EditorMom

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Impeach the Liar-in-Chief

Do I sound like I have a one-track mind? Maybe so. But if we don't get rid of our liar-in-chief soon, we'll lose our country to the hate-mongering theocratic big-business Bush cult. FactCheck.org has analyzed the lies—of commission and omission—that Bush told at his speech this week at Fort Bragg. (And what an ironic name that base has in view of Bush's insistence that the U.S. is "winning"!) Here's the analysis, which I just received in an e-mail:

The Bloodshed
Bush acknowledged the high level of violence in Iraq as he sought to reassure the public.

Bush: The work in Iraq is difficult and dangerous. Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying and the suffering is real. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?

What Bush did not mention is that by most measures the violence is getting worse. Both April and May were record months in Iraq for car bombings, for example, with more than 135 of them being set off each month. And the bombings are getting more deadly. May was a record month for deaths from bombings, with 381 persons killed in "multiple casualty" bombings that took two or more lives, according to figures collected by the Brookings Institution in its "Iraq Index." The Brookings index is compiled from a variety of sources including official government statistics, where those are available, and other public sources such as news accounts and statements of Iraqi government officials.

The number of Iraqi police and military who have been killed is also rising, reaching 296 so far in June, nearly triple the 109 recorded in January and 103 in Febrary, according to a tally of public information by the website Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a private group that documents each fatality from public statements and news reports. Estimates of the total number of Iraqi civilians killed each month as a result of "acts of war" have been rising as well, according to the Brookings index.

The trend is also evident in year-to-year figures. In the past twelve months, there have been 25% more U.S. troop fatalities and nearly double the average number of insurgent attacks per day as there were in the preceeding 12 months.

Reconstruction Progress
In talking about Iraqi reconstruction, Bush highlighted the positive and omitted the negative:

Bush: We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. . . . Our progress has been uneven but progress is being made. We are improving roads and schools and health clinics and working to improve basic services like sanitation, electricity and water. And together with our allies, we will help the new Iraqi government deliver a better life for its citizens.

Indeed, the State Department's most recent "Iraq Weekly Status Report" shows progress is uneven. Education is a positive; official figures show 3,056 schools have been rehabilitated and millions of "student kits" have been distributed to primary and secondary schools. School enrollments are increasing. And there are also 145 new primary healthcare centers currently under construction. The official figures show 78 water treatment projects underway, nearly half of them completed, and water utility operators are regularly trained in two-week courses.

On the negative side, however, State Department figures show overall electricity production is barely above pre-war levels. Iraqis still have power only 12 hours daily on average.

Iraqis are almost universally unhappy about that. Fully 96 percent of urban Iraqis said they were dissatisfied when asked about "the availability of electricity in your neighborhood." That poll was conducted in February for the U.S. military, and results are reported in Brookings' "Iraq Index." The same poll also showed that 20 percent of Iraqi city-dwellers still report being without water to their homes.

Conclusions or Facts?
The President repeatedly stated his upbeat conclusions as though they were facts. For example, he said of "the terrorists:"

Bush: They failed to break our coalition and force a mass withdrawal by our allies. They failed to incite an Iraqi civil war.

In fact, there have been withdrawals by allies. Spain pulled out its 1,300 soldiers in April, and Honduras brought home its 370 troops at the same time. The Philippines withdrew its 51 troops last summer to save the life of a Filipino hostage held captive for eight months in Iraq. Ukraine has already begun a phased pullout of its 1,650-person contingent, which the Defense Ministry intends to complete by the end of the year. Both the Netherlands and Italy have announced plans to withdraw their troops, and the Bulgarian parliament recently granted approval to bring home its 450 soldiers. Poland,
supplying the third-largest contingent in the coalition after Italy's departure, has backed off a plan for full withdrawal of troops due to the success of Iraqi elections and talks with Condoleezza Rice, but the Polish Press Agency announced in June that the next troop rotation will have 200 fewer soldiers.

Bush is of course entitled to argue that these withdrawals don't constitute a "mass" withdrawal, but an argument isn't equivalent to a fact.

The same goes for Bush's statement there's no "civil war" going on. In fact, some believe that what's commonly called the "insurgency" already is a "civil war" or something very close to it. For example, in an April 30 piece, the Times of London quotes Colonel Salem Zajay, a police commander in Southern Baghdad, as saying, "The war is not between the Iraqis and the Americans. It is between the Shia and the Sunni." Again, Bush is entitled to state his opinion to the contrary, but stating a thing doesn't make it so.

Terrorism
Similarly, Bush equated Iraqi insurgents with terrorists who would attack the US if they could.

Bush: There is only one course of action against them: to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home. . . . Our mission in Iraq is clear. We are hunting down the terrorists.

Despite a few public claims to the contrary, however, no solid evidence has surfaced linking Iraq to attacks on the United States, and Bush offered none in his speech. The 9/11 Commission issued a staff report more than a year ago saying "so far we have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." It said Osama bin Laden made a request in 1994 to establish training camps in Iraq, but "but Iraq apparently never responded." That was before bin Laden was ejected from Sudan and moved his operation to Afghanistan.

Bush laid stress on the "foreign" or non-Iraqi elements in the insurgency as evidence that fighting in Iraq might prevent future attacks on the US:

Bush: I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country. And tonight I will explain the reasons why. Some of the violence you see in Iraq is being carried out by ruthless killers who are converging on Iraq to fight the advance of peace and freedom. Our military reports that we have killed or captured hundreds of foreign fighters in Iraq who have come from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Libya and other nations.

But Bush didn't mention that the large majority of insurgents are Iraqis, not foreigners. The overall strength of the insurgency has been estimated at about 16,000 persons. The number of foreign fighters in Iraq is only about 1,000, according to estimates reported by the Brookings Institution. The exact number is of course impossible to know. However, over the course of one week during the major battle for Fallujah in November of 2004, a Marine official said that only about 2% of those detained were foreigners. To be sure, Brookings notes that "U.S. military believe foreign fighters are responsible for the majority of suicide bombings in Iraq," with perhaps as many as 70 percent of bombers coming from Saudi Arabia alone. It is anyone's guess how many of those Saudi suicide bombers might have attempted attacks on US soil, but a look at the map shows that a Saudi jihadist can drive across the border to Baghdad much more easily than getting nearly halfway around the world to to the US.

Osama bin Laden
Bush quoted a recent tape-recorded message by bin Laden as evidence that the Iraq conflict is "a central front in the war on terror:"

Bush: Hear the words of Osama bin Laden: "This Third World War is raging" in Iraq..."The whole world is watching this war." He says it will end in "victory and glory or misery and humiliation."

However, Bush passed over the fact that the relationship between bin Laden and the Iraqi insurgents—to the extent one existed at all before—grew much closer after the US invaded Iraq. Insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not announce his formal allegiance with bin Laden until October, 2004. It was only then that Zarqawi changed the name of his group from "Unification and Holy War Group" to "al Qaeda in Iraq."

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Impeach Bush: Vietnam Déjà Vu

Our incompetent president lies with every breath he takes. Reminds me of LBJ and Vietnam. Reminds Eric Alterman of Vietnam too:

Anyway, the speech, reminding me of Vietnam, also reminded me of a list we reprinted here back in March 2003, which originally appeared on something called “Mediawhoresonline Watch Watch.” I never bothered to find out what or who was behind it (or why), but it sure does look prescient today. Here it is:
VIETNAM 2 PREFLIGHT CHECK
1. Cabal of oldsters who won’t listen to outside advice? Check.
2. No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
3. Imposing country boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
4. Unshakeable faith in our superior technology? Check.
5. France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
6. Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
7. China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
8. SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
9. Fear we’ll look bad if we back down now? Check.
10. Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
11. Land war in Asia? Check.
12. Right unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
13. Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
14. Soldiers about to be dosed with *our own* chemicals? Check.
15. Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
16. Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
17. B-52 bombers? Check.
18. Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
19. In-fighting among the branches of the military? Check.
20. Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
21. Local experts ignored? Check.
22. Local politicians ignored? Check.
23. Locals used to conflicts lasting longer than the USA has been a country? Check.
24. Against advice, Prez won’t raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
25. Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
26. Use of nukes hinted at if things don’t go our way? Check.
27. Unpopular war? Check.

Vietnam 2, you are cleared to taxi.

Impeach Bush. Now. Before he kills more Iraqi civilians and American soldiers.

impeach Bush impeach Bush Iraq Vietnam

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Impeach Bush

Breast Milk Each Day Keeps the Eyeglasses Away

Got your attention, didn't I?

Here's yet another reason to breast-feed your children:

Children who are breastfed are about fifty percent less likely to be short sighted, Singapore researchers said on Tuesday.

Docosahexaenoi acid or DHA, a substance found in breast milk, could be the main element which improves early visual development in babies, resulting in more ordered eyeball growth which then reduces the development or severity of myopia.

Unless you or your child has a physical problem that prevents breast-feeding, give back that free sample of formula that you just got on the maternity ward and whip out those breasts! You have no excuse.

breast-feeding breastfeeding breast

Thursday, June 23, 2005

The Pentagon's Got Your Child's Number

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying. . . .

Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.

Read more here (free registration required) or here.

Can you say back-door draft, moms and dads?

Iraq Bush military draft

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Presidential Scholar

Today was my son Neil's moving-up ceremony at school; he's finished fifth grade and will begin middle school next year. My husband Ed and I knew that Neil's grades had been excellent this year (almost straight A's), but we were floored to find out that he received a President's Award for Educational Excellence. (This is the only time you'll ever see me happily writing about our current president.) Of all the children in his entire school, Neil was the only one to receive the award, a certificate signed by You-Know-Who, the U.S. secretary of education, and the school principal.

To understand just how astounding Neil's achievement is, you'll want to read this and this.

I can't begin to say thanks enough to all of our friends and family members and the members of Neil's education team for being there in various ways for us and for Neil. They're incredibly caring, kind, and talented people who make the world a better place.

Three thousand cheers for Neil!

motherhood parenthood ADHD education AD/HD

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Nostalgia

I'm an expat Texan. I spent the first 23 years of my life there. There's not much from there that I miss—especially Texas politicians like the impeachment-worthy George W. Bush—but I do miss my brother Wally and some of the southeast Texas plant life.

Here on Long Island (New York State), I miss weeping willows, mimosa trees (and see this), and gardenias (and see this). All of those grow here, but not very well at all, so most people here don't bother with them.

O fragrant gardenia! Gardenias are the basis for a cologne my sweet maternal grandmother Lillian (from lovely, historic San Antonio) used to wear: White Shoulders. Because its scent reminded me of her soft hugs, I loved that stuff when I was a teenager and used to wear it all the time, even though no other teens I knew had ever heard of it. Hmmm ... it's been forever since I was a teenager, but it just may be time to get another bottle.

And I miss the fat, wide-bladed grass that grew on many of the lawns in La Porte, the suburb of my childhood. The stuff that grows on lots of Long Island lawns is pitifully thin in comparison.

But you won't see me moving back to Texas.

Texas Bush impeach

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

The Best-Laid Plans . . .

Honesty is a huge thing with me. If someone's not completely honest with me, I don't want to have much to do with that person.

So in keeping with my ethics, I must report that for all our good intentions to live our beliefs, my husband Ed and I and our sons never made it to the Long Island Pride event this last weekend. It would have been our first time at the event, so we'd never been to the park where it was to be held. We were thrown off by the event map that showed a park with the same name as a locally well known New York state park in another part of the island. Who knew that there's a Heckscher State Park and a Heckscher Park?

Sigh.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Monkey See, Monkey Do: Hear No Evil

Iraq Bush impeach

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Impeach the Crook-in-Chief

Heard about the Downing Street memo? It's a document, says DowningStreetMemo.com,

containing meeting minutes transcribed during the British Prime Minister's meeting on July 23, 2002—a full eight months PRIOR to the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003. The Times of London printed the text of this document on Sunday, May 1, 2005, but to date US media coverage has been limited. This site is intended to act as a resource for anyone who wants to understand the facts revealed in this document.
The contents of the memo are shocking. The minutes detail how our government did not believe Iraq was a greater threat than other nations; how intelligence was "fixed around" to sell the case for war to the American public; and how the Bush administration’s public assurances of "war as a last resort" were at odds with their privately stated intentions.
When asked, British officials "did not dispute the document's authenticity." and a senior American official has described it as "absolutely accurate." Yet the Bush administration continues to simultaneously sidestep the issue while attempting to cast doubt on the memo’s authenticity. Nobody wants to go to war. We trust our leaders to shed blood in our name only when absolutely necessary. But the facts revealed by the Downing Street Memo force us to ask ourselves: Was I misled? Did President Bush tell me the truth when he said he would not take us to war unless absolutely necessary?

It's time to stop the crook-in-chief. He's stealing our country from us. Sign the People's Petition to Impeach the Bush Administration. And sign Rep. John Conyers' letter to Bush.

Iraq Bush impeach

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Straight Gay Pride

My husband and I will be taking our sons with us this weekend when we help staff a booth at the Long Island Pride Parade. We'll be at the New Century Singers booth, wearing our NCS and "Another Presbyterian for GLBT Rights" T-shirts. We're huge NCS fans, and one day when our sons are bigger and need less of our time, I'll audition to join the NCS.

But we're going so that we can do more than support the NCS. We want our sons to see that we live our beliefs. We want the world to know that straight people of all ages are in favor of gay rights—in favor of human rights for everyone.

Our oldest, Neil, who's 10, understands this. In fact, he got into a fight with some boys in our neighborhood because they were putting down his gay uncle, my brother Wally. Now, we teach our children that physical violence is wrong. But Neil couldn't stand what was going on. The neighborhood boys,* Tom, and his brother, Bill, have seen our gay rights bumper stickers and have seen Neil wearing his "Another Presbyterian for GLBT rights" T-shirt.

One afternoon, Tom, Bill, Neil, and another boy were all riding their bikes together and playing. Tom and Bill started arguing with Neil, telling them basically that they hate gay people and gay people are bad. Neil argued but didn't make a move until Bill started saying bad things about Wally. (Neil had told them, when the issue came up on another day, that his uncle Wally is gay.) That was the last straw for Neil, so he rammed his bike into Bill's. Bill got off his bike and punched Neil in the stomach, and Neil punched him back. Now, Neil never hits anybody, no matter how angry he gets—because we're always talking peacemaking in this house—but he was extremely angry that Tom and Bill were putting Wally down.

Just then, my husband Ed came home and saw what was going on. Tom had already left, and Bill disappeared quickly when he saw Ed. Ed talked to the rest of the boys about discrimination. Then he said that each person is entitled to his or her own opinion and that no one should tease another person about his or her beliefs or physically fight over them.

Then Neil and Ed came into the house and talked the situation over with me. I said that I thought Neil should go to Tom and Bill's house, with Ed, and apologize for starting the physical fight, but that I didn't mean he should apologize at all for his stance on gay rights. We told Neil that we understood his anger very well, but that hitting people isn't the way to convince people of his viewpoint.

Neil did this, and Ed told the parents what led up to the fight, saying that both Neil and Bill did things they shouldn't have. It turned out that neither Tom nor Bill had told their parents about the fight. The parents had Bill apologize for baiting Neil. Ed said that the parents looked very puzzled and said, "Do they even know what 'gay rights' means?" But yes, the boys do know about sex between gay men, which they've heard about from other children at school; they were telling Neil just how "awful" it is.

Ed and I imagined that the dinnertime conversation in that household was extremely interesting.

But we envision a time when being gay is no big deal, when all parents teach their children that gay is just another version of normal, when gay people legally marry and no one raises an eyebrow. And one way to make that time arrive sooner is for straight people to join in the fight for gay rights. We're all humans, gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender or straight or somewhere else on the spectrum. And that makes us each worthy of respect and honor.
_______________________
*The neighborhood boys' names have been changed here to protect their privacy.

GLBT gay human rights

Monday, May 30, 2005

Afraid of Their Own Shadows

Over 20 years ago, I did a stint as a newspaper reporter in Texas. I thought I'd be the next Woodward or Bernstein, exposing corruption to sunlight so that it would wither and die. I didn't end up doing that for long; life had other plans for me. I wish I had, though, because too many mainstream journalists are scared of their own shadows these days.

Newsweek's retraction of and letter to its readers about its May 9 story about alleged abuse of the Qur'an at Guantánamo Bay were totally unnecessary. Its main source for the story chickened out, likely under pressure from Bushco, so Newsweek chickened out, too . . . even though the International Committee of the Red Cross did produce reports of such abuse.

Dammit, we need reporters and their employers to regain the belief that those in power aren't telling the truth, until it can be proven that they are. Why is it now a good thing to cower when Bush yells? You and I both know that Bush and plenty of his soldiers don't respect anything Islamic, whether that's Iraqis or the Qur'an, so when Bush blamed the outbreak of additional attacks and protests by Muslims on Newsweek, we know he was gleeful at having a scapegoat. The Newsweek mess took Americans' attention away from Bush's disrespect for the Iraqis and his failed imperialistic meddling in Iraq.

Get some courage, journalists, and get it now, or our country's going to sink like the Titanic. I'm ashamed to say I was once one of you.

PBU22 Iraq journalism Guantanamo media Qur'an

Sunday, May 29, 2005

My Favorite Boys

These are my sons Neil (left, age 10.5) and Jared (age 3.5). They are huggable, aggravating, smart, silly, and adorable. Neil is our future scientist or engineer or architect or computer game designer, mostly very serious and extremely oriented toward how things work and are put together. He is very much like me, highly analytical and introverted, yet physically, he looks just like my husband Ed as a child. Jared is very much like Ed, gregarious and sweet and able to make anyone into a friend instantly, yet physically, he looks just like me as a child, only with Ed's childhood strawberry blond hair. It's astonishing to be able to ferret out which traits they inherited and from whom.

They exhaust me, they make me cry, they make me laugh, they snuggle up to me at night like warm little bunnies—Neil, the long, bony bunny, and Jared, the plump, soft bunny.

Neil is my difficult child, the one who challenges my parenting skills the most. With his AD/HD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), he requires me to constantly find new pockets of patience and understanding, to help him interpret the mysteries of social interaction with us and with others. Just when I've run out of patience, he'll stun me with a profound insight into someone's heart. Just when I'm beyond exasperation with his bounce-off-the-walls wild-monkey behavior, he'll settle down at the computer and design a roller coaster of such intricacy that I can't begin to comprehend it . . . and he'll explain the physics of it all.

Jared is my child with the vivid imagination: He's a bird hatching from a nest made out of bed blankets; he's a kitten prowling the kitchen; he's a fierce Jedi warrior ready to protect his mommy from "the bad guys." He's soft and he's giggly and he has a heart that's wise well beyond his years. He delights in half-accomplishing the physical feats that his brother can do with ease. He's Daddy's boy these days, following Ed everywhere, inside and outside the house.

Neil and Jared are the night and day of my soul, its yin and yang, its industry and its playfulness. They teach me every day to be a better person.
motherhood parenthood

Saturday, May 28, 2005

How to Become an Editor

Jennie, a fellow copyeditor, has some great information here on how to become an editor. If you want additional information on the basics of editing, education and certification, business tools, editing tools, network, and finding work, see the Copyeditors' Knowledge Base on my business web site. If you have any links you think should appear there, e-mail me.

Update: I'll be a co-presenter of Getting Started as a Freelance Editor, a 90-minute audio conference, on Tuesday, January 10, 2006. For details, see this. And you might be interested in this.

copyeditor publishing editing editor EditorMom

Friday, May 27, 2005

We're Doing Ourselves In

Plastic is everywhere, and that's a dangerous thing. A new groundbreaking study implicates phthalate, a chemical that doesn't occur in nature but that is an ingredient in some plastics and cosmetics, in abnormal prenatal male sexual development. For the sake of convenience, we've released a chemical into the environment that is linked to smaller penis size and incomplete testicular descent.

According to InteliHealth, a health-care education site that reported on the study:

A growing body of research suggests that some chemicals used in consumer products may cause public health problems by interfering with sex hormones. A study in the current issue of the journal Endocrinology exposed newborn mice to bisphenol-A, a chemical found in plastics and dental sealants, at doses comparable to those found in the human environment. At puberty the mice were more likely to develop cancer-related mammary duct abnormalities.

"In humans this would cause breast cancer," said Tufts University cell biologist Anna Soto, the study's lead author.

And just do a search on MEDLINE (the huge database of medical journal articles created by the National Institutes of Health) on the string environmental estrogen cancer and you'll come up with hundreds of links to reports on how chemicals that mimic estrogen cause several kinds of cancers in men and women. Many plastics contain estrogen mimics. So do old medications that you flush down the toilet or put into landfills by throwing them in the garbage.

What to do? Cut back severely on your use of plastic containers. Don't flush or throw away old meds; take them to town or county disposal centers for hazardous materials, after you call first to find out what kinds of meds they'll accept.

Don't keep jeopardizing your life and the lives of other people and of animals.

cancer environment phthalates estrogen

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Recruiting Pens Mightier Than Swords

Here's a job-op ad doomed to fail—the U.S. Army is looking among editors to find candidates for marketing and advertising positions:

Opportunity Number: 2740453
Company Name: U.S. Army
Location: Nationwide
Categories: Marketing & Advertising
Salary: Negotiable
Minimum Education: High School Diploma

Marketing & Advertising Positions Available!

The Army has more jobs—in a variety of areas—than you would ever expect: over 150 jobs for Soldiers on Active Duty, and 120 jobs in the Army Reserve. From working with computers to assisting physicians to fixing helicopters, theres [sic] an Army job right for you.

Entry level and experienced candidates are needed. To get all the facts on training in career skills, educational opportunities, adventure and excitement in your state, click on the link below.

Note: Please apply directly to the company by clicking here

Uh-huh. People whose profession it is to dissect and question everything are going to jump to do PR for one of the biggest propaganda-producing organizations under control of President Liar W. Bush.

(Thanks to my Canadian colleague Sharon S. for alerting me to the ad.)

Bush Iraq army

Friday, May 20, 2005

My Work Here Is Done

Today, an independent young woman with great common sense, good organizational skills, and plenty of compassion receives one of the many available certificates of achieving young adulthood: She will receive a diploma from the State University of New York, Stony Brook for having earned a bachelor's degree in sociology. She is my daughter, Rebecca Pijanowski. In the fall, she will begin work on a master's degree in social work from SUNY–SB's School of Social Welfare. How did my premature 5-pound 5-ounce baby become a 6-foot-tall goal-oriented 22-year-old so fast? Where did the time go?

graduation motherhood social work

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Biological Basis to Sexual Orientation

More and more evidence is being uncovered that biology plays a huge part in whether a person is gay, straight, or somehwere in between. Looks to me like yet more evidence that people should be accepted as who they are.

GLBT gay

Saturday, May 07, 2005

The House of AD/HD

I’m damn tired of people who have little or no experience with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD* telling me that I’m drugging my son, that only children and not adults have AD/HD, that AD/HD can be “cured” by dietary changes or herbal preparations, or that AD/HD meds are being pushed on kids. If you haven’t lived with anyone with AD/HD or you’ve lived with someone who has only extremely mild AD/HD, your experience isn’t necessarily everyone else’s—or even anyone else’s.

The disorder is a neurobehavioral one, and many Americans are biased against diseases and disorders they can't touch. If it’s not a broken arm or a rash but a disorder of the brain, it doesn’t exist for them. Spotty performance in school and in life is so AD/HD. It's not that those with the disorder can't pay attention; it's that they can't screen out which stimuli to pay attention to and which to put on the back burner for a time. When highly motivated, they can seem to have a superhuman ability to focus. But many tasks that they don’t enjoy require integrating multiple mental functions, and in AD/HD, executive function is impaired. Executive function is that part of your brain that helps you organize and integrate the multiple things you are doing at any one moment. It's also the part that says, "Hey—ignore that random thought that just popped into your head. You can think about it more once you've finished this other task that you’re working on."

My son Neil, now 10, had his severe AD/HD diagnosed at the end of 1999, when he was almost 5. My husband, Ed, had his own milder AD/HD diagnosed in 2000, and my father-in-law, A., had his severe AD/HD diagnosed in 2001. Life was hell here before they all began taking medications and seeing therapists. I don't know how my marriage survived. I don’t know how we all survived.

Neil is a very bright child who's now gentle and sweet and making nearly straight A's in school, in a self-contained classroom of 6 students, 1 teacher, and 1 teaching paraprofessional. That wasn’t always the case. Just about 18 months ago, he was stuck with a psychiatrist who gave him far less medication than he needed, and he was often refusing to do work in his classroom of 25, sometimes even hiding under his desk when he got overwhelmed, refusing to come out. His grades were low, even though we knew him to be quite smart.

We knew there was something different about Neil from the beginning. He had tantrums, even as a baby, when we had to change activities. Transitions were almost physically painful to him. We learned to gradually ease him into changes. You know how toddlers have tantrums when things don't go their way? Neil's tantrums were hairy fits. Though Neil was Ed's first child, I had 11 years' parenting experience on him. I had a daughter from my first marriage, so I knew for sure that Neil's fits were over the top. If Neil's toys weren't doing what he wanted them to do, he could get angry enough to scream for 2 hours. Ed and I stayed perpetually exhausted from those fits. We stopped having friends over because of those uncontrollable fits of anger. We never could be sure what would set him off. Once, when we did dare to have friends over when Neil was about 4 years old, I paid for it afterward. As I was trying to rock Neil in a rocking chair to calm him for bedtime, he hit me and screamed for at least 15 minutes. All the excitement and stimulation of the day had been too much for him, and he had to let it out.

That child just could not sit still. When he was a preschooler, he was at home with me while I worked. By the time Ed would come home from work each day at around 6 p.m., Neil would have started and left unfinished at least a dozen art projects. He ran constantly—he never walked anywhere. He could literally climb walls. And he hardly stopped to breathe when he was talking, which was all day, every day. Neil never looked happy, even when his actions showed that he was enjoying himself. Ed and I have always said that Neil was born a cranky old man.

During those horrible years before Neil's diagnosis, Ed's and A's undiagnosed AD/HD was multiplying the chaos by several orders of magnitude. Ed would be talking with me, and his attention would wander off, meaning that he’d miss chunks of what I was saying. I didn't know then that he just couldn't pay attention to me; I thought he didn't want to. This made coparenting extremely difficult; I often had to keep Ed on task while he was trying to parent. Having to be your partner's coach can be toxic to your marriage.

Meanwhile, A. would have the same kind of temper tantrums that toddler Neil had—but A. was in his early sixties. Why did this affect us? We live in an intergenerational home: We have the upstairs and A. and my mother-in-law, D., have the downstairs apartment that Ed, a talented cabinetmaker, created in our house. Once, when my daughter Rebecca was a teenager, A. scared her out of her wits. A. and D.'s dog Rusty had escaped from the back yard and was roaming the neighborhood. A. bellowed for him a few times, and then, frustrated because Rusty didn't want to come back to an angry-sounding owner, began repeatedly beating the side of our house with Rusty's metal leash, screaming, "Rusty! Rusty!" A's short, but he's a hefty man, and his anger was visceral and quite intimidating. He's also been known to beat on a blender when he can't get it to work. Scary.

Then there was the night, back when Neil was a baby, when A. came upstairs to get his and D.'s laundry from the washing machine that we all shared. He began chatting in the kitchen with Ed. The conversation stretched on for a while, and I was trying to put Neil to bed just a few feet away. (It's a small house.) I leaned around the door jamb and said, "Could you guys please keep it down a bit? I’m trying to put Neil to bed." A. charged me, his arms pumping as he stomped toward me. "Who the hell do you think you are, telling me to be quiet?!" he shouted in my face, while baby Neil lay screaming on the changing table that I was standing next to. I was scared speechless. I thought A. was about to punch me.

Neil, Ed, and A. would each say whatever they were thinking at the time, AD/HD having taken away the mental brakes that most people have. This often resulted in hurt feelings, anger, or embarrassment—or all three. Each of them had frequent misunderstandings with people outside the family too, because people with AD/HD often have trouble understanding others' facial expressions and body language. This caused Ed and A. difficulties at work and resulted in Neil's being picked on by children at school. It also meant that D. and A. argued constantly ... and, I have to admit, Ed and I argued constantly.

Ed now takes Metadate-CD for his AD/HD. Neil takes that for his too, plus Lexapro [updated] for his depression. A. takes Wellbutrin. Because of A's high blood pressure, he can't take most of the meds prescribed for AD/HD; he doesn't like some of the side effects of the others. None of the guys are drugged-out zombies. All of them are functioning much better at home and at school or work. You'd never know Neil has a disorder if you didn't live with him; he comes across as a normal, pleasant, if fairly serious, 10-year-old. He even smiles a lot now, and he has good friends. We have no doubt that he’ll go on to make wonderful contributions to the world. There are very few huge, explosive fights around here, upstairs or downstairs. Ed and I have an excellent marriage. And because Ed can focus with the meds onboard, he has been able to learn enough people skills that he was recently promoted to foreman at work, the first time in his life that he's held such a position. That's done wonders for his self-esteem. Even though A's AD/HD behaviors can still drive D. bats, his anger's under control, and she likes that, especially since they're both retired now and are together most of each day. A. and I even get along now.

Here are some readings that may help you understand:

Go here (be sure to read the section "What are the Executive Functions?") to read about executive function.

Go here and here to read about AD/HD.

Go here to experience what AD/HD feels like. Scroll way down to the link that reads: Try it yourself. Experience an auditory distraction. You'll get quite an education.

In the United States, if a child has an official diagnosis of AD/HD, the public school district is required to give him or her appropriate education, which begins with the development of an individualized education plan (IEP). See this.

Research has shown that if a child can't learn all he or she needs to know and has impaired social relationships, he or she is more likely than children without AD/HD to one day self-medicate with alcohol or street drugs and is likely to have serious lifelong difficulties in holding a job and maintaining close relationships. (See, for example, "Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD] and substance use disorders," JJ Wilson and FR Levin, Current Psychiatry Reports 3[6]:497–506, 2001.) Do parents want to condemn their children with AD/HD to that? If not, they should at least consider all the treatment options. And they should know that my family and I have considered all the treatment options and found the ones that work for us ... and that they can't presume that what works for them will work for us or that what they've read in a layperson's book and never tried will necessarily work for us.

I have amassed a mountain of bookmarks to information on AD/HD. Please write me at editormom@kokedit.com if you’d like me to send them to you.

And if you're surviving in a family where there's AD/HD, you can buy survivor merchandise.

Updated: Jared's AD/HD was diagnosed in 2006, when he was 5. He has been taking Metadate-CD ever since. He began third grade in the fall of 2009, and we then began the long process toward an IEP that begins with a request for assessment by the school.

Also, we have long suspected that D., Ed's mother, has mild AD/HD, but it has not been diagnosed or treated because she has learned enough coping skills over the years on her own.

____________________________
*Here, I am following the style of the American Psychiatric Association, which uses the slash to indicate that the hyperactivity part of AD/HD does not occur in all cases. There are several subtypes of AD/HD, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision: (1) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, combined type; (2) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, predominantly inattentive type; (3) attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type. Neil and A. have type 1, and Ed and Jared have type 2.

AD/HD ADHD ADD Ritalin Metadate-CD Wellbutrin Lexapro depression anxiety neurobehavioral executive function impaired distracted EditorMom

Friday, May 06, 2005

Better Late Than Never

Microsoft has bowed to pressure from gay rights activists and will now support gay rights legislation. The corporate giant had initially been cowed by an evangelical minister who vowed to start a national Microsoft boycott, and had withdrawn its support of an antidiscrimination bill in Washington State. Once it withdrew that support, the bill died by a single vote in the state legislature. Today, though, the company has apparently decided that diversity at work is a good thing.

Though Microsoft took the cowardly path, maybe the fact that a major player in the U.S. economy now supports gay rights will help move things along toward parity. Shame on you, Microsoft, for worrying more about your bottom line than about your employees. I'm glad you've been pushed into doing the right thing.

GLBT Microsoft gay

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

What Does the "Funky Savior of Humanity Have on His Holy iPod?"

If columnist Mark Morford ever wants another career, he'd make a great preacher. He knows.

(And now, back to my monster work deadline. Shhh!)

music iPod religion

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

I Have a Dream . . .

. . . and it's remarkably like Peter Fallon's.

pope Bush religion

Monday, April 25, 2005

Ratzinger Wanted Priestly Pedophilia Kept Secret

Thanks to KL, who commented on "An Anti-Everything Choice," for the link to an article on instructions by Cardinal Joséph Ratzinger—now Pope Benedict—to keep pedophilia committed by Catholic priests away from public scrutiny. Not only is the UK'S Observer reporting this story but the Guerilla News Network, South Africa's Mail & Guardian Online, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Tapei Times are reporting it, too.

Keeping abuse of any kind secret is evil when you are not the victim who has been terrorized into staying silent. It serves to perpetuate the abuse and kills the spirit of the victim(s). I speak from experience—though I was physically and emotionally abused, not sexually abused. I can't see such an action by a leader in any religion as being something God wants, by any twist of the imagination. If Ratzinger–Benedict is a changed man, I want to see his actions show it.

pope Catholic religion

Friday, April 22, 2005

An Anti-Everything Choice

I'm not Catholic, so the election of conservative German cardinal Joséph Ratzinger has no effect on how my church operates. But I'm human, so the prospect of Pope Benedict XVI has me worried.

The head of the Catholic Church has always had huge influence on world affairs through the attitudes he personally represents. Benedict will, I believe, have a negative influence on the world. He stands for unloving religion, religion that doesn't take real life into account. He stands for heading back to a more repressive, unforgiving past. And forgiving is what God is all about.

With Benedict at the helm, heaven help GLBT people, women, priests, nuns, Catholics who wanted a visionary leader, compassion, open hearts and open discussion of issues . . .

pope Catholic religion

Get Over It Already

A good many Americans have never figured out what women's breasts are for. They've made breasts into sex objects, things to be hidden yet flaunted, bound and pushed into unrealistic shapes, used to sell cars and lifestyles. So these same Americans raise a stink whenever women put their breasts to proper use in—gasp!—public.

Breasts are for feeding babies and children. They house the mammary glands, organs that, in an amazing feat of engineering, don't become fully operational until they're needed by the owner's offspring. The milk they produce meets all the nutritional needs of an infant for as long as a year and provides astounding mental and physical benefits that can last a lifetime:

A jump-start for the immune system
A higher IQ
Fewer ear infections
Protection against early childhood caries (tooth decay)
Fewer allergies
Protection against asthma
Decreased lifetime chance of obesity
Protection against some forms of childhood leukemia
Protection against multiple sclerosis
Decreased chance of death from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome)
Protection against heart disease, Hodgkin's disease, Crohn's disease, diabetes, and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis

Women who breast-feed their children have a lower risk of developing breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers and osteoporosis. And for you economists, breast-feeding saves mucho bucks.

So with all these wonderful benefits to breast-feeding, why the attempts to shame women who do what nature intended? It's an odd juxtaposition of puritanical demonization of the human body and oversexualization of it. Thrown into the mix are the big bucks spent by makers of infant formulas, who'd have us all believe that breast-feeding is time-consuming (ever had to clean baby bottles and prep formula?) and ties women down (hey—breasts are the ultimate portable containers!).

I'm perimenopausal and have just finished my twenty-second year of breast-feeding children off and on: my daughter for 3 months, my first son for 3.5 years, and my second son for 3.5 years (he's just about weaned). My daughter would've gotten a lot more breast-feeding if I hadn't been young enough to be really sensitive to our society's shaming.

Breast-feeding a child isn't a sexual event; it's lunch, for goodness' sake! It's breakfast and dinner and "I need comfort" and "I'm sick" and "I'm sleepy" and "I'm still your baby." Would you make an adult go eat his or her lunch out of your sight because you found it shameful? No? Then why make a child do so?

Get over it already!

breast-feeding breastfeeding breast

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Running Low on RAM

This week, I haven't much brain power to spare for writing. I'm learning new procedures for one of my freelance editing gigs, and that's got me running low on RAM. I'll be back as soon as I can.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

One Man's Courage

This week, a gay man stood up to his bigoted hometown. Daniel Lippold has more courage in his typing fingers than most of us have in our entire being.

GLBT Atwood gay

Bigotry Disguised as Religion

Why can't more adults be like their own teenagers, accepting people for who they are?

Today is the Day of Silence, "a project of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in collaboration with the United States Student Association (USSA), . . . a student-led day of action where those who support making anti-LGBT bias unacceptable in schools take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment—in effect, the silencing—experienced by LGBT students and their allies." Wonderful!

Then along comes a conservative Christian legal group called the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF; "Defending Our First Liberty"), spearheading an event for tomorrow called Day of Truth, in which student participants will pass out T-shirts and cards saying that they don't condone "detrimental personal and social behavior." ADF calls this an opportunity to "counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda" and express "an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective."

"Agenda"? I guess you could call wanting the same basic human rights as everyone else an agenda. But I'd call it a fight for justice.

The Day of Silence kids have it right.

GLBT Christians gay

Monday, April 11, 2005

Letter from the President

To my amazement, George Bush took the time—or at least an assistant of his took the time—to send a form letter in reply to my son's "please stop the war" letter about Iraq:

Dear Neil:

Thank you for sharing your views and suggestions. I always enjoy hearing from young Americans.

As you continue your studies, I hope you will strive to learn something new every day. You can read more about issues that interest you, current events, and the history of our country by visiting your library or by logging onto the White House websites, www.whitehousekids.gov and http://www.whitehouse.gov/. I also encourage you to set high goals, study hard, and help others in need. Kindness to others and dedication to your schoolwork can strengthen your community and our Nation.

Mrs. Bush and I send our best wishes. May God bless you, and may God continue to bless America.

Sincerely,
George W. Bush

I'll be sitting my 10-year-old down for a lesson in how to detect hypocrisy. Then he can hone his hand–eye coordination by throwing darts at the photo of George and Laura that came with the letter.

Stabbing the World in the Back

In his first term, George W. Bush slapped the United Nations around so much that even an ostrich at a beach would have realized that he has no use for the U.N. unless it’s doing his bidding.

In his second term, however, he’s been courting the U.N. and European nations with fake friendship. If he so wants to work with the U.N. now instead of against it, why ever does he want John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, to be the U.S. ambassador to the U.N.?

Bolton is a conservative’s conservative who served Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush. He’s said he thinks little of international treaties and international law: “It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so because, over the long term, the goal of those who think that international law really means anything are those who want to constrict the United States.” If this is how Dubya shows his desire for friendship with the U.N., what will he do to indicate his dislike of an organization? Oh, yeah—he’ll call it part of the axis of evil.

There have been accusations that Bolton tried to intimidate intelligence officials whom the Bush camp thought were soft on Cuba. The man has no diplomacy skills; he’s as blunt as a tire iron. He’s an out-and-out hawk. Here’s a frightening profile of him from the International Relations Center. The New York Times reports that “former government officials have accused Mr. Bolton of improperly circumventing State Department channels to gain access to confidential sensitive intelligence reports” and that “there have been accusations that Mr. Bolton has sought to remove dissenters from their posts or bar them from meetings called to discuss policies. A senior Central Intelligence Agency official has become the second government official to tell the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believes Mr. Bolton sought to remove him from his post after he complained that statements Mr. Bolton made in 2002 about a biological weapons program in Cuba did not reflect the views of intelligence agencies.”

At Diplomats Against Bolton, 67—yes, 67—former U.S. diplomats have signed a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee opposing Bolton's nomination. As the site says, "of these signatories, 50 of 67 served under Republican administrations (28 served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, 22 in only Republican administrations), and 17 in only Democratic administrations."

Diplomats don't want him. Do you want this person in a position where he’s supposed to be working with other nations for world peace? I sure don’t. Get on the phone to your senators and representatives now!

PBU15

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Lonely Day

I miss my husband. (Here he is, lying on the bed he made for us just over 10 years ago.)

He’s at work today, though not on the clock. He’s a cabinetmaker, so work is a cabinet shop. He’s there working on the bunk beds he’s been building for our sons for months now. The shop there is so much bigger than ours here at home, and there’s no one else there—no coworkers and no family members—today to slow him down. I know why he has to be there, but I don’t have to like it.

He’s my best friend. I’d rather hear his corny jokes and his stories that I’ve already heard so many times than sit here and edit an article for a medical journal while our 3-year-old scatters toys on the floor all around me. He’s a silly man, a gentle man, a kind man, a daddy man, a sweetheart. Why didn’t we just buy bunk beds? We’ve been married almost 12 years, and I still want to be around him all the time. Stupid bunk beds.

That's Exactly How I Feel

This article, sent to me by my friend Martha, explains exactly why I don't like the Iraq war. It's just so on the mark that nothing I can say would add to it.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

"Where Are the Good Christians?"

"Where are the good Christians?" columnist Mark Morford writes today in his SFGate.com article. Thank goodness somebody's noticed that all the antigay and Schiavo-must-live-forever Christians don't represent all Christians. We nonfanatical Christians don't make the news much, as Morford says, because we're busy working quietly for peace, justice, and an end to poverty and discrimination.

We're the ones working in soup kitchens.

We're the ones giving as much of our money as we can to tsunami relief efforts, to programs that provide job training, to peacemaking organizations, to the ACLU, to PFLAG.

We're going on a Midnight Run to give a meal and clothing and conversation to homeless people.

We're flying "Pray for Peace—Act for Peace" flags and marching in war protests.

We're writing to our senators and representatives and our president about illegal, immoral wars.

We're wearing "Another Presbyterian for GLBT Rights" T-shirts and carrying "Another Christian for GLBT Rights" tote bags.

We're working behind the scenes with groups promoting GLBT equality.

We're blogging about justice.

We're too busy living God's word to bash people over the head with our Bibles. We're too busy trying to do what's right ourselves—because we know, as mere humans, that we don't know it all—to tell everybody else how they should live.

We won't stop until consenting adults can marry whichever other adult they want to marry.

We won't stop until all women in the world have the same rights as men.

We won't stop until everyone has plenty of food.

We won't stop until there is peace among all nations.

We won't stop until bigotry disappears.

We won't stop until the hatred is gone.

We won't stop. Ever.