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.