On my post about explaining abortion to kids in the context of American history education, in which I wrote that I would treat the subject as part of a unit on the changing experience of American childhood, I received a good question from "emma" in the combox. Here it is:
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].
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“If they [your non-English speaking prostitutes]’re fourteen and under just send ’em right there [circles address on sheet of paper] if they need an abortion. OK?”
Says Amy Woodruff, clinic manager, Planned Parenthood, Perth Amboy, NJ, speaking to a man who has identified himself as a sex worker who pimps out 14- and 15-year-old girls who don't speak English. She goes on:
"They — they won't need ID then. They're gonna be a little bit more different but their protocols aren't as strict as ours and they don't get audited the same way we do…. Like ah this is for fourteen and under I'm saying. Once they hit fifteen, it's kind of a whole different, like, playing field with the age and New Jersey guidelines."
More advice to the man on what to do when he brings his underage prostitutes in for GYN exams: "If they're minors, just tell them to put down that they're students… We wanna make it look as legit as possible."
However pro-choice someone might be, would it really be so hard to prosecute clinic workers who recommend end-runs around reporting requirements? Would it really be so "anti-choice" to require them to report suspected human trafficking?
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Clean eating and a short pre-review of the new Taubes book.
I'm feeling a little less despondent this morning than I was when I wrote the last post, probably because two full days of clean eating has eliminated my weight spike. And thank you to commenter LeeAnn for reassuring me that I probably can continue watching portions for my health, and even if that tends to exacerbate my vanity problem, I probably don't have to stop, and can look for other ways to alleviate the vanity thing.
From 116.6 the other day, I'm now back below 112. Yes, I am aware that a lot of that weight is probably water. Still, I think it was worthwhile reacting quickly.
For one thing, I had lost track of portion size. During the first nine months or so of the baby's ex utero life, I needed to eat a lot more than I do now, and so I had pretty much been eating freely — seconds and thirds, whole sandwiches instead of halves, et cetera. I have gotten out of the habit of starting with a small amount and then waiting to see if I needed more.
Are you curious what "two days of clean eating" looks like for me? I planned on avoiding white flour as much as I could and keeping the calorie load under 1400 calories (reasonable for me — I'm quite small framed, and the baby has not been nursing heavily). I am currently staying as a houseguest, so I have limited control over what's available, but with self-control I can keep from getting derailed. Here's what I did for two days:
First day:
- Breakfast: 1 hardboiled egg. 15 fresh blueberries. Lots of coffee.
- Lunch: 100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around half a cup of chili with beans, two tablespoons shredded cheddar cheese, and a generous handful of fresh spinach, plus some chopped tomato and onion. 10 fresh cherries.
- Snack: 5 pecan halves, an ounce of cheddar cheese, and ten more blueberries.
- Dinner (from the local pizza chain): A big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese and one tablespoon Italian dressing. One-eighth of a large thin-crust pizza (bacon and veg).
- Unplanned eating: About a half ounce of hard pretzel near bedtime.
I felt hungry between meals right away, which I took as a good sign. Second day:
- Breakfast: One hardboiled egg. Fifteen fresh blueberries. Lots of coffee.
- Lunch: 100% whole wheat tortilla wrapped around 100 calories' worth of Italian sausage, 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, 2 tablespoons of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of fresh spinach. Another big lettuce salad with an unknown amount of shredded cheese (left over from the night before) and one tablespoon Italian dressing.
- Snack: Five pecan halves and one small apple. Coffee.
- Dinner: About two cups cooked canned green beans. One half cup canned baked beans in a sugary sauce. One quarter-pound hamburger patty with a teaspoon of ketchup.
- Unplanned eating: About a quarter-ounce of hard pretzels. One bite of sugar cookie.
Being a houseguest here, I'm free to make my own breakfasts and lunches from whatever's around, and dinner is whatever's being served. The tortillas happen to be the most whole-grain bread in the house, so I stuck with them for lunch; on burger night, I quietly skipped the bun, and that didn't seem to cause a problem. I enjoyed small portions of the sweet baked beans and the carryout pizza. I measured the salad dressing and found the mixed-salad calories by looking them up on the restaurant website.
Some travel is coming up in which I'll have even less control over the types of food available, but I always have control over how much I eat of it. So I'm feeling a lot better.
On a related note, I recently picked up Gary Taubes' new book, Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It. You may remember that Taubes wrote the huge tome Good Calories, Bad Calories, which I reviewed in some detail here. I will post a full review of the new Taubes book later, but the short review is this:
It's a shorter, more accessible version of Good Calories, Bad Calories. So if you have been intimidated by that huge book, by all means, read the newer, sleeker version, and if you wish your doctor or spouse would read GCBC, consider lending them the new, less-frightening book instead. It also contains dietary recommendations, basically for a paleo diet. I have some comments about these recommendations, but I will save it for my full review.
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The demon that feeds on fasting.
It just goes to show: Never brag. A couple of days ago I wrote a weight loss update in which I mentioned that when I tried to drop a pound, I hadn’t been able to do it without effort, and (not really wanting to make the effort) I hadn’t pushed it. “But I’m holding pretty steady, and that’s okay,” I wrote.
So, a couple of days after I’d been traveling, I suddenly saw my weight SPIKE. Probably water, most of it; but my experience is that if I don’t reverse it quickly, the water weight sticks around and becomes non-water weight. Maybe a better way of putting this is that I suspect that the first sign I’m beginning to store some fat is a sudden episode of water retention. Only a hypothesis, and only about me — but still. I was alarmed, and even more alarmed the next day when it didn’t go away but was higher.
How big a spike? Well, I’ve been a stable 113 pounds for about six weeks, but one morning the scale said 116, and the next 116.6 . Yow! I haven’t seen either of those numbers for a long while. And I have a philosophy about the scale: don’t bother too much about daily ups and downs, except when I see a number I haven’t seen in a while. I notice those. The big ones scare me.
Like, really scare me. Lie-awake-in-bed-sweating scared.
And maybe here’s the right time to mention a significant spiritual struggle. Gluttony* was a real problem for me, and somewhere between my asking and God answering and my work to meet Him where He wanted me to go, it’s not a problem for me (much) anymore. Yay me! Except: enter vanity. I am now seriously, seriously afraid of regaining weight. I like the way I look and feel now. I am proud of myself — not necessarily in a good way. Am I diligent about getting to the gym… or obsessive? It’s hard to tell the difference.
It’s only natural to be pleased with my success so far. There is, I am sure, a correct attitude somewhere, where I could be grateful to God for the gift of self-control, diligent in my stewardship of the health I have been graced with, pleased to adorn myself attractively for my husband and to reflect to the world my inward happiness and peace, and still unattached to the world and to my flesh. I am not there. I fear that I have made thinness and physical health an idol.
Maybe it’s always been an idol for me, but it was perhaps safer when I couldn’t attain it. Now it’s my precious, y’know? And I think the surest proof that it’s really a problem is this: I pray earnestly, “Please Lord, take away my vanity….” and what pops up in the mind is “…but even more than that please please please don’t do it by making me fat again.” Don’t make me choose between You and my body, I mean. But I know darn well that God has already made me choose between Him and my flesh.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters–yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple.”
Oh yes, I know what THAT means.
And meanwhile I keep looking for a way around it.
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If any of my readers think of gluttony as a big spiritual problem for themselves, then maybe this sounds self-indulgent. Wish I had your spiritual struggle instead of mine, Erin! But bear with me. Back when I was fat, it was really obvious that food was a sort of idol for me. Looking back at those struggles back then, they seem so simple compared to these crazy mind games. Simple, simple struggles of the flesh versus the spirit. All I had to do was deny the flesh! Just like it says in the Bible! It wasn’t easy to do, always, but it was easy to understand. Such a childish little weakness, wanting more cake. Now I struggle with spirit against spirit — it’s not myflesh that makes war against God’s will, but instead my love for my flesh. So much harder to root out cleanly.
Gluttony [as distinct from clinical eating disorders] isn’t that complicated to fix (it’s tough, but uncomplicated), because you only have to change something visible. Your attitude doesn’t have to change right away. You can will your fist to put down the plate, and your heart can let go later, when it sees that it is safe feeding on the Lord. But now I have to change something invisible, while not changing the visible all that much. Can my heart let go of the idol of health, while my decisions and actions still responsibly preserve it? What does that look like? Does it look like anything at all, or is it entirely within? How? If I could only drive this demon out by prayer and fasting — but on fasts, this demon grows sleek and strong.+ + +
Today, vanity or no, I’m controlling calories and experiencing hunger. I am thankful for obedience, which relieves the heart of some of its responsibility to ferret apart good and bad intentions. It only makes sense to follow through with my plan to respond to a weight spike with careful attention to my food intake.
At the same time, I am troubled by the intensity of my worry, and I wonder if I can somehow find peace. I know, rationally, that the answer is not to set my heart on thinness and health and youth and beauty — even though these things are often rewards of a disciplined life, I must not love them. I must love God more. And He has not yet asked me to choose between Him and those things — except in the tiniest possible ways, just enough to chide me, to show me where my heart lies.
I must be willing to lose it all, cheerfully. I am not willing. And yet I must be willing. And I’m not.
Yet.
“He went away sorrowful; for he had many possessions.”
Yet.
*[Editing note. Years and years later, I wish I’d done a better job distinguishing gluttony from other problems with food, like clinical eating disorders and other kinds of compulsiveness.
I want to emphasize that, whereas I identified some behaviors in myself that probably qualified as self-centered gluttony in the technical sense, I am not and never have been qualified to make that distinction for anyone else.
I hope to add some commentary to all the posts that have this problem as I find the time to review them. Here’s a more recent post where I acknowledge some of the problematic material I wrote and set new ground rules for myself going forward.]
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Get your political hotdish right here.
So, did you wake up this morning with an unbearable urge to know the answer to the question, "If the Minnesota congressional delegation had a hotdish contest, what would Al Franken and Michele Bachmann bring?"
If so, the Heavy Table blog has a recipe roundup for you.
Normally, I find Michele Bachmann cringe-worthy as far as Republicans go, but I'll give her quite a lot of credit for showing up to this harmless Franken-planned event. (Hint to other Minnesota Republicans: When Michele Bachmann shows you up in the bipartisanship department, especially for a publicity stunt, you might want to take a good long hard look at yourself.)
If anybody from outside Minnesota clicks through to the recipes and is horrified by them, you need to know that the inclusion of cream of mushroom soup is kind of a Minnesota inside joke. And I will bet you dollars to donuts that if you actually made the winning recipe, you'd like it, whether you admitted it or not.
I mean, deep down, who doesn't like tater tots?
OK, maybe really deep down.
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Power snack.
From Dooce, in a rerun post:
[My husband] and I are equally fit, but even if we do the same program on the elliptical trainer — the same run of hills at the same difficulty level for the same amount of time — he always burns at least 70 more calories than I do. I know that the machine is taking into account the fact that he is 70 pounds heavier, but it doesn't seem fair especially since he always walks in the door after a workout, heads straight to the refrigerator and pours a half a cup of caramel topping into his mouth.
As a woman I can barely handle such an act of blasphemy. The Lord gave him 70 bonus calories and he has the audacity to just pour them down his throat. It shows a complete lack of reverence toward the thousands of women in this country who carefully meter out every calorie they put into their bodies, and he should be punished by having those 70 calories cut straight out of his thigh.
I would just like to say to her: Did you also marry my husband?
(The rest of the post doesn't give the same impression. Fortunately.)
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Explaining abortion to kids.
Sally has a great post up on what she told her children when they asked for an explanation of "Abortion Rights."
h/t Betty Duffy, who I hope won't mind that I plagiarized her entire post up to here, because what more is there to say about it?
Actually I do have something to add. I'm teaching 20th-century U. S. History to my 10-y-o and a couple of other kids this year. Roe v. Wade (with its companion case Doe v Bolton and the later one, Casey v Planned Parenthood) is on my list of topics to cover (though I'm asking the other kids' parents to cover it separately rather than doing it as a group — it's a sensitive enough topic that I want it to be dealt with between the parents and their own children; I don't think I can or should teach it to someone else's child.)
When I was organizing the course by topic — because we're not following a text, I designed this history curriculum myself around good children's books — I discovered that standard American history courses, even if they are careful not to issue an explicit judgement about abortion rights, usually cover Roe v. Wade either in a chapter about the counterculture and the sexual revolution, or in a chapter about women's rights and sometimes in a chapter about civil rights as well as women's rights. The message is pretty clear by the topic grouping: Roe v. Wade belongs in the chapter on progress.
Well. I thought about this one for a while. There are some other tricky topics to cover as well. In the end I decided to create a unit which I call, "Changes to the American Experience of Childhood." Because hey, I'm teaching kids here.
And in that unit I'm going to cover things like more women working, and the leap in the divorce rate, and Title IX too, and things like that. But not so much through the experience of adults, which is how the writers of most textbooks treat it. I want to teach it through the lens of what it was like f0r children living in families.
Because it's not simple, but by seeing what these changes did for children, the people who really couldn't control what happened to them much, I think the most important moral questions come into focus.
I mean, you cannot deny that at this time, girls, growing up, saw their possible futures multiply and expand in an unprecedented way. Take Title IX alone. Leaving aside the controversies at the college level over funding and exactly what constitutes "fairness" — at the high school level, the change to allowing girls to participate in sports, well, that's huge. Girlhood changed for the better because of it.
At the same time, in a not unrelated development, more children spent time in day cares, more children grew up in broken homes, more children lived every day with the knowledge that families weren't permanent.
And, of course: the smallest children lost all meaningful legal protection over their lives. More of them, as a result, lost lives, families, everything.
So: all these changes, not from a "rights of adults" standpoint; from a standpoint of "what was the effect, on children, of adults demanding their rights?"
Like the author of the linked article, I think I don't need to spell out the rights and wrongs of any of this stuff. I only have to ask the kids to put themselves in the place of their own young imaginary selves, the selves of their younger siblings.
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Cutting back the recipe.
Kara at Mama Sweat posts her favorite one-hour gym workout, involving 30 minutes on the stationary bike, 20 minutes on the treadmill, and 10 minutes in the pool: a mini-triathlon. It sounds pretty good, and has the advantage of being simple and easy to remember.
I was pretty fixated on the idea that because of time to change/shower, I had to either swim or run at the gym. Not both.
Then I recently started doing some running drills that only took up 20 minutes, and part of the drill was to keep the running short, so I tried "jumping in the pool for a quick swim." I found out something important: It doesn't actually take all that much extra time to change for a brief swim, if you were going to shower anyway. And if you love swimming, it feels really good.
So now I'm one of those crazy gym people who heads all sweaty into the locker room, puts on a suit, and heads right back out again for "workout number two." (Sure, workout number two is only ten minutes, but still.)
One little thing to add though. I think the act of calling something a "one hour" workout sets up a mental block of sorts. I know that some people will look at this and say "I don't have an hour" or "I have an hour, but it's really only 45 minutes because I have to change and shower in my hour." And then they will skip right over it, looking for a "great 45-minute workout."But of course, any "one-hour" workout (including this one) can be shortened if necessary. It's just like cutting back on a recipe: divide all the ingredients by whatever amount you need to cut back. Round to the nearest minute, and you're good.
So, for instance, Kara's 30-20-10 workout can become 22-15-8. Voila. A forty-five minute workout. And it's just as "great" as the one-hour workout she posted.
I know it may SEEM obvious, but it's almost as if sometimes you feel like you need "permission" to tweak someone else's "perfect one-hour workout." It took me a while as a novice exerciser to realize I could do this.
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Information at your fingertips.
We were wondering how cold we could let our beer get, outside, before risking exploded cans and/or bottles.
Google to the rescue!
Here to report that if you type in "what temperature" into Google, the third pop-up autofill on the list is "what temperature does beer freeze."
Sweet.
Right after "what temperature does water boil" and "what temperature to cook a turkey."
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Mistyping.
I wonder if Cliff Reader, Ph.D., Digital Consultant, Business Development, Expert Witness, gets a whole lot of unexplained web traffic from lots of people who never follow up to ask for any consulting or expert witnessing.
He certainly gets a lot from me.
I can't possibly be the only person to one-handedly attempt to access Google Reader by typing "reader.google.com" into the address bar of my web browser, and accidentally wind up going to "reader.com" instead. Several times a day.
The same thing happens to me with a particular blog that I like to read on occasion, but don't subscribe to because I only want to see it when the political stories won't put me in a foul mood. The first four letters of its name, followed by ".com," are the URL of some kind of soft-core porn site. Bleah.
I realize that there is a solution to this problem, and its name is "bookmarks." But, hey, it's a slow day and I needed to rant about something.
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Commenter ChristyP on blogtalkradio.
Link here to blog-friend Christy P promoting the Creighton model study that she posted about here in a guest post. She explains a little bit more about what the study's for. If you're interested or know someone who's interested, check it out!
Here's the link – audio will play at the link.
A blog post with no audio here.
Especially if you know someone who's looking for a new method, or is engaged, you might want to recommend it. This strikes me as a good way to broach the subject of NFP with an engaged couple you know.
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bearing blog 
I gave a quick answer for the combox:
I think it's a question worthy of highlighting for further discussion, don't you?
My point, in putting Roe v. Wade within a unit on the experience of childhood, is to point out that it affected the legal status of children primarily — much more than it did the legal status of women. Of course, this only follows from the notion that unborn children are, in fact children; but I am sure the commenter understands that this is a fundamental assumption in my homeschool.
As with all my educational theories, we shall see how it plays out as my children get older and ask tougher questions. My philosophy about imparting the conviction that the unborn deserve protection is that it's necessary to go beyond "abortion is bad, so don't ever have one or pay for one or recommend one, try to help people who think it's their only choice, and vote against it whenever you can."
What's more fundamental than that? What's more necessary than that? Well — ask yourself why abortion is a bad thing, why people shouldn't have them, pay for them, promote them, why it's better to help people make different choices, why its legal status should change. The only good answer is that the unborn are persons, children, and all those judgments follow from it.
The Catholic novelist and short-story master Flannery O'Connor once famously said about the Eucharist, "If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it." Well. About the anti-abortion movement, I can say: "If the unborn aren't persons, than to hell with it."
And so the thing that must be imparted is the gut-and-brain knowledge that unborn children are nothing more nor less than children, younger than themselves. A ten-year-old boy will protect his little sister like a Rottweiler: I have seen it. A four-year-old girl will carefully care for her baby brother: I have seen it. The whole family will gather eagerly around Mom's belly to watch for the tiny kicks: I have seen it. They know. They mustn't lose this knowledge.
If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that she needs care, not violence.
If you know that an unborn child is a child, you don't need to be told that a scared pregnant girl is a scared young mother with a baby, that a boy with a pregnant girlfriend is a worried young father. I'll have completely failed any one of my sons if he makes it to adulthood without being able to imagine what it might be like, what it is like for too many American men: to fear that he can't care for his family. I'll have failed my daughter if she grows up without putting herself in the place of a mother who's afraid she can't care adequately for herself and for her child.
I believe that to awaken compassion for young mothers and young fathers and their children is to awaken a desire to help them all, not a desire to harm any of them. Political positions come long after that.
Readers: What do you think of Emma's question and challenge? A good one, no?