Jen Wilson Lloyd

Gray Flower Beret

annette — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000

I guess you could say that hats have always been my ‘thing.’ It really started the first time I shaved my head… and then soon after decided to grow my hair back in again. It was a long process in which hats played an integral part. I repeated this process several times throughout my twenties. Now, a mom, I love hats and any hair covering article that can erase the clues to the timing of my last shower in one fell swoop.

When my CoverYourHair.com hat arrived, I was giddy. It was very cute and, well, like I said, I love hats. I have a slightly larger than normal head, but it fit well, snuggly and with ear coverage, and without too much of an itch factor (it is ten percent nylon, twenty percent angora, seventy percent wool blend). The flower gives it a nice look, and overall I really like it. I was momentarily disgruntled to see that it was made in China. Not poorly made, mind you, but that piece of information on the tag put me off, but I have forgiven them, and now I will explain why.

There is more to CoverYourHair.com than first meets the eye when one cute hat arrives for review. As I explored the website, I discovered that CoverYourHair.com is a pretty rockin’ internet hat shop designed primarily for females. Their featured book, Hide and Seek: Jewish Women and Hair Covering explains the religious history of head covering by Jewish women. And in October, breast cancer awareness revealed how much these hair accessories are also designed for people who need more than just a fashion accent, but head covering options as they undergo treatments for cancer.

The website has demonstration videos, like “How to Tie a Tichel,” as well as a well-written and regularly updated blog. Some of the products, like the tichels, I just love, and am looking forward to purchasing. They also have turbans, prettied bandanas, snoods, berets, hair clips, baby head bands… you name it. So, for a simple gray hat, I have a nod and a smile. For the overall line up of CoverYourHair.com, I have a hearty recommendation. Honestly, I am beginning to think that as our globe becomes a village, it is entirely possible that we need to accept China in the role of the manufacturing house, and keep up hope that the rest of us also find good spots in the village as well.

If you need to cover your hair for religious reasons, to empower you in a medical struggle, or simply to make yourself feel better when the mirror cries for a change of scene, check out these products. You won’t be sorry.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, November 30th 2010

Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War

barbara — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Cynthia Enloe

University of California Press

The stories of eight women’s lives, four Iraqi and four American, establish the framework for an examination of the gendered phases of war. Nimo is a beauty salon owner in Baghdad who keeps her business open through blackouts and listens to what the women there really think. Emma is a mother in Texas, urged to let her second son join the military during wartime. Maha, Danielle, Safah, Kim, Shatha, and Charlene all have stories that in telling offer a deeper look into not only their circumstances, but into the state of the world and of the ravages of wartime.

I have chosen to review several books for Elevate Difference written about the war in Iraq and this has allowed me to study, through these scholarly texts, how this conflict is dividing not only the Iraqi people it was meant to “save,” but our own nation. As resources dwindle, more and more of our populations suffer the lifelong and devastating effects of war.

Statistically rich, and academically vital, this book offers a fresh look at how the Iraq war has changed through phases of occupation and what that means for the women on both sides. Alongside the uniformed soldiers trained and assigned to extremely difficult jobs: homes are destroyed, girls are kept from school for fear of violence, and widows turn to prostitution to support their children.

“As wartime strains the social order and more women from many walks of life decide to take unorthodox steps to sustain their own, and their families’ material survival, violence against women is adopted by some men as a means to restore the gendered order.”

As recruiters become more desperate for new troops, they infiltrate schools, and launch campaigns that involve psychological profiling of parents and teachers to assist them in finding the next soldier to sign. As soldiers are kept from home for longer periods of time, their families struggle to hold together, and when they return, they are often in need of serious medical and psychological assistance, that often falls to the loved ones they return to.

“The American military was loath to acknowledge the mental health consequences of war for its soldiers… these were the soldier’s everyday experiences in a combat zone. If they were treated as the cause of mental disabilities, how could any government wage a war?... Every soldier officially diagnosed with a mental disorder was a soldier whom the Defense Department could not redeploy.”

I am fascinated by war. I find it astounding. More than just an isolated incident of violence, war is entire populations of people agreeing to kill and maim. And war looks very different from a feminist perspective, much different than it does from the predominant masculine agenda.

Cynthia Enloe, Research Professor of Women’s Studies and International Development at Clark University, used only information available through the public domain to gather these stories and examine them. Interviews done by journalists gave her a close look into each woman’s experience. She did not conduct personal interviews, for fear of tilting her studies toward the American women with whom she would have better access. But even with this distance, Nimo’s War, Emma's War is revealing and riveting.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, October 9th 2010

The Desires of Letters

priyanka — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Laynie Browne

Counterpath Press

In 1994, poet Bernadette Mayer published The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters, a collection of loosely structured and un-posted letters written over a nine-month period while she was a new mother in New York in 1979.

Now Laynie Browne, in The Desires of Letters, takes Mayer’s flowing style as muse and resonates profoundly with her own ruminations on motherhood and daily life. Author of nine collections of poetry, she uses her talents to describe the experience of motherhood and desire, which I find is often like trying to nail water to a brick. But she turns the brick to water.

When does it get easier (you ask). The answer is yes and not when. Since time has nothing to do with us now. We live in a timeless realm where the effect of difficulty is cumulative, like labor, not each event taken on its own. There is no tense one could call ‘later.’ Each tantrum or disaster formally speaking is returning home to feel an outing has been successful, no matter how humble, to buy milk for instance, if everyone is still alive.

As a writer and a mother with young children, I often find it difficult to connect to voices so far removed from the disjointed and often surreal world my children and I inhabit. But in The Desires of Letters I felt at home. Taking the writing, the experience of being a writer, then wrapping it around the children and their needs, and the day to day that translates in such a different way than it did as a singular person who was not so bundled in with other human voices.

Naomi Stadlen, in her 2004 work titled What Mothers Do Especially When It Looks Like Nothing said that, “Mother’s live in a universe that has not been accurately described. The right words have not been coined. Using habitual vocabulary sends us straight down the same… footpaths. …There are whole stretches of motherhood that no one has explored.”

Laynie Browne has offered a beautiful new step toward this exploration.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, October 4th 2010

Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist's Hands-On Approach to Activating Your Brain's Healing Power

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Kelly Lambert

Basic Books

"Depression hurts," chimes the television announcer. Most people have been depressed at some point in their lives, whether from a life-changing event or simply a bad patch of circumstance. I am willing to wager that if you haven’t been there yourself, you know someone who has suffered from depression. The pharmaceutical industry is now doling out pills to treat depression and a large portion of our population is taking them, some with marked results, some going from pill to pill searching for the perfect cocktail that will relieve them of pain and anxiety, fear and restlessness.

In her book Lifting Depression, Kelly Lambert explores the reasons why people born in the middle of the twentieth century are ten times more likely to suffer from major depression compared to people born in the early twentieth century. Why, in our modern day convenience-filled society, do people seem to be so ill at ease? Dr. Lambert is the chair of psychology at Randolph-Macon College and President of the Behavioral Neuroscience Society, and her research has been featured on ABC’s World News Tonight and in Scientific American Mind.

In one experiment she conducted with rats, some had to work hard for rewards while others, dubbed the "trust fund rats," were simply given the treats. After five weeks, the hardworking rats were sixty percent more persistent in trying to work on a new task. She describes this as "learned persistence," and theorizes that coming from our agrarian roots, the human brain receives stimulation from doing concrete tasks like working with our hands, and accomplishing something you can hold as the fruit of your labor, "effort driven rewards."

Lambert's studies find that engaging the effort driven rewards circuit of your brain appears to be equivalent to taking a dose of the most powerful antidepressants. With this in mind, she suggests that something like "behavioral activation therapy" can work to retrain your brain to be happier in the long term. With this form of therapy, a person learns how to alter their behavioral responses to situations and even change their environments to stimulate the brain into feeling more rewarded and therefore relieving the subject of their depression.

Lambert is not advocating the end of pharmaceutical intervention to lift someone out of a lethargic and depressed state. But she maintains that without some other form of therapy, or alteration in activities, a person could simply remain on these drugs, without ever being able to get out of the cycle completely.

Lifting Depression is not only a valuable addition to the field of psychology in an academic sense, but it is also a readable guide book that I would recommend to anyone struggling with depression or seeking to understand how they could offer better guidance to a person who is.

It seems so simple, to engage in exercise, to take up knitting or woodworking as a way to engage the brain in a new rewards program that will assist in finding happiness. But if it is so simple, (and inexpensive!), then why are most people advised by their healthcare providers to just pop the pill and carry on as usual?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 7th 2010

A Place of Belonging: Five Founding Women of Fairbanks, Alaska

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

By Phyllis Demuth Movius

University of Alaska Press

The thing I remember most about my brief visit to Alaska is that even in Anchorage, I could feel the lessening of human population as soon as I stepped off of the plane. It was palpable, the very lack of people, the beautiful expanse of green just across the water, and I found it soothing in such a deep, soulful way that I promised myself I would return.

Alaska is still a frontier in some real ways and within our collective imagination, although with modern conveniences it is nowhere near what it was for the five women whose stories make up A Place of Belonging. Each settled in Fairbanks between 1903 and 1923 and helped to build the still struggling frontier town.

Even today, if a girlfriend told you she was up and moving to Alaska, it might seem a brave and courageous thing to do. Despite what Sarah Palin did to its reputation, Alaska was and is a place of great freedom and empowerment for a lot of the women who helped to settle it and who live there today. When the settlers of Fairbanks were trying to find food and clothing to make it through an Alaskan winter, no one questioned the value of every single participant. And when stories of the suffrage movement were told by people coming from the lower states and Europe, these settlers shook their heads and legally empowered women years before the arguments had been quelled in more urban and purportedly intellectual communities.

A Place of Belonging has great academic value, both for women’s studies and the study of U.S. history, as it gives detailed accounts of the lives of these five very different women, citing correspondence and including over seventy black and white photos. Personally, I found it interesting and stimulating reading with enough narrative to entertain while documenting these inspiring lives.

Ms. Movius has an M.A. in Northern Studies from the University of Alaska and has published three other works on the territory.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, January 22nd 2010

The Sixties

admin — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Jenny Diski

Picador

Jenny Diski gave me more to contemplate in 134 pages of The Sixties than I could manage to willfully squeeze out of the last piece of popular literary fiction I read. It is clear after only a few sentences that Diski is a writer worth her salt, and why she was the one chosen to handle this topic.

Often the sixties are romanticized to the point of obscurity, those who lived through them trying to weave fame, and infamy, out of their psychedelic experiences. But it was also a time of astounding idealism, a time of rethinking and challenging ways of life, while communication between people and cultures flourished in a way previously unheard of before the expansion of global media.

Rebelling against abusive parents and already on the edge, Jenny Diski lived through the sixties in London, experiencing all that it had to offer. From the substances, to the sex, to the music; she helped found an alternative school and actively played her own role in the counter culture. Now, at sixty years old, she can see both the wonder and the naiveté of her generation:

Our youthful cruelty was boundless. Youth does cruelty quite easily, not having the accretions of time to deal with, but I remember a glaring clarity as I looked at the bourgeois life and its compromises... The compromises adults make cause much of the suffering in the world, or, at best, fail to deal with the suffering. Acceptance of one’s lot—maintaining a silence about what can’t be said, lowering your expectations for your own life and for others, and understanding that nothing about the way the world works will ever change–is the very marrow of maturity—and no wonder the newly fledged children look at it with horror and know that it won’t happen to them—or turn their backs on it for fear it will.

She is nostalgic for the energy_—and most of all for the music—_but she contends that some of the most vital agendas were not only sidetracked, but were even inherently flawed. Free love was made possible by the presence of effective birth control and, she points out, central heating (especially in London). But the freedom of it was only for saying yes. Anyone who ever said no, was considered rude... (rude, can you imagine?). She describes feeling that you had to do it with anyone who asked, and that sometimes that wasn’t really so hot for a woman eyeballing her evening’s sweaty, overweight suitor. Communal living often failed simply because everyone was there to be free and to do their own thing, but "own thing became highly problematical when one’s own thing clashed with someone else’s..."

Picador is known for outstanding literature, and their Big Ideas/Small Books series is filled with gems. I am now determined to check out the other offerings, and maybe re-gift them as stocking-stuffers for my more discerning friends and family.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, December 25th 2009

Stepmonster: A New Look at Why Real Stepmothers Think, Feel, and Act the Way We Do

admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:55:00 +0000

By Wednesday Martin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Wednesday Martin lists Step-Dilemma Number One as “The Myth of the Blended Family” in this emotionally charged look into the real experiences of stepmothers: Stepmonster. She writes, “The blended family myth depends on and derives its potency from another myth, a notion just as widely embraced, just as dearly cherished, and just as fantastical–namely, that all women should love all children all the time.”

Interviews with stepmothers of all ages and experiences revealed to her how common some of the feelings and contradictions are for anyone who takes on this role. Pulled between a new marriage, the ex, and children who aren't mature enough to perceive the complexities of the situation everyone is in often make for a powder keg of negative feelings that are utterly taboo to express. Unlike new mothers, who can share their burdens by commiserating about how rough it is to lose sleep, stepmothers are faced with looks of horror if they dare admit any aspect of their new lives might be less than perfect–or a complete disaster on a daily basis.

Stepmonster came about after this Yale-educated woman with a doctorate in comparative literature married a man with two teenage daughters and, (surprise!) had a rough time adjusting and overcoming the desire to make everything… blend. She uses her own nine year experience as the kindling for an in-depth study into the half-truths and sociological myths underlying–and thereby negatively effecting–women who attempt to situate themselves into the stepmother role. Fairy tales, sociobiology, and a genuine understanding and empathy all make this an essential read for anyone about to enter into, or already steeped in, the maze of the stepmother role.

As an adult stepchild, I have recently become very close with my own stepmother after years of virtual estrangement. Reading this really opened my eyes to a lot of my own behavior as an adolescent that kept her at arm’s length without my having even been aware of it. The nature of a divorce and remarriage is so intricate and emotionally complex, and involves so many aspects of the both new partner’s self-image and the formulation of the pre-existing children’s identities, that it is daunting to unravel.

Our culture has a tendency to be overly child centered. Mothering my four year old twins, I see that my rose-colored glasses about what it is like to raise children were idealized, fantastical notions of nurture over nature. I believed if you treat a child like Buddha, Buddha they will be. Reading this book only gave me a glimpse into how difficult it might be to negotiate one's position in a dynamic already haunted by past family habits; a family that did not manage to successfully work things out.

This book is an important addition to the literature of motherhood that has been so popular in recent years. As we allow ourselves to admit that motherhood consists of messes and calamities alongside the miracles and tears of joy, we must also admit that “blended” families are not formed overnight, if ever. Some children never forgive their parents for perceived injustices of childhood, and sometimes, it is not the parents' job to fix everything for their children.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, September 21st 2009

Just Like Family: Inside the Lives of Nannies, the Parents They Work for, and the Children They Love

admin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:18:00 +0000

By Tasha Blaine

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Like Tasha Blaine, I once took a job working as a nanny. Also like the author, I thought it would be a relatively easy gig that would allow me the freedom to write while working in a nice, supportive environment. We both quickly realized that working as a nanny is one of the most intense, draining, undervalued, and emotionally taxing jobs in our modern society.

In Just Like Family, Blaine combines her personal insights, her MFA, and several years of research to closely follow the lives of three different nannies in three different cities over the course of one year. The portraits she paints read more like a novel than the sociological study they really are, and that makes her book as entertaining as it is informative. There is Claudia, a young mother who came to New York City from Dominica and still dreams of a career in nursing; Vivian, a college educated career nanny in Massachusetts running for nanny of the year; and Kim, a nanny with twenty years of experience who accepted a live-in position in Texas on the eve of her second divorce.

It is the intimacy of these stories that make the book so compelling. That level of absorption allows a unique opportunity for Blaine to educate readers about how complicated it is to work in such an emotionally intense environment. A nanny is not only charged with raising young children, but must navigate the complexities of another family from the inside, all the while enduring the stresses and hardships of a primary care giver in a society that still holds childcare near the bottom rung of the economic food chain.

Whether or not to have children, and then how to go about raising them, will be a central issue of feminism as long as a feminist movement is necessary. Childcare is simply not very highly valued here in the United States. It is not monetarily valued, and it is not socially valued. The author Ann Crittendon said that someone once asked of her, “Didn’t you used to be Ann Crittendon?” when she was home with her first child. I know how she felt.

When I decided to stay home with my twins, I found that even those closest to me suddenly treated me as though I’d died and been mysteriously replaced by a cardboard mommy cutout. Having no idea how completely consuming it is taking care of small children, they assumed my sudden loss of interest in pop culture (and personal hygiene) must have had more to do with my giving up on life than with not having time to spare for it.

There is a widespread cultural bias against the work of childcare that completely ignores how much time and energy it takes to raise a child. And in a culture where human resource and intellect is fast becoming the most important currency, it is astonishing that childcare is dismissed as something less than absolutely crucial to our survival. If I could afford a nanny, believe me I’d have one, but I’d be a much better employer for having read this book.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, August 3rd 2009

Boyfriend University: Take Advantage of Your Man and Learn While You Can

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:52:00 +0000

By Jennifer Sander, Lynne Rominger

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In 1994 I was sitting around a bonfire in my combat boots and a thrift store granny dress, drinking homebrew and wondering how many years it had been since I’d used a razor, when someone handed me a pamphlet from the 1930s about how to be a “good wife.” And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—it was demeaning and yet terribly serious all at once, and we laughed with a combination of horror and relief that the world had changed so much since our grandmothers were young.

This particular memory came flooding back to me when I received Boyfriend University by Jennifer Sander and Lynne Rominger. The premise is both insulting and intriguing: “Take advantage of your man and learn while you can.” The authors offer details of their personal dating history and all of the invaluable information they gleaned from the men they spent time with. Auto repair, how to smoke a cigar, how to play beer pong, kick in a door, fix a clogged toilet, and barbeque anything; these skills and many more are outlined so that you can take what they already learned and add it to your ‘masculine’ skill set. Also included are how to cry like a guy, how to bluff and flatter, and how to know if he’s a fixer-upper and worth keeping.

Not a big shock that the publisher happens to be the same one that gives us the “For Dummies” line of literature. The authors have done a lot of work on many other projects distributed by Wiley: Sander is also the author of The Martini Diet and Wear More Cashmere.

While I think that the opinions offered up in this book are materialistic, catty, shallow, and deeply disturbing, I must also admit that their "how to" advice is, for the most part, valid and not altogether useless. Still, while it’s true that I know a lot about cars because I once dated a mechanic, the tone of this book just feels too close to what made Paris Hilton a celebrity and took us from Dr. Martens to Manolo Blahniks in the nineties. It’s as though my grandmother wrote it with a nom de plume as the flapper’s response to the how to be a “good wife” pamphlet, and that was eighty years ago.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, April 25th 2009

Cancer is a Bitch: (Or, I'd Rather Be Having A Midlife Crisis)

admin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:09:00 +0000

By Gail Konop Baker

De Capo Press

After completing her second novel (one about a woman dealing with breast cancer that her agent wasn't very excited about), Gail Konop Baker was actually diagnosed with the disease herself. In this book, she takes the journals that kick started her column "Bare-Breasted Mama" and turns them into this smart, funny, insightful, and intimate book about an event in her life that really rocked her world.

I selected this read because it seems like cancer has been creeping around the six-degree-edges of my life lately. Neighbors, coworkers, friends of friends—every week I hear about someone else who was diagnosed. People who seemed to be the picture of good health are suddenly meeting with doctors and surgeons to form battle plans, knowing that any treatment they select is still going to be unpleasant. And I imagine some of their experiences are not so unlike Baker's description of trying to dress for the exam:

...waking that morning in disbelief that I had an appointment with an oncologist. Oncologist? That word was for other people, older people, unlucky people. People who die. I stared into my bureau drawers, agonizing over what to wear, wondering why they didn't send that information with the postcard appointment reminder and how I was supposed to navigate all these decisions without more guidance? You get an instruction booklet with a toaster oven but no instructions for marriage or motherhood or cancer.

Cancer is the antagonist in this story, but the real trip is an inside look at the messy, emotional, day-to-day of a woman's life, a woman who by chance also happens to be a very funny, witty, and exuberant writer. I not only laughed out loud reading Cancer Is a Bitch; I also paused to consider my life as a mother and as a human being while continually nodding my head as I thought of yet another friend that I wanted to recommend it to.

It is the small observations that make this book. Her own analysis of her twenty-year marriage, of how love can ebb and flow with seemingly irrational meandering and then come back to center. Like when she describes dropping her daughter off to start college:

And as I stand here in the quad I feel the rush of all the years passing in this moment. I didn't mean to rush it. I didn't mean to ever feel frustrated and bored, to want to get everything done, to ever think, 'When she finally grows up I'll get my life back,' because it isn't true. She was and is my life and I'm not ready to let go...and we're both crying now, our bodies trembling as she whispers, 'It's okay, Mom. We're both going to be okay.'

That voice is what I enjoyed so much, because of its ablity to freak out and yet still see the irony, and the humor.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, January 11th 2009

On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam

admin — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:02:00 +0000

By Joyce Hoffman

Da Capo Press

Joyce Hoffman read a book about journalists who reported on American involvement in Vietnam in the sixties and wondered to herself, “Where are the women?” Considering that she holds a Ph.D. in American Studies, a job teaching journalism to college students, and pens a biweekly op-ed column about journalism accuracy and fairness issues, it was not unlikely that she would write the book that would answer that question. On Their Own offers a thoroughly researched account of fifteen women who played vital, if varying, roles in the reporting of the Vietnam War.

For myself, when I studied the media industry in college, I became so disenchanted with the corporate system of information dissemination in the United States that instead of packing the tailored black suit in my closet upon graduation, I grabbed a rucksack and waited tables for awhile. But journalism still fascinates me, and for that reason, I wish that I had read this book in school. Many of these women simply bought a plane ticket and showed up in Saigon, determined to find their own stories. They believed that if they did their job well, they would be published by many of the male editors who told them they couldn’t do it in the first place, as they indeed were.

As a pleasure read, On Their Own can be a bit dense with historical detail that sometimes stifles the narrative of each experience; however, this detail makes the book richer for any student of the history of journalism. I had a hard time getting started with it, but I soon realized that my difficulty was because the first 100 pages deal mainly with more socially conservative women who believed in the United State’s right to be in Vietnam and felt that the people there needed to be Westernized for their own good - talented and outspoken reporters, but not women I wanted to spend much time with. Once I got into chapter three, I found stories that were not only adventurous, but personally inspiring.

Frankie Fitzgerald’s story is one that any aspiring and socially conscious non-fiction writer should become acquainted with. Daughter of the CIA’s director of operations, she spent years in Vietnam, on her own, writing with a sense of purpose. Convinced that the war was immoral and wrong, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. “She once asked a Vietnamese associate what he thought would happen if the United States withdrew. He told her: ‘Don’t ask us that. It’s none of your business. We just want you to leave.’”

Reporting on a war requires much more than death tolls and fire fight descriptions. Today, it seems obvious that different perspectives on the impact of war on societies engaged in it add invaluable relevance to that body of journalism. We are still faced with government influence and spin. The more people are reporting on events, the better we can understand them and use that knowledge to avoid mistakes in the future. Right?

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, October 13th 2008

Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa

admin — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:16:00 +0000

By Robert Paarlberg

Harvard University Press

As a mom who does what I can to buy organic food for my family, I completely understand the general distaste most of us have for genetically modified (GM) foods. The very thought of vegetables altered by scientists in labs seems creepy and somehow inherently wrong, doesn’t it? But when I read Starved for Science, I quickly realized that such a romanticized and emotional standpoint in such a critical debate as starvation is not only uninformed, it is just plain irresponsible. I also realized that, whether we like it or not, most of us are already eating GM foods on a daily basis.

In plain language and with plentiful sources to back up his positions, Paarlberg describes how in first world countries, where food is plentiful and obesity more of a problem than starvation, people can afford to pine for the days of small neighborhood farms - and can turn up their noses at the agribusiness and subsequent science that has allowed us to take for granted having not only enough to eat, but a wide choice in what and where we get our food. In Europe, the negative public opinion toward genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) has led to labeling and bans on imports suspected to be “contaminated” by genetically altered seeds. Greenpeace and many NGO’s are working actively to keep African farmers on small plots of land using techniques that date back thousands of years, but to the detriment and hardship of those very farmers.

Paarlberg describes how rich countries have come to fear and dislike GMO’s, stopping funding and support easily where food is in no shortage, and yet when it is convenient, still continue to fund their use in the pharmaceutical industry where a longevity benefit can be gained. And governments in African countries situated in urban areas that are highly influenced by European bias, both in cultural influence and monetary flow, follow suit. Therefore, they are not developing their own programs to find strains of seeds that could resist drought, and it isn’t worth enough money to anyone else to do so for them.

The majority of small farms in Africa are currently run by women, as men often leave to find other jobs in mines or more urban areas to supplement family incomes. Children stay out of school to help with the farming, and they do it all with wooden tools and poorly fed animal labor. Green movements in China and India have brought these countries to a position where starvation in no longer such a pressing issue; however, in Africa the problem is worse than ever.

Paarlberg admits to having kept his research a bit under wraps until now, knowing the reaction he would get from his own circle of friends and colleagues. It could be said that being ‘socially conscious’ has taken on certain assumptions (and presumptions) among the wealthier strata of our urban world with a borg-like uniformity, and in the case of poverty in Africa, maintaining a position of being purely organic could easily be likened to saying “let them eat cake.”

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 13th 2008

Zodiac Girls: Recipe for Rebellion

admin — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:40:00 +0000

By Cathy Hopkins

Kingfisher

Cathy Hopkins has sold millions of books, most of them written for teenage girls. After reading her latest book, Zodiac Girls: Recipe for Rebellion, I credit her popularity with a tone that both accurately captures the anxieties of adolescent life, and also achieves a likeability of character that is the key to most of today’s popular literature. Formerly an art school student, rock singer, aromatherapist and teacher of meditation techniques, Hopkins has an edge to her, a wit and style only found in people who have lived life outside of the lines to a certain degree. And this comes through in her characters.

Recipe for Rebellion is the story of Danu Harvey Jones, a motherless thirteen-year-old whose father has left for the archeological expedition of a lifetime and foisted her off on his sister, a workaholic attorney. Danu hates having to leave her home, her pets and her friends, and hates the cold high rise her aunt lives in. So, she plots to get herself sent back home by dreadlocking her hair, adopting a scowl and acting out in class. Unfortunately these tactics only increase her loneliness and isolation, until she meets a magical stranger who informs her that she is this month’s "zodiac girl."

While the plot and characters are interesting and engaging enough to stand up on their own, the key to the Zodiac Girls series is that each book is centered on an astrological sign, Recipe’s being Sagittarius. And through the foil of fantastical characters - people who represent planets and all live together in one small, needless-to-say very funky town - Hopkins manages to give a solid overview of astrology to her reader. Anyone not familiar with astrology would have a much better idea of what it is all based on and how it all works after reading a book in this series. That in and of itself is a reason I’d recommend this over most other teen chick-lit books. It is informative as well as incredibly entertaining.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, June 19th 2007

Trespassing through Time

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 17:23:00 +0000

By Trusting Calliope

Do you like Sandra Bullock? Some people do, and some people don't. But she does have a certain appeal, a wide-open smile that brightens the celluloid, and her popularity is evidenced by box office stats and the ability to get Miss Congeniality made into a sequel. Well, Trusting Calliope has a similar charm.

Jill Horn and Susannah Meyer are both California natives who are often mistaken for sisters. Before they joined forces, their lives ran parallel paths. From school experiences, to marriage, to having children, each went through similar things at similar times until the fateful day that they happened to move in right next door to one another. A friendship sparked between them that fostered the dreams each had kept dormant under the demands of motherhood. And so, united by the mutual understanding of two women raising families, side-by-side, they encouraged each other, and quickly became creative partners and best friends.

Their debut album, Trespassing through Time, explores the potential of two women who believe that they were born to sing together and as a result do so with great joy and an obvious passion for their creation. With a folk-country flavor, the vocals are strong enough to blend many different styles of music into one cohesive work. They have made an accessible album that expresses common emotions through lyrical stories, "Every day lives of friends and family- the trials, tribulations, and joys of daily life- all were up for interpretation and a melody line."

Their voices are very similar and harmonically suited. Both are talented women with a penchant for poetry, and each brings unique life experiences to their lyrics; Susannah's son has a high functioning form of autism and Jill's son entered the Navy during wartime. The songs on this album express feelings of loneliness, a mother's concern for her children, and a desire to be optimistic in what can be a very isolating world.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, April 17th 2007

Acceleration

admin — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 01:15:00 +0000

By Tom Gavornik

In his latest double disc release, Acceleration, Tom Gavornik continues on with his forty-year, six-string love affair and creates a welcoming modern jazz space, always hospitable and graced by the spirits of many of his own musical icons. This is his eighth release and follows the double disc, Soul Cry, which topped many U.S. and Canadian jazz charts in 2005. Disc one gently rolls from the light "Breeze in a Bottle" through to a mellower "One Small Cup of Water," showcasing his skills with a Telecaster, and echoing the great Les Paul as well as many of the rock groups of the sixties. His more psychedelic side turns up in the track "Six String Child," where he is accompanied by his wife's vocals and lyrics. The collaboration is similar to one they did on Soul Cry's track "Anger," but I think that both of these tracks ultimately were an indulgence that I could have done without. As beautiful as her voice is, the effect of his wife singing his praises takes away from the musical dialogue of the rest of the work. I just couldn’t listen to the phrase, "a gypsy six string boy child so different from the rest" without wanting the track to end, quickly. And it did.

Soon enough the four part tribute to The Beatles began, and before I knew it we were entering the “Cream Suite.” These tributary sketches are interesting to listen to and are each composed with skill and enthusiasm. Always known for an eclectic sensibility, Gavornik is not shy about fusing the old with the new, and this pioneering spirit is what helps to keep jazz music alive and adds to the universal conversation of the art.

Written by: Jen Wilson Lloyd, April 14th 2007