Breast MIlk vs Formula

The recent baby formula disaster in China is easily deplorable. Many questions surmount to how could they let the formula be tainted. The more insightful question is why are so many women not breast feeding their infants? The Washington Post gives some insight and parallel to the United States in the Late 1940's and 50's when breast feeding started to give way to formula. The sheer volume of formula feeders is due to science and greed. Formula companies used public relations to generate the publicity needed to get more women to switch to formula.

Here are 3 examples of how Formula companies still use PR to their advantage:

Formula Samples Hinder Breastfeeding Efforts

Formula Freebies Cut Breast-Feeding Tim

Marketing Infant Formula Through Hospitals: the Impact of Commercial Hospital Discharge Packs on Breastfeeding

here are some benefits to breast feeding (breastfeeding.com):

...breast milk has 400 nutrients that cannot be duplicated in the lab

...slows down the growth of harmful bacteria in the intestines

...inhibits the growth of bacteria in the lungs, mouth and nose

...reduces respiratory infections for the infant's first four months of life

...research suggests reduction in risk of sudden infant death syndrome

In the United States breast feeding is on the rise though it is still shunned in public. In some cases baby formula is necessary and its availability and scientific birth justified. However, science needs to be increasingly careful to not undermine nature, which it has continuously done( think corn and our food supply). Perhaps if China and the U.S believed in the power of mothers and biology the infant tainted formula would not be so grand.

A Weary Head to Economics and Commerce

I have lived in Easthampton, Ma around 5 years. It's an old industrial town that has been left to flounder on its own for a while.

Once upon a time there were a lot of buttons made here. There have been some improvements the last few years and some old factories have been reborn as condo's and art spaces. Every once in a while a new business will sprout up along the narrow strip of downtown.

Easthampton is still a working class town made up of an aging Polish-American population. Lately, there has been an influx of affluent young couples buying houses, which are less costly than neighboring Northampton.

Sadly with a swelling of citizens comes interested businesses. Stop and Shop supermarket chain has high hopes to build a store in Easthampton. All that is left for Stop and Shop to build is an ok by the planning board, which is holding a meeting on September 23. If built, the tax money generated will be good for the town, which has had trouble funding the school system of late.

Unfortunetly it will be in with Stop and Shop and out with the Tasty Top, a tradition in town. Also closing will be the Easthampton Driving range located behind the soft serve ice cream shop.

This isn't the first time these businesses have been rumored to close. Signs on the Tasty Top still say they will be back next season, but this time feels different.

The tasty top is a shack, the building is nothing special. However eating their ice cream while admiring the view is. The view from the Tasty Top is beautiful; Mt. Tom, Easthampton's Atlas framed against the sky.

There are already 4 grocery stores in a 5 mile radius of my apartment. It is already too much. A 5th store is unnecessary, but a probable conclusion. Another factor in this situation is the Big E's grocery store just a half mile from the proposed Stop and Shop. It is the only Big E's in existence. Another local business perhaps with it's own eminent fate awaiting.

I had a sundae the day before the Tasty Top closed. Vanilla ice cream drowning in butterscotch with a dollop of whipped cream. Halfway through the gooey delight, it made me sick to my stomach just as it always does. And just like always I finished it smiling as my plastic spoon stood upright, unflinching in the coating of butterscotch at the bottom of the Styrofoam bowl like a flag pole in cement. I wiped my sticky face and gave one last look at the mountain without an obstructed view.

Another Anniversary

Seven years ago on 9/11 our vows were confirmed. We, for better or worse, were wed to terrorism and every year we celebrate that anniversary. Every year we are bombarded from multiple sources about what that union means.

Tomorrow there will no doubt be plenty of photo Ops for the presidential candidates. Obama and McCain will reach deep down and give what their prospected constituents will agree as emotionally pure yet firm speeches about the war on terror, how all the victims and their families will not be forgotten, we are all united because of 9/11, etc….
The network news anchors who will probably be broadcasting from the site of ground zero will tell a poignant story about a survivor or a family who lost someone. They will tell us about the ongoing rebuilding process. One of the survivors may even be standing next to one of the candidates maybe even President Bush who will give one of his sideways across the stage nods in a good gesture sort of way.

The papers will have stories about survivors as well. Stories on the implications on the attack to Afghanistan and Iraq and the changes in airline security.
On top of the news, the conspiracy theories will be mass emailed. Perhaps in 50 years or however long it takes for documents to be unclassified we will get to the truth of what happened or more importantly what led up to those terrible events. But, this is America and its citizens will probably get a few hundred photocopied pages heavily blackened by a large tipped permanent marker leaving the document to read like a pile of vomited conjunctions.

I thought about this in the car ride to work this morning while listening to NPR. The story on was about how President Bush was going to reduce military personnel out of Iraq towards the final days of his term and then add more military personnel to Afghanistan. McCain thinks it is good as long as we have won the war in Iraq and Obama said it was too little too late and we should pull all our troops out of Iraq and bring them home. Obama goes on to add that he will if president deploy more troops to Afghanistan. When will the government realize that this particular war has no national boundaries. In certain ways the “war on terror” is more like the “war on drugs” than most any other war fundamentally speaking. The war on drugs has been going on for a long time, the rate it is going it will be the new 100 years war. The United States believes that it needs to use force when it can and this is where it fails. Force does not solve every problem and more than not leads to more problems.

The Gridiron is Back

Here in Massachusetts the weather is perfect after a week of humidity and what was left of Tropical Storm Hanna. The air has that same crispness of biting into a fresh apple from the local orchards. Even though the forecast calls for 83 degrees, the wind is whispering a prelude to autumn. If it were saturday, I would be hiking early in the morning trying to spot some migrating hawks catching the thermals southward, but it is sunday and I will be sitting in front of the television watching grown men, throw, kick, catch run with and otherwise try and rip each other apart. Yes it is the 1st NFL sunday: kickoff weekend. Although I already saw The New York Football Giants (defending superbowl champs for all you degected and still flabbergasted Pats, fans) on thursday night win their season opener, I am still enthralled to be watching any game today. Beyond all the endzone dances or the first down hand gestures or the 300lb guard beating his chest after sacking the opposing teams quarterback is a game of determination, skill and heart.

Jim Thorpe

Credible Source or Left Wing Ringer

Let the campaign begin!

(Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots; I always wondered why they were red and blue)

It can be easily inferred how I personally feel about Sarah Palin. However, in all fairness to the proceeding report I wonder how factual it is.

This is the big story about Palin. It centers around a letter being circulated by Anne Kilkenny, a resident of Wasilla, Alaska while Palin was Mayor, sent to some friends telling them what she purports are facts about Palin's term as Mayor. Interspersed with those facts are personal viewpoints that make this letter even more interesting.

Her reason for writing the letter? "I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter," she writes.
By the way Kilkenny is a registered Democrat. I wonder how the republicans will respond to an average citizen who is a PTA member, attends City Council meetings habitually, and a housewife.

Some responses to the letter by bloggers suggest that Kilkenny is jealous of Palin's success. I find that to be insulting and an attempt to discredit when all the facts pointed in the letter need to be validated and if they are then it doesn't matter how one woman feels about another. Yes, there is a lot of opinion, but so was a majority of Palin's acceptance speech at the republican convention. Let's let the facts speak loudest.

Though not an avid reader of "The Nation" a liberal magazine, I am using their page on the letter because it seems to be the whole thing where as other sites have only partial parts.

Also to show the legitimacy of the letter, here is an interview of Kilkenny by NPR

All the major facts have been checked and found to be true - Anne Kilkenny is a real person who resides in Wasilla, Alaska.

Oh What A Choice

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska's daughters pregnancy offers some perplexing questions about choice as well as for the Christian Coalition stand on the pregnancy.

In a NY Times Article by Katharine Q. Seelye, Seelye quotes Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio talk-show host who says, " if Ms. Palin’s daughter, Bristol, who is 17 and pregnant, had been the daughter of a Democratic candidate and had chosen to have an abortion, that family would be “hailed by the same elites who are launching a blistering assault on this woman and her family.” What Ms. Ingraham fails to realize is that Palin's Daughter Bristol has no choice.

"We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents," Sarah and Todd Palin said in an AP article

Palin is a staunch Pro-Lifer. Would she really let her daughter have an abortion if that was what her daughter decided? If you're pro-life there is no choice, except for adoption, but that is not even a factor in this young woman's pregnancy.

Prominent religious conservatives, many of whom have been lukewarm toward McCain's candidacy, predicted that Palin's daughter's pregnancy would not diminish conservative Christian enthusiasm over the vice presidential hopeful, writes Liz Sidoti of the AP.

"I think it's a very private matter," said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America. "It's a matter that should stay in the family and they have to work through it together. My prayers go out to them," quotes Sidoti in the same article.

I wonder why the Christian Coalition is not upset that Bristol had sex out of wed lock. I am sure that they are happy to see that she did not use a condom or other form of birth control. If the Christian Coalition is so adamant about the pregnancy being a private matter then why do they have such a problem with sexual identity and preference or gay marriage? Aren't all of these private matters?