Soldiers Breastfeeding in Public

UPDATE: In the combox, Larry L. explains the mysteries of military rules that civilians tend to miss.  This story explains it well:

Reference on uniforms and the idea of changing clothes…. True story and a friendlier than most of my military stories…. During lunch I run down to the bank to deposit some cash(in uniform). I get stopped walking into the bank.(navy federal) and get told I am not allowed to go into a civilian location in working uniform. I go back to my ship and no kidding…. you are not allowed to wear your working uniform anywhere but to military locations. If stopping to get a soda at the local 7-11 you can’t do it in “working” uniform. “Dress” uniform perfectly allowed though.

Thanks, Larry L.  Makes perfect sense.  In that special military way.

***

Original Post:

Since I was so pointed in my criticism of  Time Magazine’s pornesque breastfeeding cover photo, I wanted to observe that this photo that showed up in Yahoo news this morning is just a plain old breastfeeding photo, nothing to get freaked out about.  The mom with twins is not so discreet,  which I don’t care for.  I wouldn’t stick it on a billboard, any more than I’d post a mom doing wholesome mom things but wearing a dress or swim suit with similar amounts of cleavage showing.

(I would put that picture in a brochure for new mothers, which would be an appropriate place for a little technical instruction.  I’ve noticed in the past that sometimes formula companies will issue “breastfeeding guides” in which the explanations and images of breastfeeding positions are so uncomfortable and impractical that if you tried them, you’d be sure to give up and switch to formula.)

–> Even for nursing in public, I am far more inclined to give a pass to the breastfeeding mom-o-twins than any of the other 10,000 utterly avoidable situations where women not feeding children decide to create a temptation for hungry babies everywhere.  On that day when every other woman in the US manages to cover it up?  We can have a talk with the moms of multiples about whether there’s a more discrete way to do the one thing those breasts were actually made to do.

Bad journalism in an effort to stir up controversy:

“Also forbidden while in uniform: eating, drinking, . . .”

Er . . . no.  I imagine they meant to say something that was true.  But they didn’t.  Maybe, if I read the whole sentence and guess about how it’s punctuated, what they mean is “eating while walking” and “drinking while walking”.  Maybe?

Anyhow, I’m not military and so my thoughts on what soldiers do in uniform counts for very little, except that sheesh, yes, mothers need to feed their children.  If you’re going to have soldiers who are mothers of babies and toddlers, this is all part of the package.

Breastfeeding your baby is not some optional thing that ought to be saved for leisure hours.  It’s the normal way of feeding a baby.  It’s wonderful that safe, healthy alternatives exist for moms who can’t do it the usual way.  But it would be mighty bizarre to insist that every mother do the artificial work-around to solve a non-existent problem, just because someone’s got it in their head that normal isn’t normal.

3.5 Time Outs: Busy Beavers

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is also taking it easy today.  Post-holiday light blogging.  But scroll down he’s got some interesting stuff there — Where is the Daddy War? caught my attention.  I’ll come back to serious topics a different week.

Click and be amazed.

1.

This morning I emerged from the bedroom, and found an assortment of children in PJ’s huddled around Sesame Street.  Not surprising.  An odd collection of blankets and pillows and trash paper spread about the coffee table.  Not surprising.  My five-year-old sitting there with paper in her mouth.  *That*  I had never seen before.

2.

“Why do you have paper in your mouth?” I inquired.

“We’re beavers.”

Ah.  Beaver teeth. I had heard rumors of bunny teeth being made last week; after a weekend playing at the river, beaver teeth is the next logical thing.

I looked again at the coffee table.  Everything covering the table was brown.  Around it on the floor?  Blue. And the bits of crumpled up tissue paper were either rocks or whitewater, depending on who you ask.  The kindergartener crawled over to a length of 4″ PVC pipe with a green t-shirt top, made a buzzing noise as she chewed with her paper beaver teeth, and felled the tree.  They only have one tree to chew, so they re-erect it after each meal.

3.

This is why I homeschool*.  Because every now and then I can borrow Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond from the library, and all the kids abandon their regular school work in order to watch, even though they saw it already when they were in K5 or 1st or 2nd grade and in theory the big guys should find it boring by now, but they don’t.

And then instead of telling thirty kids, “Make a diorama about Beavers,” my kids build a live-action diorama in the living room when I thought they were just goofing off being edu-tained.

3.5

What is the proper place for the pink bunny and the purple hippos and the real live family cat, in a living room Beaver pond?  The negotiations are fascinating.

 

***

Well that’s all for today.   I’m catching up on the plugged-in life after the long weekend, so be patient with me as I work through the inbox.  I noticed over at CWG there’s a nice set of Memorial Day posts from today on back through Saturday, go take a look.

Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not beavers only.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.  Have a great week!

 

*Other people have more impressive reasons for their educational choices.  But seriously.  I’m in it for the beaver pond.

About that picnic . . .

From the blog that’s Memorial Day all century long:

Early last week I got an e-mail from one of the Veterans Collaborative coordinators asking if I would be willing to speak to the staff of  her agency about Memorial Day.  One of their missions is to support military families and she had been surprised and a little horrified to find that many of her colleagues did not know the meaning of Memorial Day.

Read the whole post here.  And subscribe.  There’s always something excellent chez Lee Ann.

World Communication Day & Promote Catholicism Day, part 2

Time for part 2 of the  Catholic media fest:

Then, on Thursday, May 24, please share the fruit of that day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at: http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/

Half of you may have noticed, my efforts at internet silence were not so successful.  So this will be fruit-of-the-noise as well.

1.  Have I mentioned how much I love the printing press?

I’ve got an old version of one of these guys, not the hardback, and the spine’s peeling away.  I think most of my friends who do book repair are also solidly anti-Catholic, which makes it awkward to ask for advice.

2. SuperHusband swears by the iBreviary. It is indeed super cool.  I mean, yes, wow.  But I still prefer paper.

3. Review Books.  Yesterday in my failure to sit on my hands, I stumbled on RAnn’s list of Top Ten Sources for Review Books.  My current title from The Catholic Company is Benedict of Bavaria.  I picked it because that little voice told me I should, and my brain informed me that it was time I made myself read something substantial for a change, and this looked like it.  Ha!  I love being wrong.

“Substantial” is my code word for “thick” and “slog through long paragraphs written by people who need to get re-acquainted with the period key, and also not use the word ontological quite so much”.  Not so.  Eminentally readable, and super interesting — quite the departure from my usual association of Pope Topics = Too Smart for Me.  I love the printing press.  Love it.

4. Local Catholic Bookstores.  OSV Weekly has this cute little sidebar about “How to Read More.”  It’s like telling someone on a diet How to Eat More.  No, really, I read enough already.  If the meat thing doesn’t work out, Not Reading is my most painful alternate penance.

But the pleasure of the review programs sponsored by the big guys is that a) It supports the bookstores who provide for those who don’t have local bookstores b) sometimes I find a great book my local store doesn’t know about, and then I can pass it on, and c) I still have my book money left to spend with the local guys.

Support your local Catholic bookstore.  If you don’t have one, and your parish has a spare coat closet they can spare, consider starting one.  Nothing beats being able to browse in person, especially for kids.

5. A great book my local bookstore is about to find out about.  One of the tremendous pleasures of Catholic New Media has been getting to know other writers online.  Which is how I ended up with the announcement of this book in my inbox yesterday:

I can’t wait to the see the inside.

Another great moment in New Media e-mails yesterday . . . Julie Davis let me look at a sneak preview of a project she’s working on.  That’s all I can say right now.  But listen: There is a super-awesome, unbelievably gorgeous book in the works.  When the time comes, I will so tell the world it’s gonna be sort of annoying.  If your name is SuperMother-in-Law, I’m getting you one for Christmas.  (Not this Christmas.  You have to wait until it meets the printing press, which is still a ways off.)  With my own money.

6.  And that’s something I love about the Catholic new media: Catholic writers being able to connect with one another and collaborate on projects.  Writers in general can be a little paranoid.  What if someone else writes my book before I do?  In the Catholic world, yes that fear can be there.  But when your mission is  to evangelize, most of all there’s a tremendous sense of relief: Thank goodness someone wrote that book so I don’t have to.

When you’re still in that long aspiring-writer time of life, with 10,000 book ideas swirling in your head and a powerful desire to write them all, you don’t feel that way so much.  But once you actually go to write a whole book and make it see light of day, and you’ve gotten past the about the 4th draft of a completed manuscript, and discover how much work is required to write anything halfway decent . . . yeah, please.  Thank you all seventy-bazillion Catholic writers for being on the job.  You are so desperately needed.

7.  Um, there’s not much money in it.   Just so you know.  But listen, accounting is a great.  Engineering?  Janitorial work?  Lots of ways to support that writing habit.  And it’s all Catholic.

***

When I was first staying home to raise kids, I’d listen to Focus on the Family, and there was often mention of the incredible loneliness of the stay-at-home mom.  The internet has eased that isolation, especially for those of us introverts who would rather read and write than chit-chat at one of those mingle-y things.

Whenever you get to know somebody, no matter how, you only get to know part of them.  You never know the whole person. And at first, you only know a very small slice of the person.  The internet is only different in which slice you meet.

I love, LOVE, having a way to meet people from the inside out.  To not be distracted by their clothes or their accent or their weird habits or lack of weird habits.  To cut out the small talk and go straight to the issues . . . it takes so long at Donut Hour to find someone willing and able to hold a substantial conversation.  I love small blogs because you can have real conversation.  Yes, I’m like a moth to flame, leaving comments at Jen Fulwiler’s and Simcha’s and Msgr. Pope’s blogs.  But I always go to Darwin’s personal site, and not The American Catholic, because it’s small enough you can actually exchange ideas, and not just shout to the stadium.

So to you who write only very small blogs, let me say THANK YOU.   The big guys are doing an important work, and I’m grateful for them.  But small blogs fill a spot no one else can fill.  Keep going.

***

Also I beg you.  If it is at all within your power, please change your blog settings to allow the “subscribe to comments” feature.  Thank you.

Don’t Tread On Us

So our federal government’s gone and gotten all totalitarians-in-training on us.  Enjoy using what amendments we’ve still got left:

• The next set of nationwide religious freedom rallies will be Friday, June 8th at noon.  Look here for the list of locations.
• For regular updates on the campgain for freedom, check out Women Speak for Themselves.
• The US Catholic Bishops are leading a Fortnight of Freedom from June 21st to July 4th.

Feeling shy?  Freedom’s not just for Catholics!  The whole point of religious freedom is that you get to choose whether and how to practice your faith.  Is it really so important that your employer set aside money for birth control only, instead of giving you the same amount of cash into a general-use health care savings fund?  (Or just cash, if you run libertarian.)   We all love to see a ‘win’ for our own cause.  But regardless of where you stand on contraception, healthcare, or organized religion, the Bill of Rights just rocks.  Defend it now.

World Communication Day & Promote Catholicism Day

Via Sarah R. via Lisa Hendey via I’m not sure who, but I finally got the memo.  How to join in the annual Catholic new media blog-love-a-thon:

This year, in keeping with the theme of Pope Benedict XVI’s message for World Communications Day 2012 — Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization — we’re asking you to do something different.

On Wednesday, May 23, we’re asking you to take a one-day break from posting on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, etc… and use that day to reflect on the Pope’s words about the role of silence in communication and evangelization.

Then, on Thursday, May 24, please share the fruit of that day of prayer and silence with everyone, by posting your answer to the question: “What in Catholic Media has had an impact on me during the past year?” Share it on the New Evangelizers website at: http://newevangelizers.com/forums/topic/catholic-media-promotion-day-2012/

Because I totally needed an excuse to:

a) not post anything

and

b) write about the Catholic Media.

You too, huh?

G-Rated Saints – new at Amazing Catechists

My latest post at AmazingCatechists.com: How do you share R-rated saints in a G-rated classroom?

(Well, sometimes you don’t.  But most of the time — St. Maria Goretti sit down — most of the time, you can.  The trick is in preparing ahead of time to avert disaster.)

3.5 Time Outs: The Plague-Ridden Lifestyle

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is nothing if not good for Death Star-themed humor.

TV is my friend.

1.

SuperHusband took the relatively healthy contingent to the family reunion [Bethune Homesteaders spared infection — castle residents went straight to our ancestral family’s farm, Curley family kept safe] and I stayed home with the weekend’s victims.  Got a lot of writing done, that’s nice.  But look, Barbecue!

2.

Having spent a weekend holed up in quarantine with an iPod, the Boy returned to the land of the living in order to show me this:

3.

And also this:

3.5

Not half a take, but themed on the halves: You’ll be pleased to know that while I learn slowly, I do eventually learn.  Monday I promised my would-be publisher I could have the manuscript on the new, expanded, book-length version of the catechist booklet done by  June 30th — and assured her that I what meant was “I plan to have it done by the 15th, so there’s two weeks of padding in there.”  Which I felt pretty good about saying, because I know I could get it done by the 1st.

See?  Take the estimated time to completion and double it — twice.  My operations management professor would be so proud.

Curiously, in checking those dates for the writing of this post, I accidentally set my computer’s clock ahead to June 29th.  Don’t worry, I put it back.

***

PS: Link day.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.  Though I can’t imagine there’s anything on the internet to top Barbecue-Zombie-Stormtrooper Day.  Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.

Book Review: Eric Sammons’ Holiness for Everyone

Eric Sammons sent me a pdf review copy of his new book, Holiness for Everyone: The Practical Spirituality of St. Josemaria Escriva, not because we’ve ever met or even know each other on the internet, but, I gather, because I really liked his first book, Who is Jesus Christ?  (Which I wholeheartedly recommend.) He’s smart that way.  I like this one too.

What is isn’t:  We have to start here, because it’s easy to guess wrong.

1. Eric Sammons is not a member of Opus Dei, and this is not a how-to book on being a member of that organization, nor an account of that group’s history.  Opus Dei barely gets mention, other than to recommend two reliable books on the topic.
2. This is not a colorful anecdote-laden biography of St. Josemaria.  The chapter that tells his life focuses is on his spiritual development — the details that help you understand the saint’s approach to holiness for ordinary people.

What it is:

St. Josemaria Escriva is a 20th century saint whose spirituality is very much in line with St. Therese of Lisieux, whose Story of a Soul was a bestseller during his formative years, and  Blessed Theresa of Calcutta, who was his contemporary and likewise informed by the spirituality of St. Therese.  Basic Catholic practical holiness — what you see in the lives of every saint across all of history.

St. Josemaria’s particular charism was the insistence that saintliness is not for the vowed religious only — an error of his time, and still a struggle among Catholics today.  We tend today to either fall into the get-thee-to-a-nunnery trap, or just dismiss saintliness as something that hardly matters anyhow.  St. Josemaria’s contention, and Eric Sammons’ as well, is that it is possible for you and I to actually be holy.  And that there are specific steps we can take to cooperate with God’s grace in working towards that goal.

As with Who is Jesus Christ, Sammons’ text is packed with information and insight, but still approachable for the average reader.   It covers similar territory as Christian Self-Mastery, but far more readable than that classic.  I personally found every chapter to be helpful for me — life-changing, even.

Who would enjoy it?  I’d recommend this for older teens and adults who want to be challenged with practical ways to grow in the Christian life.  This is not mere inspiration: expect to be pushed to make specific resolutions about your prayer life and penitential practices.  There are discussion questions at the end of every chapter, making this a great book club choice.

This would make an excellent post-confirmation course for 11th and 12th graders — either taught in a high school religion class, or as a parent-teen book study.  (Also think: Post-RCIA discipleship group.) Because the text ties to free, online additional reading (Escriva, assorted Encyclicals), it would be easy to make a rounded-out senior-high religion curriculum using this book.

This is an ideal introduction to the writings of St. Josemaria Escriva.  I picked up a (print) copy of The Way while I was reading this book, and coming to it already well-versed with how Catholic spiritual training works, I find The Way to be awesome.  I’m thrilled to have been pointed in that direction.  But I’d caution you: Do not read The Way without first reading Sammons’ book or some other similar work.  Taken out of context, St. Josemaria’s collected comments are a recipe for scruples, misunderstanding, and stomping off in a fit of exasperation or despair.  Combined with a healthy, balanced view of Christian spirituality, enlightened by a work like Sammons’, The Way becomes the perfect ’round-the-house spiritual cattle-prod  — think Imitation of Christ, Football Coach Version.

Conclusion: Highly Recommended for Catholics for ready to grow in their spiritual life, and looking for an approachable, step-by-step walk through how to go about it.

What can you learn from a homeschool drop-out?

My latest at CatholicMom.com: What Can You Learn from a Homeschooling Dropout?  Because people who don’t homeschool have some good insights for those of us who do.  Enjoy!