electric blue stilettos

I am hard core enamored with this ensemble:

Image via Honestly...WTF

joyeux International Women's Day

via http://made-in-italy.tumblr.com/

I finished reading "Bad Mother" by Ayelet Waldman just in time for International Women's Day. Seems appropriate. One of the most damaging things we do to women is to constantly judge and criticize them for the way they raise their children. (I've done it enough - to myself and to other women - I feel like a bad person sometimes.) From breastfeeding v. bottlefeeding, spanking v. positive discipline, daycare v. homeschooling, there are a million different ways to be a mother, and to get in an online flame war about which method is more evil.

And then there's all that unsolicited advice. But if it were as easy as just saying "non" firmly and only offering 4 square meals a day, being a bonne maman would be a cake walk, no matter where you live. (This rebuttal of the French superior parenting book cracked me up: "Bringing Up Bébé? No Thanks. I'd Rather Raise a Billionaire")

As my wonderful friend and mother Hannah asked as she handed me Waldman's memoir, why is it that being a good mother requires super human skills, while being considered a good father bascially requires presence?

Gender equality in parenting. That's something to celebrate on International Women's Day.

pretty

The Cats of Copenhagen

 James Joyce children's story The Cats of Copenhagen gets first publication

Sounds delightful. Now, if only prices didn't start at €300!

popuphood

I love this: popuphood.

Local urban development that is ground-up, love-fueled, and happening now. In Oakland, Ca. Look at those fantastic storefronts!

I'm excited to see how the popuphood project is manifested when I visit the East Bay in a few weeks. And really, really excited to see it with my sweet friend Hank and her lovely family, who loves her city of Oakland quite a lot.

vous avez l'heure ?

Over the weekend, I met a woman who refuses to wear a watch. She also refuses to refer to her cell phone to check the time. When I asked her about her personal stand against temporal cognizance, she told me, quite simply, that she teaches physics to middle schoolers, and because of this, her days are regulated to the minute, without fail, from the minute she arrives in class until the minute the last bell of the day sounds.

Her eyes were laughing as she described the pleasure of weekends where she can roam from one place, thought, experience to the next, without the interruption of a loud ringing to tell her to stop! and move on to the next (although likely the same) subject.

The notion of strict time constraints and work really struck a chord with me, and I told her so. It's been almost 4 years that I've been working from home, and the idea of going back to a regimented office environment, at the same time and place everyday, scares me. Yes, I miss the social interaction with colleagues... but I truly, truly love working in my office at home, where I can start the day at 7h30 or 9h30, finish up after dinner or while Jacques naps, go for a walk in the garden to clear my head or take a power nap to rest my eyes. I feel incredibly lucky that my line of work allows for this freedom, and am grateful for the self-directed motivation that I've developed because of it.

snowed in, boob out

There's a nurse-in planned today, in Menlo Park, but also anywhere else in the world, in solidarity with the women protesting Facebook's lame habit of removing breastfeeding photos. It's boob out day!

Here in Toulouse we're snowed in, so there'll be no public expressions of lactivism on our behalf, but I will say that this issue was a major reason for me closing my FB account. I found it thoroughly revolting that the fools hunting down images of breasts seemed forever incapable of distinguishing between gratuitous nudity and babies eating.

ladyblogging

"The internet, it turned out, was a place to make people like you: the world’s biggest slumber party, and the best place to trade tokens of slumber party intimacy—makeup tips, girl crushes, endless inside jokes. The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—“sisterhood,” let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship."

-So Many Feelings, Molly Fischer, n+1

snowflakes!

a palm tree with snowflakes

Temperatures have been steadily dropping here, and throughout the week I've heard people predicting snow. This morning we woke up to a snow-dusted garden, and just as we were admiring the flakes on the palm tree, the snow began to fall again. Jacques was alight with wonder -- we all were!

It's still drifting delicately down outside. Gorgeous and quiet.

Best states

The Foundation for Child Development has released their annual study on which U.S. states are doing the best to ensure children's well-being. Surprising (sort of) results within.

The subtitle of the study says it all: "Investing in Public Programs Matters: How State Policies Impact Children’s Lives."  As one of the key findings of the study points out, "Higher State Taxes Are Better for Children. States that have higher tax rates generate higher revenues and have higher CWI values than states with lower tax rates."

This is the document that politicians should be referring to as they campaign/legislate in 2012. If children are not faring well in your state (ahem, California! We used to be Golden... now we're 30th?), slashing spending on public programs is probably not the way to go.

The Monterey Peninsula, where I was raised, is a great example of how decreased government spending and poor tax policy create huge gaps between California towns that have great public schools and plenty of fun, safe, enriching activities to stimulate growing minds, and their neighboring cities that don't. Pebble Beach and Carmel are a short drive from Salinas, and yet to visit the latter is viewed as a death wish by residents of the former. The extreme gang violence and a thriving narcotics industry in Salinas does not remain sealed in the city borders, though. The retired residents of Carmel-by-the-Sea, those who most vehemently oppose tax increases to fund education, Medicare, and social welfare spending, may be able to coast along in their bubble, but their grandchildren won't.

In a Gang-Ridden City, New Efforts to Fight Crime While Cutting Costs

The above article describes the budget cuts that brought down the Salinas police force's capacity to deal with the city's exploding gang violence. I would venture that California's failed method of allocating state funds to the education budget based on local property taxes has more to do with the poverty that leads to such violence. Remember when Salinas had to struggle to keep its ONE public library open?