Welcome again to the Just Post roundtable. After two years of this it is time for change, as you probably have read in last month’s post.

With things like this, like collecting links to blog posts about social justice, and writing about social justice, there always is a doubt whether it’s going to make a difference. Well, it seems that it does. When last month Mad, Jen, and I announced that we would no longer do the Just Posts, De wrote a comment saying,

This morning, right after I got up and affixed my re-usable menstrual pad, I packed my daughter her snack with an aluminum water bottle, and groaned that it was raining again on a Wednesday, when I go to walk dogs at the Humane society. Just the first five minutes of an average day, and everything about it was brought about by the Just Posts.

I also know that this project of ours has changed my life. That the bloggers I read change the way I think about things and people. You can see how much writing on the internet can do if you go over to the Mama to Mama project. This started as an idea, and words written on a blog, too. Amanda Soule, the woman behind this, asked people to donate handmade hats for newborns in Haiti, and now she has 5523 hats, and 169 blankets to send to families in need. It’s amazing and heart-warming to see how words on a computer screen move people, and then, sometimes, they even do something.

This project also shows why I am a bit uneasy about this form of charity. First, I have done nothing but write about it, and put the button on my blog, which feels like not nearly enough. And second, and much more important, while it is marvelous that there will be more than 5,000 babies with hats in Haiti, the real problem is that there is a place on this world (and more than one) where babies have to die because of a lack of hats and blankets. The thought of a nice little cozy baby makes me all fuzzy and warm but then I turn around and there are people who don’t have water to drink, people without food, without medical care, without much of anything in the middle of war. And a few hats won’t change that.

So I beg all of us to do what we can, send money, and hats, and write about things, and put buttons on our blogs, and maybe volunteer a bit, and in the middle of that, please, don’t forget that all of this is political and global. These are big issues that need to be tackled, issues that go beyond giving spare change to beggars.

In the world as it is now, the only way for someone like you and me seems to be to start small. See, De, and I and some others I know are using re-usable hygiene products, and water-bottles, and cloth grocery bags, and while it might seem futile, especially if you’re the only one you know who recycles, and buys organic food, and takes the train or walks instead of driving everywhere, and then there are all these people around you who say it’s all a sham anyway, and that you won’t be making a difference; I tell you: don’t listen! Really. It’s way better to start small, and try, and maybe fail than to shrug your shoulders and say, “I can’t make a difference anyway.”

And so I’m really happy that there still will be Just Posts in 2009 because Alejna from Collecting Tokens and Holly from Cold Spaghetti graciously stepped in and will be continuing the Just Post tradition that is all of two years old now. Thank you very much to you both.

Now here is this month’s list:

Alejna at Collecting Tokens with Coventry Carol
Atherton Bartleby with I think I hate you
Cecilieaux with Cut off Israel now!, It’s a Madoff, Madoff, Madoff, Madoff world,
Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican, Green and Why Conservatism Was Always Doomed
Country Girl with This is a Great idea
De with Mini Rant
defiant muse with harm here is harm there
Em at Social Justice Soapbox with Resolutions for a New Year
Erika with A Day without a gay (or making an actual impact)
girlgriot with Small World…Small City…Small Minds and Not Making People Invisible
Holly with Twelve STIs of Christmas
Jozet with “Redistribute the Wealth” My Hot Green Butt
Paul Newnham with The Day After International Day and Letter to the PM
Rebecca with Big Box vs Buy Local and Small is Beautiful and Affordable
Zoom at Knitnut with Bank Street Bully

The Just Post Brides Farewell Posts:
Alejna with Better for me than a scone and a latte
Bon with At epiphany
Emily with Doin’ it all for my babies
Holly with Example is not the main thing in influencing others it is the only thing Jen (ponderosa) with Fare Thee Well
Kate at Peripheral Vision with Doing More
Magpie with A Just Post Call for Help
Mary G with Resolution in 2009
Metro Mama with An Ongoing Offering
And please, do go over to Jen and Mad, and read their posts too.

For more than a year now I have been greeting you in this way on the tenth of every month. Every month we have been gathering links and posts and issues to be presented in this space. It all started two years ago when all of a sudden Jen and Mad decided to have a social justice wedding of blogs. To celebrate they put together a list of posts dealing with social justice, and then it became a monthly event.
The Just Posts have expanded, and dwindled, some time ago Hel and I were asked to act as co-hosts to represent the continents we live on (and I still can’t get my head wrapped around the concept of me being the “European ambassador” of the Just Post roundtable).
I still feel very honored to be part of this, an effort to build a parenting blogger community with interests beyond poop. Nevertheless it has become harder and harder to make room for this sort of commitment in my life. Like Mad says, I too don’t spend my whole time in front of the computer reading and writing blogs anymore.
Still, I’d rather see us making a clean cut than dwindle away into nothingness because of neglect. And who knows, maybe somebody will step up and continue the tradition and the Just Posts will go on.
The Just Posts are proof that blogging can change things, and most important of all, people. I know that what began as a whimsical “wedding” two years ago has changed me and my life considerably. Nothing can take that away.
So, in keeping with the tradition there will be some kind of celebration next month for the last issue of the Just Post roundtable. You might want to think about how to celebrate this occasion in style.
Until then, here are this month’s findings:
Alejna with Making history and The bittersweetness of pants

Billie with Public Defenders under siege in Miami..and everywhere

Bipolarlawyercook with The guiltiest day of the year

Bon with The morning after

Chani with Don’t let them take what’s yours and Waging peace: Proposition 8

Defiant Muse with My hope for you and Equality for all

Em with What about this crisis? and Triple bottom line (TBL)

Emily with photos of a rally and Flying the banner

Emily with Resisting the urge

Erika with Equality is equality

Flutter with Helicopters make him cry

Girlgriot with Tannin’, Tommin’ and getting merry like Christmas

Gwen with A Hard Truth. A Soft Landing

Holly with Part of the main and Yes we can improve the health of our communities

Janet with Everything is connected and Something else for you to do

Jen with Turn of a phrase, mail call and A day like any other

Josh with What would it take, my brother?

Kyla with Heavy

Letters from Usedom with My African children

Mad with 1,385

Maggie, dammit with What are you Contributing with all that hate? and Violence Unsilenced

Magpie with Repurposed: hat and blankets

Mary with The Veterans

Monkeys on the roof with Summer cold

Mother Woman with Let them eat change

Neil with Another argument for gay marriage

Ngorobob House with Food for thought, mostly

Reya with The yin and yang of it all

Tanis with It’s true: You can’t put a price on stupidity

Zoom at KnitNut with Harm reduction in the context of real life

the dear readers:
Alejna
Hele
Hetha
Holly
Jess
Mary
Mayberry Mom
Sin

And, as always, please go over to Mad and Jen’s places too, and see what they have to say. Thank you.

Last month there was the second annual Blog Action Day, and the theme this year was “poverty”. A couple of posts about this are in the lovely list below. The project I want to highlight this month also has to do with poverty.
It was initiated by Amanda Soule. She has launched the project Mama to Mama. Connecting families through the gift of handmade. I have to admit that my first thought was, “Well, great, now they are sewing caps for babies on Haiti.” But I checked it out nonetheless, and then I read Meg’s post about the project and about Haiti. She sums it up much better than I ever could so please go over and read it.
This is what moved me the most:

[...]the health and nutritional status of many (and in the poorer areas, most) mothers is very compromised during pregnancy, and therefore so is the health and nutrititional status of their babies. What our nurses have found is that the newborns, especially the premature and low-birth-weight babies are often very cold. A full-term healthy newborn has a store of fat which supplies sufficient calories to carry them for several days, and help them grow and thrive. Premature, and low-birth-weight babies don’t have this. Even though it is warm in Haiti, the ambient temperature is usually less than the body temperature, and if these compromised babies have to use their calories to maintain body temperature, it is not going toward growth, and lessens their chances to survive and thrive. So in the context of an otherwise healthy population, the caps would not be so critical, but in the areas in which we are working, and for the newborns we have connections with, they are important.

And if you, like me, are not likely to sew something to be shipped to Haiti, either because you don’t sew or it would be madness to ship something like that halfway around the world, go and read it anyways because you can also help by donating, or – the easiest option – by spreading the word.
I also want you to keep in mind that the Just Posts are a community effort, so I want to encourage everyone to write about social justice and tell us about it (you can find my e-mail on my about page), and to tell us about anything you read regarding this subject.

Alejna with Blog Action Day
Billie with Registering the homeless to vote and Bolivia to USA: “Return Goni to justice”
Cecileaux with Thinking toward a new economy and Joe the plumber economics
Citymama with Letter to Wallie and Bunny before Election Day
Cyn at MOMocrats with National Happy Coming Out Day and No on California’s Prop 8
Defiant Muse with Reprieve
Emily with How I know that I live in the South
Getting it wrong with Hippie girl days
Girlgriot with This and that one
Her Bad Mother with Angelina And Me, Our Bodies, Our Selves, Our CHILDREN’S Selves, and Sings The Tune Without The Words
Holly with Blog Action Day (After)
Jaelithe at MOMocrats with Blog Action Day: Education is the key to escaping poverty
Janelle with Wealth…
Jen with the flood pt. 4 – everything is still really bad and I am a real American
Jess with Redemption Song
Josh with Rescue package
Julie with River raft beds and other reflections
Kimberly with The ugly side of politics and people
Kyla with Joe the Plumber
Laloca with The intersection of poverty, psychiatry and the law
Lara with Gone a year and Were you bold? Did you wear red today?
LesbianDad with Oh the posts, they are coming fast and furious these days
Leslie with A perfect world and Proposition eight, proposition hate
Lia with Enriching Our Lives
Lisa Lam on CraftBoom! with Blog Action Day – Poverty. It’s helping, that’s what counts….
Maggie, dammit with Awareness, What are you contributing with all that hate and Please Help
Magpie with Healthy Eating
Mary with what women want
Mary Murtz with Reclamation
Maryam with Ethnic cleansing: Rwanda style, Rwanda and the 12 wishes and Rwanda and a colored place
Mir Kamin on BlogHer with National Mammography Day is October 17th
PunditMom with Taking our daughters to the polls
Rebecca with Trying to find the words, Donate to your local food pantry, Local food economies need local processing to thrive and Tax the rich: a rant about socialism
Social Justice Soapbox with International Day for the eradication of poverty and An apple for the teacher
Susan Wagner on BlogHer with DonorsChoose Challenge – Well, color me happy!
Suzanne Reisman on BlogHer with October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2008: The Best of the Worst Marketing
Tiny Mantras with The early voting experience
Whiskey in my sippy cup with Just say no
Wrekehavoc with Kill the poor

Readers
Moosh!
Hel
Maggie
Holly
Alejna

As usual you should go to Mad and Jen too to see what they are writing about this month.

There are two things that I want to write about today. First I want to remind you that next week on October 15 there is Blog Action Day. On that day more than 7,000 bloggers will all write about the same topic to raise consciousness. Last year it was about the environment, and this year it will be about poverty. (I want to thank Lia for bringing Blog Action Day to my attention again.)
Unlike most parent bloggers this month I won’t be writing about elections. Not that I’m not interested in them, there’s just that I’m only watching this whole circus show from afar. I do hope though that every single one of you who can vote has been doing so in the US, and will be doing so in Canada. As for my German readers I’m sorry to say that in the last county election where I live only 60% of those who could have voted actually did. Shame on those who didn’t!
I guess that means I’m writing about three things after all. Well, the main thing I had wanted to bring to your attention this month is Alzheimer and Dementia research. As most people I hadn’t thought about these things at all until Terry Pratchett, one of my very favorite authors of all times got diagnosed with an early form of Alzheimer’s and decided to tell the world about it. Having a disease like that still can stigmatize you. Not much is known about the disease, and how to treat it, mostly it’s just assumed that some people get a bit weird in the head when they’re old, and all you can do is hope that you’re not one of them.
As most of us, though, I know people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, people in my family, people who because of their disease turned into mere shadows of their former selves. As most of us, I know people who tried to take care for these people at home, caretakers who had to lock their parents in and treat them like little children to get them through the day. And who often in the end had to make the decision to have them move into a nursing home because they couldn’t do it any more on their own.
There is a lengthy interview with Terry Pratchett on-line if you’re interested in more information. One thing that Mr. Pratchett said moved me the most:

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

I don’t know how to make people with Alzheimer’s feel less alone but talking about it might be a good start.
And because talking about matters of social justice is at least a better starting point than doing nothing, here is the list of posts we collected in the parenting part of the blogging community. (And this might be as good a place as any to remind everybody that every person can send in a link at any time pointing towards a post he or she has read or written. You can find my e-mail address on my “About”-page.)
Ladies and gentlemen, the list:

Alejna with September 12, 2001
Border Explorer with Everything for Wall Street; Nothing for Main Street
Chani with Financial Smackdown, My Last Sarah Post, and Steal This Meme: Politics
Daily Kos with Amazing: Obama helped a stranded stranger
Denguy with Fear
Emily with Saving the planet for Starbucks customers of the future
Ewe Are Here with Busy Would Be and Understatement
Girlgriot with Speechless and Supermoms and super colliders
Holly with I couldn’t hold it any longer and Pennies for peace
JCK with IMC project: Saving the lives of malnourished children
Jen at A2EATWRITE with How to vote/how to buy a car
Jen with Good morning America, how are you?
Jennifer at Faking It with To Support of not to support, that is not the question, as I see it
Julie with How you can help recent hurricane and tropical storm victims
Lia with Age And Ageism and Give Some Thought
Leslie with The most problemmatic of times
Los Angelista’s Guide to the Pursuit of Happiness with Shiny and Bright Sarah Palin
Mad with Losing at the waiting game
Magpie with Ways to Make a Difference
Mary Murtz with Unfriended? Defaced? What?
Mir Kamin on Blogher with Men and Women: Becoming more alike makes ‘em more different. What?
Mother Woman with Manning the Phones
Rebecca with That creepy obsession with virginity and In defense of a silver tongue
Red Stapler with Why I am voting for Barack Obama
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee with Dear Mr. Harper
The Ascent of Humanity with Construction and the Glass Factory
The American Prospect with Everybody Calm Down, Obama is hitting back
The Buddha Diaries with A Fistful of Bills
Under the Overpasses with The Sky is Falling–really! and The View from Down Here

The considerate people who read and sent links:
Alejna
Thailand Chani
Painted Maypole

And as always you should check out what Mad and Jen have to say this month, too. Without them there wouldn’t be such a thing as a Just Post Roundtable.

Time for the Just Post Roundtable. As every month for almost two years now Mad, Jen, and I gather posts about social justice. Our readers contribute by sending us links to what they wrote or read. Thank you for that again.

This month I’d like to use my introduction to remind you of something that I briefly mentioned back in February: the Goods 4 Girls project. Deanna Duke, the woman behind that project, describes it like this (and I’m quoting this in its entirety, sorry for the length):

You may have seen the commercials… the ones describing how girls in South Africa miss school when they have their period and how buying Tampax tampons will help them. There’s also a commercial for Always pads, with a similar message. Imagine having to use rags or newspaper, which is what many of these girls use for their periods.

Procter and Gamble (P&G) has started a program in Africa, where they are donating Always sanitary pads to girls who otherwise would miss several days of school each month due to inadequate menstrual supplies.

But what are the potential problems with donating disposable feminine hygiene products? Well, for starters, there is the environmental impact. In most of these areas, they have no solid waste programs or landfills. In other words, they burn their waste.

As such, products that have synthetic components (like sanitary pads and tampons) would be incinerated. For some schools, P&G is building incinerators near the bathrooms. But what about the pollutants emitted from burning these products? They may potentially get inhaled by the students and teachers. Any additional packaging, plastic or otherwise, would need to be disposed of in the same manner.

What would be a good alternative to help out these girls but without the environmental impact? Since most of these girls are using rags now, having a pad that is a more sophisticated (with a waterproof barrier) may be enough to allow them to participate in school and regular activities. They would still wash the pads as they normally do with the rags, but they would benefit from the extra protection.

I started Goods 4 Girls to provide the link for women wanting to donate hand-sewn menstrual pads to agencies who could provide the means to identify areas of need as well as provide the distribution to the women and girls needing the pads.

So, what can we do to help? We can

1. donate cash
2. for those who like to sew we can sew pads and donate those
3. donate pads

You can find out all about donating here.

The easiest way of helping is to promote the project with the button you’re seeing in my left sidebar. You can find that, and tons of information including links to further reading (scroll down to the bottom), and tales about the distribution of the first shipments of products on the Goods 4 Girls homepage.

I won’t tell you all about it because the Just Post roundtables aren’t just about making a pretty list, they are about information. And here are the posts to read:

Anne with Yolanta
Cecileaux with Tomorrow, 40 years ago and Why neoconservatism deserved to fail
Emily with Saving the Planet for Starbucks Customers of Tomorrow
Flutter with Life is good, even when it’s crap
Girlgriot with It’s not easy being green
HerBadMother on blogher with Toss the Tylenol, Nursing Moms: This is Terrifying, Lost boy and Hide Your Hooters, The Haters Are Coming
Holly with Games for the haves and have nots
Jen with God in the house
Kittenpie with Down and Out in Riverdale
Lara with My little girl is the issue
Lisa with How a graduate marketing class saved my life
Mad with Flotsam and Take back the night
Megan with Realities
Mir Kamin on blogher with School supplies socialism makes for an angry village
Neil with The Orthodox Jewish guy outside of the supermarket
Pundit Mom with DNC on the homefront: Ellen Malcom of Emily’s list and Homeless children, don’t count on John McCain
Wrekehavoc with Stop using sex as a weapon
YTSL with Life in West Kowloon

And here are those who read:
Janet
Yolanda
Mary
Alejna

Welcome again to the Just Posts. This is the July “everybody is on vacation”-edition. Also, all my own nominations got lost in what will be known as the “great computer crash of 2008″. So I’m especially grateful for all the others who nominated posts, and wrote posts of their own.

I didn’t quite know what to write about this month. Not because of a lack of topic but because I couldn’t decide which cause that’s running around in my head I’d rather feature.

Some time ago I received a letter from Open Arms in South Africa. This is an organization that Jen promoted back when the Just Posts celebrated their first anniversary. I gave them a measly amount of money and since then I have been receiving letters and pictures from them. I always feel guilty because I figure they should be spending their money helping children in need instead of paying for postage to Germany.

Open Arms is an organization that cares for children who have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS. They offer a new home to children who don’t have any place to go to. Now they have filled all their space but, of course, there are still children in need, and so Bob Solis is walking 750 miles in order to raise money to build more cottages. You can visit the “A long walk for children“-website for more information or take a look at his blog. He just celebrated his birthday along the way.

The concept of children suffering that much and dying because their parents are ill is something that’s almost incomprehensible to my mind as I’m sitting here, cushioned from a reality like that by a social system that’s still functioning. I know that there are a lot of worthy causes, a lot of people suffering, a lot of places where the kind of money that I spend on books in a month can make a significant difference for the life of somebody.

So. here it is again, the list of posts about social justice that we found in July:

Baha’i Thought with Generation Y on race
Cecilieaux with The beast drops the second shoe, Two boomer final solutions, Le socialisme americaine and Disparity
Chani with homelessness in perspective
Citizen of the world with A time to mourn. A time to heal.
Defiant Muse with like a rolling stone
girlgriot with A Girl Like Me and Oh yeah and we all look alike
Hamguins Hide-Not with OFG VIII peace
Hel with Life truths
Jen with Passing Through
Jill with A penny for your thoughts
Kaliroz with sticker shock
Kittenpie with Down and out in Riverdale
Krista with The melting pot post
Magpie with On Marriage
Mrs. G with Seventies
MYLIBLOG with Uncle Bobby’s Wedding
Practical Spirituality with choosing beauty: where do we go from here and Sacred life Sunday: authentic beauty inspirations
Slouching Mom with For whom city lights glow
The Ascent of Humanity with The red pill
The Blog that Ate Manhattan with Abortion on the Web
Under the Overpasses with Geography of hope

Our lovely readers:
Alejna
Carrie
Chani
Mama Tulip
Mary

Please, make sure to check out Mad’s and Jen’s posts too, especially since they may have even more links because I’m gone on vacation for a few days, and may have missed a post or two.

Welcome again to the Just Posts roundtable.

When last month I wrote about child poverty in the introduction to the Just Posts there were a lot of marvelous comments. I’m especially thankful to Hel for pointing out that not everyone of us is living in a “rich country”. I forget that, sometimes, in the same way that I’m not really comprehending the fact that it’s winter now, where she lives, while I’m in the middle of summer.

I knew instantly what to write about for this month’s introduction when I heard about the Expo 2008 on the radio. It’s all about water and sustainable development.

When I wrote about my guilty conscience when staying in the shower for too long, one of readers mocked me. And she is right, water is not that much of a problem where I live. It’s raining as I type this, and the water we drink comes from nearby. In past years we were advised not to give it to infants, and the town I live in helped families with newborns so that they could buy bottled water for them, but for the past years, and ever since my son has been born the water has been of good quality.

The situation in the nearby Bavarian capital is a bit different. While they have water that is pure and marvelous, and they have plenty of that, it seems a bit weird to me that that water comes from somewhere in the Alps. There are big pipelines fueling it to the city. But there isn’t a problem with the water as such. It’s good, it’s pure, and there’s plenty.

Of course, that’s not true for everyone in the world. Good water for drinking is a scarce resource and is becoming increasingly rare. Imagine living in a place where you had to chose between drinking something that makes you and your children sick, or not drinking at all. Imagine living somewhere where most of your day is spent fetching water from a place that’s hours away.

It’s sad that it always seem to come back to this these days, that there are people who have pools, and washing machines, and who take showers and baths every day, and who don’t even drink water because it’s so common, and there are people who barely have enough to survive, or even less.

I don’t know what to do about it, I know that I can’t send my unused shower water to the desert but it would be great if I could.

And now to something different, here is the list of posts that were gathered by you:
Andrea at Punk Rock Mommy with Planting the seeds of my own garden
Andrea with The burden of perfection
Averagebean with Freedom of speech?
Blog Antagonist with Speak English Me
Chani with Wellness Wednesday: take back your time
Christine Kane with Making Friends with Songs and Food
Defiant Muse with The mommy myth
Flutter with I am an omnivore
Girlgriot with Gotta do more than holla and We can, I mean WE can
Hel with Afternoon in an urban footgarden
Her Bad Mother with Joy, And Pain
Identity Theory with The weapon of rape
Indigenous people’s issues today with Five key indigenous people’s issues
Jen with Where the streets have no name and the shattered ceiling and what it means for our children
Julie with Kids and sex?
Kaliroz with indifference to me, is the epitome of evil
KC with Wheels
Mayberry Mom with 20 lousy pairs of scissors
MOMocrats with Moms need help in California family court system
Moosh in Indy with the healthcare of stereotypes
No Caption Needed with High Noon in Sadr City
The Expatriate’s Kitchen with World Refugee Day
Toddlywinks with The powerlessness of three
Tossing Pebbles in the Stream with To laugh or be outraged
Susanne with Corsets, coolness, caps, and cosmetic surgery
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with Banning the Pill Kills Women. Period. and “Third Genders” in Societies with Rigid Gender Roles
WhyMommy with Thank you, AmVets

The ones who read:
Janet
Moosh!
Alejna

And, as always, there are Mad, and Jen the ones who started this. Please, check out what they have to say this month. And Jen will be going to BlogHer and talk about this here roundtable, how marvelous.

As always thank you very much for writing, for pointing us to other’s posts, and for reading. And please, go over to Mad and Jen as well to see what they have to say.

Right now though I’m headed out the door again.

Nonetheless I’d like to remind you that tomorrow is the last day to submit your own or other people’s posts to the just post roundtable. Just send me an e-mail at creativemotherATwebDOTde.

If you’re new to this and don’t know about the just posts, click on the button below:

See you soon.

Time for the Just Post Roundtables again! For those of you new to this this is a monthly thing where Mad, Jen, Hel, and I collect links to posts about social justice. Everybody can send links to posts written by others or themselves, and then we end up with a nice list of interesting posts.

Did you realize that it has been three months since the baby shower? Back then we wanted to do a little more than just write about social justice and so a couple of us decided to take action towards social justice too. How has it been going for you? Were your commitments doable? Fun?

I still feel like I should be doing more but that’s a feeling very familiar to me, and applicable to all aspects of my life so I just tell that nagging little voice to shut up. And go on knitting tiny socks. (I committed to knit at least one pair of preemie socks every month for Frühchenstricken.)

Even small actions do make a difference. Really. So here’s the roundtable list for you:

Beth with Have you gotten greener?
Beyond the fields we know with Thursday Poem – Testimony
Bob Dylan with Arbor Day
bon with In Praise of Universal Health Care
Carrie with People are people
Chicky Chicky Baby with Both ends of the spectrum of animal abuse
Daisy with Stranger than fiction, my job is, Teddy bear, teddy bear and Politics as usual – or not
Fretful with Sense of pride
Gary in Thailand with Free Tibet
Gina with Three trillion dollars, four thousand dead, five years, one man and Not your sweetie
Girlgriot with Believing the hype
Heart in San Francisco with What art is not
Jen with My sad lament and Unhappy Anniversary
Julie Pippert with The United States: it’s okay, it’s an easy mistake to make
Kelly with Anti-poverty protesters shut down city council meeting
Kevin Charnas with Running to save
Kevin at Life has Taught Us with Olympic Spirit and Is this the Olympic Spirit?
Kyla with What would you say? and The Interview and Where I’m Not
Lost White Kenyan Chick with Food for thought for International Women’s Day
Maithri with Beyond borders
Mary with Five years forward, a thousand years back
Mir Kamin on BlogHer with Attention 8-Year-Olds: You Should Be Pampered, Primped, and Hairless
Mother-Woman with Where Was I?
No Caption Needed with The silent costs of war
Pixiedust with Great-full Friday: Community
Reluctant Housewife with My Gayest Look
Sandra with I am not an aboriginal woman
Superlagirl with The drymouth will fade, but the involuntary movements are yours to keep forever
Susanna’s sketchbook with We can do it
Susanne with Body image, or Would you recognize your own belly button?
Suzanne Reisman on BlogHer with Legalize Prostitution
The Expatriate’s Kitchen with Is it just me
The Elementary with Everything we have , One for the road and No man is an island
WhyMommy with One regret

Some of the Just Readers
Christine
Anne
Chani
Jess
Mary
Alejna

Please check out what Mad, Jen, and Hel, are saying this month too. Thank you all for participating by writing, and reading.

It’s time for the Just Post Roundtable again. You might have noticed that I haven’t written anything about social justice this month. In a way this was due to the fact that I had too much things to write about. If only I could find a way to siphon my thoughts directly into the computer I would have one or two posts daily. The things I wanted to write about but haven’t were:

1. Women’s Day on March 8th. Sadly gender still is an issue. Those of you who can read German might want to have a look at the short post Frau Kaltmamsell wrote about that. For those who can’t, basically it quotes an article that reminds us that while more than half the human beings are female there are still a lot of areas where there are only men to be seen. (For years I had a graph hanging at my wall showing how in academia women make more than half of the students but only something like ten percent of faculty members.)
2. V-day. I received an e-mail about this which I’m quoting:

V-Day is a global movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions of Eve Ensler’s play, The Vagina Monologues. This year, 2008, marks V-Day’s 10-year anniversary. To date, V-Day movement has raised over $50 million and educated millions of people all over the world about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it.

3. Goods4Girls. An initiative started by Crunchy Chicken. She is working with organizations to distribute cloth menstrual pads to girls in Kenya and Uganda so that these girls can stay in school. You really should read the whole story on the Goods4Girls site.
4. Elections and voting. Voting is very important because it’s one of the few ways we can change anything about our local politics. In my head I had a long post all mapped out about the moral dilemma of whom to vote for. We had a few local elections here, one of them was about electing the town’s mayor. I didn’t know whether to vote for the candidate that I agreed with, who was very likely not going to win, or for the candidate that seemed the lesser evil against the one that I absolutely didn’t agree with. (In the end I decided to follow my conscience. “My” candidate had about 10 % of the votes. The one whose policy I heartily dislike had 45 %. Interestingly he didn’t win but there will be a second ballot, a second chance.)

I know this is a bit much for a mere introduction to the roundtable, I apologize for that. As usual, don’t forget to check out what Jen and Mad are writing too. Hel won’t join us this month but you might want to go to her place anyway because there are pictures of puppies. (And who can resist puppies?)

Aliblahblah with Imagine
Attila the Mom with Language is powerful
Awake with Cyclical
BipolarLawyerCook with Free school lunches and social stigma
Cecileaux with Yes, we can vote for a black man and No-cajones congress
Celeste with Immunization controversy and The revolution will not be televised
Chani with Put a little love in your heart and Sacred life Sunday on Saturday
Crunchy Chicken with Using your sewing skills for good, and Operators are standing by
Cynematic with Unable to mind my own beeswax part 2
Deb with Naivete
Eileen with home visits in America
Elspeth with What the Dream House was/is for: building dreams and a real house
Emily with Real dads don’t suck and Her name
Gina with vote and wasteful
Guilty with an Explanation with Ain’t nobody’s business if I do
Gwen with Say it absolutely nothing
HeartFeldt Politics Why we must embrace controversy
Her Bad Mother with Juno’s Choice
Ian with Emerging from the mines at last
It’s Not a Lecture with Facebook: Still clueless
Izzy with the one where i get all aggro and lecture everyone
Jangari with Eleven years in the making, The Prime Minister who apologised and Sorry business Jen with Water boarding and other unnecessary evils, Little big girl and stars in their bucky eyes jo(e) with Filled with Groceries
Julie Pippert with Putting a face to the health care crisis for kids (and families) as health insurance options expire and vanish
Karen with Super Tuesday
Karen (needs new batteries) with Just call me Rosenblum Hussein
Kevin with 935 lies
Kyla with Hate to waste $30
League of Maternal Justice with I need to start somewhere
Liz at Los Angelista with our acceptance of the code and religious freedom
Mary with No good answers
MOMocrats Women with Just call me Hussein: The meme
MOTR with more evidence emerges about dangers of EBA exposure
No Caption Needed with The evolution of violence in the 21st century
Pundit Mom with Super Tuesday not so super
Reality Testing with In the mix: Helping our children become successful in school and in life
Sarcastic Mom with Carroll Community Cleanup
Shakesville with Call to action to help tornado victims
Sin with Backwards in Time
Surrender, Dorothy with The US and our spy satellites: Fear disguised as concern
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with Women are Dumb. Let’s Educate Girls and Boys Separately! That Will Solve Everything., Would the American Economy Collapse if Women Stopped Hating Their Natural Appearance? A Look at Makeup, and A Letter to My Body
Wayfarer Scientista with Bird friendly coffee/chocolate
Writing as J(oe) with Teaching in the dark
Readers
Mary
Catherine
Hetha
Jess
Emily
Chani
Joanne
Alejna

It’s time for the just posts again. As every month there is a wealth of blog posts to read about social justice. As every month Mad, Jen, Hel, and me are collecting them with your help and write a bit about something connected to it.

I don’t know if you have seen it but last month there was “Blog for Choice Day“. I didn’t know until Mad wrote about it. (You can find the link to her post and another one by Thor in the list below.)I had all but forgotten about the whole pro-choice issue until Mad told us about her volunteer work. Then I remembered that this is something I believe every woman should be able to decide for herself. Whether to become pregnant or nor, whether to have a child or an abortion.

The legal situation in Germany regarding abortion is a bit strange but it boils down to the fact that you can get an abortion by a trained doctor if you’re less than 12 weeks pregnant and you have jumped through a few bureaucratic hoops. (Of course it’s much more complicated in real life, we’re talking about German bureaucratic hoops here.) Oh, and it’s covered by health insurance. So that might be the reason why that particular issue hasn’t bothered me in recent years.

Unlike what conservatives are saying though it’s not a stroll in the park to have an abortion. Not that it should be, I think that is a very grave decision to make, but fear of punishment is not what is getting abortion rates down. For all that is known so far the best to get women to have the babies is to give them the feeling that they will be cared for. That they have options. And, well, having access to contraception may also be a factor. From what I know it’s the US that has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the Western world. (For further reading on this topic I recommend Suzanne Reisman’s post about “Victorian Times…” also in the list below.)

On another note, how are your baby shower gifts coming along? I kept my promise to knit at least a pair of preemie socks every month, in fact I made three so far. I’ll add to that so that there will be all pairs, don’t worry.

Alpha Dogma with Happy Period
Andrea with Apocalypse for one
Blue Mountain Mama with I first saw her at a kid’s program
Bohemian Creations with The machine
Bohemian Girl with Paraben Free
Carrie with My little philanthropist
Casey at Expectant Waiting with Actually, YOU need to seek help for my PPD
Chani with Midnight in our souls and Retirement of a cultural dissident
Chez Kirby with Taking Chances
The Cleaner Plate Club with My first boss, and what she had in common with a cloned cow…or a mad one
Dave with Words. Tone. Death
DAYSGOBY with Trial and error
Defiant Muse with bratz dolls and string bikinis for toddlers
Elderwoman with why hasn’t everybody turned green yet Pt. 1 and Pt. 2
Emily at Wheels on the Bus with Blog for Choice Day
Ewe are here with Just a quick note and Why our next election can’t come soon enough for me
Gina with not my god and big bad wolf
Gwen at Woman on the Verge with We real cool and And I Would Walk 5 Thousand Miles
it’s not easy being queen with his dream is still my dream
Jen with oh george, how i loathe thee and don’t you know i’m talking about a revolution
Jen Lemen with Everything we needed
Jen M with Philanthropy Thursday: Haiti
Jess with one step at a time and beloved
Julie Pippert with my big pink elephant for hump day, When it comes to sexual harassment, it’s the little things that bleed you to death and To the Sexual Harassment Google Searchers…
Kevin with Operation Climate Vote Relaunch
Lucy with We do not need rulers, we need rules of law
Mad with Blog for Choice Day
Mouse with Don’t Tell Me How to Talk About Sex and The Talk
No Caption Needed with Love in the ruins
No Impact Man with A balanced approach to climate change
Not Hannah with Enough. No more.
Peter with The politics of greed
R World with Secret decoder ring for Bush’s state of the union address
Seventh Sister with The last hours of ancient sunlight
Sin at Write About Here with tenuous
Slouching Mom with Wherein I’m dismayed to find that old and young are not always antonyms and What happens to a dream deferred
Snigdhasen with Daughters of the soil
Susanne with stifling the urge to learn
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with Why We Vote with Our Uteruses, Standing Up for Working Women & Child Care Providers, Because “Nobody Really Likes Hair in their Private Regions…”, and Victorian Times or Comprehensive Sex Ed: Which Method Do You Choose to Prevent Teen Pregnancy?
Thor with Blog for Choice Day
Uppercase Woman with Take the baby to prison day
Wayfarer Scientista with last native eyak speaker dies and energy & google earth

More shower gifts
Christine at Running on Empty with December Just Posts: A Baby!
Mary at Them’s My Sentiments with About the Gorilla in the Living Room
Suz at Within the Woods with Late to the Party

Readers
JoC
Sin
Jess
Mary
Mary Murtz
Steph

Technorati Tags: just post

I only realized why I got all worked up about this when I went to look at a nearby Montessori school. I entered the classroom, I saw the teachers, I heard their presentation and thought, “That’s how school is supposed to be!” And I realized how much I had suffered as a child in school because I had to learn so slowly. I didn’t get top grades but basically I just sat there, made an attentive-looking face and thought of something else.

I’d like my son to have the chance to learn as fast or slow as he needs to.

The other thing that has me all worked up is the Bavarian school system. When I studied music education I learned a lot about the various school systems in the different parts of Germany. When my husband and I got married, and when I briefly worked as a music teacher in a Bavarian school, I told my husband that we had to move somewhere else in case we had children so that they didn’t have to go to school here.

All in all it’s a jumbled mess of reformed reforms, of decision made hastily and then altered because it all didn’t work. That’s possibly true of most institutions but the Bavarian school system is especially prone to promote only a few elite students and leave the rest behind.

There are only very few students who still love knowledge and learning after leaving school even if they have been successful there. I can see it right now at kindergarten level when dozens of people tell my son that he should be glad to still be in kindergarten because he won’t be having any time for playing anymore once he’ll start elementary school. (Which is crap by the way, school’s from 8 to 1 and they don’t have much homework the first two or three years.) I see it in a kindergarten teacher telling another parent – while I and our two children were standing nearby – that it’s a shame, the things first graders have to do these days in schools, some of the lessons were too hard even for the kindergarten teacher!

And then, in third grade, it gets worse because then the children are pressured to get good grades otherwise their chances of getting access to a college or university education later in life will be minimal. (Really.) And if they get top grades and get admitted to the Gymnasium the fun only begins. With the recent reform of the system joy of learning and knowledge has a very hard time in school today. “Learning” is again used as a synonym for “cramming as much facts in your head as it can hold until the next test and then forgetting all about it”. Learning is considered to be hard, to be something one only does when forced to, something that isn’t fun for sure. And it’s not as if the students were taught how to learn, it seems as if they just get fact after fact dumped on them, without any strategies of how to deal with that.

I, on the other hand, still believe that learning is fun, that it’s something that occurs naturally, and especially that children are eager to learn as much as they possibly can. Just like Maria Montessori did.

In order to have our son visit a Montessori school we’d have to pay about 350 € every month for school, have him driven to school to the next town, and we’d have to be lucky to get him in since there are much more people interested than they can take. Regular elementary school is free, it’s nearer to our house than kindergarten, and it has to take him by law.

Those of you outside Germany might ask why I don’t homeschool him, seeing that I am that passionate about learning and a teacher on top of that. Well, homeschooling is illegal in Germany. This goes back to the 19th century when children were forced to go to school for the first time ever, even those whose parents depended on their labor, like farmers. I always believed that this is a good thing that it makes society a bit more equal.

But now that it is about my son I’d like him to be a bit less equal, or better yet, that all the children can have access to schools where learning is fun and where both teachers and students are looking forward to go to every day.

I know that there are still a lot of children in the world who would love to go to school and can’t. Children who have to work for money like they were adults, children who’d love to learn anything, and can’t. But still I’d like to live somewhere where learning is driven less by fear and more by enthusiasm.

Now, this is the just post anniversary. A year ago there was the first social justice roundtable where before there had been nothing. In fact, that social wedding was the reason that I found this particular corner of the blogosphere. De wrote about that wedding, she posted a picture of her own wedding day and the lyrics to “One”, and that moved me to seek out Mad and Jen who came up with this idea. And I promised to write something about social justice once a month at least. A promise that I kept, mostly, with the exception of March. (And this month you won’t find my post on the list because I forgot to nominate it. But that’s the beauty of being one of the hosts, I can point you towards it now: “Healing the World“.)

Since it has been a year of talking and writing about social justice, we decided to go a little further, to have a baby and to ask people to volunteer. I have to admit that I was a bit reluctant at first. I’m always reluctant to commit my time or energy to something new. But then I did want to do something. And I realized that it didn’t have to be something really big. Just small and doable would be enough.

My first thought was forcing my students to do regular performances at the local retirement home. But my heart wasn’t really in it. Also, the students wouldn’t have liked it. But then I allowed myself to think even smaller. And I found something totally unspectacular. Something I already have started doing, actually. I’m committing to knitting a pair of socks or a hat, preferably both each month for “Frühchenstricken“, that’s a German project to knit for preemies.

Just last week I found a similar American project for those who, like me, might be interested in doing a bit of social volunteer work while sitting on their own sofas watching TV. And then there’s “project snuggle“:

Project Snuggle- A project of knitted bears for police to take to child victims of domestic violence. Simple, really yet so very absent in the world of charitable knitting.

I would totally support this if it weren’t crazy to ship hand-knit stuffed animals half-way around the world.

Knitting for preemies warms my heart. At first I thought it was all about the fun of knitting doll-sized tiny socks. They are so cute! And almost instant gratification. But then I found that I also liked it because I was born too early myself. And at a time when my mother wasn’t even allowed to touch me for weeks. Now that I am a mother myself it rips my heart to hear her tale of how she stood in front of the window, looking at me every day for four weeks until she was allowed to take me home.

When I posted about this project the first time, thinking that it wasn’t really making a difference if I knit six pairs of socks or not, Sofia wrote a comment saying that her own daughter had been a preemie and how it warmed her heart to see that someone, a total stranger had taken the time to knit something for her daughter. And I thought back to the time my son was born, and though he wasn’t premature, I also wondered who had knit the horribly striped booties that he wore in the hospital. And while they were indeed very ugly I also knew that they were made out of love. Not for a child or grandchild but for some baby that person had never seen.

And that sentiment, love for human beings that we have never seen, is what brought forth the just posts and now the baby shower.

So, without further ado here is this month’s list. I’m really humbled by all the people who have committed to do volunteer work, and if you have too and your post is not on this list, please leave it in the comments.

Laura at Twenty Five Days to Make a Difference
Lawyer Mama with Christmas in Omaha
Magpie with 13 Ways to Help
Painted Maypole with God loves Fags
Reluctant Memsahib with it’s the corruption that’s the problem
Victoria with Give
The Chick with AIDS facts you should know
Jeff with Bless the invisible children
Mir on blogher with Dutch Diplomats, a Korean Adoptee, and the Unthinkable
Suzanne Reisman on Blogher with Dec. 17 is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers and When Will We See Some Female Geeks?
Chatoyance with Books will fly through the air for children
Jenn with full circle
Sin with 28
Frieda with What I would pray for, if I prayed
Hearts in SanFran with Only the good die young
HearthTalks with Putting it in perspective
Liz with AIDS: No longer your friendly neighborhood appetite suppressant
Chani with Sanuk is not a four letter word
Veronica with Give
Jen with it’s coming on christmas, two little girls, two little girls, pt 2
Lost White Kenyan Chick with Electioneering and corruption
Laloca with Joseph Heller couldn’t've come up with this
City Girl with thinking out loud
Ida with Gay and Homeless: The numbers to back it up
Quaker Dave with There are no words
Denguy with Everyone should eat
Jangari with Intervening into the intervention
Emily with Lazy mother’s guide to saving the planet
The Individual Voice with Christmas in Iraq and Afganistan
Babylune with it’s series of posts culminating with the generous december group writing project
MauiGirl with No more death penalty in New Jersey
Reya with What’s important
The Psycho Therapist with If you can’t find money to kill people

Baby Shower Gifts
Jenn with Let’s change the world, shall we?
Omaha Mama with Giving more and Teaching to Give Back
Andrea with Enough, again.
CCE with A words: Altruism and Asceticism
De with Oh baby,I can help
Sage with Birthing in chains
Karen with Baby shower treats
Alejna with Gifts and thanks
Jennifer with New Year’s resolving
Reality Testing with Project Snuggle in conjunction with Flutter’s original idea in 2006 there once was a girl
Aliki with Newton’s third law
Painted Maypole with Unto us a child is born
Sin with Win-win
The Psycho Therapist with On giving to organizations

Those who listened
TIV: The Individual Voice
Crazymumma
LawyerMama
Painted Maypole
Chani
Jennifer
Mayberry Mom
Pundit Mom
Susanne
Hel
Mad
Jen

And as always you should also check out what Jen, Mad, and Hel are writing this month.

For an introduction this month I’d like to point you to a post by Frau Kaltmamsell titled something like, “Being a woman is bad for income and career“. Though written in German it might be interesting for those of you who can’t read that, too, because she points us to a study in Harvard Business Review about “Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership” (and a book of the same name). It says in short that the metaphor of women hitting the glass ceiling has outlived its usefulness because gender bias hinders women’s careers from beginning to end. Still. I find this very sad and not at all surprising. The difference in wages between women and men in Germany, by the way, is bigger than in most other industrial cultures. Because we have these spectacular benefits when having children, for example we can leave work for up to two years or so with a guarantee to have our old job back afterwards. (I#m really not up to date on this because they change it on a yearly basis.)

So, to all the women out there who think that we don’t need feminism anymore because we are all so totally equal I say, “Stop kidding yourselves.” And with this not so very uplifting news get yourselves a nice beverage, sit down and visit all the beautiful posts our fellow bloggers have written the past month.

aimee with Where does your Candidate stand on Healthcare
azahar with Thought for the day
Beck with Welcome to The Macho World
BipolarLawyerCook with Your own best advocate
bon with Other Pictures
Chani with Blog Blast for Peace: If not now, when? Passing through the Gates, Horse Manure, and Gays in the Military
The Cool Mom Picks’ Safe Toy Guide
Denguy with Bad Plastic, Bad Bad and ‘Tis the Season
Devra at DC Metro Moms with What About the other 9 months?
Erin with It’s That Time Again
I am the master evil genius with What does need look like?
Jangari with Toilet culture, Exodus, and Four Corners on the Intervention
JCK at Motherscribe with We are all connected, we cannot be ourselves without community
jen with Power to the people who need it most, Tradition, Choosing and doing and going
jen at MOMocrats with Power to the People (who need it most)
jessi with Donorschooseorg–helping teachers across the country
Julie at Using My Words with Blog blast for Peace, Does the abstinence message for drug use work?, Let’s Get it On: Abstinence only sex education is risky and ineffective, Does putting the arts at risk put kids at risk too? and Inconvenient Truth: A Transcript of my testimony to the EPA at the NESHAP Public Hearing
Kayleigh at Another Working Mom with I’m Dreaming of a… and Holidaze
Kevin at Life has Taught Us with Your signature does make a difference
Kyla with Healthcare is a bitch
Laura with A more important PSA
lori with Thoughts for the day
Mad with SOS? You can’t be serious
Mad Organica with Tell Your Girls to Call for the Ball
Madame M. with Plan: Freezing butts, Stargazing and Retail (couples) therapy
Mary G with Charity begins at home
Mel from Actual Unretouched Photo with The Homeless
Pundit Mom with Do Republican Candidates Care About Women Voters?, You Know This Would All Be Different if Men Could Breastfeed and A Promise to American Women
Roy with Intersection of racisim, sexism and commerce
Sin with Seasonal Angst Disorder, Part 1
Suzanne Reisman on blogher with For a Good Time, Call a Feminist (Not that You’d Know This From the Media), No Smart Woman Left Behind and What’s Bugging Women?
Thordora with Murders are Not Monsters; they’re men
TIV with Post-traumatic stress disorder and ripples of trauma
Wayfarer Scientista with The Spilling of Oil

Thanks to all who provided the links:

Alejna
Crazy
Jen
Julie
Kiki
Lawyer Mama
Liv
Mad
Pundit Mom
Sin
Steph
Susanne
And please go over to Mad (who did most of the work this month), Jen (who is back from traveling), and Hel (who has been a bit busy these past weeks). Each of them writes their own introduction to this list, and they are well worth reading too. I hope you enjoy the links and come back to participate next time when the just post roundtable will turn one year old.

I don’t know if you have heard about it but Chani from Thailand Gal started a blog carnival accentuating the positive. I like that very much and so I want to write about something positive as an introduction to all the fabulous posts that come together in this space.

I remember, a little more than twenty years ago, when people started to be concerned about the environment for maybe the first time ever, I had heated arguments with my father about recycling and such, and he said, people would never do this. Lia wrote a post last month and reminded me how much has changed over the years here in Germany. Especially in that regard. I read somewhere that Germans are recycling champions. I can tell you why: the government decided that it was a priority (but really it was the people because the green party kept growing and growing), and then they made it easy to recycle and hard to throw things in the trash.

Germans don’t recycle this much because they are morally superior but because they want to pay less for garbage removal. But really, Lia says it so much better than I, go over and read her post please. Anyways, even my father who thinks that collecting trash for recycling is stupid puts everything in his yellow recycling bag and has several separate trash bins to collect compost, and paper, and glass, and plastic, and all the rest.

So, change does seem possible. And ever individual counts.

And aren’t you glad that for once I managed to write something short in this month of NaNoWriMo, and NaBloPoMo? But please don’t let that stop you from enjoying the wonderful posts on our Just Post list this month:

The Just Writers
Aliki with Affordable Guilt and on unreasonable expectations
Blog Antagonist with Not a drop to drink
bon with Dear Margaret Trudeau
Chani with Restorative Justice … and when community comes together
Crazymumma with Untitled and i just left my yoga class
Get in the car with Philanthropy Thursday
Glennia with why poverty matters
Her Bad Mother with No Shame
Jen with Respect Your Mother, 13 million reasons, little boy lost and
my first mothering
Jennifer with potatoes for dinner
KC with A physician’s perspective on universal health care
Mary Alice with Philanthropy Thursday
Mother Woman with On
the library strike
Painted Maypole with My Pink Ribbon and gratitude and giving
Slouching Mom with Smog
Sober Briquette with This pacifist gets all patriotic
and Sunday dinner left-overs
Susan Wagner with Wrinkle in Time, or Thoughts on Turning 40
Susanne with Art and creativity are pivotal
Suzanne Reisman on BlogHer with More Contraceptive Use, Fewer Abortions and with Combating The Stereotypes and Injustice Surrounding Male Rape
Thordora with Mentally ill lighter sentences
Maggie with Respect and Old Age and environment
League of Maternal Justice with Mission #3
It’s Not A Lecture with something good in facebook for a change
Mom’s Speak Up with American People = Bush’s ATM
been there with BlogDay for Mothers ACT
From the front lines with Philanthropy Thursday
Cecilieaux with what makes pedophiles look good
A Commonplace Book with nooses: why now?
Snoskred with please help do what you can to stop internet scammers NOW
Jenn with do you know me
Julia with what’s in a number
Thordora with It’s not so easy being hard
Julie with Imagine, tie a red ribbon round my daughter’s wrist and take me to toxic town
Biodtl with no child insured, either and why I can never vote Republican
Mimi with brave new boobs post
Jangari with another pseudo apology and more white exceptions to grog bans
Roy with let’s have a wake! chivalry is dead
Mrs. Chili with shouting it from the rooftops
Mary G. with ouch that hurt and letter to danier leather
Alejna with hungry
Ancors and Masts with how would you deal with it?
Beansprouts with I believe
Fortune and Glory with Oneness and Bomb, bomb Iran
Riversands Feeding and Gardening project with Mothers who volunteer
Princess Mouse with The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
Permaculture in Brittany with Houston, we’ve had a problem
Small Meadow Farm with Reduce Reuse Recycle
The coffee house with Positive Thinking/
The chickens have escaped! with No eggs, just rats
Beyond the fields we know with Mama says Om – Divided
Trailer Park Girl with what if

Some of the many Just Readers
Izzy
De
Jess
Jen
Bon
Joanne
Mother Woman
Alejna
Jen
Mad
Susanne
Hel

Susanne
Tabba

Thank you very much to those who participated and as always please hop over to Mad, Jen and Hel to see what they are saying about social justice this month.

Only I did still feel guilty from time to time. Because I’m not the mother I want to be, because other mothers do different things with their children, and because – to be frank often I try to sneak away and do something on my own. Like computer things. And when you’re a mother that’s Wrong.

I read about mothers feeling guilty all the time on blogs even if the mothers I meet in real life rarely talk about it. But even if they don’t talk about it you can feel it. Every time when two or more mothers meet you can sense it. And it isn’t triggered by competimoms only, every single, innocent remark can, and probably will, trigger someone’s guilt. “Look, we made cupcakes and decorated the room.” someone says, and the likes of me think about how they never bake anything, and that their method of decoration is to give their children paper and scissors and afterwards saying, “That’s really nice, of course you can tape it to the fence.” On the other hand I then say, “Oh, my son isn’t going to music class, but he likes to bang on the drums and piano, and walk around with the guitar pretending he is a rock star.” and immediately all the other mothers feel guilty for not creating such a stimulating creative environment for their children, while I feel guilty that my son who is the son of two musicians grows up without any musical training. The list can go on and on. Someone says, “Oh, we go to the playground every day.” and I feel rotten because I never go to the playground and my poor son has no peers to play with, and then I say, “Oh, we just open the door and let him out in the garden.” and the other mother feels rotten because her son has to grow up in a tiny apartment without his own sandbox and swing.

In the end we all feel rotten, those of us who bake cupcakes, those of us who grow their own food, those of us who let their children watch TV, those of us who don’t, those of us who work, those of us who stay at home, every single one. Every mother who cares about her children (and I’d say there are only very few who don’t and they probably don’t blog about it) feel guilty and like she isn’t doing enough or doing things wrong.

I recently read a post by Chris Jordan on this: “The Modern Mother“. She quotes her mother-in-law who said being a mother was easier fifty years ago. It might have been but I recall the stories my mother and my mother-in-law tell and they always had the feeling that they were not good enough as a mother somehow, plus they were feeling rotten because they wanted to work outside the home, and they couldn’t.

So, I don’t think that going back fifty years is the solution (and neither does Chris Jordan, by the way). I just think that when every single mother in the Western Hemisphere (or maybe only most of them) feel guilty about the way they are treating their children, this is not a personal phenomenon, this is social. And it is always a good thing to remember that societies are made by human beings and that the rules therefore can be changed by human beings too.

I have been reading the sentence, “I better start saving for my child’s therapy bill because I …” (yelled at her, lost my temper, have let my child down in any way) so often. And every single time I’d like to write a comment and say, “Cool down. If that’s the worst that ever happens to your child it is very fortunate indeed.” All this implicates that mothers should be somehow superhuman. Patience personified. Never making mistakes. Never treating their children unfair. We all have this image in our heads of the loving mother surrounded by her children, nurturing always. At the end of the day she sits in the midst of her children who all are smiling with perfectly brushed teeth wearing their hand-sewn pajamas, and reads them stories before tucking them in their beds. Do you realize that this is propaganda that is more than a hundred years old? Propaganda that got resurrected in the 1950s and that’s still sitting in our heads? Only now we have to be hot, sexy, intelligent, self-reliable and making money too.

In 2005 I read “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women” by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels and it opened my eyes. We all have this image of the ideal mother in our heads, and it is blasted at us from all media too. Imagine a celebrity saying that she is overwhelmed by new motherhood! Somewhere inside of us we secretly still think that becoming a mother is the most fulfilling and joyful thing we can ever achieve. And in a way it might be but then we don’t always feel fulfilled and joyful all day long. Blogs are giving us the opportunity to see real mothers in real life who also talk about the less joyful aspects of it all. Still we think that nothing we can ever do will be enough. Still we think that we are the key to our children’s happiness. That we alone hold their fates in our hands.

Well, it’s time to stop this. Our children are their own persons. They determine their own fates as much as the people around them. We should always be grateful that we live in places where we have the energy and time to worry about whether it’s good for our children to have swimming lessons or too much cake. All the children of the people who read this have enough to eat, a roof over their heads, clothes to keep them warm and mothers and/or fathers who love them and care for them. Mommy guilt is a luxury problem that harms us and our children.

I have a little task for you: every time you catch yourself thinking, “I’m a bad mother.” or “My child will need therapy because of me.” or something similar, replace it with, “I love my child and trust him (or her) to turn out okay” or “Being myself is all I have to do.”.

Okay, I don’t seem to be good at making new slogans against mommy guilt. I’m afraid you have to help me out here. What will you be replacing your old mommy guilt phrases with?

Crunchy Chicken who has a fabulous blog about environment friendly living is forever challenging us. First there was the “Diva Cup Challenge” that gave me the nudge needed to purchase a mooncup (and I’m still very happy with it), and now the cloth wipe challenge. I’m going the easy way though. I’m only using it for #1. You know, I was really happy when cloth diaper times were over and I could get rid of the stinky bucket, so I’ll just reduce toilet paper by a certain amount, not completely.

Of course, being me, I started the first day of the challenge swearing because I hadn’t any cloth wipes yet. Though I had set aside two old baby blankets (“Moltontücher“, don’t know how to say that in English) for that purpose. Those blankets are more than thirty years old. My aunt used them when her son was a baby and gave them to me when I was pregnant. I have used them a lot when my son was young. (I also tried to swaddle him with them. Very funny. I only tried once…)

So on Sunday I got my new roto-cutter and cutting board out and cut the two blankets into wipes. I then swore some more because I don’t have the stinky bucket any more. Where to put the soiled wipes then? I now use an old wet wipe-container in one bathroom and a mesh bag on the paper holder for the second one. I won’t be putting cloth wipes in the students’ bathroom though.

I’m very glad that both my husband and son are with me on this. There are only two things to remember when using cloth wipes: a) don’t forget that you’re using cloth and let the wipe fall into your toilet, and b) every time you do a load of laundry put dirty wipes in.

So far I’m loving the cloth wipes. I can’t say if it were better to hem them because we’ve only been washing some of them once.

I always thought that in order to live green I would have to do everything right all the time but now I think that I’ll do it one step at a time. Do what’s possible, leave the rest, use the car less but still use it sometimes, bring my own grocery bag most of the time but not beat myself up if I forgot.

Next step for me will be to find handkerchiefs that are soft enough for my sensitive nose…

I’m still a little overwhelmed by the task to represent a whole continent though it’s a small one. I can need your help there. Since most of you can’t read German I have refrained of adding German blog posts to the list. But I plan to write about something I found in German blogs about social justice every month.

In one of my own recent posts I have boasted about the German health care system. Well, the story I read over at gedankenträger sounds quite different than that. While the German health care and social system is good, it is getting worse and worse. It is constantly being reformed and reformed with the goal of having it become more “cost-efficient”.

Moni who is writing at gedankenträger is a single mother parenting an autistic son. He just turned seven years old. After deciding to put him into school a year late because of his autism last year she had to find an appropriate school for this year. One where his needs can be met and also a school with additional daycare since primary school in Germany runs only in the mornings and she has to work for a living too. He went to preschool at a place specifically for autistic children. Since they have a school too that would have been the ideal place for him. Only it didn’t work out, obviously they preferred autistic children who speak and aren’t that complicated. Or something.

The red tape involved has been immense. None of the people she talked to communicated with each other and although she had tried finding a suitable school since the year before she didn’t know where he would go until almost the last moment. There are very inadequate resources for autistic children even in Berlin which is the biggest city in Germany. Finally she found a school for mental handicapped children that took him and was granted financing for a helper during school hours. But then she wasn’t (and her son needs to be supervised so he won’t run away on his own). And then, surprise, she was again but not as much as the first time.

I hope very much for her that his being in school will run smoother than the process of finding one. And that she will be able to have him adequately cared for while she is at work. If you want to read her story you can do so at “Schule: der Saga dritter Teil”. And you can see a picture of her son at his very first day of school at “big day“. (Her English is excellent by the way, so don’t hesitate to leave comments.)

For more cute pictures you can look at the “Faces of Autism“-flickr pool.

So, here is the list of Just Posts for August and the people who contributed. And you should definitely check out what Jen, Mad and Hel are writing about this month too.

The writers
Bon at Crib Chronicles with Blessings
Crazymumma with If I’m going to talk the talk…
Cecilieaux with blogging last word, who is anglo, people of 1066 and portal for billionaires
Jangari with more on squandered funds and stuart highway robbery
Maypole with false hope and i know what it means to love
Denguy with boyo man
Jen with what a long strange trip it’s been, national news and side by side
Alejna with some of my best friends are republicans
KC with colorless ii
NoMotherEarth with about a boy
Urban-Urchin with disposable people
Emily with miscarriage of justice
Kevin with Jena 6
MBT with things you get nekkid for
Vera with dominator tentacles
Packaging girlhood with increased suicide rates among teen girls
Lex with compassion
Kitchen Fire with postscript
Aliki with disparity
Gwen with feed your head
From the Front Lines with philanthropy thursday
Flutter with the morning commute and What Should Flutter Cook?
Stumbling and Mumbling with you know you’re a conservative when and the tangible harm of inequality
Izzy with forgive my bluntness but i hate george bush
11D with bob herbert morphs into david brooks
MOTR with enough
Janet with my grass roots are showing
Eden with some animals are more equal than others
Acukiki at Sticking to the Point with Follow Your Dreams
African Fragments with Sisters Can Do it For Themselves
Christine at Running on Empty When I Grow Up
Ewe with Baaaaad Party, Baaaaad Party and A Sunday Not-So-Funny…
Fortune and Glory with What fills us up makes us whole again and Today as I hold my head…
Gary with Homeless
Gettin’ it wrong with Twisty Slides, Twisted Logic and Olivia
Jen at One Plus Two with Teaching Fish to Swim, I Was Interviewed by National News, side by side and What a Long, Strange Trip Its Been
La vie en Rose with It’s the body…always the body
Latoya Peterson at Racialicious with 4th Generation Racist: Can you be anti racist if you’re anti-white?
Lia with Pensioned Serenity
Maddie at Persisting Stars with Someone with sky and birds in his heart
Nina Smith with Books Review: On My Own Two Feet
Open Synergy with Darwin’s Jihad-A Luta Continua
Snigdha Sen with Streets Are For Walking, Stop Stalking
Suzanne Reisman with The Real Story: Attack Of The Predatory Lenders On Single Women Homeowners
Susanne at creative.mother.thinking with Housework for Children and Being Sick Shouldn’t Make you Bankrupt
Thailand Gal with Katrina put me over the edge, Repeat ch-ch, repeat-ch-, and Your silence will not protect you
Tired Mommy with Learning what we live
The World’s Yours To Live!! with The World of Peace
Wayfayer Scientista with Seasonal Goodbyes and Working against cultural biogotry

The readers
Jess
Thordora
Cecilieaux
Chani
Alejna
KC
Christine
Catherine
Aliki
Sarah
Karen
Mad
Jen
Hel
Susanne
Sober Briquette

For the past year or so my son has been really moody. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes depressed a little. We were fighting so much that we asked the preschool to switch from him going only in the afternoon to almost the whole day. (Yeah, that’s right, I put my son in daycare because we (him and me) were fighting so much.) When I approached his teacher, telling about my difficulties and the constant power struggle in our house, she said that she didn’t see any of it in school. And that maybe it had to do with him being around adults all the time. At home he is always the weak one, the little one, and the one who isn’t allowed to decide on his own. So I’ve been thinking about ways to make him feel more independent.

The other thing I have been thinking constantly about is how many of my students seem to be incapable – and unwilling – of doing anything on their own. It often seems to me that their parents still hold their hands at an age where they should be almost grown-up. And I think that this makes the students (and maybe the parents too) unhappier and doesn’t help building self-esteem

So maybe our children need more responsibility. I’m not talking about child labour here. I’m talking about having to stand up for the consequences of their own actions. Since most of my students come from rather privileged families, I have seen children sent to boarding school when they were about to fail a grade. I have seen parents doing homework, I have seen parents making up for everything their children screw up. Lost a coat? You get a new one. Forgot your homework? Your mother’s doing it. Have to go anywhere? Your parents are driving you everywhere you want. Even in the middle of the night. You don’t know what to do after high school? Well, just sit around at home moping until you find out.

They have nice parents, do they? (Of course, not all parents and students are alike. I do have students who have to be quite self-sufficient too.) But I can’t shake the feeling that these young adults have the deep feeling that they are really dependent on their parents. And that they won’t know what to do when on their own.

While responsibility might be a burden, eventually each and every one of us has to take responsibility for himself and his life. Well, there even might come a time where our children will have to be responsible for their children or, gasp, even us, their parents. With responsibility comes a sense of accomplishment and capability too. It’s not all bad though there are a lot of young adults out there who shy away from it. Who never learned it.

Young adults who grew up thinking that it was their parents they were doing their homework for. Interestingly they started failing school the minute they were old enough to realize that their parents don’t have any real power over them. When I had talked to those parents earlier and said, “Well, let him go to school without his homework then.” The parents had answered, “But then he will have bad grades!” Yeah, he will. Maybe that’ll teach him to do his homework.

I’m not talking about not helping. I’m the first one to explain something for the umpteenth time, to say, “Maybe you should try this.” But today my son refused to get dressed and then had a tantrum about his breakfast (“What do you want for breakfast, müsli or bread?”, “Müsli.”, “Are you sure?”, “Yes, Müsli.” – “Here’s your müsli.”, “But I dooon’t WAAANT MÜÜSLIIII!!!). So I told him if he didn’t get dressed he could walk to preschool naked. Then he dressed. And then we left for preschool. No breakfast. For him that is.

But I’m still behind what I thought I would be doing before I had a child. Back then I thought that a four year-old should be able to dress himself, pick up his toys, and help with housework. Very funny. Right now my son’s responsibilities are: dress and undress himself, know when to use the toilet, and unpack his backpack. Sometimes, very rarely I ask him to put his plate on top of the dishwasher after meals. One reason for this is that housework around here mostly happens when he is at preschool, but maybe we should change that.

Children of his age that are visiting Montessori school already learn how to cook a little, they brush their hair, they brush their teeth and they know how to sweep the floor and cut vegetables. They certainly have to pick up their toys.

So I’m thinking about which responsibilities to introduce next. I don’t want to end up with a boy who’s 16 and who comes home, drops his shoes in the middle of the floor, slumps into the next chair and says, “I need something to eat.” And who then expects me to cook something for him. I definitely don’t want him to grow into a man who says that housework is for women. A man who never will move out because he doesn’t want to be without room service and clean laundry.

I’d like to raise my son with the knowledge that actions have consequences and that he will have to face them on his own someday.

So, what are your children responsible for?

He dressed up with his cute socks and jeans and his new sandals. He told me, “But you will have to buy a pink t-shirt to go with them, you know. I have to have a pink t-shirt.” Okay.

He went to preschool. When I asked him in the evening, he told me that everybody loved his pink socks. That he really needed a pink tee. Have you ever tried to find a pink t-shirt without ruffles or something? Just a plain t-shirt. Not too girlish? Not too expensive, too, since I didn’t know how long he would like to wear it. What I saw in the department store made me glad to have a boy. There was not one t-shirt that I liked. (And I remembered why I keep buying my son’s clothes out of a cataloge. It’s not only the girl’s clothes that are ugly.) So I tried the second hand store. And found a pink t-shirt like this for 2 €:

Of course this had to be washed too so he couldn’t wear it the day after I bought it. But he had his socks. The next day we arrived at preschool, late as often, and a little girl sat down beside him. She told her mother, “The boy is wearing girlie socks.” And he showed her, proudly. In the evening he was very sad to learn that his socks had to be washed since they were very, very dirty. A few days later I told him they were ready to be worn again and that he could wear his new pink tee with it. He had loved the tee when I showed it to him. Then he said, “No, I don’t want to wear the socks or the t-shirt to preschool.” “Why?” “L. and F. made fun of me.” It turned out that a couple of kids had laughed at him because of the socks. And that everybody had been talking about it for days. Obviously a boy wearing pink socks is a very hot topic for preschoolers.

And that was it. He didn’t even want to wear the t-shirt or the socks on weekends. They are tainted with the laughter of his peers.

This makes me sad. I’m even sadder because I saw it coming. Of course I could have prevented this but then I thought, “Maybe it’s not that bad.” And that everybody should be able to wear the color he or she likes. I’m still angry that I’m living in a society where people can’t wear the colors they like. Not even when they are only four years old. I knew that preschoolers and kindergarteners are highly conventional. You can’t really blame them, they learn their values from the adults around them. Women do housework, men can work with computers, women are bad at math, men can’t sew, women always want to be pretty, men don’t care how they look, blablabla. As if there were no individuality.

Or am I the only one who thinks that gender inequality is creeping back?

(Edited to add: Since there were so many comments on this post where people felt sad for my son I wrote yet another post on this to round it all up: Pink – the third)

I’m inviting you first, to have a look at the Just Post-roundtable:

As every month, Jen and Mad sent out for posts about social justice. And they’re well worth the read.

But the main topic of this gathering is the unveiling of a brand new blog. A brand new type of blog at that. Interested?

See, after all this talk about blogging and bloggers and such in my house, my husband got interested and started reading. And then he thought, “Why don’t I do something like that?” and so he started his first blog. It is a new type of blog because it is a music blog. A mlog one could say. Every week or so he records something and then posts it on his blog. With beautiful pictures. Sometimes there even are words. He isn’t posting songs though, he is posting improvisations. Just him and an electric guitar, no overdubs, only occasionally a little cutting. He tries to play in the state of flow so they have a meditative aspect, but they’re not often sounding meditative. Or what one thinks of as meditative.

I told you that he had abandoned the thought of making a new CD for now, even though he has spent about two years in preparation for it. Getting the sounds and the equipment, which for electric guitar is inextricably linked, just right. But making CDs on top of everything else, as a “hobby” so to say (as much as I despise that word when used in relation to making music) is a little too much. So I’m very, very happy to announce it here. I hope you hop over and listen to what he plays. For months now I’ve only heard these beautiful improvisations through the wall. Glimpsing only part of it. Now I have the chance, as you have, to hear some of it fully.

Here it comes, the big official unveiling of “psychedelic zen guitar“:

My husband told me that his blogging goal for the next months is to get two comments…

Here, let me get you another (virtual) glass of champagne, click on the image above, set back and enjoy.

(Really, I’d serve you real champagne but you’d have to come over to my place.)

Technorati Tags: guitar, psychedelic zen guitar, zen

When I was pregnant with my son the pregnancy was deemed high-risk. And do you know why? Because of the simple fact that I got pregnant in the year that I turned 35. Thirty-five. Had I been pregnant one year earlier it wouldn’t have been considered risky at all.

So what? Because everything went well. But I didn’t know that when my doctor advised me to get an amniocentesis. Because you know older women have a higher risk of having a handicapped child. (By the way, after my first post about “handicapped” people I realized that the term is not political correct. I’m sorry but I don’t know what to write instead. “Special needs” seems a little ridiculous.)

To me this decision was a no-brainer. Have my belly punctured with a needle? To find out more about my baby? Are you nuts?

Apparently the rest of the world thought I was the nutty one. Everybody had an opinion on this. Of course I should do it. What if I had a handicapped child? Indeed, what if? I knew that I would have kept the baby anyway. And what if the amnio hurt the baby? I’ll give you the math: the risk of having a baby with a chromosome defect for women age 35 to 37 is 1.6%. The risk of losing the baby through the amnio is about 1%. (It is less than 1% if made by a specialist.) In my world that means that the risk of having a baby with a chromosome defect is only slightly more probable than losing the baby through the amnio.

But that’s not all. A factor to be considered is also what one would do if the baby were “defective”. (And this is why I think that this is a social issue not only a personal story.) If there had been anything wrong with my baby there would have been considerable pressure not to have it. I think that knowing that one will have a special needs child is stressful enough without people telling you that you’re doing a disservice to society by having it. If I had gotten pregnant just a couple of months earlier no one would have tried to persuade me to be punctured by needles. (Sorry, but this picture was just horrible to me and still is.)

What I did do was let them make a very big and detailed ultrasound. I was okay with that because I knew that it wouldn’t hurt my baby. And I knew that I would have kept it anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally pro-choice, only my own baby already was a human being to me when it was just a tiny clump of cells.

While I was making that decision I met with the overpowering opinion of almost everyone I met (apart from one friend) that if the baby were handicapped his life wouldn’t be worth living. That it would be better off not to be born. And of course that handicapped people are expensive.

I was flabbergasted. You know, most people aren’t born handicapped. There are only a few things that can be seen in pre-natal diagnostics. And what if something went wrong when it was born and it ended up with spasticity? What if it had a rare gene defect like muscular dystrophy that you won’t see until a few years later? What if my baby were already a toddler and then almost drowned or had an accident and ended up different than before? Would those same people think his life not worth living then? I don’t think they would tell me though, even if they thought so.

As I have told before there are a lot of people who secretly think that handicapped people should be put away so that they don’t bother the others. And that surely there shouldn’t be money spend on their education since there isn’t enough for us normal people anyway. This makes me very, very angry.

Because that indicates that this is something that can’t happen to us. That if your child is deemed healthy and “normal” you’re destined for the happily-every-after-ending to your life. When your mother was punctured and diagnosed then nothing can ever happen to you. Nobody will ever have an accident, nobody will catch a disease, nobody will ever be old an feeble. Of course you will go through life with a right to stay youthful and strong and healthy. And then maybe die in your sleep at age 101.

I have the feeling that all this fuss about pre-natal diagnostics (and from what I hear German’s pregnant women are more thoroughly diagnosed than US ones.) is so that everybody has a feeling of being insured against, well, life.

Addendum: I just saw Jenn Satterwhite’s post on “Teaching understanding of disabilites in elementary school” on BlogHer and wanted to point you towards it.

Technorati Tags: handicap, just post, medicine, motherhood

If you’re interested, his blog is still there, though his website has its own news-page. (And it’s about as easy as entering Fort Knox to post something there, it needs me, my list of passwords and three different account or user names to enter anything. It’s done best with phone assistance by our friend who programmed the whole thing.) Oh, and the whole thing is in German. I still have to translate everything into English and then have our friend do whatever he does to create new pages…

But back to this blog. There was that stray entry in August 2005, and then silence. Think of it as the gestation period of this blog. Nine months of expecting. Then I decided to make the switch to English and this marks what I count as my first official post: language switch. Since then I found a lot of blogs not dull at all. In fact I found so many that I can’t read them all if I want to do something else in my life than reading blogs. The first glimpse of what a community there was, I had when I joined blogher. Back then this blog was still called “Diapers and Music”. I started blogging away enthusiastically and then stopped to think about who on earth would want to read this. As those of you with blogs of your own know it is a bit of work. And I wanted to be read, otherwise I could have stayed with my paper journal.

When I started telling friends about the blog just to gain a handful of readers another problem emerged: most of them wouldn’t read something in English. But then, most people browsing the blogher blogrolls wouldn’t read something in German. Dilemma. I solved it in true Susanne-fashion, I did both. The twin to this blog, its German mirror was born 8 days later: “Windeln und Musik“. As of December 1, 2006 diapers vanished from my life. I renamed the blog. It’s very hard to come up with something that works in German and in English. My husband suggested “Reflexionen aus einem beschädigten Leben”, “Reflections from a damaged life”, which sounds great but a little too pessimistic for my taste. Even if it has something to do with Theodor W. Adorno. (It’s the subtitle of his “Minima Moralia“.) My life doesn’t feel that damaged though.

So I changed the name to “creative.mother.thinking”. Creativity and parenting are the cornerstones of this blog and obviously I’m always writing about what I’m thinking. I’m not that sure about the dots any more. Maybe they are silly. Preposterous. Do you think I should get rid of them? Name it “creative mother thinking”? Maybe I should.

Anyway. It’s been a year. A year of blogging, a year of walking through my day mentally composing blog entries all the time and actually writing about every third of them. For months I felt lonely with my blog. I had about 3 readers, well, 3 hits a day and 95% of people stayed only one second or less. I have spent more time on this blog than I ever thought possible, I have translated every post bar one, and have contemplated giving it up for the sake of my music about every other month.

During the last months readers have gotten up, this blog’s technocrati ranking has gotten up to 147,303 and I feel like I’m part of a community. I have found friends like De and Liv, and I even was part of a big blogger wedding for social justice. I found out that writing is more precious to me than I though and embarked on NaNoWriMo. Through which I found friends who live a little closer to me. So, yes, as much as I doubted it as first, blogging really is a social activity. It took me from sitting in my house in suburbia feeling lonely and disconnected to sitting in my house in suburbia feeling part of a community filled with friends. Sometimes I even get out and meet them in person. Mostly I don’t. One of the reasons being that I can’t just take a plane and travel halfway around the world. But then nowadays the world comes to me through my little computer screen.

And to complete all this I have to say that I started yet another thing I don’t have time or energy for. When I did NaNo I thought to myself, “Why isn’t there such a thing for songwriters?” Well, surprise, there is: FAWM. As in February album writing month. 14 songs in 28 days. I plan to fail spectacular since a) I signed up one week late, b) I have written all of three or four songs in all my life, c) I don’t even had the time to translate my last blog post for the whole week, and d) I just have to make rest and sleep a priority right now because otherwise I’ll keel over. Nonetheless I signed up and wrote almost a whole song during the last week. It only needs some lyrics thrown at its bridge…

And don’t forget to check out the Just Post posts:

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, just post

Apart from that I was one of those people who shy away from people in wheelchairs on the subway thinking, “I hope he doesn’t ask me to help him, I hope he doesn’t ask me.” And then I was unemployed after my last ever office job, knowing I’d never work in a place like that again, looking for a job in my own field. I was so desperate I even considered teaching. With hindsight I say that was the best move I ever made, but then it seemed terrifying. A friend of mine worked as a music teacher for grades 7 to 12 in a private school. She got pregnant and looked for somebody doing her job while she was on maternity leave. I really needed a job, but teaching? In a school? And in a private school with 60% of physically handicapped students? “But what shall I do?” I asked, “I don’t know how to help them. I never had anything to do with handicapped people.” She told me not to worry. Those people were very used to tell others how to help them. They do it all the time.

It’s a very small school, only 14 students per class. And I taught music there and found out that I love teaching music but that I am no longer able to work in a hierarchic system. Some of the students I liked and some I didn’t like. It is a marvelous school. they have helpers for those of the students who can’t do things on their own like eat, go to the bathroom or write. We had students with all kinds of handicaps from all over the country. Suddenly I found out that even Germany where there are many regulations and everything has to have access for wheelchairs is not as friendly as I thought.

Daily contact with people with muscular dystrophy, spasticity, paraplegia, osteogenesis imperfecta, spina bifida, and whatever changed my attitude a little. The first time I heard a fellow teacher saying, “Oh, he’s only a paraplegic, he can do everything on his own.” I was a little speechless. But compared to others… Nowadays when I meet somebody in a wheelchair in the subway I can see, if he’s a paraplegic, basketball-playing in a sports-wheelchair who is perfectly capable of maneuvering his wheelchair up the escalator, and probably stronger than me or if it’s somebody who’d like to have a little help pushing the button that opens the door.

And I found out that handicap or not, we all are just people. Not knowing how one can help certainly is no excuse for looking away. If you were handicapped like, let’s say, you broke your foot and are on crutches, or you broke both feet and are in a wheelchair, would you find it acceptable if people looked away because they were afraid of doing something wrong when helping? Would you find it acceptable for people to rush past you not helping you to maneuver your wheelchair out of the subway? Would you like to stay at home always, because you can’t drive a car or push a grocery cart on your own?

There’ll be a second part to this post, because again, I am under time restrictions here, but for today I have a task for you: when you’re out today, try to look out for people who might need a little help. Or even if they don’t need your help at all, just make eye contact, smile and treat others as equal human beings.

Thank you. End of sermon for today.

Technorati Tags: handicap, social justice

I had planned to write a beautiful post about handicapped people, but then life got in the way and you’ll have to wait for that one. Since the “just post”-award is still very young, there hasn’t been that much participation yet, but we’ll just promote it in the months to come. Oh, and this award was the result of the big fat social wedding of Jen and Mad. Since I’m really pressed for time today (and since I’ve really been wanting to do this for quite a time), I consider myself tagged with the “5 things you don’t know about me”-meme by Mir. (And when I say that you don’t know these things I’m thinking of people only knowing me through the blog, not of people like my sister, though she reads this too.)

1. I didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol until I was 19 years old. I even refused to sip on something for social reasons. To this day my mother still is shocked, when she sees me drinking a beer. As Mir told about herself, I also was the designated driver for years, and was proud of my high morale standard. I felt very superior to people behaving like a typical drunk. I have to say, though, that even when drunk I never behave like a typical drunk. Like my husband, I only react by first being a little bit louder, then a blurring of speech, and then becoming a little more quiet.
2. I smoked my very first cigarette when I was eight years old. Me and a couple of friends tried smoking behind a group of bushes in the woods. We felt really grown up and cool. Growing up in a smokers’ household, I neither had to cough or got sick. I held and lit the cigarette like I had done this my whole life. When later I tried to get more cigarettes by stealing a pack or two from my parents, I was found out. Thus ended my career as a smoker. I tried again four years later, but decided not to smoke. I never regretted it.
3. Every man I ever had sex with was a musician. At first I had a pattern of percussionist, bass player, percussionist, bass player, but then I wandered and dated a pianist and later a clarinet player. Also, I never know how you count it, when you’re having an affair with two men at once. (I had an “open relationship” with the first bass player. Well, I can say this does not work for me.) The last one was also a bass player whom I then married. End of dating history so far, but, I’m grateful to say, not of sex.
4. You know that when I studied music education my main instrument was – as it still is – voice, but what you don’t know is that my second instrument used to be drums. (Now you know how I met the percussionists.) People who haven’t seen me since that days still think of me as the drummer, but I haven’t touched drums since the end of our Brazilian band seven years ago. (Anyone interested in buying my congas?)
5. As I’m writing this, I’m depressed again. Not as in “not-functioning and nearly suicidal”-depressed, but as in “feeling as if there were a vortex inside of me sucking away most of my energy”-depressed. Since wondering if I maybe am slightly bipolar, I haven’t had another “episode”. Only things like PMS. Before Christmas my husband said he thought I might be in a “manic” state. Of course I wasn’t, I only had a lot to do. Um. And I didn’t feel like I was soaring high. I didn’t take on lots of new projects. Mild overdrive due to circumstances. But since we returned from my parents I have been glued to the computer, checking e-mail about every other second, reading blogs and waiting for the evening which I spent in front of TV. Then going to bed too late, of course. And repeat. With the firm intention to do better the next day. And repeat. After four days of this, it dawned on me that this was not normal. I was feeling depressed. On Sunday I thought I had come out of it. Only to realize today that I’m still in it. The problem is, in a way, that I don’t have times anymore where I declare myself sick despite a lack of symptoms and then spend days in bed. I’m no longer living alone, I have work to do, I have family. And I know that I don’t feel better, when I’m staying in bed. So I get up, I make breakfast, I do minimal household chores, I talk to my family, I even am happy at times, but there’s a part inside of me that has gone numb and wishes to stay that way. I know that eventually I will come out of it and that exercise, enough sleep, real food, cuddling and walks in the woods help. But I don’t know what’s happening. There are triggers, but there are no deep reasons. Weird.

So this is the reason, why I haven’t posted, why I’m sounding a little off.

So this month I’ll have to rely on others to change the world for the better. Please go and look at the just post awards. (And don’t worry about me, please.)

Technorati Tags: 5 things you don’t know about me, just post