Underground more than anything else, and not really for any other reason… Well, I’m not much for corporate anything, as much as I adore The Underground… I love people much, much more. …And I’m not apologizing for it. He looked the crowd over. His eyes were searching, searching. He looked me over. I looked at him. I’m guessing if he had bad intentions, he could have done whatever to hurt me. I don’t have a black belt in anything. But he didn’t, of course, and never did I get the feeling he would have either. What he wanted was a Tube ticket, which I conveniently had. I could have thrown it away, he never would have known, but why would I do such a thing??? There was a person standing right in front of me that clearly wanted one, and mine was still valid. I wasn’t going to use mine, because it was getting dark and, tired, I wanted to go back to my shared hostel dormitory to rest my weary bones anyway.

So, without a word, I looked at him, and he at me. I showed him my ticket. I smiled and handed it to him. He took it, quick as a flash, and darted off ahead to find a train to go wherever it is he wanted to go. I almost didn’t hear him, but I did. He said, as he ran,”Thanks.” But even if he hadn’t, it would have been enough for me, the look of relief on his face as I handed it to him. Who knows what he had to go do, but whatever it was, I hope it was good. I think it’s all o.k. regardless. As far as I know the Underground is still transporting lots of people from place to place with no more and no fewer problems than before I stepped foot there.

When I got back from London, the fella, my fella, the one that told me to push past my fears and go to London alone anyway, was waiting for me. He picked me up from the airport. I didn’t have to ask him to; he wanted to, because that’s the kind of man he is. We hadn’t known each other for very long, but something told me this one, this fella, was special. I may not have gone on that trip and experienced such growth without his encouragement. And I’m so happy I did. I trusted him and it paid off. That fella is now the proud Papa Bear of our child. It’s been almost five years since that time, most of which time since then has been spent with each other. How much is >20 hours a day X 365 days X 5 years? It doesn’t matter. It adds up to an exquisite dream… another fantastic, wonderful journey. Ongoing.

Tanya over at Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog turned me onto this awesome new happening. New England will soon have its own HMBANA milk bank (or at least it appears that way from the MMBNE links page and the FAQ page)! And you, dear readers, can help make it happen by voting for it in a contest. All you have to do is register. Get more details about this over at Tanya’s blog and the Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England website (yup, they have one up already — very cool!) But hurry! The last day to vote is tomorrow, the 21st of January.

For those of you that are curious, I covered human milk banking in the United States in several of my previous posts, one of which is a go-to post on the subject of breastmilk donation, for those of you thinking of either donating or becoming a recipient of breastmilk. Please take a look at it when you have the time, ’cause it’s an eye-opener. The different types of milk banks, including HMBANA milk banks, are pretty well covered there.

Happy voting, everyone!

Edited to add:  Tanya has informed me today (January 23) that the Mothers’ Milk Bank of New England has made it into the final round in the Ideablob.com contest and is competing among seven other candidates.  So, if you would like to see a new HMBANA Mothers’ Milk Bank form in New England and have some of its start-up costs defrayed, please vote again.  If you’ve already signed up, you just need to log in and vote.  It’s super-fast and easy, and it could make the difference between life and death for babies in the New England area in the near future.  Please vote.  The last day to vote for the final round is January 31st.  Thanks again to everyone who voted already and those who will vote again.  (And thanks again, Tanya, for the heads-up.)

Our dog died today. She was old. She had lived for over fifteen years, by our estimates. We awoke this morning to find her having one long continuous seizure in her bed. My husband held her for most of the morning. She calmed down in his arms and in his soothing presence. However, the seizures never really stopped. After a while, we both knew they weren’t just seizures; these were death throes. We both spoke to her reassuringly, telling her it was o.k. It was all o.k. She was accepted as she was, and that whatever she did at this point was all right by us. We explained to our daughter what was happening. She wanted to pet the doggie.

I never liked the dog. I never felt like she liked me. She was extremely aggressive when I met her; surprisingly so. I’d grown up all my life with pets of various sorts, and have always gotten along well with animals in general… I was not prepared for the negative energy I felt coming from her. Years ago, she jumped up and bit the skin off the shin of one of my husband’s guests at a party, completely unprovoked, right in front of me. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

She bit me once. Only once. But it was memorable enough that I didn’t make any effort to get close to her again.

She belonged to my husband’s mother, and she gave her to us to take care of for a while. “For a while” turned into forever due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. And thus began a journey of resentment for the both of us. She would take dumps in random locations of the house, almost out of spite, it seemed. She also used to mark territory with her urine pretty much wherever it would create the most work possible. So we learned to use baby gates judiciously far before we ever conceived a baby. Life with her became one long, unpleasant, perpetual clean-up ritual.

The older she got, the more two things happened: (a) the more random her soiling became (thankfully by this point it was only confined to the kitchen at night and cold days and the backyard for the majority of the time), and (b) the more calm and less aggressive she became. I began to realize she was letting go of whatever resentment she had been holding onto all these years. And as I watched her calm down, so did I, even as I cleaned up yet another turd and mopped up yet another puddle of urine. I no longer resented her. I almost liked her, except for the fact that she stank horribly even immediately after a bath. Also, by this point she not only would squeeze out turds in random locations of the kitchen (usually nowhere near the wee-wee pads I’d put down for her, in the same place so as not to confuse her) but she now would step on her solid waste and grind it into the linoleum. And walk in a circle. And re-grind her own feces into the linoleum yet again. If I wasn’t right there when she took a shit, I paid for it later. So she became a constant source of background stress for me. She probably took about 3-5 dumps in one day, all random, almost all of them destined for linoleum-grinding if I didn’t run and pick them up immediately. No amount of scrubbing of that kitchen floor made it feel clean enough to me, because she would re-soil it within a couple of hours anytime she was indoors. I couldn’t let my baby’s feet touch the kitchen floor because I feared she may contract parasites from the dog’s feces through her delicate feet. So the baby gate was there not only to keep the dog (and feces) contained in the kitchen, but to keep my precious baby out of harm’s way, in more ways than one.

I didn’t notice how much of the stress created by this reality I was taking on until she finally passed on. It feels like an enormous relief to not have this burden anymore.

Yet I am sad. My daughter knew we had a dog. During those times when she’d see her beyond the gate, she’d look at her, point, and say, happily, “Woo-woo-woo!” (Her word for “dog”.) During those times when I had the temerity to allow her in the kitchen (with shoes on, of course, and body armor — …O.k., I’m exaggerating a little about the body armor, but not by much), she’d go straight for the dog. And she’d pat her softly. And she’d hug her gently. She knew she needed to be gentle, because the dog was old and frail. My baby loved that dog. The dog never bit her, never even seriously tried (though she did bare her teeth at her a little a couple of times, which would have made me nervous, if not for the fact that the dog had only about a dozen teeth left in her entire mouth). If my baby could love her, how could I not?

This afternoon, when we noticed the dog wasn’t seizing anymore, wasn’t breathing anymore, and her eyes started misting over with the characteristic look of death, I decided I needed to bathe her one last time. There were fleas, stubborn fleas that were apparently resistant to Advantage and Frontline, fleas who now realized the body they were feasting on no longer had enough warmth to attract them anymore. I carried her flea-ridden body, bed and all (that’s where she passed on — in her own comfy bed after being held and petted for a good long time) upstairs to the tub. I ran the water until it was hot and drizzled some baby shampoo in it. I washed her rigid body in the hot soapy water, keeping her nose above the water line, just in case there was still life there. The heat of the water made her body pliable again, everything but her legs, which were tense and unyielding like small old tree branches. Afraid of snapping them off, I left them mostly alone and worked on scrubbing the fleas out of the rest of her. I watched the fleas drown, glad that they were no longer on her anymore. I want nothing to interrupt her rest as long as she is still with us. I rinsed her body, surprised that her formerly misty eyes now looked bright and dark brown again, as though she were still alive. Could it be, I thought, that the heat from the bath is bringing her back to life somehow? I looked for a good long time for any sign of life, a twitch, anything. All I saw was those bright eyes staring into the distance, looking strangely alive. I kept her nose above the water, just in case.

My husband brought me some towels. He felt grateful that I was doing this, that I was reconciling with her. He knew about our history, and he wanted closure for us as much as I did. I wrapped our dog in the towels, tightly, like a burrito. I made sure her nose was sticking out, but nothing else. I wanted to keep the warmth of the bath in her for a good long time. I held her like a newborn and spoke to her, a few things just for her to hear. I placed her in her clean bed again, in the kitchen where she was accustomed to sleeping, and she is still there. Her body will stiffen once more, as she lays there peacefully, flea-free this time, unburdened of her past and surrounded by the love of her family.

Tomorrow we will bury her in the backyard. She will go back into the Earth, into her original mother, everyone’s original mother. There will be nothing separating her from it — no plastic bag, no cloth, nothing. She will go back as it should be: authentically. No bullshit. We may say a few words for our dog, but no words really need to be spoken. The Earth knows what she does, and we trust her enough not to tell her how to do her job.

We are probably not going to be getting another dog anytime soon. In all likelihood, our lives will run much more smoothly now that cleaning the kitchen floor will mean that it will stay clean for longer than 12 hours. Still, there is a sadness there, a void. It will pass eventually, and when it does, it will be a new day indeed.

In a world where we are often made to feel that we must choose between one or another thing, I’d like to believe we can have what we really want.  And I believe that what we really want is to be taken seriously, among other things.  Concerning our upcoming presidential election, I feel optimistic about a more positive future, one where cooperation rather than division prevails.  I was hoping that Oprah Winfrey would decide to run, but it looks like this year she won’t be.  She is putting her energy into many good things, though, as she is wont to do.  :)  I am as well, and I am confident you, dear readers, are, too.