Earlier, I handed a sheet of stamps and a pile of postcards to my five-year old Remy. He was to place the stamps onto the proper corner of the postcards (invitations to his brother’s birthday party). He stared at the tropical fruits stamps. “Is all you have kiwi, Mama?” he asked, peering over to the fruit bowl. He set to work. He affixed a couple of stamps. “Don’t you have any papaya?” he inquired. After a couple more, he realized that he’d switched to the wrong corner “These stamps are making me wish you had star fruit,” he explained, handing me the mostly untouched pile. “I’m too tired and too hungry for watermelon to do any more,” he added. I thanked him for helping, then tucked him under a baby blanket on the couch and handed him a picture book about knights. He is “reading” now. We are listening to the rain. The birthday boy or I will adhere the rest of the stamps to the postcards later.

Helping’s an impulse that must be nurtured. Helping—in daily life—seems to me not only important for happy home but a virtual sowing of seeds towards helping in the world. Helping is a tricky trait to bring along with joy. This morning, it cost me fifty-two cents. Money well spent, I thought to myself as I pried the errant stamps from the top left corner of two postcards. I’d been careful to display neither disappointment in a mistake (perfectionism is already an issue for Remy) nor any frustration that he didn’t actually complete the task, because I wanted to be sure to appreciate his efforts.

In my household, some helping occurs organically. Before coming downstairs, Remy hung out with his baby sister for about ten minutes until she grew cranky, at which point he passed her to me (literally, given that he’d carried her down the stairs). I didn’t ask for his aid; he wanted to be with her, but he knew he was the one taking care of her, which was not only fun but helpful, too. Getting the twelve-year old to place socks in hamper… well, that impulse doesn’t appear to be a natural one. My voice could wear out solely from repeating phrases like clear your plate or unpack your lunch bag or turn off the lights . Gradually, though, he at least completes those tasks more often than not. For the longest time, I cleared the plate and tossed the socks into the hamper each and every time (and too often still do). Ezekiel’s our first. He was our little baby prince (as my stepfather said soon after Ezekiel started crawling, “But why should his feet touch the ground? We can carry him.”). Ha-ha. It seemed easier to do for him than to have him (learn to , that’s the operative concept) do for himself. When Ezekiel was still a toddler, our second baby arrived, a grandfather was very ill, and for me—already in perpetual caretaking mode—I had more energy to keep doing than to slow down and encourage him to learn to do. By the third child, I’d come to understand that those sometimes tedious or frustrating moments reap eventual reward. Better to learn how to gather your stuff for school or put things away or get the stamp on the postcard than to feel uneasy about attempting routine requests like these—or believe someone else can do them all for you.

All isn’t lost with Ezekiel. He does help with the siblings; he is enthusiastic about saving the earth (along with his middle brother Lucien, they have a Save the Earth club); he volunteers at the school library and co-edited the school’s literary magazine. Although his room’s a disaster (oh, and his locker could more aptly be called the receptacle for lost socks —and even a lost shoe ) he is trying to hone his helpful instincts. He does care for others. The more I encourage him to be empathic and competent, the more these traits emerge. Even if I missed some (okay, many ) teachable moments earlier, I’ve begun guiding him to place feet on ground. While his head remains in the clouds, I think that he likes using his feet. 

We left for Northampton’s Pride March with the typical hubbub of mama’s-taking-too-long-at-the-last-minute-and-papa’s-understandably-annoyed . Good to have family traditions, huh? We stepped out with a close family friend, and three of our kids (five, nine and twelve weeks; our twelve year-old had to forgo Pride for ballet rehearsal). The weather, although overcast and cool, didn’t put a damper on us.

Walking up our street, I asked the five year-old—who remembered fetching tossed handfuls of candy and eating Purple Pride ice cream best—why we march. He wasn’t sure. I explained, “It’s about families with two moms, a mom and a dad, two dads, one dad, one mom, all being great for kids.” He topped me, of course. “Or 99 dads!” he exclaimed.

In our town, Pride—commencing with Dykes on Bikes and sporting floats and people waving from pick-up truck beds—acts much like other towns’ Fourth of July celebrations do, the rainbow banner our flag of choice, friendly, cheering crowds lining Main Street, wafting street fair scents (grilled meat, fried food). Sure, attendance swells with sunny weather and falls off a bit when it’s gray. But the event—by year 27—has solidity; its heft is comprised of tradition and shared sense of purpose. It’s almost impossible to recall the early days, when menacing protesters practically outnumbered marchers. I was in college, then, and I remember feeling afraid and feeling brave simply for showing up. Courage seems less at the forefront now because the mood is so celebratory. And I still notice something different each year. This year for example, the prevalence of faith groups from nearly every denomination was notable, in such sharp contrast to those religious protesters from so many years ago. And schools: long ago, college students participated in Pride. Over time, some high schools joined in. These days, even elementary schools and middle schools are represented. Sure, queer parents have marched for years, but not always with their kids’ schools. A snippet from a longer chant behind us voiced by the Amherst High School Gay Straight Alliance: “2 4 6 8, don’t assume your kids are straight!” Comfort and acceptance offers room for more ease, simple as that.

My kids, familiar with Pride, scampered after brightly colored necklaces and bite-sized pieces of equally bright-hued candies. They waved at friends, regarded the drag queens, and marched along until we reached the rally site and lunchtime. They liked the music, loved the Pad Thai, and enjoyed playing with friends. In short, Pride equals good fun, regardless of any underlying rationale for attending.

Earlier in the week I’d heard about an experiment in Alabama where two men sat on a bench and kissed to see what would happen. Beyond stares, one woman called 9-1-1, because two men kissing—to her mind—represented an emergent situation, and even more disturbing a crime that could, well more so, should , be stopped. I thought of that factoid while I marched. Where can you find comfort and acceptance? Not on an Alabama bench, that’s for sure. Closer to home, there’s so much distance to travel: on the one hand, I thought of friends facing heartbreakingly difficult and legally tenuous custody situations; on the other hand, I recalled the incredible sense of joy that permeated my friends’ wedding a few summers ago. Not only was the sheer beauty of their longstanding love honored, further, there was palpable relief from their extended family constellation with the realization that it was okay—in the state of Massachusetts, but really in a much grander sense—to affirm this romance. Truly, there wasn’t a dry eye to be found. 

I hope my kids always know that 99 dads—while a lot of dads—can be terrific. Families are not all the same. In each, we can find ways someone falls just outside the “norm” (nothing sacred about the “norm”). Over time, that message of we’re not all exactly the same seems so basic as to want to ignore it. But we can’t. Not while our ability to honor and protect every family isn’t nearly secure. And that’s why I love our town’s emblematic rainbow flag and more so its rainbow spirit, which affirms these equations: love is love, and love makes families. 

Babies resemble the earth itself. I think about this while I watch a two month-old sleep. She’s all tucked up, a rounded sphere. She’s so delicate, so malleable, so susceptible to outside influences and yet so sturdy, so constitutionally sound, so complete.

My job as a parent is to nurture her. Part of this nurture business is to let nature—development, time, and personality—simply unfold. While there’s garden work required—feeding, grooming, admiring, keeping warm—there’s also the need at times to envision her as stretch of wilderness and leave her be. Sometimes, parenting literature refers to this as benign neglect . Or, let the kids play . The garden and the wilderness each require an ethic of stewardship, and to me, stewardship assumes amazement. Indeed, I’m in awe of how such tiny, buttery soft creatures become active citizens, not so differently from how I marvel each spring when cold, dark, wet earth yields and flourishes. This week, our baby started to actively coo, initiating conversations. This week, she grabbed hold of my hair. Around my neighborhood, clumps of crocuses trumpet spring colors before the grass has returned to green. The ground went from brown and snow white to brown and purple, brown and flowery white.

One thing that happens when you’re caring for a baby is that you end up taking time to notice minute details, a curled fist or the flash of a tongue exploring just ahead, shallow breathing, or lint collected in the folds of a neck. This past weekend, twenty-four cities and many people in other places as well celebrated Earth Hour. This action—on a Saturday evening from 8-9—was extremely simple: people turned off the lights. Some people gathered to do so; others stayed home, flicked away overheads and lit candles instead. Like the upcoming Earth Day (April 22^nd marks its 28^th year), one goal of designating specific time to focus upon this planet is to slow down enough to experience appreciation for the place that holds us and that we must hold ever so dear. For an hour, for a day, as a newfound (or longstanding) habit, it’s critical to see what a beauty we’ve got here. As my little baby reminds me these days, until you take notice the baby/earth you cannot truly appreciate babe/earth and until you appreciate baby/earth it’s impossible to be a compassionate custodian. With children, we all know that while the necessities of food and shelter are critical a small person cannot thrive without love, attention, limits, laughter, and concern. Ditto for the earth. Turning off lights or driving a hybrid car, recycling, composting, building a “green” house or any individual action cannot actually stem climate change’s momentum. No tipping point can come about solely from rote actions, new routines or greener technologies. The collective will must turn towards sustainability. At the risk of sounding sentimental or corny or new age-y, the kind of change required absolutely involves our hearts, and must engage our passions and our compassion. I believe organizers dreamed up Earth Day, Earth Hour, and Step It Up, with the realization in mind that we all need opportunities to explore our feelings of concern about and appreciation for this plane before we can tap into these beliefs and affirm our priorities. These epiphanies must be writ large, because while on the one hand, the changes required are extremely personal; on the other hand, this kind of revolution truly takes a village.

At my house, Earth Hour began with a wailing meltdown; our five year-old, scared of the dark, wanted the lights on. Eventually, he and his papa and baby sister went off to watch a DVD of the Planet Earth series in a room illuminated by a thick candle. But when he first protested, I felt momentarily frustrated by his tantrum. I’d wanted a pristine, perfect Earth Hour. Kids rarely make perfect any hours. They are imperfect in the most wondrous ways.  He’s the one who races to the light switch to be the biggest energy saver in the household. My real Earth Hour comes often as I marvel at his industry, seeing that he’s already becoming a steward. 

Can we talk about Tuesday? Beforehand, it seemed likely that Senator Obama would wrap up this Democratic nomination and we could all begin to focus upon beating Senator McCain. Obama had already begun to oppose him rather than his Democratic opponent, Senator Clinton. But Ms. Clinton did not receive Mr. Obama’s memo. Instead, she’d been fighting him with everything I hate about politics: fear, sarcasm, even disdain. She mocked; she taunted; she cut him down. Some accused her of dirty politics; others called her shrill. Maybe it wasn’t dirty, but it was far from squeaky clean. In response, Mr. Obama took the high road. Ellen Goodman pointed out that like the “victor” in a divorce, the high road was available to him. While he didn’t pull out the gloves—or the claws—he condescended, echoing obnoxious high school superiority as he’d done during an earlier debate when he’d said dismissively, “Hillary is likeable enough.” While he hints at her female weaknesses, she doubts his capability without subtlety in her ominous 3 AM advertisement. Let’s agree that no one is playing nice anymore.

Hillary’s tears or Barack’s audacious hope, I like both. I am inspired by people who care deeply about making this world a better place, so much so that I will put aside votes I disagree with (even her first Iraq vote) or proposals that disappoint me deeply (his health care policy). If these candidates are truly committed to working toward peace and meaningful access to health care, reproductive rights, improved education, and stemming climate change, I can swallow a few disappointments along the way. The art of inclusive, collaborative policy making is essential right now. The road to change can’t be cowardly and it can’t be vague. Telling the truth is necessary: about what war is costing us in dollars and lives and how far out of reach health care is for so many and how millions more children are living in poverty than a decade ago and how many bridges are at risk of collapse and what a warming world means in terms of how many “natural” disasters we will imminently face…

Tuesday threatened to preclude substantive discussion about the most pressing issues—and not just between Democratic candidates—for another eight weeks. Battles of personality and insubstantial questions of gender versus race or age versus youth or pragmatism versus idealism, let alone the endless polls that seem to be making this whole contest into a contest rather than a meaningful search for our next President, appears to be what we’ll face far into April. All this fluff comes with a ridiculously high price tag to boot.

The democratic, electoral process is supposed to be an actual process. Given that the Democratic Party hasn’t secured its candidate yet, back room deals are probably out of order. And in electoral politics, when punches are being thrown, ignoring them doesn’t seem to work, either. Thus, the risk is for a slugfest. Here’s my plea: for true democracy—its spirit intact—to prevail, the gloves must be discarded. Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton must act as colleagues who disagree on certain points and are stylistically different and bring distinct gifts to the table. They must not only find their respect for one another, but also assure that respect remain sacred. Given that negative campaigning probably saved Ms. Clinton’s bid this week, it’s extremely unlikely that either will heed this plea.

What I’d like to see instead is for candidates to reveal their deepest hopes and dreams. I’d like a chance to elect the Al Gore of An Inconvenient Truth versus the Al Gore of 2000. Dare I say it? The high road—high as in inspired—compels me. The rest disheartens me. That’s my vote.

International law has finally—after mass violation of women and girls occurred in Kosovo and Rwanda—recognized these crimes as distinct ones under international law. That’s obviously a critical development on behalf of women’s safety and women’s integrity worldwide. Three recent stories, though, remind us of the fact that war culture and utter disregard for women go hand in hand, and not just in far-off places. These stories take place, if not always geographically within our borders, within our own society.

Firstly, Representative Louise M. Slaughter, along with over 100 of her congressional colleagues, recently pressed Secretaries Gates and Rice to provide answers on the record to prove they will ensure that the grisly gang rape and torture Jamie Leigh Jones, a KBR employee, endured in Iraq by a group of her fellow employees, including the ensuing cover-up by the US military and the security company, will never happen again. Slaughter writes that while the Army created a rape kit, it then handed the kit over to the contractor KBR, and it was promptly “lost.” Two years after the brutal attack on Jones, there is still no word about an investigation from the Departments of Justice, State or Defense. This kind of collusion doesn’t sit well with Slaughter and fellow congressional members. Accountability, writes Slaughter, merits “rocking the boat.”

Although not directly related, after Persian Gulf War Veteran James Allen Selby hung himself in jail awaiting sentencing for at least 27 counts that included rape, armed robbery and attempted murder, he was, in death, granted a full military burial. In a recent opinion piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Ann Ream questions this procedure. She writes: “The military policy of allowing honors burials for veterans convicted of rape sends a chilling message to victims: Even the most heinous sexual violence does not trump prior military service,” a position she deems as “ethically indefensible as it is inconsistent.”

And the murder of Lance Marine Corporal Maria Lauterbach, eight months pregnant, by a fellow Marine, Cesar Laurean, a man she feared and at least at one time accused of sexual assault (although he was never even switched from the same unit), completes this trifecta of military protectionism for men who potentially have perpetrated violence against women. Her purported rape fell into an area some deem as “gray,” as if date rape or saying “no” isn’t enough to make it real. This grisly murder was real, though and it occurs as the media has begun to shed light on how many military personnel have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan with such severe emotional trauma that a spike in murder, domestic violence, and suicide rates amongst those veterans is undeniable.

I don’t highlight these crimes to argue that one problem is bigger than the other or that men are more important than women or vice versa. The ways traumatized military men or veterans act—these extreme cases and many unreported ones—signals that the Military has a formidable job to do in the wake of war.  The Military must take on—as its moral imperative, and its humanitarian imperative—a boldly different and compassionate and comprehensive way to care for its veterans returning from war with such deep trauma that at best their young lives are forever altered.

It’s that caring for emotional wounds of its service men and women isn’t the only moral imperative for today’s military. An essential component to that moral and humanitarian imperative is for the Military to take a forceful stand against any tacit condoning of violence against women, internationally, domestically, and in zones where US citizens work as civilian contractors. You cannot work to protect basic human rights without seeing this one as absolute: freedom isn’t freedom if it’s only for half of the population.

Compassion isn’t linear. Compassion must move fluidly, in many directions in order to do its job, and begins with absolute intolerance for violence against women anywhere in the world, by anyone, at any time, in any uniform, “gray” or no. And it extends to those who served in inhumane conditions, to try to make it so that their broken selves can be restored. These priorities must be paired to make today’s world a safer, more just, more humane place.

Did pop culture eschew abortion entirely in 2007? The moralistic right wing commentators are sure happy about movies that herald shotgun marriage following one-night-stand and an adulterous waitress having a baby, while in “real” life, the good little sister of the year’s baddest gal, Jamie Lynn Spears, is making what anti-choice folks deem the “right” decision by having a baby—father not officially named—at the ripe old age of sixteen. What makes all this sex—extramarital, underage—worthy of the right wing’s glorification? According to Rick Santorum, what’s important is Hollywood viewing ultrasound pictures as first baby pics. (Smile, you’re in utero!). To him, those pictures utter not 1,000 words, just three: abortion is wrong.

Movies like Knocked Up struck some ambivalent chords with progressive people. Even the film’s lead, Katherine Heigl, admitted the film wasn’t exactly a feminist call to arms. Its message: men can be overgrown boys, kind of piggish ones at that, and still get the pretty girl (and, oh, the baby too). Many wondered whether the movie was anti-abortion-shmashmortion.

Whatever the case Knocked Up, with its critical comic childbirth scene, couldn’t have been a movie had she gotten an abortion. Choosing themes like adoption or raising unplanned babies doesn’t mean that the entire celluloid world has taken a stance against abortion. Yet, this crop of films and this knocked up teen star do, at the very least, reflect back to us our collective increasing discomfort with abortion. Although abortion remains legal—if not accessible—and although over a third of all women will have had an abortion by the age of 45, abortion has become unseemly, a thing of distaste and shame.

Even information is becoming offensive. Abstinence only sex education stopped providing young people with facts about conception and contraception. Lo and behold, teen pregnancy rates rose for the first time since 1991. HIV rates are on the rise amongst young gay men. There’s a kind of tripped up logic going on here. Isn’t it less of a big deal to inform young people about contraception and sexually transmitted infections than for them to face unplanned pregnancies or dangerous infections? Last time I checked, the answer to those questions is still yes .

These days, even amongst those in favor of “choice,” abortion is viewed as a regretful, far lesser option. In 1988, Katha Pollitt wrote in an essay that abortion is essentially a “bloody, clumsy method of birth control.” Describing how her friends had gotten pregnant for reasons like the one time in 13 years he forgot a condom or her thinking she couldn’t get pregnant while breastfeeding a 6 week old, Pollitt reminded us that in real life mistakes happen. Mistakes are part of life, no big deal. Abortion, she explained, is one method of remedying certain errors. In 1988, Pollitt admitted concern about the essay’s reception; 20 years later, her thinking might well offend those professing to support less the reality than the euphemism of “choice.”

Meanwhile, Jamie Lynn may find her choice—her moral or career saving or heart’s desire choice—to have a baby the harder path six months or two or twelve years from now. Babies, even for the wealthy, are not so easy (just ask her sister). Parenthood’s rocky road, be it through adoption, one night stand or teen passion, gets glossed over by Hollywood’s vision of b-a-b-y as happily ever after. Abortion, in contrast, is oft portrayed as a cold, seedy, desperate alternative (on the short-lived television series Jack and Bobby , a minister’s daughter has an abortion, is kicked out of her parents’ house and dies in a car crash). Abortion, leading to parental rejection, self-destructive behavior and death, just is not as funny as one-night-stand-goes-awry-boy-gets-girl (awry equals baby in this case). Having an abortion isn’t necessarily easy and it’s certainly not glamorous. But abortion is a way of saying no to parenthood at a given moment . By demonizing it, abortion is made to be so much of a bigger deal than it is or at least than it needs to be astounds me. Hollywood’s tales aside, without being able to tell these private stories, ones of decisions carried out not lightly but securely, we lose all humane capacity for error.

This time of year, especially with a presidential election supposedly actually heating up after what feels like years of build-up, it seems like everything’s flying. Here in New England, for one, snow: we got our first real, albeit small, snow—and our first snow (ice) day. The contemplative writer part of me never wants six kids in my house on a Monday, but in fact, it was a lot of fun to have those giddy kids playing together. I tried to remember that snow days are, when you’re a kid, just about the best thing ever…

Now, had this seasonally appropriate weather acted as a harbinger that we—the collective we—were suddenly all as moved by Mr. Gore as many of my friends and me, I’d have felt even better about our very early snow day. Unfortunately, the newspaper headline about the disappearing fish in our local Mill River was enough to remind me that no big sighs of relief are forthcoming. But amongst the ideas that I find flying right now: green as the new black isn’t going to bring those big exhalations; here at year’s end, especially when thinking long and hard about our next presidential (and house and senate choices), it’s critical to remember that the most significant changes are going to be policies we adhere to, from carbon emissions to cars’ mileage requirements to investing in rail systems to finally realizing that the entire population’s health is our collective business and responsibility. Conversion, conservation, and community: think of these ideas and ideals as the ones that can change us. I was heartened last night when talking to a friend to learn how she’s noticed that while her extended family used to think her living more green was crazy, they’ve begun to adopt some of her ways. Moving the conversation from “green” toward an understanding of what sustainability means, that’s a good New Year’s resolution for all.

 Another idea flying at this time of year: the over-consumption and over-commercialization of our buy-crazy culture. During this holiday season, we are over-buying to the tune of $455 billion (to really get into this “shopocalypse” theory, see Morgan Spurlock’s new film on the subject, What Would Jesus Buy?). Consumerism—its lure over our daily lives, for one—and most especially the lock big corporations have upon the policies that are determining our present and our future (think, Iraq, auto makers, big Pharma, fast-food, diet) is one idea we need to not only discuss but act upon. How to act is difficult: boycotting a particular chain probably has limited effect. Still, for what it’s worth, you can continue to press your representatives to represent you and not corporate interests. You can push this crop of candidates about mileage requirements and single payer health plans. Meanwhile, you may find yourself thinking these big and somewhat despairing thoughts about how overstuffed our culture is, and how overstuffed our own lives are, while at the same time, be getting caught up in the seasonal push to give-give-give some more. If you or I stop buying, does that change the tide? Of course not, but this year, I’m trying to tone it down and to add some gifts that are about giving back and giving thanks rather than merely adding stuff (and yet, I’m adding lots of stuff).

This is also a time of year when thankful thoughts fly especially generously. I am particularly grateful to my kids’ amazing teachers (not just their classroom teachers, their coaches and art and music and dance and Pilates instructors, too). Witnessing my kids making new discoveries, believing in their creativity and intelligence, strength and kindness, well, that’s an incredible gift. I hope I take the time to tell these compassionate and smart mentors and models just how much they mean to us. Grateful, too, am I to my kids and my kids’ friends for bringing nothing shy of joy to my life. I am continually thankful to know them and grow alongside them. They are good fun! And I’ve got more good will and love in my life from husband, friends, and family than anyone should hope to have.

What a mixed-up jumble, these thoughts flying at year’s end!

If you’ve got a teenager, steer clear of Texas. Why? Because Texas holds the dubious distinction of not only being #1 in the nation for teen pregnancy but also for repeat teen pregnancy. For those teens, the ones who’ve already birthed a child—and their offspring—this news is a big deal. According to “Another Chance: Preventing Additional Births to Teen Mothers,” a publication from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the birth of an additional child to a teen mother reduces the likelihood that she will complete her education or become self-sufficient.

Let’s talk about cycles. A Time magazine article cites these statistics: half of those who give birth before age 18 complete high school (as compared with 96% of those who postpone childbearing). On average, they earn half as much money and are far more likely to be dependent on welfare: 71% of females under 30 who receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children had their first child. And what about the children? They are more likely to fall ill during childhood, and more likely to become parents while still teens themselves. None of these stats about teen pregnancy constitutes new news, and of course we all know Texas to be pioneering epicenter of the abstinence-only sex education model. Texas also requires teens to inform one parent about abortion 48 hours before the procedure. Another statistic: teen abortion rates dropped slightly after the parental notification law took effect, although it’s not known how many teens crossed state lines for the service. What has been documented about states with parental consent or notification laws is that blocking access also decreases teens’ access to other reproductive health services. In other words, over the years, not becoming a parent has become increasingly difficult for Texas teens.

Here’s the good news: turning the tide is possible. What’s necessary to do so is considerable effort that includes both broad thinking and broad action. The risk factors for teen pregnancy, according to a study published by Planned Parenthood of Georgia, include poverty, a history of sexual abuse, poor performance in school, and lack of consistent parenting and lack of information about such topics as sex, birth control and reproductive health. Given how many factors truly contribute to the reality of teen pregnancy, debate about abstinence-only sex education versus comprehensive sex education really constitutes the tip of a very large iceberg—and most of the ice gets ignored while arguments from those opposing teen sexual activity try to advocate it being stopped by not talking about it—and yet critical to change outcomes. One can liken the anti-teen sex advocates to the anti-drug champions of Nancy Reagan’s era: “Just say no.” If only change were that simple, right?

Successful models are out there, ones that look to antecedents of teen pregnancy like poverty and try to build community partnerships so that the whole child—or whole teen—can benefit from having her or his needs addressed, basic necessities that help young people thrive like academic support, encouragement, access to basic health care and adequate nutrition.

Systemic and broad thinking and comprehensive action addressing problems such as teen pregnancy represent the only possible approaches to make meaningful headway so that young people really get to choose when or whether to become parents. Time and again, such oversimplified questions—often ones that really do not have satisfactory answers such as when does life begin—put a kibosh upon addressing ways to make actual people’s lives better and healthier. Should teens be sexually active? That, too, is the wrong question. Without ensuring that teens can make decisions around sexual activity in informed and responsible ways, the question is not really worth trying to answer. Should teens be forced to live in poverty? To that question, there’s a clear answer: no. And yet, for so many in power—and so many of us not in power, too—solving problems like poverty doesn’t top the agenda. In theory, sure, but we—as a nation, say choosing its next President—haven’t made poverty a central issue. But without a willingness to be complex in our thinking and far-reaching in our actions, we can’t really take on these kinds of social problems successfully. 

Dear Democrats in power and those aspiring to it:

Consider this nothing less than a plea from a very nearly disaffected supporter.

Stop this war . Americans—roughly seventy percent of us—want to see our participation in a civil war (we do understand that our government pushed this situation into full-blown civil war) come to a swift end, a certain end, a foreseeable end. And I’ll tell you what, shy of a clear exit strategy—say, that’s not yet possible—what I want from you Democrats , my party since before birth, is this: I want you to refuse funding for this war . I believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans opposed to our continued participation will understand your voting to end this—which might, by the way, actually work—signals to us not a lack of support for our troops, but a profound support for their wellbeing. If pulling on the purse strings doesn’t get the congress talking about the actual costs of this war—by which I mean monetary, sure, but really also the war’s toll on humans here and in Iraq and neighboring countries, degradation of the environment and on—I don’t know what will. Obviously, the monetary costs are staggering. With the latest request for funding, the National Priorities Project estimates the cost of this war to have reached $611 billion. Every time I begin to hear the breakdown of what that could have bought us—schools, health care, or an adequately equipped and prepared armed services, infrastructure such as bridges that won’t collapse at will—I want to cry. Seventy percent of us always believed or have come to believe that this war money’s been wasted. And if it were just money, I guess that’d be one thing, but it’s not. Purse strings affect lives, millions of them. Purse strings affect lives here and lives elsewhere and not coincidentally it’s October 5th in New England today and the temperature is supposed to hit 86 degrees and remain in the 80’s for many more days, and while a nice little spell of Indian Summer is one thing, this is a globally warmed Indian Summer and I’m scared. I want you to vote to put some of that $611 billion toward sustainability, carbon neutrality, and innovations, sanctions, change that will tend to our planet’s health.

Step it up . On November 3rd at rallies across the country, people are going to ask for 3 things: 1) to create 5 million green jobs conserving 20% of our energy by 2015; 2) cut carbon 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050; 3) a moratorium on new coal. Sure, I’d like to see every presidential candidate and every member of congress at a Step It Up rally. But more than that, I’d like to see a strong, definitive reprioritization by our leaders to put sustainability into the forefront and have it stay there . The real visionaries of the sustainability movement are talking about economic justice and access to health care, not simply recycling (because we all know recycling alone isn’t going to heal the planet or those of us on it).

Sure, I’ve got plenty more that I want from our government—an end to funding for abstinence-only sex education or an increase in health insurance coverage for children—but for now, I’d settle for real debate about real issues . Please put an end to posturing and politics and avoidance of issues with glossy substitutes (voting against an ad, one opposing the war however poorly chosen, doesn’t amount to representation; if you were going to speak out forcefully against negative character assault you could have stood up with actual ballast for Max Cleland and John Kerry). Oh, and I also don’t want to spend one more minute discussing whether this country is ready for a woman president, a black president, or a Latino president, or a president whose spouse has cancer. I don’t even want to talk about leadership; I want to see it in action (Mr. Obama, why didn’t you vote on the Lieberman bill last week?). War will endure and global warming will go unchecked unless you listen to us and start to insist upon change. Go for it.

From that first May morning my town’s farmer’s market opened for the season, Saturday mornings have been delightful. That first week, reunion brought a surprised pleasure, then, as summer pushed in, greetings became more relaxed and more expected, routine. No one comes to the farmer’s market with a long face. Those early weeks most of what was for sale were fledgling plants eager for the earth’s spring and summer offerings: heat, water, and coolness. Summer’s begun to wane. Bounty pours forth each week with a new offering, starting with early green leaves, onto berries, roots, and now peaches and apples and potatoes. The rituals—reunion, planting, harvesting—are small ones, simple pleasures. That first morning, I listened to people affirm that spring provides hope. All summer, I’ve witnessed how much pleasure we humans derive from accepting the earth’s gifts.

Juxtapose all this with people’s mounting concerns for the planet. Terrifying headlines trumpet our earth’s ills, including disappearing honeybees, scorching temperatures in Southern California causing fires and power outages to ever-larger houses built inland. Effective repair will only occur when government and corporate entities decide that healing the planet is fiscally more sound than plundering it. Citizen hat on, I urge my legislators to press for greener laws and try to use my consumer power wisely by supporting companies that are going greener. But do I feel good, really, when doing those things? No. I feel very small and ineffective sending my email or buying my organic whatever.

Recently, I met with Owen Wormser and Mike Keeney, about whose company, Treefrog Landscapes, I was profiling. Wormser and Keeny employ a sustainability model to their landscaping business. What struck me most was something Mike Keeney said about himself, in regards to his work. “I’m a half-full kind of guy,” he explained, before positing an unflagging belief that when people appreciate the beauty of their own physical surroundings, investment in creating a healthier planet inevitably follows. I seized upon “half-full.” Already, it’s changed my vision.

“Half-full” is obviously the farmer’s market. But it’s also the fun I had planting flowers with my four-year-old and his friend earlier this summer. They loved choosing spots for the flowers, they loved pulling at hairy roots, and they loved discovering slithering earthworms, glistening slugs, and spindly spiders. “Eew!” they shrieked with sheer delight. For weeks, we admired the simple fact that flowers thrived where before there were weeds, “half-full” all over again.

Other people’s actions produce that same spirited pleasure. Through my friend, Phil Korman, I learned that his neighbor, Jen Gallant, recently organized a neighborhood tour (they both live in my town, Northampton, Massachusetts). Jen Gallant got the idea after learning some basic gardening tasks from a neighbor (she’d recently become a home owner). She explained, “Then I heard one of our neighbors had just put up solar panels, another neighbor had a huge windmill in his back yard, and others were keeping chickens and I thought a great thing is going on here—people are doing what they can to be self-sufficient and lessen their environmental impact—yet they are doing it either by themselves or with very small groups of neighbors.” So, she set up a tour that about forty people took one rainy Saturday, visiting the 80 foot tall windmill that’s been going for 26 years and people’s compost piles and talking about rail trails, greenway advocacy and car-sharing and collective childcare arrangements. She said, “People met their neighbors—got to walk and talk—and it all far surpassed my expectations.”

While Representative Carolyn Maloney is introducing a federal bill to protect breastfeeding, some stage legislators in Ohio are pushing a bill requiring women to receive permission from the “father” of her fetus before seeking an abortion. So, if you are trying to explain to your children the real differences between boys and girls, it’s not what toys they play with or what clothes they wear; the difference comes once the boys and girls grow up to become men and women, at least in 2007 and looking out upon the political landscape potentially for some time to come, because society still believes women are unable to enjoy control over their reproductive lives. No comparable parallels exist for men, no real life mother-may-I games.

Protesting their “sometimes much infringed-upon rights” breastfeeding advocates regularly stage nurse-ins, during which breastfeeding women assemble in one place to nurse en masse, often to protest a specific incidence of lactation-related discrimination. Earlier this summer a public library in Hilo, Hawaii had about 40 nursing mothers and babes descend, for example. On August 8th, an attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records for synchronized breastfeeding in multiple sites will occur at 10 AM local time in each of the 120 plus countries participating (if you’re a nursing mom interested in participating, register at the Breastfeeding World website to be counted). That mass action is part of World Breastfeeding Week, sponsored by such respected groups as the World Health Organization. These grassroots actions can be effective, in that they generate press and empower women (strength in numbers). Breastfeeding in public is not necessarily illegal depending on location; however, some of these actions mirror civil disobedience. Women are fighting for a right that they should—and theoretically at least—do already have. And this is what makes the whole concept of nurse-ins to gain traction for acceptance in public so frustrating.

Far more controlling than sending women to the hinterlands of public restrooms while breastfeeding is proposed legislation that a woman in Ohio would need to obtain a man’s permission before receiving an abortion. Simply declaring “paternity unknown” wouldn’t be an option. Women would be required to submit a list of possible “fathers” and then doctors would have to run paternity tests (all before the end of the first trimester). The bill, cloaked in language about fairness and fathers’ rights, is anti-abortion start to finish. Advocates for abortion access are quick to point out how these types of restrictions—waiting periods, parental consent laws—interfere with what can be an extremely cumbersome process, enough to take the abortion option off the table (the anti-abortion movement’s express goal). In this proposed legislation, claiming or naming parentage instantly personifies the fetus, and tethering a pregnant woman to a man’s approval, given that the pregnancy resides solely within the confines of her body (the parenting gig can be easily shared, not so pregnancy). These strictures are anti-choice and anti-woman. Here’s the real bottom line: in order to be a fully autonomous adult, a woman must retain control over her body.

A short video that recently hit YouTube drives this point home. A man stands in front of a Libertyville Ill. abortion clinic and asks anti-abortion demonstrators seeking to criminalize the procedure what they think the punishment for having an abortion should be if a woman has one despite its illegality. The range of responses includes: "I've never really thought about it." "I don't have an answer for that." "I don't know." "Just pray for them." Posing this question is part of an initiative by a new public-policy group called the National Institute for Reproductive Health; the organization sees this contradiction as natural centerpiece for a national conversation. By getting real about criminalization, perhaps people will realize how punitive that extreme actually is. They hope this slogan/question can shift the abortion debate: how much time should she do?

The fact that reproduction affects women differently than it does men is undisputable. From that initial swelling of her breasts to the babe in arms dependent upon her milk, she must be free to choose exactly how she wants to or can navigate these responsibilities. Society weighs in, and often in contradictory ways: pregnant celebrities are glorified while a 2002 addition to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) allows states to cover unborn children but not the women carrying those pregnancies to term, meaning in essence that women aren’t to be covered for post-partum care (including such services as treatment of infection, treatment of complications after delivery, family planning, and mental health services). Women deserve autonomy. Certainly, we deserve to be treated like citizens rather than criminals, whether feeding babies or seeking health care. For no matter what our reproductive choices are, we are daughters and sisters. And sometimes, we are mothers, too.

To hear Shaq tell it, childhood obesity is a crisis in this country that will kill more kids than guns—and he’s determined to do something about it (he’s giving himself six months). For starters, employing his considerable powers of celebrity and motivation (NBA career aside, he’s father to 6), Shaq pledges to get 6 overweight middle school students into shape. Within the first hour of Shaq’s Big Challenge , we see the term overweight doesn’t pertain to these kids: morbidly obese—as 14-year-old Walter muses, “Morbid, like die,”—applies (to two).

To hear my 9 and 11 year-old (who happened upon my watching the show yesterday), respond, Shaq’s message—that childhood obesity is a life-threatening epidemic—came through loud and clear. These healthy, active kids were terrified.

What shook them most: the parents’ roles in these kids’ health crises. “Did Shaq find the 6 fattest kids in America?” asked my 9-year-old. My kids could not fathom how these sons and daughters got obese. They’d never glimpsed so much fast food, never imagined that kids wouldn’t have so much as tried a vegetable, and never heard of parents who wouldn’t tell their kids to get up from playing video games—average 5 hours a day for 14-year-old, 285 pound Walter—and go outside.

My curiosity about the show had everything to do with how Shaq and ABC television would explain and combat what is obviously the biggest challenge to this generation’s heath. A recent barrage of studies suggests not simply the magnitude of the problem but also chronicles the nearly countless ways childhood obesity is now entrenched in our society: from cutting physical education programs to the fact that kids no longer break a sweat in gym classes, from proliferation of cheap, fast food in poor neighborhoods to lack of affordable, healthier food reaching those same areas, along with the indisputable fact that this generation is more sedentary than ever. According to an article in the Arizona Republic , researchers have found that pressuring kids about weight and eating may foist body image and eating-related issues upon them (damned if you do, damned if you don’t?).

Leave aside the societal, here’s what my kids witnessed in terms of the familial: Kit’s mother is overprotective and doesn’t like her to leave the house. Chris’ Cuban family shares big meals and believes abundance—meal size, body size—signals prosperity. James’ single mom favors convenient food her kids will eat (snacks of popcorn with two entire sticks of butter, fast food meals). None of these parents, obviously, set out to kill their children. While the parents all cop to the fact their kids are overweight, they seem stunned during the first episode to learn of the peril their kids actually face being so heavy, “ticking time bombs” as Dr. Muinos puts it. Now, we don’t know if these kids’ pediatricians have been telling it like it is to them or not (included in a recent spate of articles about childhood obesity was this one: a panel urged pediatricians to use words like ‘overweight’ and ‘obese’ more bluntly to compel parents and kids to get on top of the problem; the American Medical Association refuses to follow the recommendation for fear of stigmatizing kids). Shaq’s Big Challenge is reality television, with its narrative arc meting the tale in bite-sized segments over a series of weeks, not journalism. What we see instantly, though, is that none of these parents have tried—on a meal-by-meal or “let’s take a walk, now” basis—to alter their children’s ways.

With exercise programs in hand, the kids are given the task of going to the Y to work out. Not a couple of days in, they’re slacking off. My 9-year-old asked me why they didn’t try harder and why they’d lie about their efforts. “Remember this year when you were supposed to write 3 sentences and you kept writing 1-word answers?” I asked him. He nodded his head. “You were scared you couldn’t really do it so you just didn’t try. Remember what happened?” He nodded again and recalled, “You helped me.” “Yup, and when you had a little help you started to write longer sentences, and more sentences. That’s what those kids need, someone to help them not be scared to try.”

Shaq asks Dr. Muinos, “Surgery? Diet pills for kids?” The doctor shakes his head. Shaq resolves to personally push them (and hires a trainer). However complicated the problem of childhood obesity is, the solution—person-by-person—is pretty simple: burn more energy, eat less, and eat healthy. It’s not rocket science. Plenty of things that aren’t rocket science are difficult to carry out, including not just loving your kids but doing well by them. And then, ideally and necessarily, society must follow your lead.

Since having children—my three sons are ages 11, 9 and 4—I’ve personally become less invested in my own appearance. It’d be easy to blame this negligence upon the frenetic pace of working parenthood and the fact that as a writer, sweatpants are generally acceptable work attire. But a big part of my aversion to gussying up is this: I’m completely turned off by the prettification of little girls. It’s almost as if in rebellion, I don’t want to accessorize, coif, or pose in order to avoid contributing to the madness.

I’m not alone in believing that the pink craze (think, Disney) has spiraled out of control (the company just launched a line of princess inspired wedding dresses). All of it—from clothes to music to snacks aggressively marketed—creates a kind of straight shot from Pochahantis to the Cheetah Girls to the Pussycat Dolls back to a princess-themed wedding? From the endless reports about starlets’ ultra-skinny bodies or what body parts they are overexposing (think, Brittany without underwear or hair) to childhood obesity in near-epidemic proportions, we’re a society ricocheting between extremes. Provocative images and clothing and music flood these kids but it’s not pop culture alone, it’s an accompanying shift toward gender codification: things that were once (and by once, I mean when my eleven-year old was small) unisex—disposable diapers, for example, or tricycles—now come color-coded by gender.

During kindergarten, my middle son told me he wanted his next lunchbox to have a mirror in it like Hannah’s. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Cornell historian and author of The Body Project, counsels adults never to comment upon girls’ appearance. Comment instead, she suggests, on what they are doing. Following that advice is not so easy. Just try it. Girls’ clothing is dolled up with pastel hues, flowers, and cutesy details in order to encourage comment. Activities like ballet seem to be organized around girls’ outfits: leotard, slippers, even a tutu. When my middle guy began ballet in preschool, he was devastated to be stuck in black tights and white t-shirt surrounded by a veritable sea of pink. At recital time, the girls got filmy skirts; he got a sash. Black and white didn’t hold a candle to all that frothy pink. We gave him a pink leotard, tights and slippers for his birthday so he could dance around at home, savoring his prettiness.

These days, my youngest, himself a highly aesthetically attuned four-year-old with shaggy hair and a penchant for mixing stripes, pants with pockets and wearing plenty of his favorite color, brown, has contempt for the “Pretty Pretty Princess” game played by girls in his class (plus Emmett). “Pretty is dumb,” he declares. He has altered the word, in fact, so appalled by pretty that when something’s pretty, it’s “licorice.” We talk about how pretty isn’t everything and how not only girls like pretty (for example, Emmett). The older kids discuss more complicated realities like the notion that calling non-girly girls tomboys pegs them as boy-like. And how boys with non-stereotypical preferences are sometimes called sissies. So to find oneself in any way outside the “norm” is almost de facto to be slated as defective.

In Hollywood, an alternative to skeletal girls has come into vogue curviness in the forms of Sara Ramirez, Tyra Banks, Jennifer Hudson and America Ferrera. These women doubly impress because none of them is crashing and burning en route to rehab. But leading collegiate basketball players like Courtney and Ashley Paris and Alison Bales inspired me most recently. Bales proudly wore three-inch heels, which made her 6 feet 10 inches tall in a December photograph taken while the team was in Cancún, Mexico. Bales said a photograph of her in heels on Duke’s Web site had elicited several grateful messages from tall girls or their parents. In Jere Longman’s February New York Times article, “Rejecting Stereotypes, Embracing Size” Courtney Paris’ coach, Gail Goestenkors, explains, “Before, tall girls were all soft and finesse and didn’t want contact. Now it’s strong, physical, bring on the contact. Courtney epitomizes that.”

With powerful and tall and big women leading the way in NCAA basketball, small and willowy isn’t always “in.” Courtney Paris is quoted in the Times’ article, “We’re women who are not apologizing for being bigger and being different or for being athletic. It’s more acceptable in society. For my generation, it’s really not a big deal.” You might call these players anti-pink. Here’s what I personally like about these women: they use their bodies and they are proud of their strength; they have confidence in themselves; they have aspirations beyond sport and beyond appearance. Not your average princesses or superheroes, these young women are extremely positive role models (for both girls and boys). And, by the way, they are incredible to look at. 

Wet-nurses stage a comeback? According to Time magazine, a mini-surge in popularity for the practice comes because breastfeeding is at a fifty-year high, and today’s young moms believe breast (milk) not only best, but also better from a breast. At about a thousand dollars per week, wet-nurses earn more than nannies do or than gestational surrogates receive to carry out another intimate and arguably relational task, that of pregnancy. While it might seem that breastfeeding and abortion have little in common, delve further. The Supreme Court with its recent decision about later-term abortion believes that legally women do not enjoy agency over their own reproductive decisions. Pair this reality with another: procedures or practices that are advantageous to doctors and hospitals, pharmaceutical companies or insurers have security over ones that are not.

Reintroduction of wet-nurses is a small-scale occurrence (at a thousand dollars per week, enough said). Yet, even if the service were less expensive, it’s unlikely that most women would opt for a wet-nurse because cross-nursing (a woman breastfeeding another woman’s baby) is a fairly taboo practice. Our society defines the breastfeeding relationship as one between mother and child, largely for the very sound reason that it is intimate. When the wet-nurse story ran on the Today show, an academic likened wet-nurses’ services to gestational surrogates’ services, asserting that the emotional fallout possible from paying for such personal tasks seems great. Gestational surrogates, like other aspects of fertility assistance, are regulated primarily by private agencies. There’s little federal regulation regarding fertility assistance, mainly due to legislators’ unwillingness to navigate hot-button issues involving reproduction. Reproductive technologies aren’t uniformly covered by insurance and thus can become very expensive (and simultaneously extremely lucrative for doctors), adding economic pressures to political ones. Economist Debora Spar, in her recent book, The Baby Business , illustrates just how meteoric the rise in treatments has been in a very brief window: “Between 1995 and 1998, the number of in vitro procedures performed in the United States rose by 37 percent, from roughly 59,000 to roughly 81,000. During the same period, the number of fertility clinics rose from 281 to 360.”

If fertility is relatively unregulated, abortion services are ruled by legal and social constraints. The anti-abortion movement has commandeered the concept of “life” so thoroughly that clinics providing pregnancy termination services must sit behind virtual bunkers. Metal detectors, discreet signs—if signage appears at all—and every privacy measure in the book characterizes the clinic experience these days. Threats of harassment and physical violence to clients and doctors not only enshroud the service itself in a climate of fear, but also a climate of being, at least somewhat, wrong. With all of these measures in place, the entire endeavor feels shady, a procedure at best lurking on the edges of the law. So often language surrounding abortion is apologetic—even from those who support the right. Missing, even from supporters, is mention of the unwavering fact that women cannot function as equals to men in our society without the ability to exert agency over saying yes or no to pregnancy. We think of this primarily in terms of unplanned pregnancies, but without later-term terminations, women may lose their lives or their future fertility because a medical option has been taken from them (and their doctors). Providing abortion services—along the risk of being a dangerous endeavor—isn’t necessarily a lucrative undertaking, with high costs of insurance and security and potential loss of patients (for other services).

No commensurate moral quandary over midwives exists, yet access to midwifery care in this country is being compromised for the overriding reason of profitability. Although midwives enjoy better outcomes—lower infant mortality rates, fewer interventions including episiotomies, inductions and cesareans (in one recent study midwives’ rate was under 10% compared to 22% for obstetricians)—access to midwifery care is shrinking. One estimate is that midwives attend only one out of every twenty births in this country. The cost of training midwives, according to a study at Johns Hopkins, is a quarter of what it takes to train an obstetrician.

It seems too simplistic to say that access to the widest range of services involving reproduction is available to the country’s wealthiest women. But that’s the case, nonetheless; no fertility assistance measures are available to poor women. Medicaid does not pay for abortion. Even if insured, most women cannot afford to secure a midwife’s services—pregnancy care, labor, delivery and a hospital stay—unless that choice exists within her network of approved providers. Two principles need to guide those of us who care about the quality of women’s health services and about women’s equality: authentic access to health care options for all women and ensuring that women have true agency over their bodies.

Let’s face it: the Internet can be one big time suck. Take Cheddarvision, a site sponsored by a British cheese maker filming a year of cheddar aging (cheddarvision.tv). In just one minute, you can see the first three months in time-lapse form. Since its January launch, Cheddarvision has had some 500,000 hits. But you can use the Internet to accomplish something extraordinary. Bill McKibben, long concerned about global warming, is doing just that, and there’s still time for you to join in. Step It Up: A National Day of Climate Action (stepitup2007.org) has logged over a thousand actions across the country. The number’s climbing, practically daily. One shared message unifies these events: “Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises-the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate.” McKibbben’s approach is to encourage a chain of events each tailored to city or neighborhood or iconic natural site on April 14th, 2007, rather than people swarming the Mall in DC for one big march (a tact that certainly has its place). Think of Step It Up as Earth Day for the new millennium.

  Actions vary widely, from scuba divers diving off of Key West, Florida, or a large rally in New York City to screenings of films, lectures, garden tours, opening of farms and gatherings at naturally scenic spots. The effect, organizers hope, will create a wake-up call of sorts. The message writ simple: urging us to remember why we care—or why we should care—about preserving the planet’s health and wellness. If you open the newspaper or just check the weather, it’s almost impossible to avoid the fact that global warming presents huge dangers to the planet. And while organizers acknowledge that individuals making change is essential, they assert that individuals are incapable of making adequate accommodations to stem climate change; Congress must act. There are currently five proposed Senate bills that propose mandatory greenhouse gas caps.

  McKibben is an author, whose most recent book is entitled “Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future,” and is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. Envisioning the Internet as a tool, McKibben’s idea relied upon the momentum that could build when so many people pooled their passion. A significant component of McKibben’s message is “now.” As he writes on the Step It Up website, “And by now, we mean now.”

Could this be a tipping point? Step It Up has inspired regular people to leap in headfirst, ones who do not generally call themselves activists, like Ruth von Goeler, a key organizer for Northampton, Massachusetts’ Step It Up event (a large, family-friendly really in a downtown park). Having experienced Al Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” as a “pivotal call to action,” she and a friend, Nell Lake, had been discussing opportunities to get more involved in the climate change movement. Upon hearing about Step It Up, they jumped on the chance to “do something.” Ruth has two young daughters. She feels responsibility—or perhaps, “a healthy load of guilt,” she reasons—about what she can do to leave her daughters “a livable world.” She says that as a family, global warming issues are addressed in daily life: “we have done many things— had an energy audit, replaced windows and light bulbs, turned down the heat, recycle, compost, use canvas totes, supported the local Food Co-op, grew a vegetable garden—but I definitely feel there is more we can do.   Some future projects include getting rain barrels, looking into bus service for our kids' school, and possibly getting solar panels. Becoming more critical consumers and buying fewer ‘things’ is big goal. ” The task of organizing Northampton’s event has been much like a job. Lake, too, has children and since becoming a parent, she finds herself more concerned about global warming, saying “in general the fact that we're making our planet unlivable terrifies and appalls me.” Inspired by McKibben’s declaration that it’s time for the choir to sing really loud, she elaborates, “We in the ‘choir’ can’t solve this crisis ourselves. We need leadership. We need laws.” Lake’s a writer and editor, who spent her first few years after college working as an organizer for political and legislative campaigns before she moved into journalism. Since then she’s kept her political involvement to letter writing and phone calling. However, becoming involved, she says, “feels necessary.”

  Regardless of whether this issue has captured as many of your waking hours as it has for McKibben or von Goeler or Lake, Step It Up is an opportunity to remind our leaders, and one another, how critical this planet is, for us (and our children and grandchildren). Now.