The Working Mom Issue: It Depends

(by Zuska) Feb 13 2012

I recently lost my mind completely and went on the twitters.  Due to my folly, I caught a link from @DoubleXSci to this article at the LA Times about the science of being a working mother: The MD: What Science Says About Working Moms, and What the Heart Says.  I have read a skajillion of these kinds of articles in my lifetime.  This one tells us no worries!  Go on and be a working mom!

Searching for more definitive answers, researchers at UC Irvine combined the results of 69 different studies on the topic. Their findings, published by the American Psychological Assn. in 2010, were reassuring. With few exceptions, children whose mothers returned to work when they were young fared just as well as those with stay-at-home moms.

"The only negative effects were found with very intensive, full-time employment early on," says Wendy Goldberg, a professor in the department of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine. "We have to look at other factors that affect child achievement and behavior. Maternal work isn't the whole story by any means."

I firmly believe that if decent childcare is readily available, no one's going to be seriously damaged if mommy goes back to work whenever she wants.  Daddy goes back to work on day 1 and somehow kids survive.  We rarely think about the consequences of that separation at birth, do we?

But two lines in the above quote get me.  "The only negative effects were found with very intensive, full time employment early on" and "Maternal work isn't the whole story by any means."  I would think not.  I would guess that whether or not you call your work a "career" and whether or not your work pays enough to keep you and your kid(s) from starving are two big, related factors, that might also tie into that intensive, full-time employment early on biz.  You might call what I am picking at here "class issues".

Here are some stereotypes we know and love:

1.  Welfare queens who just keep having babies so they can get a bigger check and stay home and not have to work.

2.  Hardworking middle class people who do their part and don't want to see their taxes go to support someone else.

3.  Women in science who have babies don't work as hard and want special treatment and extra credit for lesser quality work.

Take note that in theory, women are also included in "hardworking middle class people" but in practice deployment of the statement invokes an ideal of a nuclear family with hardworking man supporting wife and kids at home.  So, we can now start putting together rules for being a woman with kids:

If you are poor, you should not have kids, because then you will need the government to support you, and that is unfair to hardworking middle class people who do their part.  If you are poor and work, you can have kids, but don't expect childcare because again, that would be unfair to the hardworking middle class.  If you are poor and work and your kids are endangered because your part-time WalMart wages won't pay for adequate childcare, they will be taken from you because you are a bad mother. Also, try not to get sick, because health insurance? Ha!

If you are middle class, congratulations!  You have a hardworking husband who will take care of you and the kids, and of course you will probably want to homeschool the kids.  If your husband's salary is inadequate to support this lifestyle, he is not hardworking enough.  You may have to get a job to help out, but don't expect childcare.  That would be unfair to other hardworking middle class people.  Keep your fingers crossed that hubby does not die or divorce you. You may have insurance, but it may be mostly useless so again, try not to get sick.

If you are one of those career women, you should not be having children at all, just to pay someone else to raise them.  If you really want to have children, then you can't devote yourself to your career anyway.  So why hurt both your children and yourself?  Besides, if you have children, no one will take your work seriously.  Even if you get married and don't have children, people will be wondering if you might not just pop out a kid at any moment, confirming their suspicions that you are not serious.  Probably best to stay single.  Then they will just gossip about how you are an ice queen and frigid and a bull dyke and lesbian and ball-breaker and not a normal woman and need a good fucking and who would want to fuck you anyway.  It's not too late to think about becoming a nurse, or teacher, or even an executive assistant.  Then you can look for a nice man, settle down into a middle class lifestyle, and have some kids.  Try not to be poor, and try not to get sick.

If you are one of those career women who runs a company, you can do pretty much whatever you want because you will have lots of money and you own a company.  Not that it will be easy or that you will be universally loved or respected for it.  Just sayin', money=choice.

If you are one of those career women who wants to go into politics, you had better have children, and be prepared at all times to talk about (1) how important being a good mother is to you and how you have always arranged your schedule to be there for your children when they need you and (2) how having children will in no way ever impact on your ability to function as [fill in public office here] in even the slightest manner.

I think that mostly covers it.  Good luck!  Anyone with additional advice on how to be a woman with children, please leave a note in the comments!

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No Modesty Left At All

(by Zuska) Feb 09 2012

People keep saying the dead-tree format is over and done with but you can still learn so much from reading the newspaper.  Take for example this (for once) sensible editorial I chanced upon yesterday in the radical left-leaning Philadelphia Inquirer.  If you are "poor", ask yourself:  WWJD?  Be prepared to shape up in a hurry because He'd tell you something like this:

Our Lord Jesus: Are you a tween working 60 hours a week sticking things on pots while rats gnaw at you, just so you can get your dad out of debtor's prison?  No?  What you are is lounging about in your air-conditioned paradise with your cable tv, maybe even going to the public library and using the computer to get on the Internet there, and you're whinging away because you're "hungry".  If you're so hungry, why are you so fat?  Riddle me that one, Batman!  Your school (though I wouldn't let my kids go there) is free (for now, till we institute the voucher system) and your government pays for "much" of the tab of state and community colleges (if by "much" we include "ever decreasing amounts").  Why are you so dumb?  You can be as "poor" as you want and we won't even put you in debtor's prison!

 

You see, being poor used to be about really suffering in a hideous manner unto death. If the impoverished people are fat, have cars, and aren't in jail, the system is working pretty good for them.  But give the "poor" a little and they still aren't satisfied.  It's not enough to be a wage slave in a rat-free environment.**  They want equal opportunities, too!  But the whole point of success is to give your children unusually good opportunities. But no, the "poor" want to make it about the size of the gap, claiming that if the rich get richer, the poor should too.  That's just crazy talk!

Myself, I say it's time we solved this "poverty" problem, such as it is, once and for all.  Modesty will not serve; let us be bold in our proposals.  What few poor we do have should be fed an all organic, no hormones or antibiotics diet for three months to cleanse their systems, then humanely slaughtered on-site in old style, non-industrial abattoirs. We should not limit ourselves to just the more obvious, meatier cuts but strive for a whole human, nose to foot approach.  Many parts of the poor will pair well with a good pinot noir, and there is nothing like poor heart - tender, amazing, not funky like liver, and poor trotters make great tacos.  Even if it weren't respectful to the poor to practice nose-to-foot eating, the ecological benefits alone make it a wise choice for the environmentally conscious eater -- feeding multiple mouths with one whole animal and all its edible parts is much more efficient and less tolling on our environment than processing multiple animals to feed only a few mouths, which is what we do when limiting ourselves to eating only a single part.  You know, like chicken nuggets.  Which I hear, make the "poor" so fat, but also our wallets, so what are you going to do.

 

**Well, I did hear today about a transport authority worker stuck in a booth all day who has to dodge rats running around his feet so, technically, I guess we haven't quite achieved "wage slave in a rat-free environment" yet.  So close!

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Evaluating Eldermobiles

(by Zuska) Feb 03 2012

There are several pieces of paperwork I MUST get done today, there are a dozen blog posts I want to write spawned by sessions and conversations at SciO12, there are groceries to be bought if we're to eat tonight, and I have a migraine, so I really should be in bed with the lights off and an eye pillow draped over my forehead.  Yet this bit of a topic has been nagging at the back of my skull for days (maybe it's the source of the migraine!) and I just have to write it out.

I had always wanted a Beetle but never thought I'd get one.  I drove hand-me-down cars, or practical cheap things with good gas mileage, because cars are just transportation to get from point A to point B. And I can't tell them apart, aside from "this one's red and that one's black".  Except for the Beetle.  I loved the Beetle. I just didn't see myself buying one.  I would drive my Mazda 323 till it died, and then get some equivalent replacement.

But in October of 2001, the world as we all had known it had fallen apart. There was no point in being practical. Or waiting for my car (or myself) to die.  One day on a whim I walked into a dealership and there she was.  Sapphire, the Uppity Blues Beetle.  I fell in love, paid sticker price for my 2-year-old baby, and drove her off the lot.

Kids waved at me, other Beetle drivers honked their horns, perfect strangers asked me how I liked driving that Beetle.  It was a fun car.  It was also a pain in the ass.  The electrical system had a mind of its own, little plastic bits and buttons periodically fell off and had to be glued back on, the glove box door, for Pete's sake, had to be replaced.  Sapphire was high maintenance, that's for sure. But I loved her.  And my mom loved her, too - because she had leather seats that were easy to slide across, and because she had a bar across the glove box area that mom could grab onto when she was getting into the car.  With the back seats down, there was plenty of room to stash mom's wheelchair and her walker, too, plus any other stuff we needed to take along for the day.  You had to life the wheelchair over the rear lip when putting it in or taking it out, but all in all, Sapphire was a pretty darn good eldermobile.

Sometimes I flew to see mom rather than drive and then I had to rent a car.  Any car with cloth seats was a loser right from the start.  Elderly people just cannot easily scooch and slide across a cloth seat.  Leather or faux-leather is what they need.  Sometimes I would get a PT Cruiser and my mom would be ecstatic.  It had the handy grab bar like my Beetle (see here, scroll down).  It was just the right height - not too high, so easy to step into, and not too low, so easy to get out of.  Definitely plenty of room to stash the chair, walker, and other gear.

One sad day, Sapphire got creamed by an asshole in a big black SUV doing 50 mph on the shoulder of the road who literally ran right over top of my car to get back on the road.  Maybe you could have fixed her, for the price of 1.5 new cars or so.  The insurance company handed me a check and Sapphire got hauled away to be cut up for parts.

Now I needed a new car and I was in a pickle.  One, I don't like making decisions about big purchases like this.  Two, I needed to decide relatively quickly because I had no car. Three, I had very specific needs I wanted my new car to satisfy.  Four, I'd had Sapphire for almost ten years and had paid absolutely no attention to cars during that time.  I had no idea what was out there, how much cars cost, where to even start looking.

Naturally, I began to crowdsource a solution to my problem.  Everyone had great advice to offer.  All kinds of advice.  I had more options to consider than I could keep track of.  Mom was not offering "advice" - she knew what worked for her and told me to just go buy a PT Cruiser. During the car search time I twice rented a Chevy HHR to go see mom.  She liked it almost as much as the PT Cruiser except it had no handy grab bar.  It did get great gas mileage and I could get the wheelchair in the back without putting the seats down if I had to, which meant I could take both mom and Aunt Betty to the Ice Plant for lunch.  So that was a bonus.  Mom still favored the PT.

I went to dealerships, I looked at cars, I test drove cars.  I looked at the Toyota Matrix, RAV 4, and Prius, the Scion xB, the Kia Soul and Sportage, the Mazda 5 Minivan, the Chevy HHR, the PT Cruiser, the Subaru Impreza and Outback, and I don't remember what all else.  I looked at new and used cars.  I made lists and did comparisons.  I test drove, I did online research, I made up my mind, and then I started all over again.

I felt the openings on the Matrix and Impreza were too small - too hard for stiff bodies to get in and out.  Not enough storage space in a Prius, and the RAV 4 and Mazda 5 seemed too high of a step-in, as did the Sportage.  I liked the Kia Soul a lot, but ultimately felt its rear opening was a bit too small - didn't want to have to fight to put a wheelchair in the back.  I was really leaning toward the HHR because I had driven it and liked it, and the gas mileage was fantastic but Mr. Z was very set against it.  He felt the interior looked a little too cheesy, was concerned about plastic parts falling off a la the Beetle, and wondered how resale value would hold up. I couldn't find an HHR or a PT with leather heated seats, which I really wanted. In the end I bought a used Subaru Outback which had every feature I wanted save amazing gas mileage.  It has leather seats, and seat heaters - very comforting to mom's achy back in cold weather.  It has dual climate control so she can be toasty and I can be cool or vice versa. The back just swallows up her wheelchair with room to spare - I've put her transport chair and her walker in there with it as well - and there is no lip to lift it over.  Furthermore, the opening of the back is low, so one does not have to hoist the heavy equipment up high. The back is spacious enough to hold all the gear without putting seats down so I can take mom and Aunt Betty together to lunch.  (Or my mother- and father-in-law.) There are two great cup holders in between the driver and passenger seats, as well as a spacious storage box - roomy enough for mom's special sunglasses or her water bottle.  Alas, there is no handy grab bar across the front but because of the height of the passenger seat, mom can back up to the seat, sit down, grab the handle above the door, and swing her legs into the car.  The door opening is large enough for her to do this and for me to assist her.  The car warms up quickly in cool weather, cools down quickly in summer heat.  And it handles fantastically over the mountains between where I live and where mom is.

The AARP offers some advice to caregivers on choosing cars, but I did not find it particularly helpful.  It is very general, and some of the car models they mention I would consider to be difficult for elderly people  to enter and exit.  If you have narrowed you search for a car down to two or at most three vehicles, the best thing to do would be to take your elderly person along with you and let them try getting in and out of the car.  See for yourself how easy it is to put the wheelchair or transport chair or other gear into the car.  I was not able to do this because mom and I live so far apart so I had to measure and guess.

Another good thing to know is that if you have found a car that you think will work for you, but it doesn't come with leather seats, you can get leather covers made for them at a reasonable price.  A good site for used car information is TrueDelta.

For some years now, car makers have finally become aware that women drive cars and that kids are often in the cars whether women or men are driving.  It would be nice, as our population rapidly ages, if they began to pay some special attention to car design that works well for caregivers and the elderly people they transport.  Or caregivers and the not-so-elderly but people with disabilities that need transport.  Universal design, is what I'm asking for.  We're starting to get there in home and apartment design.  But cars are still things we are supposed to fall in love with, things that make a statement about us.  Not practical things that can help us help anyone get from point A to point B.

I loved my Beetle like a teenager - it was shiny, it looked cute - but I love my Subaru for its comfort and functionality. It annoys me when people ask why I got such a boring car or why I'm driving a mom-mobile. If my car is supposed to make a statement about me, then my car says I like old people and I care about their needs. My car is an eldermobile. I get the most compliments on my car when I am helping my mom in or out of it outside the assisted living home.  People there look at cars in a different way.  And my mom always says proudly in a way that makes me want to cry, "she bought this car just for me!"  I'm guessing I won't see Subaru advertize anytime soon how great its Outback is for transporting old people, because we live in a youth culture, and so the Outback must be about youthful adventurous types leaving it all behind and getting to the rugged outdoors.  It could be both, if our culture didn't look upon the elderly with so much fear and loathing.

Car makers are selling us youth and sex - that's why there are always so many hot babes draped over the vehicles in ads and at car shows - and they don't imagine anyone is going to want an eldermobile.  No, the car is supposed to help you stave off age and death, not transport it to the cardiologist.  I don't imagine we'll be seeing eldermobiles on the market anytime soon.

 

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Things I Found Ponderable: #scio12 Report the Second

(by Zuska) Jan 26 2012

Gather round, Zuskateers, and you shall hear the tale of Clang!2 - White Privilege.

If you will recall, in Report the First, Zuska looked deep inside her own brain and found a squirming pile of sexist maggots gnawing away at her will to transform the world.  Report the second is just as unlovely!  So grab your popcorn and let's get started!

Many of you Zuskateers know that some years back I had a stroke caused by a migraine, and that the stroke made my migraines much, much worse - so severe and frequent that I had to quit working.  You may not also know that I lost nearly all my vision at the time of the stroke.  It gradually returned over a period of several months, but I did not get it all back.  I was left with a blind spot in the upper right quadrant of my visual field. It's not a black spot in my vision.  If I really pay attention, I can see that the area of the blind spot seems to have been rubbed or erased out.  But most of the time I don't even see the blind spot.  It's as if my brain takes everything it sees around the hole that is the blind spot, knits it together to patch up the whole, and tells the rest of me, "Okay, no problem here.  What you are seeing is all there is to see."  Oliver Sacks has written about this phenomenon in an essay titled "Scotoma: Forgetting and Neglect in Science".  (It's in a hard to find book called Hidden Histories of Science that is worth seeking out.)

My blind spot is a case of my brain not letting me know what I don't know, and I have to actively work around this to get the information I need, properly interpret the world, and keep myself safe.  Signs are sometimes hard for me to read because I don't get all the information at once, my brain can't make sense of it, and is too stupid to imagine that there might be something I'm missing.  Same thing when I'm reading the paper - I get to the end of a column and think "that story ended oddly".  Then I move my head and see there's an upper right part of the page - oh look! more story!  Finding things on the computer screen can be a nightmare.  I work hard to pay attention because I know I'm missing stuff, but it is exhausting, and sometimes I just quit.  I watch tv knowing I'm seeing about 3/4 of the picture but so what.  It'll do.

I tell you all this because my scotoma is the perfect metaphor for Clang!2.

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Things I Found Ponderable: #scio12 Report the First

(by Zuska) Jan 25 2012

Once in New Orleans I went on a late night walking ghost tour.  The ghost stories, the architectural beauty, the historical tidbits have all mostly vanished from my brain, but one bit of the tour stays ever with me.  A careless tourmate paying little attention to the terrain ahead ran smack clang! into the metal upright of a street sign.  His head hit so hard it sounded like a rung bell; he bounced backward, the pole shook.   We stopped, startled and hushed. As terribly as it must have hurt, out of embarrassment he waved us off as though it was nothing and resumed walking.

I've often wondered how I would respond if/when I slammed my own head into an upright metal pole.  Now I have my chance!  Metaphorically speaking.  This post is part of my attempt to not just resume walking as if nothing had happened.

I had two metal-pole-to-the-head moments at SciO12.  The first came right away. No one saw me run into this particular street sign, but rather than just resume walking, I thought it would be better to share the story.  It was at the keynote address Thursday morning: The Vain Girl's Survival Guide to Science and the Media given by Mireya Mayor.  If you read the page of notes I took from her talk, you would get the sense that I experienced it in a very positive way, enjoyed it, maybe even found it inspiring and found some useful ideas in it.  All of which is true. At the same time, however, I was having an appalling out-of-body sort of experience, listening to an ongoing monologue in my head, wondering "who is this sexist asshole and how did she get inside my brain?"

At first I was conscious only of having a very negative reaction to Mayor.  This felt bizarre, since I knew absolutely nothing about her. Long ago a wise woman told me, "when you find something that makes you angry, upset, or disgusted, move toward it instead of away. Try to figure out why you feel that way.  You may learn something about yourself."  So I attended to the incoherent thoughts in my brain, to puzzle out this negative reaction.  Here is the ugliness I unraveled as Mayor spoke.

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There Is A Dinner Policy And We're Sticking To It!

(by Zuska) Jan 10 2012

Dear Kittehs:

Dinner is at 5:30 pm.  You know it, I know it.

Why must you start hovering about me like two hungry vultures at 4:30 pm?This helps no one.

Your frequent mini-whimpers suggesting you have not eaten in 12 days,  softly nudging my knee with your sweet little nose, gazing at me with your large luminous eyes - it's all intended to  induce the Catholic guilt ever lurking just under the surface - and you're right.  But we both know if you eat now, you'll just want second dinner early, too.  Then you'll be thinking you should have third dinner. That way lies madness.  Also, dirty looks for mommy from the vet  when she brings in two fat kittehs.

Thank you for your understanding.

Love, Mom

P.S.  See, it wasn't so hard to wait that long was it?  We can go get dinner now.

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Flying Chairs at #scio12 !!!!!!!!!!!

(by Zuska) Jan 09 2012

Forget the jetpacks, ScienceOnline is going to have FLYING CHAIRS!!!!!

They are incredibly awesome.

They look like ordinary plastic and metal classroom desk chairs, but you just sit down in them, think about where you want to go, and hang on!  They will whisk you from one session to the next, swooping and swishing above the crowds below.  You can take them outside, too, and fly around in the parking lot with your friends.  Sometimes, though, Bora programs them all to go to one place at one time when we all need to be there for a plenary session or a dinner or what have you.  It's a sight to see everyone rising up like a flock of nerdy birds, whizzing along to the next venue.

 

When I woke up this morning and realized that flying chairs at #SciO12 was just a beautiful dream, I felt sad only for a moment.  Even if there aren't going to be flying chairs, Bora and Anton will still have created something so fab I'll feel like I've been flying around by the seat of my pants for three days.

More down-to-earth and sensible discussions of what to expect at SciO12 can be found at Dr. Stemwedel's place and over at WhizBANG!

 

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Getting "In God We Trust" Back Into This Country

(by Zuska) Dec 29 2011

It's December 29th, and I'm taking a little time out of the mad holiday rush to sit down, relax, and write out some Christmas cards.  I know what you're thinking: Zuska, isn't this just a tad early to start working on the 2012 mailing list?  You are correct. However, it's a dandy time for cranking out the 2011 cards.  Hopes are high that they will actually reach a mailbox, maybe even in 2011.  For lo these several years I've not managed to send out anything more than a card to Z-mom, but I feel a Christmas miracle coming on. Surely a month of incessant Christmas carols everywhere I go will have inspired me.

Last year while digging around in a cupboard I came across a box of Christmas cards with envelopes already addressed and stamped.  A few signatures and a personal note or two were all that was lacking.  I thought briefly about converting these abandoned cards to a 2010 mailing. But the amount of extra postage each envelope needed would tell the whole embarrassing story.  Fortunately my township recycles paper.

I was inspired to mull over my ongoing Christmas card mailing list failures-to-launch while listening to All Things Considered; Iowan Man and Potential Mitt Romney Supporter plaintively inquired the following:

  "Yeah, I was wondering what you're planning on doing to get 'In God We Trust' back into this country again because our kids can't even celebrate Christmas in this country for fear of offending someone else," said the potential supporter. "Y'know, when we came here, we were founded on 'In God We Trust' and I'd like to see that back in this country again." [emphasis mine]

Could that be it?  Iowan Man may be on to something here.  I thought I was lazy and perhaps somewhat concerned about all the paper wastage. But I am fairly sure now that this is the problem:  I can't celebrate Christmas by sending out cards for fear of offending someone else.  It just has to be that.

In solidarity with Iowan Man, I offer below The Lament of the White Christian During  Xmas Election Season.

We can't even celebrate Christmas in this country for fear of offending someone else. Sure, you can buy Hanukkah cards - some of your best friends are Jewish! - but it's just a pity card because you can't send them a real Christmas card. They probably know it and wish their second-class holiday was the real one, and that makes you feel soooo awkward. Just because your holiday is Number 1 is no reason for other people to make you feel bad.

Then you have your atheist friends (hah! as if). You can't even say Merry Christmas because they will call out the ACLU and sue you, even if you X-out Jesus and say Merry Xmas.  What are you left with? Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays and Sparkle Season and other euphemisms that are just pushing "In God We Trust" right out of this country and making our kids afraid.

The worst of all is the Muslims, of which I don't personally know any, but they just get enraged when they hear anything about Christmas.  They are going to take over this country and mark my words, we are going to have to celebrate Christmas in secret, because they will kill us if they find out.  They have already gotten a Muslim elected president and pretty soon no Christian will be safe anywhere.

We need to get "In God We Trust" back in this country so that when the end times come, we'll be Raptured.  So, what I want to know, Mr./Ms. Presidential Candidate, can you promise me that if I vote for you, your first priority will be to install the authoritarian white christian theocracy I'm pining for?  Merry Christmas, In God We Trust.

 

 

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When to Tell? Who to Tell?

(by Zuska) Dec 29 2011

The most awesome Hermitage asked in a recent post

Ignoring the fact that knowing who to even complain to, and to what purpose, is not always clear, how bad does something have to be before you are compelled to take a stand? Should the criteria be severity, or simply how easy something is to prove? Should you always do the right thing, or should your career come first?

I wrote a long comment that sort of turned into a mini-post.  I'll reproduce it here. My answer was written assuming that what was being complained about was harassment or discrimination.  One main point I wanted to get across is this:  DO NOT WAIT until you have been harassed or discriminated against to try to figure out what you should do when you have been harassed or discriminated against.  Read and educate yourself about your school or workplace's relevant policies and procedures, understand how things would officially be handled and what that would imply for you.  Go talk to someone at the office of diversity or the equal opportunity office (where a complaint might be likely to be handled).  If your university has a women's studies department, ask them for resources to help you understand the situation women in science face in academia and how to respond to harassment and discrimination (tell them you don't need to read high theory, you need practical stuff about dealing with douchebags).  An informed woman scientist is one who is less likely to be harassed, and more likely to be able to aid a colleague who is dealing with a problem.

Okay, here's the rest of what I wrote over at Hermitage's place.  I encourage you to go read her post and the comments there, too.  Continue Reading »

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How Soon Can I Go Back???

(by Zuska) Dec 13 2011

Whole lotta everything going on in the past few weeks.  Past coupla months.  Okay, the whole dang year.  It's not been one of my better blogging years.  But I've been spending time with people who matter to me, and that is something I treasure.

Last week, though, last week was just for me and Mr. Z.  We took our annual vacation to a warm sunny beachy sandy place.  We don't buy each other gifts or cards or flowers for birthdays, anniversaries, or holidays. We save money for this vacation and relaxing time alone with each other, away from all the things we deal with in our daily lives.  This year the vacation seemed to stretch on and on; it felt much longer than the one week, and I felt thoroughly relaxed. Yay!  Eventually we had to come home, though, back to cell phones and stacks of mail and things that need doing for the people we care about and the kittehs we love even though they use litter boxes and the yard that looks like someone is trying to let it go back to the wild.

Last night I dreamed I went outside to get the paper and there was a tough old man with leathery sunburnt skin and strongly muscled arms and legs, busily working over one of my garden beds and in the process of turning it into a thing of beauty.  He'd already completed work on one - weeds gone, soil turned over and compost mixed in, some new perennials planted in pleasing arrangements, perfectly edged with natural stone - and was hard at work on the next.  I was bewildered.  Why was he here, where had he come from?  He said he had been sent to ensure that my garden would flourish until I had time to properly care for it again. Well, and then I woke up.

The beachy sandy place was lush with beautiful foliage. I went on a guided nature tour of the area to learn about the flora around me, and the gardens on site that produced many of the vegetables and herbs we found on our dinner plates. Someday, someday, I will be a real gardener.  Meanwhile, here are a few pics of things that enchanted me.

Dragonfly on palm frond

 

This is quite near the water, and I spent a lot of time here.

Sea grapes growing into beach hut

 

And here I was just enamored of the color and geometry.

Japanese fanpalm

 

During our yearly vacation, Mr. Z and I play gardener to each other's soul and spirit.  If we can't completely guarantee a year of flourishing between vacations, it seems we at least prevent complete wilting and withering.  We trade tips and make plans for proper care in the coming year.

For some things it takes a long time to see results but in others you get a bit of reward early on, if you are paying attention.  Last year I planted a tiny ninebark sometime around the end of June.  One year later it had turned into a fine young bushy plant and lo! -this dude showed up.

Ninebark leaves and mantis

I'm pretty sure that's a praying mantis. I can't remember the last time I saw one of those.  Even if my garden looks like crap to me, putting in those native plants is starting to make a bit of a difference.  Lots more bees this year, and other kinds of bugs.  Little things like that can keep you going for a long time.

So, dear Zuskateers: how does your garden grow?  None of us have that gardener of our dreams who will show up and take care of everything till we're able to get back to it ourselves.  How do you refresh?  What small thing in the past year gave you much delight?  Semesters are ending and we're gearing up for holiday madness so it might be good to reflect for a minute upon those things that bring us brief moments of joy, keep us sane, or keep us from going completely nuts.  At least until we can get back to the sandy beachy place once more.

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TRAPPED!!!!

(by Zuska) Oct 27 2011

Day 1, Hour 1 of captivity

Conehead lies in despair next to the bathroom door.

If only it would open and let him out.

14 days of this hell????

He swears he'll never eat another needle if only you let him out to sweet, sweet freedom.

 

 

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Humorless Feminazis Everywhere!

(by Zuska) Sep 06 2011

Regular Zuskateers know that I am a humorless, hairy-legged feminazi.  Day in, day out, my grim outlook never wavers. I devote myself to the serious pursuit of feminism, which is no joking matter.

Thus, you can imagine how my little feminazi heart beat just a little faster, how the hairs on my legs stood up all a-quiver from the tops of my thighs all the way down to my Doc Martens, when I read these two posts last weekend:  Scicurious on Are men really funnier than women? Who's asking? and Stephanie Zvan on Humor Study is Funny Peculiar.   Sci and Stephanie together were discussing Greengross & Miller's paper "Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males" Intelligence, 2011.

I absolutely refuse to admit that anything is higher in males, not even cholesterol, and fortunately Sci and Stephanie were able to shoot this paper full of holes.  Feminazism is spreading all over the internets!  I do think, however, they could have been a little bit more serious and angry in their posts, maybe shouted a few revolutionary slogans and given some press to the Wimmin's Front of Scienceblogging, which, as you know, is vastly superior to the Scienceblogging Popular Wimmin's Front.

Also:  Congrats to Stephanie on moving Almost Diamonds to Freethought Blogs!!!!!

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Smart Girls at the Party

(by Zuska) Aug 31 2011

Via Gerty-Z - thanks so much for alerting me to this site!

Smart Girls At The Party!

As Gerty-Z notes,

the tagline [is] "change the world by being yourself". Now, that already sounds pretty awesome. BUT, if you poke around you will find that it is set up by three super-awesome women: Amy Poehler, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles. They interview women and girls who do cool stuff

Valentine is a gardener.  And there are many, many more cool videos and other things on the site.  Share this with every young girl you know!!!!!!!!!!!

 

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A Farmer's Laments

(by Zuska) Aug 31 2011

Tomato season, no matter how long it lasts, always seems painfully short to me.  Real tomatoes, with all their juicy flavorful delight, are an incomparable treat.  I've been making sauce, tomato juice, a fancy tomato-and-melon soup, a simple and amazingly good tomato-and-green bean dish, tomato sandwiches, BLTs, and of course, just plain old sliced tomatoes with a little drizzle of olive oil and balsamic, and maybe some mozzarella and fresh basil.  Tomorrow I'm going to concoct a roasted heirloom tomato Bloody Mary mix for a friend of mine.  I know the tomatoes will be gone soon and so I eat as many as I can now.

I eat through the seasons courtesy of the wonderful farmers who come each week to the markets I frequent.  I eat what they are growing and have to sell; the Z-table features whatever they've got.  Today one of my favorite farmers asked me if I was a vegetarian.  No, I said, it's just that when there's so much good stuff available, we tend to eat more of it and go lighter on the meat.  (Side effect: cheaper, and better for our health. Mr. Z asked me once, "Am I becoming a vegetarian?"  Ha ha!  Veggie by stealth!)

At the market

Today at the farm market I got into a conversation about farming's travails with one of my favorite farmers. They did not suffer too badly from Irene.  Many young fruit trees were blown over by the wind and had to be restaked; the corn was blown down, but could still be harvested.  (He feels for the farmers with large corn crops that are normally harvested mechanically.  It will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to run a mechanical harvester across the blown down rows.  For sure they will only be able to go in one direction, not turn and go back and forth across the field like they normally do.  They'll have to make one pass, then turn and go all the way back up the field and start over.) Peaches took a beating, and the cantaloupes may be done, but the watermelons are harvested and will keep for awhile.  The blackberries came through unscathed.

Irene was not the main aggravation on his mind, however.  Stinkbugs were, and a new devastating invasive pest, the Asian spotted wing fruit fly.  Stinkbugs poke into ripening fruit and leave only a small blemish - the fruit could still be saleable - but the punctured skin leaks scent and juices that attract hornets and yellow jackets. The fruit fly, however, is a real nightmare.  Normally fruit flies are attracted to rotting fruit but these flies come to ripening fruit on trees and vines and lay their eggs, which mature and decimate the fruit.

The farmer said his raspberry crop was infested.  He had to pick off every fruit and discard them, spray thoroughly, and continue to discard ripening fruit for a week.  He said this new pest, combined with the stinkbugs, is making him rethink the whole idea of organic farming.  His family has tried to do organic farming, partly because they believe in it for the good of the land and partly because customers want it, but he is sickened by seeing the literal fruits of his labor ruined just before time to go to market. There was anger in his voice as he spoke about this, and about people who want to buy fruits and vegetables shipped from China because they are cheap, or because it's something interesting.  Every time you bring a fruit or vegetable in this country from China, he said, you are taking the chance to bring in another pest, and you are hurting me, and you are hurting agriculture in this country.  I wouldn't eat anything from China, he said.

He also talked about GM corn.  Worms get in to his corn, of course, and they do light spraying to control the worms, even though some of the "organic only" crowd fusses about this and hesitates to purchase oh noes! the lightly sprayed wormless corn.  He looked into a type of GM corn that is resistant to worms, but ended up deciding against growing it for three reasons.  (1) Lots of his customers don't want to eat GM crops. (2) They make you sign all kinds of paperwork to get the seed and grow the corn, and you are not allowed to save seed.  You have to buy it again each year, and it's just too expensive.  (3) It simply doesn't taste as good;  "Who wants to eat cardboard?"  He's not opposed to GMOs on principle, but is unwilling to compromise on flavor, and dislikes losing the autonomy of being able to save his own seed.  On this latter point: he talked about the issue of some GM soybeans that are designed with self-terminating seeds - they cannot reproduce.  He thinks this is madness, and is worried that making seed sterile is a trait that might spread into the wild population.  All in all, he doesn't see GMOs as providing any value for him at this time.  One of the main points of his operation is to provide the markets with locally grown food with a taste far superior to that in the supermarkets, which helps justify the somewhat higher price that allows him to make a living and keep going.  GMOs that resist pests but have no flavor are of no real help.

Time and again I am staggered to realize how hard the farmers work, constantly, day in and day out, to bring their produce to the markets.  The food they grow is wonderful.  It takes more time (and the money, and the utensils)  to prepare and cook fresh produce than, say, ordering take-out, or heating up a tv dinner in the microwave.  Everything in our lives is stacked against us devoting that time to food prep.  We are pushed toward the baguette dispenser and away from the bakery, but we owe it to ourselves and to the farmers, and to the kind of life we would like the children of today to have when they grow up, to resist that push as much as possible.  In some parts of Philadelphia, there are young kids who have never seen fresh vegetables and cannot identify them by sight. A world in which young children do not know what a tomato looks like, let alone how good a true fresh tomato tastes, is one we should feel shame to inhabit.

 

 

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"The Bakery of Tomorrow" Makes Me Want To Cry

(by Zuska) Aug 30 2011

A thousand years ago, when I was an undergraduate, there was one bank in State College, PA that had an ATM.  "Rosy, the 24 hour teller!" it was called.  The bank had to give the ATM a name and warm, friendly female persona to introduce this strange new concept to its customers, especially since they were charging them extra for the card they needed to use it.  Craziness, I thought.  Who in the world is going to pay for the privilege of having access to their money, when you can just go in to the bank and have a real teller give you your cash?  That silly thing will never catch on. Rosy!  What a hoot!

Many years and a skazillion ATM fees later, the bank has the last laugh.

Now, in my Sunday paper, I read about this horrifying development in the land of the baguette.

Jean-Louis Hecht [a] baker from northeast France has rolled out a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser, promising warm bread for hungry night owls, shift workers, or anyone else who didn't have time to pick one up during the bakery's opening hours.

"This is the bakery of tomorrow," proclaimed Hecht, who foresees expansion in Paris, around Europe, and even to the United States. "If other bakers don't want to enter the niche, they're going to get decimated."

There are only two machines...for now.  And people may scoff that it's not as good as the real thing...for now.  But just as we got used to paying for our own money, and scanning and bagging our groceries ourselves, we'll get used to this.  Monsieur Hecht says so.

"It's like with banks: Before, everyone went to a teller; now, everybody uses ATMs," he said. "It will be the same with bread: Today, everybody goes to the bakery. Tomorrow they'll go to the baguette dispenser."

We are too busy to wait in line for human tellers inside a bank, or for someone else to check out and bag our groceries.  We'll do it ourselves, 24/7, and never mind that the waiting in line used to contribute to someone having a job.  Never mind that accepting a half-tolerable baguette, because you can get it at any time of the day or night, will put bakers and their employees out of work.  Monsieur Hecht says his bread dispenser will change the lifestyle of bakers, letting them sleep in a little later, and imagines this desiderata justifies the technology, but what the bread dispenser will really do is dispense with baking.  As he says

"If other bakers don't want to enter the niche, they're going to get decimated."

It's deeply ironic that France, of all places, is discovering fast-food bread, at a time when many U.S. cities are beginning to rediscover the virtues of old-fashioned bread-making and bakeries.  At one local farmer's market near my home, a baker sets up a stall each week and those who would purchase bread from him had best get there in the first two hours of the market.  The bread goes before the cookies, before the croissants and apple dumplings and nut rolls and cannoli.  Even in my local Genuardi's grocery store, the Wonder bread languishes on the shelves but the "artisan bread" from the store bakery is snapped up early in the day.

Technology that decimates, that destroys jobs and gives lower quality food as its gift, is truly technology gone bad. The bulk of U.S. food culture is ample proof of that.  How much food culture will France be willing to sacrifice in the name of efficiency and convenience?  Or will they realize what they already know, that eating cheap crap on the run is no bargain?

 

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