i ♥ rock 'n roll

put anutha dime in the jukebox baby! joan jett

I know its only rock & roll but i like it, like it, yes i do!-Rolling Stones

i ♥ pork

if it wasn't abundantly clear, i love pork.

and i was finally able to manifest my dream yesterday. heritagefoodsusa.com is having a 20% special on quarter hogs, and i had a 15% off new subscriber coupon (ok so i actually had to use our family email to re-subscribe to get the coupon but you get the idea.)

going in with two other households (Hun & Lily-Tommy), we bought a quarter hog of red wattle--the rarest and most endangered and most succulent porcine breed that we have to eat in order to save from extinction. eat the pig, save the world. google it, but don't cute overload yourself into vegetarianism. red wattle makes niman ranch look like trichinosis. only eating unicorns could be better than this. ok, or maybe an acorn-fed ossabaw.

having limited freezer space, the only way Lily & Tommy could go in for their portion (~12 lbs) was for Lily to start slangin' pork on the side. word got out on the street that we had exclusive, high-quality product, and to make a long story short, now there's folks who want in on the next shipment. it's the urban hustle to survive. over vacation, i'm going to work on setting up a community sponsored agriculture co-op for organic heritage pork. something else to add to my eclectic resume. so you see, your honor, i started with good intentions and that is how i became a dealer. to paraphrase Nancy Botwin "I'm a pork dealer , there, I said it, I'm a f*cking pork dealer"

as for Hun, weo i think he sleeps with his pork under his pillow. he misses Sylvia. she misses the pork. though i'm sure the pork in cambodia is quite tasty.

separately, T & i also got some trotters to make soups. vinamese people believe that pig's feet soups increase milk production in breastfeeding mothers. you ever hear of a sow who doesn't have enough milk for her piglets? so this is my personal lactivism in action.

the pork was delivered FRESH in a cooler on ice. T. is still confused by the physics of that. on sunday, that hog was in pasture; on monday, it fulfilled its' life's purpose; and by wednesday, it was in our bellies. as animal-likers, we won't dwell on the former two aspects. the movie BABE is also being banned from our house and will be added to the n2 contraband list.

it was mostly packaged individually by cuts; the smaller ones in smaller portions, the roasts in huge chunks. i won't get into the listing of cuts. we really should have take a photo last night at the carnage.

so since this is the best pork i have ever had up to now, i figure i will chronicle our eating of it.

last night, using a recipe that i got from Bruce Aidells's Complete Book of Pork: A guide to Buying, Storing, and Cooking the World's Favorite Meat (henceforth referred to as the pork bible) that T got me for my birthday one year, i made Pearl Balls--a pearl-ly rice-encrusted meatball. a lovely dim sum-like dish flavored with shallots, minced ginger, sesame oil, bragg's amino acids (essentially a healthy soy sauce), brown sugar and fresh ground malaysian black pepper with your basic soy sauce, rice vinegar, & hot sauce condiment. we ate this with a vegan butternut squash soup grown by T's mom's neighbor; i modified an america's test kitchen recipe for this and hand-milled the squash for a rustic texture (i learned about this from too much Food Network channel while on maternity leave from Ina Garten) and a brown and sweet brown rice mixture inspired by my venture into kimbap-making for work. T. made pea sprouts.

the flavor of the pork was umami and distinct without being gamey or cloying. not that slight baconish porky like niman ranch porkchops (which are also mighty fine) but another kind of pork flavor that was tantalizingly delicious. can't wait to try the next one.

may the pork be with you.

loch ness teeth

VL is sproutin 2 teeth! the left broke gum on sunday. the right one yesterday.

nanny diary

doing some blog housekeeping. this is an OLD POST FROM JULY that i never finished since i went back to work right after.

now that we have officially joined the ranks of the middle class by being upwardly mobile, swapping refugee blue collars for white collars, and buying a house with an mortgage which is about 50% of our income and operating on consumer debt, we are further entrenching ourselves in middle class culture by looking for a nanny since we can't afford for me to forgo a salary to stay home with the baby. not that i'm sure that's what i would want to do anyways. (side rant: people are wierd about claiming class especially amongst the socially conscious spectrum of born-into-the-middle-class who tend to idealize/glamourize poverty. call a spade a spade. me & grew up on welfare & food stamps and we don't aspire to go back to poverty. i'm just L from the block, i used to have a little and now i have a little more. i have two college degrees, a socially responsible invested retirement fund, and life insurance; i have some privilege. it's not entitlement nor is it bootstraps nor is it a silver spoon. it is however cultural and social capital that i choose to be honest & forthright about. so if you have someone who is not blood-related that takes care of your child for 20+ hours a week every week, she is not a "babysitter" nor a "caretaker" nor a "childcare provider", she is your nanny. you are an employer. you might not be The Man, but you are a Boss. deal with it.)

with our idealism and our roots and our small budget, we decided to hire a vinamese nanny. we placed an ad in the local weekly at the beginning of june to run for 4 weeks. our ideal was to have the nanny start the first week of july on trial since i was going back the second week of july at parttime. we had decided that having the nanny at our house was best since we have cloth diapers and all the gear here already.

we've interviewed around a dozen give or take. i have concluded that vinamese people are insane. okay, not insane, just not... acculturated to professional jobseeking protocol. the number one assumption being "One looks for a job if one is able to work."

the first nanny we hired co Huyen had 20 years of experience and had just retired after caring for a set of american twin girls for a pair of Berkeley doctors for 8 years. after a year of missing them and being bored, she decided to work for a vinamese family for a much lower payscale. after i expressed my desire to hire her, she regretfully informed us that her other employer (of the twins) whose 3rd baby she watched 1-2 days a week wouldn't let her quit and offered her an additional day instead. being emotionally tied to the twin girls, she couldn't quit.

so we went with our second choice, co Thu. she had 8 years experience and had a minor hand disability but we worked out an arrangement of how to compensate for that since VL almost exclusively uses the potty to poo. after coming over to her house a few blocks away from us, she regretfully informed us that her younger brother didn't want her to work because she was disabled and he provided for her so that she wouldnt have to work.

out of frustration i hired nanny #3 di 3 (her birth order name) or di Helen. she was in her 60s, a source of some concern for us since our girl is thick, but this is the friday before our trial week. she started on the 1st. being older and from an older model of childcare, she was responsive to the baby's cries, but wasn't interested in playing with her so much, much less let her stick her toys in her mouth and she refused to go on walks with the baby; it was either too cold or too sunny. granted van lang wasn't taking the expressed breastmilk in the bottle and so therefore wasn't napping very long due to hunger, and i have been known to get bored playing with baby, but by day 2, when she thought i wasn't looking, di ba would read the newspaper while VL lay somewhat disgruntled on the couch next to her. and when i pointed out that VL was making irritable and frustrated sounds, the nany told me she was training her to not need to be held (or presumably played with). trung and i deliberated over whether to let her go. and decided to give her one more day. on day 3, di 3 shows up and announces that she is moving to antioch the next day (july 4th) and is quitting. whatever.

so we have placed another ad in the vinamese paper. we've gotten some calls and i was most interested in a call from what turns out to be my next door neighbor co Thanh a women in her early-40s. she used to own a HK-style dim sum restaurant and it went under so now she stays home watching her grandson. she thought she'd try earning some extra income. she came over and was very sweet with the baby and wanted to work from her house since she still is watching her grandson. i made an appointment to come over and see her house. weo, as it turns out, her son, the baby's thuggish father who is playing world of warcraft in the middle of the workday, doesn't want her to do childcare for another baby because she wouldn't be able to be mobile and get out of the house if need be. so she regretfully turned down the job (which i didnt offer to her yet).

postscript: after all those false starts, we found a great nanny!

karaoke revisited

so clearly when i say, "oh yeah i'll post about that later", i never get back to it (VN trip, my homebirth story, etc.) weo, in june of 07, i posted about translating Purple Rain for my homey Bao, a national champ of spoken word. he had only needed the chorus and that's all i got around to translating though i promised the blog-iverse i would come back it.

now, Dr.10 had introduced me to vinamese translation bot that i never got around to testing out really. whatever sprite of mischief and procrastination has taken my fancy now to try the bot out by finishing my translation of Purple Rain into vinamese.

so, for your Karaoke Pleasure, i give you his Purple Majesty:

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple Rain

Tôi không bao giờ có nghĩa là bạn để gây ra bất kỳ đau đớn

I never meant to cause you any sorrow

Tôi không bao giờ có nghĩa là bạn để gây ra bất kỳ đau

I never meant to cause you any pain

Tôi chỉ muốn xem một thời gian bạn cười

I only wanted to one time see you laughing

Tôi chỉ muốn xem bạn cười trong mưa tím

I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple rain Purple rain

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple rain Purple rain

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple rain Purple rain

Tôi chỉ muốn xem bạn tắm trong mưa tím

I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain

Tôi không bao giờ muốn được yêu của bạn ngày cuối tuần

I never wanted to be your weekend lover

Tôi chỉ muốn được một số loại bạn bè

I only wanted to be some kind of friend

Baby Tôi không bao giờ có thể ăn cắp được từ các bạn

Baby I could never steal you from another

It's như một xấu hổ của chúng tôi đã có hữu để kết thúc

It's such a shame our friendship had to end

Tím mưa, mưa Tía
Tím mưa, mưa Tía
Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple rain, purple rain

Tôi chỉ muốn xem bạn dưới mưa tím

I only wanted to see u underneath the purple rain

Mật ong tôi biết, tôi biết, tôi biết là lần thay đổi

Honey I know, I know, I know times are changing

Đó là thời gian tất cả chúng ta đều đạt ra cho cái gì mới

It's time we all reach out for something new

Điều đó có nghĩa là bạn quá

That means you too

bạn nói rằng bạn muốn có một lãnh đạo

You say you want a leader

Nhưng bạn có thể không có vẻ để làm cho tâm trí của bạn lên

But you can't seem to make up your mind

Tôi nghĩ rằng bạn tốt hơn đóng nó

I think you better close it

Và để tôi hướng dẫn bạn đến tím mưa

And let me guide you to the purple rain

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple Rain, Purple Rain

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Nếu bạn biết những gì tôi đang hát về lên đây

If you know what I'm singing about up here

C'mon nâng cao tay của bạn

C'mon raise your hand

Tím mưa, mưa Tía

Purple Rain, Purple Rain

Tôi chỉ muốn xem bạn, chỉ muốn xem bạn

I only want to see you, only want to see you

Trong mưa tím

In the purple rain.

n-squared home training

so i recently sent out our family groundrules for VL to my immediate family since we have our set of values that may or may not be shared and the holidays (prime gift giving season) are approaching. our primary value is protecting our daughter from materialism/commodification and toxins. nothing controversial, no comment on religion or politics, no judgement on other families' rules.

the reactions i got were kinda funny. my ma sez "Sorry dear, your daughter will be so sad with no funs for the first 5 year in her life." which i think is hilarious because like my ma's own childhood in rural VN did not have any of the things we ban from our house and i'm sure she had funs (weo after doing her chores that is). and she herself pointed out to me that all the food she grew up on was organic because pesticides (and agent orange and napalm) hadn't been introduced yet. and for the first five years of his life and the first three years of my sis' in central VN, my siblings played with family, household objects and objects in nature with little detrimental impact on their imaginations or body burden unlike the toys & material objects of today's modern household.

my step dad who would be chief offender on all counts (especially candy, red dye and princess stuff) said nothing. he doesn't ever check his email except for once a year when he has me un-close his email account or set up a new email for him when i come visit for the holidays. to be fair, he also generously gives us lots of cash to buy clothes and savings bonds for school and helps us with travel money too.

my bro who might be potentially a giver of the battery-operated, plastic kind (like Whack-A-Mole which would be so cool if they made a wood version) didn't respond either. it's cool. as an uncle, i fully expect him to pass along his gourmand predilections to the child with full appreciation for the ways he's introduced me to good food all my life (first caviar, first truffles, first crab cakes, first clam dip, first sake bombers, first gourmet meals, first fine champagne... and the list goes on.).

my sis who gives very thoughtful and wonderfully handcrafted gifts sez "It's truly more blessed to give than receive." sure, at the same time, i guess i'm more pragmatic when it comes to gifts, why waste other people's money on things i don't want or we don't allow? we didn't register for wedding gifts, we went the traditional route (and by this i mean vinamese tradition) and got cash gifts which paid for the reception; for the baby registry i asked people to get stuff used from craigslist and asked for cloth diapering supplies mostly and most folks gave cash with which we were very grateful to purchase all the stuff we needed, some new, alot of it used. registries themselves are wishlists of things you want, which practice i find eminently practical, but it's only socially acceptable to have registries on major social rites of passage rather than events like holidays & birthdays. and sometimes, people buy you things off registry anyways which can result in something delightful that you wouldn't have bought for yourself (like a digital labeller! awesome!) and sometimes results in something that makes you go huh? (like the talking Stewie doll. you do realize one, i'm like in my 30s and don't collect dolls from animated TV shows. and two, i didn't have a TV for most of the nineties & 00s, right bro? i didn't even ever watch the family guy or the simpsons.)

i don't care for the social ballet of receiving gifts with one hand with genuine appreciation for the gift giver's intention of course, and some white lie nicety about using it, and passing it behind my back and with the other hand returning or recycling it.

my ma frequently gives me new & used clothes, shoes & avon products (she's an avon lady) and while i love her care & thoughtfulness, i always have to return them to her because it doesn't fit (i have a very different body type from my ma--i take after my paternal grandmother--and a different style sensibility because i'm in my 30s, not my 50s nor what she projects 30s ought dress like [um, ma, i don't go clubbing anymore and certainly not while i was pregnant. weo, only once and it was really just a bar and it was really no fun hanging out with smoking, emeryville quasi-hipsters at Kitty's, and anyways, i don't wear sheer blue leopard print chiffon because no one needs to see my big belly, navel & stretch marks. but then, in her 30s ma was a clubbin' disco queen and i have the photos to prove it!] and she thinks i'm bigger than i am or my feet are smaller than they are.) and i'm allergic to the cheap synthetic toxic chemicals in avon products. for some years i took the gifts and re-distributed them to friends, but nowadays, i don't have room in my luggage nor space in my house nor time to do that. so i thank you ma, and i can't use this because... happily, my ma isn't neurotic (in that way at least) and doesn't take it personal.

of course, our choices are political and spiritual in essence especially because what we want for our daughter and how we choose to go about getting there runs counter to dominant popular culture (and unfortunately what constitutes popular culture is corporate marketing). my cousins have nicknamed the baby "Moonbeam" for a reason. shrug. we love each other; we don't have to love each other's parenting choices. (and funnily enough i had considered naming the baby Moon something in vinamese Nga or Nguyet, but the english transliteration would really butcher the cadence of it. and we ended up choosing a historical name rather than a poetic one.) so this is how we do it in the n2 household:

• no princess stuff
• all natural materials like cotton, wool or wood are preferred
• no plastic toys, no battery-operated toys. toys should be educational or stimulate the imagination
• no corporate logos on the clothes (example: anything that has Disney on it, Tommy, Polo, Old Navy, etc). she's a baby not an advertising billboard
• no commercialized product tie-ins. no Disney, no Pixar, no Hello Kitty/Sanrio or TV cartoon characters like Dora or Sponge Bob. no hypersexualized toys like trampy Barbie or hooker Bratz dolls.
  
• no TV until she is 5 yo
• gently used, second-hand & hand-me-downs in good condition are great. what's important is the sentiment and utility, not the cost
• no princess stuff
• no dairy (this means no butter or milk or ice cream), no candy or artificial dyes in food (especially red)
• homemade is lovely too
• oh, and no princess stuff.

postscript: actually, it is socially acceptable to have "wishlists" so we started one for VL on alternativegiftregistry.org.

the morning after

the nice benefit about living in the digital age is the instantaneous access to news across the country and worldwide and the global connection to individual events. the invention of phallogocentric writing systems created history and led to the social construction of the patriarchal nation-state. and so, history is written and sometimes, surpasses individual remembering. benedict anderson pointed to newspapers as a key technology constructing the imagination of a national political community though it may be fractured, nevertheless it remains conceptually cohesive via this print medium of national mythos and ethos (and pathos). maybe your morning newspaper delivery (you still get hard copy?) was stolen today and you don't have $500 to shell out on ebay, or maybe you still see value in print media as an artifact--virtual news is after all so very ephemeral. to see how the world (okay corporate & independent media) scribed this moment in history, click on this.

OBAMA WINS

i can't hardly believe it!

my coworker and i (and VL) were just giving a community needs assessment survey design training for seven black and brown youth leaders who are building a center for the young people of West Oakland. the dream they dare to dream is built on hope and the determination to make change, to stop the violence, to unite young people, and envision a positive future. the news came via text message midway thru the training and electrified us with possibility. what blessed company to be in when history was made.

i just read this:
"Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Barack could run. Barack is running so our children can fly."

as much as i believe in social change and social justice, i never thought it would happen in my lifetime. shame on me for giving into the culture of fear that dominates used to dominate american politics.

hot damn. i guess my breast pump was right. she called it back in april. voteforbarack-voteforbarack-voteforbarack (blackhope! blackhope! black hope!).

car seat PSA

so VL is growing so fast, we had to replace her infant carseat that we inherited from aunty Tuyet. we got a sunshine radian 65 convertible (though she's growing so fast we prolly should have gone 80, but who knows if she will be over 65lbs by the time she's 53" tall? i dunno). in the process of doing all the consumer research, i learned that 85% of parents install the carseat WRONG and that car accidents are among the leading causes of death for children in the US. we had been driving around blithely for 8 months all unawares that VL's seat was installed improperly. we can only thank the heavens we weren't involved in a crash. those darn instruction manuals are not user friendly!

so here's what i learned about correctly installing a car seat:

• babies should be rearfacing at least until 20 lbs and 1 year old but the longer you can keep them rear-facing, the safer they would be in an accident. the max weight is determined by your carseat, our max is rear-facing up to 45 lbs.
• though all positions in the second row are safe, the center seat is the safest seat in the car. we had previously had VL installed on the right side to make it easier for curbside loading. though i had wondered about what would happen in a side impact crash.
• cars made after 2002 mandatorily have the LATCH system in addition to the standard seat belt install. the LATCH system was designed to make car seat installation easier since so many parents weren't installing car seats correctly with the seat belts. you should use LATCH or the seat belt to install NOT both. using both undermines the efficacy.
• because of width issues, most sedans/compacts/etc only have two outboard LATCH installed (meaning the outside seats only) and do not allow you to "borrow" the two inside LATCH for a center install. check your owner's manual (if it doesn't say you can borrow, then you cannot install in the center).
• top tethers are now standard with all car seats and the anchors are standard in newer model cars. the tethers need to be attached to the anchors or to some immoveable part of the car frame. in the case of rear-facing car seats, it can be to the passenger side seat leg. check your car owner's manual for anchor locations.
  

there are plenty of places that provide FREE car seat checks, find one in your city or town www.seatcheck.org/

and the technicians & forums at www.car-safety.org give specific advice about installation for your specific car seat & make/model of your car.


oh and one fun thing. if you've got two kids in the car and you want to keep them entertained, you can macguyver bungee cords or rope between the oh-shit-handles (i know those have a proper name but this is what i call 'em) and hang toys off the line to create your own car mobile. you can also zipline stuff from front passenger seat to the back row for older kids. disclaimer: i make no claims as to how it may distract the driver.

lessons in parenthood

so VL tumbled out of the bed the other day. it wasn't a big deal. we have a low platform bed and a rug. i really gotta learn to heed my intuition though cuz the thought crossed my mind and i dismissed it. she cried for all of a minute and then it was back to lots and lots of active playing & smiling when she should have been sleepy. i gave her a dose of rescue remedy not that she needed it and took a big dose myself to calm me down. no scratches or bruises. so i took her to her chiropractor for an adjustment the next afternoon and other then her ribs being slightly subluxated (which is chiro for tweaked) she was fine. i figured weo, now she's learned about edges and that will be the only time, right? wrong. she's been going for the edge kamikaze and intent on going over. i even held onto one calf to see how far she would take it. she made it over our gramma-made bootleg co-sleeper barrier (clearly its not a barrier), get her hands on the bedframe but then her arms couldn't support her weight (22lbs!) and the laws of physics took over. and of course i had her dangling in the air by the calf like a snared rabbit. we thought maybe it was just imitation since she sees us going over the edge and she likes to do what we are doing in her own fashion, i drink tea|she gnaws on the mug rim, i read a magazine|she eats the magazine.

then the other day we were playing in the living room and she did a belly crawl to the edge of the blanket towards the potty which was in a different corner than usual. so i picked her up and put her on it (naked butt) and she went. hmm. then later that evening after playing contently on the bed, she gets agitated and starts making for the edge again only not in the middle where i get up, where the rug is but between the rug & the nightstand where the potty is. her little paws were outreaching toward the potty. hmm. so i picked our lil adventurer up and put her on the potty and she peed. ding! lightbulb! she's not trying to crack her head open, she is trying to get to the potty! clearly, we've been missing her attempts to communicate with us (since it primarily consists of her staring intently at me with little to no vocalization or secondarily of agitation when she really really is on the brink. and is the precise way she communicates hunger and sleepiness as well.) and she is asserting her will and mobility to do for herself. i told Dì Sáu this who smiled benevolently and said something or the other about the baby crawling. (sometimes i think she doesn't understand me and just nods along pacifyingly) then this morning, VL peed on the potty and Dì Sáu put her on the blanket afterwards and then went to go wet the flannel wipe with warm water to wipe her down. and when she came back, VL had belly-crawled off the blanket and peed some more. on the floor. next to the potty. so now we finally get it.
i am so amazed at babies' intelligence and will to communicate and how adults paternalistically underestimate them. and i'm even more amazed at VL's will to self-determination.

beepbeepbeep!

Get outta mah way! i got places to go, things to do, people to see. the world is mine!

dreaming of pork

what is it that Americans and approx 20% of the world have against pork?

T & i and others of our ilk been bemoaning the lack of high-quality, relatively inexpensive organic pork. at least with chicken we can go to a halal store and get humanely treated, non-drugged chicken for comparable prices to a regular grocery store. but no one does "halal" pork and it's considered an insult to even inquire. when we were in Viet Nam, the subtle flavor of the pork, just couldn't compare with anything we could get here at a typical grocery stores. and even when we go to that organic grocery store, all they have is pork chops. while delicious, you can't find the cuts--from the rooter to the tooter--used in vinamese cooking. what happens to all those organic pig trotters that could be the base for practically every vinamese noodle soup? (fyi non-vinamese people, pho is the only aberration. all vinamese noodle soups are made from pork bones even that wierdly named Bun Bo Hue|Hue-style beef noodles.)

T. dream-crushed my idea of raising our own vinamese pot-bellied pigs since he astutely surmised i would name the pigs, teach them tricks, and then recoil at butchering them. (rather, he has dream-crushed my idea of raising them to eat them; he hasn't dream-crushed my idea to raise them as pets cause the miniature donkeys would be lonely out back and what better company than pigs? smarter than dogs and can be potty-trained to boot.)

our friend Giang re-sparked my enthusiasm for acquiring a deep freezer. Giang & co. bought an organic 4H pig from the County Fair and it was delivered butchered into cuts, though unfortunately, american cuts. so no feet, head, ears or bones. darn!

i happened to find a source for organic, heritage pigs and practically every cut. heritage pigs are the breed of famed, succulent black pigs ghat are high in omega-3 fatty acids, that were all but bred out of existence by the commercial dry, anorexic pink pigs of factory farming.

better yet, you can get a whole pig (!) including shipping for about $300. and of course if you are a first time user you can 15% off. so for about $250 you can get a year's worth of pork! (or one fine pig roast. not that we ever finished installing the kalua pit in the backyard... there's always next year or la caja china.) pretty good price considering that non-organic, commercially produced heo quay|whole roast pig costs $150.

http://www.heritagefoodsusa.com/
*Ok and it cracks me up that part of their mission is the genetic preservation of endangered rare breeds, so their mantra is "If we want to save them, we must eat them! ." I can just see some chinese company breeding siberian tigers and sunbears to eat with exclusive Louise XIV VSOP cognac with that very mission in mind.

Calloo callay, oh frabjous day! my favorite pre-pregnancy jeans fit.

ok, so there is some spandex involved but only like 3%.

red elephant

calling out the (red) elephant in the room.

i was beginning to feel like i was the only one that remembers that white suffragettes successfully campaigned to get the vote to maintain white supremacy after black men were enfranchised.

Belle Kearney, “The South and Woman Suffrage,” Woman’s Journal, 4 April 1903

"The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy . . .The South is slow to grasp the great fact that the enfranchisement of women would settle the race question in politics. The civilization of the North is threatened by the influx of foreigners with their imported customs; by the greed of monopolistic wealth, and the unrest among the working classes; by the strength of the liquor traffic, and by encroachments upon religious belief. Some day the North will be compelled to look to the South for redemption from these evils, on account of the purity of its Anglo-Saxon blood, the simplicity of its social and economic structure, the great advance in prohibitory law, and the maintenance of the sanctity of its faith, which has been kept inviolate. Just as surely as the North will be forced to turn to the South for the nation’s salvation, just so surely will the South be compelled to look to its Anglo-Saxon women as the medium through which to retain the supremacy of the white race over the African. . . ."

one hundred years later, the narrative doesn't sound much different.

diaper-free redux

btw, when i mentioned to Dì 6|aunty 6, our nanny, (more on nannies later, the post is mostly done) that VL has been going diaper-free on the weekends, evenings, and with her Bà Nội, Dì 6 confessed that she wanted to let VL go without diapers too but was afraid of being reproached by me for acculturating the baby to naked butt, cuz once they have a taste of freedom, they don't want to be straight-jacketed anymore. Dì 6 sez VL doesnt pee randomly but after naps, and hourly, etc. so she's been doing her own empirical observation which makes me happy for the care that VL gets. anyways synchronous with this happy convening of observation & values, VL discovered how to pull open the velcro on her wool diaper cover. so it's just as well.

and we are diaperless at night. she was only able to pull off the hold-in-the-pee-all-nite feat twice. but that's not why. i just would rather she was comfortable in her sleep. so i have our wool puddle pad beneath her (thanks, anh Hy!) and put a prefold diaper flat on top of that. so if she pees, the diaper soaks up most of it, and what it doesn't get, weo the wool turns into soap yadda yadda. she does have the unerring ability to scoot backwards off the wool mat and pee directly on the bed. luckily, we have a wool mattress topper on our organic wool & cotton rubber bed. it's been the case that when she's uncomfortable whether from wet diaper of full bladder, she wriggles and grunts in her sleep and refuses to bú (weo, could you eat were that the case for you?). so i sit up, foist her up on the potty between my legs and hug her while gently rubbing her bladder and making the tsssssssssshhhhhh sound. sometimes she does that funny little i've-been-holding-it-in-too-long-shiver before she pees. and then i gently wipe her off and put her down to the bed. so no diapers at nite and only 2-3 cloth wipes. and she doesn't even cry in protest anymore.

so now we are down to a handful of diapers a week. thank the stars because regardless of what cloth diaper zealots tell you, it does stink. urine becomes ammonia which cannot be contained. maybe we should do as Dì 6 suggests and stop trying to contain it and just let it air dry in a basket. is it always the case that the more you fight something, the more it persists?

crystal vulva

so the new roman catholic cathedral in my city just got dedicated yesterday. no, that's not me in the red ao dai or the nun frock. during the taking of this photo and the dedication of the cathedral , i was 100 feet away walking along the lake on my way to the cathedral to bourgeois green living--Whole Foods.

i think its interesting in this era of populist evangelical born-again undo-the-constitutional-separation-between-church-and-state, that the roman catholic church chooses to name their newest Cathedral "Christ the Light" rather than the usual array of saints and the ever popular Mary of the Sacred Bleeding Heart and its various iterations. (and let's not even get into how they got the $190 million to build after it shelled out hundreds of millions to pay the victims of priest child molestation). i guess they're not immune to the X-n zeitgeist and wanted to assert their own affiliation to christianity... but then the cathedral looks like a vulva.

see, i called it years ago that the cathedral design was vulvular. i say it on a near daily basis when we pass by on the way to and from home. and here's the proof to my puddin'.

ah you say, but it looks like a fish. not just any fish but the tilapia that christ himself ate and that has become the symbol of christianity. indeed, this article about the cathedral explains the design concept thusly:

More than 1,000 sheets of glass will cloak a skeleton of Douglas fir, forming a luminous 12-story dome inspired by the fish shape known as the vesica piscis, an ancient symbol of Christianity. (LA Times 9.2.2007)

ah, i say, and there it is--a Vulva. an exalted yoni in glass & wood. and there ain't no contradiction in that. for those of you who aren't familiar with the symbology of the sacred feminine in the pre-christian mother goddess multi-millineal timespan, the diamond or marquise shape is an ancient symbol of you guessed it, the Vulva--the true origins of human Life. when christianity sought to convert the masses of goddess-lovin' pagans, it co-opted many of the holy days & symbols along the way. and in time, the symbol of the Mother Goddess' yoni became the fish symbol of Christ, and the Mother Goddess herself became Mary, mother of god.

there you have it oaklanders, a lakeside, monumental, sacred crystal vulva nestled amongst the steel & concrete phalluses of downtown commerce.

and can i tell you, that's the biggest yoni i have ever seen! true story!

p.s. while i'm on the topic of female genitalia, may i just say for those of you fond of binary analogies, the female equivalent of the penis (which is a sexual and urinary organ) is not the vagina (internal muscular canal, no urine passeth this way). that is just anatomically incomparable. but, you protest, we like to be reductive and teach our children to say "a boy has a penis and a girl has a [singular noun]". nope you are wrong. if you are speaking of external genitalia the anatomically correct term is vulva. if you are speaking to reproductive ability, that would be uterus or ovaries as the case may be.

p.p.s. and while i'm talking about catholics, (the now Monseigneur) Father Dennis is a racist! While the presiding priest at Holy Spirit, he hated the vietnamese parishoners and called me and my friend Ha "you barbarians!" when he caught us trying to sneak into the hall with the secret method passed down kid-to-kid to use the phone (no vandalism, honest).

politics

and now for some perspective...

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

baby Kate is here!

my sis just had her baby 20 minutes ago. the little bugger came face first so pushing took 3 hours and lots of different positions til she she turned the right way.
9 lbs 4 oz!

a pig is a pig

so lipstick on a pig is the major presidential campaign concern.

Riiiiight. Because cheating on and then abandoning your crippled-no-longer-hot former model wife after she stood by you & single-handedly raised your three brats for seven years while you were in the hole, with a younger, tighter, and richer woman is somehow NOBLE.

Question: What do you call someone who marries a trust fund baby and gets thrown a $450,000 face-saving bone annually from the father-in-law?

Answer: Apparently, you call him a Feminist.

ain't that some self-serving pork in a barrel? those with lipstick on their... ahem, collar, shouldn't be casting stones. it's like the 21st century and name-calling and out & out lying is really the most important issue in a presidential election? so asinine. can we get back to the real fracking issues?

people are dying under this economy. literally, dying. consumed as pearls before swine. it would behoove us to remember, All Animals are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others.

this little piggy had none, and this little piggy
cried whaaawhaawhaa all the way---
biloxi in 2005. not much has changed.

oh weo, there a bunch of new casinos via where
these homes used to stand built via the eminent domain
of tragic circumstance. where are the people?
working for minimum wage in the casino.
what govt relief has been done for them?
weo, the govt subsidized the casinos. duh.

we've been sold a pig in a poke. the American economy is a house of cards built on trillions and trillions of debt and we've been dealt two ace of spades. it's like [warning stupid power analogize coming up], it's like the higgledy-piggledy house made out of straw; it's like the economy is a HOG being gavage-fattened* with cannabalistic swill comprised of putrefying animal by-products marinated in lard and cardboard filler derived from GMO corn-syrup which is itself over-produced and subsidized by the govt. oh, it turns out that porkbelly of debt has been carved up by the rest of the world. America is bringin' home the GNP bacon for China and like, every Western nation. aw, it so nice to know that my consumer debt is going to such humanitarian uses. i might just go finish up that PhD and contribute more interest points to world congeniality after all.

lament the death of "the true, wise friend called Piggy". with or without lipstick, any presidential candidate who cannot offer some real solutions is leading us down the real Bridge to Nowhere.

I-90 bridge in Mississippi destroyed by Hurricane Katrina (2005)

you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. all the name-calling in the world doesn't change that at all.

*pigs, left to their own innate farrowing nature would prefer to eat acorns & truffles, however a starving pig will eat whatever is in front of it, no matter how unhealthy to their constitution, given no other choice. kinda like american children and processed food. end result is the same too--obesity and imminent death. true story.

grief has no language

diaper free!

we've been doing elimination communication with VL consistently since she was 3.5 months old. within a few days she was happily pooing almost exclusively on the potty (only misses were when we were in the car or when we were making dinner/doing chores & not paying attention). thing is she doesn't want to soil herself, so she'll hold out and try to get attention as long as she can before resignedly & involuntarily going in her diaper. so because she was offered the potty for pooing she went all at once instead of pooping herself a little and then holding in the rest, to be repeated 2-3 times a day.

this last month or so at the encouragement of her Bà Nội|paternal grandmother, we've been giving her diaper-free time as long as we're home & around her. it helps that its summer and being naked butt isnt too big of a deal. (though i did i finally break down & bought baby leg warmers when i accepted that i wasn't going to knit any anytime soon in spite of my purty stash). we just put her on the potty before & after napping, before & after nursing, and when ever she's squirmy and every 20-30 minutes or so. yes, there have been misses. she's peed on me twice, on her padded play area, on her Bà Nội. but y'know, it's only pee. Mr. Darcy did not break up with me; the world did not come crashing down. we change her and change ourselves and live to tell the tale.

at nighttime, we leave the diaper on and she's been down to three then two pees a night. and sometimes when i'm too tired to even wake up when she attaches herself to my boob, i let her sleep the night with a wet diaper. i tried pottying her at night and it was exhausting. i was 3am clumsy. she cried at some new routine being introduced to her sleeptime, being somewhat woken up by the naked butt, ceiling fan breeze (heatwave) and sitting up on the potty bit. so i haven't tried that again, though if her eyes pop open and she smiles, i may try it if i have the energy. its better than changing a diaper on the other side of it.

the nice thing about being naked butt is that her clothes fit better (though baggy on the bum) since most american baby clothes nowadays are designed for disposable diapers and cloth diapers are considerably bulkier even though the biobottoms bikini cut wool diaper covers that we use (and love!) are very trim. i met VL's doppelganger who is three days younger the other day and i was utterly fascinated that she was wearing fitted leggings that weren't rolled up on the cuffs or highwater waists (because they are a size or two up). i poked at her butt and asked her mom, is she wearing panties? no, she was wearing a disposable. i had to laugh at how skewed my perspective on baby bottoms has become. VL is my norm. though i will say in the last month, VL's little tush has become juicy, as has her thighs, arms, belly, cheeks, well all over really. she is just pure juicy-ness.

anyways we cancelled the diaper service a few weeks ago and go through about 30 cloth diapers a week. mostly during the day when the nanny has her. so we've finally achieved that zen balance of owning your own diapers. and its nice to know that next baby, we won't have to put in as much moola top start off.

so last night, big milestone, she didn't pee in her diaper all night! she held it, and my timing was on. as soon as she started to stir, i took off her diaper and put her on the potty and boy did she happily pee. she held it almost 12 hours! talk about supreme willpower. i can't even hold it at night anymore. anyways, as pleased as i am about this, this is her own achievement for herself. we try not to praise her for peeing & pooing because a) she doesn't need to be trained to be a people pleaser and b) bodily functions are utterly natural and not needing of praise anymore than breathing and blinking deserve praise.

i was reading meditations for new mothers and came across one that really resonated with me about children asserting their independence, sometimes defiantly. the gist is that you shouldn't let your own fears become the challenges & limits that your child has to surmount in order to lead her/his life. getting over the fear of her pooping or peeing on her clothes, on me, on the floor, wherever, was really a big barrier for me intially and why i didn't start pottying until three months in (though i've been cueing since birth), even though i was mentally committed to it. and now that we are on the other side of it, i can see how my fear held me back, held her back. why should she have to sit in pee or poo all this time because i am afraid of getting my clothes soiled? my clothes are washable, and are not so valuable that making my baby soil herself is more important. it helps of course that we have hardwood floors. as for the wool rug, well, wool absorbs pee & makes it into anti-bacterial soap. i think after having to deal with washing dirty cloth diapers with my amish washer and handscrubbing the diaper covers, it makes me a little more practical and less squeamish when it comes to what comes out of my baby. i say that now, before she has started solids.

next stop: tiny baby panties! go VL!

milkman

[ed. note: i wrote this on 5.24.08 but was delaying the posting of it till i could finish transcribing the Nina Simone song. when do i have the time? hence, its over three months later and it's still missing a section, but it's almost complete.]

i know, very few posts since i gave birth. what can i say? the demands of motherhood is not an old wives' tale. i thought i couldn't handle being on call with a career as a midwife. and yet, here i am on 24/7 (and believe me, in the beginning it was 24 hours everyday with very little time for my own basic human functions) at the whim of a wee babe and no substitution possible. or so i thought.

male lactation is physically possible, just not socially acceptable.

i knew this curious biological fact. even made light of it in the baby registry. but it is true. just read this. it's my belief if more men nursed their children, their would less violence, less wars.

22nd century

there is no oxygen in the air

men and women have lost their hair

ash and faces, legs that stand

ghosts and goblins walk in this land

when tomorrow becomes yesterday

and tomorrow becomes eternity

when the soul, when the soul goes way beyond what life has taken

and there are no more babies born

when there is no one and there is everyone

when there is no one and there is everyone

tomorrow will be the 22nd century
tomorrow will be the 22nd century
tomorrow will be the 22nd century

will it will it will it it will be
it will be

it will be---.

ahhh---
ahhh---

the 21st century was here and gone

and the 20th century was the dawn

and the beginning of the end was the 21st when the 20th century was at an end

1990 was the year when the plague struck the earth
1988 was the year when men and women struck out for freedom

and bloodletting was the thing that was

people said there was no cause and there was no reason and no cause

1972 was right all the way drums and buildings all through the day blastin
right wing left wing middle of the road...
...
sidewinder back swinger back lash whiplash

race stalkings red stockings
liberation of women liberation of men

liberation of animals, prevention of cruelty to animals, men and beast

flyin, and i'm flyin, flyin things
revolution of music, poetry, love and life
sex changing changin changin
man is woman woman is man
even your brain is not your brain
your heart is a plastic thing that can be bought
there are no more diseases that can be caught

man became the thing that he worshipped
man too late became his god that was the day

that man and woman truly became born

man became his good man became his evil man became his god man became his devil

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

tomorrow will be the 22nd century

it will be

it will be

it will be---.

written by Obeah Man, sung by Nina Simone

the politics of milk

when i was a keiki, my ohana wen go to da Havai'i-kine State Fair. there we met LaniMoo. talk about your sacred cows. i can remember her standing outside the billowing white tent where the cows were being kept. an ambassador to her species adorned with her melia lei & haku lei, victorian blouson & muumuu, and her celestial name, LaniMoo was brown-skinned, two-breasted, two-legged, native & regal like the nubile Havai'i-kine ladies in the parades. only she was not really a holy cow, she was a haole cow. and dis heifer had a lockdown on immaculate conception. (they just re-launched a new mascot, her son by "surprise virgin birth" Kawika. given how they fertilize cows, weo the less said about that the better, though mike rowe has a lot of funny things to say.)

basically, milkcows were an invader species brought by the haole plantation owners in 1793 when they colonized the island of Havai'i. since everyone in the world are naturally lactose-intolerant in adulthood except for northern europeans, and hawaii-kine being no exception, i imagine profits were pretty limited. in the mid-50s introduced Lani Moo the bovine mascot so named by a haole kid. then in the mid-1970s they got smart, they started corporate-sponsoring the local youth soccer league and producing the propaganda about cowmilk's benefits. my dad being no stranger to propaganda (and no coincidence, like most brownskins, a lover of soccer) was militant about it. we all had to drink cowmilk. lots of it. my siblings being kids by then and over their (breast)milk drinking days by a decade maybe didnt catch on or get the brunt of this militancy. me being the baby, i was cowmilkboarded. and i came to have cowmilk all the time. gallons. and ice cream. and cheese oh i came to love cheese. i've been colonized by cowmilk.

i didn't stop drinking cowmilk until college sometime after my ex moved out. and then on a foster freeze & berkeley marina date with T. in 1999, i had the gut-wrenching realization that i am indeed lactose-intolerant, a "problem" i share with 95% of adult humanity, that i promptly & temporarily solved with lactase supplements. though there's not fixing anything with ice cream, lactase or no. nowadays its a moot problem since i've stopped consuming so much cowdairy products. and last year in an effort to treat my allergies & chemical sensitivities, i went on a strict dairy- & gluten-free diet. and indeed, my allergies & sensitivity cleared up. so i got lazy. then when i was in that last couple of months of pregnancy, i wanted ice cream and went on a bender. so i had haagen daz on a stick once a day. gotta love costco for bulk purchases.

and now i'm the dairymaid for our daughter. she is six months now and still exclusively breastfed. all 18lbs and 12.4oz of her. pure mother's love buttermilk.

breastfeeding. so not controversial. even our HMO sez mothers should breastfeed at least until 6 months. and i plan on breastfeeding to two years at least.

weo, we went to our 6 months check up yesterday. when our osteopathic-cum-medical pediatrician found out VL was still being exclusively breastfed, he said i should start giving her iron supplemented food right away because breastmilk has low iron after 6 months and no, i couldn't just take more iron supplements as the mommy. well, i took him at face value and was doing my own educational reading about starting solids, and i read in the evidence-based book Baby Matters and on kellymom.com that because cow's milk in formula commonly inhibits the development of intestinal villi ("leaky gut" syndrome) and as a result causes gastro-intestinal bleeding and malabsorption, because of that, formula & babyfood had to have extra iron to compensate for the loss of blood & iron. whereas breastmilk has lactoferrin an easier-to-digest form of iron and one that boosts baby's ability to resist bacteria like E. Coli. and breastfed babies at 6mos+ that are not given iron-fortified foods have a higher iron level in their blood than breastfed babies who are given iron-fortified food. the iron they use to fortify baby foods actually leaches the lactoferrin iron in breastmilk! so the standard for how much iron is "needed" is still based on babies who take formula and are therefore iron-deficient, and then applied to breastfed babies which in turns makes breastfed babies, iron-deficient! out-dated research based on formula companies' & dairy industry's profit-motivated "science". ridiculous.

we very quickly realized VL couldn't tolerate cowmilk. not because we gave her any, but because i consumed it. those last trimester haagen daz ice cream bars were still in the freezer after all... i'm piecing things together here, the puzzle of my digestive system. in thinking back to my dairy-full childhood and the cowmilk formula supplementation i was given the times i was hospitalized as an infant, which eventually overtook & ended the breastfeeding aft 6 months, i remember all the unexplained sometimes bloody gastro-intestinal problems & poor digestion i had as a kid and even now as an adult. i was always having to poo in a cup. and there was never a solution or explanation. a while back, when i was recounting my allergies and chemical sensitivities to my brother, he said it was prolly all the milk i drank as a kid. maybe there's something to that. maybe the cowmilk colonization that has degraded my digestion.

and cowmilk, cowmilk is so innocuous seeming. but as i teased my larger-than-your-average-vinamese-midwestern friend Linh, cowmilk is for cows; drink cowmilk, become a cow. and like a bad joke, her son was allergic to cowsmilk. and it seems there is something to that, even though there is a billion dollar dairy industry which tries to tell you otherwise; cowmilk is implicated in a over a dozen diseases. human milk is the perfect human baby food. it contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby human needs to grow into a human adult. cows' milk contains all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that a baby bovine needs to grow into an adult bovine. wait, not just rancher-added rGBT growth hormones, we're talking grow-a-baby-hormones-intrinsic-in-lactation kinda of hormones. setting aside industrial propaganda-driven medicine, societal norms and dominant culture, on an intuitive level, what makes us think it's okay for a human baby or child to consume all the proteins, carbs, sugars, hormones, biotics, immune defense that cows' milk contains? app

with synchronistic irony enough, i came across this 1912 digitized book; Honolulu was the site for a major USDA experiment in standardizing and regulating dairy production because of high level of infant mortality resulting from milk consumption:
infant mortality and the connection to cows' milk (1912).

we must know that there is something species-specific about mother's milk because we don't consume the milk of any carnivores for example (in addition to it being very hard to milk a tiger). And indeed, we do know there are differences among mammalian milk:

A comparison of mammalian milk from a 1912 USDA Honolulu experimental research on reducing the infant mortality resulting from cows' milk.



differences between human and cow milk

the term breastfeeding itself is a "sacred cow", reserved only for humans, but truly all mammals breastfeed. isn't it wrong that we humans, we living in a Euro-American cultural context try to breastfeed a bovine? and i guess other people are questioning why we as a society would rather feed a baby another species of milk than milk from another mother.
common sense in 1912

i recollect that when VL was in the womb she would kick and stretch out her legs so hard, that you could see the bump on the top of my abdomen. we were amazed. when she was born her legs were stretched out straight unlike any newborn the midwife had ever seen and she even had to rate VL's leg reflex apgar a little lower for it. a few days later, when our chiropractor Dr. Aaron did a homevisit (his partner Dr. Eileen came for a couple of hours during labor), he noted that VL was having digestive issues and the tension in her back and legs was her way of trying to resolve it. he did an adjustment and her legs instantly relaxed. we thought oh maybe its her newborn immature digestive system, but i immediately harked back to her straight leg propensity in utero and then, like many things, the thought passed. when i had a postpartum ice cream bar, she cried and cried all night. it's not colic. like Linh' son, my baby is allergic to cowmilk protein. and we're still trying to figure out if by extension, she is allergic to beef protein which by some cosmic coincidence i had stopped eating in '03 due to boils and other things, and had only resumed eating last year. even now, some days her digestion (and mine own) is really off. and it seems that i will have to go back on a strict allergen-free diet--no beef, no pork, no dairy, no soy, no corn. we'll see about the wheat.

so despite the pediatrician's recommendation, i will wait until VL is developmentally ready to eat solids (not quite there yet) and i will not feed her processed, dehydrated, reconstitute simulacra of food fortified with artificially derived chemicals aka baby cereal.


more 1912 common sense about the connection of nutrition to health

i'm getting so tired of having to be our own educator & advocate when it comes to our family's health. i wish the western allopathic modality of medicine as its practiced in the US which pays lip service to "breast is best" and which has become the modern standard worldwide, i wish that it was evidence-based, instead of this janky presumptive "truthiness" paid for by the blood money from profiteering industries. and yes, babies die from this. i mean i know that is my job as her mother to make the best choices for her and do the educational prep that requires, and at the same time, with everything we have to do, it would be nice to have an ally in her medical care...

postscript... i just read the last few chapters of Baby Matters including "the Dangers of Cow's Milk" and "Allergy Matters". three things i learned: 1) "early exposure [under the age of 1] to cow's milk protein a risk factor for childhood diabetes, but 3 or more glasses of milk per day during childhood leads to a quadrupled risk of diabetes" [the author goes on to cite other scientific studies which show correlations between cowmilk and a full spectrum of diseases common in developed countries like cancer]. 2) Colic, ear infections, eczema, cradle cap, among others "normal phases" for American babies all have a direct correlation with food allergies. 3) if the mother has allergies, she is likely to pass on that immunological response to her child though not the specific trigger (mom could be allergic to onions and baby may be allergic to cows milk) and should avoid all potentially allergenic foods in the third trimester. no one ever told me that!

i'm lookin over my life, my health, VL's birth and being, and my postpartum recovery (i had hives! and mastitis!) and understanding it and the human immune system in a whole new way. i'm a little stunned at the breadth & depth of it actually.

the connection with food is so fundamental, ingrained, cultural and giving up something (like flan) feels like a sacrifice and yet, the eating of it has caused me a lifetime of gastro-intestinal damage & hemorrhage and i've been unknowingly embarking on the same path for my daughter. i gotta decolonize my mind, decolonize my diet, decolonize my colon.

the cure for cancer

Dr. June Meymand runs a cancer center and says breast milk protects her patients' healthy cells, while killing the cancer at same time.

breastmilk can cure cancer!!!

why the heck are we spending millions on cancer research? we should be paying those millions to mothers and socially supporting breastfeeding.

i guess instead of making mama yogurt for VL, i should donate it! for all you lactating moms, here's your local milk bank info:

CALIFORNIA
Mothers' Milk Bank
751 South Bascom Ave
San Jose, CA 95128
Phone (408) 998-4550
FAX (408) 297-9208
mothersmilkbank@hhs.co.santa-clara.ca.us
www.milkbanksj.org

find your local milk bank
http://www.hmbana.org/index.php?mode=locations

and if you are no longer lactating... http://www.kellymom.com/bf/adopt/relactation-resources.html

sleepwriting

freed from a marathon nursing session (another growth spurt already, my little love?) i perused the bookshelf for what i remember not and happened across a journal that my sister gave me as i was about to embark on my first trip to VN twenty-five years after our phamily left to meet relatives that have haunted our childhood. as with all my journals, it is sporadic, inchoate, inconsistent. when you grow up with two older siblings and a bratpack of cousins you learn to destroy your diaries as you go along.

i came across this undated entry from sometime in 2001 in the house on 25th St where i lived with 10, jujubee, and sometimes el. (i usually cannot remember dates, i still chronicle my history by where i was living at the time.) back at the turn of the century, i used to write creatively & perform while procrastinating on mind-deadening grad school.

this entry was a dream that i had. an electrifying gathering of many and i was giving a toast or a speech. i was me, but i was not. i think i might have been a man. did i dream this or was this something i heard and remembered in my subconscious? perhaps from another lifetime. so powerfully had i been moved in my slumbers, i roused and in the liminal space between twilight and dawn, i scrawled this down. only one other time in my life have i been so productive in my dreams, and that was to solve a particualrly sticky algebra problem. and now since my speechmaking days are a distant memory, i share this with you because many are the corny, trite or trying-too-hard things i've written--especially in the spoken word zeitgeist era (though i've always considered myself a poet not a spoken word artist; i like iambic pentameter, sestinas and portmanteau) that will never see the light of day nor tarnish your coracles, but this is actually good. this is not the truest thing i have ever said or believed (only my sister knows that) and yet there is something sterling about this that gives me that frisson of third eye clarity that i get when i speak from my heart. which happens not enough mired in the mundacity of everyday life. maybe one day when i write the novels i have brewing in the back of my mind, i will use it. [ed. note: the ellipses represent either dramatic pauses or lacunas where my dream skipped a groove or the roaring of the adulating crowd moved to testify like when the warriors were in the playoffs] :

as far as the spirit can see
are many peoples
many waters
many lands
many faiths
many nations

our common belief unites us
our common belief in true freedom, justice & equality
our belief makes us sisters & brothers
this belief makes our numbers multitudes
it is our reason for living and our reason for dying...

we have learned much from each other...
our ancestors give strength, spirit & knowledge to the world...

my sisters and brothers, we are Hope...

and in every particle, every patch of this earth
there is another
who yearns to be free
the earth herself will resound with our fierce hope

my sisters & brothers
stand up and raise your fist
join in this toast salute
and roar together to fill your body & soul
let the winds carry our voices to every ...

may our words be fertile
may our actions be collective

say with me
free the land
free our people!

father's day

father's day has always been something of a mystery to me.

my first memory of father's day is in the kindergarten because school is where one acculturates to holidays when you come from an immigrant family. my parents had just separated and mom & us kids had moved to the mainland from honolulu before the school year started to be closer to my maternal grandparents and motley aunties, uncles, cousins, malteses, zebra finches & seahorses crammed into a three-bedroom across the street. mom was working in a factory job. i played store with food stamps. i had hot cocoa for the first time and burnt my tongue. and i think my dad was going to visit us that summer. my teacher was Mrs. Alexander and at that time, single mothers were still very uncommon. for father's day Ms. Alexander had us twist two strands of yarn around a wire hanger to make a padded hanger for our fathers. well, i chose green & black. camouflage colors. for the jungle. because my dad was in the army. and a whole lot of jumbled things about international politics, smuggled black & white documentaries, war, patriotism, and sacrifice that my 6-year-old brain could wrap itself around. i vaguely remember explaining this to Mrs. Alexander and her assistant. i also faintly remember Mrs. Alexander coming to a home visit with mom though the timing isn't clear and me having some trepidation about it as i played on rusty-nail planks in the backyard of our first apartment on Reynard Way. i know that since that time it was verboten to mention my father for various reasons. i didn't stay long at that school.

i don't know what happened to that hanger. our inheritance consisted of abstruse heartaches and a couple of briefcases of scattered contents that we siblings have secretly pilfered over the years. my brother has the flag; my sister the passport; myself the news clippings. i remember seeing only one token of father's day in there. a construction paper card from my sister that resembled a button-up shirt & tie--the quintessential symbol of a white white-collar father. i guess elementary school indoctrinates kids to be upwardly mobile (teleology of the nation-state blah blah). our father went bare-chested, he wore aloha shirts, tight butterfly blue-collars, formal khaki guayaberas, bộ áo bà ba đen with hierarchically-knotted keffiyeh, and camouflage.

so since my dad was an ocean away, father's day has been rather disconnected and enigmatic to me though i did learn rather quickly and shrewdly how the refugee-single-mom-absentee-dad thing garnered lots of sympathy partic when i flaked on some homework (see bright but does not apply herself for more on that.) my friend's fathers and their relationship to them were all intimidating, baffling, and inexplicable to me.

of course, i make an effort on father's day for my stepdad; at least, i have since i stopped being angry at the world for my laissez faire-latch key childhood and angsty adolesence, ceased being resentful that he wasn't my real father, and finally accepted the unconditional love he always gave us kids (i'm probably the only person who got all misty-eyed when phillip "he's not my father"stepfather became a zombie in Shaun of the Dead. that scene gets me everytime.) still, it is an effort, not burdensome mind you, but something that doesn't come easily to me, like a favored ballad that i can only hum and sing the chorus and occasional odd word or lyric. perhaps i still take him for granted.

so this father's day is the first that i have felt freed of all those past memories, forgotten memories, and lack of memories. the first that i have felt the simple gratitude and love that makes this a holiday. and all for my daughter's father. it is said that having children is healing; through them you remember the magical wonder in Life and through them you re-live your past hurts and hopefully learn, and forgive, and heal. and so, this is the first father's day that i know what it is to feel gratitude for a father, to have a loving, engaged, and present father. one who stays up til the wee hours cooking & cleaning that i may be with our child.

thank you, my love.