When Going Back to the Land Isn’t an Option

I’ve mentioned a few times on ye olde blogge that a while back, I was very interested in a “natural” lifestyle. Heck, even over in my profile bio on the right, I mention that in my daydreams, I live on a ranch. Well, a few years ago, from around 2006 to 2008, wanting to live a “back to the land” lifestyle was a very strong desire of mine.

Recently an online friend blogged about something similar – seeing the positive qualities in a simpler life, a more natural life, a slower lifestyle. She admitted that she probably romanticized it but that it still looked appealing. I noticed many commenters agreeing, saying they felt the same way. I jokingly commented that she sounded like I did, a few years ago. She responded and asked what I did about it, and here’s what I told her:

I made certain small changes to our lifestyle, and honestly, I kind of grew out of it because it wasn't a dream that was to become a reality for me anytime soon. :/

My husband wasn't interested (especially in the back-to-the-land stuff - he's a city/suburbs guy) so without buy-in from him, it wasn't going to happen, you know? And because of that I just kind of let it go and began focusing on other things. I get my "fix" in other ways - spending more time outside, eating better, doing creative things with the kids, watching Frontier House on PBS, ha!

Something I've noticed about myself is that I will get really gung ho about something that interests me, and I'll think that I need to change my whole life to look like whatever that interest is. What I'm still learning is that maybe "tweaks" are what I really need. Maybe I don't need to homeschool and make all my food from scratch and raise chickens and live on a farm sustained with electricity from our windmill and become a midwife . . . maybe what I'm feeling is really a pull to spend more time with my kids on what they're learning from this world . . . make better food choices and start a container garden . . . cut costs and make eco friendly choices in my suburban townhouse . . . tell my friends about great pregnancy and birth resources and let them know I'm available with a non-judgmental ear if they need to vent or need advice. Maybe I can use my interest to advocate on behalf of people who need a lot more of these things in their lives but have even less access than I do - people who live in food deserts, people who have only ever been told that birth is a terrifying, painful thing to leave up to a hospital staff, people who have so little chance to visit a zoo or forest or farm, or even just a park.

I'm still interested in all those things and love to see, read, hear, talk about them . . . but in their full-blown form they don't work for me. Doesn't mean I can't incorporate some of their important principles and aspects into my life!

Do you do this? Do you get really excited about something, learn a lot about it, and think you must change your whole lifestyle to be happy? Have you actually done it? If so, how did it work out? Are you like me – it takes a while but eventually you understand that perhaps a radical change isn’t in order, but smaller changes are?

What are things you thought you needed, and it turned out maybe you just needed to make some tweaks?

Stop Being a Jerk About Vaccinations

So, I’m going to write about vaccinating your kids . . . and not vaccinating your kids. I’m not going to try to convince you to do one or the other. I am, however, going to ask you to dial down the snark when you come across a parent who chooses not to vaccinate their kids.

My kids are 12, 10 and 4 years old. When the oldest two were babies, I never once questioned whether or not they should receive vaccinations. Everyone got them and I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t – I didn’t even know that there were people who chose to opt out of vaccinating their kids, or that there were laws to allow parents to do so. It was a non-issue for me.

During the years my two kids were very young, I gained a huge interest in a “natural living” lifestyle, a non-traditional lifestyle. I read about and became friends with people who farmed in the city, made their own clothes, homeschooled their kids, made all their food from scratch. I also began learning a lot more about pregnancy and childbirth, and all the politics and issues surrounding natural birthing methods vs. managed, medicated births. If I’d had my way, we’d have moved to a farm where I could live out my “back to the land” fantasies and my kids could roam the outdoors and become BFFs with the wildlife.

At the same time, I was learning more about Autism, including the belief of some that certain vaccines are likely to cause Autism. In addition to everything I was reading online and the people I saw in the media, I knew someone whose son is on the Autism spectrum, and she believes his Autism is linked to his vaccinations. She’s no hippie – in fact she was a successful mental health professional with a very traditional lifestyle.

When I became pregnant with our third kid, I became determined that I would not repeat some of the mistakes I’d made with my pregnancies and births and early parenting, with my older two kids. Now, I didn’t have any major mistakes I was grieving over, but I felt that maybe I’d dodged a bullet on certain things. Like vaccinations & Autism. So I began looking more into the Autism/vaccination connection and read some really compelling stuff. What impacted me even more than the possibility of vaccines leading to Autism was how vaccinations had increased so dramatically over the years. Kids today get A LOT of shots, y’all.

So Ashley + natural living + having another baby + current events = ASHLEY IS SCARED LIKE WHOA OF VACCINES.

When our son was born and due for his first round of shots, I expressed my concerns to his Dr., who talked to me like I was an idiot. I’m sure he gets tired of explaining his point of view to freaked out parents, but guess what? That’s his job! I was told that he would no longer keep my son as a patient if I didn’t let him get vaccines. At this point, I hadn’t even said to him that I refused to do it – I’d told him about what I’d been learning, and that I was scared. 

We compromised – our son would get his vaccinations, but he would receive a certain one (the one that is rumored to be the Autism culprit) later than the CDC schedule recommends and he would only receive vaccines that were free of mercury or Thimerosal (which contains mercy). The mercury/Thimerosal thing wasn’t an issue because most vaccine manufacturers had begun removing these preservatives anyway because of the possible links to bad reactions/side effects. This was required by the CDC.

At a later date, when I was at the Dr’s office for my baby son’s checkup and shots, the nurse was telling me about the vaccines he’d be getting that day and mentioned one I wasn’t familiar with. I asked what it was, and she again repeated the name. I asked again and she then explained that it was a “super booster” which combined five different vaccines into one shot. Combining vaccinations into one shot isn’t new to vaccines, but this specific combination was new to me, though I was familiar with the vaccines, in their individual form. I asked why they’d been combined, and was told that it was recommended by the CDC.

So reader, I have a question – if something is recommended by the CDC, the people who make the final call on what vaccines are important for our society – would you assume that the CDC recommended something that was medically necessary? I did.

I asked why it was recommended (and mind you, I wasn’t being a jerk about it – I was curious and wanted to be informed) and the nurse sighed and went to get the Dr. The Dr. told me that the CDC sets the vaccination schedule (i.e. your baby gets the MMR shot at XX months old, your baby gets the chicken pox shot a XX years old, etc) to coincide with well-child visits (when you’re supposed to take your kid to the Dr. whether they’re sick or not, to see how they’re doing developmentally) so that kids would actually get their shots. If parents have to make a different appointment just to bring their kid in for shots, the appointment often doesn’t get made or is skipped, and the kid gets behind on their shots. So the CDC schedule is more about making sure the kids GET the shots, than the medical necessity of having shots on a certain timeline.

I.E. there was NO medical necessity for my baby to have a shot that combined 5 different vaccines into one. I don’t know how long that particular combination had been manufactured, but it wasn’t around 6 years before when I’d had my last baby – so at most, there was 6 years of research tracking how this type of super booster impacted the health of children who received it.

I didn’t like that and I didn’t like that I had to ask and ask and be treated like I was an annoyance to get this information. So I asked if it was possible for my kid to get those shots individually the way my older kids had. Again with the sighing and tone of annoyance – but yes, they could do it, I’d just need to schedule extra appointments and they’d have to postpone the first shot because they now only carried the super booster and didn’t have the individual shots any more, they’d have to order them.

Since then, this has pretty much not been an issue. My kid gets his shots, he doesn’t have Autism, and I’ve followed along as the debate continues to rage between the Vaccines-Cause-Autism/No-It-Doesn’t camps. I thought of this all again because recently on Twitter, a friend tweeted about asking her kid’s pediatrician whether a vaccine contained mercury, and the Dr. said he had no idea and didn’t know how to tell. And then when they figured out, it turned out the vaccine did have mercury!

Now, consider the history of medicine and pharmaceuticals, in the U.S. alone. Have we not  - over and over – learned of things that the medical community thought were not only safe, but good for you, that turned out to be horribly unsafe and bad for you? To the tune of birth defects, genetic mutation, irreversible damage and death? This stuff is still happening today – a new drug comes out on the market and it either takes a while for it to be fine-tuned (even after approval from the FDA) or it is later recalled for dangerous side effects? Have we not seen examples of the healthcare industry making decisions that were bad for people but good for profits? Have we not seen people try to hide the damage they’ve done because it will cost them everything if they were discovered?

Medicine and our modern healthcare industry has done amazing things to better the lives of people around the world. They get SO much right. But who can argue that they never get it wrong? Within the last 100 years we thought the answer to mental illness was lobotomy. We put pregnant women into twilight sleep to give birth. We have seen the rise of pharmaceutical companies and the massive amount of wealth they generate. Doctors used to tell heart attack patients to use margerine, it was supposed to be healthier for them than butter. This was only 20 years ago, folks! So knowing all of that, why is it so outlandish that parents might be concerned with the increase in vaccines, and possible links between vaccines and other illnesses?

As I said in the beginning, I am not trying to make an argument that one should or should not vaccinate their kids. I do wish, though, that when people hear of someone who isn’t vaccinating their kids, they will have more compassion. I know a lot of people who don’t vaccinate their kids and they aren’t stupid, or uninformed. They aren’t careless (including with the health of others), they aren’t narrow-minded and unable to consider opinions outside of their worldview. I’ll tell you the truth – most parents I know do vaccinate their kids and most of them don’t give it a second thought and haven’t done a MINUTE of research into what’s being pumped into their kids. Those I know who don’t vaccinate – without exception -  researched the hell out of all of this stuff before they made the decision. Yet they’re treated – without having been asked about their personal circumstances – as the irresponsible ones. I don’t think that’s fair.

Adam Braverman Saves the Day

On last night's episode of NBC's Parenthood, there was a scene that gave me happy chills. I was sitting there with my hand up over my mouth, on the edge of the couch, staring at Adam Braverman (Peter Krause's character) with such love . . . ;)

See, in the show, Adam and his wife Kristina recently had a baby - a very unplanned baby. They already have a teenager and a younger son. Adam and his brother just bought an old recording studio and are trying to turn it into a profitable one. They also hired an assistant who is super crazy young and SMOKING hot.

Kristina is dealing with the I Just Had A Baby And Feel So Incredibly Not Hot And Self Concious stage that most women go through during the weeks & months after giving birth. It takes quite a while for the body to "bounce back" to its old self, and the truth (sorry, y'all) is that for most women, it never does bounce all the way back. Especially after having more than one kid. On top of all that, your body's hormones are still trying to regulate themselves, so your emotions are just all over the place and heightened. You feel gross and your body is healing from birth, so even if the Dr. has given the ok to have sex again, you may not feel ready. You might be scared of pain, of not being attractive, of not enjoying it. Your hormones are trying to tell you "Slow down, you just had a baby" so you may not even be interested in sex. Still, sex is important for most relationships so going weeks and months without it can strain the relationship. And it's like - your husband is giving you space because he knows you're not ready yet, but the fact that they aren't trying to get it on makes you feel like you're not desirable.

It's a tough time to be a chick, I'm telling you. I've been through it 3 times. I remember one day on maternity leave after our last child was born, watching something on tv that prompted me to go look in the full-length mirror. My husband came home and I was sobbing on the couch about how horrible I looked and how I was never going to be hot again and, well, he had to do a lot of encouraging so I wouldn't totally lose it.

So in the scene below, Adam's recording studio is having a big launch party. Kristina is in the red dress, the smoking hot assistant is in the black jacket, and Adam is the guy who totally blew me away with how sweet and loving and real he is when talking to Kristina.

Sigh.

Watch it and sigh with me.

True Success and True Failure as a Coach

I’m sure most, if not all, of you have heard about the child abuse that took place in connection to the Penn State football program. This hits particularly close to home in my family as my husband is a high school football coach and has also coached little league football (middle school grades). Abuse like this can happen anywhere – through an organization like a school or a church, within a family or neighborhood. It can happen at the hands of a stranger.

And you know what – I can understand why people turn towards a cover up. If someone I knew well and respected, whose success was tied up with my own, was rumored to have been doing something horrible to a child, I wouldn’t want to believe it. I would think, if I call the cops and it’s not true, everyone’s reputation will be tarnished, people could lose their jobs, they’ll be branded forever as a monster even if it turns out it wasn’t true. I can understand the pressure against making that call.

But that’s where we see people’s strength and character, right? When a child’s safety – when unknown children and their safety is at risk – you must, you MUST put those concerns aside and do what is best for the children. Shoot, it doesn’t it even to be children, it could be adults.

Besides the horror of what was allowed to happen, including university administration not alerting ANY authorities (what?!?!), it makes me so sad to see coaches and other people who work with kids, tarnished that way. My husband coached a group of boys for 3 years in a row, starting with their 6th grade year in little league football, through their 8th grade year. He became very close to those kids, some of whom came from pretty disadvantaged situations. He was a major mentor for some of them. He chaperoned parties, went to parent-teacher conferences when parents had to work. He took them on trips to tournaments, had them over to our house for pizza parties. He counseled them, required them to give them progress reports from their teachers. We got to know the families and life situations of these kids. For one boy in particular, he was seriously a father figure.

Then we decided to move to Chicago and we had to step out of their lives. He felt such guilt over leaving some of the boys. They depended on him. Some of the boys did well in school and football (and other sports and activities) and some of them didn’t. Some of them got into major trouble, including jail time. At one point we considered seeing if one of the boys could come live with us in Chicago, because he wasn’t getting the guidance and support he needed at home, but that didn’t happen.

Since then, my husband has coached at the high school level, as a freshman coach. Every year, his freshman want to move up to the next team but are sad to not have my husband as a coach any more. My husband is about fundamentals and developing a love for the game. He has a special connection with a couple kids each year. Just recently, a player on the varsity team was featured in a Chicago Tribune article and you know what coach he talked about? His freshman coach, my husband.

He’s kept in touch with the little league kids – who are now men, actually (which is so hard for me to believe!). They’re college aged. Some of them are in college, some are working, some are fathers. One of them played football at a junior college and just received a football scholarship to a well-known university in our region, and he’s asked my husband to go with him on a campus visit next month. My husband has stayed in touch with him all these years, coaching him over the phone, watching game tape and sending him feedback, talking to him about life. When we visit my family, my husband visits his football kids and their families, his fellow coaches who are still in town.

THIS is the good a coach can do. This is how a coach should be. A person who is given access to children is supposed to enrich them, not damage them. They should not be above reproach. If anyone ever suspected my husband of causing harm to a child, damn right they should look into that, even if it means a heap of trouble for our family. Even if it meant my husband's chances of coaching again were ruined, I'd hope that the matter would be investigated fully until everyone concerned was satisfied that he hadn't done anything. The safety of our kids is too important to do anything less.

I am so proud that my husband does it the right way . . . and I am so sad for the children who were harmed by that sick, twisted man. I am so sad that a group of coaches and administrators put their jobs and their salaries before the well-being of children.

Possibly unusual safety tips for kids

Every once in a while, my husband and I go over safety tips with our kids. I don’t know that the things we teach our kids are that conventional, but I believe in them whole-heartedly.

1. If you’re in an emergency situation – if someone is hurt or is about to be hurt, if something is damaged or about to be damaged, if something really bad is going to happen and you need a way to stop it, it’s ok to break rules. It’s ok to scream in a public place. It’s ok to cuss your head off to get the attention of someone who can help you. It’s ok to interrupt me if I’m on the phone. It’s ok to talk to a stranger.

2. If you’re lost or need help from a grownup, don’t look for a police officer or someone who’s wearing a uniform – find someone who looks like a mom, a grandma, an aunt. Find a woman. Go to a woman with kids. Look, my Dad is a cop, I’m not saying people in uniform are bad. But – I feel more danger from men who would hurt kids than from women. And there aren’t usually people in uniform everywhere you go. But there are almost always women and moms. I know if a kid came up to me needing help, I would do anything I could to help that kid.

3. If someone comes up on you and tells you to be quiet or they’ll hurt you, you scream your head off. Think about it – if you ARE quiet, they ARE going to hurt you. That’s what they want to do. What they don’t want is to be noticed by anyone else. You kick, scratch, scream, bite, anything you need to do, but you do NOT obey.

4. On the other hand, if they tell you they want your money, give it over immediately. Don’t try to be a hero. You just have to use your best judgment – are they trying to hurt you or rob you? If they just want your stuff, give it to them and call the cops afterward. If you’re in a store or bank and someone tries to rob the place, become as invisible as you can and obey the robber. Don’t try to be a hero and don’t try to outsmart the robber. Most robbers aren’t brilliant, practiced jewel thieves like what you see in the movies. Rather, they’re hopped up on drugs or scared they’re going to get caught, and their trigger finger is itchy. Don’t give them any reason to freak out.

I’ve tried to balance safety tips like this with “puppies and unicorns, life is safe and happy” – I don’t want to freak them out unnecessarily . . . but I would rather them be a little scared – and prepared – than naïve and unsure of what to do in a bad situation. Obviously, when we’re in these situations, we don’t always think straight and may not do any of the things we thought we would. But sometimes we can, and those things can make a difference.

Do you have any safety tips you practice, or have taught to your kids?

Bits and Pieces

I finished reading the Twilight series. I really liked the last book, Breaking Dawn, but think that Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse should have been condensed into 1 book, making it a 2-book series. There was enough pointless filler in books 1-3 that you could have removed 2/3 of it, shoved all the funny, steamy & dangerous parts (i.e. the good stuff) together and made just one book out of it.

The final book was about SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! Bella's life after becoming a vampire. It was awesome, I loved it. It was just what I was looking for - fun, exciting, light reading. Too bad the entire series didn't measure up to the last book.

* * *

My kids start school today, 4th and 5th grades in a new school. I'm excited for them. I'm anxious for them - I hope they make friends. I know they will, they always do. They already do have neighborhood friends who will be in the same school but in different classes. Especially Bennett (4th grade) - he makes friends immediately, wherever he goes.

Still, I'm anxious. Kori is in 5th grade, the new girl. She's sensitive even though she tries to hide it. She's smart, funny, cute, has cute clothes (though nothing too expensive). Unless she has some MEAN GIRLS in her class, she should have no problems fitting in. I don't care about her being popular, I just don't want her to suffer because someone thinks she's an easy target because she's new.

Last night was a "welcome back" picnic at their school. We met their teachers and the kids played for a while on the playground. Bennett was surrounded by his "peeps" (seriously, you should see him and his little friends saying 'whatup' and giving each other bro-hugs and daps), while Kori hung out with us. Rian (3 years old) wants to go to school like his big brother and sister. We do need to get him into pre-school or something so he'll be less of a terror when we unleash him on kindergarten.

Sometime in the next day or two I'll be writing their teachers a letter, the way I do every year, telling them about my kids - their strengths, weaknesses, interests, etc.

*sigh*

My babies are growing up.

* * *

I've been doing a lot of thinking about my own schooling and career.

I've been a little burnt out on school but now it's time to get back in gear. I have a detailed plan for getting back into volunteering and using it as personal research for learning more about the various fields I *think* I'm interested in. I also need to get some admissions & faculty interviews set up at a couple schools whose grad programs I'm considering applying for.

Last but not least, I need to get back on my game in terms of using the professional development resources my job has to offer. I'm lucky to have full-time career & employee development consultants available to talk to.

Here are just some of the things I'll be looking into, to see if I might be a good fit and if there is work in my area:

~ Anti-racist advocacy.

~ Getting resources to those who are poor and especially those who are poor and without a voice, especially immigrants, especially immigrants who aren’t here legally.

~ Teaching about privilege.

~ Getting resources to the working poor and/or those who make too much money to qualify for subsidies (welfare) but don’t really make enough to make it.

~ Closing the gaps for people who are on the verge of moving to the next level of self-sufficiency but aren’t quite there . . . maybe if they could just get decent childcare, they could. Or if they could get reliable transportation. Or if they could take one year off of work to finish their degree.

~ Developing more innovative education and social mediums to draw white, middle-class women into discussions about racism, privilege, class, welfare, philanthropy.

~ Helping others get motivated and involved in community service, including finding ways for people to serve when they have very little free time or have some roadblock, like no childcare or something.

~ Promoting the idea that K-12 and college education should always involve a service component.

~ Promoting service programs to pre-college and college students.

~ Promoting community service “tours” which result in getting college tuition, better loans or training, like our veterans get (like some other countries have).

I think one day, policy might be an area I could do well in . . . but I have to gain much more experience and education before I can be of any value that way.

EDITED TO ADD: After hashing this out with some friends, I'm also strongly considering staying in higher ed at an institution that makes the world a better place (like where I work now). I'll likely write more on this in the future - the actual debate ever raging in my brain called, "What am I supposed to be, what am I supposed to do?"

Probably taking things too seriously

Another Twilight entry, but more about the message it sends to young readers. Get ready for your heads to explode with “OMG ASHLEY IT’S JUST A BOOK” (kind of like when I criticize movies because “that wouldn’t happen in real life”).

I added a few people on Goodreads and one commented on the Twilight series – that she liked it but it rankled her feminist self and also concerned her as a domestic violence advocate.

There are definitely some things in the books that bother me, mainly because there are gads of teenage girls reading them. And yes, if your teenager is getting all of their relationship advice and modeling from a book, there’s a problem. But you can’t underestimate the power of fairy tales shaping our expectations. How many young girls have been raised seeing their parents relationships, compared to what they see in movies and books and think “XYZ is how relationships should work”, while XYZ is completely off the mark?

Here are some things I dislike about the series:

• Edward and Bella’s obsessive, all-consuming relationship is shown as the way “real” and “mature” relationships are and should be. The other teen romances are treated trivially. Bella’s parents’ relationships (with each other and new significant others or lack thereof) are shown in an immature light – her Mom rushes in without thinking and her Dad is emotionally stunted. 2 teenagers are seen as having cornered the market on the way REAL love should be.

• The other relationships that are given any credibility are all “soulmate”, “made-for-each-other”, “I have no option other than to love you forever” things, among the vampires and the werewolves. Theirs seems to be an instinctual love and it’s not based on compatability or values. No credence seems to be given to people learning about each other, committing and then choosing to love one another when times are rough and the fireworks have gone out. Sure, their characters love each other through tough times but it’s always because they have no choice in the matter.

• Bella starts off as an independent person who craves time alone. After falling in love with Edward, she can’t bear to be alone. The guy is with her at school. After school. All night long. It’s literally said in the book that the only time they’re apart is the couple of hours when he leaves, before her dad goes to bed. Then he sneaks back in. So they’re together 20-22 hours a day and she can’t handle those 2-4 hours when he’s not with her?

• WHY they actually love each other has nothing to do with their personalities, beliefs, talents, goals . . . it’s just instinctual, physical . . . it’s destiny. Ok, whether you believe in that sort of thing is beside the point – even if destiny is what drew them together, shouldn’t we see WHY destiny drew them together? Shouldn’t it turn out that their personalities complement each other or that they both have a passion for something? We could assume that these things are the case but they’re rarely implied or explicitly said. Even when they talk about loving each other, there is no WHY. It’s just “I could never exist without loving you.” Ok . . . why?

• Edward – and Jacob – and Bella’s Dad . . . all control the CRAP out of her. Especially Edward! Sure, it’s because she’s hunted by everyone and their dog, but still – as long as there’s a good reason, it’s ok to order your girlfriend around, kidnap her, completely defy her parent’s rules and boundaries?

• Bella sees nothing outstanding or special about herself. And no one else tells her otherwise. Sure, people like and love her. But um, what are Bella’s talents? What are her interests? What does she want to be when she grows up? Here’s what we know: Edward thinks she’s beautiful. Bella is clumsy and seems to draw danger. She was kinda sorta into music and literature but gave it up when Edward hurt her/when she’s with Edward (which is all day, every day). She got into extreme sports and stuff but that was just so she could hear Edward’s voice in her head. She thinks college is pointless, she wants to become a vampire so she won’t be physically older than Edward all their lives.

Don’t get me wrong – I still think the books are fun, though I still have my complaint about too much filler, not enough of the fluffy good stuff (I’m doing a lot of skimming). But these are some things I really don’t like about the way relationships are framed in these books.

He also colored all over that table

Recent text from my phone to: 1(((mmmmmmmmmm

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Courtesy of this guy:

Ignoring a problem won't make it go away - Take 2

Yesterday, after reading My Sister's Farmhouse's new post on how Christian Private schools are just a euphmism for White Flight, I got all hot under the collar and posted about how Pioneer Woman's plans for teaching diversity to her chidlren were just wrong. They were wrongity wrong. Oh, and also? THEY WERE WRONG!!!!!

The comments at MSF devolved, oh, how they devolved. And some real racists came out. Of course, most people today don't look at them as racists, after all, where were their burning crosses? For example, just because they referred to non-Whites as people who have a new baby's daddy every month, that's not RACIST . . . they're just talking about their experience. Right? Anyway, reading those comments made my head explode so I had to stop.

Today I deleted my blog because it was just a rant and what good was it doing? Going back to MSF to check on the new comments ('glutton' might be my middle name) I see someone's link to their own reaction to Pioneer Woman's diversity blog, back when it was originally posted. And what she had to say, and what her commenters had to say, was everything I wanted to say yesterday, but couldn't, because my fingers wouldn't type properly (due to the rage).

So, here. Read what Megan and her friends have to say. It's what I wish I'd said.