Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Who's Wearing the Pants Now?

Sure we've all been expecting this moment--but I wasn't prepared for how emotional I got when I received the message this past Saturday morning via email with the simple subject line: "I'm in." It was from Hillary Clinton, announcing her decision to run (i.e. form a formal exploratory committee to assist her with a run) for president. My young daughters were happily crowding me at my desk at the moment and there it was, this email and a video with Hillary's personal message. We watched it together and I was already imagining how we'd remember this special moment when they were older. Okay, so they really didn't listen very attentively to video Hillary (one was playing with the mouse and trying to get the little arrow on the screen into Hillary's mouth) but then again, they didn't notice either that their mother was starting to tear up. It wasn't the hokey "Let's start a conversation" message either. It was because of what Hillary's announcement and this psychologically transforming moment in time will mean for them in their lives.

This just is a really big thing--historically, politically, culturally and emotionally--that a woman and mother is running for US president. And that her biggest challenger may be a junior senator who happens to be a black man. Who would have thought? I am stunned by this turn of events. Just when you think the end of the world is upon us, after six years of oppressive, amoral, dictatorial monopoly playmoney Bush-league government, leaving us with the world's biggest f_ _ _-ing deficit, financially, morally and geopolitically, there is a parting of the dark clouds permitting this irridescent, multi-colored rainbow of readiness to shine through. I almost want to kiss Dubbleya and say, "Thank you, Mr. President, for being so bad, so VERY bad that it is amply clear that no one could possibly do worse than what you have done." We are not talking mediocre here. We are talking a pure disaster of a president. A straight, white, draft-avoiding, card-carrying Texan, Daddy's-boy man: the single biggest threat our democracy has seen since the collapse of Communism. It may be the only legacy from the damage inflicted over the last six years that the next president (whoever she or he is) won't have to fix.

Anyway, we moms have a lot to celebrate, between Nancy Pelosi taking the reins as the first woman Speaker of the House, and Hillary agreeing to subject herself to the trials and tribulations of being the first woman candidate to ever run for president. It's huge. The first ex-First Woman candidate for president. The first ex-First Woman who forgave a president publicly-exposed-for-philandering candidate for president (and he'll be her greatest supporter and biggest asset). If she wins, she'll be the first woman president and she'll put the first First Man in the White House. Even the first ex-president First Man. And the first . . . we'll, let's not go there. That's quite a lot of firsts for one woman to have to bear, it's true, but it just confirms that this woman is rather an amazing individual. We know she has loyalty and dedication. But she is showing she has enormous courage. She has tremendous chutzpah. She may even have huge cajones! I am definitely supporting her!

A Minute to Think about Resolutions. . .

Whew, a moment of peace.  The kids are gone for the day (they are being delivered to their ex-nanny, now unofficial aunt, for a New Year's overnight).  Hubby is driving them -- and then is continuing on for a New Year's Eve day game of pick-up baseball (his true love).  The way he described it, the guys thought they should play on New Year's day, but then figured they would be way too hung over, so they decided to stick with their regular Sunday schedule, to pre-empt the drinking portion of the holiday.  Smart, huh?  I am in heaven!

The family is actually gone, and I am absolutely free to do whatever I want.  FINALLY!  No more gifts to race around to find.  No more marathon wrapping to do.  No more food shopping or speed cooking.  No frantic cleaning and clearing of clutter for when guests arrive.  No more desperate searching for that last forgotten gift, that must have item of ski-wear, or must-have book.  The pressure is finally off. 

The house is quiet and somewhat dark, on this cool, overcast California day.  However, if I weren't anchored to my desk by my knees, I might just float up and start bouncing around, there is such a sensation of weightlessness.  I can finally let my mind drift.  There is quiet, amazingly.  My head chooses to remind me that I could be straightening up the kitchen and bedrooms, or even dealing with the curling wallpaper in the bathroom -- but nah, I'll deal with that stuff later. 

Now I need to think.  I've been so busy, I haven't even had time to blog.  "Blogging interrupted by life," was the title that kept headlining the post that I could never get to.  But also, I have to admit, deep in the throes of orchestrating and enjoying all of our holiday mirth, there has been a searing ambivalence that has manifested itself in this issue of blog writing.

Thankful for Mothers

A couple of nights ago, my daughter came into our bedroom after we had gone to sleep and gently touched my hand. A very tiny touch but my eyes blinked open instantly and saw her standing there sadly in the dark beside me. "What is it?" I asked. Then she quietly uttered the words that, in my drowsy state of mind, made me unsure if I was still sleeping and dreaming, as it seemed suddenly that she was me, and I was standing beside my own mother sleeping in her bed, saying the same words. "I had a scary dream," we said.

My mother lifted the covers for me and I could smell the scent of her warm body before, I realized, I lifted covers to let my daughter creep, gratefully, into the bed next to her mother. As she settled down, I remembered how warm that bed had felt, how protectively inviting--no, compelling--it had been, and felt the chill to her normally warm body. Did my mother also realize how long I had agonized outside my parent's door, how hesitant to twist that door knob, and yet finally how driven by fear I had been? To enter and see a soundly sleeping mother and not even want to wake her but to need to join her and be warmed and comforted through her presence, by a fear that would not subside on its own. . . . I knew this.

The need to find relief from scary dreams and images -- it is real and I experienced it desperately for a long time, a long time ago. The need to protect one's child from those nightmares and to reassure so that the child can sleep, is real and I experienced it for the first time this past week. With my seven-year old slumbering in the crook of my arm for the first time since she was an infant, my mind traced over memories, now weirdly calmed, and musty reassuring scents from my own childhood and it was like I was there again. Back then, next to my mother, I had been able to drift off to sleep, and I think I should be able to now, with my daughter next to me, but I can't. I am awash in memories. Then, without warning, I am somewhere else, somewhere beyond memory that I am not sure I have been. In a home, but not a home, a scary place where a mother is unable to comfort her child. It jerked me wide awake in the dark with a bruising palpitation of fear and realization. There was a generation in my family, a lost generation, where mothers could not comfort their fearful children. Where parents' still warm bodies were incapable of chasing away the nightmares that they all lived . . . and where they all mostly perished, despite the unabated love and fierce need to protect. How this wafted into my mind, I don't know, but I suddenly saw what was worse than my childhood nightmares had ever been, maybe even worse than death. . . . Then I silently understood a mystery in our family that no one has ever given an explanation for, a mostly suppressed fact barely understandable to me at all: what could have caused my mother's grandmother to leap out of a window sometime in the early 1940's with her young granddaughter watching. As a lifter of covers I knew.

My mother tells a story that she thinks is very cute about how afraid I was, as a child, of gorillas. I was always coming into her room at night, telling her I had scary dreams. Of gorillas. She had no idea why gorillas would seem so scary to me, after all, Curious George was about the closest I had come a gorilla. Then, as Mom tells it, one day we were in the kitchen as usual and I said, "There, those gorillas scare me." She perked up, and heard the radio just finishing a report on Vietcong guerillas that were waging a fierce battle against . . . .

So I understood my daughter's need . . . and I believe the days of her innocence are even scarier to me than mine were to my mother but, clearly, not more scary than in my mother's day to my grandmother and great-grandmother. . . .

Cross-posted at Mother Talkers

Recap on Our Future

Thank you, America! Thank you each and every one of you brave souls, who did your part to make this leadership change in our government a reality. I am SO relieved, even happy! I don't care that it's been a few days since the election, I am STILL thrilled! This is so overwhelming, it has taken me this long to find the words to put this achievement in perspective. But let me do the mom thing and gush for a moment.

Not only do I thank voters, campaign workers, activists and bloggers--but I also am deeply appreciative of all of those political candidates who put themselves, their families and their sanity on the line to stand up for our democracy. That is not easy. And this was a big win! You all deserve your victory parties!

I am especially awe-struck by the large number of candidates who are moms on all levels of government, from school boards to Senators. I am SO proud of you and so impressed that you have done this (whether or not you won or lost). I don't know that I could have done this--but the fact that you did is a source of total inspiration to the rest of us. It is extremely exciting and historic, that Nancy Pelosi, a mother of five, is ascending to the position of Speaker of the House, where she is third in line for the presidency. I have goose bumps thinking about what this may say about the country's level of acceptance about women's roles in our society. I would like to think it says that the American people can accept qualified women in every professional role that they aspire to!

As I look out across the news, the blogs, the abundant email correspondence flying around, it is clear that this election was the result of massive efforts from many diverse corners of our society. While I tend to think that bloggers deserve a lot of credit for broadening our awareness about candidates and issues and activating individuals all across the country, there were clearly thousands of groups, organizations, projects, campaigns and individual efforts underway that contributed to this momentous achievement, this wonderful collective "thumpin" given to those previously in charge. People everywhere were involved and contributed in various ways--some a lot, some a little. We have all benefitted! So, with a sigh of relief and thanks, I now want to take stock of our situation.

Corporate Greed & Politics

I've had just about as much of corporate greed as I can possibly stand.  Before this Republican administration took over, this was a democracy and the White House stood for principals like justice, freedom of press, human rights, improving educational opportunities, improving health care and fair pricing of drugs and protecting us and our environment from harm.  Now the White House is more like a brothel.  Bush, Cheney, Rove, Abramoff and too many Republican Congressmen like Delay, Hastert, Pombo, Doolittle and Cubin, have spent their time in and out of office actively selling its favors to the highest bidders.  It is a vicious and democracy-debilitating cycle, as the favors generate more obscene profits to the bidders and the bidders, in turn, give bigger and bigger donations to their Republicans pimps to keep them in office.

Who are the highest bidders?  It depends upon which mess you are looking at.  If you take the Iraq war, the Bush administration quickly turned an honest bone to pick with terrorists into an unlimited profit opportunity for Cheney's Halliburton, NRA donors (including gun and military equipment manufacturers), and Oil and Gas cronies.  Focusing on how to insure that donor corporations profit rather than minding the military strategy has resulted in fabulous profits for big contributors and a shameful global mess where terrorism has thrived!

If you take freedom of the press, under Bush, the big media corporations have managed to use their perverse influence to reverse decades of restrictions on consolidations of press, airwaves and other media outlets, to limit the public's access to diverse opinions. We no longer have freedom of the press in this country--because a few media moguls control virtually every news outlet you and I read, watch or listen to.  Reporters are constrained by what their corporate employers will allow and so we don't get the kind of critical news coverage we expect (this is probably why blogging has truly taken off in the last few years, because people realize that the truth has not been getting out and they are mad. . . )

Hey Moms, Watch out for Big Zeros on the Ballot!

As moms, we generally have our priorities straight.  Our kids are our highest priority in almost every respect. There is very little dispute in this respect, and although we often make different choices as to work, child-rearing, and education, we mothers love our kids beyond measure.  It is no wonder that, as Sarah  wrote, we get all excited when politicians want to hold or kiss our kids--it is more than just an acknowledgment of how cute junior is; it is a visually powerful gesture of just how important caring for our kids is.

Luckily, as we make our final assessments about which candidates to vote for in this election season, how much those kid-kissing politicians actually care about our kids is not beyond measure.  In January of this year, the Children's Defense Fund issued their Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard  based upon the voting records of members of Congress that directly impact the lives of our children.  This is a quantifiable measure of how much our representatives have voted for measures that were in the best interests of kids.  An organization called Mothers Acting Up recently brought this powerful scorecard to my attention.  Let me recite some of the highlights of this informative report, then I will share some of the key scores!

Thirty Senators and 167 House Members scored zero percent in voting in favor of legislation that would positively impact the lives of children in America.  Twenty-three Senators and 90 House Members scored 100 percent.  The report strongly chastises the 2005 Congress as being one that "values the rich more than the poor; corporate and special interests more than mothers and children; and the gun industry more than child safety."  Furthermore, the report points out that while many budget choices voted on by the congress cut vital children's programs, at the same time, they were giving tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires.  The utterly searing conclusion issued by the report was that "The United States of America does not have a money problem; we have a profound values and leadership problem." 

Election Lore & Logic

Tis the season to be . . . voting!  While politics doesn't make most of us feel too jolly, we moms do manage to juggle worrying about political issues with worrying about getting kids innoculated against the flu, scheduling playdates and planning our thanksgiving dinners.  The 2006 season is shaping up to have a fairly big impact on the political playing field, locally as well as nationally.  In particular, Silicon Valley has a whole slate of fairly riveting issues up for grabs through voter initiatives.  Questions like whether or not to tax cigarettes an extra $2.60 a pack to help keep kids from picking up smoking feed right in to the bedrock of a mom's concerns. 

We may be sleep-deprived, but we do think about whether we have done enough to reduce our state of dependence on petroleum fuels or whether we should do more--at the risk of raising the current price of gasoline--so that the future outlook for our kids can be brighter.  And what about controlling eminent domain?  We certainly wouldn't want Uncle Sam rolling in and unreasonably grabbing our new vegetable garden--but we also really care that our towns protect us from wanton environmental destruction and over-development.  Might that so-called "controlling" eminent domain Prop be the Trojan Horse that stymies the efforts of our communities to protect themselves?  This is a tough new question that we need to think about.  And speaking of Trojan's, that parental notification on a minor's decision to end a pregnancy raises an old question (a similar Prop was voted down in the last election cycle) and we are again forced to imagine our own daughters, now more than a year older, in this dilemma and think about what the chances are they are still talking to us at that time . . . . 

All of the messaging, the advertisements, the fund-raisers, the political spin--well it does have us spinning.  Spinning and digging . . . out our desks and counters from under the piles of political advertisements that have streamed in, like in that Harry Potter movie, through all the cracks.  So we will have to seriously consider the merits on voting for limitations on political contributions for elections.  If it will reduce the amount of junk mail there is teetering on the edge of our desks--it would definitely be worth considering! 

We have our homework to do--but believe me, few of us are going to let that precious 19th Amendment go to waste.  We know our job and we'll be out there voting our minds and hearts--if we have to wake up a napping child to do it!  Posts over the next few days will mostly feature our contributors' political aspirations, inspirations and possibly sources of perspiration as well!  (Check for some possible special guest contributors, as well!)

Musings & Costumings

I just spent a wonderful weekend in New York City. I lived there for 10 years before moving to California. You'd think I'd be used to it--but no, with Village revelers of all styles walking around on the Saturday night before Halloween in outrageous costumes, the guy with the five foot long inflated giant penis attached at the hip did evoke something of a reaction. Laughter. I am not sure that it was the size or sight of the enlarged, plastic appendage, so much as it was the amusingly diminutive proportions of the man hoisting it up with his arms. Bold. But this costume was quickly eclipsed by one that took me more than a second or two, from within the Papaya Hotdog stand, to figure out as it strolled by. An over-sized, oval-shaped, flat fur-lined pink collar resting on some guy's shoulders, with his head enshrouded in pink folds and creases? Yes, my fellow moms, you got it! Some guy was walking around in the Village with his head emerging from a giant vagina costume (and the proportions looked a whole lot better to me on him than I remember them being when a head emerged from mine)! Gotta love NYC!

The next day, my sister, Wendy, was supposed to drive me out to the airport. Instead, she was hit broadside by a cab while on her bike on the streets of Manhattan in plain day light. (I wonder if the cabbie was distracted by trying to figure out what some strange costume was. . . .) Right when I was going to meet her, Wendy's husband calls me to inform me that they were in an ambulance and I would have to take a cab to the airport. She was bruised and broke teeth but she had been wearing a helmet and he insisted she'll be fine. I debated what to do, with just a short window before risking missing my flight. In the end, I bought a big bunch of flowers to leave in their apartment where I was staying, wrote out a long note, and jumped into a cab. My cab driver was a talker, and it turns out, he had seen the accident site and the police making out their reports! He felt terrible about it and, can you believe it, gave me advice for my sister on how to best sue that cab driver!

A Foley in the Works

I really liked what John Kerry had to say about the recent disclosure that the Republican congressman Mark Foley was revealed to be an aspiring homosexual child molester.  He said at a New Hampshire fundraiser that "those from the Party that preaches moral values that covered this up, have no right to preach moral values any more."  So true!

It will not surpise us mothers that our leaders can be shown to have lied to us and the world in order to commence a war for their economic purposes and it barely causes a political ripple.  But you mess with our innocent kids, and we will hunt you down and vote you out of office.  What amazes me, is that it has taken so long--and we've had to suffer so many horrific offenses to our American dignity and our moral authority, not to mention to the integrity of our democratic institutions, for people to begin to put aside what the dissembling Republicans have been telling us, to look at what they've actually been doing.  As Alan Abelson so aptly wrote in Barron's recently (and I quote only from memory), the Republican leadership tried to sweep the Foley scandal under the carpet, but it was just too crowded under there for him to fit. 

The whole Foley scandal is giving ethical Republicans something to be truly depressed about, because it has pulled the curtain away from the shams that their elected representatives have been successfully perpetrating on them about their superior moral stance.  Those men are not acting remotely ethically, as the blizzard of Republican scandals that are seeping out--despite Republican cover-up efforts--is proving (and remember, they are keeping Democrats out of the process, not permitting them any opportunities to challenge and have refused calls for investigations--so we will not know what they are actually doing, until they lose that majority power!).  Still, from this single example of Foley and the cover-up, we can see clearly that even acting responsibly towards their own Pages is not happening.  It is probably a bitter pill to many of those who have supported them and believed in them to have to accept.  But it is not a time for the forces of truth, justice and democratic principles to rejoice.  There are still too many active Republican deception plots underway for anyone who has been aware of these false shenanigans to be able to feel even remotely smug, despite the Foley in the Republican spin works.

Let's review a bit about the current election battlefield: 

Here in California there are many pressing efforts underway to dredge out the truth from the bullshit (bushshit?) fictions that are created by the Republicans to confuse our less diligent thinkers. Like religious fundamentalism cloaked in faux family values.  Take Prop 85  for example.  It is almost exactly the same as Prop 73.  Remember Prop 73 from the 2005 Special Election just about a year ago?  It was a measure to require a waiting period and parental notification prior to a minor being able to terminate a pregnancy.  It was SOUNDLY defeated and for good reason.  So why are we being asked to vote on this again?  Because the religious fanatics who are trying to force their beliefs on the rest of us are able to bankroll it, that's why.  In this case, the Right to Lifers are behind this, cloaking their religious agenda in the deceptive concept of parental notification.  They haven't figured out that the only parents who don't get told about their daughters' pregnancies are the fanatical right-to-lifers whose daughters don't trust them to put their interests ahead of their fanatical beliefs and those abusive parents who were likely the one's who sexually molested their unfortunate daughters in the first place.  There is NO way to legislate family communications and this second attempt is a blatant effort to chip away at Roe v. Wade.  Who is behind it and supporting it?  Evangelicals for Social Action, Right to Life of Central California, Life on the Ballot, Yes on 73, and Jim Holman and Don Sebastiani, two rich fundamentalists who have enough money to require everyone else to waste their time, money and efforts to get the same issue rejected all over again.  No one else--not one social service agency is for it.  (Holman and Seabstiani have themselves ponied up over $3 million of their own cash to fund this measure and get it on the ballot.) I'm VOTING NO on PROP 85!

The Terminator Signs AB-32

In 1984, Arnold Schwarzenegger daringly starred in "The Terminator," a classic, futuristic science fiction movie that I have to believe most of us moms saw before we were moms. Some of us liked it so much, we might have even seen it multiple times, over the subsequent decades, with different boyfriends and then again with our husbands, after it was released on DVD. There was a cult following for this movie, mostly not us moms, but it clearly appealed to a very wide audience, including women. Arnold was great in it--he still looked like a man in exceptional shape, even in the buff, and the role seemed tailor made for his whole persona--including the fact that he had few spoken lines. This suited his verbal capabilities perfectly. (The film's sequels have done okay, though they were nowhere near as great as the original, despite featuring the appealing and amazingly buff Linda Hamilton in the first sequel as the crazy, savior "mom" (my absolute favorite mom hero) and gorgeous Kristanna Loken, as a fierce female Terminator "TX" in the second sequel.)

The original movie is one that I have never forgotten, it made such an impression. As a citizen of California and Terminator movie fan, it was particularly painful, therefore, to have one's movie idol show up in drab Republican guise, here in our own state capital, swagger around like a movie star but then attempt to talk like a government official, at times clearly without a script. We watched with curiousity and even alarm as it quickly became clear that our revered Terminator was trying to act like a governator, but could not quite get the role to suit him. It's been, to say the least, a puzzling time for us viewers, far worse than either of the sequels, but on some level of semiotics, I should have realized there was going to be a classic Republican switch 'n bait finale, and I believe it is about to happen. Let me explain.

In case you don't remember it. the Terminator told the story of a fight for supremacy between man and machines, that started with the innocent technological effort to build artificial intelligence into computers. We are told that, at some point, artificial intelligence programmed into machines became real intelligence, and soon after the machines became self-aware, they secretly began plotting the demise of humans. They had a plan and early in the new millennium (ie, around now) machines launched a technological and nuclear war against mankind. Most people, we learn, were killed by the nuclear devastation and the few surviving humans were forced into the battle of their lives, as rebels, scrounging and hiding in filth and ruins for survival while attempting to destroy the better equipped forces of the machines' robots.

The action of the movie centers itself, however, on a time in the past, before the war of the machines has occurred. We learn that the tide of the fight between man and machines has turned in man's favor; man is winning and the machines devise the "ultimate" plan. They would, in the words of the trailer promotions, "reshape the Future by changing the Past." They send Arnold back to the past as the Terminator, a Cyborg, a class of indestructible futuristic machine clothed in human skin, that feels no pain and no pity. The Terminator's sole mission is to kill Sarah Connor, the woman who is to become the mother of the future rebel leader, John Connor.

Hopes & Dreams

We are back in school and it is a wonderful relief!  My kids are safely nestled into their new classrooms and liking their teachers and I am feeling especially liberated and proud.  I am one of those moms who has successfully filled out and turned in all of the school's requisite, multi-colored forms, medical disclosures, releases, before and after-school activity sign-ups and lunch orders that were piled up and taunting me for weeks!  Okay, so I didn't exactly get them done on time but I persevered and got through them so I could hand them over on the first day of school, even though, in their licentious pastelness and weightiness, they were really dragging me down for quite a while. 

There are always those hugely annoying forms that require that you fill out, by hand, the same, tedious information, year after year, as to medical afflictions and doctors, insurance info, who can pick up your kids, drop off your kids, or get them during an emergency.  Newer are those bright orange forms, joined with mini ration packs, that ask you for your out-of-state surrogates, who should be contacted to come collect your kids, in case you are no longer available (yiih!).  These are tough but even more onerous and capricious, I think, is the deceptively simple form coming directly from the teacher, which, in a single line, requests that you tell them your "hopes and dreams" for your child. 

Ordinarily, this is a difficult form, because after the normal platitudes, it forces you to reflect candidly on your child's weaknesses, where you feel they need to do better than they did before.  This year, however, my perspective has experienced a seismic shift and I am having a hard time narrowing my response on this form to such expected aspirations as "making friends," "building skills and confidence," and "developing a love of learning."  These would normally roll off my pen.  Not this year, my mind is heavy with global concerns and I am tempted to send the teacher the following:

Dear Teacher:  I'd like to send my child to school and not worry about her safety, her future or what she might learn about today's sad reality.  I'd like to not have to worry that she will have to grow up into a world that is permeated by terrorists, who were fringe scourges before--but who have been enboldened and bolstered by the less than respectable ethics and deficit of geopolitical skills of our current leaders.  I'd like to never have them have to know the irrational fear for themselves and loved ones that the use of commercial airlines as detonation devices has opened up in their parents' minds.  For that matter, the existence of bombs in general and the willingness of individuals to end their own lives with one, in order to kill others is not something that I see would benefit my child to have to learn.  This being my feeling, do you think I really want my child to obtain the knowledge that there are vast stores of nuclear warheads out there, some controlled by us, which is pretty scary itself, but many not controlled by us or by people who even remotely value life like we do, that can not only wipe out thousands of people instantly but that can make whole regions of the globe uninhabitable. What grade do they teach this in anyway? 

Mom Outreness

I was recently invited to a party with the suggestion to wear "what's comfortable or outre." These words elicited quite a bit of excitement among those responding, who repeatedly went for it with comments like "I want to wear what's outre. What's outre?" and "We'll be there . . . in outre . . . whatever that is . . ." Nevertheless, we were impressed that one among us knows what's outre, but the sense was definitely that most of us didn't.

The fact is, that while we do struggle to stay in shape and eat healthy, many of us don't give the time of day to our choice of clothes. At least not in the course of one of our ordinary mom days. I am a case in point, here. (If you are working in an office outside the home, however, this discussion may not apply to you and we sympathize with your pain.)

Personally, this release from the pressure to be a fashionista suits me just fine. I've always been hopeless with fashion. When I came to California from New York and started to work in a small start-up, I wore one of my many presumably fashionable business suits the first day and then, suitably embarrassed and duly impressed by all the jeans-draped engineers, I packed them up and gave them away and haven't look back since. I shortly found true love, perfect weather and career compatibility here in California--but I've stayed because the thought of having to go back to wearing suits, stockings and pumps is frankly more than I can bear.

Working in a tech start-up permits great latitude for low-maintenance casual wear, but being a mom opened up for me whole new vistas for sartorial slouch and slovenliness. With kids at some ages, walking around with great big blotches of something kind of goopy on you is not that frowned upon or uncommon, for that matter. Can even provide for great inter-mom bonding. Other kid ages permit you to indulge in four seasons of nothing but sweats and logo sports gear. For those moms really on the run, staying in work-out clothes all day, in part to create the illusion that you have hopes of getting to the gym but also to minimize the time it takes to escape to gym, should an opportunity arise, works extremely well. Besides, you need to be in sneakers constantly so you can race after that always-on-the-go child. By the end of the day, you can sometimes almost imagine that you had the work-out, you are so tired.

You know it's bad when . . .

You hear the sound of boisterous running and shrieks of laughter, followed by the loud, dull thunk, followed by a pause so long that you've started running before the blood-curdling cry commences. It's enough to make a mom's heart just stop and all sorts of prayers go through one's head as you run over to assess the damage. Rule of thumb: the longer that pre-cry hiatus, the worse the injury and the bigger the boo-boo.

With this Bush administration, you know it's bad, when news of an imminent attack is reported in the news within a day or two of other newly breaking news about Republican ne'er-do-welling. Republican self-first dealings and end-running around our Constitutional protections, high-level crony appointees revealing the depths of their disregard and incompetence, profiteering and non-performance on governmental contracts by large donors and even lowly House and Senate members caught frolicking on the tab of the oil or pharmaceutical industries all warrant at least a yellow or orange alert terrorist level. The effort to manipulate us by arousing our fears has gotten so flagrantly bad, that one wonders whether they're even taking the American people seriously. I suspect that those announcements raising the terror alert level are more of a window into the current stress level for Cheney and Rove. They keep on pushing those buttons, expecting us to run screaming into our holes, but lately we've started watching them. Seems that their button pushing is a much more Pavlovian response to their own stress levels. Probably within a short period, the Alert Level will become more indicative of how much of their domestic totalitarian terrorism is bubbling up into the press than any actual foreign threat. But they're pretty wilely. They've slowed the stream of terror attack alerts and now they're changing alert color levels for "thwarted attacks." Of course, they haven't managed to actually thwart any attacks here--but luckily, those British have obliged them by thwarting attacks that they're willing to allow Rove to announce at his convenience.

Talk about Republican over-reaching--you know it's really bad when the Republican primary loser announces his support for the primary winner of the Democratic party! I was stunned when I heard that self-proclaimed third-generation Californian Republican and Republican primary loser, Pete McCloskey, publicly announced his decision to support Jerry McNerney, the Democratic primary winner, against Richard Pombo in California's 11th District. In a letter entitled "The Need for a Democratic Majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007," McCloskey almost vindicates himself for past sins.   This letter is so good, I just have to quote parts for those who have not had the pleasure of reading it (sorry I quote so much--but this is worth trying your patience with):

"The observation of Mr. Pombo’s political consultant, Wayne Johnson, that I have been mired in the obsolete values of the 1970s, honesty, good ethics and balanced budgets, all rejected by today’s modern Republicans, is only too accurate.

"It has been difficult, nevertheless, to conclude as I have, that the Republican House leadership has been so unalterably corrupted by power and money that reasonable Republicans should support Democrats against DeLay-type Republican incumbents in 2006. Let me try to explain why.

I have decided to endorse Jerry McNerney and every other honorable Democrat now challenging those Republican incumbents who have acted to protect former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who have flatly reneged on their Contract With America promise in 1994 to restore high standards of ethical behavior in the House and who have combined to prevent investigation of the Cunningham and Abramoff/Pombo/DeLay scandals. These Republican incumbents have brought shame on the House, and have created a wide-spread view in the public at large that Republicans are more interested in obtaining campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists than they are in legislating in the public interest.

"At the outset, let me say that in four months of campaigning I have learned that Jerry McNerney is an honorable man and that Richard Pombo is not. Mr. Pombo has used his position and power to shamelessly enrich his wife and family from campaign funds, has interfered with the federal investigation of men like Michael Hurwitz, he of the Savings & Loan frauds and ruthless clear-cutting of old growth California redwoods. Mr. Pombo has taken more money from Indian gaming lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his associates and Indian tribes interested in gaming than any other Member of Congress, in excess of $500,000. With his stated intent to gut the Endangered Species and Environmental Protection Acts, to privatize for development millions of acres of public land, including a number of National Parks, to give veto power to the Congress over constitutional decisions of the Supreme Court, his substantial contributions to DeLay’s legal defense fund, and most particularly his refusal to investigate the Abramoff involvement in Indian gaming and the exploitation of women labor in the Marianas, both matters within the jurisdiction of his committee, Mr. Pombo in my view represents all that is wrong with the national government in Washington today. . . ." To read the full text of McCloskey's letter, see: http://www.seeingtheforest.com/archives/2006/07/republican_says.htm.

Yeah, Pombo's a bad guy! I checked and he's named as one of the 13 "Most Corrupt" members of Congress (see http://www.beyonddelay.org/summaries/pombo.php: Beyond Delay: 13 Ethically Challenged Members of Congress). So McCloskey's shining the light into his own house and telling us how much it stinks. Gee, us moms already know that it's a whole lot easier to tell that something stinking when the smell isn't emanating from you. . . !

P.S. Even though we get to vote for Anna Eshoo, Pombo's so bad (and Jerry McNerney is so good), that we're throwing our support towards Jerry, as well. Tomorrow, we're hosting a reception for him at our home in the late afternoon. If you want to come meet him and hear someone with a good vision for the future of California, let me know. Sorry, Jill, this is no Techcrunch, but we'd love to have you. And Beth, you know it's bad when you blame it on the babysitter. If you want to come, just bring your kids.

Boys, politics and the Middle East

I was the second of four girls in my family. My father is an artist and did not conform to classic male patterns. Thus, early on in my exposure to boys, I realized that I did not understand them at all. Being a tom boy, however, I could afford to ignore them and I did my best. Nevertheless, anyone attending public school in the New York area gets exposed to fairly diverse samples of perhaps some of the best and the worst behavior in boys. Some was inspiring and some was truly frightening. The rules of male behavior were a mystery to me but I knew that there were some boys that you could trust to protect you, whether they acted as friends or not, boys that would ignore you completely and boys that were actively mean and rather frightening, that you went out of your way to avoid. The boys often fought each other, for very unclear reasons, mostly, it seemed, based upon how close they once were, but otherwise, it seemed rather random, like due to bad hair days or looking at someone the wrong way. I generally could not understand either why they fought or how, after attempting to beat each other's faces in, they could be acting like friends again the next day.

The fights were scary things. It amazed me how angry and fierce they could become over even the smallest of slights. How ready they were to try to hurt the other one--and also how completely they could seem to forget about it. That dichotomy was another aspect that perplexed me. I could not fathom how it all worked--or even whether fights actually solved anything. It was only reassuring to know that fighting wasn't allowed at school. If it broke out, the male teachers would stream over and drag the offenders off to the principal's office or wherever. I never heard what went on in those meetings with the principal, but the threat of those meetings kept the fighting to a relative minimum. Of course, girls were almost never involved in fighting.

Fast forward a few decades. We're no longer the spectators on the playground, watching a fight break out between a couple of battling adolescents in a hormonal rage. No, now we are the spectators on the global playground, watching a fight break out between a couple of nations and peoples in the throes of the hormonal rages of their leaders and supporters. In a big way, I feel like I am reliving the frightening playground scenes of my youth, except that this time, the players are armies and the blows are fatal. People are dying on both sides and yet, in a surreal slow-motion like nightmare, there are no teachers running out to put a halt to the fighting. People seem hazy about whether or not they should or should not be fighting. There clearly is no "principal" that is threatening to expel or leave back the offenders. To my dismay, there does not even seem to be any consensus of the "principle" of the confrontation. The fighting is allowed to continue . . . deaths mount, papers report and few seem all that horrified by it all. Not horrified by the deaths on either side. But also not horrified that the conflict between these two peoples is being waged in the manner of adolescents, rather than by the rules of conduct of responsible adults.

I want to say, however, that I am horrified. Any mother bothering to raise her children to be guided by principals of civil society, where the desire to slug one's adversary is strictly prohibited and the ideals of "I" statements, sharing, compromise and empathy, are tirelessly taught must be horrified. I have to believe that all of us mothers are horrified, because even one life lost from a conflict over "things" or simple "enmity" is unacceptable to me, when there are life-affirming ways of resolving such disputes. It is incomprehensible to me that the 21st century leaders of the countries of the world, both those involved in specific conflicts and those not involved, permit fighting to be the default dispute resolution methods. How is this not like letting the adolescent boys duke it out on the playground, only much much worse?

What's a Mom To Do . . . ?

I am a very pro-active mother. I like to jump on problems before things get bad.

When my first baby moved from a basinette to a crib, she didn't sleep well. I decided that the hard, plastic-coated mattress that I had inherited with a crib was too uncomfortable, so I gave it away and bit the bullet to get a wonderfully soft, cotton-batted mattress that actually had some give to it and warmed to the touch. My baby loved it and has been a great sleeper ever since, as was my second, who used it next.

When I suddenly was informed that my precocious, talkative elder child had refused to converse in pre-school (and even her nanny began to say she was "shy"), I had her evaluated by an expert and we found an inhibiting speech issue. With a modest amount of speech therapy, we successfully dodged a self-defeating "shy" bullet and today there's little left to remind us of what could have been a huge life-long problem.

When one of my daughters started to pick her nails, we were all over that one and nipped it right in the bud. Successfully. Whew!

So when I am presented with scientific evidence that the polar ice-caps are melting at an accelerating and alarming rate, along with glaciers everywhere in the world, as well as the legendary snow caps on such notoriously frozen peaks like Mount McKinley and Mount Kilimanjaro, I get concerned. When I am shown that the Greenland's ice mass has declined more in the last twenty years than in the prior 1000 and the Alaskan permafrost melting is causing ancient forests to fall over, this is worrisome. When I hear that CO2 levels have already reached levels approximately double that of any historic highs going back 650,000 years in time (due to recent age industrial outputs) and are trending upward at an astonishing rate, (with a curve that parallels the preciptous rise in global population that will take us from 5 billion to nearly 10 billion within the next decade(?)) and that global temperature more or less tracks to CO2 levels, so we are in for what could potentially be a doubling of temperatures--and we've already begun to knock upon record highs in ten of the last 14 years--it's seriously time for action.

But what's a mother to do?

Step 1: It is imperative to make oneself as informed as possible about these issues. Do we mothers have time to peruse hundreds of deeply technical scientific articles on the subject, 100% of which support the facts of global warming? Absolutely not--I can barely get past the front page of the NYTimes--so that's just not an option. But, options exist to allow you to escape for a few hours, preferrably with the person who will have to live with you afterwards, to get out to see "An Inconvenient Truth." Luckily for us busy moms, Gore has done a fabulous job of accumulating authoritative scientific information and presenting it intelligibly to us. On the other hand, should you substitute by reading articles in popular magazines about global warming? Definitely not. Gore has studied the submissions in the popular press and while surprisingly, 53% refute the existence of global warming, the vast majority of those, he found, were written by paid industry authors whose specific mission is to sell "doubt" about global warming to the public. Believe it or not, there are powerful (but hardly bright) interests out there who don't want to see us mobilize against our unhealthy oil dependency (even at the cost of their own kids' futures).

Step 2: So now, if we believe that global warming is really a crisis today that we should act on, what do we do? Perhaps the most unsatisfying part of Gore's amazing movie was in the "Actions to Take" column. He got through the entire movie without nary a suggestion for the audience. Then, in what seemed like an emotional hedge, he listed a few fairly paltry things that you and I can do today to help. His list--mixed in with the scrolling credits, included such things as replacing regular bulbs with florescent bulbs, writing your representatives, recycling, riding your bike and using mass transit, buying a hybrid (now that they've killed the electric car), writing the car companies to insist on better mileage, writing your electric company, and praying. Aaargh! These are not action items! These are merely palliatives intended to keep those of us capable of fully extrapolating from leaping off cliffs.

Al Gore has done us a great service in providing the impetus to act--but, frankly, we need much better thinking in the "Actions to Take" column. I am compiling some ideas of my own. I am also looking to get substantive ideas and thoughts from anyone else who is concerned and thinking about this as well.

Ode to My Non-Mom Sister

My sister, Wendy, just completed an eye-blinkingly fast five days out here. In classic style, she swooped in and out but, despite this brevity, she has left a bevy of bodies well hugged, well-celebrated and gleefully enjoyed in her wake. She inquired continuously, she listened eagerly, she smiled into our eyes and she bestowed endless "oohs" and "aahs." As I prepared or cleared meals and relocated clutter from where things were left to where they belonged, I observed Wendy giggling contagiously over the serious yet utterly silly things my 6-year old says as a matter of course. Some of us can find S's little quips cute, others might find them annoying but Wendy laughed out loud, repeated them in awe in case we hadn't heard them, and slapped her thigh in delight, like people do with a comic's punch line. Her eyes widened with verifiable amazement and attention over the endless marker drawings and pencil scratchings that my 8-year old produces with the frequency of snowflakes in a blizzard. She never said "no" when asked multiple times during her stay, "Do you want me to read my monster bug story to you again?" She laughed at every unsilly joke. She lost gracefully at Scrabble and she gazed admiringly at every saved bug. Wendy didn't merely soak in the delights of my kids and reflect back to me just how cute and talented they are. She sighed over my garden, my dinners, even my recently back to mostly toned tummy.

My sister, recently married, does not have kids but she has something I don't have--a fresh, emotionally rested and unstretched-out-of-shape state of mind that can enjoy kid antics and humor pure and simple, unpertubed by the imperative to discipline, the fear of extended clean-ups or the threat of long-term over-exposure. She even has that rarest of all perspectives--the capacity to applaud the most under-acknowledged of all--the mom! She's retreated now, safe from the noise, the chaos, the clutter and the crying . . . but she's done her job. She's left fully restocked with cute stories and amazing anecdotes (with which she'll regale the east coast contingent of our family) but more importantly, she's refreshed my sometimes clouded mind with a strong reminder of how enjoyable and entertaining my kids really are!

The Truth be told . . .

Like many of us, over the past decade or so, I've been really up to my ears raising kids. I worked for a little while, until having my second, then stopped, so I could really focus on not running out of milk or having moldy snacks take over from all corners. I've been incredibly busy for years--and with the exacting working hours (24/7) and vacation allotments provided to us moms (uh, none), I feel like I've barely gotten out.

So, when a friend invited me out to a movie--the first in a long time, not with kids--I jumped on it. We went to see "Who Killed the Electric Car." Wow, couldn't believe this. Here I was, feeling really virtuous for having gotten myself a hybrid vehicle recently--and it turns out there was a fully electric car made and marketed by GM in the mid-90's! And I completely missed it! With the foresight of a crazy person about to shoot themselves in the foot, GM pulled the plug on their perfectly great electric vehicle, yanked the leased fleet of EV1s from their own customers--who wanted to keep them--and vindictively had every single one of these cool electric cars shredded! (If you want to know why, go see the movie!). Now they are being slaughtered by foreign competition, with hybrid vehicles providing half the gas mileage economy! A brilliant self-destruct strategy, even by American manufacturing standards!

Silly me, I staggered out of that movie, energized with rage, and decided (if you can call it that, being slap-happy as I was on the combination of utter freedom for a few hours and frothing indignation) to scramble right over to "An Inconvenient Truth," which had already been out for a while. I had wanted to see it and there again, the kids' schedules had kept me from getting out. So, I pasted together a "hard truth" double feature by racing over to the other side of Palo Alto and slipped inside CineArts, with my large Diet Coke and unfinished popcorn hidden in my bag.

Wow! I didn't realize just how out of it I had been. Somehow in the past decade, between the mass of diapers, the sleep-deprived nights, the challenges of raising those precious, if looney little creatures, maintaining a marrriage, recovering my body from child-birth and sport deprivation, trying to connect or reconnect with friends and most recently figuring out the next likely phase of professional endeavor, I managed to miss the fact that we are totally on the brink of destroying our civilization as we know it! I've been reading the New York Times religiously and this was not something that I was aware of! Yet Al Gore has been worrying about this since shortly after I was born and it's taken about a half a century for the message to come across! (Convincing me, finally, that he really is not the best communicator!)

But finally, with tons of practice and some well-timed serious bad luck, he's gotten the message across. I'm telling you, this is an urgent crisis right now and you, my fellow moms, must go see that movie asap if you haven't seen it! The fact that the kids need dinner or the toilet is clogged should not be the reason that, in another decade, you wonder how you could have missed this one and why you are sweltering in 150 degree weather or swimming in a pool that is already ten feet under water.

I am posting this here--because there is no "SV environment" section and because it will take some serious changes in governmental policies to really begin to turn this ship--but come on, you SV mommy bloggers and readers, get with it. This global warming thing is a train going off a cliff NOW and some of us will be highly embarassed if our truly suffering kids knew that we (you and I) flubbed it. If we don't act, we will have allowed the "doubt-spinning" oil/gas/energy marketers, coupled with our oil industry fondling GOP government, to have cost us our last meaningful opportunity to save our kids' future. No reason we can't still muse over poop, small boobs or bad hair cuts--but we also have a job to do. Just like watching the kids at the swimming pool . . . let's not get so distracted by our own witty chattiness, that we neglect to keep 'em from drowning.