Archives › 2006 › November
Marriage, Children, and Party: Some Statistics and Assumptions
I was rereading a USA TODAY article from September that reported: “Marriage and parenthood define what’s different about Democratic and Republican districts even more clearly than race, income, education or geography.” Republican representatives, far more than Democrats, come from districts that have high percentages of married people and many children, with Republicans averaging 7,000 more [...]
Stress-Free Thanksgiving Tips
Life coach Paula Gregorowicz is dishing out Thanksgiving advice all over the place, both at Queercents and her own site, Coaching4Lesbians. Worth a read if you’re starting to feel your pressure rise as you think about stuffing and gravy and in-laws. Personally, I’m too busy arranging my wedding this weekend to even think about Thanksgiving [...]
Math Skills Don’t Add Up
In the face of poor test scores and a lack of basic math skills among secondary-school students, educators around the country are rethinking math curricula, the New York Times reports. Math reforms a decade ago that emphasized letting students solve problems their own way, without necessarily teaching basics like long division, have not had their [...]
Meat, Breast Cancer, and Grandmothers’ Eating Habits
A twelve-year study of over 90,000 women has found that daily consumption of red meat may significantly increase a woman’s risk of certain breast cancers, even before menopause. Women who ate more than one and a half 100-gram servings of red meat per day had nearly twice the risk of developing hormone-sensitive breast cancer as [...]
IKEA Hacks
A comment on Parent Hacks tipped me off to the great blog Ikea Hacker. It’s full of ways to tweak, enhance, and otherwise modify products from the Swedish retailer. Add doors to a shelving unit. Make a pinhole camera from a plant-pot holder. Add a pattern to the inside back of a bookcase. (This would [...]
Marital Bliss, Part II
First, thanks to all of you who have sent me good wishes for my impending nuptials. I’m humbled by your kind thoughts. Our chosen Justice of the Peace e-mailed us some sample vows. She’s a lesbian herself, and understands that we’re celebrating our thirteen years together as much as our new marital status. The vows [...]
Weekly Political Roundup
Many of us are suffering from a surfeit of politics right now, so I’ll keep this week’s update short. One more victory in the U. S., and a few international items: In a case of death by procedural maneuver, a measure to put a same-sex marriage ban on the 2008 ballot looks unlikely to succeed. [...]
The 2006 Weblog Awards
Nominations for the 2006 Weblog Awards open later today Monday. [They just updated the date.] Polly at LesbianDad wrote to me suggesting that LGBT-family bloggers flood the existing Parenting Blog category with LGBT-family-blog nominations as a way of raising awareness about our families. (Our blogs could also go under the general LGBT Blog category.) Polly [...]
Do Non-Traditional Gender Roles Boost Creativity?
A recent study from Washington University in St. Louis found that firstborn children who had many siblings, close in age, and of the opposite sex tended to have more creative ideas than their latter-born siblings. I’m not sure the study has any daily relevance to parents—I’m for encouraging creativity in all children. Still, one passage [...]
Young People, the 2006 Elections, and Preparing Our Children
Americans under 30 voted in the largest numbers for midterm elections in at least 20 years, and may have made a difference in the many close races. Young people favored Democrats by 22 points, nearly three times the Democratic margin among other age groups. Some say this indicates a rising Democratic bloc that could be [...]
Hacking Board Games for Preschoolers
Although my son has an apparently infinite capacity for playing Candy Land (interspersed only by rounds of Cariboo), I have a limit. I don’t, however, have a limitless budget for buying new games. My solution has been to create variations of older kid/adult board games we already have around the house. Here are a few [...]
Reading the Bans
The surprising thing is not that Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin passed bans on same-sex marriage. Anyone who knew anything about the cultural makeup of those states knew it was going to be a struggle to defeat those measures, albeit one worth fighting. What surprises me is that the bans [...]
Blue House Meets White House: U. S. Election 2006
At this hour, the Democrats have regained the House, with Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female Speaker. Out lesbian Representative Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin won reelection, although voters in her home state also approved a ban on same-sex marriage. Openly gay Representative Barney Frank won his race Massachusetts, making him the first openly gay congressional [...]
Sesame Street Shows International Adoption, Single Motherhood
Sesame Street today featured one of its human characters, Gina the Veterinarian, adopting a baby from Guatemala. The amazing thing wasn’t just that they covered adoption, but that they also chose a single mom for the adoptive mother. (We’ll see if the right wing jumps all over this like they jumped on Murphy Brown, or [...]
Where to Vote
A public service announcement before the start of Election Day here in the U. S.: If you don’t know where to vote, call 866-MY-VOTE1 (866-698-6831) to find out. You can also use that number (set up two years ago by the non-partisan National Constitution Center) to report any polling irregularities. If you prefer to get [...]
Music Recommendation: Choo Choo Boogaloo
If you’re looking for some new kids’ music that won’t drive you crazy with squeaky voices or repetitive catch-phrases, try Choo Choo Boogaloo by Buckwheat Zydeco. Best known for his Grammy-nominated zydeco music for adults, Buckwheat and his band have put out an engaging children’s album that manages to be fun without being cutesy. It’s [...]
Marital Bliss, Part I
My partner and I applied for a marriage license in Massachusetts Friday, though we weren’t sure we’d be able to do so. We explained to the very nice clerk in the Gloucester City Hall that we did not yet have a home in the state, but my partner will be starting work there on Monday. [...]
Chicago Tribune Columnist: Same-Sex Marriage Affirms Traditional Marriage
It’s always good when someone writes intelligently in a mainstream publication about LGBT rights. Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune yesterday tackled the conservative claim that same-sex marriage “would grossly shortchange the needs of children ‘in order to further adult interests in sexual freedom’”: Now, it will come as a shock to heterosexual couples that [...]
Weekly Political Update
Lots of new in advance of the U. S. elections this coming Tuesday. Here are some of the highlights: An Alaska Superior Court will order the state to change its proposed requirements for benefits given to same-sex partners of state employees. Among other things, it ordered that partners who are jointly responsible for a child [...]
Reciprocal Membership at Children’s Museums
I’m visiting Boston with partner and son on a house-hunting trip. We took a break today, however, to go to the Boston Children’s Museum—and got in free, thanks to a Reciprocal Membership I’d bought at our local Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum. The Reciprocal Membership Program, sponsored by the Association of Children’s Museums, gives free admission to [...]
Health Roundup
Several pieces of health news caught my eye today, so I’ve rolled them all into a single healthy treat: People may have overreacted to the link between children’s use of antidepressants and suicide, say researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Although an earlier FDA study showed that a very few people (about one [...]
LGBT Family Visibility on National Adoption Day
November is National Adoption Month, first celebrated (as a single week) in 1976. The observance culminates on National Adoption Day, November 18, when “courts and communities coast-to-coast will come together to finalize thousands of adoptions of children from foster care and to celebrate all families who adopt.” President Bush, like his predecessors back to Gerald [...]
Insidious LGBT Culture
LGBT culture creeps in when you least expect it. No wonder the right wing is scared of us. My son loves when my partner or I make up stories for him. He can be very specific in his requests, however, and often tells us what characters he wants in the story, where they should be, [...]
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