Exhale, New Moon – No, It’s Not New Agey WooWoo

Okay, I have been BUSY. Co-hosted a fundraising party for Exhale – the fantastic “pro-voice” organization founded and led by Aspen Baker, last night. It was a truly amazing night where I wasn’t a) in my pajamas in front of my computer (’cause that would have been awkward, right?) or b) pounding out an article on women’s rights faster than I can type or c) cleaning up after my two dogs or d) feeding the chickens…

Nope – I strode right into that house-party like I owned the place (which, I didn’t. But, lordy, I wish I did. My co-host’s home was gorgeous. Wowza). And I had a blast talking to colleagues I usually only get to see at conferences or meetings. Or on Facebook – which isn’t really “seeing” them at all. I’m telling you the work-at-home life is weird.

I gave a little talk about how to create respectful dialogue around abortion, online. I got to schmooze with RH Reality Check contributor, Scarleteen.com founder, author, artist, sex ed goddess Heather Corinna and the inimitable, diehard women’s rights FIGHTER, never-say-never, Jewish-but-really-Mexican-by-proxy Marcy Bloom, and other gorgeous souls who are all working towards a more just society for women.

My mother even accompanied me! She, of course, made many friends. As she always does. And she’s got purple hair. I’m just saying.

Exhale is such a worthy, unique and starry organization to me. Exhale runs a post-abortion talkline. They do not identify themselves as pro-choice or pro-life because they are not a political organization. Aspen’s goal is to create safe, respectful spaces for women to be able to openly and honestly discuss their experience with abortion – whatever that experience may be. She has been lambasted by both sides for refusing to claim a label. The truth is, Exhale is very much a pro-choice organization or they wouldn’t do the work they do. But Exhale’s goal is to create a space for the pro-VOICE perspective. And I support that. I’ve supported that in my work as Managing Editor at RH Reality Check and I support that personally. I was on the original Board of Directors for a zine called Our Truths, Nuestras Verdades which chronicles women’s abortion stories in various ways. Now Exhale publishes the zine.

Check out Aspen’s video on RH Reality Check, part of “Our Reality” video series:

I worked at a clinic for 7 years. Believe me, women who have abortions are not concerned with labeling themselves. In fact, likely at least once or more a day a woman who calls herself “pro-life” comes in for an abortion. You never think it’s going to be you.

The event was truly magical and I feel honored to have been played a role in putting it together. A huge thank you to Julie Davidson-Gomez, Aspen Baker, Deb and everyone who showed up as well!

Afterwards, I needed some non-abortion rights time (we all need that, right??) and went out for drinks with my friend Xena. We downed crazy drinks and yammered on loudly, as we do.

But I digress HUGELY. Because this post is not only about Exhale. It’s also about a publication for which I have the utmost respect and loooove. It’s a magazine called New Moon and its geared towards girls ages 8-14 years old. I’ve written about New Moon before. But I’ll say quickly that even though Aliyah is still not technically “old enough” for New Moon, she’s been reading it for the last two years.

Aliyah loves for me to read her the stories, she loves to look at the pictures of “Luna.” I think she appreciates a magazine just for girls – all about girls as human beings not as show things for one thing or another.

But New Moon is in trouble and it’s up to YOU and ME to save it. So, here’s the deal. Here’s a letter I received from Nancy Gruver, founder of New Moon Media. She is a mother herself. She started this with her husband many years ago. I cannot tell you strongly I feel that magazines like New Moon are so very important for our daughters, for their futures, for all of our futures. Read the letter below and help out if you can. However, you can!

Empowering girls with healthy, positive media is my lifelong passion, and one I know you share. New Moon Girls online community and magazine gives girls ages 8 and up a safe, exciting, supportive space to express themselves and hear from other girls around the world. Girls who could be the next Courtney Martin (a finalist this week in Washington Post’s America’s Next Great Pundit contest) whose first article was published in New Moon when she was a girl, 14 years ago.

Sadly, this will all end on 12-31-09 without your help.

New Moon’s had a tough year like many other businesses. Even with a lot of effort, we haven’t succeeded in bringing in additional investors this fall, and it’s time to add a new strategy to keep New Moon alive. We have until Dec 31 to reach monthly break-even so that New Moon can grow in the future.

Have we tightened our own belts? You betcha! Right now our monthly expenses are 65% less than they were a year ago. But we still have a gap of $7500 a month to break-even. The good news is that with your help we can close this gap. The gap amounts to only 250 orders a month @ $29.95.

With your help to sponsor memberships for non-profits and to give New Moon as gifts, we can continue to ensure a media that lifts girls’ aspirations, increases their power, and gives them an outlet for their unique perspectives and voices. I’m sending this email to everyone I know and asking you to do the same.

Together, we can fill this gap and save New Moon for girls.

Please act today so the media universe for girls won’t be totally dominated by http://www.facebook.com/l/44675;Stardoll.com, Seventeen magazine, and worse.

You can help by:

* Sponsoring memberships for libraries, schools and programs serving low-income girls. It’s quick and easy to sponsor one, ten or 100 girls – every dollar matters! http://www.facebook.com/l/44675;www.newmoon.com/donate
* Buying memberships for all girls 8-14 that you know. Our holiday special saves you 50% after the first order.http://www.facebook.com/l/44675;www.newmoon.com/offer
* Telling everyone what you value about New Moon. Link to us, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter and share with your FB friends and Tweeps. http://www.facebook.com/l/44675;twitter.com/nancy_newmoon

Together, we can do it. And, in addition to the above ways to help, if you would like to learn more about becoming an investor in New Moon, let me know.

Thank you,

Nancy

How To Make Sweet ‘n’ Easy Homemade White Bread

If I can make this bread, *you* can make excellent, homemade white bread – without a bread machine. I promise.

I have been on a baking binge lately. Simplicity is what I’m going for these days. David and I both work; we’re ka-rayzee busy. You’d think we run a small nation at times. I admit I’m not the most creative cook – or baker. What concerns me right now is that my children know and understand where their food comes from: where it’s grown, organically or not, from a local farm or not, how it got from the farm to “here” – whether “here” means the store or our home. We’ve got a couple of chickens mostly because I thought it would be wonderful to be able to use eggs from our very own hens.

I want my children to know and recognize most of the ingredients that go into whatever it is they are eating. I mean, it’s not hard and fast. I get that David loooves chips ahoy cookies. I am NOT going to get him to give those up. Which means the kids will eat them too. And, hey, I’m not about making them nuts over a damn cookie.  But, for the most part, whether we’re talking cereal or hamburgers, we prioritize organic ingredients, no preservatives or chemical additives, and locality.

But the real reason, I think, that I love making these things is for the utterly selfish feeling it gives me – I know I’m gifting my family with something that’s really wonderful for them. And, honestly, who doesn’t love that feeling?  I love watching them bliss out on a an oatmeal, chocolate chip bar I’ve made. Or making themselves a quickie-sandwich with this bread. Or, in my dreams, eating a bowl of the yogurt (with honey) I’ve whipped up (they aren’t huge yogurt eaters so I’m usually the one downing the yogurt…).

For now, here’s the sweet ‘n’ easy recipe for white bread – use it for sandwiches, top with jam for breakfast, eat it anywhere you damn well please cause you made it!

What you’ll need:

3/4 cup warm water

1.5 tsps (or 1/2 tablespoon) of active, dry yeast

1 tbsp sugar

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

*1/4 – 1/2 c. of flax seed meal (this is optional and I add it to add some fiber to the bread and cause my kids think I’m obsessed with flax seed so I need to live up to their vision of who they think I am. Hippy-flax-seed-feminist-mama-galore). I use this and I love the taste!

Olive Oil or butter to grease pan and bowl

Can you believe that’s it??

First, combine the yeast, warm water and sugar in a bowl. Let the yeast, warm water and sugar sit for about ten minutes.

Then, add the two cups of flour, flax seed and the salt and you can start by stirring with a wooden spoon but it’s best to mix it up with your hands.

Sometimes, I find a need a bit more warm water but you just want to make sure you end up with a hunk of dough that isn’t too wet but also isn’t too flaky and powdery.

Then you place this mixture in a lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for an hour and a half, even two hours if ya feel like it!

Rising...

Your dough should have risen to about double its size by now.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead it for about ten minutes.

You can also employ the help of another family member who looooves the feeling of texture against her skin…(yes, I was multi-tasking here; baking bread while carving pumpkins. Honestly? I sorta leave the pumpkin carving to David. I’m cool with the end results; I’m just not all hyped up to scoop out pumpkin-muck and flesh or maneuver little razor-sharp baby knives through the hard shell. Call me the Halloween Grinch, okay?!).

Then place this kneaded dough into a lighly floured loaf pan. I have both a glass and a tin one and haven’t seen a noticeable difference between the two. I’m a fairly green baker though so you may be thinking, “Noooooo! You don’t use a glass loaf pan for bread. What is she doing? Nooooo!” Or not.

Sorry for the side-lying photo!

Leave it in the greased loaf pan, covered with plastic wrap once again, for another 1-2 hours, until it rises again to about double its size.

Then you preheat your oven at 390 degrees F. and bake for 20 minutes.

You’ve got bread!

I love this bread so much I’m developing an aversion to store bought bread. Even the pricey, locally-baked stuff. Just cause it’s my bread. Soon I’ll be milling my own flour out back. Or out front. Or somewhere. How do you mill flour?

Enjoy!!

If You Want A Say In Your Own Birth Process, Please Leave Now

A short post of mine over at RH Reality Check:

Whose idea of customer service is this?  If you want one of those fancy “support people” while your birthing or have some newfangled idea that you’ll be making your own decisions about how you’d like to birth, well you can just turn that pretty little head of yours around and leave right now.

Thank god for The Unnecesarean.com calling travesties like this out in such a hilarious way.

Here’s the friendly message from the physicians at the Aspen Women’s Center to pregnant women:

And here’s just a sample of the spoofs on the sign that Jill at Unnecesarean.com is calling for (You can still enter the contest and win a copy of childbirth educator Penny Simkin’s book “The Birth Partner”):

PSYCHO

The Moopster and I went to Benaroya Hall last week. We spiffed it up to attend the, ahem, symphony. Well, at least our own special version. The Seattle Symphony provided the live accompaniment to the original Psycho (“WEET WEET WEET WEET!”) from 1960. A perfectly spooky way to spend October 29th – you know, two days prior to Halloween. So it’s two-days less spooky than October 31st.

Moopy dresses up Moop-style for some freakishly elite fun:

Oh, come on. I am powerless. How amazingly Elijah is this?? He’s actually wearing the suit-jacket we purchased at Value Village for $5.99 for his Halloween costume this year (Al Capone – the original gangsta).

The film and performance was, as you can imagine, just amazing. Psycho is a piece of art that really should be appreciated for what it is – an iconic, ground-breaking suspense film that laid the groundwork for so many films that followed.

The stark, stringy soundtrack. Those violins and violas and the cello with the bows eerily scratching across the surface of each string. The broad, sweeping shot of the city as the camera dives into the window of a hotel room as Janet Leigh’s character, Marion Crane, is embroiled in a steamy tryst in the middle of the afternoon. But, as the film progresses,  the shots become more and more claustrophobic in their framing. Once Leigh (Crane) commits her crime, the camera moves in slowly , helping us identify more deeply with Marion Crane, making us feel what she feels. Close-ups of Janet Leigh’s big eyes, squinting, focusing and re-focusing through the dark, driving rain.

The close-up of the police officer’s face leaning into Leigh’s car as he questions her. Her jumpy, curt answers. The timing almost feels off when she delivers her lines but you realize it’s supposed to make you feel antsy and anxious.

The first time you see Norman Bates he seems sweet and innocent. Like a lanky teenage boy striding into frame.

Hitchcock doesn’t jump into anything. He makes the viewer wait. I’ve seen this film maybe 3 or 4 times now and I’m still hopeful, initially, that Bates is really just a naive young guy yearning for some companionship. Okay, maybe that’s just me.

That is, until Hitchcock’s masterful shot in the parlor.

It’s the scene where Norman Bates has invited Marion Crane into the parlor behind the motel’s office, for a sandwich-dinner, after her long drive. The conversation turns brilliantly to Bates’ feelings of being trapped in the life he’s got as Crane realizes – in a bit of foreshadowing and double-meaning – that she has stepped into a trap by committing the crime she has. Of course, she’s not hip to the actual trap she’s stepped into but you, as the viewer, know Hitchcock’s got a secret stashed away. You can just feel it.

But the brilliance of Hitchcock is this: when Bates first hears Marion Crane talk about committing his mother to an institution, you get the low angle shot of him that just chills you to the bone immediately. It’s right at that moment that you realize Bates is crazy. I mean – just from that angle. Hitchcock was a master at these camera angles. Later on in the film, as Bates is questioned by a probing private investigator, making him more  jittery and jumpy, he leans over to look at the guest register the  PI is also looking at. The camera is positioned directly underneath Bates’ long neck. It’s so close you can almost feel the skin and veins. It’s an eery and yet sensual shot that once again makes your skin crawl.

Of course, the most memorable scene in Psycho is The Shower Scene.  And it’s this scene that is burned into the brains of everyone whose watched it. Marion is showering, happily, sexily, allowing the water to run over her face, her hair, the medium shots of the shower drain, as the water swirls around, flowing down. Again, Hitchock ever so slowly pulls us along.

And then.

WEET WEET WEET WEET!!!  The shrieking of the symphony is so effortless and I literally grab Elijah’s arm as he slinks down in his seat, t-shirt up to his nose. The shower curtain is yanked back and Marion is attacked by a knife-wielding maniac in a grey bun and a frumpy dress.

It’s all in black and white but somehow the thick blood is just as terrifying. And the final shots of this frightening gore – Marion’s eye, the circular drain below, leave you exhausted and numb.

The film obviously progresses from there. And I could go on and on about so many of the shots, the scenes, the beautiful suspense that Hitchock builds upon. In the end, though, Hitchcock sort of lets Norman off the hook. Leaves him be. He’s become his mother, essentially, and will live out the rest of his days overtaken by his mother’s personality. It’s Oedipal to the bone, sure. Before we realized that mothers didn’t make their sons killers because they remarried. Have we realized that yet? Before gay rights (“But why did Norman wear his mother’s clothing?” Marion Crane’s sister asks the psychiatrist who examines Norman Bates upon his capture. “Because he’s…a transvestite!” the police chief dramatically responds. (To which the entire audience at the symphony cracks up)). Uh, yeah. He’s a murderous, pyschotic, deranged young man because he’s a transvestite. I so do not miss 1960.

Even if you can’t catch Psycho with a gorgeous, live symphonic accompaniment, watch it anyway. It’s just a masterpiece of film. On a cold, dark, gray October night. Or November. Took me awhile to finish this post.

Happy Halloween!!

(It’s the “Bates Motel”  - or one of the houses we visited for trick or treating)

“Impotence is following you”

For those on twitter, I received this email notification this morning from twitter (“Impotence is following you”) and I just find it funny that this is what passes for utterly normal these days. We don’t blink an eye when we receive something like this in our inbox (well, I did blink. I laughed my ass off. David kinda looked at me and said, “Uh, I guess that’s funny. Sort of.”)

“Impotence is now following you.”

“A little information about impotence: You may follow impotence as well…You may also block impotence if you don’t want them to follow you.”

“Impotence may have decided to stop following you…”

This is what’s called “technological advancement”. Hee hee. Oh, and I’m following them too.