The Soccer Mom Vote

water shortages

I don't know if it's been in the news elsewhere in the country, but it's all over the place here: Southern California is headed for a water shortage.  It was inevitable that the subject would come up on one of the parenting lists I belong to, and people had come up with some stuff that I hadn't even thought of.  Of course, there's always installing a greywater system but that can be costly, complicated, and difficult to acquire a permit for (in some places, impossible).  I would personally love to re-use household water on a grand scale, but can't quite swing it right now.  So here's what I'm doing instead (very simple and limited, but hey, it's something): save shower water to flush with.  My husband and daughter take a bath every morning, and instead of letting the water out we leave it in and flush pee with it.  Simply fill up a bucket from the tub, pour into the toilet, and it flushes.  For my shower, I have a bucket that I keep in the middle of it and let the cold water rain into it while I am waiting for it to get hot.  In the time it takes for that to happen, the bucket fills and I get an extra free flush out of it.  It may not seem like much, but I feel better about it.

If you live in a place where it rains often, a downspout rain barrel is super easy to assemble and use, though you can buy one for about 100$ from most gardening websites.

My big water stumbling block is my lawn; I have it, so it must be watered.  I'm not a fan of xeriscaping.  If my regional xeriscape looked like this, I might get on board, but this is what it looks like where I live.  I could plant food in my lawn, but it would take SO MUCH work to make my lawn into garden and maintain it.  So what am I to do?  I water and mow (though with a push reel mower, so at least I'm not noise or carbon polluting while I am doing it) but I don't fertilize or use pesticides.  Anyone have any great ideas on this problem?

personal responsibility

The recent recall of toys with small pieces that children could choke on reminds me of something that has been on my mind since my family came home from a 3 month stay in England.  Of course, any time a child gets injured, it is a tragedy.  I am not arguing that companies shouldn't be careful about what they market and sell.  But isn't it also partially our responsibility to check to toys to see if there are any parts that they could swallow or choke on?  And if we feel that the toy might not be safe for our child, can't we put it away for later, when they won't put everything in their mouths? 

What does this have to do with England?  Well, I saw many examples of the absence of silly CYA policies there.  We went to a wonderful place called Horse World where you could open the stalls of some of the animals, grab a curry comb, and groom away to your heart's content, with no supervision.  Am I crazy, or would this not be an option in the US?  I know that at the local zoo here there is a petting area, but it's very carefully supervised.   Many of the walking paths in England are on private land that is protected for that purpose.  You walk through a turnstile from public land onto private land, often walking among livestock, but you are trusted not to antagonize the animals.  In the US there would be worry about someone suing for some stupid something or other after they did something stupid.

I personally believe that we lose out on a lot because of our overly litigious society.  If you order a hot coffee, you should expect that if you spill it on yourself, it might burn you.  I am willing to make sure that I am a thoughtful, observant member of society if it means that I will have a little more freedom.  But then again, I fed my daughter unpeeled, whole grapes when she was under 2.  I would not have sued the grape farmer if she had choked.

Go Maryland!

An email came to my box a few weeks ago via a homeschooling email list that I had joined with a view to going on some cool field trips.   I was not aware that the group was a "ministry" of a particular church; when I was sent an email about it inviting me to join on another group it was not couched in those terms (which I believe was a bit deceptive), but after looking at the group's home page I just unsubscribed from it without further protest.  The assumption was that this story was so obviously outrageous and disgusting that we would all immediately take up the cause of fighting this outrage.  What outrage, you ask?

Well, as part of a two part sex education lesson aimed at 8 and 10th graders, totaling 90 minutes, the Maryland State Board of Education will be incorporating the concept that homosexuality is not abnormal or deviant.  And there will be an dvd on the proper use of a condom.  The email I got was full of outrage about the "promotion of homosexuality in the classroom" and the curriculum's "expressed hostility toward Christianity" (the capital "c" is a quote, not how I would write the word).  There was concern that the "Maryland curriculum could become the model for promoting the homosexual lifestyle in public schools across the nation."  Keep in mind that students need the written permission of a parent to even attend these classes.  I just fail to make the intellectual leap from the viewpoint that homosexuality is not deviant to promotion of it.  Does addressing the educational needs of the homosexual in school promote homosexuality?  According to these people (the American Family Association), yes, but it seems like quite a leap to me.

I am happy to see schools address the educational needs of the students.  Many 8th graders, unfortunately, should know how to use a condom unless we want them becoming parents or contracting STDs.  And for the parents who don't want normalization of homosexuality or sex education, don't sign the permission slip.  I want to believe that the ideal of abstinence education really works, I really believe that teenagers are having sex way too young, no matter what their sexual orientation, and a lot more of them than anyone wants to admit.  But my observation is that it's not working.  And I would rather that if they are going to be sexually active, they know how to put a condom on properly.  And if they're gay and sexually active I would rather that they were confident enough about it to use a condom and not feel shame about it.

As I stand two years plus into the parenting journey, I am terrified about all the stuff I will have to deal with, I worry about keeping my daughter safe in her teenage years.  But I don't think keeping her ignorant or teaching her bigotry is a smart or effective way to help her stay safe.

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Last Tuesday I got to see Michael Pollan speak at Revelle Forum at UCSD (the website where I registered for the forum cautioned to get there early so I was there a half an hour early with some magazines which I got to read for a full half hour, uninterrupted, it was heaven).  I had read The Omnivore's Dilemma earlier this year after hearing about it on NPR and was profoundly affected by it, so much so that I developed a full-blown crush on Pollan (still crushing hard, by the way).  But it wasn't until I saw Michael Pollan speak at the that I really GOT it.  Until I read The Omnivore's Dilemma I had been smug and complacent in my belief that as long as I was eating organic, I was not only doing the right thing for my family, but also for the environment and animal welfare.  But as Mr Pollan pointed out at the end of his lecture, there is really no "one" answer.  The unfortunate answer is that in order to make sure we are eating the best quality food with the lowest cost to the planet, we have to read labels and do research.  It can be exhausting.

So here are some things I have learned from Mr Pollan:

• Corn is everything.  Everything is corn.  It turns out that because everything most Americans eat is derived from corn, it actually ends up making up much of the carbon in our bodies.  Here is an excerpt from the book that says a lot about our dependence on corn:

Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak. Corn feeds the
chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia
and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish
farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn.
The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows
that grazed on grass, now typically come from Holsteins that spend
their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn.

Head over to the processed foods and you find ever more intricate
manifestations of corn. A chicken nugget, for example, piles corn upon
corn: what chicken it contains consists of corn, of course, but so do
most of a nugget’s other constituents, including the modified corn
starch that glues the thing together, the corn flour in the batter that
coats it, and the corn oil in which it gets fried. Much less obviously, the
leavenings and lecithin, the mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the attractive
golden coloring, and even the citric acid that keeps the nugget “fresh”
can all be derived from corn.

To wash down your chicken nuggets with virtually any soft drink in
the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980s
virtually all the sodas and most of the fruit drinks sold in the supermarket
have been sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—after
water, corn sweetener is their principal ingredient. Grab a beer for your
beverage instead and you’d still be drinking corn, in the form of alcohol
fermented from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on
the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical
names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified
starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez
Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup
and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and
gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise
and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening,
the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins. (Yes,
it’s in the Twinkie, too.) There are some forty-five thousand items in the
average American supermarket and more than a quarter of them now
contain corn.This goes for the nonfood items as well: Everything from the
toothpaste and cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleansers,
charcoal briquettes, matches, and batteries, right down to the shine on
the cover of the magazine that catches your eye by the checkout: corn.
Even in Produce on a day when there’s ostensibly no corn for sale you’ll
nevertheless find plenty of corn: in the vegetable wax that gives the cucumbers
their sheen, in the pesticide responsible for the produce’s perfection,
even in the coating on the cardboard it was shipped in. Indeed,
the supermarket itself—the wallboard and joint compound, the
linoleum and fiberglass and adhesives out of which the building itself
has been built—is in no small measure a manifestation of corn.

• Having a monoculture (one crop) is not healthy for the environment; pests of all types thrive in a monoculture, which makes farmers need to use more and more pesticides.  Monocultures also deplete the soil, which creates the need for more petroleum-based fertilizer.  There is so much excess fertilizer used in Iowa that in the spring, "Blue Baby" alerts are commonplace.  Parents are urged not to use tap water coming from the Des Moines river because of the huge nitrogen runoff from monocultural farms; nitrogen heavy water can inhibit the blood's ability to carry oxygen to the brain.  source
• Having a monoculture is not good for national security; it's never good to put all of your eggs in one basket.
• The farm bill is not good for farmers.  They should not be growing as much of a monocultural commodity crop as they possibly can for the lowest possible cost (they are often selling corn for less than it costs to grow it, then the government makes up some of the difference).
• Bovines should not eat corn (they literally can't digest corn and it makes them sick, which is one of the reasons both that they have to have antibiotics all the time and also why they emit greenhouse gases), they should eat grass.  That seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?  But chances are you may never have even eaten meat or milk from a cow that wasn't mostly grain fed. Meat from non-pastured cows, it turns out, may be what is making us sick, not the cholesterol in the meat itself.  Meat from pastured cattle is high in omega 3 fatty acids, meat from grain fed cattle is not (among many other ways that grain fed meats measure up poorly to grass fed).
• The "organic" label only means that the animal has only eaten organic feed and hasn't had hormones and antibiotics.  It does nothing to address the horrific conditions under which animals are kept and slaughtered in this country.  "Cage free" and "free range" only mean that the chicken was not in a battery cage.  It does NOT mean that the chicken ever went outside, only that in most cases for the last two weeks of its life a small door was opened in the barn.  Most chickens do not use it.
• Ethanol is NOT the answer.  More corn?  It seems on the face if it like it might be a good idea.  But guess what is used to fertilize the corn?  To refine it?  To transport it?  PETROLEUM.  Ethanol uses more petroleum to produce than it saves.  Pollan says that if the US used 100% of its corn crop to produce ethanol, it would replace 15% of the need for petroleum gas in this country. 

It may seem like the book is full of gloom and doom but the section where he talks about Polyface Farm is downright wonderful.  This farmer has found a way to produce astounding amounts of "better than organic" meat and eggs, while leaving the land richer.  This farm has animals that actually live the life that is pictured in the products of other companies.  And the owner doesn't ship his product because that goes against his ideals about eating local and using petroleum to ship food to the ends of the earth.

This is truly one of the best books I have ever read; I am positive that I am leaving out some major points but it's a start.  If you like to think critically about where your food is coming from, you can't go wrong with this one.

You can read the introduction and first chapter of the book here.
Here's a description from the author's website:

What should we have for dinner? The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival   as a species.   Should we eat a fast-food hamburger?  Something organic?  Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?  The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet         confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.       

In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating.  His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on.  Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.       

The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating.  For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.

choices

Maybe it's just because I live in the city centre, but I see a LOT more women wearing some sort of headcovering here in Bristol, UK than in San Diego.  I see it and part of me cringes because it feels restricted to me.   But there is also part of me that finds it beautiful, fascinating, mysterious.  Most of the women I see are wearing what looks to me like traditional African clothing, like that pictured here.  It's certainly very beautiful, and these women almost always walk with their heads high, like they know what a lovely spectacle they make when they command the sidewalks in their packs (they're usually not alone) of billowing dresses and scarves, always in gorgeous colors.  Not as often, but still a daily sight, is the woman in modest western dress with a head scarf (hijab) and sometimes women in a jilbab and head scarf.  They always look beautiful and neat.  I can't help think sometimes that it must be nice not to have to worry about having a bad hair day if it's always covered up.  I walk around with rose glasses about moslem women covered up, until, now and then, I see a woman in a burka.  It's usually this kind, with the slit for the eyes, but once or twice I have seen this kind (chadri).  And my rosy picture crumbles.  I don't feel like there are many women who would choose to wear a garment that restricts them from seeing where they are going, as the chadri does.  I read My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban - A Young Woman's    Story when it came out and was shocked to hear about how hot, uncomfortable, and vulnerable it can feel under there.  I have read here and other places where women feel safe in a burka though I have to wonder how much of that is colored by the assertion that women need to cover up to keep men from giving in to their animal impulses (a reason I have heard used for keeping women covered up). 

Which brings me to my point: According to this article, nowhere in the Quran does it command a woman to wear a head covering, the command is only to be modest (which, when the Quran was written, largely meant covering up your breasts).  The majority of practicing Moslem women I have dress very modestly, and they do cover their heads to pray (which many judeo-christian sects do also).  So who dictates whether and to what degree a woman has to cover her head/body?  As far as I can see, it's the men.  And that, I have a problem with.  I think women (and all people) should have the right to express their devotion to their deity with whatever degree of cover or uncover suits them (I don't think they should be exempt from uncovering their faces for the DMV and other identity pictures, but that's probably another story).   I love this story about a kuwaiti woman elected to parlaiment who refused to wear a hijab.

So ladies, cover it up, let it free, I will smile at you and commend your choice.  But just be sure it is your choice, because that's what makes it meaningful.

what I learned in Amsterdam

I have a cousin who lives in Amsterdam (which is in The Netherlands, of which Holland is one, for the geographically challenged among us).  He lives there because his husband is Dutch.  Because the US doesn't recognize same sex marriages, his husband would not become a citizen if they moved to the US, so they are literally prohibited from moving to the US, whether they would like to or not.  So my cousin has become very anti-US and at the same time very active in Democrats Abroad and Love Exiles.

The Netherlands is a country that allows a lot that we prohibit: euthanasia, same sex marriage, marijuana, prostitution, and sex  education and contraceptives for early teens.  You'd think the place would be one big seedy den of stinky, slimy sin.  Dangerous too, with all those oversexed drugged out homos wandering the streets.  In reality, it is a pleasure to visit and truly one of the places abroad I think I would enjoy living.  It feels extremely safe and pleasant.  People are astoundingly nice and helpful, and it is stunningly pastoral while at the same time feeling completely modern and cosmopolitan.   According to this BBC article, it's not that the Dutch are amoral or irreligious (it feels like a very religious country to me).  It a fundamental pragmatism that they have going for them.  They figure that all things being equal, it's better to be able to have some control over things that will happen anyway.  I think we as a country would do well to take a page out of their book.

But instead our president has decided to declare preemptive war against them.  Have you heard of the American Servicemembers' Protection Act?  Me either, though I was made aware of it by my cousin.  The way that he explained it to me (and the way I understand it after doing some research of my own) is basically that if any of our citizens (or those of our allies) were ever brought before the International Criminal Court, we would, in effect, invade the Netherlands (more specifically, The Hague, which is in The Netherlands).  Keep in mind that this court is set up to try people for crimes against humanity.  So this basically gives immunity from prosecution for crimes against humanity to any citizen that the US decides to protect, for whatever reason, or we invade The Netherlands.  This scares me.  Deeply.  No human being should be protected from prosecution for crimes against humanity; this court is set up to deal with people like Slobodan Milosevic.  It's where Nazi atrocities would be prosecuted present day.  I dearly hope that none of our citizens are performing acts heinous enough to be brought before the ICC, but I also believe that if they are, the ICC has every right to prosecute them without fear of war.  I love the US, but sometimes I am scared and ashamed of the decisions our leaders make.

So I wish that my cousin and his wonderful husband could come live here in the US but I don't feel too bad for them, being forced to stay in The Netherlands.  It's a country where I might be able to live and hold my head up a little higher when I tell people where I'm from.

meanie moms

Last month soccermom Elaine* was invited to go to LA and visit set of The New Adventures of Old Christine (8:30pm Monday nights on CBS) and interview the cast.  So she asked me to come along and let me tell you, I was WAY out of my league there.  Here is a list of the other attendees (courtesy of Elaine):

Amy Keroes and Dawn Dobras, founders of the popular working mother website Mommy Track’d, Erin Kane and Kristin Brandt, who created the website and podcast Manic Mommies – which features a weekly podcast available for download on Itunes and Yahoo; Melinda Roberts, better known as The Mommy Blog and author of Mommy Confidential, Liz Gumbinner, who is an advertising agency executive by day and pens the wildly successful blogs Cool Mom Picks and Mom101; Sara Fisher, a part-time public relations executive and author of the blog, The Self Made Mom; Tim Clark, who is better known as L.A. Daddy; as well as four contributors from BlogHer including: Elaine, author of Wannabe Hippie, Lorien Silverleaf, contributor to The Soccer Mom Vote, Yvonne from Joy Unexpected; and Liz Rizzo author of Everyday Goddess.

The studio had a cameraman follow us around all day and here's the result:

The show is really funny; the whole cast has impeccable comic timing and it was inspiring and intimidating to meet those talented and accomplished women. 

Including Alex Kapp Horner and Tricia O'Kelley, who play the Meanie Moms on the show.  They had coffee and pastries with the whole gaggle of bloggers after the interview.   Not only are these women even more beautiful in real life than on tv, but they are nice and real, nothing like Marly and Lindsay (the Meanie Moms).  Heck, one of 'em even married a real life Mainah (that's a person from Maine to all of you non-Maineiacs). 

But watching all the episodes of the show that are online and meeting these two ladies, I started thinking more and more about something that has been in the back of my mind for a long time.  It's the mommy wars.  Working vs stay at home, AP vs mainstream, all the ways we are different from the "other" moms.  And some of those "others" can be downright mean.  Though the Meanie Moms may seem like caricatures, there are really women that mean out there.  But not me, right?  Well, maybe, according to Alex Kapp Horner, maybe I am.  Because she says that some of the moms at her kid's school look down on her for not feeding her child organic food.  Wait a minute, I think I may do that, and I definitely have a hard time not judging when I see moms who aren't breastfeeding. 

What is this need we as women sometimes have to tear each other down?  To feel superior to others?  Why can't we all subscribe to the "sisterhood" many of us claim to aspire to?  I recently read Tripping the Prom Queen and was appalled by how much pain women cause each other as adults, not because I haven't experienced it, but because I didn't have any idea it was so widespread an epidemic.  Didn't we outgrow this stuff when we crossed over from high school?  Apparently not, as I have been deeply hurt by other women as an adult.  I can only hope and pray I haven't caused as much, and I have made real, coscious efforts to be as kind as I can and to try to make amends when I haven't lived up to my own standards.

I really think it is important as moms to model good sisterhood for our daughters so that they can inflict as little pain on others as possible and meet the "Mean Girls" with grace when they encounter them.  So I challenge you and myself to help minimize the pain and sorrow we cause to other women and help our daughters break the cycle of violence that women perpetuate on each other.

*For another, less political, viewpoint of the day, check out Elaine's post about it on her blog. 

multitasking

I love the idea of bento boxes, each little section holding a different type of food, all separate.  It's really perfect for those who prefer that their food not touch.  Laptop Lunchboxes* has the cutest bento-type boxes with little containers with lids.  I love the idea, but I am no longer storing food in plastic containers, so I thought I'd drop the company a line to see if they were interested in making one out of stainless.  So here's what I wrote:

I LOVE your lunch boxes!  But I am eliminating plastic food storage from my life (as are most of myfriends). Is there any chance you will be offering a lunchbox with stainless steel containers any time in the near future? I would personallynot mind a plastic lid, though maybe silicone would work?  Thanks,  Lorien

And here's what they wrote back:

Hi Lorien.Thanks for your suggestions. I'm glad you like our lunch box, but am sorry to hear that you may not be using it any more. We have had other customers interested in a stainless version, but we don't anticipate creating one any time soon. The process is very costly and we do not think enough people would pay the money that we would have to charge to make it worthwhile for us. We also have not heard of any study that shows that polypropylene leaches any chemicals into food and therefore are confident that our lunch box is safe to use. As Dr. Dean Edell has noted on his radio program, there are a lot of other things that you should be more worried about than the plastic that your food touches. I'm not sure I will change your mind, but think about it...the air we breathe has got to be more toxic from exhaust fumes than the polypropylene containers we place our food in.  Best Regards, Tamara Cummings, Obentec, Inc.

Condescend much?  As if it's impossible to think about air quality AND the containers I store my food in.  It's exactly that type of thinking that creates an environment of apathy.  The problem's too huge, so I just won't think about it and maybe it will go away.  I'm just not that type of person; I'm not wired that way.  If there is an injustice or wrong that's on my radar, I will try to right it in any way I can, however small.  Even if it's just talking about it.  I happen to think that talking about issues and letting people know what I have found out goes a long way toward change.  Isn't that what we're doing here?

And yeah, I can walk and chew gum at the same time, so thinking about toxins leaching  into food and the toxic air we breathe, at the same time, even, should be a cinch (I do drive a hybrid, FYI, trying to do my bit with the exhaust fumes).

Here is a list of articles on plastic coming into contact with food:

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plasticizers/Out-Of-Diet-PG5nov03.htm

http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/may302005/snt1030252005529.asp

http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=3068

http://www.ithacahours.com/greenstarstock.packaging.html

http://www.cancer.ca/ccs/internet/standard/0,3182,3172_369485__langId-en,00.html

http://www.worldandi.com/public/2001/October/ee.html

Anyone have any ideas on how to do away with my Camelbak lexan bottle?  It's just so easy, what with the straw and all...it's the only plastic I can't seem to kick.  I have seen the Kleen Kanteen and Sigg, but they don't have the straw.  It's key to my water consumption.  Here are some of the solutions I have come up with in getting rid of all of my plastic storage containers:

• IKEA (they have a lot of wonderful sizes and shapes of this glass container)
• Target sells this set of Pyrex containers--fridge to oven!
• Crate & Barrel sells a whole lot of really great sizes of glass dish with plastic lid, here's a smattering of what they offer, inexpensive!
• I also got a really great set of stainless steel tiny containers with lids at Target, but I can't find them online.  They're about an ounce each, perfect for sauce or dressing.

*The laptop luchbox can be seen in the height of its full glory on The Vegan Lunchbox.  The lunches this woman prepares her son are so beautiful and creative; I'm not a vegan but I check in there regularly to see her creations.

separation of church and state

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”   Many legal scholars interpret that to mean that the government should not promote any religion, but I've noticed recently that this particular aspect of the constitutional is violated every day with very little challenge.  Every once in a while we have some little skirmish about it, some won, some not, mostly with very little effect. 

Here in San Diego we have a battle over an 822 ft cross that marks a veteran's memorial on public land.  This particular inappropriate use of public land has been in litigation since 1989, with no end in sight.  If it were not on public land, if only christians were memorialized on this land, maybe there would be no argument; this one seems like a no-brainer to me, yet the fight continues.  I guess at the heart of my discontent with the current arrangement is that there is a segment (much larger than I am confortable with, frankly) that believes that what they believe is the only truth, THE TRUTH.  And all the rest of us are tragically wrong.  Even though our right to be wrong is protected in the first amendment of the constitution, many want to deny us that right.

Every day when I spend money, that money has god on it.  Even though lots of people do not trust in god, and many who do trust in god trust in a god who is conceptually very different than the capital G-O-D who is present in most churches.  If a Christian wants to observe one of the holiest days in their religious calendar, they can do so, with pay.  For anyone else, it's take a vacation day or work.  Why?  Because the United States of America has 10 national holidays, one of which is Christmas.  There's no day off for Yom Kippur, Diwali, or Id al Fitr (nor should there be).  Just Christmas.  Christ Mass, the celebration of which implies that Jesus was the messiah.  It's not a secular holiday, folks.  I don't care how many fat men in red show up with presents, you're not selling me on that one.  We don't even get a day off of work to vote, yet Chistmas is a national holiday?

In elementary school I had to say the pledge of allegiance with the "under god" bit in it, though I used to skip that part, staying silent while everyone around me mouthed words they didn't even think about because they didn't have to, they were all raised not to question.  We had Christmas parties every year and it never occurred to one teacher or student that it might not be appropriate in a publicly funded institution.  For some reason, it's just not on people's radar.  And many people for whom it is very much on their radar think it is right and just.

For those people, I offer you the comforting thought that you are right up there with the leaders of Iran and China.  In Iran religious beliefs are imposed by the government, in China, religion is outlawed; in both cases, the government is involved in religion.  In both cases, these governments are viewed by many westerners as despotic.  Let's keep our country from heading in either direction and keep government and religion separate. 

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller