When women gather in New York to talk about women. Reminds me to mention a tremendous film I recently saw–U.N. Me. 

That’s all I’ll say about that for now.

I used to take large rocks out to our backyard and pound them with a hammer to see what was inside. When my parents found out they made me put on safety goggles but the exploration continued. Good times.

This article talks about letting your kids live a little:

The book’s title is “deliberately provocative,” Tulley says, and it’s meant as both a guidebook for fretful parents who want to loosen up and a “call to action for over-protected children,” with instructions on safe ways to experiment with dangerous things. “We create a false impression in our minds that children are in peril all the time and everywhere, when in fact, according to the most recent studies, this is the safest time in history for children,” he says. “There couldn’t be a better time to be running around outside playing.”

I agree, however, I have to ask–with two parents working, who takes care of the kid when the garden gate gets slammed in your eye? (This because you are chasing someone in tag, who rightly thinks, aha, I’ll slow her down by slamming the gate behind me…Yes, this also happened to me. Hello major black eye.)

So I agree and disagree–it is a safe age, and our kids could run around outside but empty neighbourhoods with no one home aren’t super conducive to that. Kids may well be coddled these days but they also don’t raise themselves and many neighbourhoods are empty after school. That doesn’t feel safe to me.

________________________

Brigitte adds: I was chatting with someone last night who was saying how difficult it was for kids to find friends to play with outside, since everyone was at some kind of supervised and organized activity, not just outside like we used to be way back in the dark ages (aka the pre-1995 era). I refrained from asking him what connection, if any, he saw between that phenomenon and the fact that most adults, including him and his wife, work outside the home so much.

A poignant piece about the risks of having children in Uganda by the founder of Save the Mothers, one Jean Chamberlain. Then there’s this in the Hill Times (subscriber access only) suggesting the Liberals will push Harper to include abortion in his maternal health mandate for the G8.

At bottom, I think Canadians know that maternal health involves what Chamberlain describes and that including abortion is deeply political and actually irrelevant when women are bleeding to death after delivery.

More soon, by the way, on my discussions with World Vision vis-a-vis maternal health and abortion… Stay tuned.

Abortion takes the lives of blacks disproportionately. And reported in The Times, no less. All the very horrifying news that’s fit to print:

Abortion opponents say the number is so high because abortion clinics are deliberately located in black neighborhoods and prey upon black women. The evidence, they say, is everywhere: Planned Parenthood’s response to the anti-abortion ad that aired during theSuper Bowl featured two black athletes, they note, and several women’s clinics offered free services — including abortions — to evacuees after Hurricane Katrina.

If there is something more annoying than a random bag of milk rupturing and slowly leaking inside your fridge, what is it?

Yikes:

Almost 6 percent of American women, that’s 7.5 million adult women, report using prescription medicines for a boost of energy, a dose of calm or other non-medical reasons, according to the latest numbers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“Many may not consider what they’re doing abuse because they’re using a prescribed drug,” says Susan R.B. Weiss, chief of NIDA’s Science Policy Branch. “Many of these medications are being taken as performance-enhancers.”

[…]

To blame may be what some are calling the superwoman syndrome. Overworked, overwhelmed and overscheduled women juggling families, friends and careers are turning to stimulants, painkillers and anti-anxiety meds to help launch them through endless to-do lists.

I have no idea whether that’s true or not – I’m sure there are all kinds of reasons people take drugs, and they probably don’t all have to do with trying to do too much. But hey. If you find yourself so overwhelmed that you need anti-anxiety meds, maybe what you need is a break instead. Take it from someone who’s gone through a few burn-outs and has learned this lesson the very (very) hard way: Less is almost always more.

Seriously: I haven’t watched five minutes of Olympics coverage (one, I don’t have television, two, I don’t have time these days to watch anything, and three, the limited time I get for athleticism I spend in my dojo). But I’m enjoying stories like this, and this:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Even after nearly 20 years of skating and traveling the world with his ice dance partner Isabelle Delobel, Olivier Schoenfelder was never expecting the phone call he received from her last winter.

The good news: Delobel was pregnant. The bad news: Delobel was pregnant and the Winter Olympics were in little more than a year.

[…]

The petite, dark-haired Delobel and the tall, blond Schoenfelder, both from France, were world champions in 2008 and were looking like favorites for the gold medal in Vancouver after climbing the ranks for many years, an ice dance prerequisite, and finishing fourth in the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy.

But a shoulder injury that Delobel sustained in December 2008 during an exhibition interrupted their season, and it was during her injury layoff that she became pregnant.

“I was still convinced we’d make it to the Olympics,” said Delobel, 31, in an interview after the compulsory dance Friday night in Vancouver.

The reaction from their rivals is a blend of admiration for Delobel’s ability to return so quickly and of sympathy for Schoenfelder.

[…]

Though Delobel continued to train and skate deep into her pregnancy, even suffering the occasional fall in practice, she left the ice in late July, giving birth on Oct. 1 to a son, Loïs, and then returning to practice in late October at their longtime training base in Lyon, France. She began three-a-day sessions and intense physical training in November.

“You better believe it was tough,” said Delobel, who had gained close to 20 pounds during pregnancy. “It was really a physical challenge, but I’m proud to have managed it.”

And she has every right to be. Well done!

I wish I could say we’re making this up:

Anti-smoking porn?  Only in France.

And you thought the lap-dancing teachers in Winnipeg were setting a bad example… Apparently we Canadians have nothing on the French.  Here comes news of a new anti-smoking ad that is causing quite a stir in France.  You can judge for yourself, but the porn-inspired photos leave little to the imagination.