New book projects, new affiliations and a few more steps to world domination (!) are in the cards for this year!  I can’t wait to get started and I hope you’ll join me on the way!

Which, as you probably know, means that all that Google-y tracking stuff gets all off kilter.  So the next time you have a chance, if I happen to be on your blogroll, could I ask you to change the url to www.punditmom.com?

Thanks!  I was hoping you wouldn’t mind! 

Sure, they have a big love-fest with Ann Coulter and Liz Cheney, two women who are adept at channeling the darkest side of Republican politics, but it seems like the GOP increasingly has a problem with women unless they agree that our country is “importing terrorists” or unless they’re willing to be mean to small children. In addition to questioning people’s political bona fides, I sense a sudden surge in resorting to petty juvenile ugliness if political women don’t agree with what are becoming lockstep GOP positions.

Conservative darling Laura Ingraham (one woman the GOP does seem to like) took her disdain of Meghan McCain to the mean girl level of suggesting that her views should be discounted because Ingraham thinks McCain is fat and talks funny. To her spunky credit, McCain finally announced that anyone who wants to mock her size can kiss her fat a$$!

Sarah Palin was the next big thing for the GOP when she was John McCain’s running mate, but today the not-so-subtle inferences that she’s incapable of anything other than advocating for abstinence only sex education are hard to escape. There seems to be a purposeful blind spot when it comes to processing anyone, especially women, who doesn’t gratefully accept the GOP wisdom that men have laid down before them and who decide that perhaps they can — *GASP* — think for themselves.

Sure, it could just be that right-wingers don’t like these three women — but there’s a pattern that’s becoming disturbingly common in how some Republicans talk about women they disagree with. There is a marked increase in resorting to personal insults, mockery and language my third-grade daughter and her classmates know better than to use.

Sotomayor is too judicial to say what she’d probably like to about Republican (and media) attacks that her temperament is suspect because she criticizes lawyers who’ve come before her if they were ill-prepared or disorganized when they were in her courtroom! I hate to break it to the GOP leadership, but if that’s a disqualifier, then every judge I’ve ever practiced before would be out on their bums!!

Seriously, isn’t it clear? Lots of men and some women in the GOP seem to be afraid of those who deviate from the approved party line. It’s sort of like the political equivalent of the old Saturday Night Live skit where every theater-goer describes the bad magic show in the same words –“It was as good as Cats. I could see it again and again.” Wander from the Rush Limbaugh-approved script and you’re smacked down as a critical, short-tempered, unqualified, plus-size diva.

Maybe I shouldn’t raise the issue. If the Republican party isn’t careful with its continued slams against women who think outside the small conservative party box, it will find itself with no women other than the current handful who seem to enjoy playing the inflammatory games of Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. As a Democrat, that’s OK with me — but I know there are plenty of moderate Republican women who are looking for a reason to stay in the party and feel like that’s becoming more difficult. If the way the party is set up now doesn’t change, all those bullies will find themselves without women voters.

The good old boys are going to need those votes — unless they’re planning on cloning themselves in time for November 2012.

Update: Just found this study at Bonnie Erbe’s blog. Maybe this has something to do with how some Republicans view women … ???

So many of us are trying to find ways to make a difference in our communities, sometimes politically and other times for social issues. We do what we can, but of course change can happen a little more quickly when those with slightly higher profiles decide to get involved with causes.

More Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lesley Jane Seymour is a supporter of CARE, a humanitarian organization dedicated to fighting global poverty. CARE recently held its annual national conference to help teach women how to lobby and approach lawmakers on behalf of some of the poorest women around the world. Seymour thought it would be a great idea if she could convince a group of her readers to attend the conference with her, so she launched the 40 Over 40 Making a Difference effort, which ended up being 50 Over 40!

50 MORE readers accompanied Seymour to the conference to learn about how they can lobby Congress on behalf of the poorest women around the world, with the focus being on securing the positions of women in their families and communities to better their economic situations.

Just days after conference, over 25 new co-sponsors in Congress signed on to the Child Marriage Prevention Act that was in the works, which is important because one of the goals of this year’s CARE conference was to bring attention to plight of so many girls around the world who are forced into marriages at incredibly young ages.

While Seymour was heading back home on the train after the conference, she took some time out to talk with me about why she thinks she, as a magazine editor, should be promoting women’s activism.

“We have the power and the time to help. It’s our obligation to change the world and our readers want to help do that,” Seymour said. “But to do that, we have to know how the legislative process works and get Congress to work for us.” And that’s where the work of the Care National Conference came in, teaching her and other 400 others how to navigate Congressional offices on behalf of causes they believe in.

Seymour talked with the “50 Over 40″ who accompanied her, and said so many were anxious to be more involved in helping to make change for women around the world.

“These women said they had all written checks to charity in the past, but that just giving money alone didn’t feel tangible to them. They wanted to work on a project that could do something with a specific impact,” said Seymour right before she almost missed her train stop because of our chat!

If I had been paying more attention, I would would have signed up for the Care conference, since it was held in Washington, D.C. Because what better information to have as Mothers of Intention, than knowing how to get doors opened and phones answered in the offices of our lawmakers. Just think what we could accomplish if more of us knew how to get that kind of access.

Maybe we should ask Seymour for 60 Over 40 next year?

I’m learning the hard way that they aren’t the innocuous diversion that I thought they were, especially with a daughter on the verge of tweenhood. Check out my latest at 50-something Moms, Fashion Magazines, I Have to “Quit” You.

Don’t worry, though — I’m not quitting punditry anytime soon!

That’s what Supreme Court nominee and federal court judge Sonia Sotomayor has said in the past about how individual experience comes into play when deciding cases and looking at the law.

Many conservatives are afraid of that approach and are going to try to convince America that no judge should be appointed to the Supreme Court who doesn’t decide cases merely by applying the law to the facts of a case in a vacuum.

But which facts? How do we know which ones are the important ones in any case? The right ones? The ones that will sway a case from one outcome to another? As someone who practiced law for about 15 years, I know that sometimes those questions are easier than others.

You can’t decide a case without looking at all the facts, even the ones that don’t seem important at first blush. I learned that the hard way as a young lawyer. That’s where digging a little deeper and calling on the things we’ve learned in life help us out as lawyers in a way that all those law school classes don’t.

At the risk of being called too flip in this analogy, I’d like to invoke my favorite movie lawyer Elle Woods from Legally Blonde. (If you’re short on time, pick up the video at about 4:30).

As a recovering litigator, I LOVE a good cross-examination! I’m not talking about the unlikely witness stand confession — Elle’s personal expertise that the rules of hair care are simple and finite are what turned the tide in that case. Without knowing those facts, she would not have been able to make the connection and prove that the witness was lying. Yet her male bosses scoffed at her, thinking she was headed down a pointless tangent as she questioned the witness.

I know this was just a movie, but the example happens in real life cases every day — lawyers and judges find ways to apply the things they’ve learned in their own lives — to sift through facts to figure out what’s relevant and what isn’t. Sometimes that’s easy and sometimes it takes something more than an Ivy League law degree and years on the bench to put the pieces together to see the whole picture.

Does anyone really doubt that the outcome of the Lilly Ledbetter case would have been different if the majority of Supreme Court justices had faced the kind of discrimination Ledbetter or their colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had? Ginsburg, as is evident from her dissent, saw the facts of the discrimination a lot differently than her male counterparts.

Facts are never just black and white. They look a lot different depending on the lens through which they are viewed. For some men, there’s no relevance to how women have been treated differently than men by companies who find loopholes in existing laws. But to a woman who has lived or observed that experience, there’s a very real and significant difference.

When the GOP goes on the attack on Sotomayor’s nomination, as they surely will, and try to frame her as an activist judge or someone who can’t focus just on the facts and the law, keep reminding yourself about Elle Woods.

If she hadn’t been a Cosmo girl, her client would have ended up in jail for life for a murder she didn’t commit. I’m not saying that we should ask if Sonia Sotomayor was ever a Cosmo girl, but sometimes there are important things our life experiences teach us that get us to the right outcome.

That’s not activism. That’s real life.

There’s a storm brewing around me, and everywhere I turn someone is having a crisis about the meaning of hope. The questions are sometimes spoken, but mostly silent, and they sound something like this:

If I don’t want to travel around the world to (maybe scary) places and ask people questions about hope, am I still a hopeful person?
Can you be hopeful and incredibly doubtful at the same time?
Is there some sort of expert definition of hope and do you have to be a survivor of various tragedies to claim it?
What if the hope you know best is the kind that shows up in tiny moments–like giving a child a bath or washing the dishes or making a bed–and what if you’re not so hopeful about other things–like if the person you love loves you back? or if your life can be dramatically different than it is right at this moment, even though you desperately wish it was?
Is being hopeful best left to a hope specialist? or do regular people who (theoretically) have nothing to complain about really have a shot at that thing at all?

I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I’m watching carefully as the questions unravel the askers and I’m hoping against all hope I have nothing to do with all the accompanying self-doubt, but I’m not so sure.

What I do know is that hope starts as a seed and if you are very, very lucky, you find a place to plant it, and someone else comes along and waters it and little by little together you can watch it grow. What it grows into no one can predict exactly unless you were also lucky enough to find the master gardener who gave it to you and ask her what it will turn out to be, but even if you can find that person and she decide to tell you, I’m not sure you could believe her or that your heart could even let you know the answer–the future of seeds being generally mysterious and uncertain, especially to the person who’s never held a seed before.

At least not a seed as simple and innocent as this.

It was just a flash, anyway, right? The way you felt when you saw the fire in her little girl eyes. The way your heart leapt when you first looked through the lens at running water, fresh turned earth. The way you knew everything had to change when you heard your name, when you read the fine print.

It hardly matters.

Or does it?

Hope asks that you notice tiny moments, each one, but not only this. Hope asks that you trust them, that you listen to them, that you take that sneaking suspicion that the Universe is indeed a safe place, a good place even and that you plant it deep into that dark corner of your heart.

It’s a ridiculous act, and no one need know. Until, of course, everyone has to know. That something’s growing here. And that whatever it is, it is no longer meant for darkness, that it is taking over actually. That it is expanding beyond the confines of your mind and twisting and turning its way out your ears and your eyes and even–God help us–your mouth where it says exactly what it was thinking, back when it was just a seed in a case in the dark in the part of your heart where you were most hurting.

And believe me, these words are a scandal. They are deceptively simple. So simple, you could miss the click before the explosion goes off, before you understand really, that everything must change if this thing is even half true.

“You have everything you need.”
“You are not alone.”
“No one belongs here more than you.”

By the time you speak them, you will forget about hope or the seed or the flash when you first wondered if it could be true. By then, you will have an actual living thing to tend to, a living thing that looks nothing like when it started–a little bit of nothing in your hands. With this living thing–this Hope made manifest–you will have a place to rest, a place to stand, a view from which to see the world, a blossom of goodness to inhale, a bit of fruit to nourish you, a site to behold from a far off land. From the shoots of this living thing, you will plant again and again and again until your life is a field of possibility, until your land is a garden of Hope where any lost traveler can come.

For something to eat.
Or a seed.
Or a story.
Or a place to be convinced,
the best is yet to come.

Thanks, Jen! We can’t wait to see the photographs you come back with. Anyone who knows you knows they will be filled with inspiration for the rest of us.

Photo courtesy of Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters

But as I was trying to capture a little of this late afternoon light, my camera started acting all funky — giving me messages that the lens wasn’t attached correctly (when I’m pretty sure it was) and not doing it’s auto-focus thing. I’m trying to arrange a get-together with one of the Shutter Sisters soon, so maybe she can help me out. In the meantime, a think a trip to the camera store is in order next week.

Because what’s a girl to do if she can’t play with the camera when the mood, and the light, strike?

Photo by PunditMom

I have to admit that I am so tired of all the eye rolls from friends, acquaintances and even doctors after even the slightest mention that there are certain foods I AM CONVINCED have an adversely affect my son’s behavior.

The typical comment (accompanied by a snicker) is These foods have been around forever, your son is not the first to eat them. These kids are fine and Chill Out.

But, now a kindred spirit in the form of mom Robyn O’Brien, founder of AllergyKids, has laid it all out for us mamas to understand in her book, The Unhealthy Truth.

I knew it! I am not crazy. The unhealthy, and unfortunate, truth is that since the late 1990s, our food supply has undergone a significant change where for example the package of boxed macaroni & cheese that you ate as a child is not that same that you are feeding your kids today. Instead our food supply is NOW laden with genetically-modified proteins, antibiotics, chemical additives and preservatives, all allergens irritating our kids’ immune systems and contributing to a skyrocketing allergy epidemic.

Robyn O’Brien leaves no stone unturned going from food group to food group and telling us what we need to know. Really! There’s drama, financial intrigue and politics behind the scenes of the FDA, CDC, and FAAN when it comes to Soy, Corn, Milk, Artificial Sweetners & Coloring. O’Brien is our generation’s Erin Brokovitch sharing with us a John Grishamesque-tale wherein you expect Julia Roberts to be starring in the book’s movie-version. Unfortunately, this isn’t the Pelican Brief, it’s a true story and our kids are the victims.

What Robyn O’Brien learned and has shared with us is that parents need to be the ones reading every label (if only that were good enough) and understanding from where their children’s food is sourced because unfortunately our government has done a piss-poor job over the last 10+ years protecting our food supply. Until things change, parents need to be more active and responsible.

Now, you can read The Unhealthy Truth and get really mad. Or, you can read it and be motivated to act like Mama O’Brien. We can make our food safe for our kids and make laws to protect our children from dangerous foods just like the European, Australian, Japanese and Russian moms have already done.

See, our food has changed and new ingredients have been added that have NEVER been tested for safety. Don’t you think our food should be clearly labeled so that we have a clear choice about what to feed our kids? I sure do.

The European Union has a law requiring the labeling of foods containing ingredients with more than 0.9% of genetically-modified content. We Americans have nothing. Heck, I had no idea corn (found in virtually all processed foods) and soy were genetically-modified. Shame on me? Shame on our government? Or, shame on the food industry?

It is possible for big companies to make and sell kid-friendly, family-friendly and healthfully-processed foods. They are doing it in many countries outside of the US.

In the UK, many US-based companies like Wal-Mart, Kraft, Coca-Cola, and the Mars Company have voluntarily removed artificial colors, the preservative sodium benzoate and aspartame from their products. Which begs the question why are these companies not doing a better job here at home?

Don’t our kids deserve better?

What can you do? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.

1) Start reading food labels much more vigilantly again; we’re very good about organic dairy, vegetables and grass-fed meats already. (The book provides you with a list of brands to trust)

2) Eliminate some of the worse offenders from my son’s diet (Yellow 5 & Sodium Benzoate) swiftly.

3) Support initiatives to have a safer food supply. I went to Change.org, typed “food” in the search button, and supported actions that made sense. I’m not done here, there’s much action to be taken.

Does this mean my family is going cold turkey and you’ll never see us chowing down on some colorfully-processed foods? No. I love me some cheeseburgers & fries (with a shake to go with it) for special times and won’t deny my son the same guilty pleasures on occasion.

But the bigger issue is getting the companies and the government to make it so that we parents don’t always feel like we’re playing bad cop but rather can walk confidently down our local grocery store aisles and shop for food without fear that it is making us sick.

If your child’s health is important to you, then yes, The Unhealthy Truth is for you. It’s intense (don’t plan to fly through it like the Twilight series), but it’s an important book, one that parents need to digest. I didn’t feel there was any fear-mongering in it, but rather well-researched and important information about the connection between our food and why it is possibly making this generation of kids sick.

Thanks so much, Isabel, for being this week’s Mother of Intention!