bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Wake-up call.

    We taught Milo to pee on cue when he was a baby.  I never went the whole diaper-free route, preferring to mix it up:  cloth diapers most of the time, disposables some of the time, pottying/cueing/toileting/barebottomedness at home.  No matter what kind of infant hygiene you’re using, it’s darn useful to be able to hold your baby’s butt over a suitable receptacle, make the Special Pee Noise, and have him pee right away.  Saves trouble on car trips, etc.

    I think that’s part of the reason why he spontaneously toilet trained early on.  At 18 months he was diaper-free in the daytime.  A few months later we stopped using diapers at night, too. 

    But recently he’s started wetting the bed every night.  Regression due to the impending birth of Baby #3?  Hard to believe that, when he sleeps right through it.  I think he’s just temporarily outgrown his bladder capacity. 

    Please, no more diapers!  Our solution has been to set an alarm for 2:30 AM.  When it goes off, Mark takes him to the toilet and makes the sound — cues him to pee.  Milo pees, without even waking up.  Then everyone back to bed.  It’s worked like a charm for a couple of weeks now.  But Mark’s getting tired.

    Last night I heard the alarm go off.  Mark turned it off.  But then he didn’t move again.  I rolled over and poked him.  "Hey.  Don’t go back to sleep until you take Milo to the bathroom."

    "OK," he groaned, and I heard him struggle to his feet.  Then I heard him swear. 

    "Too late?" I asked.  "Did he pee?"

    "Yeah — in the last thirty seconds!" 

    I laughed as Mark started to peel the sheets back.  "You cued him — with the alarm!"

    Now what?  A different alarm every night?  I suppose we could set the cell phone to vibrate and strap it to one of our bodies…

    —

    |

    No comments on Wake-up call.

  • Two updates.

    Last week, Animal Control came and rounded up the neighborhood undocumented chickens.  I miss them.

    Today, I made the midwife measure my hemoglobin again, and it was 11.5 g/dL — well within the normal range for pregnant women!  It’s not yet up to my normal level, which is 12, but it’s nice to see results in just 2 weeks. 

    Still feeling pretty tired though.

    —

    |

    No comments on Two updates.

  • “Ethical” egg donations?

    The Boston Globe wants to present in the best possible light Harvard University’s research program on embryonic stem cell research.  That’s why the Globe is praising the "ethically sensitive" standards by which researchers plan to obtain donated human eggs:

    …the Harvard researchers are doing their best to minimize risk. They will not be using Lupron [a drug that raises particular concern] and they will be regulating doses of other drugs to minimize danger.

    They also will not be offering the kind of inducements that might cause women to cast aside caution in the interest of financial gain. Egg donation for use in infertility treatment typically earns a woman $5,000 in Massachusetts. State law forbids this kind of payment for stem-cell research.

    A state advisory commission recently decided that women could be reimbursed for time off from work.  The Harvard researchers won’t even allow that. All a woman will get is reimbursement for such immediate expenses as cab fare. It’s unclear whether any women will be willing to take part in these experiments.

    These sound like fairly standard precautions to take to ensure the ethical use of human beings (in this case the women — obviously, the state advisory commission has not considered the ethical use of the human beings who might be created by cloning) as research subjects.  Whatever else one can say about them, such means of obtaining eggs — unlike what goes on in egg-harvesting for fertility clinics — can accurately be called "donation."

    Cloning is wrong.  But the point I want to make here is not that.  If the Boston Globe is ready to praise Harvard and the state advisory commission for their care in setting guidelines to ensure that women won’t be exploited by stem cell researchers, is it also ready to condemn the lack of such guidelines in the artificial-conception industry?

    —

    |

    1 comment on “Ethical” egg donations?

  • Hot air.

    My husband is being haunted by the ghost of Buckminster Fuller.

    I admit I didn’t know that much about the guy.  If it weren’t for buckyballs, I might never have really noticed or cared that he is credited with the invention of the geodesic dome.  I suppose that, up till a couple of days ago, if you had said to me, "Who’s Buckminster Fuller?"  I’d have said, "An architect, I guess."  Buckminster Fuller had never really entered my consciousness at a very high level. 

    The other day Mark had to go to an offsite training course in a newfangled management technique or decisionmaking algorithm or teambuilding exercise or similar, the details of which are not important here (does anyone really believe the details are important anywhere?  I hear the free lunch was pretty good).  What he really remembered from the day was that another employee of his company gave a speech in which she cited, in the effort to provide an example of a useful technical insight, a quote from Buckminster Fuller which went something like "Wind doesn’t blow, it sucks."

    This infuriated my husband.  I am actually a little bit worried about him.  Apparently he spent parts of the next three days in deep investigation of why she said that, didn’t anyone try to stop her from saying that (the answer is apparently yes), what was the exact context of that quote, and who the heck is this Buckminster Fuller guy anyway that he would say something so prepopsterous.  The reason for my alarm:  this sounds like something I might do, if I were the one working in the corporate world, and it would probably lead to my getting castigated for "not being a team player" or similar.  (There are a number of reasons why I have retreated from market activities, of course, but I can’t deny that one of them is a complete inability to put up with b***s**t in the name of being a "team player.")

    Looking for the quote, I Googled "Buckminster Fuller" that evening while Mark cleaned up dinner and ranted, and noticed that the first search result page was peppered with very silly assertions, such as "Buckminster Fuller was probably one of the first futurists."   I smelled "guru."  After Mark mined Amazon.com’s "Search Inside This Book!" feature to find more details about quote, he got even angrier.  From Bucky Works:  Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas For Today by J. Baldwin, a passage about that quote (still haven’t found an exact rendition of it):

    A single sentence might contain the seeds of an entirely new vision of physics…

    When B ucky announced that wind "sucked," …he was serious.  Talking about the wind "blowing" deflects the thoughts of speaker and listeners alike from what is actually happening.  No force can push a huge parcel of air around Earth any more than you can push a flock of ducks into a barn.  Push—compression—is local.  Push doesn’t operate over long distances.  In any case, what could be doing the pushing?

    Nothing is doing the pushing:  wind isn’t pushed.  When you face the wind, you have your back to its cause.  A distant low pressure area pulls denser air to itself, just as a bucket of feed in the barn will bring in the ducks.  Suck—tension—can operate over vast distances.  Suction is not deterred by obstacles.  A northwest wind is actually a southeast suck.  Our parents  and teachers have told us wrong…. If our teachers couldn’t get wind right, how can we trust anything else they say?

    One might ask the same thing of old Bucky.  Don’t get me wrong — to say "the wind is blowing" is indeed imprecise except in a literary sense.  It’s an anthropomorphic characterization.  But then, so is "sucking."  When conventional wisdom is inaccurate, the polar opposite of that conventional wisdom — the simple refuge of the reactionary — is likely just as inaccurate.  Accuracy is found by rejecting the soothingly simple — do not confuse it with the "elegant." 

    What happens, of course, is neither blowing nor sucking:   the wind flows.     And indeed it is a local phenomenon, in response to the local pressure gradient.  And — never mind the duck analogy —what is up with this "push doesn’t operate over long distances" thing?  Has the author of this never heard of electrical (Coulombic) repulsion?

    Apparently old Bucky was one of those gurus with just enough technical jargon and knowledge under his belt to attract the trust (in technical matters) of a wide following of people who don’t know any better, including J.  Baldwin.  Perhaps Fuller was, in fact, an astute philosopher.  I am not qualified to judge that.  But I think I’m qualified to say that he overstepped himself when he spoke as an authority in, say, fluid mechanics.  Either that, or he fell victim to one of the worst of science’s temptations, that of making inaccurate technical assertions, cloaked in the respectability of technical language, to gain the adulation of a non-technical audience.

    —

    |

    1 comment on Hot air.

  • Coadjutor?

    The buzz is official, according to the Star Tribune:  Archbishop Flynn has asked Rome to appoint a coadjutor.  Essentially, that means a successor, one who starts work while Abp. Flynn is still in charge — I suppose to smooth the transition and to ease the workload on the archbishop in the years and months before he retires.

    Here’s the Strib article.  Here’s the Hadleys’ take on it at OWAWTI. 

    I first heard that rumor over after-Mass pancakes the morning after the local Catholic bloggers’ get-together.   I won’t speculate.   I think the Hadleys have it right about the paper’s coverage (except that they gave the final quote a pass, the one where the professor from the St. Paul Seminary says that she hopes for an appointee who "doesn’t take strong ideological positions."  Cue the eye-rolling, please.)

    I’ve got nothing to add to this story for now…

    —

    |

    No comments on Coadjutor?

  • Holyoffice does it again…

    The Da Vinci Code FAQ.

    Q: Is "The Da Vinci Code" fiction?
    A: No. It’s what I call "faction": Historically true facts interspersed with car chases. In the very first page of his masterpiece, Brown writes, "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

    Q: Well, if it’s in a book, it must be true.
    A: Exactly…

    Q: Why isn’t any of this in the Bible?
    A: It is – but not the Bible the Man wants you to read! The truth uncovered by Brown is contained in scriptures like The Gospel of Thomas and The Secret Gospel of Oprah, works that depict the truth of Jesus’ humanity and marriage, despite being written several hundred years after the canonical gospels.

    Q: How do we know these non-canonical works are more accurate than the canonical ones?
    A: Because the people who regarded them as sacred came out on the losing end.

    Q: So, the fact that they were ultimately less popular and successful than the canonical gospels means they’re true?
    A: As Elaine Pagels explains it, yes.

    Q: So, in that case, is the "real" foundational document of the U.S. government actually the Articles of Confederation?
    A: Yes! I was just saying that to the President of Congress the other day.

    Read the whole thing.  Via Bettnet.

    UPDATE:  The comment threads are good too:

    What most people don’t know is the Gospel of John was originally written by John Woo.

    —

    |

    No comments on Holyoffice does it again…

  • Iron woman.

    Tired, tired, tired.  I’ve been telling Mark that I’m good for exactly three things over the course of the day:  1) I can make dinner.  2) I can make sure Oscar does his schoolwork.  3) I can perform exactly one other act of housekeeping.  After that, I’m done.  I’m sitting with my feet up and a big glass of red raspberry leaf tea and resting.  Last Saturday I went back to bed right after breakfast and slept until three o’clock.

    Last week when the midwife pricked my finger for the hemoglobin check, I took one look at the drop of blood, went pale and dizzy, and needed to lie down.  I’ve never reacted that way to the sight of blood before!  Precious, precious blood.  Turns out my hemoglobin measured just about 10 g/dL — normal levels in pregnancy are 11-12 g/dL.   I don’t think I’ve ever had such low iron.  Not surprising.

    Mark took the boys to the co-op and came back with packages of bright red steaks and bags of dried apricots and bunches of fresh spinach.  Also some liverwurst, and yellow mustard and crackers to eat it with.  And a bottle of Floradix.  I promised to eat some red meat and green leafy vegetables every day. 

    I feel better, after only a week.  Maybe the improvement’s all in my head.  Give me the strongest placebo you’ve got.  I’m still not doing more than one act of housekeeping a day, though.

    —

    |

    1 comment on Iron woman.

  • More on c-sections’ effect on moms.

    Heart, Mind, and Strength Blog posted a link to the abstract of a study on maternal complications associated with primary and repeat cesarean sections.  The abstract has a sampling of the numbers:

    There were 6,201 first (primary), 15,808 second, 6,324 third, 1,452 fourth, 258 fifth, and 89 sixth or more cesarean deliveries.

    The risks of placenta accreta, cystotomy, bowel injury, ureteral injury, and ileus, the need for postoperative ventilation, intensive care unit admission, hysterectomy, and blood transfusion requiring 4 or more units, and the duration of operative time and hospital stay significantly increased with increasing number of cesarean deliveries.

    Placenta accreta was present in 15 (0.24%), 49 (0.31%), 36 (0.57%), 31 (2.13%), 6 (2.33%), and 6 (6.74%) women undergoing their first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth or more cesarean deliveries, respectively.

    Hysterectomy was required in 40 (0.65%) first, 67 (0.42%) second, 57 (0.90%) third, 35 (2.41%) fourth, 9 (3.49%) fifth, and 8 (8.99%) sixth or more cesarean deliveries.

    In the 723 women with previa, the risk for placenta accreta was 3%, 11%, 40%, 61%, and 67% for first, second, third, fourth, and fifth or more repeat cesarean deliveries, respectively. 

    The authors conclude:  "Because serious maternal morbidity increases progressively with increasing number of cesarean deliveries, the number of intended pregnancies should be considered during counseling regarding elective repeat cesarean operation versus a trial of labor and when debating the merits of elective primary cesarean delivery." 

    That’s absolutely right.  And HMS Blog adds, "This says to me that it would be very worthwhile for maternity care providers to help women avoid that FIRST C-section."  Amen.

    The study is Silver et al., "Maternal Morbidity Associated with Multiple Repeat Cesarean Deliveries," Ob Gyn 107 1226-1232 (2006). 

    —

    |

    1 comment on More on c-sections’ effect on moms.

  • Fair is fair. Or foul, as the case may be.

    After Mass I was sitting at the parish KofC pancake breakfast with my family and the Desperate Irish Housewife family, and (after a string of conversational turns that led up to it) Mark volunteered that my PhD experience was comparable to Macbeth.

    I turned on him.  You have never compared my graduate education to Macbeth before.

    I haven’t?

    Mr. Desperate Irish Housewife interjected:  I’ve heard people compare graduate school to Sisyphus before.

    I insisted, No!  I’ve never heard you say that in my life!

    Oh, well, I’ve thought it lots of times, he said.  Anyway, it’s like this:  Once you got in far enough, you had to see it through to the end.

    The bitter, bloody end, I take it, said I.

    Ha!  said Mr. Desperate Irish Housewife.  That’s perfect for a chemical engineer!  "Out, out damned spot!"

    See, it matches very well, said Mark.  All except the c-section part.

    Thanks.  Don’t wish that on me, I’m seven months pregnant.

    And then there’s all the paperwork at the end —

    Yes! said Mr. Desperate Irish Housewife.  The forests are marching upon you!  And — "bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!" Ha!   He stirred an imaginary cauldron.  How supportive you must have been, he said to Mark.

    Oh, I was very, very supportive, Mark said, pointing at me as if to stave off any protests.

    Supportive!  Like Lady Macbeth!  She was very supportive!  Ha!  said Mr. Desperate Irish Housewife. 

    We all know what happened to her, of course.

    —

    |

    No comments on Fair is fair. Or foul, as the case may be.

  • Chicken.

    A couple of weeks ago we were awakened around five in the morning by the cock’s crow.  And again the morning after that, and the morning after that.  I’m getting used to it now — I don’t think I’m noticing it at 5 AM anymore — but the rooster in the yard of the neighbor across the street crows from time to time all day long.  I don’t mind it.  Actually, it’s kind of cool, and the kids love it.

    I don’t know if you knew this, but in Minneapolis it’s legal to raise chickens in your backyard.  Here’s an April article from a local publication:

    Growing up in New Prague, Minn., Willcütt kept not only chickens but rabbits, geese, and a pet goat. When he moved to Nicollet Island, he says, “I thought my chicken days are over.”

    But what Willcütt didn’t know was that his new neighbors, Leslie Ball and Phyllis Kahn, had been talking for years, says Ball, about “how we wanted to use wind power and grow our own food, keep chickens for their eggs.” According to Ball, Willcütt overheard one of these conversations “and transformed our entire life.” The three of them (along with husbands and partners) now cooperatively keep a coop of 25 hens and one rooster. “I can’t say enough about how much it’s transformed my life,” says Ball. “I’m honored that I get to live with these gorgeous chickens.”

    Willcütt, in fact, would like to see more people keep chickens. “If you’re a busy urban professional,” he says, “chickens can still come into your life.”

    We’re pretty accustomed to buying eggs directly from a farm, a nice way to get them from free-range, organically-fed hens at a lower cost than the co-ops charge.   I’ve thought often that it would be a fun project for the kids, when they’re older, to raise a few chickens for their eggs.   

    And we’d fit right into the neighborhood.  In the Powderhorn area of South Minneapolis, where I live, it’s fairly common to see a hen or two scratching in someone’s backyard.  I think that it’s grown more widespread as the neighborhood has become home to more and more Latino families.  Fine by me:  a chicken eating bugs in an urban backyard is probably a much happier chicken than a chicken living among thousands of others in a metal barn with a door at one end.

    But this is the first time I’ve heard a rooster!  I found out from another neighbor — the one who lives next door to the rooster-owning family — that they have three roosters and one hen, which seems like an odd ratio to me, but that explains why we hear quite so much crowing.   She said she adopted one of the hens for herself, and that her son (who’s maybe four years old) really loves her.   The hen I mean.  I think their hen is the one that was pecking the dirt in our own back yard the other day.  Since their family, and the hen, lives on the other side of the street, I keep wondering why.

    (pause while that sinks in)

    There are some legal hoops to jump through.  You need a Small Animal Permit to keep chickens in your back yard.  It’s not expensive — $10 per year — but to get it, you must pass an inspection of the premises and get the consent of 80% of the neighbors who live within 100 feet.

    Hm.  Nobody ever asked my permission.  And Laura (the adoptive owner of the aforementioned hen) didn’t say anything about a permit.  Could it be that my neighborhood is full of…. undocumented chickens?

    Well, fault me if you will, but I won’t be turning them in, provided the chickens continue to appear fat, healthy, and well-cared for.  My husband grew up among farmers.  I like the sound of a rooster crowing in the morning.  My kids, especially Milo-the-avian-obsessed, are absolutely thrilled when a hen appears in our yard.  And who knows, maybe someday we’ll want to raise them ourselves.  I wonder how many hens I would need to produce our two and a half dozen eggs a week?

    —

    |

    1 comment on Chicken.

  • Lileks on June.

    A lovely piece.

    —

    |

    No comments on Lileks on June.

  • Alleys.

    Minneapolis is reviewing a proposal to bar people from alleys unless they live on the block:

    The proposal would prohibit anyone from walking in an alley who doesn’t live on that block or who isn’t a guest of someone who does. Police, paramedics and firefighters would be exempt, as would garbage haulers, meter readers, code inspectors and others whose jobs take them there….

    "I see so much crime occurring in the alleys. It’s a quick getaway," said Minneapolis police officer Mike Killebrew.

    "If you don’t live there on that block there’s no reason to be in the alley," said Killebrew, who proposed the ordinance to the city attorney. …

    Any move to make walking in alleys illegal is likely to anger some people.

    On a sun-rich Friday afternoon, Gordon Anderson walked down the paved alley on the 3400 block of Lyndale Avenue S. He said he has lived on the block for 20 years and that everyone in the neighborhood walks down alleys.

    "That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard," he said. "The whole country seems to be going to the Soviet Union, I’ll tell you that."

    Mr. Anderson would be allowed to walk down his own alley under the proposed ordinance, just not the one on the next block over.

    People walk down our alley all the time, mostly people I don’t recognize.  Lots of teenagers, lots of kids wearing school backpacks.  And there are others I don’t see but who leave their traces:  graffiti speckles the garage doors year round.  Sometimes someone takes a leak against a garage (I apologize if you think that’s crude, but really, if you pee on someone’s garage doesn’t it deserve a crude term?)  There’s also a couple of regulars who pick cans out of recycling bins (technically illegal but frankly, it doesn’t bother me). 

    When I was in grade school, I regularly walked down the alley to get home from the school bus stop.  The alley seemed much more interesting, to a kid, than the sidewalks.  There was a lot of gravel to kick, for one thing, and a few walls to walk on, and you could see into the neighbors’ back yards and talk to their dogs through the Cyclone fence.  And you could pick mulberries in the weedy patch.  I particularly remember a gap in the bushes that led to a great secret hiding spot behind somebody’s woodpile.  It was shaded by a canopy of branches and sheltered on three sides by foliage, on the fourth by the stack of logs (which nobody, apparently, ever burned).  I wonder if that spot is still there and if kids still hide in it.  Almost every time I’m back in Ohio I am tempted to drive down that alley and peek through the gap in the bushes.  I’d probably get arrested, though.   

    Our block was triangular, so the alley was winding and branched.  Compare that to the alleys in Minneapolis, which run straight north and south, each one bisecting a block.  Almost everyone has a fence — a tall one — so there’s nothing to see except fences, garage doors, and garbage cans.   Since the alley is straight and parallel to the streets, there’s not much reason to walk down the alley.  It’s almost never a shortcut.  I can understand why kids like it, and the can-pickers, but why do so many teenagers and adults prefer the alley to the sidewalk?   

    —

    |

    No comments on Alleys.

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Categories

…more to come later