The Mother's Handbook.net

Dermoplasty. Stat.

themother — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:00:57 +0000

Let me begin by stressing that I do not read Dear Abby. Hubby does occasionally, mostly because it’s right under the crossword and sometimes the headlines are hard to ignore. I do my crosswords online, so we don’t have to fight.

Yesterday, Dear Abby screwed up.

Woman writes in that a 30 year friend of hers is childless by choice, preferring to lavish her attention on her pets. She gets a new dog, and gives it her friend’s daughter’s name. Mother is furious and frantic. How could her friend steal her daughter’s name for a DOG? Of all the nerve. She’s so upset that she may never speak to this woman again. I mean, what if the daughter and the dog are in the same room or something?

Dear Abby’s advice? It would be so sad if this long friendship was messed up by this “lack of judgement.” Just don’t put daughter and dog in the same room, so no one will get confused.

HUH?

Putting aside the obvious insensitivity to the “childless by choice” folks among us (whom studies show are not bitter and unhappy, thank you very much), and the potential that this woman was actually honoring the young lass by naming her new “child” after her friend’s daughter, let’s get to the crux of the matter here:

Are children so stupid that they are going to get their self identity confused with a DOG? Really?

What happens when this poor snot hits grade school and finds out that there are four kids in her class with the dog’s name? Massive identity crisis? Serious ego meltdown? She’ll probably need twenty years of therapy and STILL turn out to be an axe murderer.

Sheezsh.

But I digress. It isn’t the kid who has a problem here.

We cannot protect our kids from every little slight in the world. There are gonna be lots more, and lots more important, than discovering that one’s name is not unique.

Dear Abby:

Your advice to this poor lady was in error. You should have recommended a dermoplasty. Thicker skin seems to be in order.

Or perhaps a good swift kick in the arse.

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The Meal Planning Dilemma

themother — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:00:24 +0000

I was reading a blog about a mom who has begun planning meals for her family. She was so excited.

It made me think. Why don’t I do that?

Then I thought: Oh, yeah. That’s why.

When the kids were tiny, we had real meals. I cooked. They ate. Worked out great.

Now I have teens. They eat. But they only eat on pizza night, spaghetti night and steak night.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t eat the same three things every week. I get bored. My pizza may be amazing (it is), my meatballs fabulous (MIL’s recipe. Can’t beat Jewish grandma meatballs), and my steaks may be flat-iron seared, but there is a limit.

Every week, before I head to the warehouse store, followed by the regular grocery store (our warehouse store does not carry STICK PRETZELS), followed by the drugstore, followed by a huge glass of medicinal wine, I sit my crew down and ask for dinner suggestions.

Pizza, spaghetti, and steak. Arrrggh.

Then I remind myself that they are teenagers, and they are perfectly capable of feeding themselves. They have the skills; they have kitchen access; they have a car. I no longer have to feed them to ensure their survival. And not feeding them could perhaps ensure my survival. Or at least my sanity.

Having made this momentous decision, I feel the weight of a whole generation slipping off my shoulders. I have started watching cooking shows again, not to sigh and think, “They won’t eat it; why bother?” but to think ”Wow, that sounds great! Can’t wait to try it!”

I’m starting to get my kitchen mojo back. It’s kind of fun.

Or at least it will be until CPS comes to get me. I’m sure one of my loyal readers can bake me a cake with a file in it, right?

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How to Change the World

themother — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:13:52 +0000

When we hear the word “visionary,” we think of folks like Newton, Einstein, Ghandi, Hawking, Lincoln, Voltaire.

Some would add in Marx, Freud, Nietzsche. Or even Steve Jobs and Gene Roddenberry.

But sometimes it’s the quiet, shy guys who are the true visionaries. The ones who see the world clearly for what it is, and what it isn’t, and spend their lives trying to make the former match the latter, just a teensy bit. They’re the ones you’ve never heard of, but they’re the ones who really changed the world.

George Drysdale was one of those.

Born the 7th child of Sir William Drysdale (by his third wife, having lost two young, probably in childbirth), George headed to fashionable Edinburgh to study medicine among the luminaries. His medical education was interrupted by a mysterious illness that forced him to retreat to the calm of Europe. When he returned, he and his younger brother Charles set up shop as private medical consultants in London.

That is pretty much the public face of Dr. G. R. Drysdale. No one knew anything more about him during his lifetime. Painfully shy, he barely mustered the social skills to attend his patients. While his brother Charles was an active reformer, George sat on the sidelines.

Except he wasn’t sitting. He was the secret author of the anonymous 1855 “Elements of Social Science,” a deceptively dry title intended to keep his book from arousing censor and scandal while it sold 90,000 copies over it’s 50 year run of constant publication (a massive number, BTW, for a ‘scholarly’ work in the 19th century– the plates were so worn by the last run that some pages were blurred beyond legibility). The better title was Drysdale’s own: “Physical, Sexual, and Natural Religion.”

The book was an expose of Victorian morality and how it harmed women. It was a frank discussion of everything that was currently known about sexuality, both medically and psychologically, interspersed with complaints that so little was actually known, because studying it was socially unacceptable. It was a tirade about how the medical community consciously kept what little was known from women who needed to know. It was a tutorial on birth control, euphemistically termed “preventative intercourse” in a book not noted for using euphemisms of any type. It was a plea for women’s rights, suffrage, education as medical practitioners, and education as humans, long before the first feminists stuck their heads out of their kitchens and bedrooms. It was a manual of free love.

In 1855.

No wonder it needed a dry title.

The book was slammed and hailed, reviled and beloved. Moralists whined and moaned and bought copies and read them under the sheets.

What no one could do was ignore it.

Its authorship was attributed to just about everybody active on the reform front–even Charles–but never suspected to be George. George was not, however, inactive. He vigorously defended his stance in print, always with the initials “GR.” All letters went through his publisher and an anonymous PO Box. GR was a major voice in the reform movement. He contributed the updated medical information that Bradlaugh and Besant published with “The Fruits of Knowledge” (that got them tried for indecency). He was often challenged to public debate; all such requests were denied.

How does a painfully shy young man get himself into all this trouble?

There is only one case history in the Elements. It is his own.

A young, well educated young man, realizing that he’s prone to masturbation, reads the encyclopedia and discovers all the horrors that can come from this terrible vice. Frantic, he consults a doctor, who gives him various salves and tonics. For a year and a half, the young man attempts to exercise self-control, but his health becomes progressively worse. His doctor tells him he now has congestion of the brain, and sends him out to get exercise and a haircut (no, I’m not making this up).

As his symptoms get worse, he seeks the only remedy left–urethral cauterization. This painful procedure was meant to stop patients from masturbating by making it, well, uncomfortable. It made our patient ill. He took time off and went on walkabout in Europe, trying to clear his head (both, presumably). Eventually, he sank into depression and entertained thoughts of suicide.

At some point, he saw a French doctor, who told him that maybe he should just go get screwed and see if that fixed his problem. So he did. And it did. Wow–LIGHT BULB.

Maybe sex wasn’t such a bad thing after all? Maybe it was sorta necessary for health? Maybe all the machinations that Victorian society put itself through to avoid sex, or talking about sex, or teaching women anything about sex, or preventing the unwanted pregnancies that came from sex, or stopping men whose sexual urges weren’t being gratified from taking advantage of all those uneducated women who couldn’t support themselves any other way than prostitution, was just the bloody wrong way to go about the whole business?

Drysdale published the Elements out of his own pocket. He lost money on every copy, trying to keep the price down so that people could afford to buy it. When he died in 1904, his brother Charles and his partner Anne Vickery (one of the pioneer women in medicine and a founding member of the Malthusian League) carried the gauntlet themselves, often at great personal price. Their son, Charles Vickery Drysdale, kept it up for another generation.

Drysdale dreamed of a world where women (and men) would be free to have sex whenever they liked, without fear of unwanted pregnancies, disease or societal repercussions. The shy visionary would have been amazed at what he accomplished, in the long run.

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Nothing Like that Old Time Religion

themother — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:16:04 +0000

Synagogue at Ostia Antica, Italy, 1st century CE (oldest synagogue in Europe)

And by old-time, I mean about five thousand years.

Two bar mitzvahs in two weeks. One very Orthodox, with a capital O. Women segregated, not allowed on beama, not allowed to read Torah. Next one mostly Orthodox, mixed congregation, women only allowed on beama for their OWN bat mitzvahs.

[Because excluding half the population is a time-honored way of propagating your religion.]

I learned a few things.

I learned that leprosy was caused by blasphemy. Funny, I always thought it was mycobacteria. Guess those squiggly pink things under my microscope were put there to test my faith (kinda worked, too). I’m fairly sure that I uttered a few blasphemes the first time I saw leprosy in the very late 20th century, but so far my nose has not fallen off. I’m holding my breath.

I learned that certain verses in the Torah are curses. Those are chanted under the breath and in a monotone, because they don’t make people happy. I was thinking that there are lots of things in the Torah that don’t make me happy. The open bar coming up when they were finally done chanting, however, would make me real happy.

I learned that the prohibition against teaming an ox and an ass together means Jews shouldn’t drive Priuses. Who knew? [By that I mean, who knew that it was even conceivable that we could stretch an iron age rule about livestock that far? The bar mitzvah boy did. He got a laugh, but don't be shocked if some rabbi comes out next week and makes this a law.]

I learned that it is really, really hard to piddle in a women’s bathroom with no light, because they forgot to turn on the lights before Shabbat started. Probably have a male janitor. I also learned that sirens do NOT go off if you turn said light on on Shabbat. But I’m probably going to hell. Except Jews don’t believe in hell. Just really good guilt.

[One of the bulbs on the menorah behind the beama was not screwed in properly, so it flickered on and off through the whole service. I amused myself by counting how many times they were unwittingly desecrating the sabbath. It seemed I was the only one who got the joke. Maybe because I was the one who had to try to piddle in the dark.]

I learned that it is blasphemy for a woman to dress like a man. The rabbi was looking directly at me when he said that, since I was one of only two women wearing pants. Not that any man would wear purple/copper iridescent silk taffeta pants (or at least any man who doesn’t have to worry about the blasphemy laws himself). But when my friend gave me the dress rules, and told me mid-calf, I figured, “Pants!” Oops.

[One of my relatives showed up for the second, only mostly Orthodox, bar mitzvah in a tuxedo. She looked smashingly good, too. Another of my relatives showed up for the same bar mitzvah wearing a see through, open-knit top, past the elbows and over the shoulder blades, with no bra. She was only 80, so it looked really, really good, too. But she was the one who was technically dressed up to code.]

I learned that there is some new rule about kosher wine that requires the grape must to be boiled (because somewhere in the Torah it says that Jews have to just keep making it harder on themselves). It produces ghastly wine. I also learned that Cosmos are excellent alternatives. But that there is a true limit to how many one can imbibe and still do a decent swing. I will not, however, be fielding a urine infection, regardless of the dungeonlike state of the bathroom.

I learned that ancient wooden Torah scrolls, in the hands of a 6′, 140 pound honoree, are a tad unbalanced when held overhead ceremonially. I also learned that those elderly guys on the side of the beama can move faster than the Six-Million Dollar Man when it looks like said honoree is going to lose the battle with gravity. I could swear I heard that noise, too. Apparently the taboo against actually touching the Torah scroll is thrown out when the other alternative is even less savory.

[Self-same honoree commented later that his iPad would have been a lot easier to hoist overhead. Jews, however, are not well known for adapting to the times.]

When looking around the shul, I learned that the only folks who seemed to be in rapturous contemplation of their God at the 3-3/4 hour mark of unrelenting Hebrew chanting were the old guys who stood, davening, through the entire service with their tallits pulled over their heads. But then, since their attention was not broken up by the endless up/down movement of the rest of the congregation, I do wonder if their rapturous contemplation was more about the inside of their eyelids.

[I can't help but think that this might not be the way to win over the next generation. And yet here we are, five thousand years later.]

But mostly, I learned that a little of the old-time religion goes a very, very long way.

As hubby said on the way out the door, there’s nothing like a good dose of religion to remind you why you gave it up.

For those of you who insisted. Unfortunately, you can't really see the hand-beaded collar in the photo.

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Cartesian Dualism Does NOT Get You out of Chores

themother — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:06:49 +0000

Back in the day, Aristotle was “THE Philosopher.” In fact, that is exactly how he was referred to by the Church fathers, from the time of his reintroduction in the west in the 11th century. St. Thomas Aquinas made it his life’s work to put a Christian spin on the old pagan, and by the time he was done, Aristotelian philosophy was perfectly married to Christian metaphysics. In all disputes, Aristotle was right, anyone else was wrong, the Church and the Scholastic university system backed him up, and that’s all there was to it.

Then a few guys named Gallileo, Copernicus and Newton popped up. They not only SAID Aristotle was wrong–they could PROVE it.

Oops.

Europe was panicking. If Aristotelian physics was wrong, what about Aristotelian metaphysics?

You can just imagine Nietzsche’s Madman running through the streets shouting, “God is dead! What the hell do we do know?”

But all was eventually saved by a smart guy named Rene Descartes. It was okay for scientists and mathematicians to determine how the world works. It’s just a big machine, after all. So are our bodies. But our MINDS are metaphysical. They are God’s realm. Science is and shall ever be silent on how the mind works.

Cartesian dualism was born. And we’ve been dealing with the fallout ever since.

Teenagers are walking examples of Cartesian dualism. Their bodies sit there, right in front of you. Their minds are some place totally different. Off in that metaphysical realm, through which we mortals dare not tread.

Actual conversation with the Goth:

Mom: Did you fill up the gas canisters like I asked you to?

Goth: When did you do that?

Mom: At the dinner table last night. You were there, weren’t you?

Goth: Um, yeah.

Mom: We had a whole conversation about the errands I needed you to run today, remember?

Goth: Um, no.

Mom: WERE YOU NOT AT THE DINNER TABLE LAST NIGHT?

Goth: Um, yeah.

Mom: How can you not remember a twenty minute conversation?

Goth: My mind was somewhere else.

SEE? Dualism. You probably didn’t know your teenagers were world-class philosophers, did you?

P.S.: Doesn’t work on me. I’m a materialist. Our brains are bags of chemicals. And they’re attached to our bodies. Even at the dinner table. Even when Mom is handing out chores.

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Every Sperm is Sacred (But not necessarily every fetus)

themother — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 12:00:37 +0000

Quick! Does anyone know when the Catholic church decided that early term abortion was a sin?

[Hint: unless you've recently looked this up, you're probably way wrong. Like, centuries wrong.]

Way, way back, the ancient Greeks decided that a fetus was human when its limbs articulated. Hippocrates said that was around 42 days for females, but only 30 days for those more perfect male specimens. The famous Hippocratic oath’s proscription of abortion was actually against PESSARIES for abortions; plus the word “abortion” implied a fetus past that 30 day mark.

Hippocrates himself prescribes a method of inducing abortion to a slave-dancer-prostitute: jump up and down with the heels hitting the buttocks as often and rapidly as possible. It apparently worked. He described what he believed was a “six-day” embryo. Wasn’t, of course, unless Hippocrates had microscopic vision.

Aristotle, the great naturalist, studied human physiology (as much as anyone could way back in ancient Greece). For Aristotle, though, “studying” meant “thinking about.” Experimental method was then unknown. In fact, when Gallileo built his famous telescope and started LOOKING at the stars and planets, his contemporaries scoffed. Many refused to even look. Had not the great Aristotle simply reasoned the way the world should be? What was the point of investigation?

Aristotle pontificated that the human embryo was ensouled (possessed “nous” or intellective spirit) about the time that the menstrual blood “set”–somewhere around 40 days for male embryos, longer for those defective girl types.

The Hebrews turned to Leviticus, where it is written that the male embryo is ensouled at 40 days, the girls at 80 days. Talmudic law allows both contraception and abortion in that 40 day window; in fact, the fetus is considered “rodef”–a threat to the mother’s life. It isn’t considered truly a separate being until crowning, when it has a better than even chance of actually being born without killing its mother.

Arabic law, using a synthesis of Aristotelian and Galenic physiology plus revelation, held that the fetus goes through three 40 day stages of development, and wasn’t human until the end of the third stage, at 120 days. Contraception and abortion were permitted, up to the fourth month.

Christianity adopted an odd combination of Hebrew law, Aristotelian philosophy, and Augustinian conviction that sex was for procreation. Nonetheless, while frowning on masturbation as a mortal sin (itself a misunderstanding of Hebrew scripture and levirate marriage), Church canon appears to have held a more lenient position on early term abortions. Since the male fetus was ensouled at 40 days and females at 80, abortions after that were deadly no-nos. Before that? Not human.

[In fact, there was an ideological and theological problem here. If an early fetus had a soul, then a fetus was a man. If it aborted spontaneously, as so many do, it would be a soul--a man--without a body for the resurrection. Plus it wouldn't have been baptized or had last rights. Yes, this sounds like a "how many angels can fit on a head of a pin?" argument, but this stuff occupied the best minds of the Church for about 1500 years.]

The whole debate was academic, anyway. There were no reliable pregnancy tests until the 1920s, when it was discovered that the hormones of pregnancy make baby mouse ovaries ovulate. Great for women; bad for baby mice. Later they used baby rabbits–hence the famous “rabbit test.”

The Egyptians had the urine test–sprinkle barley and wheat seeds with the suspect’s urine. If the seeds germinate, she’s pregnant. It might actually have worked, some of the time, due to the estradiols of pregnancy.

The Greeks looked for swollen breasts. And gas.

What no one seems to have considered useful was a cessation of menses. With poor nutrition, alcohol diets and arduous physical labor, most women probably weren’t very regular. Plus, there is often a bloody show near the time of the first missed period, even in modern times. The docs weren’t too thrilled about relying on women’s memories, anyway, women being so stupid and flighty and all. Add in a spontaneous miscarriage rate of around 60% in the first ten weeks [Modern numbers. Possibly much higher in the old days with the aforementioned poor nutrition, alcohol diets and arduous physical labor. Not to mention rampant endogamy and its attendant genetic consequences]. So, fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice…

Pseudo-Albertus, in the Secrets of Women, made it very clear: women lie. Don’t trust them to tell you whether or not they’re pregnant.

Throughout antiquity, the middle ages and the early modern world, the only reliable sign of pregnancy was quickening. Until then, pregnancy was a kinda, sorta kind of thing. And while the Church might well have frowned on abortion, no one seemed to have been too upset about the idea of “bringing the courses” on.

Hippocrates included recipes for menstrual regularity, despite the whole mistaken-oath-thingy.

Trotula had lots of suggestions for bringing on a missed menstrual period. St. Hildegard of Bingen, the great healer and Christian theologian, had several recipes. As did virtually every gynecologic manual in history.

There were ads, clear through Victorian times, for snake oils purported to cause menstrual regularity. NOT to be used as abortives. Nope. Honest. (Of course, the fact that they rarely worked probably protected the perpetrators from persecution).

Besides, only prostitutes had “abortions.” Married women just wanted to get their physiology back in check.

So, back to the original question. When did the Catholic church outlaw abortion?

1869.

For almost all of human history, until the very last century and a half, early pregnancy was the realm of women.

In 1869, Pope Pius IX dropped the “ensoulment” clause and made abortion of any fetus an excommunicable offense. He was responding mostly to the brand new science of embryology. He was a little late to the party, though; Protestant countries had begun banning abortions at any point in pregnancy earlier in the century, partly as a result of the New Morality, but largely under pressure from the new, professionalizing medical community which thought that pregnancy, abortion, and contraception were DOCTORS’ business, not women’s business.

That same medical community, now 150 years later, that is clamoring for stem cell research. Take shotgun; apply to foot.

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The Red Gene

themother — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:00:14 +0000

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say.

[Sometimes it hits someone important on the head, and the theory of gravity is born. Sometimes it just falls on the ground and rots. We all root for the former.]

It helps if the tree doesn’t have a whopping set of bad genes to pass on to the apples, but you just never know. We find new bad genes all the time. And now there’s another new one.

It seems that there’s a credit gene. People with the right version manage credit well, people with the wrong version end up in debt.

Young adults with poor functioning genetic variants of Monoamine Oxidase (an enzyme that breaks down neurotransmitters–we use MAO inhibitors to treat depression) tend to run higher credit card balances. With two bad copies, the rate of indebtedness ran to 15.9%, twice as high as the one good, one bad kids.

Low MAO levels have also been linked to alcoholism and various addictions. Gee, do we see a connection?

I suppose we could all run our kids down to the local gene store and get their MAO alleles done. OR:

We could teach our kids how to be responsible with credit from a very early age. While we work hard to protect our kids from predators of the live kind, parents routinely neglect to protect kids from predators of the plastic kind. There is a simple solution:

Get your kid a credit card.

No, I’m not insane. I’m not joking either. The only way to learn to manage credit is to have credit. And those all important numbers that will allow him to buy a house at 25 or get student loans at 20 depend on having credit to get credit.

Around the time a kid graduates from high school, two things happen. First, the armed forces recruiters start calling. This is your cue that your child is old enough to have his own life and run (or ruin) his own future.

After that, tons of credit card applications magically begin to show up in the mail. One gets filled out and sent in. Their very own credit card. Their very own credit.

They get a credit line of around $25. Not enough to get in trouble with. But enough to build on. Mom’s instructions are very clear: charge up to the limit every month. Groceries, gas, stuff they’re going to buy anyway. PAY IT OFF, every month. Slowly, build credit.

It doesn’t matter what genes a kid has if he learns responsible money management from mom and dad.

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FREEDOM!

themother — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:56:33 +0000

For the first time in 22 years I do not have a child at home during the day!

[Okay, there was an all too brief year and a half eight years ago when I tasted freedom. Then got pissed off and brought them all home again.]

Stretch started real school this morning. YES!

The Goth got one of the coveted junior parking spaces, so he and Stretch can drive to school. I don’t even have to do carpool.

I am free! Free, I tell you! Free!

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Can You Fit a Full Term Infant in a Warming Pan?

themother — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:00:54 +0000

While we might consider this odd question to be a bit of an academic exercise, this was the single most important problem occupying the collective mind of Merry Olde England in June of 1688.

When last we left the obstetrical travails of the British Royal Family, James II had just succeeded his brother Charles II, taking the throne as the first openly Catholic monarch of Britain since Bloody Mary.

The overwhelmingly Protestant populace was decidedly not amused. Nor was Parliament, which, anticipating James’ accession, had put in place a variety of laws which prevented Catholics from occupying public office. All of which were royally ignored by the new royals.

The specter of Bloody Mary and the religious despotism of the Catholic kings of France (then the ever intolerant and tyrannical Louis XIV) were never far from the public mind.

While England fumed, the Vatican saw this as a huge opportunity to reclaim the English crown. This goal required a Catholic heir. Too bad James’ daughters from his first marriage were raised Protestant.

Two years after the death of his first wife, James decided to remarry. In 1673, an arrangement was made, with the personal intervention of Pope Clement X, with Mary Beatrice d’Este of Modena.

Mary had been heading to a convent. She was absolutely distraught at the idea of marrying (in fact, she had a 48-hour royal tantrum, requiring restraints). The Pope, a close personal friend of the family (and rumored to be Mary’s natural father–the papacy never did get that celibacy memo), had to talk her into it, reminding her exactly what a fabulous opportunity this was. She would be better than a pious nun; she would be personally responsible for returning an entire nation to the true Faith.

All she had to do was produce a son, who would then supersede the two Protestant daughters in line.

Unfortunately, Mary’s obstetrical luck was a tad wanting. By the time she became Queen in 1865, eight pregnancies had failed to produce a surviving child. There followed three years without another go. At the age of 30, it was looking likely that the Pope might be foiled. England was breathing a collective sigh of relief.

And then…

A trip to the healing waters of Bath produced the requested miracle. A child was due in July of 1688.

Skeptics abounded. Princess Anne (later to be Queen Anne) was convinced it was a trick. She tried several times to catch the Queen undressing, but was disappointed each time.

The whole birth thing was still mysterious to the men who ran the country. Midwives delivered babies behind closed doors. No one knew what really happened. It was entirely possible, in the eyes of the collective mindset, that a false pregnancy could produce a living child, smuggled in by a mischievous midwife, in, perhaps, a bed-warming pan.

The Warming Pan Scandal quickly developed a head of steam. Anne conveniently removed herself from London to Bath, so that she wouldn’t be present at the birth, and so would not be forced to admit that the pregnancy was real.

It didn’t help that the child was born a whole month early, not the least bit premature.

James was perfectly well aware of the concerns of the public and the Parliament. Despite the early delivery, he managed to convene upwards of SIXTY prominent witnesses to the event, male and female, Protestant and Catholic. All but a few of the Queen’s closest ladies, however, stood at the foot of the bed, where the curtains were closed (modesty, you know–can you even imagine giving birth in front of sixty people wearing formal clothes and bad wigs?).

A warming pan did indeed arrive, to warm a perfectly warm bed from which Mary had never stirred, around an hour and a half before the delivery.

Accusations flew. Witnesses claimed that the baby was legitimate. Witnesses claimed that they couldn’t tell. Witnesses claimed that Mary was lactating. Witnesses claimed that she wasn’t. Witnesses claimed they had felt the baby move in utero. Witnesses swore they never did.

Anne did her share of rabble rousing, and her surviving letters to her older sister Mary (of William and Mary) safely tucked away in Orange, show that she was doing a damn good job.

The memory of the Popish Midwife was still hanging in the air. In fact, Catholic Elizabeth Cellier herself had predicted, in print, that a royal son would be born in June of 1688. Convenient, huh?

In the absence of DNA testing (developed by another Brit, Sir Alec Jeffries, in 1984, nearly three centuries too late), there was nothing anyone could do to prove it, one way or another.

But there was something Parliament could do. They began negotiations with William of Orange to take over the country on behalf of his wife Mary, James’ oldest, Protestant daughter.

William marched on England on November 5, 1688. James’ forces went out to meet him, but the commanders quickly defected to William. The royal family was forced to flee to France with their infant son. The “Glorious Revolution” was virtually bloodless; it also marks the last successful invasion of British soil in history.

The question remains: Can you really fit a term infant in a warming pan?

Sir Jack Dewhurst, obstetrician and historian of royal confinements, says he has personally put a 5-1/2 pound child in a 17th century warming pan. He does note it would require sedation.

Most historians are convinced that James III (The Old Pretender) was indeed legitimate. It doesn’t really matter; in the end, the warming pan won.

[This is the latest installment in the ongoing Nefarious History of Motherhood, or at least the history of having female bits, in general. You can catch up on the whole series here; or, if you are in a particularly masochistic mood and have nothing better to do for a few thousand hours, check out the Bibliography.]

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Alchemy, Anyone?

themother — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:04:03 +0000

I kept telling people that the healthcare bill wasn’t the solution. Do we really want to spend a trillion bucks and put an ever-growing layer of bureaucracy between us and our health?

What we really need is a cure-all. A panacea. If no one’s sick, no one needs healthcare.

I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But I tell you, it exists.

No, it’s not water (although, according to homeopathy, water can cure an awful lot of stuff. But even the homeopathy people don’t claim it can REVERSE AGING).

For that, we need a really powerful cure-all.

We need—the Philosopher’s Stone.

Harry Potter needn’t have spent all that time and energy saving the Philosopher’s Stone from the Dark Lord. Voldemort could have just made his own with the instructions on eHow.

Yes, folks, that’s right. Instructions for immortality are available on the world’s favorite how-to webzine. With just a little morning dew, a distiller, a kiln (yes, a kiln) and gold or silver leaf, you can cure what ails you. Anything that ails you.

But wait! There’s more!

It can awaken your psychic powers.

And it can turn lead into gold.

WOW. Is that cool or what???

But you might not want to do that. Turning lead into gold, while profitable, apparently has disastrous long term consequences, bequeathed to the unwary by the ancient practitioners of the Holy Art:

…the alchemists warned that you must be careful not to transmute too much gold at once, or it will become radioactive and the radiation will harm you and eventually kill you. And selling gold is considered a trite waste of the Stone in alchemy. You will feel like a **** if you make all your money selling a product of alchemy and disgracing and defiling the Holy Art.

[How "holy" the art is is a bit of a controversy. The Church has traditionally frowned on alchemy, considering it part of the black arts, and therefore Satan's department. But it was the alchemists who defined modern chemistry, so maybe that's Satan's department, too. And if that's the case, then plastic is the devil's handiwork, and medicine, and...]

If you don’t have a kiln, a distilling apparatus, much morning dew where you live, or a handy source for gold leaf, you can buy the health elixir straight from the guru himself, 75 Euros for 3 grams.

Harriet Hall has calculated your yearly medicinal costs for you–approximately $24,000.

What? You didn’t expect it to be cheap, did you? C’mon, it cures EVERYTHING.

And I have this bridge…

Send this to the person bothering you today!