Her Daily News

It’s been a few months since we last heard about the Mormon Polygamists in Utah and Texas in the news but there are a few books out right now that really give an amazingly heartbreaking and rather informative portrayal of life inside the cult of polygamy.

I am not talking here about the stray and random family who chooses to live in the modern world in a home with one man as husband and several women as “wives”. I am referring here to the large populations that live in a few specific towns on the Utah-Arizona border.

First off,Stolen Innocence is a personal account of Elissa Wall, a most brave and courageous woman who suffered unimaginable abuse of the mind and body for years. Wall writes openly and honestly about her life inside a polygamist family.

I read this book a few months ago as soon as it came out. I read all 500 pages in about three days. I didn’t sleep. It was that good.

Another warrior of a woman, Carolyn Jessop has also written a book about her life. Escape is the story of a mother of eight children, married to a man 32-years her senior when she was a mere 18-years old and her eventual escape in the middle of the night with her children. Neither woman has looked so much as looked back.

I have just started reading this book and just like Stolen Innocence, it is stunning and eloquently written.

Polygamy is illegal in The United States of America. The polygamist sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, is not part of the more common Mormon Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has been woefully and shamefully absent from the media in this presidential election.

“MomsRising is working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America. Started in May of 2006, MomsRising has gained over 140,000 citizen members and is rapidly growing. More than 85 national and state organizations have signed on to be aligned with MomsRising.”

The group organized a petition of over 21,000 signatures, mostly mothers, to deliver this letter to Sarah Palin. The letter emphasizes that they are pleased that a woman, rather, a mother is on the forefront of this election and may very well become the next Vice President of this country. More to the point, this letter lays out specific issues of crisis level importance facing women, rather, mothers and children right now in this country. It asks Palin what she will do to support women and children. It doesn’t challenge her beliefs, her family or any of her personal or past issues. This letter asks Sarah Palin to list her goals for helping mothers and children.

MomsRising intended to hand deliver the petition of signatures asking that she read a letter, which was attached. Palin’s office wouldn’t accept the letter. They claimed that they had no process to receive letters like that and they were not able to accept it.

This story was written about on DC Metro Moms by Devra Renner who also writes here.

The story was also covered on the local evening news.

Canadian blogger and mother, Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother, was asked to cover-up recently on a WestJet flight from Vancouver to Toronto as she breastfed her four month old son. Connors, not one to take things lying down and also outraged at the treatment of a nursing mother, blogged about it here, and then talked about it here on the CBC news. (skip to minute 16)

We need more women championing for those of us who nurse our children. While I’m not personally a fan of letting my tube-sock boobs flap freely in the breeze, nor would I encourage anyone to do that, the point I make is that it is natural and NORMAL to breastfeed a baby. Most women at least attempt to cover up and are vaguely discreet while simultaneously wrangling a loose boob and a baby.

Sorry guys, but the actual purpose of these boulders is for nursing, not your own entertainment. We’ve gotten far too lackadaisical by giving babies bottles, so much so that we balk and gasp at a nursing mother in public as if that is wrong. What if we chastised women for giving bottles of formula?? I don’t think that will ever happen. If the mother of a three month old wants to go a park or the mall or fly on an airplane she shouldn’t feel any more ashamed to open her blouse than another mom feels to shake-up a bottle of formula.

There are other breastfeeding bloggers out there who keep up posted about their situations and encounters with un-breast-friendly folks. And another one can be found here.

For a complete list of breastfeeding laws in your state, click here.

It doesn’t hurt to know this either. Child’s Right to Nurse Act.

Lucy Noland is a recent addition to the Houston, Texas number one news team at KHOU-11.  She normally co-anchors the 5PM and 11PM news but this past weekend she has reported NON-STOP on the effects of Hurricane Ike on Houston and Galveston.  And she doesn’t even look tired, yet!

Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston, Texas last night around 3am CST as a very strong Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Direct TV is airing a live feed of the NBC affiliate of KHOU-News 11.

I live in Maryland and I have been watching the Houston news since about nine o’clock on Friday evening. She was reporting then. And still going at two o’clock in the morning when I last saw the television before falling asleep. She was still going this morning at nine o’clock. And still, now, at almost midnight on Saturday.

Throughout this entire storm Noland has been respectful and professional while conveying as much information as possible to all people in the Houston area.  Her concern is as evident as her reporting talent and professional manner.

Noland was born in Saigon, Vietnam.  While attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks she reported on the college radio station and later made the jump to television where she covered an erupting volcano and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  She has also anchored in New York, San Francisco and Detroit.

Source: Wikipedia, KHOU-TV

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KHOU.COM has current and up-to-the-minute information for those in the path of this storm.  They are asking for person with information to call them and assist in spreading the word.

Two years ago Black Belt Mama wrote a very nice memorial to Ronald Tartaro and I vowed that I would make the same type of dedication to someone else when another September 11th rolled around.

Just this week on Twitter it was said that if we aren’t careful enough to remember it the right way we’ll start seeing 9/11 sales at the local big-box stores and that would be, unfortunate.

It was my final semester of college. I had just begun my senior year and the day was glorious really. I walked from my apartment in Rossyln to the Metro and then through the cool-morning-air-filled streets of Foggy Bottom to class and I remember looking at the sky and thinking that it was just a gorgeous day. I distinctly recall the simpleness of my feelings before it happened.

I was sitting in class when the token GW basketball player walked in and announced with dreadful casualness that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center; his mother lived in New York City and had just called him. That was his excuse for being late to class and really no one believed him. Over the course of the next half hour or so news spread and my teacher actually threw her hands into the air and said “I don’t know what is going on but I can’t teach with this happening,” and with that we left class. I went to my office on campus where I worked and soon learned the whole story.

I recall that it was a particularly frightening and lonely time.

I lived one mile from the Pentagon at the time.

Later that night a good friend of mine from High School who attended another nearby University called me and told me her much older half-sister had been on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Lisa J. Raines was on American Airlines Flight 77.

I struggle to write this today not because of sadness or pain but because her family was private and they never wanted nation-wide recognition. It wasn’t their style. I fear I am doing them a disservice by writing this today, seven years later, but I doubt they will find it actually.

It is important that we not forget the people whose lives ended on this day seven years ago. I’m not one to say that they are all heros because my patriotism doesn’t extend in that way and none of those 2,996 people wanted to be a HERO on that day.

Project 2,996 strives to remember the lives of each individual and not the terrible, public way they were taken from us.

Lisa Raines was an incredibly dedicated pioneer in her field, working as a Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Genzyme, a biotechnology company. Her untimely death left an irreplaceable void in the lives of her husband, father, mother, two brothers and sister. Not everyone needs a verbose memorial and Lisa’s family would appreciate a brief tribute.

Thank you for taking the time to read this today and to remember one of the lives that ended too soon, seven years ago today.

A recent article on CNN reports that Elizabeth Edwards is now being criticized for keeping her husband’s affair secret so that his political ambitions could continue and so that she could advance her own agenda.

Um. Wait. BACK UP. Did I read that right? The wife of a man with a wandering eye and hand (and … oh, nevermind, you know!) is now being put on the chopping block because when she found out about her husband’s indiscretions, she choose NOT to tell the media and the entire nation? Seriously!?

John Edwards may have had an affair and tried to hide it but where do we get off telling his wife, his cheated on wife that she did anything wrong? I get that they are political figures and that makes, by some crazy and quite arguable twist of fate, their lives public information. But I don’t buy into that.

Maybe I’m just a stupid old staunch liberal who doesn’t care who her President sleeps with at night. I prefer it be his or her spouse, but I could honestly care less if our political leaders are black or white or gay or straight. Call me old fashioned or stupid or lame but I really don’t care what my politicians do behind closed doors. I get that people think a man who will commit adultery is not strong enough and not valued enough to be our nation’s leader, but, I tend to see a larger picture, not forgiving the affair or the lack of values or moral judgment, but I guess, I just feel that a private life is just that, not really any of my business. And, it doesn’t really have any bearing on the ability to govern. Just sayin’.

I also feel pretty strongly that Elizabeth doesn’t deserve any crap from us. She was the wife who was cheated ON, she is managing terminal cancer (metastatic breast cancer), and she is a mother and a wife, she has plenty going on in her life and no doubt feels an immense amount of guilt over her husband’s poor choices and over the fact that her health is worsening (albeit slowly, but, she is terminal). I think she kept quiet on this because it was her PRIVATE life and she doesn’t deserve to be judged based on John’s actions and she certainly doesn’t deserve to be judged by us.

SOURCE: CNN

American Idol returns in January for its eighth season and Paula Abdul won’t be the only estrogen-based body on the judges panel anymore. Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul will be joined by Grammy-nominated songwriter Kara DioGuardi.

Dio Guardi is a songwriter who has written songs for Kelly Clarkson, Celine Dion, Pink, Gwen Stefani and Faith Hill.

American Idol was originally intended to have four judges so don’t expect the dynamic to be too different, just expect a larger table.

Dio Guardi was born in Scarsdale, New York in 1970. She has been a contributor to many international-hit songs since 1999. She also co-owns the publishing company Arthouse Entertainment.

She will undoubtedly provide a great new dynamic of music-industry advice, not to mention shake up the stale dynamic of Randy-Paula-Simon and refocus their energies back on the contestants rather than their own drama.

American Idol was created in 2002 by Simon Fuller and has become a national phenomena. The show is hosted by an even larger Idol-built-icon, 34-year oldRyan Seacrest.

I’m not new to the blogging world but in the past year I wasn’t too aware of all the new sites and activism in the blog world. (I was home with a newborn and my reality contact and awareness was, … slight?)

This is a big year, politically speaking. I live in Washington, DC (okay, the suburbs, but still) While I normally don’t get too involved in political debate, I feel it is often futile, I have some opinions and I do support those who lobby for change that I can get behind.

There are some great women, many of them mothers, who are taking a lot of time from their own lives, leaving their children for a few days to lobby for change that will benefit all of us. You can find them here at one of my new favorite sites MOMocrats. Many of them are actually at the Democratic National Convention this week in Denver, Colorado speaking up and taking notes. They are updating on Twitter and they have a Facebook page.  These women are awesome, check them out!

Ellen DeGeneres, 50 and Portia de Rossi, 35 wed last Saturday evening at their home in LA. The couple exchanged handwritten wedding vows in an intimate home ceremony. Ellen announced their impending nuptials recently after the California Supreme Court ruled a previous ban on gay married was unconstitutional. Nineteen guests attended. Photos of their wedding are available in this week’s People Magazine. Sources also report the couple does talk about having children.

This past summer, Rossi sported a 3-carat diamond ring set on a pink pavé band, a gift from DeGeneres for their upcoming nuptials first noticed when the pair attended the Daytime Emmy Awards together.

In other domestic-type pop culture news, Jennifer Garner confirmed today that she and husband, Ben Affleck are expecting their second child. The couple claims that Violet, their toddler has given them a good idea of what having a baby around the house is like and that they are “excited”.

Glass of suds? Anyone? People Magazine reports Jessica Simpson is staring in a new beer campaign. This brew claims to have vitamins! Ladies … put down the Turbo Jam and drink up the vitamins! Seriously?? (WHAT!)

Heather Locklear just returned home after a brief stint in rehab for depression and anxiety. Her friends say she is looking great.

Finally, the United States women’s softball team lost their first game since September 2000 and will not be in the running for a gold medal, reports Sports Illustrated. They made two very uncharacteristic mistakes early in the game which allowed the Japanese team to take control of the game. The United States Olympic team has won three straight gold medals in women’s softball. This is quite an upset to the team and their fans.

Christina Applegate, best known for her 10-year roll on Fox’s Married with Children as Kelly Bundy and more recently as star of Samantha Who?, admitted this morning on Good Morning America that she had a double mastectomy just three weeks ago. She plans to undergo reconstructive surgery during the next year.

Diagnosed just this summer with breast cancer that was confined to one breast, she opted for the the more radical treatment of a double mastectomy. Applegate’s mother battled breast cancer and she tested positive for the BRCA1 gene mutation that has been linked to more severe forms of breast and ovarian cancer.

Since her diagnosis she has opted for a healthy diet including fish, grains and vegetables and taken a serious matter-of-fact approach in making decisions that will effect her health and the rest of her life.

“I’m going to have cute boobs till I’m 90, so there’s that,” she joked in the interview, which aired Tuesday. “I’ll have the best boobs in the nursing home. I’ll be the envy of all the ladies around the bridge table.”

Applegate appears to be taking things in stride although, without a doubt she is experiencing stress and anxiety on unprecedented levels.

In recent years she has stepped out of type-cast role as a dumb-blonde-bimbo and taken on some more serious and challenging rolls. Her Daily News hopes Applegate has a speedy recovery and quickly returns to the set.

This article on Newsday comments on the increase in women having preventative double mastectomies. Do you find this to be too radical? Or, do you think this is a wise decision when faced with the challenges of BRCA1-breast cancer?

Some other Breast Cancer Information Sites:

Breast Cancer Info

Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure

National Cancer Institute

Sports Illustrated:”Either way, the judging in gymnastics at these Olympics has been wildly erratic at best.”

United States gymnast Nastia Liukin won the silver medal on the uneven bars even though she had a score identical to that of China’s He Kexin. They both scored 16.725. This has brought about yet another Olympic scandal, this time in regards to the judging of gymnastics.

Sports Illustrated wrote a very detailed article about this situation when Liukin saw her score was the same as He Kexin, but He Kexin was listed first.

In other Olympic news, Dara Torres, 41 won three silver medals in swimming and Stephanie Brown Trafton won the first gold medal in women’s discus since 1932. She “laid a golden egg” at the Bird’s Nest today, throwing 64.74 meters.

There are many more remarkable female athletes, for more Olympics news, scoring updates and schedules, visit NBC’s Olympic Zone homepage.

A great baseball player has died. Dottie Collins played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League which was created in 1943 to entertain the Americans at home while World War II took young men away overseas and Major League Baseball was on hiatus. Collins joined the league in 1944.

A New York Times article published on August 15 said, “She pitched underhand, sidearm and overhand; she threw curveballs, fastballs and changeups; and in the summer of 1948, she pitched until she was four months pregnant. She won more than 20 games in each of her first four seasons. She threw 17 shutouts and had a league-leading 293 strikeouts in 1945 for the Fort Wayne Daisies, when the women’s game resembled fast-pitch softball. … The All-American league went out of business after the 1954 season, and the images of the young women in their one-piece tuniclike dresses, skirt above the knees, playing before enthusiastic crowds in cities like Fort Wayne and South Bend, Ind.; Rockford, Ill.; and Kenosha and Racine, Wis., faded.”

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League has it’s own website and an exhibit at the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame which Collins helped create. She worked with curators and used her contacts to get materials donated for exhibition.

The 1992 Penny Marshall directed movie, A League of Their Own brought national attention to this great league of women who patriotically played ball when their country called on them. Unfortunately for the women who had grown fond of their league and each other, the war ended and men came back home, the women were told in no uncertain terms that they were no longer needed.

She died of a stroke. She was 84.

Library, National Baseball Hall of Fame

Actress and entertainer Jenny McCarthy is the author of Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism. I have to admit that I never paid much attention to her before. She wasn’t someone I really took seriously, until I read about her son’s struggle with autism.

Autism is a frightening word for parents. I remember watching my own son as he reached the age when most autistic traits begin to manifest themselves, around 1 to 3 years old. I had read about it and knew some kids who had it, so I analyzed his every movement for while to see how he was acting. Was he lining things up too much? Overreacting to noise, lights, or touch? Was he responsive or in his own little world all the time? Did he lack age-appropriate communication, did he fail to learn by copying behaviors of others, was he showing repetitive movements, or displaying socially inappropriate behavior? These are all traits of autism. They are also traits of normal childhood development in the appropriate amounts. So when I read how McCarthy had been stunned by the doctor’s diagnosis, I could sympathize with how that blow must have felt. My own son has no signs of autism. But I had prepared myself for the worst and hoped for the best as he developed.

In a special report to CNN, McCarthy stated, “Everything I thought was cute was a sign of autism and I felt tricked.” Some children with autism have severe forms that are evident right away. For milder forms, like McCarthy’s son Evan has, the clues can be difficult to pick up on. She had been to several doctors and hospitals after Evan began having seizures at age 2. It wasn’t until she finally visited “the best pediatric neurologist in LA” that a diagnosis was finally made. As Evan lined up ear cones in the corner of his office and started flapping his arms, the doctor explained autism and how Evan’s “cute” behaviors were actually classic autistic traits.

McCarthy has pledged to “work my ass off raising awareness for autism and banging down doors to get answers.” Evan is now five, completely communicative, and has responded very well to treatments. But his mother knows she was one of the lucky ones. The same treatments that worked for her son don’t work for others, and no one knows why. I didn’t pay much attention to McCarthy before because she just seemed like another blonde with boobs trying to get famous for being an all out party girl. But it is her energy, drive, determination, and complete emotional openness that just might provide an effective spokesperson for Autism. If anybody can bang down the doors, it will be Jenny McCarthy.

To learn more about McCarthy’s book, visit Amazon: Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism.

Read more at Discussing Autism.

Jenny McCarthy, autism, Louder Than Words, autism treatment, diagnosing autism, health, children’s health

How Fares the Fairer Sex? is a new series that will feature a brief look at some of the top headlines for women. In this first edition, we will look at Reese Witherspoon, Natascha Kampusch, Skinny Bitch, and Leona Helmsley’s mansioleum.

(more…)

So what would it be like if gender roles were truly reversed? Well, a news series on Fox this fall will explore just that. The brilliance of the idea almost makes me wonder why this hasn’t been explored before (possibly by a better network). Below is the series description:

When Women Rule the World - Fox

What if it was “a woman’s world”? What if women made ALL the decisions? If men were their obedient subjects?

These questions and more will be explored when a group of strong, educated, independent women, tired of living in a man’s world and each with a personal axe to grind, rule over a group of unsuspecting men used to calling the shots on WHEN WOMEN RULE THE WORLD.

The unscripted series will reveal how women and men react in a world where women are in charge and men are subservient, and each gender’s ability to adapt to a new social order will be put to the test.

The participants will be brought to a remote, primitive location where the women will have the opportunity to “rule” as they build a newly formed society – one where there is no glass ceiling and no dressing to impress. For the men, their worlds of power and prestige are turned inside-out and upside-down. And for these women, turnabout is fair play!

In order to win, the men must accede to the women’s every demand, 24/7. Here, women command and men obey. Over the series’ duration, the men will be eliminated by the women until one last man is standing.

How will the men react? How will the women treat the men? Can women effectively rule society? Will the men learn what life is like for some women in today’s world? Will this new society be a Utopia or a hell on earth? And in the end, who will be man enough to succeed in the new social order?

I guess it wouldn’t be safe to call this a reality tv show since it is the opposite of the society we live in today. That is not to say that the concept is an impossible reality. I view it more as a “what-if” scenario, acted out for the whole world to see. Unless the cast is poorly chosen, I think this will be an eye-opener for both men and women.

women, television, utopia, men, gender roles