A couple recent posts talking about extended breastfeeding got me thinking about the many minority opinions and beliefs I hold.
Here's what I came up with…
1. Extended Breastfeeding – Not even 20% of Canadian babies make it to nine months let alone past a year (or two!)
2. Atheism – anywhere between 16-30% of the population depending on which study you look at. (And actually, this is only a minority compared to *all* religions. There are actually more atheists/agnostics/nonbelievers than all but one major religion.)
4. (Male) Librarian – this isn't a “belief” per se but men are about 17% of the profession (though also over-represented in senior management positions.)
5. Polygamist – just seeing if you're still paying attention.
6. Reader – More than half the people surveyed in the US a couple years ago read only 4 books a year on average. A quarter said they'd read zero.
Also with all the StatsCan hub-bub, I'm more aware than ever before just exactly how often I come across and/or use their statistics in my day-to-day life. I always say this but if you try to look at it without any political considerations, how could anyone honestly think that doing away with the mandatory long form census is a good idea? (The breadth of the negative reaction across all sectors is a pretty big clue that the Cons fucked up but good.)
10. Flames Fan – 3-5% (slightly biased poll though as it asks “Which is Canada's team?” rather than something like “Which NHL team has the most fans?”)
The controversial traveling show “Our Bodies” is at Regina's Science Centre right now and they're offering a lecture series each week to go with the topic. This week's subject was “Kids As Couch Potatoes” and that seemed fairly relevant to our lives these days so we decided to go check it out.
Some random thoughts on both… – I'm not sure what I expected but the exhibit didn't blow me away. I even wondered if we were getting the full show or if we got a bit of a mini-version being a smaller centre. (My memory of hearing about it when it played Toronto while in library school was that tickets were like $50 or $75 or something. Here, I think it's $20 and we got a discount for coming on lecture night.)
– the lecture revealed that kid watching TV is…bad! (Who'd a thunk it?) But still an informative talk with lots of good information and statistics (now where do those come from?)
– also lots of information about our society's less-than-active lifestyles – kids *and* parents – which are obviously closely linked.
– Shea and I both know we let Pace watch too much TV (and here I'll sound like that smart but not too smart friend from a recent blog post who happily used a sample size of one to show that formula feeding ain't that bad) but I watched a lot of TV growing up and I feel like I turned out okay. In fact, you rarely hear people (outside of the TV industry I guess) citing some of the benefits of watching television – it gives you cultural literacy and I'd argue a better awareness of our commonality than perhaps any other medium, it gives you visual literacy, it helps you in social situations, it can help you win money on TV game shows (okay, now I'm stretching and my arguments are collapsing in on themselves too!)
– speaking of breastfeeding, again that idea that extended breastfeeding doesn't get the promotion it deserves is all over the place when you're looking for it. The lecturer pointed out that UNICEF recommends six months of breastfeeding and I felt Shea tense, knowing she wanted to scream out “two years!” (They're both right – UNICEF recommends six months of *exclusive* breastfeeding but for that to be sustained for two years. But the point – why wouldn't a PhD in children's health studies take this opportunity to promote breastfeeding for the longer length of time in a crowd with lots of parents and families present?)
– Then, in the “fetal” part of the exhibit (not as bad as it sounds but they had it curtained off with an additional warning notice), they had one sign talking about SIDS which listed some of the contributing factors – pre-mature birth, drug & alcohol dependency in the mother, etc. But of course no mention that not being breastfed is now considered just as much of a potential cause of SIDS as those other things.
– Lots of the controversy around the exhibit is about the exhibition of human bodies for what is, in essence, entertainment (edutainment?) There is also some concern from the religious angle which, as an atheist, I can nicely ignore. Much more worrisome is the uncertainty about how the bodies were obtained and what sort of consents (if any) were in place. I mean, I've got my signed organ donor card in my wallet. But no similar document can or has been produced for these specimens who are suspected to possibly be executed Chinese criminals or worse (body trafficking?)
– our regular babysitter got her license recently and that's probably a clue that we'll be looking for a new babysitter soon. She's already gotten a job at a local bakery but says she'll still do some babysitting…at least for the time being. Man, where did the last couple years go?
[Oops, forgot I pre-loaded this Music Monday post after coming across the song in a MetaFilter thread last week. So, combined with the post below, you get a 2-for-1 on the Music Monday posts this week!]
It's World Breastfeeding Week so here's a song, written by a nursing student, about the subject.
I don't usually
do a long narrative for my Music Monday posts but I'm got to say that
I'm so amazingly proud of Shea for the dedication she put into
breastfeeding Pace for over two and a half years – never spending more
than 24 hours away from him in all that time (actually, she might not
have done so to this day!)
Breastfeeding
(and especially extended breastfeeding) is one of those things in life
that you feel like you can't talk up because it's (sadly) such a
minority position. Shea once mentioned to a friend that part of the
reason we haven't had a second child yet is that it's so draining to do
extended breastfeeding and she feels like she's just finished doing it
for our first child even though he was now three.
“Well, you don't
*have* to do it that long” the friend responded. Now this friend
wasn't one of those new mothers who leaves their freshly hatched baby with the
grandparents when the baby's three (weeks, not years! ) to go on a jaunt to Vegas. In fact, she's fairly “crunchy” (eg.
hippy-esque) in most ways. But still that suspicion of extended
breastfeeding comes through when you hear comments like that – even from
people who you'd expect to be a bit more open-minded.
Another
friend who's otherwise extremely intelligent brought out the “I was
formula fed and I turned out okay” argument. True, this person is smart
but apparently not smart enough to recognize that a sample size of one
is statistically invalid!
Anyhow,
I didn't mean this to be a rant (and I'm very aware that's how many
“lactivists” are thought of within larger society. Or should I say,
that's how they're portrayed. There are some very powerful corporations
and special interests who stand to benefit greatly by marginalizing
breastfeeding and making it shameful.)
But one of the ways that Shea's influenced me is by making me an even
bigger believer in breastfeeding than I hope I would have otherwise
become. (It's not something I probably thought a lot about before
getting married and having kids. But I'm pretty sure I would've been a
breastfeeding believer on some level – if for no other reason than the
common sense science of it. Hmm, something the human body has evolved
over thousands of years as the perfect food to give a newborn every
advantage or…a powder made in a factory?)
We happened to
just watch *Grown-Ups* the other night (thanks to the staffer at “Live
with Regis & Kelly” who put it out as a torrent! ) and one of the running jokes was that one character's wife is still breastfeeding their child at four years old. “Oh well, at least extended breastfeeding is getting some publicity?” I said to Shea.
On the other end of the pop culture spectrum from Adam Sandler fart and poop movies is the supermodel Gisele who is a proud breastfeeding advocate,
saying it helped her regain her figure after giving birth and if she
could, she would make it law that new mothers have to breastfeed for a
minimum of six months. (Yes, I know all the arguments about “My milk
didn't come in – I had to bottle feed” or “My baby just refused to latch
so I had to bottle feed” but that's a whole other post for some other
time.)
So anyhow, given a choice between a supermodel and Sandler, I know who I'd pick!
Edmonton writer and columnist, Todd Babiak, has just posted the last in a year-long series of columns about his family's sabbatical in France.
Having gone with his wife and two young girls, some of his thoughts on the experiences we (try to) give our children were particularly resonate for me (though I have no one year sabbaticals on the horizon…unfortunately!) The full series of columns is available on his Edmonton Journal page.
I'm not sure how often we take can & bottle recycling but it's usually once we get about 4-5 bags. This time, we had more like a dozen!
(We also love when the local soccer/hockey team comes by on bottle drives as they often feel like they've hit the jackpot when they hit our house – we usually just give them whatever we've had built up!)
I posted this three years ago (!) but the question recently popped back into my head and since I find the answer truly awe-inspiring in that “how many stars are there in the galaxy?” kinda way, I'm going to post it again.
I suspect the process has remained essentially the same in those intervening three years but is even better because of advances in hardware, software and web technologies as well as ongoing, constant refinements by the Google team.
Having a birthday in mid-summer has its advantages. One is that Shea and I have a tradition of going to one of the big summer blockbuster as one of my presents. (Well, usually we do anyhow. But the first year we did a birthday movie, I wanted to go to “Jurassic Park 3” but Shea thought it might be too scary or stupid – I can't remember which – so we went to “Cats & Dogs” instead…which turned out to be both scary and stupid! )
But since then, I've usually gotten the movie of my choice – Batman, Spiderman, Star Wars and the like. Last night, we went to “Inception” which was this year's pick but a little different than the typical Hollywood whiz-banger. I won't talk about it too much since it's one of those “you pretty much can't say anything about till you've seen it” but I will say that it was pretty cool. Not as confusing as I heard, didn't blow me away as the best film in the history of history like it did for some others.
I guess the coolest thing about it is the whole sub-culture that immediately developed to analyze, speculate and consider the film which has so many different levels and ways to interpret it plus so many questions to argue about.
Recurring feature alert! I've done this before where I do five quick hits on my five most common topics on this blog and why not, let's do it again.
Here's a few quick hits on my most popular topics…
Hockey Uhm, it's July 28. This does not bode well for this aspect of the Pop Topics recurring feature. Luckily the Reddit hockey sub-reddit has lots of posts to keep a fan interested. Here's one on “The Ten Ugliest Hockey Players of All-Time” and I'm proud to say I picked #1 before clicking the link!
Libraryland “Libraries get a mall make-over” highlights a trend for locating public libraries in malls and I've gotta say, RPL has been on this trend for fifteen years when we first put a library in a local mall. (Er, that date may not be exactly right. I wasn't around then…) Plus we're doing the co-locating thing all over the place – we've got one branch from the same era in a city facility that also has an indoor pool, we've just broken ground on a re-located branch that will become part of an inner-city community centre and another will be part of a shared facility that has a wide range of community organizations in it including public health, police, schools and more.
Pace Cuteness Let's see…this wasn't Pace directly but we thought it was funny when he came home with some art from daycare labeled “Paste” by a casual worker they had in that day. We knew “Pace” was a fairly unique name but never expected it to be mis-heard like that! This probably doesn't count as “cute” either but when we were heading out of town last weekend, Pace immediately recognized McDonald's, thought Superstore was Wal-Mart and today, saw a Domino's logo on top of a car and happily exclaimed, “Pizza delivery car.” His brand awareness probably provides way too much insight into the crap we do as consumers!
Politics I love this take-down of the Tea Baggers. They don't get mad at some of the most outrageous acts in the history of their nation but try to offer people the ability to go to a doctor when they need to and look out!
) to go on a jaunt to Vegas. In fact, she's fairly “crunchy” (eg.
