It's Christmastime

Days You'll Remember

My Favorite Thing

Photo by Emma Janssen

We went to Juan de Fuca Festival's The Sound of Music sing-along.
Immy won a costume award for "Most Likely to Elicit Awwwws."
Her prizes were a whistle, [whiskers on] a kitten and a bright copper kettle
in a brown paper package tied up with strings.

Making Stuff

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Do Good Anyway

"According to the Census figures from 2010, across the country, 31.6 percent of single-parent families headed by a woman — about 4.7 million in total — were impoverished. That figure marked an increase from 29.9 percent just one year prior.

Male-led single-parent families fared better with about 15.8 percent — or 880,000 total families — below the poverty threshold.

In comparison, just 6.2 percent of married-couple families were impoverished in 2010."

Max Reinhart | "Single moms in poverty here reflect national data" | The News-Herald Online

A Bit of an Expert

Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, on breastfeeding:


“Carla is feeding the baby. I think it's much better for protecting against allergies and illnesses.

It does free men of blame because we don't have the problem of bottle-feeding. You don't have to get up at night, although out of solidarity, I do open one eye.

But for the woman, it's both a joy and a kind of slavery. She is worried about not having enough milk.

I've become a bit of an expert, at my age!"

Quotes and Photo From Hello!magazine.com

The Generous Harvest

Brides for Brothers

Help the GOP, Marry a Single Mom
(Seriously, someone suggested this.)

A Western Sense

Special Relativity

What does "The Speed of Life" mean?

Imogen

With One Voice

Dear 2012 Presidential Candidates,

We are your future constituents and we are parents.

We are American mothers and fathers and grandparents and guardians. Our families might be the most diverse in the world. Blended and combined in endless permutations, we represent every major religion, political ideology and ethnic culture that exists. We are made from equal parts biology and choice. Our children come to us in every way possible—including fertility miracles, adoption, and remarriage.

Our very modern families embody the freedom that defines America. We embody America. We are rich in diversity, but we are united in our family values. We come together today, with one voice, to express our grave disappointment in the national political discourse.

The 2012 countdown has barely begun and we are already being bombarded with the warmed-over, hypocritical rhetoric of 2008. We are living in a time where 15.1% of Americans now live in poverty, the unemployment rate stands at 16%, and we are spending close to $170 billion annually between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan*.

Given the current state of affairs we would expect every candidate to focus on the issues that truly matter: job creation, debt-relief, taxes, education, poverty, and ending the war(s). Instead, it is already clear to us that the conversation has been hijacked, with the goal of further polarizing our nation into a politically motivated and falsely created class-war.

We will not stand for another campaign year in which politicians presume to know what our family values are as they relate to the nation.

To be clear, here are our family values:

Affordable health care, including family planning, for all Americans. We will not tolerate any candidate using the shield of “Choice” to blind us from the issues that really matter. When funding is stripped from organizations like Planned Parenthood, access to sliding-scale health care (including yearly pap smears & mammograms), comprehensive sex education, and family planning is blocked from the poorest of the population.

Access to education, and the ability to actually use it. We want quality, affordable, federally-funded pre-K programs made available in every State, in order to provide an even starting point for all children enrolled in public schools— regardless of the wealth of the district or town they live in.

A reinstatement of regulations for banks issuing mortgages and full prosecution for those who engaged in fraudulent lending practices. We want full accountability —investigation, indictment and prosecution— of those individuals and institutions who engaged in fraudulent lending practices and who helped create the massive foreclosures that left many families homeless or struggling to keep their homes.

A return of strict environmental regulations protecting water, air, food, and land that were removed in the last two decades. We want our children to grow up in a world not weighed down by the strains of pollution and global warming. Between BPA in our products, sky-rocketing rates of asthma in kids, questionable hormones in our over-processed food, and more, we need leaders who will put our needs and safety over the desires and profits of large corporations.

Family planning, healthcare, education, economic solvency and environmental safety: these are our national family values.

Candidates who demonstrate the ability to understand the gravity of these issues, and their impact on our families, and who can provide actual, viable solutions to these problems will garner our support and our votes.

We believe in this democratic system of ours, and we will continue to use our voices and our votes to see that it reaches its fullest potential.

Sincerely,

Your future constituents,

The mothers & fathers of America

Click here to find out more about this letter.

Nevermind

Rejoice Regardless

Elizabeth Shepherd, Bainbridge Island Storyteller (and others)

Story That Stands By Itself

Monochrome Self-Portrait
by Imogen

The Charming Gardeners

Our friends Bob & Kristina personalized this Blue Hubbard Squash for Imogen.

What You Have to Do

I was reading Winter Days in the Big Woods to Imogen. She mentioned how cute Laura Ingalls was. Then, referring to the opening credits of the TV show Little House on the Prairie, said, "Remember, she fell down in the meadow? That's what you have to do. You have to stop crying, get up and start running again."

That's my Immy.

An Artist is a Dreamer

Play-Doh

Doing This Thing Together

Imogen and Me on a Sailboat
by Imogen

Magnetic Yield

Upcycled Pizza Flyer Magnets
by Imogen

Ditto

Goodnight Immy
Goodnight Mama
Sweet dreams Baby Love
Sweet dreams Mama Love
You’re the greatest kid ever
You’re the greatest Mom ever
I love you Immy
I love you too Mama
Goodnight Goodnight

Play a Role

You’re part of society.

You have to play a role or you set yourself aside from it.

Axel Emmermann (On CBCradio's The Current)

Five-and-Dime Queen

Imogen on Halloween
by Imogen

Carnival of Mirth

Ice Cream Princess

Always With Love

"He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man."

Mona Simpson, Steve Jobs' sister, speaking of Steve Jobs

Play On

Her Second Year

The Spaces Between Stars

Spring 2011

More or Less

Less is often more.

Mies van der Rohe

It's Getting Harder

"A single parent with a preschooler and a school-age child in Seattle needs to earn $56,904 a year.

In East King County, the same family would need $65,690 a year, the highest self-sufficiency cost in the state. The lowest, Wahkiakum County, is $32,997.

A lot of working people, of course, don't make even that much.

Washington's minimum wage is the highest in the nation, and it is scheduled to go up Jan. 1 to $9.04 an hour.

According to the report, at the new level, that three-person family would have enough income to cover less than half its living expenses."

Jerry Large | Poverty Report: What's the Cost of Living? | The Seattle Times

That is Happiness

Willa Cather, My Ántonia: "I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great."

October 8

My Job as a Parent

"I realize my job as a parent is to parent myself out of a job. I know I need to teach values, lead by example, and give my kids opportunities to think for themselves so they can make their own decisions and mistakes and grow from them. And hopefully by the time they've gathered and digested all of this information they'll be perfectly capable and functioning people. On paper this all makes perfect sense, but when you're in the trenches it's a lot more difficult, because letting go of the reins means giving up control; and without control I no longer can determine outcomes, even though I intuitively know that trying to control anything is an illusion."

Saelen Ghose | "Parenting at Halloween" | The Milford Daily News

You Were Almost Home

Renting Again

by Kate Lebo

  

No city in the world will save your life,

But you keep hoping.  On your old block

A house kneels on a corner and watches

Its thin lawn, some fences and next door's

Bamboo blinds.  Last year you'd stood

On its porch and felt solid, waiting only

For a ride.  You were happy.

Not exactly.  You were almost home.

Inside someone watched football.

Someone cracked an egg.  Someone

Sorted yard and glue and sequins

Into meticulously labeled drawers.

Do you know your body's address?

You could find that house again, right now.

One day you'll be daydreaming on a bus

And your house will burst out of its doors before you

Lit from within and dirty, like the little boy

You haven't yet birthed.

From a river & sound review via KUOW

My Favorite

Which of my photographs is my favorite?
The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

Imogen Cunningham

How I've Learned to Hide

Afoot and Light-hearted

I like the way this photo captures our time in Port Townsend.
Awash in patterns,
 eating a hot dog from Dogs-A-Foot,
Imogen gives a dollar to a cute girl busker.
October 2

So Lucky

Imogen this morning:

"Mom, why are Canadians―or people from another country―so lucky that they don't have to go to school and they sleep in cots? I mean hammocks. [She shares her thoughts on hammocks: made of ropes, skinny, 'swingy'] Anyway, they do have to kill 'aminals' to eat. But I don't want to kill aminals. But we do eat aminals sometimes."

World Vision

Kenya: It's a Tough Life for Single Mums

"For those folks who still harbour crazy hang-ups about single mums, just remember that they are trying to raise normal children in a rather abnormal environment while struggling to maintain their identity and femininity. It is a tough world! Cut them some slack."

Stay Beside Me

Motherland

Motherland cradle me

Close my eyes

Lullaby me to sleep

Keep me safe

Lie with me

Stay beside me

Don't go

-Natalie Merchant

Take Me Home

2011 Clallam County Farm Tour

Deia and Imogen
First Stop, Lazy J Tree Farm

Onto Johnston Farms

Next Stop, Freedom Farm

And We Wrap it Up at Nash's Barn
With Cardboard-Crafted Wings

Living Space

September 28

Peering into the Beaumont Cabin,
Olympic National Park Visitors Center

Not feeling like walking on the Living Forest Trail

A Very Happy Start

Happy Ending?

There are no happy endings,

Endings are the saddest part,

So just give me a happy middle

And a very happy start.

Shel Silverstein

Old For Your Age

Imogen to me sometime in the last year:

"Mom, you're kind of old for your age, but you look young. Very young. That's a really old age (40), isn't it? But you're young-looking."

[Um, thanks honey?]

Buttercup Ginger

IMOGEN

On June 30
"You should have named me a better name like Ginger Cup."
On July 1
"There's lots of pretty names like Buttercup Ginger."

But When I Look Up

God is in the Details

“…I am a big believer in ‘Intelligent Design,’ and by that I mean I love IKEA!”

-Tina Fey, Bossypants

Of Ginger, Lemon, Indigo

Altair, Elwha River
Olympic National Park

To Strengthen Morale

The History

Child Care Costs

"In the [2010 National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies] study, Massachusetts, with an average cost of $16,500 per year for full-time care, was the most expensive [state for child care costs] overall and least affordable for single-mother families and two-parent families with infants, the NACCRRA study shows. Using the median income for a single mother in Massachusetts ($28,510), that's 58.7 percent of her income for child care.

In Louisiana, the average single mother income is $18,435, the study shows. The average $5,900 a year cost for child care eats up 32 percent of a single mom's annual income."

Hasten, Mike. “Child care in La. is bargain, study finds.” Shreveport Times (online). September 17, 2011.

Plastic State

Buying in Bulk = Less Toxics
-Women's Voices for the Earth

Lack of Voice

In 2010, 22% of US children lived in poverty! For a family of three, poverty that year was defined as a household income less than $18,310.

-Information from the Associated Press via the Casa Grande Dispatch and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

"Poverty is pronounced deprivation in well-being, and comprises many dimensions. It includes low incomes and the inability to acquire the basic goods and services necessary for survival with dignity. Poverty also encompasses low levels of health and education, poor access to clean water and sanitation, inadequate physical security, lack of voice, and insufficient capacity and opportunity to better one’s life."

—World Bank [via Wikipedia]

The New Shape of Parenting

"…[W]ith the dramatic rise in unmarried mothers giving birth (from 18 percent in 1980 to 41 percent in 2008), as well as a rise in the likelihood of single mother households falling below the poverty line (a scenario 9 times as likely to happen in 2009 as it was in 1990) single moms are facing persuasive — if stark — reasons to cohabitate. Add to that the reality that the average single mom makes just over $25,000 and the average cost of raising a child per year weighs in at $13,860…"

Epstein, Amy Levin. "Moving In with Single Moms: Is shared housing the new shape of parenting?" Babble. September 12, 2011.

Life is Mostly Freehand

Kayaking with Bob, Port Angeles Harbor