ElementalMom

Debbie at “Homeschooling: Freedom and Fun For Your Family” sent us an interview questionnaire, and it’s up! Go check us out!
None of Her Children are Wired To Code: Laureen Hudson’s Interview

I’m a huge fan of Sharon Astyk’s. I love that she can look at everything going on in the world, and see it as an opportunity for growth, for change, for setting up a good life. I find her stuff to be both honest, and optimistic (unlike most peak oil/climate change/financial collapse readings, which are kinda like Mad Max, and quite disturbing).

So it’s with some glee that I announce that we’re going to be participating in her Independence Days challenge. Head on over to her blog to see how it works. I’ve added the widget to my blog, to let folks know that I’m participating, and I’ll post my wrap-up on Saturdays, or as close to it as I can manage. Because we’re on a boat instead of on dirt, it’ll be pretty heavily modified sometimes. But I think it’s important for folks to see that, if we can do this, anyone can, and any steps towards independence are good steps.

Here’s my first installment, for the first week of March:

1. Plant something – This weekend, I’m planning the early crop in our garden box at Big Daddy Community Garden in Oakland, and I’m starting herbs in pots on the back transom.
2. Harvest something – Picked lemons from my benefactor in Oakland
3. Preserve something – Juiced the lemons and froze the juice, dried some of the peel.
4. Waste Not–  I’m looking into the local farm cycles, to see what kinds of bulk purchases we can get in on.
5. Want Not – We did two entire days of errands on foot last week. Woof!
6. Build Community Food Systems – I’ve been bagging on all my neighbors to get some preparedness together. It’s amazing how resistant people are to simply having a bag of beans and a bag of rice available, even though a lot of these people go to Costco and could easily afford it. So I continue to harass the people nearest me physically.
7. Eat the Food – We made our own lara bar knockoffs. Pretty good, and a great replacement for sugar mayhem.

So that’s us, for this week. If you’re thinking about joining up, let me know in the comments, and be sure to leave a link to your blog, so we can share each other’s progress, and be encouraging.

I’ve got my tickets for next week’s Trust Birth Conference booked through Southwest, because you know… United Breaks Guitars.

Today, we head off to the Consulate for our appointment. So to soothe my nerves, I’m writing about the why of this.

Obtaining dual citizenship has two facets. One is practical, the other emotional.

Practically, you’d have to be living under a rock to not realize that over the last 20 years or so, the United States has not been famous for playing nicely with others. Our politics, combined with the Legend of the Ugly American, has led to it being fairly uncomfortable to travel with an American passport in a lot of places. When you dig deeper, you find out that it’s also vastly cheaper to travel in the world if you’re not American. Here’s a short list, taken from an Italian-American forum:

• Australia
  Italian passport holders enjoy visa-free entry to Australia. However, Australia has an electronic registration system called eVisitor for pre-clearance. It’s available on the Internet, and it’s quite easy to use. It’s also free. In contrast, U.S. passport holders have to pay AUS$20 to use the Internet-based Electronic Travel Authority application which is otherwise similar.
• Brazil
  Italian passport holders don’t need a visa to visit Brazil. You can stay for up to 90 days for tourism or for routine business. U.S. passport holders, in contrast, need visas. It takes a long time to get them, you have to pay for them, and typically you have to start using the visa rather quickly after you receive it. It’s a major chore.
• South Korea
  U.S. passport holders can now enter Korea for tourism or for routine business for stays up to 90 days without a visa. However, for Italian passport holders it’s only 60 days. Why? No idea. Nearly all other E.U. passport holders can stay for 90 days.
• Macau
  Feel like gambling? Pack your Italian passport: you can stay for up to 90 days without a visa. It’s 30 days for U.S. passport holders, so please lose your money three times faster.
• Fiji
  Italian? Stay 6 months and enjoy paradise a little longer. American? Stay 120 days. This one doubly doesn’t surprise us; when Jason and I were in Fiji in 2000 when they had the first of a string of coups, the American ambassador to Fiji made comments that were so inflammatory, we hid our passports and pretended to be Australian, just for safety.
• Mongolia: No (tourist) visa necessary for US passport holders for up to 3 months. EU holders need a visa, which is around $30 or $50.
• China: There’s a big difference here in terms of cost. It’s at least $100 for US passport holders, but perhaps only $30 for Italians.
• India: There is an additional fee for US passport holders only, of almost $30 (2750 yen).
• Uzbekistan: US citizens need a Letter of Invitation, whereas Italians do not.

And so on. French Polynesia is the kicker. Last I heard, an American-flagged vessel entering their waters not only can stay a limited time, but must post a $1500 bond for each crew member, in local currency. The bond gets returned when you leave, again in local currency, so you eat the exchange rate both times. An EU-flagged vessel (any flag) can show up, not pay bond, and hang out for I believe it’s six months. Considering we’ll be sailing there, this one administrative hurdle alone pays for the time and the money required to obtain EU citizenship.

Cuba’s another biggie. It’s huge, friends, and takes up a big hunk of the Caribbean. And as Americans, we can’t go there. But Italians? No worries.

So from a purely practical, getting-around-in-the-world-on-a-boat perspective, having dual citizenship is worth it and then some.

But then, there’s the emotional standpoint. This is the letter I’m including with our application packet.

Achieving Italian citizenship is a gift of love we are giving to our children.

For my part, I have no Italian ancestry, but grew up steeped in Italian culture. My grandfather, a lyric tenor, bought me my first Beniamino Gigli record when I was a toddler. I grew up attending rehearsals with Grandpa, learning the roles along with him, bursting with laughter at Gianni Schicchi, bursting with tears at the aria “Che gelida manina” in La Bohème. Being with Grandpa, I was part of the Italian community in Los Angeles, and that’s what my childhood memories are all tangled up with; my extended family of honorary aunts, uncles, and cousins, were all Italian. I was raised with the language in my ears, the food in my belly, and the music in my heart.

For his part, my husband claims the Italian ancestry through which our application is submitted. His great-grandfather never renounced the citizenship of the land he came from. But more than that, he taught his children, and taught them to teach their children, pride in their Italian ancestry. So much so that three generations down the line, we have the joy and the privilege to reach back and reclaim it.

For our family, our three children, formalizing Italian citizenship is the perfect way of melding the culture and ancestry of their heritage. It will allow them to claim, in a real and tangible way, the full benefit of what they are.

When I went to the Secretary of State’s office to acquire the apostilles for our application, the clerk called people up by the nation their apostilles were intended for. When she came to mine, she smiled, brandished the stack of paper over her head, and cheered, “Viva Italia!”

I couldn’t agree more.

As I’ve mentioned before, I wrote that letter because a translator who helps people through this process all the time told me “We are a passionate people. Understanding why you want this will help speed your application along.” Can I just say, I love that? I have gotten so incredibly sick of American bureaucracy who acts as if they, and you, are merely cogs in a bigger, heartless machine, cloaked in choking clouds of moral rectitude (I’m thinking of our bout with Aurora’s Social Security number, here).

So, here we are. This is the why. Today, we go and lay down a two-inch thick stack of documentation before the Consular authority. Think good thoughts for us.

I’m blogging this, after having tweeted it and facebooked it. Please watch it. Please think about it. Please do it.

And please, let those people do the right thing. God bless you Keith Olbermann, for using your position and visibility to speak for those who can’t. I hope someone who can do something is listening.

My friend Pilar sent me a link to this blog, and I found myself nodding, grinning, and really just identifying with, oh I dunno, pretty much everything in the whole blog. On the one hand, it’s paperwork everywhere I look. On the other hand… bring on the crows.

The day before my birthday, I immersed myself in the possibilities of Piedmont.

My pal Jennie’s dad does stage lighting and set design for the Berkeley Opera, so she found herself in possession of a few tickets. Having chatted about opera for ages, she knew I was a fan, and invited me out for an evening performance of Don Giovanni. Naturally, since it was the night before my birthday, we decided to make it a girls’ night out, and have dinner as well.

Friends, a mama of three little ones rarely, and I mean rarely, gets to do the whole night out thing in quite such style. I am gonna ride on the vibe of this one for a while.

Dinner was at Trattoria Corso. We decided to sit at the bar, and order a simple meal. I scanned the menu, and realized that although it’s advertised as Florentine, a lot of the food was from the Piedmont region of Italy, which just so happens to be the ancestral home of Jason’s family. I’d been researching the food and wine of the region, because as I’ve written here and here, I think that part of understanding a people is understanding their food. So dinner ended up being a luscious, comforting, creamy slab of baked polenta, a plate of exquisite grilled beets, some lightly sauteed spinach, and a chicken breast that I’m pretty sure was the best I’ve eaten, ever, anywhere. We washed it down with half a bottle of a Piedmontese white wine, appley at the front and buttery at the finish. Ahhhhh.

Then, off to the opera. I am not a traditional opera snob; I love the idea of opera, and the folk art aspect of it, and grew up seeing everything from full productions at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, through dinner arias sung at the Knights of Columbus hall in seedy neighborhoods. I know good opera, and I can enjoy more local, earthy opera too. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot, so I was absolutely knocked off my feet by this production.

The lead, Eugene Brancoveanu, was breathtaking. It wasn’t until intermission that I got to sneak a look at the program and saw that he had a list of impressive credits that took up an entire column. Baritone Igor Vieira, as Leporello, handled himself fantastically, with a grasp of physical humor nearly as good as his voice. And the rest of the cast did amazing things at varying times. Soprano Kaileen Miller, as Donna Anna, gave us the willies, so convincing was her portrayal of a girl bereaved to madness. She spent the entire opera carrying around a sheet covered with the dried blood of her slain father like a blankie, and at one point, laid on a corner of the stage completely covered in it. Ubercreepy.

A highlight of the production, for me, was the set. Berkeley Opera uses “minimalist” sets; they have a projection screen, and minimal props. You’d think that’d be cheesy or disappointing, but Projection Designer Jeremy Knight, Jennie’s dad, made it be so incredibly much more than a built set could ever be. His interpretation of the “Catalogue Aria” has had me giggling for days. The video below is what was happening on the stage, behind Leporello, who is brandishing his iPhone to Donna Elvira, explaining to her what a cad Giovanni really is.

Is that just unbelievably cool? The “little black book” taken to new heights.

Seeing as how I am normally on babies’ nighttime schedule, staying alert to the end of the performance was a challenge, and I was yawning embarassingly by the end, not from lack of enthusiasm, but by it being about two hours past my normal bedtime. Jennie dropped me off at home, and I fell into bed, floating on a cloud of aria, supported by a belly full of Italian food.

Considering the insane amount of work that this Italian citizenship thing has been, it was so, so nice to spend an evening just reveling in the culture, the possibilities that it represents. All work and no play has got to end sometime, and this was about the best finish I could imagine.

(Part 1 of this series of posts is here.)

Jason’s cousin Chris is the one who did the lion’s share of the original legwork to establish that Grandpa Bernardo never renounced his Italian citizenship, making this entire “Becoming Italian” adventure possible. Early on in the process, I contacted him on email for pointers on how to do this. And over the months, he’s been help and more help, mostly in figuring out what documents I really need and which I can probably skip, but also just in being soothing. When you’re dealing with four generations of births, marriages, deaths, and paperwork from counties and comunes both, it gets nutty, and it’s really easy to feel like you don’t have a handle on it. Add to that the fact that it’s not even my family; I’m getting quite the education on a towering history of family drama and romance.

Yesterday, Chris came by to sort through my accumulated paperwork, check it over, and see if he thought I was prepared (seeing as how he’s already completed the process and has citizenship). Within moments, we had each divided our nearly inch-thick stacks of paper into several stacks, and three checklists. Jason’s really not been part of this process; he has gone and signed papers when I needed him to, in the places where vital records are only given to a living descendant, but otherwise, he’s pretty much just having me do it. So when he saw the fruits of a few years of paperchasing spread across the table, his eyes got wide. And when Chris and I started trading notes on obscure facts about their family and arcanery about getting documents out of bureaucracies, they just got wider. It’s a bigger job than it seems like it might be, until you see it all spread out like that.

And it’s not a linear, checklisty kind of process. For instance, there are three different agencies that record renunciation of citizenship and acquisition of American citizenship. Chris was only able to get the records from one of them, Chris’s mother was only able to get one other one, and I was only able to get the third one. So much depends on what kind of day the person at the desk is having when you arrive, and whether they like you or not. It’s totally random. Between the three of us, we have complete records and total proof. There’s nothing inherent to any one of us that would make us unable to get a given record, and of course, we’re all asking about the same person’s record. It’s just a matter of the stars aligning.

I have made one tactical error: I got the apostilles before I photocopied the documents. Apostilles in California are stapled directly to the documents, a little bit offset, and then stamped off the edge of the apostille and onto the original document. Once you’ve acquired the apostille, you absolutely, positively cannot ever remove it, or it nullifies the apostille. So making my photocopies is going to be a PITA. Oh well, live and learn.

I also have waited way too long to get my translations done. Honestly, I thought I had time, and the days just snuck up on me. So as of Monday, I start the panicked, prayerful phonecalls in the hopes that some one of the Consulate’s approved professional translators will help me out in time.

But having said that, in the major ways that seriously count, I have done due diligence and then some. I’ve covered bases, even ones that I might not necessarily need to cover. I figure it’s always better to overprepare than underprepare. I’m also hoping that it’ll reduce the chance that the Consulate will punt our application for some undotted i or uncrossed t.

I keep saying “our application.” That’s not really the case. It’s only an application for Jason and the children, since this is jure sanguinis, “of the blood”, and I am most definitely of the marriage. So once we finish this and the application is accepted, then the fun begins, and another flurry of paperwork assembly, including fun stuff like an FBI background check for me, gets underway.

Beyond the mere facts of proving that you’re descended from Italian nationals, though, there’s a fuzzier, more human dimension to this process. I’ve bought dress clothes for the children; white button-down shirts and navy slacks for the boys, a pale pink dress with salmon and white chrysanthemums and a chocolate brown sweater for Aurora. I’m hoping to pick up little vests for the boys, still, but they’re harder to find than it seems they should be. Jason has polished his dress shoes, and I’ve got a dress picked out. I have heard of people showing up at their appointments wearing jeans and t-shirts, and I’ve also heard that those people’s applications take longer, sometimes years, to be approved.

There’s also a creative writing component. The first translator I contacted recommended that “since we Italians are passionate people” that our application would be viewed more favorably if we wrote a 1-page “love letter” explaining the heart of why we wanted citizenship. It’s harder than it sounds, to convey your reasons for doing such a thing, in one scant page. I have written, edited, and rewritten the thing over the course of months, and there are multiple drafts. I think I’ve finally nailed it, but I need to wait at least overnight to make sure. Once the thing holds still, I’ll post it here. Which means you’ll see it by 3 March, at least.

So I wrote a blog a few days ago about how upsetting it is that the Lancet has formally retracted the Wakefield MMR study, but hasn’t retracted the Hannah TBT, even though I’m pretty sure Hannah does more harm to women and babies every single day than Wakefield ever did.

A commenter and friend, who works in the biomedical industry, suggested that if I was serious, I should write Lancet and tell them so (it’s in the comments, you can read it yourself).

And I thought… hm. What a lovely idea! Yes, we should indeed write some letters. Because what amazing good would it do for the cause of vaginal breech, if Lancet retracted Hannah with as much publicity and
fanfare as they’ve now retracted Wakefield?

So here you go:

Editorial Departments

General editorial enquiries: editorial@lancet.com
Web enquiries: webeditor@lancet.com

The Lancet
Editor: Richard Horton
richard.horton@lancet.com

Deputy Editor: Astrid James
astrid.james@lancet.com

North American Senior Editor: Maja Zecevic
m.zecevic@lancet.com

Let’s see if we can spread a little love. If you do in fact write a letter, please post it on your blogs, and let us all know, so we can crosslink, tweet, and facebook like mad things and maybe drive some attention to this.

…every single day. Tough to remember, some days. Here, since I can’t be right where you are, and sit and drink tea with you and laugh (and cry) about the transitional disasters and joys, watch this, right where you are.

What can I say? I dig it.

Writing Contest at Stand and Deliver
Topic: Becoming a Parent, Becoming Transformed
Genre: Your choice (first-person narrative, short story, informational article, etc.)
Length: 500-1,000 words
Deadline: entries must be received by March 1, 2010
Submission instructions: email your essay and contact information to stand.deliver at gmail.com. One entry per person, please. Entry must be your own original, unpublished material.
Prize: winning entry receives a $50 gift certificate to Second Womb Slings. The entry will also be published at Stand and Deliver.
Instructions: The contest topic is open-ended. Please reflect on one specific aspect of becoming a parent that has transformed you in some way. It could be about anything from struggling with infertility to giving birth to raising an exceptionally spirited child.

Pardon me in advance if this is incoherent and raging. It’s mostly because, well, I’m incoherent and raging currently.

So here’s the deal. The Lancet is going to retract Andrew Wakefield’s study about MMR and autism.

Just think about that for a moment.

I don’t give a wet slap about whether or not you think vaccines have anything to do with autism. Just throw that out of your heads for a minute. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Wakefield’s paper was the worst piece of garbage science you’ve ever seen. I don’t happen to believe that, personally, but go ahead and run with it, for the point of the argument.

The Wakefield study is 12 years old. T-w-e-l-v-e. Do you really, genuinely think, that the Lancet has only published one bullshit paper in twelve years?

OK, how about this? The Hannah Term Breech Trial. This one paper, published in 2000, is the reason that a breech baby is considered an automatic cesarean section. And it’s complete crap. Dr. Marek Glazerman ripped it apart (also in the Lancet), and Hannah herself also published a retraction of sorts which showed that her data was not spot on, but they should go ahead and cut women open anyway.

This particular piece of peer-reviewed dogmeat continues to be cited over, and over, and over again. And gee, you don’t see the Lancet retracting it, do you?

Vaccinations are more profitable than non-vaccinations (and I won’t even go into the profit involved in vaccine damage, because we’re playing along with the Wakefield-is-a-loony side for the purpose of argument).  Cesareans are more profitable than non-cesareans, and I’m not going to go into the profits of cesarean damage here either, I’ve done it elsewhere.

Maybe it’s just that my cynicism is showing, but I’m pretty sure that what we’re seeing here is not any sort of scientific method that Al-Biruni or Roger Bacon would recognize. Oh, that’s right. That’s because they were scientists, and what we’re seeing now is more the purview of economics.

UPDATE: Fraud in medical research publishing? Say it ain’t so.

Yes, you.

Look, all the great families of the Middle Ages and Renaissance were patrons of the arts. They recognized that life without art was nothing, and so they sponsored some of the greatest talents and finest minds of their time, with the end result that we’re still looking back on the heights that art attained during that supported period of time.

Today, not so much. I don’t know a single artist who isn’t having to be their own marketing department too, who isn’t taking time away from creation to hustle for the groceries. And frankly, that diminishes us all; every moment that great artists are holding down a desk or flipping a burger is a moment they aren’t spending creating works that inspire, that motivate, that energize and delight.

To that end, if you’re not familiar with it, I’d like to tell you about Kickstarter. In their own words, Kickstarter is:

… a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.

We believe that…

• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

My brilliant, talented, gorgeous pal Angela has a Kickstarter project going that fully deserves to be funded and then some. Please go check it out, and become a patron of the arts. Especially now, when times are hard and the world is wooly, sometimes art is the best expression of what we’re capable of as a culture. If we want history to remember us for something other than Wall Street, we have to leave behind art that will speak for us. So step up to the plate, please, and consider patronage.

This just in from ACOG:

Ob-Gyns Encouraged to Screen Women for Depression During and After Pregnancy

“As ob-gyns, we recognize that postpartum depression is a serious health issue that we need to direct more attention toward,” says Gerald F. Joseph, Jr, MD, president of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Postpartum depression is the theme of Dr. Joseph’s 2009-2010 presidential initiative. “Screening for depression during pregnancy is also important to identify it early on and to help prevent a worsening of the condition after delivery.

“With over 4 million births in the US every year, we’re talking about a huge number of women with postpartum depression—between 200,000 to more than one million each year. Unfortunately, we don’t have the data at this time to support a firm recommendation for universal antepartum and postpartum depression screening,” says Dr. Joseph. “Nonetheless, we realize the importance of screening our patients so that we can start gathering the data for future evidence-based guidelines.”

Multiple depression screening tools are available, according to the new Committee Opinion. Women diagnosed with depression during pregnancy or postpartum should be referred for treatment and follow-up evaluation.

You have got to be kidding me. You think a lot of women have postpartum depression in this country? YOU ARE DAMNED WELL RIGHT THEY DO! AND THEY NEED SUPPORT, NOT TREATMENT!!!!!!!!!

I mean, can you imagine what would happen to postpartum depression diagnoses if new mothers were told “congratulations! Here’s your baby! And your freezer is now stocked with healthy, frozen meals, so you don’t have to shop or meal plan or cook for the first two weeks, and we’ll be sending someone over every day, so you can get a shower, and we’ve set a stack of “visitor guideline” brochures at your door, so everyone who visits brings food and knows to do a load of dishes or laundry when they visit. You’re all set! Happy Babymoon!”

But no. Right now, “treatment” for PPD is usually medication, and nothing else. Doesn’t actually help with any of the root causes of PPD, but makes the mothers less troublesome while they battle it out alone.

Now, I am not suggesting that there aren’t women out there who are genuinely in need of chemical intervention, because that’s the nature of their depression. For those women, pharmaceuticals are a boon. But for the vast, vast majority of women, it’s the combination of the crappiness of the birth experience combined with the complete lack of support from their families and their communities. It’s an established fact that women who have consistent, solid support postpartum have far less PPD than women who don’t.

Once again, ACOG misses the mark.