Life Changing, Love Inducing, All Powerful Toddler Naming Contest

Our friend Chuck sent us this terrifying picture of my baby to confirm my last post's assertion that BabyG is more aptly TodderG.



Speaking of which: I never liked the name BabyG and am finding TodderG intolerable. I'm not sure I can ever write the word again it's so bad.

I therfore hereby and because of announce:
direct from MaGreen, GreenDaddy & the todder formerly known as BabyG:
the one and only, the first ever, never again, higly unique and extraordinary:

NAME!
THAT!
TODDLER!
CONTEST!
EXTRAVAGANZA!

Rules are: in the comments, you suggest one to fourteen possible blogland names for the toddler pictured above (or anywhere below). Hopefully the names will either adhere to the general rules of nomenclanture at Green Parenting, or completely revision them. I have already considered and discarded the following three options: ToddlerG, GreenToddler & Sprout. I like people knowing I'm talking about a toddler right off, but not so much I need toddler in the name. I like Sprout because it's the name of the Jolly Green Giant's little friend, and it's a little green thing. But that's also why I don't like it.

THE WINNER will receive a bottle of MaGreen's Famous, Handmixed, Non-Toxic, Sweet-Smelling All-Purpose Cleaner.

Notes On BabyG

Who is, by the way, no longer a baby. She is a full blown, prancing, squawking, bluffing, bossing bundle of toddlerhood. And toddlerhood is an incredible thing – I realize now that the old doctors and aunties who write books about how to be parents were not even slightly exaggerating when they talked about the extraordinary smarty-pantsedness of these little tykes. In fact, I swear to moss and emeralds and all things pretty and green that if you put your ear to my baby girl’s ear the same way you’d put your ear to a seashell, you will actually hear the gurgling and bubbling of rapidly developing human brain. (Unfortunately you won’t be able to test this fact since my baby would bite, claw, climb, stuff an elbow inside of, yank the hair above, or kiss your ear long before it reached her ear for verification.)

Proof? In just the last few days I taught her to kick! Kick! Kick! in the pool. She's mastered the difference between her arm and her elbow. We’ve taught her to sleep without breastfeeding, to carry her potty to the toilet after she’s gone (she’s not ready to dump…) A chasing game I improvised the other day has been transformed, by her, into this: she: pulling a little ball toy behind her; Mommy or Daddy: follows her while pushing the ‘popper’ toy. Sounds harmless but it means hours of minutes ‘chasing’ the baby from room to room, in a circular fashion. The whole time we have to shout: Weeeee! Weeeee! Weeeee! And if we stop, she drops her toys and shrieks! (The twos are coming on strong)

More charmingly, I taught her to open her eyes and to close her eyes last night, in hopes it’d help when it was bedtime. Only it backfired, because she makes this hilarious effort at closing the eyes. Instead of just letting her eyelids fall normally, she expends all this effort and ends up in this fluttering eyelid state. (It reminds me of that exercise where you sit in a pretend chair, and your muscles shake and buckle, and your body’s saying: don’t tell me you’ve gone and forgotten how to sit down on the floor, because if this is the best you can do, we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble…)

Living the Three Quarters Life

Yesterday, I switched to a three quarters full-time schedule for my job. I negotiated this arrangement eight months ago, but the switch depended on a new person joining the office staff and training that person to take over some of my responsibilities.

At first when I wrote out my new schedule to share with my co-workers, I felt disappointed. After all the patience and bureaucratic legwork it took to make the part-time switch, I realized that thirty hours is not dramatically different than forty hours. I will still go to work five days per week and during most of the daylight hours I will be sitting at a desk staring at a computer screen. Instead of starting work at eight, I am to start at ten the first three days of the week. Thursdays, I will leave at one so I can take a course towards my doctoral degree. Fridays, I will work a full day.

But those two hours yesterday morning were precious and wonderful. I left the house when I normally would in the morning, but instead of going to my office I wrote in the library. The whole day I felt more cheerful and energetic. My work and family life felt more balanced. It is not that I spent more time with MaGreen and BabyG, but when I got home, instead of crashing on the couch and slogging through the evening, we all went to the university outdoor swimming pool. BabyG seemed to enjoy the pool. She climbed up the small slide and slid down it about twenty times in a row. Even though the absolute quantity of time I spent with my family did not change, I think the quality of the time was better.

In order to arrange this three-quarter schedule, I had to give up a quarter of my pay, which was used to cover part of the new staff person’s salary. We could not be able to pull this off oeconomically if MaGreen did not manage our finances as carefully as she does. She keeps track of our expenses using a computer program Quicken. She spent several days earlier this summer switching us to an internet bank, turning off our landline, setting up a good Skype account, and doing various other things to save us money. Also, even though my total income will decrease, our taxes will be lower so the cut in my take home pay is less than the total cut in my gross pay.

I hope I continue to feel good about the three quarters life and that it also helps MaGreen and BabyG feel a good balance in their lives too.

Material Differences

During our trip to India, I tried to pay attention to the material conditions that my family there live in and the way they choose to consume. Last year, the state of Gujarat, where my family is from, grew at a 10 percent rate. That is equivalent to China’s growth rate.

So the material conditions and choices I want to describe are those of middle-class Indians in one of India’s most prosperous states. The very poor in India consume a fraction of the resources used by people in the US, but what about the rising middle-class? Is the Indian middle-class copying American behavior? For example, George W. Bush defended his decision not to sign the Kyoto agreement by saying, "Kyoto would have wrecked our economy. I couldn't in good faith have signed Kyoto," and claimed that the treaty didn't require other "big polluters" such as India and China to cut emissions. Indians were quick to point out that pollution rates per capita for India are extremely low. But even environmentalists in the US shake their heads and lament the thousands of new cars on the roads in Asia canceling out the virtues of those who buy hybrids in America.

What I saw was that the middle-class in India go to great lengths to conserve energy and resources. We ought to consider carefully how middle-class Indians live and actually compare, in a detailed way, their lifestyles with those of people in the US before we come to conclusions about what respective initiatives are needed by each nation. I wrote out a list of sustainable practices and design choices that I noticed in the homes I visited in Gujarat:

Multiple overhead fans strategically placed over seating areas that rotate at extremely fast speeds

Window air-conditioning units in specific rooms that are kept closed when the unit is in use, so that people gather in an air-conditioned part of the house rather than air-condition the entire home

Easy to open shutters that let breezes in

Marble or tile flooring that stays cool in the heat

Reupholstering of old furniture rather than purchasing new

Lines strung in the balcony for drying clothes

Long rows of switches that can turn off each light, appliance, plug, or electrical device so that nothing is left running on standby

Western-style, sit-down toilets with a knob that controls water coming from the pipes so you can flush using just the right amount of water rather than always having to empty the entire tank.

Bidets rather than toilet paper, so less trees cut and less water required to flush

Solar water heaters or small, gas water heaters that make hot bathing water on demand rather than the huge contraptions we have in the US that keep a big tank of water hot all day and night

Buckets in the bathroom for “dhol” baths

Rooftops that collect rainwater and channel it into wells, which prevents flooding, replenishes aquifers, and averts salination in seaside areas

Pressure cookers with stacked containers inside of them, which make the most of the energy used by their gas stoves

Wall-mounted water purifiers rather than bottled water

Numerous stainless steel canisters for efficient storage of dry snacks, lentils, grains, and rice instead of disposable containers

Scooters for small commutes and running errands

My relatives in India live in comfort. They have refrigerators, air-conditioning, washing machines, microwaves, gas stoves, hot water for baths, good drinking water, well-appointed living spaces, and their own transportation. And yet, they use a fraction of the resources that people in the US do. (My cousin said he would share his utility bills with me so I can back up my claim with some numbers in the near future.) When middle-class Indians – the so-called biggest polluters according to Bush – have gone to such efforts, how can we in the US demand “equal” commitments to reductions in emissions. The burden is on those of us in United States and Europe.

Car Seats in Asia?

Before we went to Thailand and India, we made an appointment with a specialist in pediatric travel medicine at the children’s hospital. After a long wait, the doctor told us that BabyG didn’t need any shots or extra vaccinations beyond what she already had, but then the doctor read off a long list of precautions we should take:

*Dress the baby in long sleeves and pants
*Apply insect repellent on all exposed skin daily
*Apply permethrin to the baby’s clothes (another kind of insect repellent)
*Avoid rural areas and contact with animals
*Give the baby mefloquine to prevent malaria (based on BabyG’s weight, she recommended a quarter of the regular tablet)
*Use a car seat.

“The number one cause of child mortality in foreign countries is motor vehicle crashes,” she said.

The bill for talking to this specialist, even though she didn’t give BabyG any medicines, was over one hundred dollars. I remember thinking, we better heed her advice since it cost us so much. MaGreen bought Ultrathon insect repellent, which worked very well. We soaked the clothes in permethrin instead of spraying it on, since it repels insects longer that way. The house started to reek of poison while we did this, so we shifted the operation outside. Apparently, once the permethrin has bonded to the fibers in the clothing, it is not known to be toxic to humans. We even packed a mosquito net.

But a car seat? How could we carry BabyG’s huge Britax car seat around Asia? In my previous trips to India, I had never seen anyone use a car seat. Even my brother and sister-in-law, who are very safety conscious doctors, didn’t use one with their son while in Asia. But the doctor’s words rang in our ears. Number one cause of child mortality. After all of our preparations and expenses, what kind of parents would we be if BabyG got hurt because we didn’t put her in a car seat? People wanted to take Britney Spears’ kid away from her because she got caught by the paparazzi not using one. So we bought a $40 portable car seat off the web. The user reviews were mixed, but the manufacturer said it could fit into backpacks and weighed less than 4 pounds.

In Thailand, none of the taxis we encountered had seat belts in the back seat. They seemed to have been cut out. The tuk-tuks, which are like rikshaws, were built without seat belts. And sometimes tuk-tuks were the only mode of transport available. When we went to Khao Yai National Park, we specially arranged in advance for a taxi that did have seat belts. After a long and difficult instillation, we managed to get BabyG in the car seat on the way there. But on the way back, she absolutely refused to sit in it.

In India, my cousin’s van was also built without seatbelts and by that time we were resigned to holding BabyG in our lap or letting her sit on the floor. According to one of my uncles, fatalities from crashes in India happen for completely different reasons than they do in the US.

Most of the time, in India, motor vehicles are rarely driving over twenty-five miles per hour, so collisions between small vehicles at high speeds, where a seat belt would really help, don’t happen frequently, he said. Sometimes cars get trapped between large trucks on the two-lane roads, he added, and then a seatbelt will help no one.

As you can imagine, I didn’t find this analysis very reassuring! And yet, we all survived – praise the Green Goddesses -- and BabyG enjoyed the break from car seats as you can see in the pictures. (When we passed cows on the road, she mooed with glee.)

Travelling with Cloth Diapers

At eighteen months, BabyG was, for the most part, potty trained. She consistently told us when she needed to go to the bathroom by saying pee pee, making the pssss sound, picking up her little potty, or grunting while squatting. She would try to take her diaper off and sit on the potty without assistance, but we usually needed to help her out. When she was done, she stood up, tried to pick up the potty, and walked it over to the toilet, but I helped out because I didn't want any spillage. We thought that maybe we wouldn't even need to take diapers when travelling to India and Thailand, but BabyG did occasionally wet a diaper (but always did #2 in the potty).

It was, of course, really difficult for BabyG and MaGreen on the fourteen hour plane trip from the US to Asia. During the first half of the flight, BabyG went through all of the diapers in the handbag and MaGreen used the maxipads from the airplane lavatory to line the diaper cover. BabyG seemed to sense the diaper situation at that point and during the second half of the flight she actually used the airplane toilet with her mommy's help.

When MaGreen and BabyG walked out of the airport terminal in Bangkok, both had this look on their faces, like they were trying their hardest not to cry. When BabyG got sight of me, she did start to cry. Not a full throttle, but bewildered and weak. We gave the diapers to the hotel laundry service and they charged $1.50 per diaper! So when BabyG wet a few diapers over the next couple of days while sightseeing in Bangkok, I promptly soaked them in the sink before they started to stink and tried to dry them in the window. They didn't dry well in the window so MaGreen found a spot on the roof near the hotel's solar water heaters.

During the flight to India, BabyG wet a few more diapers and we decided to wash the whole batch in my aunt's washing machine. Until recently, none of my family members in India had washing machines. They don't have dryers. All the lines strung in the balcony and all the bars across the windows were hung with our laundry.



I like the picture above. There are BabyG's diapers, slowly drying despite the monsoon rains. It rained for three straight days when we arrived. It's so cloudy, the energy-sipping, tube light seems brighter than the natural light. My cousin's wife is there quietly arranging things. She has a degree in statistics. She says that it's difficult to find part-time work in India and concentrates on raising two children and running the household, which she does very gracefully. As we toured the state of Gujarat, I noticed the laundry hanging from all the homes, nearly every balcony festooned, some with saris billowing out. BabyG returned to her Elimination Communication ways and it was over a week before we needed the diapers washed again. We were staying at a house where a young maid did the wash by hand and I saw her make a face at the diapers but she washed them.

So we travelled to the other side of the planet using cloth diapers. In case you were wondering, it can be done. It wasn't especially hard. I washed them myself by hand, sometimes we had access to a washing machine, and other times a professional washer woman did the work. And they dried, even during the monsoon. I feel good about not leaving a trail of soiled plastic across Asia.

How the Sun Shines on the Soda Men

Two young male workers unload bottles from a Coca Cola delivery truck in Bangkok. Their shirts are a brighter red than the truck. The taller one is broad-shouldered and the veins of his forearms are thick. The shorter one has a Buddhist amulet around his neck. They are proud. They step out of the shade and pose for me in the full sunlight. They stare at the camera, but just underneath their serious looks are smirks. I want the picture to document how they collect used glass bottles while delivering full ones ready for consumption. In Thailand, as in India, soda bottles almost never go into the garbage. They are not melted down or remade. They go back to the bottling plant and are used again in their original form. You must drink your Cokes where you buy them. No sipping while strolling down the streets. No casual toss and clink of bottle against bottle in the garbage bin. I want the picture to be about recycling in Asia, but the picture is about something else. It is about Thai men who want the world to see how vital they are. I think they want their country to be seen shining, attractive, and modern.

Just Tea: An Interview with Janaka Biyanwila

A month back at the 2007 Conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics in Bangkok, I met Dr. Janaka Biyanwila, a father and teacher of Organisational and Labour Studies at the University of Western Australia in Perth. He was awarded a prize at the conference for a paper on unions and women tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka. The contest he won is named in honour of Rhonda Williams, who was an African-American activist and economist.

I had the opportunity during a break between sessions to record an interview with Janaka, which I have transcribed below.

Me: Congratulations on winning the Rhonda Williams Prize.

Janaka: Thank you.

Me: Could you tell me about the paper you submitted to win this prize?

Janaka: The paper was about tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka. I was particularly interested in looking at trade unions in the tea plantations. The women at these tea plantations are one of the most marginalized and exploited groups of workers in Sri Lanka. Tea is a very important export commodity for Sri Lanka and has been for over 150 years, which is part of the colonial legacy. The conditions of the tea workers who live in these plantations have changed very little over the years. Even though these workers have been organized since the 1930s, there has been little change in the living and working conditions in the plantations. It’s about much more than the trade union strategy, though. It’s about plantations in general, the kind of productions systems there, because they have maintained these conditions of poverty. My intervention was to look at why these trade unions are not pushing for better conditions and livelihoods for these women.

What I discovered was that even though the dominant trade unions are mostly male-biased, patriarchal, bureaucratic unions, there are some unions that are willing to link up with more activist organizations and to mobilize women much more than the traditional, party-dominated trade unions that exist in the plantations. One of the things that I focused on in my paper was this new network that has come up linking tea plantation workers across the globe, which started out of the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai. They started a network promoting what’s called an International Tea Day, which is December 14, to raise awareness about tea plantation workers across the globe, who are living in similar conditions.

Me: Could you describe those conditions in detail? What’s so bad about them?

Janaka: First of all, in terms of wages, their wages are just above bare minimum. In terms of daily wages, they make less than $2 per day. That’s only wages, but there is a whole regimentation of work too. These women are not only burdened by household work and wage work, but they are also burdened with communal, religious work, so there is a triple burden these women are experiencing. In terms of living conditions, housing and education are key issues the trade unions have been fighting for. They still live in these barrack-style line rooms, which are almost 10 feet by 10 feet small rooms where whole families live next to one another. These line rooms are separated from one another. They are surrounded by these tea plantations, cut off from other workers in other estates. So there is a bit isolation happening. With that, the plantation owners have never provided enough infrastructure. There’s lack of access to water, lack of access to electricity, and lack of access to transport.

Me: What about healthcare?

Janaka: Healthcare is another major area, definitely. In terms of poverty conditions, poverty has increased in the plantations in the last ten years. Malnutrition has also increased.

The tea plantations were nationalized in Sri Lanka from 1972 to about 1992, and in 1992 they were privatised. But the real process of nationalization only lasted from 1975 to about 1977, because from 1977 onwards Sri Lanka shifted to a neo-liberal, export-oriented economic strategy. So the privatisation of plantations was supported by the major trade unions because they were under political parties and the parties pushed privatisation. But in terms of worker conditions, this has had limited impact on improving their status.

Me: So for people living in the United States, Australia, or other places, what can we do besides feel guilty while drinking tea?

Janaka: It’s not about stopping tea drinking. Feeling guilty is OK because that might be an emotion that initiates some interest and desire to intervene in what’s going on in the whole global production chain around tea. All tea-producing countries, which are mostly in the South, have similar conditions. So one of the things we can do is to struggle for worker rights across the board in many areas, but in particular areas of tea-growing parts of the world. There is a website called justtea.org, which promotes something similar to fair trade practices.

Me: Through this website you can get information about solidarity activities?

Janaka: That’s one level. The other level is also trade union action. If you are linked with any trade unions or work organizations, it is good to find solidarity and share information with tea plantation workers because they need that solidarity, even just knowing that you in America are aware of what’s happening to tea plantation workers in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and Africa.

Me: Where I live in Houston there is a focus on maquiladora workers along the US-Mexican border. I think it is worth connecting those struggles with ones in other places.

Janaka: Definitely. In Sri Lanka, we have similar kinds of industrial zones, which are called Free Trade Zones. That’s another area I have been interested in studying, one of my research areas. Free Trade Zones are again anti-union, don’t allow worker rights. Nevertheless, these women have struggled and they have labour organizations. And one of the most innovative things one of these organizations has done is to have exchange programs with women plantation workers. So these young workers coming to these factories from rural areas are experiencing factory work for the first time, but at the same time, because of the way they are organizing, they are getting to share their experiences with other women and also understand what other women workers are going through. So I think these kinds of work exchange programs or awareness-raising programs are so important for building a broad solidarity for the struggle for worker rights.

Me: Thanks so much for talking with me. Is there anything else you want to say.

Janaka: Thank you so much. I’m glad you are here to push the struggle for worker rights and social justice.

Khao Yai National Park

We are back from our trip to Thailand and India. I had hoped to blog while travelling, but that didn't work out. We didn't have regular internet access. So what we are going to do is publish posts about different different parts of the trip over the next few weeks interspersed with non-trip posts.

Once MaGreen and BabyG joined me in Bangkok, we had time for a daytrip out of the city. We decided to go to the Khao Yai National Park. It is in the mountains about three hours from Bangkok. We hired a taxi with seatbelts to take us there and back. The waterfall we saw was the most amazing part of the trip.



The trail was about one mile long followed by two hundred steep steps to the base of the waterfall.



The park is the home of wild elephants. We saw plenty of elephant excrement but no actual wild elephants. We saw other wild animals including this buck and several monkeys.



BabyG enjoyed herself. We let her stick her head out the window as we drove slowly down the nearly empty park roads.

We are all in Thailand

On Sunday, MaGreen and BabyG made it to Thailand after a harrowing journey. They were not stranded in Atlanta for three days like I was, but BabyG had a very difficult time after the first seven hours of the fourteen hour flight to Seoul. MaGreen said that she cried for the last half briefly stopping to breastfeed. She would swallow the benedryl MaGreen brought and without a dropper, MaGreen could not force it down. Delta, apparently, was not terribly child friendly. The Incheon (Seoul) Airport had a play room which BabyG enjoyed. It even had a little trampoline that she tried out. The last leg of journey, via Korean Airlines from Seoul to Bangkok, went more smoothly. The stewardesses gave BabyG a wonderful book with “magic” reusable stickers of people from all around the world. Nonetheless, when MaGreen and BabyG emerged from immigration and customs at the Bangkok airport, they looked exhausted. I was waiting there for them. BabyG was quiet and had this look on her face that I had never seen before. As soon as she saw me, she started to cry, not loudly, but very plaintively. We took a metered cab to our hotel, the Bhiman Inn, and after an hour more of crying, BabyG, MaGreen, and I finally got some sleep.

Monday, we took the ferry down the Chao Phraya river to the Royal Palace and the temple housing the Emerald Buddha. The lady managing the boat really packed us foreign tourists into that boat. It was hot, but once we made it inside the compound we rehydrated. The temple was extraordinary. We were amazed by the littler details, like the golden bird lamps, the roofing, and the statues of sentries outside the entries of the buildings. In the afternoon, MaGreen and our friend Monica, who is traveling with us, got a traditional Thai massage at the massage school inside a nearby temple. BabyG and I went back to the hotel and reconnected. We read books, tickled each other, and crawled around the bed. MaGreen and BabyG skipped dinner and went straight to bed.



Tuesday, MaGreen was sick. She seems to have had a flu that peaked around noon and by the evening had nearly resolved. Monica, BabyG, and I visited some local markets in Baglamphu and Chinatown. Lots of plastic trinkets and lots of people. In the evening, we ate at the Oriental Hotel along the riverside. Many writers have staid at the hotel including Joseph Conrad, but I would say the rates these days, $300 to $500, are high for most writers.



Today, Wednesday, we started the day with our routine visit to the park down the street. In the early mornings, people do all kinds of exercise which seem to be derived from Thai and Chinese Buddhist traditions. We are going to take it easy and prepare for our planned trip to the Khao Yai National Park tomorrow.

I don’t usually write this kind of diary sort of entry but I just wanted to give everyone a quick update.

Feminist Economics in Thailand

I have traveled to Bangkok and am participating in the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) conference in connection with my work at the editorial offices of the journal Feminist Economics, which is based at Rice University.

The conference is at Ramkhamhaeng University, which is one of the largest schools in the world. Over the next three days, scholars, activists, and leaders from government and NGOs from thirty-five countries will present talks at the conference. Many will focus on issues of major importance to this region of the world including international trade, sex work, migrant labor, and the informal labor market.



At the opening plenary, the speakers were Dr. Juree Vichitvathakran of the National Institute of Development Administration in Bangkok, Naiyana Supapung of the National Human Rights Commission in Thailand, Jean D’Cunha of the UNIFEM East and Southeast Asia Regional Office, and Jackie Pollock, the Director of the MAP Foundation for the Health and Knowledge of Ethnic Labour, Chiang Mai.

Unfortunately, I could not attend the first two talks. D’Cunha spoke about migrant workers in Southeast region, many of whom are domestic workers. She spoke about the situations of women who clean houses and take care of children. Jackie Pollock spoke about Burmese migrants to Thailand. She started her talk with a story of a migrant worker who came to her office asking for help. Her employer had not paid her for three years.



I'm hoping to share more as the conference goes on!

Green Parenting Goes to Asia

Pretty soon the whole family will be travelling to India via a brief stay in Bangkok. I left today. MaGreen and BabyG will be leaving next week. I took all the family stuff packed up in my bags so MaGreen won't have to lug around much more than our 18 month year old progeny and her entourage of snacks and toys.

MaGreen thought the trip itself would go pretty well because the preparations have been vein-poppingly stressful. Passports that don't arrive. Supply orders that don't go through. Ungainly sized visa lines. Travel doctors priced for mightier Maharajas than we. Now I'm stuck in Atlanta because my flight got cancelled. Apparently, a volcano erupted in Russia and the plane would not have had enough fuel to fly around it.

If the whole experience is to balance out, Laws of balance ought to come out on our side once we're overseas.

Families Rising

I know it is a little late to share a father's day e-card, but this one really gets at Green Parenting issues. It was released by Families Rising, which is an effort by MomsRising to open to men. I encourage all the US folks out there to add their names to the email list so we can all put childcare issues at the forefront of the national agenda. (Please share info about similar efforts outside the US if you know of any.)

Frog Nights in Houston

I walked my baby to sleep this evening. She climbed in the stroller when I rolled it out. She knew what kind of ride it would be as she hoisted herself in. It was intrepid of her to venture out with her father as the sun set. I had dressed her in a white long-sleeved shirt and white pants. I smeared the remaining little strips of exposed wrist and ankle with insect repellent. Storms have swept through the city over the past two days leaving big puddles everywhere. This gulley, bayou, and sewer drained swamp-turned-city is saturated. It is one of those nights when you think about the precariousness of our city, how we live on a gigantic concrete platform moored by thousands of oak trees over a heaving lake of clay. Usually when I pass people in the street after dark, they remain silent but this evening everyone said hello, maybe to tacitly acknowledge the beauty of a near flood or else to stave off fear with human voice.

At first, my baby babbled to herself. Then she began to strain against the belts by arching her back. She whined rhythmically, a plaintive kind of chant. I thought I would have to let her out so she could push the stroller herself or toddle across the nearest concrete lot. But all of sudden she was asleep and I realized she had been struggling against her circadian rhythms, trying to reset her own clock with a last burst of energy. The belts held her down, but it was the discipline of her own cells that did her in. I turned around and headed back home.

And then the frogs came out.

I saw dozens. Most leaped into the groundcover and under tree roots as we approached. Some frogs did not startle though. I bent over and looked at them closely as the baby slept.

A runner passed us from behind as I ambled along. I must have looked funny trying to stir up the frogs. He may not have noticed the frogs at all. He was probably too involved in his exercise to think about why I was running the tip of my boot along the puddles. I imagine he focused on his breaths, between which he rushed out a “hello” as he rushed by. I checked my baby and I felt thankful that I had her there, her weight in the stroller, her body heavy in sleep, slowing me down to frog-watching pace. I was glad to be a father fettered by my baby’s dependency.

Today was my first father’s day with my baby. Last year, she was in Salt Lake City with her mother helping Grandma Helen and Grandpa Lou. So I feel like I have a right to share my grandiose thoughts about the state of the world. On my walk, I thought about how vulnerable frogs are to toxins and that it must be a good sign that after all that has been perpetrated on the air, the water, and the land, these frogs have reclaimed one night. I thought about the hopefulness of finding frogs in Houston. I felt that hope in my heart, I felt it radiating in the world.

Navigating the Bamboo Wagon

When I was registering for our wedding, a few years back, I asked my very particular aunt Patricia to recommend sturdy kitchen products. Among her many recommendations were bamboo cutting boards because, she said, they are light and bamboo is more sustainable to harvest than many of the woods we traditionally use for the likes of chopping upon.

Since then, I’ve noticed bamboo products popping up all over the place: in clothing, furniture, cooking utensils, diapers, and even, as a reader pointed out awhile back disposable plates. In other words bamboo, like hemp did a few years back, has entered into popular green-consciousness as a miracle child. It is the product you don’t have to feel guilty about buying, or perhaps even, you could feel proud about buying.

The idea behind the bamboo boom is that bamboo isn’t actually a tree, it’s grass. Thus, it can be harvested and within three years, the population will have regenerated. The shoots send out an immense amount of oxygen into the air. Moreover, the ‘wood’ as my aunt pointed out, is light but durable. Clothes made from bamboo are very, very soft and hypoallergenic. As far as I can tell, these are the primary reasons so many people have been so enthusiastic about bamboo products.

Of course, when anybody tells me they’ve found the perfect product, the one you can use endlessly, the all good source for x, y, or z, I hesitate. I begin feeling a little unsettled and squeamish. I smile noncommittally. I sneak into my skeptics den, first chance I get. I Google it.

My first foray into the world wide web on the matter of bamboo turned up numerous websites about how Japan’s insatiable need for disposable bamboo chopsticks was depleting bamboo forests in China. Several animal species rely on them. Panda bears, for example, eat them. Humans in the region of the forests rely on them to clean up the atmosphere. So while it’s true they aren’t ancient Redwoods, they function the way trees do in regards to the ecosystem they exist in.

Further searching led me to a few stories about how difficult it is to monitor the manufacturing of bamboo: like any process in which pulp is made into product, a number of toxic chemicals are needed to enable the process. There is no regulatory system governing the way these chemicals are disposed of. Although many companies state that they responsibly harvest bamboo, because there’s no regulatory system, consumers need to take the companies’ word for it.

I am certainly not an expert on bamboo. But it seems strange that this half of the world (where the US is) thinks of bamboo as an unending supply of miracle pulp, whereas campaigns on the other, bamboo-growing side of the world are encouraging people to investigate the realities of deforestation. There seems to be a disconnect between desire (the perfect green building material/fiber exists), possibility (it is possible to grow and harvest bamboo responsibly), and reality (but it doesn’t always happen, and the forests are being depleted.

Does this mean I think bamboo is bad? Of course not. The advantages of responsibly grown and harvested bamboo are well documented. Though I am skeptical about the existence of wonder products, I do believe it is possible and likely that many of the companies claiming to responsibly harvest bamboo are doing so. Probably a number of them aren’t. The problem, as I see it, is that there’s no easy way for me discern the history of whatever bamboo I buy.

So far as I can see, the industry isn’t regulated enough for ecologically minded folks to embark on a bamboo product free for all. I do hope that in time manufacturers and companies can benefit from bamboo’s versatility, and that it will be easier for consumers to trust their bamboo isn’t some Giant Panda’s lost lunch or the cause of some river’s ailing fish.

For me, this means that I might buy a couple bamboo products from companies I trust for some reason or another, but I’m not going to go looking for bamboo like it’s the grail of green. I might get a chopping board one day, or a bamboo spoon. Bamboo furniture? I think it’s better to buy used wood, if it’s possible. Bamboo clothes? Maybe organic bamboo I know the source of, but nothing I’ve read has convinced me regular bamboo clothing is more ecological than, say, rayon (a wood pulp broken down into fibers).

And, getting to the question a reader posed many months ago, and that spawned this post, how do I feel about disposable bamboo plates? If disposable chopsticks are such a huge issue, I can’t see how disposable plates wouldn’t be. Moreover, I fail to see anything green about a product made to throw away after a single use, even if you can compost it.

On The Benefits of Bamboo:
Bamboo Renewability
Bamboo A Versatile and Renewable Resource
Disposable Bamboo Dinner Plates

On The Troubles With Bamboo:
Bamboo Flooring: Is it Really Treehugger Green
World Bamboo Diversity Falling to Deforestation
Bamboo Paper: Not Forest-Friendly
Loss of Bamboo Threatens Rare Animal Species
Chopsticks Economics and the My Hashi Boom

Vegetarian Burgers for Babies and Toddlers (and Moms and Dads and Grandmas and Uncles and...)

Like most vegetarian parents I know, we have striven, since BabyG started eating food other than breast milk, to ensure she’s getting all the iron, fat, and nutrients she needs. I’ve read about many tricks other vegetarian parents have used to ensure their children get the right nutrients on a lot of other websites, but one idea that has worked the best for us and that I haven’t seen written up very often, is making bean burgers.

I began making my own burgers when I realized that BabyG, who turned her nose up at anything that came on a spoon, would greedily eat Quorn, tofu, or bean burgers. Since buying these foods is expensive, I’ve learned how to whip up a batch of veggie burgers for BabyG over the last few months. It’s very easy. It’s satisfying because after you get the basic idea of what you need in order to make a burger stick together, you can mix and match protein, fat, vegetable, and grain sources to ensure your baby is getting a good variety of foods in her diet, over time.

Here’s the recipe I have made most frequently. I like it because the burgers are a pretty, pale orange and the cranberries are noticeable and exciting:

Cranberry Spotted Veggie (but not vegan) Burger
(vegans can use standard substitutions for eggs, cheese…)

Ingredients

1 cup white beans, dried (2 1/2 cups cooked)
2 T. Braggs amino acids or soy sauce or tamari
¾ c. marinara or ketchup
1 cup of shredded cheese (to bind burgers & add protein)
2 eggs (to bind burgers & add protein)
2 carrots, shredded
1 c. celery
1 cup dried, unsweetened cranberries
2 T. Herbs de Provence
Mix of cooked rice, amaryth, or millet; uncooked oats; or breadcrumbs if you’re out of all the rest. I add this until the mixture has a thick enough consistency to make into patties.

Directions:
Cook the beans in 3 cups of water, in a pressure cooker, eight minutes. Mash the beans, then add everything but the grains and mix well. Finally, begin adding grains until your batter has a thick enough consistency that you can form them into balls, flatten them with your hands, and put them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes on each side. If I want to take them to a barbeque, I still bake them long enough for them to be sturdy enough to sit on the grill (about eight minutes per side). People love them.


With that recipe out of the way, I want to say again that the glorious thing about veggie/bean burgers is that you can use anything in your cupboard, usually. You can use vegetables with high amounts of certain vitamins, or iron if you choose. If your baby isn't getting enough iron and hates iron drops, you can add some. Varying the recipe is a snap. Moreover, they are an ever expansive food that you can pack in a baby or toddler’s lunch, and have them munch on all day. You can put them on your sandwiches. You can barbeque them at home or take them to a barbeque. And one batch is usually enough to last our family and a couple friends about a week. They are a wonderful food.

Here’s the more general guide I follow when experimenting. You need: protein bulk, something to make the beans stick together, vegetables, nuts (good fats and protein), spices, and grains.

Bulk: 1 pack of tofu or 1 c. dried beans or 2 ½ cups cooked/canned beans
Fat: 1 cup of chopped nuts (if your baby is old enough/not allergic, of course)
Veggies: 1 to 2 cups. Whatever you want. If they are veggies that emit water, grill them; veggies like spinach or tomatoes, you may opt to squeeze juices out (but into your batter) after you grill.
Seeds and/or dried fruits: ½ to 1 cup
Spices: Herbs de Provence, curry, your favorite fresh herb, chile, salt (unless you add soy/Braggs/tamari), onions, garlic
Liquid: If I use tofu, I use less tomato sauce. But I always add tomato marinara of some sort.
Something to stick it all together: I use eggs and cheese. Vegans, I know, often use egg-substitute and vegan cheese.
Grains: I like using quinuoa or amaryth, for their protein properties. Rice and oats look pretty. Mashed potatoes and yams are another good idea.

Directions: Same as above. That is: Mash the beans or tofu. Add the rest of the ingredients. Then add the grains until you can make patties. Cook ten minutes on each side at 350. Sometimes I make a vegetarian gravy to go with this, using a little Braggs, a little not-Beef boullion, and flour. GreenDaddy was a big fan of it.

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Is there Salmonella in your Tahini?

Our friend Chuck suggested we post this press release about Salmonella in the Whole Foods Tahini. I believe he supposes a high percentage of tahini eaters peruse these pages. Is it true?

I'm in the middle of a post about bamboo. Also, I just read a post somewhere else about a car that runs on compressed air. FYI, that was another of my ideas that weren't. Somebody stole it away, but I guess the good thing about those ideas is that it's best when they're stolen.

******************
Whole Foods Market Issues Nationwide Recall of 365 Organic Everyday Value Sesame Tahini

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE -- Austin, TX -- May 22, 2007 - Whole Foods Market is voluntarily recalling 365 Organic Everyday Value Sesame Tahini 16-oz, with a Best By Date of 10/02/07 or earlier because it has the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.

Food contaminated with Salmonella may not look or smell spoiled. Consumption of food contaminated with this bacteria may cause salmonellosis, a foodborne illness. In young children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems, salmonellosis may cause serious and sometimes deadly infections. In otherwise healthy people, salmonellosis may cause short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea. Long-term complications may include severe arthritis.

365 Organic Everyday Value Sesame Tahini was distributed nationally through Whole Foods Market retail stores. The product comes in a 16-oz glass jar with the UPC number 0009948240599. The Best By Date is located on the top of the lid of the jar, any Best By Date of 10/02/07 or earlier is being recalled. No confirmed illnesses have been reported to date.

Potential salmonella contamination was brought to the attention of Whole Foods Market by the product's manufacturer. As a result, the company is voluntarily recalling this product as a precautionary measure and has put additional safety measures in place. No other Whole Foods Market Private Label products have been affected by this recall.

Consumers who have purchased 365 Organic Everyday Value Sesame Tahini can return it to Whole Foods Market for a full refund. Questions may be directed to the Company by calling (512) 477-5566 x20656 or via email at privatelabel.customerservice@wholefoods.com.

Thank You Cindy Sheehan

Today, MaGreen and I read Cindy Sheehan's letter on DalyKos with great sadness. I'm not sad because she's retiring from being the face of the US peace movement, but because she has suffered so much. Her motivation truly came from losing her son to the war in Iraq, not from ego or ideology. She cut through the divisions within the peace movement. When she set up Camp Casey, MaGreen and I had already ended our intense phase of street activism because we were burnt out by those divisions. She gave us a way to lend our bodies and voices without having to debate points of unity and march routes with anyone. I didn't have to go downtown and ask for a sound permit. MaGreen didn't have to design a website getting out the word about the next protest. We just showed up in Crawford. Cindy Sheehan's authority as the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq seemed to trump all the distrust among activists. Her civility set the tone for the thousands of people who gathered with her in the Texas heat.

MaGreen was six months pregnant with BabyG when we drove to Crawford with our friends Keith and Theresa. The weekend we went may well have been the most frenzied moment in the history of Cindy Sheehan's protest outside George W. Bush's ranch, because a national group of pro-war activists had planned a counter-protest. On the way, we got caught up in the pro-Bush caravan made up almost entirely of SUVs and huge trucks. They had US flags mounted, draped, and crammed between various parts of their vehicles. Their windows were painted with “Support the Troops” type slogans. Right before Crawford, the whole caravan turned off towards what I assumed was their rallying site.

We drove into Crawford as pro-Bush people stood on the sides of the streets or sometimes in the street itself heckling us. People flipped us off or gave thumbs down signs. Many of the pro-war signs seemed factory made and they said, “I’m with W.” Others were homemade and said things like, “Cindy doesn’t speak for our marine.” Or “I support the troops and their mission.” There were several signs connecting the U.S. invasion of Iraq with 9-11. Free US flags were being handed out and the little plastic ones were strewn all over the ground. We had a big flag with a peace sign flying from our car. One man shouted that our peace sign looked like a chicken foot. “Now I know what it stands for,” he said, “chicken foot, chicken foot.”

When we got through their gauntlet of flag-waving and heckling, a peace protestor greeted us. “Ah, you’re friendlies,” he said and gave us directions. We worried that some pro-Bush person impersonating a peace activist had duped us. We had to park in a lot outside a hotel and take a shuttle to the site where the peace activists had gathered. We could see the road towards Bush’s place and there were secret service people there standing behind the “100% ID Check” road blocks. The volunteers hurried us into the huge tent where a rally was in full swing. We walked under the tent and there was Joan Baez getting on stage. Late, Cindy Sheehan spoke, mostly light-hearted quips, not her full-force polemics. “Joan proposed to me yesterday,” Cindy said, “and I accepted…just another day at Camp Casey.” A few more jokes and the rally was over. We missed most of it. Several Iraq veterans had spoken.

Once the rally broke up, some extraordinary musicians took the stage. Terri Hendrix, and Lloyd Maines played with a fantastic fiddle player. Non-Texans started shouting, “Who are you? You’re amazing!” One of Terry Hendrix’s song had the refrain, “Hey hey FCC don’t you turn your back on me.” The infrastructure of the whole camp was well done and clean. The main tent was situated behind “Arlington West” where all the crosses in honor of killed US troops were erected. To the side of the tent were about eight port-o-potties. Also tents for some groups like Military Families Speak out. There was a no drug and alcohol policy. Everyone volunteered to do something. I passed around the donations bucket and collected about $250 for the Crawford Peace House in five minutes. It was so hot, over 100 degrees in the sun, so everybody stayed underneath the tents or an umbrella. Water was available free and volunteers walked around handing them out. People had to drink massive amounts of water. The recycling bins for the “empties” filled over and over again. MaGreen had to find two chairs to sit on and placed them in front of a fan. She said, and I quote, she needed, "one for my enormous behind and another to put my feet up for the first time of my pregnancy."

A restaurant catering group served free food – celery, salad, tomatoes, cheese, dressing, cole slaw, cucumber and tomato salad, beef and corn and chicken and poblano tamales, tortillas, buffalo meat, barbecue chicken, roasted green peppers, roasted onions, two kinds of sausages, a vat of barbecue sauce, pecan pie, brownies, several other desserts, lemonade, and tea. While people were waiting in line for the food, they wrote thank you letters to the man who lent the land for Camp Casey II.



There were people there from all over the country. We met folks from California, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Colorado. There were many, many middle-aged women there. There were few teenagers and children. Also very few people of color, perhaps twenty-five out of the 2,000+ people there. We did not see Camp Casey I where we heard that there were a 1000+ people. Singer songwriters must have been ten percent people there. One young man had a sign that read, “Country singers against the war.” One t-shirt had a Gandhi quote on it, “At first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.” Another said, “The revolution will not be televised…it’s online.” Several shirts said, “Yee-haw is not a foreign policy.”

After dinner, we volunteered for traffic duty and helped keep the road from getting congested. Many of the people who drove by were curious onlookers with cameras and many were pro-Bush people waving flags, giving us thumbs down signs, the three-finger W, holding up signs that said “Hippies go home,” and even people sticking their tongues out at us. We kept telling each other, “No confrontations, avoid confrontations.” Peace people also drove by. One truck had a hand-drawn devil on the back next to which it said, “Bush is my number one worker.” Every now and then a beat-up truck driven by tough-looking guys with thick moustaches, fencing materials in the back, would drive by. They just looked at it all and kept driving. The volunteers said, “Now that was a real cowboy.”

From the road, you could see the sun setting and a big storm coming in. In the tent, three sisters from Ithaca were singing a cappela, their refrain was something like “can’t be silent anymore,” and it was if their harmony drew in the wind. The tent started shaking violently. The overhead lights swung from side to side. People were packing up and securing things madly. We caught the first shuttle out. Keith and Theresa stayed back longer to help with the traffic. We reunited at the car. All the hotels in the area were booked solid so we drove home in the night through an electrical storm. Every two or three seconds the sky lit up like it was daylight. MaGreen said that the Calvinists tried to read meaning into everything they saw in nature and it was hard not to see the two thousand lightning strikes we witnessed as symbolic of all the people who had died in Iraq.

Cindy Sheehan wrote in her resignation letter:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

That part made me want to cry. Camp Casey was an incredible moment in history, not just because it forced the human cost of the Iraq war into US news coverage but because for the people who were actually there it was a time of communion, renewal, hope, kindness, and friendship. That beautiful event happened because of Cindy Sheehan's determination. She deserves our utmost attention. We should open ourselves to the message in her "letter of resignation."

She ended her letter with bitterness and a challenge:

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

Seven Greenish Things About Magreen

Like GreenDaddy's post below, I'm responding to cake's tag: we were both supposed to write seven things about ourselves people don't know. Because I am stickler for the title of our website, mine are loosely based on ideas I associate with being (or not being) green.

1. I drank a glass of shelack, as a child, and had my stomach pumped. I don't remember the pumping, but I remember eying the shelack and thinking it looked tasty.

2. My friend Shelly and I used to clean my dad's bar every Saturday and Sunday morning, while playing barmaid. We stole a sixpack when I was six, drank it, and threw up all night long.

3. Throughout my pregnancy and even the delivery of BabyG I never actually envisioned having a baby at the end. I was thinking: I'm pregnant, or I'm in delivery, but never: I'm creating a child that will one day actually exist. I was determined to come through the 'phases' of pregnancy and delivery, but was totally shocked when suddenly there was this tiny other being, my baby, in the delivery room.

4. I learned to swim in an irrigation ditch full of leeches. Every summer I stepped on at least one rusty 'pop top'.

5. When I am depressed, I imagine myself curling up and resting in some coral cave deep in the ocean. When I'm happy, I look forward to passing lots of time swimming and canoeing in cold, cold clear rivers.

6. I once hitchiked out of Zion's park, during a Spring Break backpacking trip I took there with college classmates, because I missed my father so much and couldn't stand being so close to him without visiting(I went to school in Minnesota and he lived in Salt Lake City).

7. Whenever I am very angry at somebody I fantasize about supergluing their car's tires to their driveway.

Okay. I tag anthromama, fiddlehedz & pirate papa...none of whom I've met face to face, but whose blogs I've read awhile. I also tag top secret blogger juju, and anybody else out there yankering to yammer in meme form.

The Secret Seven

I got tagged by cake to do a post that lists 7 things about me that you might not know. I've never done a meme, but here it goes:

1) The first album I ever bought was Aerosmith’s Permanent Vacation, back in 1987. That’s the one with the song “Dude Looks Like a Lady.”

2) I won a gold medal at the 1989 National Unicycle Meet for my age group in the Walk the Wheel race, which requires taking your feet off the pedal and putting them directly on the tire. Only one other kid finished the race. Mobile, Alabama – the city I grew up in – had a very active unicycle group. I got interested when I saw them performing at a pumpkin festival.

3) When I was about fourteen, I read and reread Ursala Le Guin’s Very Far Away from Anywhere Else at least three times.

4) I started a South Asian radio show at a college radio station that’s still going after nearly ten years. It’s on WNUR in Chicago and is called The Lotus Beat. I feel really proud of that even though the name embarrasses me.

5) I never had any wisdom teeth.

6) I enjoy checking everyday how many minutes are left on our cell phone plan.

7) One of my favorite tasks I have been assigned as part of a job was when I worked as an intern for a children’s magazine called Muse. I was asked to find pictures of monkeys that didn’t show any of their genitalia. So I spent half the day at the Chicago Public Library thumbing through books about monkeys and, among other things, learned about Jane Goodall.

Now I'd like to tag Laura.