GladRags Gab

Increasingly, the aerial view of city outskirts is a predictable pattern of lined houses filling standard sized lots with cul-de-sacs and swimming pools circularly accenting the rigid geometry.  I can zoom down and picture the added attractions as everyone tries to keep up with the Joneses – the basketball hoop, the play set (with a canvassed play house if you’re lucky), the pool floats for lazing about, the ATVs for weekend trips to the open country; there always seems to be too little paycheck for too much “Can you buy me that, pleeeease??!!!”  It’s like running a race on a treadmill – it’ll wear you out, but it’ll never get you to where you need to go.

As we plug away, trying to make a career, a family and a community, and to arrive ultimately at financial independence, how do we keep perspective?  How do we remain healthily critical of our lives so that we can avoid choices that waste resources and segregate communities, and remind ourselves of the things that are truly important in life?  How do we gently nudge our neighbors and loved ones when it seems they have lost this perspective and, worse yet, when that misguided sort of life is interfering with our own potential happiness and freedom?
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I have to admit, I have never been a kid person.  I never really saw myself as a parent, most of my friends didn’t consciously chose to have kids, and I am the youngest of the majority of my extended family.  I enjoy being the baby and have never felt like that needed to change.

So my sister has a bun in the oven.  As well as 2 of my close friends, added to another close friend who had a kid less than a year ago, and another who is trying.  All of a sudden, I am surround by breeding.  To say the least, it is freaking me out.

Now, as a consumer, a responsible one at that, with this new baby craze sweeping through my world, I am inspired to research new green baby products.  I love to shop, I admit it.  And this is giving me something new to shop for.  Let me correct that, I love to research products, yet rarely buy them.  I am an e-commerce analytics tease (many abandoned shopping carts).  Back to the main issue here, eco baby products.  Adorable.

Here are a few links to get started with:
GreatGreenBaby
EVO
allthingsgreen.net  

And don’t forget that Gladrags Night Pads can be used for post-partum!

There are tons of other companies out there making amazing new responsible baby products.  Comment if you find more!  I will pass them on to the sister…

-Jodi

I think breastfeeding is one of the most rewarding, important, and wonderful things that happens between a mother and her child. Here's a dismaying article reported in the Washington Post about how the politically powerful formula industry toned down some intense and provocative ads produced by the Health and Human Services Department to increase historically low breastfeeding rates in the U.S.

While these ads were blunt and used scare tactics like showing an insulin syringe or an asthma inhaler with a nipple, the facts are that breastfed children suffer significantly lower rates of conditions like type 1 diabetes and asthma. But with $8 Billion in worldwide annual sales, those formula makers have some clout and they know how to use it.

-Brenda 

I had a “remember when” moment today. Remember when the gym teacher came into the classroom and took all the boys with him (he was invariably a man) and the school nurse came and took all the girls with her (the school nurse was invariably a woman). Ooooh! We were going to learn about our bodies! Woohoo!

This experience was somewhat mortifying for a youngster who was raised in our sexually repressed society. I mean, why else would they make the girls and boys be separate? Obviously there was something that us girls were to talk about the boys shouldn’t hear and vice versa. For the record, I still am not positive what the boys talked about.

But us girls learned all about our periods. We learned that once a month one of our ovaries would release an egg and if it wasn’t fertilized (by some act that we won’t actually talk about), then the lining of our uterus will shed, causing us to bleed. Sitting there all, embarrassed and sheepish, we were taught that - no really, our bodies weren’t broken if they bled. However, it was this somewhat clinical, rather gender separate experience that I believe causes young women to be embarrassed about the changes in their bodies. Girls will stealthily put a tampon (hopefully organic) in their pocket without anyone seeing. Boys pretty much pretend that the whole thing isn’t happening. And why should they acknowledge it, they weren’t made to watch with period video with all the girls, so they can claim ignorance. If we remove this taboo about menstruation at a young age, maybe our children won’t be so freaked out by it when they are adults?

Anyway, I digress. Recently, this video clip was brought to my attention by former GladRagger, Sara (Green Light Design). The video is a 1940’s Disney/Kotex production called The Story of Menstruation. It is a delightful look at how our bodies change with the onset of puberty and things to remember when attempting to avoid cramps and stay healthy and happy. This is just the sort of video that I watched sitting with all my female classmates, most definitely embarrassed of my body. Alright folks, grab some popcorn and Dots candy and enjoy The Story of Menstruation (see below)!

 -Jodi

Labor Day always signals to me that summer is over. But it really isn't over, because here in Oregon, September is a wonderful warm, dry month. I’m getting amazing vegetables in my weekly basket from Pumpkin Ridge Farms. I’ve belonged to this CSA for over twelve years and without a doubt, my family and I are healthier people because of it  - I would never actually buy the vast amounts of dark, green leafies I am forced into cooking! It feels great knowing I’m eating an organically-grown morsel picked that very morning and that I’m helping local farmers Polly and James make a go of farm life. In every delivery, they include a note with recipes and a report of how the sun, the rain, the wind, and the bugs are effecting the crops. It’s great to be in touch with nature through your food.  Check out the CSA in your area.

Happy eating,

Brenda 

I had a great birthday. For one thing, my favorite former employer, GladRags, asked me to blog for them (joy of joys). Secondly, we have a fantastic new tradition in our multi-generational house (I live with my parents, husband and two children in Vermont—I know it wouldn’t work for everyone but it’s working out really well for us). Instead of buying each other gifts for all the birthdays and holidays, we decided to put that money toward a project that the birthday person gets to choose. For my birthday this May I chose to make a medicine wheel garden in the front flowerbed. I spent the weekend digging in the dirt, mending the rock wall, and preparing the flowerbed for all the cool new plants I got to buy with my birthday gift certificate to the local plant store. My shopping spree included a bird bath, gazing ball and all my favorites: lavender, lemon balm, sage, strawberries, roses and thyme. Hoo-ray! Medicine wheels or shields are a Native American tradition used to create sacred space. I built mine on the principles found in The Medicine Wheel Garden: Creating Sacred Space for Healing, Celebration, and Tranquility by E. Barrie Kavasch. I associate them mostly with safety and have built small ones out of stones on my dresser to symbolically represent one that would surround my home or me.

I happened to read New Moon Rising: Reclaiming the Sacred Rites of Menstruation by Linda Heron Wind around the same time as I was working on this garden. Wind describes how to make a belly shield, which I quickly noticed was the same concept as a medicine wheel garden. Belly shields can be made either physically or mentally as a way to protect your belly from the negative energies in life. She also said something that struck me: that women also need a space to go to during PMS time where they don’t need to have their belly shields up, a place and time to be open to what I think of as the higher calling of menstruating: inspiration and understanding. Maybe my medicine wheel garden can be a place like that for me…although it is in the front of my house where all the neighbors can see as well as traffic going by. Do you think they’d mind me washing out my GladRags out there?

Michelle