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Now THAT’S a Thanksgiving story

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Way to go, Grandma!

BOSTON – A Boston woman has succeeded at one of the all-time great Thanksgiving Day juggling acts: She cooked the turkey while helping deliver her baby granddaughter.

Patricia McCalop was in the middle of preparing the meal when her daughter suddenly went into labor two weeks early.

McCalop called 911, and a dispatcher talked her through the delivery and helped her confirm that the baby girl was breathing.

Paramedics arrived shortly afterward and took Africa McCalop and her newborn to the hospital. They are both in good health.

Patricia McCalop said she kept running between the kitchen and her daughter in labor because she didn’t want the turkey to burn while helping her child deliver the baby.

“I’m like, ‘What are you doing with the turkey? We got the baby,'” Africa McCalop told the Boston Herald. “She didn’t know what to do. She’s like, ‘I got to go get the turkey baster.’ I’m like, ‘For what?'”

The infant weighed six pounds.

No word on the turkey’s weight, but I’ll bet it tasted great!

Community MIA

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Three articles in yesterday’s Macleans on community Missing in Action. Barbara Amiel talks about Daul Kim, a South Korean model who killed herself at 20, writing before she died that “the more I gain the more lonely it is. I’m like a ghost”; Kate Fillion interviewing a former Tokyo hostess who provided emotional comfort to Japanese men for a living, thereby losing her own husband and finally, a short story referring to Nadia Kajouji, who committed suicide after discussing it online.

Community is one manner in which to combat systemic loneliness. Sadly, we don’t have strong communities.

I think about this problem from a public policy perspective often enough. Would we have a campaign for government-funded daycare, if families weren’t so atomized? Would we have a campaign for the legalization of assisted suicide if people didn’t fear becoming a burden as they age and sitting around by themselves, staring at the walls? Would we think abortion was a viable option if women and men and families were supported in a meaningful way? I wonder.

With community MIA, government tries to fund it. This doesn’t work, generally speaking. I say strong families and/or friendships create the strong communities, not the other way around.

I am reading a book just now by Jean Vanier about community. It’s a good read. We may have no community in modern, North American life because it’s easier to live in the delusion that one is perfect, simply because one is alone.

Just rambling thoughts for a Saturday morning.

Of simulated sex acts and garlic mashed potatoes

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Look: I know there’s sex everywhere all the time no matter where you look. But still, there are times when I get a little shock from the – how to describe it – utter lack of any sense of occasion displayed by those who write about such things.

Example: This news story about Lindsay Lohan posing topless for a French magazine. Here’s what it says after describing how “In the shoot she can be seen simulating sex with both a man and woman.”

Meanwhile, Lindsay will be busy preparing Thanksgiving dinner with her family, at their home in Long Island, New York.

Lindsay’s mother Dina said: “Lindsay is making the garlic mashed potatoes. They are amazing!”

No, no, no. Either you write about the starlet’s bare-it-all antics, or you discuss how she celebrates Thanksgiving. You don’t mix the two – they really don’t go together very well.

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Andrea has a lot of thoughts on this one: One: Is this something her mother is proud of or trying to ignore? (“My daughter is in a nude photo shoot simulating sex with strangers… Wow! These mashed potatoes sure are great!”) Two: Only in America would a reporter try to merge Thanksgiving and sex. Three: Rome didn’t fall in a day, and America won’t fall because of Lindsay Lohan. But the words “civilizational decline” spring to mind. Four: The pilgrims sure as heck are turning in their graves. Finally, is there a funny comedy sketch in there somewhere? Lohan at a pilgrim’s thanksgiving table? Or is it just too sad?

Like I said, lots of thoughts in my head on this one.

Defending Vellacott, part II

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I continue to defend Maurice Vellacott in the face of Liberal histrionics. Yikes. Is there valium available in the House of Commons?

Neville said the comments were “vile” and “completely degrading to women” and demanded the Harper Conservatives reject them. “His comments show an odious attitude toward women,” she said, comparing him to a “Reform party extremist.”

At the same time, I will say this: he had to know his comments would be received this way. We live in an abortion-friendly culture. People by and large think abortion is sad but necessary in some circumstances. Coming out guns ablazin’ with the idea that it constitutes a battery (true) and that the mere presence of the choice does women wrong (true) is all well and good but there were probably a couple of steps that could have come first in nurturing old-school feminists like Anita along. She is living in the 60s, and we need to get her to the 70s, even the 80s, before hitting her with the new millenium.

That said, I’m glad when abortion comes up.

A chivalrous defence–that’s me defending him

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A kerfuffle brewing because an MP, Maurice Vellacott, expresses the view that abortion is an injustice for women.

This may come as news to many–but it’s not to me. There is a valiant history of women defending the pro-life position. In fact there was a time when feminists actively campaigned for the criminalization of abortion in support of women’s rights.

One pro-life feminist, Rachel MacNair, calls abortion a “battery”–“Surgery done on a healthy body is mutilation, and such surgery done without adequately informed consent is a battery.”

This is not currently the mainstream consensus, but it once was. Discussing and debating this from every angle will be very important. I for one support getting full information about abortion and what it does out there.

Furthermore, I also acknowledge that where there is the presence of this choice, it holds a magnetic pull for short-term “resolution” of “the problem.” I would not have been immune to it–but supporting women means doing so within the context of our reproductive capacities, not outside it, demanding invasive surgery to eradicate a natural outcome of having sex.

Here ends my rant for today.

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Brigitte adds: Allow me to join you in his defence. He’s not the first to make that point, and he won’t be the last one, either. Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy against her will (say, after a rape) isn’t fair, even if in many cases having an abortion wouldn’t really “solve” that woman’s problems. But neither is pressuring her to have an abortion against her will. And those who think women in Canada today are almost never pressured into having unwanted abortions are deluded.

The first step is for the rest of us to notice

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A terrifying article about acid burning in Pakistan (and other countries in that area). Warning: It contains graphic pictures of women who were attacked in this most barbaric way.

I’m linking to it here because, as Nicholas Kristof wrote: “Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies: they are poor and female. The first step is simply for the world to take note, to give voice to these women.”

Please, take note. At the very least, take note.

A right to die isn’t the same as state-sanctioned euthanasia

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Hey, if you’re old and sick and hurting and tired of living, and would rather find a way to accelerate your departure from this planet, that is your business. So maybe you stop taking the countless pills various doctors prescribe and get a stiff drink or three instead. Maybe you take up heavy smoking again. Maybe you refuse treatment and only accept pain-killers (or pain-numbers). If the choice is between being dependent on machines or dying, many of us would choose to go. That’s a choice only you and the people who love you can make.

This is what I call your right to die by refusing treatment, getting disconnected from life support, or simply by living extremely dangerously. All adults have it, and provided your loved ones (and ideally your lawyer as well) are made aware of your preferences, you should be able to get your wish, even if you are not in possession of your faculties. I don’t believe this author has any reason to be worried about the current legal framework surrounding end-of-life issues. He currently has the right to choose not to be kept “alive well past what nature had intended”. And given how stretched medical resources are in this country, I’m willing to bet he won’t run into very strong protests on the part of his doctors should he find himself in such a situation.

Having the right to refuse treatment and die more or less your own way is not the same as instituting state-sanctioned euthanasia. It would help if people didn’t mix up the two so often.

Ditching the Pill

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Sounds a bit new-ageist at times (or is New Age passé now? I never know what’s cool), especially the bit about the “emotional identity attached to achieving your own menstrual cycle, and being able to read your body”, but whatever, I’m glad young women are reconsidering the Pill.

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