Wearing on me Eragon

I took Conor, Chloe and a couple of their friends to see Eragon tonight. Conor has been waiting for this movie for a long time. Eragon was the first really long book that he read and it made a big impression on him at the time. So we had to go on opening night. I was looking forward to it too. I didn't read the book and I like to be able to share references with my kids.

But this was, well totally derivative. If you've seen the three Lord of the Rings movies I don't know what more you'll get out of this. The Urgals look and act like Orcs, the King's castle is akin to Mordor and the battle scenes, yes you've seen them before. The only thing that kept me interested was Jeremy Irons, who has aged quite a bit since Dead Ringers, but is still breathtaking. I just kept staring at his face wondering at what point I had lost interest in the young leads and became drawn to the old guys. I think it's his eyes. John Malkovich, as the king, sounded like he was reading his lines off a prompter--just deadening.

A Good Mood Guide

If you told me four years ago that I would be writing a book on alternative therapies for mood disorders, I would have found the idea highly amusing. As the senior vice president of medical affairs for an Internet marketing agency, I was not only writing copy for antidepressant web sites, but I was taking two antidepressants everyday. The pharmaceutical industry was my means of support as well as my savior from insanity. Deadline pressures, business travel, and the stress of managing a busy team of writers, editors, and proofreaders made it seem impossible to me that I would ever be able to stop taking those pills.

As is increasingly the case these days, one of the two pills I was taking had come under investigation by the FDA. My psychiatrist told me that the drug caused an increased risk of liver failure and that I would have to have blood tests done every month, to ensure that my liver enzymes were not elevated. The artificial defense that I had constructed for myself was starting to crumble, and I would need to make life-changing decisions as a result. Now, I look back at that discovery as a catalyst for all the positive, renewing changes I’ve made in my life, but at the time, I was terrified.

What do you do, when you have to stop taking the antidepressant medications that you’ve come to rely on? Many people turn to alternative medicine as a solution for their specific problems. In study after study, these therapies are proving to be as effective as medications, without the side effects. Doctors may even recommend that their patients with mood disorders consider alternative therapies during pregnancy or lactation, an important matter for the many bipolar women who choose not to have children at all, rather than risk going off their medications. For women who are having mood issues during menopause, now that estrogen replacement therapy is no longer recommended, alternative therapies are also an attractive option.

I'm going to offer suggestions in this space for lifestyle changes that can help to ensure a stable good mood throughout your lifetime. I will discuss the most effective therapies based on their proven effectiveness in clinical trials including:

• Talk therapy--cognitive-behavioral
• Biological therapies--e.g., omega-3 fatty acids, SAM-e and 5HTP
• Lifestyle changes--good sleep hygiene, nutrition, and social networks
• Mind-body therapies--exercise, yoga, and meditation

The best way to begin being accountable for your mood is to make one small change at a time and to record your moods on a calendar or in a journal over the course of a month. If you're still menstruating, know first how that affects your moods. I've drawn simple up or down arrows on the calendar in my kitchen. Predictably, my mood is worse a week before I get my period. That's a law of physics. Nothing I do has changed that. But the rest of the month is malleable and amenable to some of the above therapies.

I haven't found one simple thing that's improved my mood. I look at the supplements, social support, exercise and many other changes that I've made in my life as a finely woven net that holds me up. Each strand adds strength to the structure, but if one breaks, I'll still be OK. Each of us has to construct her own net. I'll share what I know from my personal experience and the research that I've been doing on this subject over the past ten years.

Projects and Thoughts

It's time for me to switch gears and recover this blog from its dalliance in adventure and travel chronology. It's dark and cold here and that means it's time to focus inward and get back to some serious writing.

As it says in my profile, I'm working on a memoir about my search for my birth parents. That's the project I was working on in the Prague Summer Program, and the one I plan to continue and finish the next couple years while I'm in graduate school.

The other big project I'm working on is a book on alternative therapies for women with mood disorders. This book is the natural output of my career as a pharmacologist, medical writer, and instructor of biopsychology. My research, pharmaceutical contract work, and teaching led me to find solutions for my own mental well-being and I hope to be able to share that knowledge with others.

I think I'm going to use this space to help me develop the concepts of the second project. It seems to be the one that would benefit the most from public exposure and I can begin to sketch out chapters in this format. I'll start with my personal journey and struggles with mood disorders and since the theme of this blog is writing and mothering I don't think there's too much of a discrepancy there. Writers and mothers are notorious for being moody.

Please consider sharing your own concerns, questions or knowledge about mood problems or alternative therapies. Women do have more than their fair share of this burden and our cycles, both monthly and over our lifetimes add difficulties to successful treatment.

Thanks Hotel Chelsea

Be afraid for your children is the title of an article on the Hotel Chelsea's blog. They picked up on my story of our last visit. I assure you, Conor will be back before he's an adult. In fact, I think I'll make reservations for the last week of December. Love them.

Salon on the Leibovitz Show

I don't think two people could have walked away from the same show with opinions that are as far apart as mine and Sarah Karnasiewicz's, as expressed in a review in Salon this weekend.

Where I saw courage, Karnasiewicz saw reckless candor and that is a telling testament to the risk of misinterpretation. I have a tendency to applaud candor in all of its forms. I think we get so little honesty in our lives. Certainly people are exploiting their family secrets all the time, I realize that's happening, but we don't often get the pus-filled peek at feelings that I got from the Leibovitz show.

I walk away from so many exhibits without feeling anything at all, nevermind thinking anything at all. I want to connect to something outside of myself to know that I'm not alone in my mental wanderings. So Karnasiewicz didn't connect and I did. She was looking for an aesthetic continuity between Leibovitz's professional work and her personal work. I saw a forms that fit the content.

Art for Love

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others
-Vincent Van Gogh

We spent our second day in NYC at the Brooklyn Museum. I had heard that was where the Annie Leibovitz exhibit--A Photographer's Life--was being shown. We must have spent a good hour and a half in the exhibit. The final room had two large beds in the middle of the floor and Chloe and Conor crashed on those with their books leaving me all the time I wanted to study the pictures.

The exhibit merged together Annie's two outputs, her professional and personal photographs, in forms that suited the material. Celebrity shots are slick, large format, flattering pieces, work that Annie is famous for. Her personal snapshots are shown en masse, much smaller individually, but as a collection powerful in scope. This is where you can see the pictures of Susan Sontag in her hospital bed, Annie's children, and the Leibovitz family portraits taken over several Thanksgivings down the road from here at her country house in Rhinebeck.

I had a crush on Susan Sontag for years. Her combination of piercing brilliance and courage, and her dark, soulful eyes was alluring. It's no wonder that Leibovitz fell in love with her, when you also consider the attention she paid to the art of photography. What moved me the most though in the show was the demonstration of that love throughout the course of illness and eventual death. I think it was more poignant for me against the beauty and vitality that Leibovitz herself had during this time and the beauty she was surrounded with in her work. What I wondered did she hold onto in Susan that kept her love alive all this time? Was she responding to her memories, or does Leibovitz have the muscle (and I think she must) to conjure up an active love, giving it away and creating a lasting beauty in her work. Descriptions of several of the photos (family portraits and the Cash family photos for instance), which quoted the subjects, say that Annie could be seen crying behind the lens while composing a shot.

This is an emotional exhibit, but not because you see a strong beautiful woman decline in health and looks. It's because you can see evidence of a love that few of us will ever feel and not having it, maybe we've convinced ourselves that it doesn't exist. The shock of discovering that it does can create an immeasurable sense of loss. We often think of art as coming out of unrequited love. As I read today in Nina's blog, The Lazy Geisha, her husband Jeff says that

“Desire is born in the gap between what we have and what we want, and it is in this gap where all art is made.”

I had believed that myself. I thought that love sickness was good for my poetry and that so much wonderful art has been born of this pain. But now, I wonder if this this isn't an adolescent idea and one that can be treacherous too. Think Oscar Wilde. Looking at Leibovitz's work, I now believe that true art, mature, lasting work can come from deep long-lasting love. The kind that produces individual growth, the kind that forces you to the point of enlightenment, because you stick with it until you're transformed. There's no flitting around here. This is hard work, heart-wrenching in its immoveable devotion to connections between people and their meaning to our lives and work.

Too Much in NYC

The kids and I saw Death Cab for Cutie Thursday night at the Theater in Madison Square Garden. Ben Gibbard the lead guitarist and singer couldn't contain his joy over the election results. He made a couple of remarks about living in rosier days and predicted that in a couple of years the troops would be home and Barak Obama would be president.

I was blown away by Ben's drumming in the middle of We Looked Like Giants. He put down his guitar and walked over to a second drum set that they brought out for him. Bright white lights filled the stage and he let go, shining as if that were his one moment to be totally on.

I missed Transatlanticism--I need you so much closer. Maybe they played it for the encore, but I couldn't stay for that. Conor had fallen asleep and I knew I had to get them back to the hotel.

The Hotel Chelsea...when we checked in before the concert, we had to wait in the lobby for the bellman to show us to our room. Conor sat on one side, playing his Game-boy and Chloe and I on the opposite side. An older man sat down next to Conor. He had a carved, wooden monkey head in his hands, and he was putting things into the hollow bottom of it. Conor looked over at me with a question of concern. I assured him that he was OK with a hand gesture and he settled into his curious observation mode just in time to catch the story of the head. The man in possession of the monkey head told another resident of the lobby that this head had belonged to him at one time. He had owned it about 15 years ago and then someone stole it from him. He said he found it today in a store and stole it back. The head was from East Africa and was quite attractive, I could see how someone would become attached to something like this.

When we got back to the hotel after the concert and arrived on the 7th floor where our room was, we could see bright lights beyond the door in the direction of our room. We tried going the other way, because we weren't sure exactly which way to go, but then realized we did have to go toward what we then realized was a photo shoot of...a woman wearing a corset. It was about 11 PM. We opened the door and the photographer apologized to us. No, we said, we're sorry to interrupt. Conor claims he didn't see anything other then the leopard print chair that was turned over on its side on the floor.

Our trip the next day to the Brooklyn Museum included a scene with the NYPD. When we sat down in the car, a man lay across from us spread out over 5 or 6 seats. He was passed out and no one paid much attention to him. A man a couple of seats down from me asked us where we were headed, I guess because he saw me looking at the list of stops. I told him the Museum and he said that we should get off the stop after him. We had a long ride ahead of us and I settled back in my seat to relax. At one of the stops, a uniformed policeman got on the car and walked right over to the guy who was passed out. He told him to sit up and nothing happened. Then he grabbed the guy's belt and started shaking his body to wake him up. The guy looked up at the cop and the cop said sit up, you can't lay down on the train like that. The guy said I was looking for something, and the cop said no you weren't, you were passed out. Right, the guy said, I was sleeping, but after you woke me up, I started to look for something.

He sat up and the cop stood there, a big guy with his gun and stick. He put his hat on, down over his eyes the way they do that to look tougher. Then something happened at another stop. The cop yelled something, got off the train, and then back on again. At the next stop, he told the guy who had been passed out, to get off the train. The cop seemed really angry, as if whatever had happened at the last stop now had to discharge and this guy was going to have to pay. He did get off and we saw the cop put handcuffs on him.

The rest of us on the train shook our collective head at the abuse of power. And our friend who was going to get off at the stop ahead of us, grabbed a bottle of whiskey out of his duffel bag, filled his Sprite bottle and then shared it with another guy across the aisle from him.

Paying Attention

I hurt myself a few times in the last couple of months. I fell riding a horse--actually a pony--for the first time in September. I got lucky and didn't do any lasting damage, just a sore shoulder for a couple of days. What was I thinking about? What was distracting me?

I burned my hand making tea. I poured boiling water all over the back of my left hand. I held back tears as I drove my daughter to her dance class soon after the incident. For three weeks I covered it with my other hand when I stood talking to someone. It turned dark brown and peeled. Underneath the raw, red skin looked unready for exposure.

I fell riding again on Friday. This time I did get hurt. My neck and shoulder are sore and I have appointments set up with my physical therapist, massage therapist, and a new chiropractor that a friend strongly recommends. This is probably overkill, but since I've been feeling so great physically, maybe better than ever, I can't accept this setback easily.

One thing I know from riding is that your eye is everything. Where you're looking and what you're thinking about is critical to staying in the saddle. It's not easy to be a daydreamer and ride horses. Until now, I've been lucky, but it looks like I've tempted fate and my daydreaming is beginning to cost me.

Clarity and focus are things that I've learned about in yoga and meditation. I can try to apply some of those skills to the rest of my life. I think I better, before I really get hurt. My new mantra should be "focus on what you are doing now." That would keep me out of a lot of trouble, because so much of what spins me is not paying attention to what I'm doing in the moment. I assume many writers have the habit of living in their heads. It's how we get a lot of our work done, and since we bring our heads with us wherever we go, we often forget that we're doing something other than work and get lost somewhere in between the two activities.

I can't possibly stop thinking, except when I'm sitting at my computer, but I do need to be more aware of how I allocate time for this work and time for the rest of my life. I need to notice if I'm paying attention when I'm cooking, or spending time with my kids, or driving, so that I don't get hurt anymore. But also so that I can live more fully. If I leave this thinking process on all of the time, I think it gets diluted and less effective. It becomes something in the background, too familiar and less engaging. And the activities that I fill my life with become nothing more than unnoticed landmarks whizzed by at 75 mps.

Blue Arabesque--NY Times Review

Patricia Hampl's new memoir "Blue Arabesque"--justifiably called so, since she defines memoir as the story of a mind, not a life--received a grand review in the October 29 Book Review section (available now to online subscribers).

Kathryn Harrison compares Hampl's analysis of her aesthetic experiences to those of John Berger in "Ways of Seeing," and Susan Sontag in "On Photography."

Patricia Hampl’s determination to occupy the space between the eye and its object and her success at articulating the mysterious transactions therein grants her authority among writers like Berger and Sontag, who not only sit and stare but see. Read “Blue Arabesque” and you too might mistake — or exchange — art museums for churches.

I'm eager to read this after having the honor this summer of studying with Patricia at the Prague Summer Program. The other two books of hers that I've read, "A Romantic Education" and "I Could Tell You Stories," are now two of my best-loved reads. If her exploration of Matisse is anywhere near as exalted as what she accomplished with Czeslaw Milosz in "I Could Tell You Stories," then I am sure to be taken beyond the walls of my minor-league mind.

Here's an example of her thinking on why Milosz's memoir "A Native Realm" differs so much from American work:

The American assumption is almost always psychological, and therefore personal. There is a throb toward (personal) salvation beating within American autobiography. Milosz's assumption is superficially cooler, harder. Put another way, it is more elemental. For him, the awareness of a rich and complex "origin" necessarily dilutes some of the paralyzing power of the present: something else is always tugging at consciousness, something neither wholly familiar nor wholly abstract. This presence which lies at the heart of the experience of memory is both personal and impersonal. This double nature of his memory, which Milosz says caused his post-War experience in the West to be "robbed" of some of its "reality," is, from an American middle-class perspective, an enriching and intensifying of reality. (from "Czeslaw Milosz and Memory" from "I Could Tell You Stories")

Be kind to yourself and allow this brilliant memoirist to push your thinking, seeing, and feeling into the realm of the divine.

First Dance

My daughter had her second school dance last Friday and it reminded me that I had taken some pictures of her and her friends as they were leaving our house for the first school dance. Jim walked them across the street to the middle school.

She had asked me if three of her friends could come over after school that day to get ready. I said sure, and went shopping that afternoon for snacks and pizza and drinks.

Instead of three friends, four ending up walking over here after school, although Chloe forgot to mention this additional girl's presence. Fortunately, I saw her walking through the kitchen and asked her who she was, a few minutes before her father called to see if she'd made it over here OK. That's right, I'd never met her.

She's only eleven and yet our biggest argument lately is about dating. She insists that she should be able to go to the movies with a mixed-gender group with no chaperones. Last year, I was the only parent who did stay for the movie when they went as a group. Even though I sat in the back and said nothing the whole time, I'm ruining her life. Sigh...

Rock on Baby

Is it easier to be in a good mood when you listen to a lot of music? I wondered about that. I figured that it could at least help as a distraction for the annoying and sometimes damaging thoughts we can allow to make residence in our minds.

A quick search on Medline showed that music is being used as therapy and that it has been shown in a variety of studies to improve mood. Using "music and mood" as my keywords, I pulled up 271 articles. Here are a just a few of them:

Kemper KJ and Danhauer SC published Music as Therapy in South Med J. 2005 Mar;98(3):282-8.

Their study shows that:

"Music is widely used to enhance well-being, reduce stress, and distract patients from unpleasant symptoms. Although there are wide variations in individual preferences, music appears to exert direct physiologic effects through the autonomic nervous system...Music effectively reduces anxiety and improves mood for medical and surgical patients, for patients in intensive care units and patients undergoing procedures, and for children as well as adults. Music is a low-cost intervention that often reduces surgical, procedural, acute, and chronic pain. Music also improves the quality of life for patients receiving palliative care, enhancing a sense of comfort and relaxation..."

Stratton, V.N. Psychology and Education: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2003; vol 40: pp 1-11. News Release, Penn State University.

Shows that:

"No matter what kind of music you listen to, it makes your mood better...Not only did our sample of students report more positive emotions after listening to music, but their already positive emotions were intensified by listening to music," Stratton says in a news release.

It didn't matter whether the students listened to rock/pop, soft rock/easy listening, oldies, classical, or new-age music. It also didn't seem to matter whether the music was played during an activity -- such as dressing or driving -- or or whether it was played while socializing.

After listening, the psychology students were more optimistic, joyful, friendly, relaxed, and calm. They also were less pessimistic and sad. Music, however, did not entirely soothe the frightened beast in student breasts. After listening, they did not report being less fearful."

And...music therapy, massage, and hypnosis may have a positive effect on anxiety in cancer patients (Mansky PJ and Wallerstedt DB Cancer J. 2006 Sep-Oct:12(5):425-31).

So, why not turn on the tunes? We have so many more ways to enjoy music in our lives these days, from our iPods (check out the love song to this device on Salon today) to Pandora--a free customizable Internet radio service, which I'm listening to now as I write this, that we really have no excuse to sit in silence.

I've gone back and forth with music. I know I wouldn't have survived our cross country trip without the thousands of songs I had downloaded, and my feet move with extra buoyancy when I listen to my workout playlist while running. I also love to listen to music when I cook.

I do sometimes choose to sit in silence when I write though. I guess I've always thought that music would distract me. I've read that some writers use music to set the mood for what they're working on and I've toyed with that idea myself. I do know that if I'm going to get depressed, irritable, or crave carbohydrates it's usually going to happen when I'm writing. I mean sitting still in front of a computer all day and spitting out slop isn't a mood-enhancing activity for me. Maybe if I play some music I'll get more done and make fewer trips to the refrigerator. It's worth a try.

Aironic Hudson Valley Living

I've never read the Kingston Times. Although it's published by Ulster Publishing, whose work I admire--especially anything written or edited by my friend Sigrid Heath--I rarely see this newspaper around town. But, the other day when I was at Adams in Kingston, I couldn't manage to walk by this headline:

Killing us softly?: Scientists suspect PCBs jack up stroke, heart attack risks in riverside towns

I happen to know Dr. David Carpenter the researcher who is responsible for this study. He's renowned for his public health work, was the Dean of the School of Public Health and is employed by the New York State Department of Health Research Labs, where I worked for five years before and after grad school.

What I found so disturbing about this research is that they are suggesting that the 40% increased risk of heart disease that they saw, in towns that border the river, is do to volatile PCBs, meaning that they're airborne.

In other words, we're breathing these in every day and they're acting on our livers to increase production of cholesterol which then builds up in our blood streams and blocks our arteries.

This finding is remarkable considering that towns that border the Hudson River have generally speaking a more affluent population which should have reasonable access to health care and knowledge of healthy lifestyle choices.

GE, thanks for that and the microwave thing too.

Taking One's Life

Pay attention to things that come up more than once in a short period of time. It's not always a coincidence. Suicide is a theme for me to struggle with it seems. Please be assured that I'm not suicidal myself, but that I'm finding myself engaged in the topic with several people.

I have a pen pal named Beverly who is a prisoner in California. Her last letter was short and painful for me to read.

My dear Sista and friend,

This will be short--I just am upset today because a young woman here about age 26, hung herself. Yes, Kim she died right in her cell--the room mates were not around, I had last spoken to her during work but never was there any clue that she was having problems!

As I have mentioned before Kim, I have seen too much illness and death among my peers--these years have not been easy to do, yet I press on no matter what I endure because I'm leaving here Kim and no matter how tough being here is--taking your life is not an option, ever!

Well, I just felt too overwhelmed Kim and I thank God I can express my fears to you...

It's taking me longer to write back to Beverly this time. I've had to think of how someone in my situation can possibly identify with what she's feeling. My automatic response regarding suicide--that it's the end result of a potentially fatal illness, not unlike a heart attack--doesn't resonate with people. Most people that I've spoken to about this, still see suicide as a choice and not the result of what happens when a powerful organ like the brain is sick.

Maybe I am too much of a reductionist. It's just that despite how difficult it might be for people to understand that the mind is in the brain and no where else, it seems like too elusive a concept for most people to grasp.

Lately, people have come to accept the idea that sexual orientation isn't a choice. Before this awareness, homosexuality was viewed as a criminal deviancy, a crime against society. But now, most people seem to understand that a conscious choice is not what homosexuality is about. That people are born with their orientations and that their lives can be a struggle for acceptance.

Our brains are affected by stress. Depression is considered by neuroscientists to result from chronic stress. Certainly being in a woman's prison at age 26 is depressing. When we're suffering from chronic stress, our brains are bathed with high levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. This compound can actually kill neurons in some brain regions and can affect the way the brain works.

Of course suicide can be prevented in many cases, but I think the more we consider this event to be a medical crisis, rather than a selfish, criminal act, the farther along we will be to finding compassion for the dead, their families and friends. No one stands around at a wake for an obese, middle-aged man snickering about how selfish he was to leave his family. If he had only exercised and dieted...or do they?

Untreated depression can be fatal. It's hard for me to see this any other way, just as it's hard for many of the people I've spoken with about this to see it this way. Our consciousness is a wonderfully complicated phenomenon constructed from the cells inside our skull and when we try to understand this we falter as humans have throughout history.

To Beverly and other survivors, the aftermath of a suicide seem more tormenting than a death by other means. We always struggle with questions of "why" or "if only," but we can say that for all deaths. Understanding the role of the sick brain in suicide can give survivors a break. They are no more responsible for the way a neuron is firing in someone else, than they are the way a loved one's heart is pumping. Think about accepting this as another natural, but no less tragic death and see if your heart opens up a little more.

I haven't begun to address the issue of health care for these prisoners. I wouldn't dare to absolve anyone who works there for this woman's death, if she wasn't receiving adequate care. From what I've been learning, the conditions there are abhorrent and medical negligence could possibly be a question in this case. But that's a different question to answer and a different state of mind to live in, than one where the survivors are looking at each other and the departed in a futile effort to make sense of a choice.

Lonely in a Hot World

Two things that I read yesterday resonated in the most poignant way and I had to share them with you. In Parabola, an article by Thomas Berry quotes Chief Seattle as having said

"when the last animals will have perished, humans would die of loneliness."

Berry goes on to illustrate the importance of the natural world to humans by reflecting on the needs of our children, especially toddlers and pre-schoolers. How else can we communicate with them in any meaningful way, without the use of pictures and stories of humans and animals?

These present to the child a world of wonder and beauty and intimacy, a world sufficiently enticing to enable the child to overcome the sorrows that necessarily they experience from their earliest years....We consider ourselves blessed, healed in some manner, forgiven and for the moment transported into some other world, when we catch a passing glimpse of an animal in the wild: a deer in some woodland, a fox crossing a field, a butterfly in its dancing flight southward to its wintering region...

How lonely will we and our children be when this is no more? The connection is with an article published in Nature in 2004, which predicts that, worst case scenario, 60% of all species will be extinct by the year 2050. Chloe will be 55 and Conor 53. What kind of world are we leaving them? Will they see a fox and her baby along the side of the road when they drive home from a night out, like I did the other night? Will they be able to take their children to Glacier Park to see mountain goats? Will hawks and turkey vultures soar over the valley?

More from Berry:

The animals can do for us, in both the physical and in the spiritual orders, what we cannot do for ourselves or for each other. These more precious gifts they provide through their presence and their responsiveness to our inner needs.

Wait--tell the chimps it's unnatural

A new, first of its kind exhibit at the Oslo Museum of Natural History courageously portrays the truth about sexuality among the animal kingdom. While the religious right seethes at the sight of bees sucking pollen together, the exhibit illustrates a complexity of relations among creatures. Not all interactions are performed for the sake of reproduction.

The birds and the bees may be gay, according to the world's first museum exhibition about homosexuality among animals.

With documentation of gay or lesbian behavior among giraffes, penguins, parrots, beetles, whales and dozens of other creatures, the Oslo Natural History Museum concludes human homosexuality cannot be viewed as "unnatural."

"We may have opinions on a lot of things, but one thing is clear -- homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom, it is not against nature," an exhibit statement said.

Geir Soeli, the project leader of the exhibition entitled "Against Nature," told Reuters: "Homosexuality has been observed for more than 1,500 animal species, and is well documented for 500 of them."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1012-01.htm

Laptop Lunchboxes

It's not often that a new product comes into my life and changes the way I think and behave. As a mom of two school-age children, I'm faced with concerns of offering healthy, organic lunches, and the issue of packaging. How do we provide lots of cut up veggies and fruits and yet not increase the volume of the already overflowing garbage pails with more ziplocks?

Laptop Lunchboxes are one of those cool things that the kids like and I love. It even offers a creative outlet and a book with ideas of how to fill all of the containers with yummy, vitamin and fiber packed goodies.

The Mind is the Universe

and the universe is the mind.

I always wondered how--if there was any chance of consciousness after death--it would be contained. Gamma rays? I do believe in a collective unconscious, but knowing that the mind is in the brain makes it hard to imagine anyway of it remaining after the cells, which make it up, decompose.

Anyone out there who doesn't understand what I mean by that should read Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. He shows how brain lesions can fundamentally change who we are, yes our consciousness. That slim little book, more than anything else, shook my metaphysical understanding.

But today, I Stumbled upon (literally) two images. One of a neuron and one of a model of the universe. See for yourself. It's the same thing. It's all one and I like that.

Is Bush Really the Devil?

Mark Morford doesn't think he quite pulls it off.

Satan has better taste in shoes. Is far sexier. Can actually spell 'Venezuela.' I mean, come on

Energy Star Pledge

This weekend the new organization that I helped to form is manning a table at Red Hook's annual Hardscrabble day. Neighborhood Earth Watch will be selling compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), handing out free reusable shopping bags, courtesy of Hannaford's, and asking people to sign a pledge change one light bulb in their home to an Energy Star light bulb.

You can sign the pledge yourself here.

Microwave Fire--GE

Yesterday morning we had a very close call. Conor was making his oatmeal in the microwave and I was in my office reading e-mail. He called me from the kitchen to say that there was a very big problem. I ran in, and he told me that our microwave was on fire. I assumed that he meant that the food was on fire, but when I opened it up, I saw flames burning on the inside of the microwave itself. The food was fine, aside from strings of melted plastic on top of it.

We closed the door, unplugged the appliance and thought of getting water. Conor filled up a cup from the fridge, while I grabbed a dish towel and wet it under the faucet. I opened the door again and placed the dish towel on top of the flames, where it sizzled and put out the fire.

We carried the microwave outside to the patio, where it still sits. My initial reaction was to call GE to tell them about this problem, so that they could warn other consumers, but when I googled around, I found out that GE knows full well about these fires, although they won't say so to their customers.

Please be careful with your microwave. Even if you don't have a GE model, know that most of these are manufactured outside of the US and have the branding put on afterward. Think twice about letting your kids use the microwave when you're not home.