Janice Marie Parker Pierce August, 25, 1943 - October 31, 1997

On another note, October the 31 is kind of a pregnant day for me. My mother died nine years ago of colon cancer. At the very moment she was dying, John Keats Endymion was being read on the radio. So she died to these words. They are very beatiful, and I think must have been a comfort to her. I know that continue to be a source of comfort to me, and I read them every year in her memory.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Happy Halloween!

I love this holiday. I almost died from the cuteness at the Tot Lot. The kids were killing me.

I decided to post some pictures of my little guy. I worked at a church for a number of years as the webmaster. They put the fear of God into me, so to speak, about posting pictures of children on the internet. They saw predators lurking behind every screen. I guess I have internalized it because I have been nervous to post any pictures. Really, they should have been looking for the predators in the sacristy, but that is another story.

I have been visiting all of these really great parenting blogs, and everyone else has pictures of their cutie pies. So here it goes. He is kind of incognito in the lobster out fit anyway.

I hope that you all have a fantastic time tonight.

Adoption Day

We had a big week here in Boston. Our second parent adoption went through, so we went down to the courthouse. A lot of my friends who are gay parents express annoyance that they have to go through this step. Personally, I am just grateful we live in a state were we have legal protections for my little family.

It was pretty dramatic though. We left really in the morning to get to the courthouse on time. But there was a huge accident in front of us. We were diverted into the tiny, congested streets of Roxbury on the last day of Ramadan. Traffic was at a complete standstill. We completely freaked out. We were yelling at each other, yelling at the other cars, the cops…everybody. We were so worried about what would happen if we were late. We finally get into downtown Boston, and of course, we couldn’t find parking anywhere. We parked in a handicapped space just so we could book it to the courthouse. (I’m not condoning this behavior. In our defense, we never do this sort of thing).

We went racing down the Financial District, flying past all of the morning commuters and big dig construction workers. We made it to the courthouse just in time. Then, our lawyer was 45 minutes late. She was stuck in the same traffic we were.

The judge couldn’t have cared less. She strolled in 15 minutes after our attorney came storming into the room. My wife was worried that she would grill her about her parenting skills. She did no such thing. She just picked our son up and let him chew on the gavel and pound on the keyboard. She was older, had really blonde hair, and just the thickest Boston accent you ever heard. She kept saying, “He’s so cute. I am going to sign the adoption papers over to me.”

Then she signed the papers and it was all over. We were at the clerks waiting for the ugly yellow adoption certificate. I looked over at our son and said, “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” Then my wife’s mom said the sweetest thing. She said, “She knew he was her mother.”

We went to Legal’s afterwards. They had these delicious baked oysters. They were great.

Our little guy has had a cold since then. He has been pretty crabby. In fact, I have never seen him in such a bad mood. Every toy I gave him he would just through on the floor with a screech. Even when he’s intolerable, I love him so much. He is just my little streetfighter.

Party with the Ann Coulter clones

My wife and I went to a bridal shower for a friend of ours. She is straight and marrying a very nice guy who I also happen to be friends with. She is a priest in a pretty wealthy town. Some of her parishioners were there as well as other clergy. Even though she is a member of the clergy, she is really fun and down to earth. She wore her clergy collar into a sex shop and proceeded to buy me a sex toy. I know because she called me on the phone to see what I wanted. I am pretty excited about her wedding.

On the day of the shower, I just couldn’t pull an outfit together so I wore jeans hoping it would be ok. As soon as I walked into the party and saw the other women dressed in dark velvet and beautiful plaid bows, I knew I had made a mistake. I felt like such a slob.

I tried to engage one of the parishioners in conversation. She was Ann Coulter thin and blonde. She was an attorney but now was a stay at home mom. I was interested in her because I am thinking about applying for law school. She muttered that law school was a big mistake, and then turned back to her other suburban friends.

We were there with our son, and boy, was he unhappy. We thought he would nap in the car, but no luck. He stayed awake the whole time. He fell asleep at the party, but would wake up startled every there was clapping when the bride to be opened up a present. We ended up leaving early because we were afraid our son was about to go into a full out melt down.

As soon as we got into the car, my wife turned to me and said, “My god, they were so straight.” I knew exactly what she meant.

I am blogging about this incident because there were a few things about it that interest me. The first thing that became clear to me is that I really surround myself with people who are very much like me. Even my straight friends aren’t sooo straight. Generally, we are a pretty grungy crew. The women at the shower were very thin and well coiffed. They shrieked and giggled every time the bride to be opened a box of lingerie. I think this what marshaled the comment from my wife.

The second thing was that it was apparent to me that it can be really hard to interact with people who are a different class from you. I don’t like to think of myself like this. I like to think that I can relate to pretty much anybody, but I tell you, these women were tough. But its not like I was raised in a cave, I went to Northwestern for crying out loud, I have been around rich people before.

And the last thing I want to say is that babies and polite company just don’t mix. I should have learned by now. But I’m pretty stubborn. We keep trying to take him to nice restaurants when we should just resign ourselves to IHop.

Don't eat your veggies

Did you see? There is a recall on lettuce because of ecoli fears.

http://www.fda.gov/oc/po/firmrecalls/freshexpress05_03.html

All I can say is that if ecoli breaks out in cheez its or diet coke, I'm in big trouble.

Time to log off

There is a saying that I like very much that goes something like this: You don’t have to show up for every fight you are invited to.

I think about this saying a lot when I get into online “discussions”. I think that there is something about disembodied text that just brings out the worse in people. Sometimes I get sucked into a discussion and have a tremendous urge to be the last person to post a comment. This happens even when I know I am talking to someone who has the coherence of my grandfather 3 months before he died of Alzheimer’s.

I try to avoid bulletin boards or comments on blogs if there is an argument brewing. However, with all of the crap that is being said about the Foley scandal, I found myself showing up for the street fight, invitation or not.

The postings were on belief.net. I felt like I was in some kind of Alice in Wonderland upside down world. According to the thread, homosexuals are oversexed, miserable, have multiple partners and absolutely shouldn’t be allowed to get married, and Rep Foley proves it.

I have to laugh about the oversexed part. I should be so interesting. Honestly I am so tired from working and taking care of the baby, sex is the last thing on my mind. In fact, I have a pile of laundry and dishes, a living room full of toys and dried baby food my shirt. At this point, I don’t want sex so much as a clean house. Though, I’d take sex too..

And I just have to wonder, who are these people that they are talking about. These hypersexed, multi-partnered, drug taking, circuit chasing, youth loving, prada wearing gays? I’ve seen them on tv. But, I live in a very gay neighborhood, and nobody that I know is like this. The gays that I know worry about sending their kids to kindergarten and when to make a run to Toys R Us.

There is something about getting into an argument with someone who insists something is true that you know isn’t true that makes you feel a little crazy. I had a friend who would insist that all lesbians had been sexually molested. I pointed out that I hadn’t been sexually molested and neither had my wife. But she would just repeat her claim over and over. After a while you need to just stop arguing. And if you are online, you need to log off.

Bonsoir

I grew up in the Southwest, where there was a certain distrust of governmental powers. This was particularly true if there was a Democrat in office. When the men lost their minds, there was a Southwestern flare to it. They would join militias and bury their guns out in the desert because they were convinced the government was coming to take their ammunition away. I would actually see the men do this and I would think to myself, “My God their crazy. Who could be so paranoid?”

I’m a little bit older now and I no longer live in the desert, but I have to say my mistrust of the government has grown exponentially these last few years. I’m not burying guns. I don’t own any. However, I have been learning to speak French. Every Monday night, my friend and I go down to the local Adult Education Center and conjugate French verbs. I’m sure you are thinking that it’s a worthy endeavor and not at all crazy. But I have to tell you the reason why I am doing it is because I have grown convinced that before my life is through, I am going to have to make a run for Canada. I want to speak the language once I get there. I have my passport on me at all times, and I am dismayed that my wife does not have one. I have even been watching Julia Child so that I will be fully acclimated to the local cuisine.

I’m not sure whether or not to give the laundry list of things scare me about this country. I do not like all of the DOMAs that have been passed in the last few years, I do not like the war in Iraq and I do not like these new anti-terrorism bills that tromp all over the constitution.

At first I thought this has nothing to do with being a parent, but it does. Its one thing to feel like you are not safe. It’s a whole another to feel like your child isn’t safe. When I look down at my little boy at night, I feel such love for him its almost too much to bear. Suddenly I feel like I have a lot in common with those guys who buried their guns in the desert. I want protection. I want no harm to ever make its way in from the outside into the nursery room. I want my little guy to always be as peaceful as he is now in his little Halloween sleeper that says “I love my Mummy.” I can’t believe how crazy I feel, but I want a handle on French sentence structure and gun buried nearby.

TLC

It’s been awhile since I have updated this blog, mostly since I am so busy. I am trying to start an at home business and still take care of little guy. I am finding it really challenging working at home and having a baby. I never would have tried to start my own business if I didn’t become a mom. However, I now realize that a new business is kind of like a new baby, and it needs to be fed – a lot. If I had known this, I would have tried to start the business a year or two before having the baby. Instead, I have a real baby and a new business venture.

However, I am not so busy that I ever miss TLC’s Bringing Home Baby. It’s a show where they show a family in the first 36 hours after coming home with a new baby. I like TLC, I do. I like all of their corny baby shows, but I found myself getting a little testy with them. They were just so relentlessly heterosexual. Despite all of the different types of families out there, they never seemed to deviate from the one mother, one father cookie cutter family. Just when I thought all was lost, they feature a gay family on Bringing Home Baby. I was so excited, I blew the chunks of Oreos I was eating all over the floor. The family was a couple of dads and their two twin daughters. I was so pleased, I emailed them. You would think I had all the time in the world.

Brothers and Cousins, or something like that

I was contacted by a woman who had used the same sperm donor as I had. She lived relatively close by and wanted to know if we would like to meet. There is an organic farm with a petting zoo at the halfway point between our homes. I was surprised at how excited I was by all of this, and we agreed to get together.

She was very nice and very friendly, but she made it clear that she didn’t want them referred to as siblings. That was fine by me. I really didn’t know what to make of all of this.

Her son is a few months older than mine. When we met at the farm, I remarked that they looked like cousins, not brothers. There was a resemblance, but they weren’t the spitting image of each other, so I thought. I wanted to know if her son had cowlicks like ours (he didn’t) and if he had sleep issues (no again).

Of course, we weren’t at the farm a half an hour when a nice lady came up and asked if they were brothers. Dead silence. I don’t know what that woman must have thought. Finally, the other guy’s mom said, “They're cousins, sort of.” It was an answer that works, but it kind of bothered me since it wasn’t really the truth. I think I might have been more comfortable just saying they weren’t related at all, but I hadn’t thought this through. We went to a restaurant, and the waitress asked if they were twins! This time we just said no, they are several months apart.

My wife and I had decided to use a sperm donor to avoid emotional complications, but here we were in the thick of another one. They weren’t brothers and they weren’t cousins, there are some other thing that I don’t think has a name yet. The other mother isn’t a gay woman, but a single mom by choice. It is not just gays and lesbians entering this brave new world. This world without proper names for our relationships.

Swimming Lessons

We missed our son’s swimming lesson this morning, again. If there are any new parents reading this, and I can offer a piece of advice, skip the swimming lessons. In fact, skip all of the classes. Your baby won’t care. In fact, they would rather be at Home Depot in the ceiling fan department. It is a real hassle getting there. I signed up for so many things, Baby Yoga, Baby Swimming Lessons and a couple of mothers groups. It is what I imagined myself doing when I was pregnant. My gay and lesbian parenting group is the only thing I am able to consistently get to. They have a drop in policy, so you have a couple of hours to make it, but even then its sketchy. If he seems like he needs a nap right before its time to go, I have to make a choice. Go and hang out with other adults, but have a tired and cranky baby. Or I can put him to bed, and hang out by myself. As much as I need companionship with people who are not drooling and pooping in diapers, I don’t really want my son to be overtired. This is how I miss most of our activities.

Plus, I go to therapy. If I can’t get someone to baby sit him, I drag him to the therapist’s office. This wrecks havoc on his naps, and I feel like a bad parent. Most other days, I just concentrate on getting him on a consistent sleep schedule.

I really like that new Dunkin Donuts commercial where the mother is driving her five kids around to all of their activities. It reminds me that there are sure to be plenty of classes for him to attend in the future. But for now, he is sleeping.

Changes

Its been awhile since I last posted, and we had a lot of changes around here. The baby is scooting around the house like a little commando. Since he has figured out that he can get himself around, he is less interested in being held. You can imagine how distressing that is. He seems to vacillate between wanting to be on his own, and wanting to be held. Sometimes it appears that can’t make up his mind, or that he wants both things at once. I know what that is like. Often, I want safety and freedom when they aren’t always compatible with one another.

He has also gotten incredibly big. I literally can’t keep him in clothes. He is only 8 months, but I have to dress him in clothes for a one year old. He is eating more and more solid foods, and making an impressive mess.

Having the baby has been a big economic strain, and my wife and I are trying to make it on one income. The financial thing has been stressful for our relationship as well. I have been trying to get some work on the side to bring in a little extra income. I’ve been doing some networking online, and have found that a lot of stay at home moms are doing the same thing. A lot of them are Christian moms. I am finding that I have a lot in common with Christian SAHMs. Talk about karma.

Bad week in the courts

Its been a bad week for gay marriage proponents. The Nebraska gay marriage ban has been reinstated, as well as the ban in Georgia and New York’s highest court ruled that it can deny marriage to same sex couples since it is the court’s intuition that two opposite sex parents were best for children. Note that the court did not feel the need to provide actual data, just an intuition. Is there any other group of people that are as oppressed by other’s intuition? If the courts and legislators are unable to provide the rational for their decisions and instead rely on “unsettled feelings” or “intuitions” is this not bigotry, pure and simple?

I think children are the heart of the matter. Not that these decisions are made for the benefit of kids, because if that was their concern there would be healthcare for everyone under 18, and more money in the educational system. I believe the real motivation is to discourage gay people from forming families, which is in its essence, a denial of our basic humanity. We can form loving relationships, have children, and build lives, but don’t expect any help or approval from society or the legal system. And oh, keep it out of straight people’s faces, since the very fact of our existence is somehow offensive to them.

I found this all pretty depressing. We had spent the weekend in Ogunquit, and I did have one situation that made me feel a little more optimistic about the future. My wife and I entered a coffee shop with our son asleep in his stroller. My wife went to get some coffee, and a young mother entered with her husband and daughter. She saw my son and exclaimed how cute and chubby my son was. She then went over to my wife and asked if that was her son, and my wife said yes, it was. She repeated her compliments and then went back to her family. It was kind of thrilling to have a random straight person acknowledge the reality of our family. I think our son is the best little ambassador for gay families. Maybe this is the best we can do, one straight person at a time.

Straight anxiety and gay marriage

I haven’t been blogging about the marriage debate here in Massachusetts, because I find the whole debate so painful and anxiety producing, I have a hard time thinking about it. I couldn’t watch the TV yesterday because of it. But this morning, as in all mornings after the debate comes up, there is a slew of commentary from straight people on what this all means. I am a bit of a compulsive letter writer, but I cannot answer all of them, however, I found this article on slate particularly annoying:

Hate and Marriage: http://www.slate.com/id/2145620/nav/tap2/

I found the authors address on google, and this is what I wrote to him:

Dear Sir,

Let me see if I understand this. Gay people should abandon the fight for marriage because of straight people’s mostly unconscious anxiety about their gender roles. This is the most ridiculous argument yet. If I understand you correctly, gay families should remain legally unprotected because the majority (straights) are anxious? As a gay woman, I have seen the limits of democracy. If the majority wants to discriminate against a minority, then they can. Really, nothing stopping them.

I think your point is that this deep seated anxiety which causes 70% of the populace to trip over themselves getting to the voting box to vote against gay marriage is not bigotry, but it is. If there is no rational reason to expand marriage rights to gay people, if it is indeed, something that really belongs on the psychologist couch and not in legislation, it is discrimination. Not perhaps the virulent hateful kind, however, the haters drive the debate, and the anxious pick up its rear. All I can say to all of this, I hope you get over it so my family and I can have full citizenship in this country and are able to protect each other legally.

If you would like to add your two cents, this is his email address: rford@standford.edu

On another note, my state senator Dianne Wilkerson came through like a champ once more for gay people. I am calling her office with a thank-you and a donation this morning. This is her site: Dianne Wilkerson(Yes, this is how I spend my time when the baby is asleep).

On second thought

I have been thinking more about this breastfeeding situation. I am more attached to it then I realized, even if I am being gnawed on. I don’t think my son will have any problems being weaned. He already takes a bottle of formula pretty willingly, I think its me who is going to have a problem. Every time I am tempted to do it, I just think of the first few days of his life. He latched on so well at the hospital, like he was a pro. The nurse kept on saying how smart he was, and I was amazed that we were able to do it. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to make milk. It just seemed too weird, but there I was feeding my baby.

He had all of these really cute breastfeeding expressions. He had a very serious one where he would furrow his brows like he was solving a physics problem. There was another one where he would lift up his eyebrows like a connoisseur as if he were saying, “This is an excellent batch.”

Now he messes around a lot when he is eating. He smiles, he looks all around. If I am breasting in public, everyone gets a good look at my nipple. I am not sure what to do about the biting. Its like he is conducting an experiment in cause and effect “Look when I bite down, that funny lady screams.” I never pictured myself one of these people who breastfed their babies until they were toddlers. He is six months now, and that is when I thought I would stop. I’ll keep doing it for now.

Breasts and Bottles

I remember when I was pregnant feeling like my body had become community property. I had wild cravings for junk food. People had a lot to say about this. Everyone from co-workers, friends to people I didn’t even know wanted to tell me about what I should be eating or not eating. I finally came up with a rule that I used in response, I told people that the non-pregnant were not allowed to tell the pregnant what to do. It was surprisingly effective. And then I had the baby, and once again, everybody in the world has an opinion.

Of course, I am not complaining about people who offer to share their experience if you ever need it. Those gracious people are life savers. My sister-in-law is like this. She has plenty to say when asked, but never butts in. But there is a whole army of others who want to tell you all about the best sleeping arrangements, baby carriers, toys, television shows, you name it.

I have been thinking about this because I am thinking about weaning my six month old son off the breast. Truthfully, we have been moving in that direction for a while. I have had repeated problems with thrush, which made feeding painful for me, and eating painful for him. Now, he is beginning to teethed and has been gnawing on my breast. Do you know what it is like to put your nipple someplace knowing it is going to be bitten? It’s a little nerve wrecking.

I have mixed feelings about this because I don’t know if I will have another biological child, so this may be the only breastfeeding I ever do. Despite all of the problems, I do think it helped me bond with my son. He is so cute when I feed him too. He looks up at me and smiles, and it just kills me.

I am also not looking forward to the Breastfeeding Nazis either. These women really have their scorn down to a science. Half the time, they don’t even have to say anything. They just give you a look, and you know they disapprove. But like I use to say when I protested in front of abortion clinics, it’s my body, my choice. I wish people would have a little more respect for women’s bodies. Even with a child inside or outside of them, these arms, legs and boobies are private property.

Baby Food

My wife and I have two sources of stress in our lives when it comes to parenting advice. First, we have her family, who practice a very conventional, mainstream type of parenting. They think we are really out there with our co-sleeping arrangements and our slings and such. But living in Hippie Dippyville like we do, we also have a lot of attachment parents as friends, and they are another sort of stress. We have friends who breastfeed exclusively, imply letting your child cry it out is child abuse, and even some who practice elimination communication. We seem so mainstream to them. The baby sleeps with us at night, but during the day, he takes his naps in the crib. We even let him cry before he sleeps. Also, we breastfeed about 50% and bottle feed the rest of the time.

There is a lot of internal pressure resulting from parenting choices. It is such an important job, and you really want to do the right thing because you know the stakes are high. Most of the time, you try a lot of different approaches, and you make a decision on what works. You just forgot the parenting philosophies.

In order to avoid criticism, we end up lying a lot to both groups. This is silly, I know, but it can make life a lot easier. We don’t tell my wife’s family that the baby sleeps with us, and we keep the feberization on the down low with our hippie friends.

My wife and I have decided to make all of our baby’s food instead of buying it. I enjoy being in the kitchen, and I feel like making the food helps me to make more intentional choices. Most of all, I don’t want him to ingest pesticides, so we buy organic fruits and vegetables that I mash up in the food processor. We definitely thought this would send her family into fits of eye rolling and elbow jabbing. But it turns out, her mother used the exact same process to feed my wife when she was a baby. She would mash up the food and then freeze it in ice cubes in the freezer, just like we do. So you just never know. The organic rice cereal, however, we keep to ourselves.

Brains vs. Brawn

One thing that I have noticed with my lesbian mom friends is that we love to talk about our sperm donors. Actually, I think my straight friends are pretty interested in this too. Some of them will come right out and ask about the donor, while others are more hesitant, perhaps fearing to be rude. I don’t mind. I love talking about it.

We ended up with #3672 at the California Cryobank. You can’t get any more of his sperm, he has been put out to pasture. When we decided to get pregnant, my wife and I had really different views about what kind of donor we wanted. I wanted a really good-looking donor. It has been my observation that beautiful people sail through life. My wife wanted a really smart donor. She comes from a very intelligent family, and I think brain power is the main way they navigate through the world.

I actually found my beautiful donor. He was an Italian donor in a Virginia cryobank. The nurse’s notes said that he was as good-looking as a movie star. I was beside myself. This was the one. However, when my wife heard his taped interview, she thought he sounded lazy and unmotivated. I argued these were environmental traits and not genetically linked. Meanwhile, she found 3672 at California. He was an electrical engineer with fantastic SAT scores.

I really don’t know how she won this. I think it may have been due to a rounded chorus of our friends chiming in. The overall feeling seemed to be that going with the smarter guy was the right thing to do. Why that is, I still don’t understand. But the long and the short of it is, we went with her guy.

Now, I have to say, my baby is really cute, so I got what I wanted. Every time I go out, I hear the phrase “Gerber baby” sent my way. But the thing that I didn’t realize, you love your baby no matter what. He could have been born with two heads, and I still would have loved him.

A therapist I was seeing at the time suggested that when choosing a donor, to focus on health. His reasoning was that there is a lot of debate about what is genetic and what isn’t, but they know that health has genetic factors. I think that is pretty wise. We only have five more vials of our guys, so we may have to go back to the sperm store. Though, knowing me, I will be looking for the movie star again.

Cookies and Dykes

This post is dedicated to Anna Ginsberg. She is this year's winner of the Annual Pillsbury Bake-off. She won a million dollars with her Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing recipe. I saw her on the food network. She bakes cookies every day, and she uploads a picture of them to her blog. I thought she was pretty cool.

So I decided to bake cookies and upload a picture of them to honor her. These are Paula's Loaded Oatmeal Cookies from the Paula's Home Cooking Show. They are great, and boy, was my wife surprised when she came home. Thank-you yo-yo girl for the link! Here is Anna's Blog http://cookiemadness.blogspot.com/

On another note, I wanted to say hey to all of the dykes in this year's Dyke March. Normally, I go to the march. They pass out stickers to wear at the march, and I was remembering when I was a young baby lesbian, and I wore a sticker that said "Single Dyke". Then, last year I went when I was pregnant, and I wore a sticker that said, "Dyke Mom". This year, I can't go at all because its past my sons bedtime, so now I really am a Stay At Home Dyke.

Have fun tonight everyone.

Macy's buckles to bigotry

This is a little bit of a cheat, but here is a letter I wrote to Macy's this morning. They took down portions of a Pride display due to pressure from MassResistance, a fringe anti-gay group. Here is my letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

I am a frequent shopper at your store as well as a Macy’s card holder. As a gay person in the Boston area, I am distressed to learn that your downtown Boston store succumbed to pressure from MassResistance and removed portions of your Pride Week display. According to your spokesperson, your store is trying to “strike a balance” for your customers. The choice of words is interesting since the balance you are trying to strike is one between tolerance and intolerance or a balance between bigotry and justice.

I have read many postings online from people who have said they will no longer shop at Macy’s. If I said that, I would be lying. I like your store too much, which is why I hope in the future you do not listen to these fringe groups when trying to decide on your displays. And I want you to keep one thing in mind. No matter how much money members of MassResistance have spent at your store, they cannot possibly have spent as much as I have over the years. My entire closet, shoe collection and kitchen have been furnished by Macy’s. All I am asking in return is that you show a little backbone.


////

Like I noted in my letter, I did actually see quite a few posters comment online that they would no longer shop at Macy's. You might be wondering why I will continue to do so. I use to work for the Episcopal Church during an interesting time. It was right after the ordination of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Communion. There was a lot of talk about staying in Communion with people we disagreed with. That was because several powerful bishops were decidely not wanting to stay in Communion with the US church. But the feeling was if we all stayed in communion with each other, it could be a growth experience for everyone.

So I have decided to stay in Communion with Macy's. I would like to think they will stop being such cowards given a little support, and it will most definitely be a growth experience for my shoe collection.

Mercury rising

This is more of a public service announcement than a blog entry. But I was reading the Boston Globe and they had an article by Robert Kennedy Jr, on the effects of mercury based preservatives in children’s vaccines. He believes that studies show a correlation between the rise in autism and other brain disorders with the introduction of these preservatives in children’s vaccines. Most distressingly, has been the dramatic increase in autistic rates among boys. Ten years ago, the rate for autism was 1 in 2,500 children. It is now 1 in 80 for boys.

Fearing lawsuits, manufactures of vaccines have now removed the preservative Thimerosal which contains the mercury from most vaccines. However, it can still be found in flu shots and tetanus boosters. I remember when I was pregnant I was repeatedly advised to get a flu shot. The reasoning was that I didn’t want to have the flu when I was pregnant or when I had a young child. I don’t know the exact reason I refused to get one, I just felt uncertain about having a shot when I was pregnant.

Needless to say, this all makes me very angry. I remember what a maniac I was when I was pregnant. I wouldn’t touch fish because I was afraid of the mercury content of fish. I wouldn’t stand in front of a microwave. I argued endlessly with my employers about the lead content of the paint in the office. It would have been something if after all of this, my doctors turned right around and shot my baby up full of mercury from the moment he was born.

I have to admit that I always thought the anti-vaccine people where a little wacky. I thought it was probably a group of people who were on the natural child birth continuum, so I really didn’t give it much thought. Turns out, they have a point. Need I point out that it is not ok to poison the brains of 1 in 80 boys? I see the brain like the hard drive of a computer, if a virus is introduced to the hard drive, the computer can be irrevocably damaged. This is a horrific violation to the children who received vaccines with this preservative and some may never be the same.