Ceci n'est pas un vagin - The "Vagina" Problem

"I say it because it's an invisible word - a word that stirs up anxiety, awkwardness, contempt, and disgust."

- Eve Ensler, in reference to the word "vagina", in her preface to the 1998 edition of The Vagina Monologues

"Because that word is either so taboo or surrounded with negative connotations or draped in shame or medicalised, it's really important to take it back."

- Naomi Wolf, on her choice of title for Vagina, as quoted in the Guardian in 2012

Naomi Wolf is a little late to the party on this one. In 1996, 16 years ago, Eve Ensler decided to write a series of monologues addressing issues of female sexuality, violence against women, reproduction, and all sorts of things connected with women's bodies. In her preface to the 1998 edition of the book, Ensler indicated that she had been ambivalent on the question of what word should be used to encapsulate the physical locus of so much female experience - the "entire area and all its parts" - and acknowledged the fact that she was warping an established term. This is what she said:

"I say it because we haven't come up with a word that's more inclusive, that really describes the entire area and all its parts. 'Pussy' is probably a better word, but it has so much baggage connected with it. And besides, I don't think most of us have a clear idea of what we're talking about when we say 'pussy'. 'Vulva' is a good word; it speaks more specifically, but I don't think most of us are clear what the vulva includes."

Really? Because thanks to you, Ms. Ensler, most of us are no longer clear on what the vagina includes.

An Atheist Prayer for Peace

So, Friday is the International Day of Prayer for Peace. This is a thorny issue for me, because as an atheist I don't pray. In fact, I think that prayer is wishful thinking, and without action it is a method of self-placation that doesn't accomplish anything. My gut response is "why wish for peace, when you can work toward it?"

But then I think that not only is peace a worthy, lofty goal, and one that we should certainly turn our minds and hearts and hands toward, but part of seeking peace is opening myself up to the idea that prayer is sacred and meaningful and powerful to millions of people, and I need to respect that. And I want, as an atheist, to be a part of a movement and a moment that strives for peace. So I've been thinking about how I can do that. Here's what I've come up with:

1) Practice peace. There are so many variations on the "think globally, act locally", "peace begins at home" theme, and at their heart they are about practicing what we preach. They are about putting our lofty, abstract goals into concrete action. They are about making little, real differences on a day-to-day basis that have real impact on individuals' lives and consequently on the world more broadly. Be kind. Be compassionate. Be patient. Be generous. Be peaceful. Listen to and respect others.

2) Put your resources where your prayer is. War and violence are often rooted in ideology. But they are also often rooted in want and inequality. I contribute monthly to Care Canada, and for the International Day of Prayer for Peace I am donating to Project Ploughshares, an initiative of the Canadian Council of Churches, that works against armed conflict and for peace. Given that I don't believe in a deity, I'm at a loss to ask a deity to work toward peace. But I can certainly support - philosophically and financially - a real live organization that works toward peace.

3) Pray in another way. The word "pray" comes from the Latin precari, and it can also meant "entreat", "beg", "request", "plead", "ask earnestly". I understand that kind of prayer for peace. I entreat the reader to work for peace, in whatever way you can. I ask you, earnestly, to give some of your time or money toward making the world a more peaceful place. I beg you, when confronted with a choice between peaceful conduct and the escalation of conflict, to choose peace, and to let that little act of peace resonate and ripple outward into the world.

Plea(se).

The Quest for Consent Culture

As I mentioned last week, I find the word "rape" anachronistic in a country where for almost thirty years, "sexual assault" has been the official descriptor for non-consensual sexual touching and violence.

It is for this reason that I was originally so shocked and repulsed when I heard the term "rape culture" used to describe the complex and pervasive attitudes toward sex - and, usually, toward women - that not only enable and excuse sexual assault, but also make it difficult for people to gauge what sexual assault even is. My response was along the lines of "wait just a minute! Sure, we have all these culture-wide problems with sexual assault, but isn't 'rape culture' a bit much? What's next - 'murder culture?' 'Pillage culture?'" [Well, perhaps. But those are topics for another day]

Precisely because this culture and these attitudes have grown out of many aspects of our culture and society, all of which overlap and feed into each other, I think it is overly reductive and a bit misleading to call it "rape culture". It's a shorthand term that works well for the people who already know what it is, but it is problematic.

One term that has developed to describe the antithesis of "rape culture" is "consent culture". Consent is required, we say. With consent, we can all have good sex, positive sex, and we can eradicate sexual assault. But to do this we must address the greater issue of what "consent" really means, and how we as individuals and as a society have fostered an environment in which true consent is rarely sought, and in which we often lack the power, knowledge, and skills to exercise our autonomy in determining whether we consent. It often appears as though consent doesn't fit well within our established framework for dealing with sex. That framework itself needs to be changed before consent will take root and work.

What follows is simply a collection of my experiences and observations with regard to the ways in which our culture stymies consent, followed by my take on how we can foster consent. Throughout, I will refer to women and men in a very gender-binary way, in which sexual assault is done to women by men (who frequently have no idea that what they are doing is a problem). I am doing this because this is usually - but by no means always - the way in which sexual assault occurs, and I think that this is so precisely because of the way in which our culture and society create and enforce gender, and influence sex.

Cusco's New Airport: A Threat and a Promise

Getting to Machu Picchu is relatively easy these days. I've been there three times, each time with my children. The youngest was around a year old and not yet walking, the first time we went. We took a train as far as Cusco, and then another train. In fact, there is no road to Machu Picchu; one must either hike in along the Inca Trail, or take the train. I suppose one could attempt to boat as far as the base town of Aguas Calientes (aka Machu Picchu Village), but I don't know whether that's a truly feasible option.

Still, lack of roads aside, it's not hard to get to Machu Picchu. Visits to the site form part of whirlwind tours that are enjoyed by young and old, hale and frail alike, who barrel through the place on the heels of their tour guides. The site swarms with tourists. According to this article, the site receives some 2200 visitors per day.

The city of Cusco similarly does not suffer a lack of tourism. It is estimated that some 1.5 million tourists visit Cusco, with its population of less than 500,000, per year. The city is awash with restaurants, hotels, shops, travel agents and tour operators to fit the budget of any traveller. And yet one of Cusco's great charms is that it has a sort of rustic, ramshackle feel to it. Treading the cobbled streets, past low stone archways strung with brightly coloured fabrics, the breathy lament of pan flutes mingling with the smells of cooking - and sometimes of livestock - in the sharp thin air, one can forget the hubbub of tourism and feel apart and at peace. There's a glimpsing of something more, in some parts of Peru, that affects even the most jaded of travellers.

While snatches of this feeling may be caught in Cusco, they are much more common in the village of Chinchero. Chinchero - the "birthplace of the rainbow" in Quechua - is some 28 kilometres to the northeast of Cusco, and over 300 metres higher in elevation. It is a stop along the tourist trail, but most visitors arrive in tour buses passing between Cusco and the Sacred Valley and stay only a short time before carrying on. I doubt the inhabitants of Chinchero much mind - they seem largely unconcerned with the tourists passing through. The people of Chinchero have largely maintained their traditional life from pre-European days. They are an indigenous population who speak Quechua, and who sustain traditions that have been heavily watered down and repackaged for cultural consumption in other parts of the country. The women of Chinchero are gifted spinners and weavers, and the people continue to use traditional farming techniques to grow potatoes and lima beans, and to raise llamas and alpacas.

So I was deeply saddened to learn on Thursday that the Peruvian government has passed a law to expropriate land in Chinchero to build a new airport there. The airport is being billed as an economic boon to the area, promising desperately needed new jobs in an admittedly impoverished region, and expanded/improved service to Cusco and Machu Picchu. The BBC reported on the concern that the new airport would only create more taxing tourism at the Machu Picchu site, while threatening the natural and cultural heritage of Chinchero.

Of course, there is also the claim that a new airport will be safer. In 1970, a plane crashed at the Cusco airport, killing 99 people, and the airport often shuts down or runs at lowered capacity due to weather concerns and its mountainous location. However, so far no one has produced any evidence to suggest that it is an unsafe airport, or that the new airport will be safer. Rather, the official line is oriented toward the economic benefits and opportunities for increased tourism that a new airport will bring. On that front, I fear, the plan will do more harm than good.

Why It's Not Called "Rape" In Canada

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.” – Rep. Todd Akin.

I have been, like so many people, swept up in a hurricane of negative emotion, noise, and – frankly – nonsense in the wake of this statement’s hitting the airwaves. I want desperately to respond to the notion that the “female body” has some magical power to prevent conception in violence, which is so bizarre that I have trouble even grasping the concept. I want to respond to the question of whether the purpose of abortion is to “punish” a “child”, and like most people I have strong and often conflicted thoughts and feelings about abortion.

But these questions have been amply explored, as doctors have essentially debunked the “rape doesn’t impregnate” line of thought, and people have run fresh circles around the question of when and if abortion should be allowed.

There has also been a lot of talk in the past few days about rape. Legitimate rape, forcible rape, actual rape, violent rape, “rape rape” – the list goes on. And I think on this point, I may have something to add.

An Answer to the Question I Asked ...

... On Halloween, 6 years ago. I still have this blog because I think on some level I knew the day would come when I wanted to blog again. And that day is today.

It has been 6 years, and in the interim I have had a second child, moved to Peru, blogged for over a year in Peru (at http://www.inthewhitecity.blogspot.ca/), gone to law school, clerked at the BC Supreme Court, and become a lawyer. I have removed most of the old posts from this blog, because in looking back, many of them served only to express a fleeting thought that had no lasting value. Or they were sufficiently personal that, although I'm glad to have written them down, I no longer want them to be part of this blog. I have kept a few old posts, even though my perspective may have changed, and my writing style evolved, simply as a tie to the past.

But when I was keeping the blog in its original form, I was a pregnant stay-at-home mother who had been out of school for some time. Now I am a lawyer, and a working mother, and my purpose in writing and my expected audience have shifted. Thus, what went before is not indicative of what is to come. I do keep another blog in which to share my children's insights and observations, which are often quite humourous, and that can be found here: http://youshouldwritethisstuffdown.blogspot.ca/

I hope I will have the energy and the focus to make what goes into this blog, going forward, interesting, engaging, and useful.

Why Do I Still Have This Blog?

Yeah, I honestly don't know. I think it may have outlived its usefulness.

But, until I can figure out what to do with it, here it will sit.

The Kindness of Strange People

So, a while back, I was walking down the street in a rougher neighbourhood in Vancouver, with my kids in the stroller, and someone grabbed my shoulder. I jumped and turned with a big scowl on my face, only to find myself accepting a fallen mitten from a scruffy homeless man.

And then, less than a week later, I was standing at the corner of Granville and Drake, waiting for the light to change. A twitchy, bedraggled woman came towards me, babbling and gesticulating, clearly high on something, and I tried really hard not to notice her. As she drew near, I heard her say, "you have beautiful children."

Man, I have got to be less cynical and standoffish. But I don't carry change, and I get so tired of smiling wanly to the panhandlers and rattling off an apologetic "sorryIdonthaveanychange." Especially when I'm walking into the liquor store, or the local boutique grocery store. What's worse, patronizingly refusing to help them, or just ignoring them altogether?

Anyway, having street people be kind to me was a sharp reminder that I should, in fact, be kinder to them.

Then Again . . .

It is telling that my brother, who appears to draw strange people the same way that I do, told me his New Year's Resolution was "to be less approachable."

hmmm.

More Vegetarian Soup That Doesn't Suck (and some that does, too)

A picked up a can of black bean and vegetable soup for us at the local healthy, largely organic store (you know, the $8.99 per pound of organic ground beef store). It was horrid. Bland, mushy black beans, with bland, mushy vegetables. Since my favorite black bean soups involve bacon, sausage, or at the very least meat-based stock, I'm not the best person to look to for a tasty vegetarian black bean soup. I could probably, however, do better than that one.

Here is a vegetarian soup that tastes quite lovely:

Creamy Chick Pea and Spinach Soup

I think you could easily make it vegan by replacing the heavy cream with coconut milk, as long as you didn't use the reduced fat kind. It would mingle nicely with the middle Eastern spices.

Stupidly Easy and Delicious Brownies - In the Microwave!

The other day I was craving brownies, and I had ribs stewing in the oven. So, I looked on the internet for a recipe for microwave brownies. I skeptically tried the one I found, thinking "this could be awful," and to my surprise they were dense, chewy, rich, not heavy, and all around delightful. And stupidly easy to make:

• Cream together 1 cup of sugar (I used berry sugar, since I had some) and 1/2 cup softened butter
• Beat two eggs and a tsp of vanilla extract into the sugar mixture
• Mix in 1/2 cup each of cocoa powder and white flour

Pour the brownie batter into a greased and sugared 8-9" round glass baking dish (every version of the recipe says round, so that's what I did). Microwave, uncovered, on 50% power for 8 minutes. Check the brownies and if they aren't quite done, give them another 2 minutes or so, still on 50% power. Let the brownies sit for a few minutes before digging in.
I'm sure you could add nuts, if you wanted to. You could ice the brownies, but they're so rich it would really be gilding the lily. In any case, eating them warm with vanilla bean ice cream is marvellous. And did I mention how easy they were to make?

Joys of Parenting (or, I Want a Spear of Destiny)

So, last night we went to see Constantine. I have never read the Hellblazer comic series; if I had, I'm sure I would have hated the movie. As it was, however, only having seen advertisements for the movie in Sandman comic books (please Hollywood, never make a Sandman movie!!), I got a huge kick out of it. Deathly pallid and thoroughly miserable Keanu Reeves fights demons, pisses off angels, and reluctantly aids the lovely Rachel Weiss in her quest to solve the mystery of her sister's death. Yes, Keanu remains one of the most monotone actors on the planet, but in this situation if you squint you can pretend he's just playing the role of the disaffected demon-slayer.

The movie involves an artifact called the Spear of Destiny, and begins with the claim "He who holds the Spear of Destiny controls the fate of the world" or something along those lines. Apparently the spear is what pierced Christ's side on the cross, and Hitler was obsessed with finding it, and so on. It's that sort of artifact. I think I want one.

Constantine is a violent, scary movie. There are nasty demon possessions, violent exorcisms, people's faces melting off, graphic wrist-slashing images, grotesque shape shifting, death-by-having-flies-pour-out-of-one's-mouth-nose-and-eyes . . . oh, and a man forcibly drowns a woman. On top of all the usual flamethrowers, guns, and bloody, vicious fist fights. But, hey, that didn't stop the people two rows up from us from bringing their little kids to the movie. The children looked to be about 7 and 5 years old. The younger one spent the movie in her mom's lap, hiding her face, and at some point she dozed off. I saw the father reassuring the older one a few times. There was no crying, or anything, but for God's sake!! Who takes their little children to a movie like that??? Sure, these kids have probably been inoculated by having watched violent television since birth, but still. It took effort on my part not to walk up and comment. Not that it would have done any good.

If only I'd had my Spear of Destiny . . .

Quackery

[This is a post from when I was heavily pregnant with my youngest. I felt ranty]

Did you know that there is a homeopathic cold and flu remedy on the market that is made from the heart and liver of a freshly-killed duck, incubated for forty days, whereupon the organs are pulverized, freeze-dried, reconstituted, and diluted repeatedly before the solution is impregnated into sugar granules? Did you know that the quantity of duck organ the manufacturer claims is in the homeopathic remedy is "200C", or 1 part per 100 to the power of 200 (a number followed by 400 zeros, so a pretty small amount)? This means that if any given tablet of the remedy actually contained a single molecule of duck, the tablet would have to be composed of four times as many molecules as are estimated to exist in the universe.

Apparently that's not a problem for homeopaths, who believe that water retains a "memory" (their word) of stuff that has been in it, and that the smaller the dose, the more powerful its effect. So, hey, if it's not there at all, it's pretty darn powerful, huh? Seriously. I kid you not. This is the "law of infintisimals." The result of all this is, of course, that the company that makes this stuff needs one duck per year to produce an unlimited supply of cure, for which they netted over twenty million dollars in 1996. Don't believe this crazy talk? Check out Dr. Stephen Barrett's overview of homeopathy.

Homeopathy is also based on the "law of similars", which in essence claims that taking something that causes the exact symptoms you're suffering will ease them. Yeah, I'm still not joking. This of course does not mean that you should drink buckets of espresso to cure your insomnia; the law of infintisimals indicates that what you should do is drink sugar water that once contained caffeine but has since been so completely diluted that it has passed the point at which the laws of chemistry indicate that none of the original substance is still there. Except, of course, the memory. That'll knock you right out, with no side effects. Conveniently, apparently the water only remembers the homeopathic remedy, not the near-infinite number of other molecules it has contained during its life. Still dead serious, folks.

"But wait!" you exclaim. How does the law of similars mean that duck guts produce cold and flu symptoms? I wondered the same thing, myself, and so went straight to the homeopathic horse's mouth for answers. Also, of course, being of a research-oriented nature, I didn't want to take Dr. Barrett's word at face value, even if it did make gobs and gobs of utter sense. So, I went to one of the roughly two million websites out there that promote homeopathy: Homeopathy Home - The Net's Best Homeopathic Resource. (I went to more than that, but this one seemed so "scientific" . . . ) I figure, this is pretty popular stuff, seemingly condoned by lots of not-insane intelligent people, so if it's the net's best resource, they're bound to give me some highly persuasive information about homeopathy, and how remedies are developed. Basically, they told the same 200-year-old history of homeopathy that Dr. Barrett did - it developed at a time when doctors mostly bled and purged their patients, and homeopathy did far less harm then than did conventional medicine, or "allopathy." The stories diverge after this, though. The good doctor tells us that while homeopathy did enjoy great popularity for a while, it fell out of favour as medicine got, well, better at curing rather than killing people. HH, on the other hand, claims that doctors then as now were intolerant of competition and worked tirelessly to discredit and undermine the more lucrative and effective homeopathy (yes, lucrative). All right, they'll agree to disagree.

But WHY would anyone think eating the memory of duck innards would cure cold and flu symptoms?? Because eating them in normal amounts makes you feel like you have a cold? I guess. That's exactly how homeopaths figure out what various substances are going to do for you - today, as 200 years ago, healthy people ingest random stuff and then monitor their symptoms. It's not quite that simple, of course, but that's the premise. It's called a "proving," and at least in the beginning homeopaths would monitor their bodies' behaviour for days after consuming the substance to be proven, and assume that whatever was going on was caused by what they'd eaten. Or smoked, who knows really. And here's where it gets weird (surprise! It wasn't weird yet!): I checked out modern provings on the ol' HH site. Apparently, recent provings have been done with peregrine falcon wings, lava, any number of plant bits, often from specific trees, eggshell membrane, mobile phone radiation, the blood of a dying AIDS victim, . . . uh, what? Mobile phone radiation? Who ate that? Well, nobody, obviously. They attached vials of lactose to the side of cell phones to catch the memory of the radiation, since its ill-effects are already well-known . . . well, what about the falcon wing? The lava? The AIDS blood? Yeah, nobody's eating that stuff either. In fact, the falcon wing and lava are both homeopathic remedies for psychiatric and emotional problems, and the proving was the manufacturer's emotional response to them (i.e., not even the patient's response, which I guess couldn't possibly be different). As for the AIDS patient's blood, the homeopathic remedy made from it is not actually meant to treat AIDS. As far as I can tell, it's being used to treat - and I use that word extremely sardonically - a wide range of emotional and psychiatric disorders caused by severe childhood abuse. How was the proving done? Oh, the homeopath went ahead and made the extreme dilution of the guy's blood (so dilute that the virus wouldn't be present, I assume), and then she and a bunch of other people took the stuff and analyzed their own responses, including visual images that appeared to them, physical sensations like itching or light-headedness, and emotional or behavioural responses, including restlessness and joy. The woman claims that "this stimulus, perhaps because it is amplified by the many coexperiencers . . . is sufficient to produce long range effects." For a real trip down the rabbit hole, you might want to check out her full proving report.

Why did I bother looking so far into this? Because I have this ridiculous, debilitating hayfever-like condition, which is utterly crippling some days and non-existent on other days, and I'm pregnant. Actually, it may be because I'm pregnant that I've been feeling this way for over two months. So last Monday night, nose chapped from blowing, looking just like a Nyquil ad, I staggered down to Shopper's Drugmart and asked the pharmacist if, being in the family way, I could take anything to clear my horrible nose. He told me there's a homeopathic remedy that's quite effective, that Choices carries, and that of course I should drink lots of fluids and take vitamin C (?), but that nothing pharmacological was safe. I narrowly avoided attacking him, at least verbally, through sheer willpower, and came back home. But afterwards, I thought, "hey, he's a pharmacist, maybe I'm missing something in the homeopathy department." Now I'm guessing either he figured I might benefit from a placebo, since a lot of people around here probably do go in for homeopathy, or he's One of Them.

Bunch of flakes.

Grrr.

Guess I'm stuck till the baby comes and I can dope myself up again . . .

Virtually Drunk

[written when I was pregnant and craving a martini]

So, of course, in my delicate condition I am not drinking. This doesn't mean, however, that I can't contemplate the wonderful world of recreational libation. And as is so often the case in Vancouver, my thoughts turn like a compass needle to that vitriol-inspiring beverage, the "martini." Not, you understand, the martini, beverage of choice for philandering English makers-of-bad-puns and occasional government agents, but the "martini." Its aliases include "crantini," "chocotini," "apple-tini," and any other bastardization the self-congratulating barman can concoct. It is basically a blend of any number of liqueurs and distilled spirits, often flavoured with juice or something, amounting to two ounces of liquor and served in a martini glass. I have to admit I once asked for a martini, was asked what flavour I wanted, and responded, " . . . ? Um, gin?"

I know I'm being dreadfully pedantic, and language is a living, morphous thing, and obviously the "martini" is popular, blah blah blah, but seriously. A martini is a fairly good jag of either vodka or gin, mixed with a smaller amount of vermouth (the drier the martini, the less vermouth), and it should be served so cold that the only thing keeping it from being solid ice is the alcohol content. Some people will get their knickers in a knot over the gin vs. vodka issue, but from what I understand, either is acceptable. Gin's more commonly considered a "traditional" martini. Add what you will, an olive, an onion, a twist of orange peel, even a dash of bitters, but this is a martini. Throw in a dash of the brine from the olive jar and you have a Dirty Marty. The rest are just fruity, boozy drinks that people who actually don't like martinis consume. This is either because they don't enjoy the taste of undiluted spirits (and so "shoot" whiskey and the like, rather than sipping it), or they don't like the taste of gin specifically, or they have been served mediocre - bad - martinis. Usually a martini is bad because it is not cold enough, it has been improperly mixed, or the gin is of a particularly low quality.

So how do you make a superlative martini? Well, there's the long, purist way, and then there's the shortcut. The long, purist way is to keep your gin or vodka, vermouth, shaker, and martini glasses in the freezer until the moment you need them. A silver or stainless steel shaker will get your drink colder than a glass one does. Put a bunch of crushed ice in the shaker, pour in four ounces or so of gin, and your preferred amount of vermouth (I use about a capful, or 1/4 of an ounce), put the top on, shake it vigorously but not violently for a few seconds, and strain into 2 chilled glasses. Consume immediately. There is actually some debate over whether you should shake a gin martini at all, since too much bouncing around can "bruise" or "crush" the delicate flavours of the gin. I believe this, largely due to the number of off-tasting, luke-warm martinis I've been served in posh bars. I read somewhere on the net, but can no longer find the reference, that for this reason, a bartender should know that a shaken martini is made with vodka and a stirred one with gin. If this is so, than presumably that dashing 007 was flipping off MI-5, or the Russians, or both, every time he ordered his martini shaken. A nice thought, except apparently somewhere Mr. Bond followed up his usual "shaken, not stirred" with a curt "and don't bruise the gin." Alas, I haven't read the books and I've seen only a handful of the movies, so I'm in no position to comment. At any rate, I'm sure there's a way to shake the gin martini enough to aerate the drink (the purpose of all beverage shaking) without bruising the gin. For instance, Cigar Aficionado recommends shaking to waltz time.

But what if I don't have a cocktail shaker and I want a shortcut martini? Fine. A clever and witty jazz musician I know, who is getting a bit advanced in years, fills a highball glass with ice, fills it halfway with gin, slips in a teaspoon or so of vermouth, stirs it, tosses in a couple of olives, and he's away to the races. It's cold, it's strong, the gin isn't bruised, and you don't need a degree in advanced bartending physics to make it.

Caveat: everyone who loves martinis is a martini snob, and they each think they know exactly the right way to make one. I'm sure they'd be all down my throat about my method, but there you have it.

I leave you now with the following martini recipe, courtesy of Hawkeye from M.A.S.H:
"I think I've found the perfect martini . . . you pour six jiggers of gin into a glass and then you drink it while staring at a picture of Lorenzo Schwartz, the inventor of vermouth." (Some M.A.S.H. trivia geek on the web actually went to all the bother of finding out and then pointing out that vermouth was in fact invented by Antonio Benedetto Carpano. Some people have no sense of humour.)

Borscht du Jour
Recently we had our vegetables delivered, which is always "produce surprise," and I was pleased to find beets in the box. With the tops on! Now, whenever I get beets in their entirety, the following monologue passes through my head:

All right, beet greens! They're so yummy, and good for you! Now, how do you cook them again? Could just saute them, I guess, but that's kind of boring . . . ummm . . . What should I do with these things, anyway? Chop them up fine and throw them in the borscht? That seems like a bit of a waste . . . hmmm . . .

Of course, there are things you can do with beets besides borscht, but really, I only ever do borscht. It's great, because it's an excellent soup in which to dispose of leftovers, as long as they aren't too distinctively seasoned. Carrots, potatoes, leftover roast, wilting greens, aging cabbage, woody celery, that half-tin of diced tomatoes that's been kicking around - shred or dice them all finely, cook the bejeezus out of them in a sturdy beef (oh, all right, you can use vegetable stock if you must) broth, with the beets, also shredded, and finish it off with some sour cream. The beets camouflage everything else. The best flavorings for your stock are star anise (fish it out before serving, though), caraway, black pepper, garlic, and whatever else you particularly like.

None of this has anything to do with beet greens. Right! There is something interesting and kind of elegant that can be done with them, actually, and I don't recall seeing the recipe anywhere (even - gasp - on the internet), except my Mom's kitchen. Apparently she got it from a Ukrainian friend. For the uninitiated, in Manitoba "Ukrainian" usually means "somebody whose ancestors came here from the Ukraine about the same time mine left Ireland and England, i.e. the late nineteenth century." Anyway, here's the recipe.

Make dough for dinner rolls, about 20 rolls' worth (I halved a recipe for 36 rolls, and put the reduced recipe below). At the point where you would normally make the rolls out of the big ball of risen dough, preheat the oven to 350 F and shape the dough into little cylinders about 2-2.5 inches long and as thick as a breakfast sausage. Wrap each of these very loosely in a beet leaf, or a section of beet leaf if the leaves are huge. You should end up with roughly 24 rolls. Place the wrapped pieces in a deep baking dish (or as many dishes as it takes) with lots of space around them, and be sure that the seam or end of the beet leaf is down. Set the dish aside for the rolls to rise, and make a very thin cream sauce. This can be done by just melting two Tbsps of butter, whisking in two Tbsps of white flour, removing the pan from the heat, whisking in two cups of cold milk, and returning the pan to the heat just long enough for it to begin to thicken. Your sauce should be no thicker than unwhipped whipping cream, or even coffee cream. If it seems too thick, just mix in more milk. Sprinkle the rolls liberally with dill (fresh chopped for preference, but dried works fine) and pour the cream sauce over. You need enough sauce to fill the pans at least half an inch, preferably more. Now stick the pan in the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the ends of the rolls (what you can see besides beet leaf) are a nice golden brown, and the cream sauce is seriously thick and bubbly. I served this with (leftover) borscht and very simple pan-fried beef sausages with onions, and it seemed like a haute take on peasant food, when really it was pretty much just peasant food. They can also be frozen once wrapped, but before the sauce and all, and then just baked the same way once thawed.

Dinner rolls (makes 18 or so)
1 pkg dry yeast (or 2.25 Tbsps)
1/2 Tbsp sugar (1.5 tsp)
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 lightly beaten eggs
1/3 cup sugar
roughly 2.5 cups white flour
Mix the first three ingredients and set aside. Scald the milk, add the butter, and let it cool to lukewarm. Mix in the eggs, the remaining sugar, and the salt. Add to this the yeast mixture, and pour all this into a well in the middle of 2 cups of the flour, which by now is in a large mixing bowl. Mix it all well, and add more flour till you have a soft dough. Turn out on a floured surface and knead until smooth (which is to say, not forever like you do with some breads). Set in a greased bowl, run a greased hand over the top of the dough, cover with a damp cloth or plastic wrap, and let rise till doubled (about an hour). Punch down and either make the above recipe or shape the dough into rolls, place in a greased pan or two and let rise till again doubled (more like 1/2 hour this time), and bake at 400 F until golden brown - about 15 minutes. These are lovely, rich, slightly sweet dinner rolls.

Baby's First Brainwashing

So, when J was about 14 months old, and not talking (oh, who am I kidding, he still isn't talking), he learned a few basic signs. He quickly adapted the sign for"more" to mean "I want". One morning we were watching a bit of TV, and an ad came on for the Dairy Queen Cheesequake. He paid little attention until the final scene, which showed an extreme close-up of the ice cream treat in question. Transfixed, he sat deep in thought for a nanosecond and then, with the air of one coming to a momentous decision, pointed to the screen, looked me dead in the eye, and signed "I WANT." With utter, final, certainty. He had no point of reference on which to base his conclusion that this stuff was desirable, other than the TV's assertion of the same.

Brrrr. We turned the TV off after that.

Cheerful Submission: Live Longer Through Dudgery

So, every few months or so some female friend with a predilection for spamming forwards me an email entitled, "Why I Love My Mom", or "Women Rule", or "Why Women Live Longer." Twice I've received it in honour of "International Women's Day" (I'm so glad we get a day, you know?). Inevitably, the woman sending the email is a wife, a mother, and a breadwinner. She is terminally busy, she is the primary care giver not only for her children but also for her husband, and she is in every way a classic SSF - self-sacrificing female.

My gut reaction to the message she forwards, which ostensibly celebrates women, is a quote from Beautiful Girls: "This is a mockery, this is a sham, this is bulls**t."

What follows is the text of the forwarded email, in one of its myriad permutations:

"Why I Love My Mom
Mom and Dad were watching TV when Mom said, "I'm tired, and it's getting late. I think I'll go to bed." She went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches, rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took meat out of the freezer for supper the following evening, checked the cereal box levels, filled the sugar container, put spoons and bowls on the table and started the coffee pot for brewing the next morning. She then put some wet clothes in the dryer, put a load of clothes into the wash, ironed a shirt and secured a loose button. She picked up the game pieces left on the table and put the telephone book back into the drawer. She watered the plants, emptied a wastebasket and hung up a towel to dry. She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom. She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher, counted out some cash for the field trip, and pulled a textbook out from hiding under the chair. She signed a birthday card for a friend, addressed and stamped the envelope and wrote a quick note for the grocery store. She put both near her purse. Mom then washed her face with 3 in 1 cleanser, put on her Night Solution age fighting moisturizer, brushed and flossed her teeth and filed her nails. Dad called out, "I thought you were going to bed." "I'm on my way," she said. She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside, then made sure the doors were locked. She looked in on each of the kids and turned out a bedside lamp, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks in the hamper, and had a brief conversation with the one up still doing homework. In her own room, she set the alarm; laid out clothing for the next day,straightened up the shoe rack. She added three things to her 6 most important things to do list. She said her prayers, and visualized the accomplishment of her goals. About that time, Dad turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular, "I'm going to bed." And he did...without another thought.
Anything extraordinary here?......
Wonder why women live longer...?
CAUSE WE ARE STRONGER.......MADE FOR THE LONG HAUL...... "

Uh . . . right . . . our drudgery helps us live longer. Okay. I have so many problems with this little story that I barely know where to begin. Why does the author love her mom? Because she is apparently single-handedly responsible for the running of the entire household? Because she still "takes care of herself" - note the filing of the nails and the (my favorite!!) application of the age-fighting moisturizer - even when she's really busy and exhausted? And what of Dad? Are we supposed to love him because he sits on his butt watching TV for an hour while Mom frantically puts the house in order? More than likely, we are meant to find Dad's "inability" to see all the little details endearing. After all, it's a woman's touch that a house needs, right? This is as insulting to men as it is to women.

I do not know many women who behave as "Mom" did, above, and I'm glad of it. The women who forward this message on to me, usually with a sly verbal wink in there to the effect of, "boy, don't I know how she feels", or "who's been spying on my house?" - well, these women worry me. Granted, when I give my usual response of, "well, it's not my life - my husband pulls his weight around the house," they bridle and assure me that really, their husbands are very good around the house, too, but, well, you know . . . hmmm. The whole thing smacks of cheerful submission. There's an overt acknowledgement that it is often drudgery, that it's tiring, that it's unfairly skewed toward women, that it's a "long haul", and yet these women are so proud! They wear it like a badge! It's something for which one loves one's mother ...? It baffles me.

The thing that bugs me the most is the idea that *this* is why women live longer than men do. I am uncomforably reminded of a story I read recently, possibly though not certainly in Dropped Threads:

A middle-aged woman's father had passed away, leaving her elderly mother to live alone. We'll call the daughter Susan and the mother Mom. In the months following Dad's death, Susan became worried about her mother's emotional health. Even though Mom seemed to be coping well, and often acted happy, Susan was concerned that she might be depressed. Mom had gone from running a spotless home - the envy of Susan and her sisters, who never felt they quite measured up - to often letting the house get messy. One day, Susan visited her mother in the early afternoon. She was dismayed to see that Mom was still in her robe, and that not only the lunch dishes but the breakfast dishes as well were still on the counter and in the sink. She decided she should confront her mother about the problem. "Mom, how are you feeling these days? You know, without Dad, how are you doing?" "Oh, you know, Susan, I have my ups and downs, but I'm doing all right. Thanks for asking, sweetie." Susan suspected her mom was putting on a brave face, and pressed on. "Well, Mom, we've all been kind of worried about you." "Why on Earth?" asked her mother. "Well, you used to run such a tight ship around here, and now, well, look at you! It's two in the afternoon, the dishes aren't done, you're still in your robe . . . " she trailed off, slightly embarassed. Her mother began to laugh. "What?" asked Susan. "Oh, Susan! You all think I'm depressed because I haven't been cleaning up a storm? Sweetheart, I miss your Dad so much, there are times when I think I'll lose my mind from loneliness. That's true. But it was always your father who insisted on a spotless house, on having meals ready at 7, 12, and 5:30 on the dot, just the way his mother always did. I'm more like you girls, and I'm just indulging myself a bit these days. I don't have to run the house any way but my own, now."

It's kind of a heartwarming story, but combined with the email story it leaves me uneasy. Work hard, they seem to say. Submit to society's - and your husband's - demands that you, in Fridanesque style, derive personal fulfillment from the pursuit of domestic excellence - nay, perfection - and you will live longer. You will live so long, if you do this work well enough, that you will outlive your husband: and finally have earned the right to lay aside that work, and live in the manner you choose - alone.

Not for me, that life, and I hope not for any of the men and women who are in my life. I wish for us all lives where we share our work, and together create homes (and divisions of domestic labour) that we can enjoy and be comfortable in now.

Apparently, Even God Loves Raymond

Vancouver has a Christian TV station - channel 10 - called NOW TV. They show a lot of religious stuff, and they flesh out their lineup with programs which, while not specifically Christian, promote values consistent with such a station. If you think about it, Everybody Loves Raymond (ELR) does have a lot going for it in the Family Values department. Deborah stays home with the kids, Ray is a Man's Man, being a sports writer, and all, and despite the arguing and the oddball comedy, the Barrone family conforms nicely to a conservative Christian model. Part and parcel are the stereotyped roles of men (lousy with words, constantly acting like good-natured idiots, easily manipulated by promises or denials of food and sex), women (nagging, concerned with appearances, verbose, heavily domesticated) and children (namely, hardly ever seen and definitely not heard). And everything I've seen suggests that these are the gendered, hierarchical behaviours expected and endorsed by the conservative Christian establishment.

I do get a kick out of the fact that they blank out every time anyone says hell, damn, etc., which all get said a whole lot on ELR.

What really slays me is that at the end of each show these two bozos in folding director's chairs discuss the preceeding episode from a Christian perspective. They assess the Christian lessons that the show teaches. Which, if the people at NOW TV will forgive me, is a load of hooey. See, there is the odd episode of ELR, and in fact of many sitcoms out there, that tries to teach a specifically religious lesson - for instance, there's an episode of ELR where Ray goes back to church after a long absence. But there are loads of other episodes that simply do not have anything to do with Christianity, other than the vague cultural fact of the family's Catholicism. So the bozos take whatever pat, glib, shallow moral each episode offers (and every episode of every sitcom has somebody learning that they should be generous or tell the truth or take the homely girl on a date, or whatever), and turn it into a pat, glib, shallow interpretation of Scripture.

*sigh*

And speaking of pat, glib, shallow spiritualism:

The Faith Quandry
Inevitably, when people get to know each other, they end up having a big talk about religion. Often, especially in families or circles of friends where there are differing views on religion, the folks who agree will gather to chat about the other guys and their whacky ideas, or else disagreeing parties will enter the same tired old dance around issues they've debated ad nauseum already. I don't really think there's any reason to discuss religion. Either you're preaching to the choir, or you're not going to convince anybody anyway.

Except. Personally, I have a lot of issues with religion. There are loads of things I haven't figured out, loads of things that I have conflicting ideas about, and loads of things that I just don't understand - but desperately want to! So, maybe I enter into ultimately unfulfilling discussions with people about religion because I'm trying to define my own take on what, for me, remains a thorny and complicated issue.

I was flipping channels this rainy Vancouver afternoon when I encountered, on NOW TV, a broadcast from a local church. The woman speaking was from somewhere in the deep South. She was engaged in a stern lecture, at times scathing, about the usual stuff - taking Jesus as your Saviour, obeying God's will, et cetera. And she was making a number of very compelling points: that we should forgive others, rather than seeking retribution. That we need to grow as people, that we cannot be static individuals, that humans should mature and develop, and should be responsible for their actions. That people can choose to wallow in their sorrows, or they can choose to rise above and move on, and learn from the negative experiences. I agree with all of these points, but man do I not agree with her reasons behind them! I believe in forgiveness because I know none of us is perfect, and I wish to be forgiven for my own inevitable transgressions. I believe that compassion and forgiveness are essential to foster peace in the world. She, on the other hand, was arguing that we forgive because if we don't, GOD won't forgive us our sins. And we should not seek retribution because punishing people for their sins is GOD's job. Furthermore, she was stating point blank that, even though she herself had never been assaulted or abused, people who had been so wronged were still not eligible to receive God's grace until they'd forgiven the people who'd hurt them.

Now, I do think that in order to heal oneself, one must make peace. And I think forgiveness is essential to that peace. But I would never have the audacity to tell someone who had been hurt, damaged, in a way that I actually can't imagine, that they MUST forgive their assailants, or lose out on eternal life. See, as soon as you accept as true the idea of Heaven, of salvation in the afterlife, you also accept that there are certain things people must do in this life in order to attain Heaven. And quite frankly, I am opposed to these conditions, and to the fact that the "saved" or the "born again" feel they have the authority to dictate these conditions to others. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that just anyone should get past the pearly gates. But I don't know if I like a God who says, "yeah, being a good person isn't enough - you also have to take me as your lord in order to enter Heaven." Why isn't being good sufficient? Is it because nobody can be perfectly good, so everyone is going to be good in different ways, and to different degrees, and it's hard to impose standards under those conditions? What, God can't look into the hearts of humans and tell whether or not we've striven as best we could to be good? I think most evangelical Christians believe that by definition a person can't be *as* good without having accepted Jesus as their Saviour as they can be once they are born again. It's like until you let go and plunge full force into God's goodness - by accepting the tenets and prescripts of Christianity - you'll always be holding back that little bit, and it won't be enough.

Notice I said "most evangelical Christians believe". Believe. Not think, not understand, but believe. They have faith. They have FAITH. At some point, early or late, in any religious discussion, it boils down to whether you believe or not. Religious faith is not built on proof, logic, or facts. It simply isn't. Loads of reasonable, rational, educated people believe in God, and I do not think they arrived at that belief through a series of logical steps. Rather, they have felt the presence of God, or the Spirit has moved them, or they have heard the Word and "known it to be true." They've just known, without having to be shown any hard evidence, in the same way that I know peace is better than war, love better than hate - I don't have to back up my argument, because it's not something I'm trying to prove. It's just what I know.

I believe this to be Christian faith: That something within people resonates with what they are hearing from the Christian movement, from evangelists, and they are moved to believe. I know this sounds overly simple, but it "rings true." The trouble is, I think, that evangelists also believe that we all have that something inside us, every last one of us, and that we are simply not adequately receptive. We need to be cajoled, coaxed, urged, and even occasionally threatened with eternal damnation in order to believe. And I sometimes wonder if evangelists don't stretch the truth a little in order to give fence-sitters the shove they need to fall into faith.

I don't, I can't, believe, as the lady on today's show asserted, that during the three days after he was crucified but before he was resurrected, Christ went down into Hell and demanded the keys to Death, Hell, and The Grave, because since he had broken the rules and entered Hell even though he had never committed any sin, he had "the legal right" (her words) to demand those keys. And what, Satan, that stickler for bureaucratic i-dotting and t-crossing, said, "Well, Mr. Christ, I see your papers are in order and you do have a legal right to these keys, so here you go?" This was her explanation for why we have to take Jesus as our Lord and Saviour in order to escape death and Hell - he's already been down there and picked up the keys . . . okay, she lost me again. How does him having the keys keep the saved from ending up there? He's locked the door, so their souls can't get in? But other, unsaved, souls can still get in, so maybe it was a special key that only locks the door to the saved . . . I give up. Again, not only does this story not ring true for me, it actually undermines any twinge of "hey, maybe she's got a point" that might have taken hold of my mind.

There are other things Biblical that don't ring true for me: the Immaculate Conception and the Ressurection, for two, which is why I really can't call myself a Christian, even if I believe in Christ's teachings. What frustrates me, what I strive to understand but can't, is how intelligent, reasonable people have no trouble believing not only these things, but also a whole host of other ludicrous assertions thrust upon them by the evangelical establishment.


A Stone Can't Fly, And Grandma Can't Fly, Therefore Grandma is a Stone

One of the attempted methods of converting us doubters is persuasion through logical argument. And as I'm sure the choir to which I'm preaching will agree, it's a shoddy and false logic, of the sort demonstrated in the title. But I think the most dangerous logic of all that the believers use is this: "the preachers speak the word of God, and I believe the word of God, therefore I believe whatever the preachers say." They're forgetting that a person can speak the word of God sometimes. But that person is not without fault, without error, unable to make mistakes. I think we can all agree that only God is so perfect.

Mothering Necessitates Invention

With an infant's unerring ability to distinguish between fun, forbidden delights and boring old toys, J can always be found crawling towards one of the following: the venetian blinds on the balcony door, anything in a plastic bag, the VCR, the glass-topped end tables, the cords sticking out of the back of the computer, and the pilot light on the gas fireplace. I filled his carseat with toys and wedged it between the couch and the wall, so that it's accessible in a challenging, tantalizing way - like the cords in back of the computer - and he hasn't so much as glanced at it. Given that when they're babies is the only time we even stand a chance of outsmarting our kids, I think all parents become mental contortionists in our effort to pull one over on our beloved offspring. Here are a few ways in which I've attempted to outwit J:

The Decoy Book
Nothing says excitement like that crinkling, leafy thing that adults are always holding in front of their faces with such undivided attention - the book/newspaper/magazine. So, I put last week's TV Guide somewhere accessible (but not obvious), and let him go to town. It appears to take him the better part of a week to demolish one, and we just pick up the torn out pages as they appear.

The Post-Modern Cushion Fort
Since we don't have baby gates, I've taken to removing the cushions and throw pillows from the couches and blocking access to the most tempting diversions - the VCR, the blinds, and the glass end tables. I also use chairs (which have floor-length skirts around their legs) to block the computer. I consider the result a compelling subversion of the dominant high-power-businessman persona of the apartment's furnishings, while simultaneously highlighting the "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" nature of the corporate male's urban one bedroom apartment, i.e. it is merely a reincarnation of the little boy's cushion fort as an exertion of independence from . . . oh, who cares? J thinks it's a fun game, and it keeps him from wrecking the blinds.

CheerioSweeper
This is like Minesweeper, but with Cheerios. Every morning I put J on the living room floor and scatter a handful of Cheerios all over the carpet. It's then his job to roam the living room, sampling whatever he encounters (which he would do anyway), and eating the Cheerios. If I make him sit in the high chair to eat breakfast, he just gets grumpy. And, since babies don't so much seem to eat everything they find as just evaluate it through "mouthing", I hope this reinforces for him the idea that there are some things we eat (Cheerios, say), and others we don't (lint, hair, leaves, bits of TV Guide . . . ). I think it's working - he's getting more selective with what he puts in his mouth off the living room floor. Why waste your time on newsprint when there's a perfectly good Cheerio to munch? Plus, this way he's *choosing* to eat the Cheerios he encounters, rather than having me thrust eating upon him. And, to reassure the squeamish, I do vacuum regularly.


Sing, You Fool

Parents sing to their kids. I'm not sure how universal this is, but I've noticed that other parents of small children seem without exception to sing to them. Sometimes it's actual children's songs, but more often than not it's whatever song happens to enter our heads at the moment the kid's grumpy, often with modified lyrics. Most parents' repertoires seem to include bastardizations of the Flintstone's theme and Frosty the Snowman, which goes to show what sticks in our psyches from our own childhoods. Also, parents don't give a gosh darn who hears them when they are serenading their little ones, as long as it gets the job done. For example, J often grouches when I change him, and the other day I was already mid-diaper change in the bathroom when I realized I'd been singing The Poop Song (don't ask) in front of our friend who was visiting . . . and this morning J, and probably the neighbours, heard a rousing rendition of that classic "Mom's Washing Her Hair, All the Babies Stare." Inventing rhymes on the spot has never been a strength for me. I did manage to rhyme feet with sweet, and arms with charms, and face with place, but I couldn't think of anything for legs other than . . . eggs? Like he cares - I'm covered with bubbles and singing like a maniac. As far as he's concerned, it's the best show on Earth.