Celebrity Booby Trap: Bethenny & Rachael Ray Frown on Public Breastfeeding

As long as we force breastfeeding women into back rooms, societally we will all lack familiarity and comfort with it, and breastfeeding rates will remain lower than our stated public health aims. We all benefit from breastfeeding. It is better for the infant, the mother, and society. Not only are famlies not spending money on a product they don't need, but they're not polluting the environment with all the unnecessary packaging and bottles, etc. I don't know this Bethenny person, and I've never been a Rachael Ray fan (we can all open cans, Rachael), but it seems to me if you are in a position of having people actually *listen* to you, you should use that opportunity to be an advocate, not yet another obstacle.
Celebrity Booby Trap: Bethenny & Rachael Ray Frown on Public Breastfeeding

Happy 2011!

And here are some of the policy issues we should pay attention to in the new year (drumroll?):

• repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell (done, but yet to be implemented...long overdue)
• attempted repeal of healthcare reform (want to know what's in it? Go to http://healthreform.kff.org/) 
• breastfeeding friendly workplace legislation being phased in (some good news--for more go to feed://www.whitehouse.gov/feed/blog/cwg) -- thanks to healthcare reform law
• attempt to privatize and otherwise whittle away at entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security
• Immigration Reform (http://www.asianjournal.com/dateline-usa/15-dateline-usa/8584-immigration-reform-needed-for-economic-growth-bloomberg.html; http://www.newsmax.com/US/DREAM-immigrationreform-CenterforImmigrationStudies-ACLU/2010/12/30/id/381465)
• attempted investigations of everything and everyone under the sun (to keep us good and distracted)

Why am I telling you this? I recall that the nation voted in a mostly new cast of characters who are talking a lot about compromise, bipartisanship, and working together for the good of the American people. I recall a lot of concern about the national debt. Someone will have to make sure these clowns remember their "mandate." If we don't do it, we'll only have ourselves to blame when all we get is a lot of theatrics and no results.

“Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”  ~Jerry Garcia

Isn't it Quaint? More Nostalgia for Home Economics

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132230490/elegantly-old-school-nostalgia-books-on-the-rise
Isn't it sweet and old fashioned? In this book review on NPR's morning edition, I heard more nostalgia for what we are left to assume is the long dead field of Home Economics. And, of course, Martha Stewart was mentioned yet another time as the modern instantiation of Home Ec. What is most disconcerting to me is that our field has not become irrelevant, but invisible. If Home Economics is seen as old fashioned, Family and Consumer Sciences is not seen at all. As schools continue to make budget cuts, FCS programs remain vulnerable. No one can support programs that they apparently do not know about. Family and Consumer Scientists: let's stop rebranding and start advocating. Strongly.