Finally, Some Sweet Health News

Proof, at last, that chocolate is a wonder food! Yes, I know I’ve thousands of words debunking bad science and bogus ideas about health and bodies. (Offline, it’s upwards of a thousand pages.) But I’m also on record as supporting the health benefits of red wine and coffee (oh, and more on coffee here and here, for nervous new moms). And now, with chocolate, we’ve got the trifecta! A yummy, healthy hattrick!

From Moonstruck Chocolate in Champaign, Illinois, posted by Flicker user eszter, used under a Creative Commons license.

The bottom line is that a meta-study just published in the British Medical Journal found that the people who ate the most chocolate were  37% less likely to have cardiovascular disease and 29% less likely to suffer a stroke. No consistent, measurable impact was seen on diabetes or heart failure. Popular reporting on the new findings has actually been mighty thin, beyond the gleeful headlines. The New York Times and the medical newswire Ivanhoe both offered up the bare bones: the good news, plus a few cautionary phrases about the need for further research and a disclaimer that you shouldn’t just go hog out on chocolate because OH NOES, THE FATZ!

So I took a peek at the study, which is freely available on line. As all important research should be! I don’t care if we historians have to go through a library; the people who want to read my work know where to find me, anyway. But health is a public good, such research is often publicly underwritten, and most medical journals are part of a rapacious oligopoly raking in 40% profits on other people’s work. Earlier this week, the Guardian compared these journals to Rupert Murdoch, except with extra, surplus, bonus evil. Kudos to the BMJ for bucking this trend and letting regular folks view the full text without ponying up $35 or more for the privilege.

On to the study itself, which is a review of seven earlier studies that were mostly observational in character. None were randomized and controlled, so probably the whole lot would be discarded as rubbish by the Cochrane Review. They largely relied on questionnaires administered to patients, which raises the specter of recall bias. (I often can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.) As in any meta-study, comparison is difficult because the individual studies relied on different measures and methods. But they weren’t crap science, either (that was the point of excluding other studies that weren’t adequately rigorous or informative).

Importantly, most of the studies under review did make serious attempts to control for confounding variables (even though this reader was prepared to forgive just about any methodological flaw):

Five of the seven studies included in this meta-analysis reported a significant reduction in the risk of developing cardiometabolic disorders associated with higher levels of chocolate intake (one on cocoa intake), even after adjustment for potential confounders, including age, physical activity, body mass index, smoking status, dietary factors, education, and drug use. Although we did not find any experimental studies (randomised controlled trials) evaluating the effect of chocolate on hard cardiometabolic outcomes, our findings corroborate those of previous meta-analyses of experimental and observational studies in different populations related to risk factors for cardiometabolic disorders.

In other words, the literature is pretty consistent: chocolate is good for the heart and your whole cardiovascular system. And contrary to how some commenters at the Times were trying to spin it, those benefits were not negated by fat, whether in the chocolate or in the human consumer. They accrued even in people who ate the cheap, sugary stuff (though this is one area where I’d like to see research, which would no doubt confirm my own prejudice in favor of very dark chocolate). I am not surprised by this, since chocolate milk has already gotten the Dr. SunGold stamp of healthy hedonism.

Another way in which this strikes me as pretty good science: The authors point to a couple of plausible biological mechanisms that could make chocolate protective, which include “increasing the bioavailability of nitric oxide, which subsequently might lead to improvements in endothelial function, reductions in platelet function, and additional beneficial effects on blood pressure, insulin resistance, and blood lipids.” Nitric oxide, as you may recall, is the linchpin behind the effectiveness of a certain little blue pill. Viagra was initially under development as a cardiovascular drug that just happened to have felicitous effects on blood vessels located further south.

So in conclusion, if your chocolate bar is still rigid after 4 hours, you may want to consult your physician. Or you could just take it in hand and nibble it ’til it softens. Melting it into a hot fudge sauce is another medically advisable option. And remember: all that erotic enjoyment is good for you!

As for me, I’m trying to get a syllabus together this evening, so no cocoa-inspired sexytimes for me! But I just poured a glass of red wine and broke out oa square of the dark stuff. For breakfast, it’ll be my classic homemade mocha with Snowville milk. Now some intrepid researcher just needs to reveal the wonder nutrients in cheese.

From Chocolatier Blue in Lincoln, Nebraska, taken by Flickr user J. Paxon Reyes, used under a Creative Commons license.

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My Mother’s Day Wishlist

The kids are asleep, as of 11:55 p.m. EDT. I’ve got candles burning in the same tealight candelbra that did a job on Grey Kitty’s whiskers, lo those many years ago. I sit on the front porch as the rain cascades around me, letting me and my candles burn.

Oh, and I’m wearing a bathrobe, just to confirm that most hoary of prejudices against bloggers.

The kids will wake soon, and when they do, I’ll be presented with offerings. One involves dirt. Or earth. Or something that requires earth. I’m all for it, though I nearly managed to kill my ‘mater seedlings this weekend through a deadly combo of drought, too-close grow lights, and lack of fertilizer. (When my own fumbling incompetence rains down, I do wonder how my children continue to thrive. It helps that their CNS trumps the tomato’s defense mechanisms. I guess opposable thumbs don’t hurt, either. At any rate, my earth mother cred is shot to hell; just ask my ‘maters.)

I will tear up at my children’s sweet offerings, no matter that they felt obligated or spurred by a class assignment at school.

I will hug them and kiss them and keep their presents forever.

And yet, I still have a wishlist.

1) Can we get beyond the idea that women are uniquely suited to multitasking? Cordelia Fine just bulldozes this stereotype in her book, Delusionas of Gender. And more: Kevin Drum marshals the evidence that multitasking is folly for everyone, irrespective of gender. No wonder I still have a florid scar from the time when I tried to pull a baking sheet from the oven while ensuring that the mini-Tiger (aged not-quite-three) wouldn’t get burned. (Guess who got schorched instead??) I keep multitasking, I’m liable to lose that opposable thumb. Picture a dog watering a tree. Picture a dog baking a souffle. The intersection of that? Um, that would be me. Multitasking. The combo of onions and knives is a particularly foolhardy ideas.

2) Can we please just “be excellent to each other,” as Bill and Ted would say? The one thing I truly want from my beautiful boys is kindness. Toward each other. Toward me. They have mad skillz with their friends, so can we please bring those skillz home? Because, y’know, rudeness is a neurotoxin, especially when rudeness is spread among peer or near-peers. I’m well aware that another camp of researchers regards sibling arguments as healthy, spurring on their verbal development. May God, or some benevolent goddess, or my pal the Ceiling Cat save us from further precocious verbal development. We’re already at a point where the least bad outcome could be a Amero-Germanic version of Alan Dershowitz. But back to the neurotoxins. My kids appear to bee more than fine. They chat; they argue, they wear me down. But my brain? It’s in acute danger of rotting! Neural termites and mad-cow disease could hardly hollow it out any faster than the daily squabbles! No wonder the Red Cross recently rejected my blood on suspicion of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakobs disease, aka mad cow for homans. (True story.)

That’s just my very personal list. I know theere’s ooodles more to say about what other kids and mamas need – not to mention daddies. I realize that my personal wishlist is very much formed by the concerns and privileges of educated, middle-class mothers.As for what less-privileged mothers need – well, Katha Pollitt pretty kicked it into the goal with her commentary on the “Tiger Mother” flap.Please read what she has to say about class,mothering, and solidarity, and I’ll just leave it at that – with the injunction that we should all be excellent to each other, to our parents and our children, tomorrow and always.

Happy Mother’s Day to you all, be you bio-mother, step-mother, adoptive mother, other-mother … or just another exhausted multitasker of any age, gender, or species. May your day be crowned by candles, flowers, champagne, and the survival of your opposable thumbs.

And on those days when excellence turns to flatulence? Well, you’ll still be welcome here at the Kitteh, where we recognize that being a child or a parent or just a fallible hooman is simply who we are. Welcome to the club. I’d light a candle for you, but I must admit it’s rather perfumed, and you might just prefer eau de methane.

(Next up: our local Mama Robin, if I can manage not to terrify her.)

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Less Traumatic Surgery for Some Breast Cancers?

Here’s the backstory: Up to now about 20 percent of breast cancer patients – those found to have cancer in the lymph nodes under their armpits – had those nodes cut out as if they were little balloons that could carry metastases to anywhere in the body. And indeed, sometimes cancer spreads via the lymph nodes, which is why they had to go. Or so thought any responsible oncologist.

For the women who undergo extensive axillary dissection (that is, cutting under the arms and removing the nodes), the risk of complications goes up. They are more vulnerable to infection, but more importantly, many of them get lymphedema – painful, chronic swelling of the affected arm due to the inability of the lymphatic system to remove excess fluid from the limb. It’s miserable, disabling, and disfiguring. It can be progressive. It has no cure. You don’t want to have it. Women can also suffer nerve damage, shoulder pain, and limited mobility of the arm. (All of this goes for male breast cancer patients, too.)

But the medical thinking was: We need to cut out any microscopic cancers to minimize the risk of recurrence. What patient would risk her life to buck that logic?

Now, the sun has set on this thinking. A major new study has proven that for properly selected patients – those with tumors smaller than two inches whose cancer has spread to the nodes – axillary dissection and all of its attendant ills is not necessary. It confers no survival advantage. None! Chemo and radiation – which are de rigeur for anyone with nodal cancer – seem to work equally well if the nodes are left in peace. I have not looked at the study, but what I read in the New York Times was highly persuasive and well reported. (Were I the patient, I’d definitely want to scour the scientists’ original article.)

The new recommendation is irrelevant to most early-stage patients, whose disease has not yet spread to the nodes (which can be ascertained by examining a couple of likely suspects with “sentinel node biopsy”). Nor will it help those people diagnosed with more advanced disease. None of the patients in these two groups should be treated with axillary dissection anyway, under normal circumstances. But boy, it could make life after cancer a whole lot more comfortable for the folks who fall in that 20% – for whom lymphedema often became a painful lifelong reminder that they’d had cancer and it could recur at any time.

Will doctors actually take the study’s findings to heart? That’s where I’m skeptical. Axillary node dissection just met its Waterloo. But will breast surgeons – indoctrinated by education that says more treatment is better, and anything less is irresponsible – continue to fight the old battle? I’m afraid they will, and not just because I cynically think they fear lawsuits. (Any sentient doctor should fear lawsuits; they’re part of the landscape by now.) No, I worry that habit will prevail, along with the conviction that doing something is always better than doing nothing. The New York Times report that major cancer centers and a few individual doctors are changing their protocol:

But Dr. Carlson said that some of his colleagues, even after hearing the new study results, still thought the nodes should be removed.

“The dogma is strong,” he said. “It’s a little frustrating.”

Patients may need to push their doctors. We can ask them about our options. If they’re unwilling to question from old methods, we can find another doctor. I’m not in that position right now (thank my stars), but I’ve had multiple scary mammograms. If I do get cancer, I’d hope for an aftermath where my body wouldn’t bear more scars than necessary.

The rage expressed in the NYT comments section by women who live with those reminders – unnecessarily, they now know – is justified, even though their physicians did the best they could with the knowledge they had. But now that we know more? I wouldn’t want to live with that pain and rage if it could be avoided. Life after cancer poses enough other challenges.

 

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Unimaginable Back in the Day: Gender-Neutral Dorms

And by “back in the day,” I mean in the rollicking ’80s, when some parents panicked at the prospect of women and men on the same hall.

My university is on the verge of establishing a gender-neutral housing option. This doesn’t mean that all students will be mixed willy-nilly, irrespective of gender. It just means that some students can opt into a dorm where any genders can share a room.

This is really good news, obviously, for people who aren’t gender conformists. Students who are trans or genderqueer will finally have options. Since there are only 50 beds available in the pilot program, and they’re mainly for upperclassmen, incoming students will have to file special requests. I hope this process will be simple, so that the youngest trans students won’t feel they have to fight for access.

I’m frankly surprised that my university is taking this leap. Compared to a more diverse urban campus, we don’t have many openly trans students. Many of our students have conservative parents. Our university administration is not known for taking risks. I applaud it for doing the right thing. I’m even more impressed by the students who raised the issue and got the policy changed.

One of my outstanding former students, who blogs at I Hamburger, punctures the myth that opposite-sex couples will leap at the chance to live together:

How many unmarried couples did I know who lived together off-campus (and we’re talking planned it as they were a couple, not lived together and became a couple)? Zero. That’s because in college, people usually want to live with their friends, not significant others.

(Read the whole post here.)

That sounds about right. Even back in those swinging ’80s, my college friends shied away from living with their romantic partners. It represented more commitment than most of us wanted.

I did briefly live with a boyfriend for one summer during college, but only under duress. Not that we didn’t like each other. Not that we minded sharing a bed. We just didn’t want to be locked into a commitment we weren’t ready for. The house manager of our student-run semi-co-op informed us that the only way he could satisfy other students’ wishes was to place the two of us into a shared room. It was just for the summer, and at the end of it we happily reverted to separate quarters.

The only lasting impact of that summer? I inherited his kitten, since his new quarters prohibited animals. (So did mine, but I had a much better chance at hiding her.) That kitten was Grey Kitten, patron cat of this blog.

I knew exactly one couple who shared a room in a conventional dorm (not a co-op). That was my freshman year, in a dorm full of pre-meds and teetotaling Asian Americans. Skeet and Tom had matching plaid bathrobes that they wore almost constantly. Yes, Skeet was a dude (as was Tom). It took me half the year to figure out they were more than mere roommates. Even in that conservative milieu, way back in 1981, no one gave a hoot.

I’m sure a few parents will gripe about my university’s new policy. Maybe they need to recall that 30 and 40 years ago, students were having sex just like students do today – no more, no less. The only thing that might have changed since then? Our acceptance of sexual diversity.

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Which Hunters Should Get to Hunt?

I’m not talking about duck versus pheasant versus deer. No. For the past few days, hunters just outside my town have been trying to track a human. He wasn’t their prey, though. Denzle Stanley is a small, slight, 84-year-old man who wandered off into the frozen rural hills two mornings ago. After three days of searching, officials called off the search.

Those of us who didn’t know Mr. Stanley learned of the search’s end the same way as we heard he’d gone missing: through the county’s 911 alert system. (Which, I might add, I’m happy to see put to intelligent use.) The second 911 call ended on an odd note, though. While the sherriff continues to investigate, citizens are positively warned off of further searching.

I realize that hopes dim after three days. The county threw all its resources into the search, ranging from dogs to helicopters to infrared. Meanwhile, nights have dropped below freezing, with a few inches of snowfall since yesterday. It would take a miracle to find him alive.

But that’s not why the search was called. Instead, as NBC 4 (Columbus) reports:

Authorities said the public should not search in the wooded areas and fields surrounding Albany because of the start of muzzleloader deer season Saturday.

“We do not want anyone getting hurt with all the hunters in the woods next week,” Albany Fire Chief Roger Deardorff said.

What would it take to call off the deer hunters, instead of the trackers of a human being? Local officials report that the family has agreed to suspending the search, and volunteers are exhausted. And yet, at least a few members of the public evidently want to keep searching; if they’d all gone home, there’d be no need for a 911 warning. Couldn’t the deer hunters wait a few more days? Maybe Mr. Stanley still wouldn’t be found, but his loved ones might suffer fewer “what-ifs.”

I don’t know if Mr. Stanley suffers from dementia, though at his age, it wouldn’t be surprising. Caretakers for people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias worry about exactly this scenario. My father is not yet so confused that I worry about him wandering off, but that day will surely come. I feel for Mr. Stanley’s family. (If any of them were to arrive here via Google, I would say this: You did the best you could. You tried to strike a balance between protection on the one hand, and allowing him some freedom and dignity on the other. That is all any of us can do when age befuddles our elders.)

This week we also got an alert for a local teenager who’d gone missing. By the end of the day she’d been located, safe, in Missouri, after the police tracked her cell, and every parent in the district rejoiced a little, whether we’d known her or not.

Her rescue makes me think that we should equip our elders with cell phones. They may never learn to text, but hey, I don’t text either. I’m betting you could buy a lot of cheap cell phones for the price of a single manhunt.

In the meantime, though: Couldn’t we just delay muzzleloader deer season a few more days?

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Sittin’ Here on the Group W Bench

Best Thanksgiving song ever? “Alice’s Restaurant.” Hands down.

(Then again, I can’t think of another T-day song except for “Over the River and through the Woods,” which was written by another kick-ass American dissident, Lydia Maria Child, who fought for the rights of slaves, Indians, and women. Her song wasn’t political – unless I’m missing a subtext – but I do want to know more about her.)

If you don’t know “Alice’s Restaurant” – or if you haven’t listened in a while – here’s Arlo Guthrie playing it a few years ago, with scenes from the “Alice’s Restaurant” movie interspersed. (The original lyrics are here, but Arlo updated and edited them a bit for this performance.)

(Click here if you can’t view the clip.)

Astonishingly, my very Republican, anti-hippie, draft-dodger-deprecating dad loved this song. He used to play it on the piano all the time when I was a little kid in the early 1970s. My sibs and I would sing along and dance. Only later did I read all the spoken-part lyrics and wonder: what’s a father-raper? By then I was maybe twelve and able to plunk the tune out myself on the piano. I was also abundantly old to realize my dad was not a good person to ask.

“Alice’s Restaurant” has been running through my head the past week or so, and it’s not just in honor of Thanksgiving. I’m thinking it’s time for a new edit of its final lyrics (with apologies to Arlo):

And the only reason I’m singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, or maybe you’re just tryin’ to hop a plane without gettin’ all irradiated and nekkid-scanned. So if you find yourself inspected, detected, infected, neglected and seee-lected for a backscatter scanner,  just sing, “Officer, You can get anything you want, at Alice’s restaurant.” And opt out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t grope him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re batshit and they won’t grope either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends, they may think it’s a movement.

Maybe it’s not a movement. Maybe it’s just one guy who convinces a couple of other people to opt out.

Or maybe you don’t care about opting out in the airport. Maybe you’re okay with people viewing your, ahem, junk. (Geez, I hate that term as much as I hate “vajayjay!” Now we’re stuck with it!)

Isn’t there something in your life, though, that just has to stop? Isn’t there some occasion that demands you sing a bar of “Alice” and just opt out? (And no, I don’t mean an irritating relative at your Thanksgiving table … though I just learned that my sister’s husband’s father’s third wife conducts training (??!!WTF??!!) for the TSA, so perhaps it’s just as well I missed out on this years family gathering in California, even though I’m aching to be there.)

If you’re ready to sing a bar of “Alice” – well, I’ll join in on the harmony. And I might – just might – sing it solo at the Columbus airport a week from today.

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Action You Can Take against the TSA’s Sexual Abuses

I’ve been posting up a storm about why the new TSA body scanners are unethical and arguably illegal (and I’m not done yet). If you agree that the TSA has violated a line that should not be crossed in a democratic country that ostensibly values human rights, here are a few things you can do.

Right now, you can complain (politely) to the chair of the Senate transportation committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (WV), at 202-224-6472. The committee is holding an oversight meeting on the TSA tomorrow morning (Wed., Nov. 17) at 10 a.m. I just called and they were very nice to me, even though I’m not a West Virginia constituent. You can also go to the National Opt-Out Day website and see if your state has a senator on the committee. The site provides contact info for all committee members. I’ll probably call at least a couple of the senators from the states where I’ve got a personal history (North Dakota and California).

I just mentioned National Opt-Out Day in passing. This is a concerted effort to get passengers who are outraged about the TSA’s procedures to opt out on November 24. I don’t know the fellow behind National Opt-Out Day, Brian Sodegren, but he appears to be just one guy, not an organization, which makes me tend to think he’s just a fed-up citizen and not a minion of the Freepers, for instance. His website doesn’t sound any obvious right-wing dog-whistles, and a quick Google search doesn’t flag Sodegren as any flavor of extremist. Even if he were a Freeper, though, I’d be happy to make common cause on this issue, because civil liberties don’t belong to any particular political constituency. I’m staying home for Thanksgiving, but if I were traveling, I’d definitely join in. I hope the protest will call attention to TSA abuses and wake up some Americans who up until now simply trusted that everything the TSA does should make us safer.

Some people are choosing to boycott flying until the new policies are rescinded. I can’t do that because I need to visit family on the other side of the country, but if you want to join them – or even if you just want to follow breaking news on these issues – check out their Facebook page, We Won’t Fly. I agree with commenter Mark (who brought the page to my attention) that we need to act on a number of fronts. The intent of this tactic is to put pressure on the airlines and other branches of the travel industry, which will then put pressure on the government.

When I fly on December 2, I plan to opt out. I’ll politely but firmly state that I do not consent to having my breasts or genitals touched, I’m merely not resisting. I’ll also decline my “right” to be hand-screened in a private space, which only removes accountability. We have the right to a witness in private screening, but I’m flying alone, and I don’t consider a second TSA screener an impartial witness. Let the world see what the TSA is doing! The violation is in the invasive touching, not in the view that onlookers will get. If I’m subjected to invasive screening, I will document it. I’ll ask to lodge a complaint with the TSA. I’ll register it with the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s incident reports. (EPIC is suing to have the scanners removed from service). I’ll also report it to the ACLU. I’ll call my senator, Sherrod Brown. And of course I’ll blog about it!

I also thought about wearing only a swimsuit under my coat the next time I fly. This would underscore the ludicrousness of patting someone down when every curve and bump is visible. But overt protest actions only make sense if you can get them filmed, and I’m unfortunately traveling solo. (Also, I really do need to get to California, so getting kicked off the flight is not an option.) It turns out that one of Germany’s fringe political parties, the Pirates, beat me to the idea.

If you’ve got more ideas, leave them in comments, and I’ll do a follow-up post.

(Click here if you can’t view the clip.)

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Why, Some of My Best Friends Are Scientists! (And Some Are Even Girls, Too)

And I might have become one myself, had I not blown up some chemicals in a high school lab. (My best-friend-cum-lab-partner took that incident as a signal from teh Ceiling Cat to pursue a Ph. D. in microbiology, so go figger.) Throughout college, at least half my friends were in STEM fields, maybe because Stanford was so heavy on engineers. (Conspicuously few were premeds, though, as playing in the Band had a lethal impact on many folks’ GPA.)

I still really enjoy science – and scientists – and so even if there were no gender angle to it, I’d still get a kick out of this website, which features drawings of scientists done by seventh graders. Each has a before-and-after version, with the “after” drawn once the student had met up with a real, live specimen of a scientist at Fermilab.

The paired drawings handily expose all manner of stereotypes – and the students’ growth beyond them. Sometimes it’s terminal nerd-dom that gets swept away, as in these sketches by “Ashley“:

Not that nerdiness need be bad, mind you!  Disclaimer: I too cherish my inner nerd. Though I never really took to Heinlein, I still have a soft spot for the original Start Trek, and some days I like books a bit better than people. And I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone – that most humanities types harbor a little nerdy streak, though we try with varying success to cover it up. The most assertively hip and fashionable big academic shindig, the MLA conference, might be interpreted as a massive exorcism of the inner nerd. Surely there’s a paper in that: “The Return of the Repressed: Post-Freudian Perspectives on the Nerd Within.”

While Ashley’s drawing makes mention of women and men, some of the other girls actually shifted the gender of their “typical” scientist. A great example comes from Amy:

See, the scientist shifts from being obsessive and frankly unbalanced to … being hip circa 1972! A scientist may even be interested in racquetball! (And honey, I’m not snarking about the “even” – I had zero interest in the sport.)

And a scientist can be a gal. A fashionable gal, even, who’s friendly and open and has a sense of humor. A gal who likes to dance.

Now, go flip through the other drawings. They’re cute, they’re enlightening, and they show that Amy was not alone in her preconceptions, even if she did draw the awesomest green smoke.

So the next time someone starts spouting untested, Lawrence Sommer-esqeu theories about women being naturally less suited than men to STEM careers, we might recall Amy’s sketches. We might ask what happens when girls (and boys!) meet real-life scientiests. We might also ask how to make science careers more family friendly – but oy, that’s be a whole ‘nother post. We might wonder how we can offer encouragement to those girls who nearly blow out a ceiling tile in chem lab (ahem!).

In the meantime, I have a couple of scientist friends who I think would rock that turquoise blouse and matching oversized shades.

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Hazarding a New Definition of Virginity?

So I’m purple with envy (yep, that’s one stage beyond green) at the folks who were lucky enough to attend the Rethinking Virginity conference at Harvard last week. I’m no longer a practical expert – why, my virginal days lie deep in the previous millennium – but I’d be a virgin at this sort of conference, one that straddles the academic, activist, and bloggy worlds. Oh, and it’s not just that I’d be mildly starstruck, though I’d love to meet Shelby Knox. The less famous folk had equally smart things to say. If you too want to feel mopey about staying home, Therese has got a very nice link farm from the conference.

Anyway, I’ve been mulling over those posts and triangulating them (hexatulating?) with Hanna Blank’s marvelous essay on process-oriented virginity in Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. I’m basically on board with Blank’s suggestion that the world wouldn’t end if each person demarcated their virginity on their own terms. I especially love her idea (going back to St. Augustine, I shit you not!) that a rape survivor can define for herself whether she still wants to claim the title of virgin.

But part of me wants to say, Fuck virginity! What did it ever do for me, anyway? And can we cut out all this silly rhetoric about “losing” virginity? Grooving on my newfound sexual experience was pure win for me. I’m leaving out a few messy stories, sure, but on balance: pure fucking win.

And maybe we could just ditch virginity. Let it go up in smoke. Maybe we could talk instead about desires and acts and those particular people who set us humming.

But there is something important about “coming of age” sexually, and I wouldn’t want to lose that. Lux Alptraum’s wonderful Jezebel post on her conference panel provides the killer argument for why we still need “virginity.”

During the queer virginity panel, we examined how the notion of virginity—traditionally correlated with penis-in-vagina intercourse—transforms when mapped onto a queer identity. Though one panelist felt that the idea of virginity lost its meaning outside of a heterosexual relationship, I still feel that the experience of one’s first sexual relationship (however you define that) is significant enough to transcend gender, sexuality, and identity. In fact, in a queer space, loss of virginity can sometimes be more significant, as its that first sexual experience that solidifies an identity that might initially have been considered “questioning” or “curious.”

(More goodness here.)

My own coming-of-age story was relentlessly heterocentric, yet I totally get what Lux is saying about the formation of identity. Our first really significant sexual encounter shapes our sense of self – not immutably, but importantly. And it’s not just a matter of sexual-orientation as identity, though that’s obviously a huge deal. The demise of virginity can also be about claiming adulthood, learning a serious new way to play as an adult, relating differently to one’s body, moving a relationship to a deeper level, realizing that sex isn’t always linked to love. And that’s a short list of how our early sexual experiences may mold our identities and body-mind loops; maybe you’ve got more? If so, please bring ‘em up in comments.

So how would I redefine virginity? As much as I like Blank’s model, I think it’s too purely personal. We also need a more interpersonal way of understanding virginity. That is, unless we want to say masturbation counts as unravelling virginity – but I don’t want to go there, not least because I value the interpersonal dimension. Masturbation also opens the door to virginity loss among the under-three set. This seriously squicks me. The small people need to freedom to discover boyparts and girlparts without the baggage of innocence and experience. (Baby Jesus, for instance!) Let’s just stipulate: no virginity loss for the sippy-cup crowd.

For the rest of us? Well, I sort of like the idea of seeing a “first orgasm” (also from Blank) as the watershed. But for some of us, the orgasm gap could mean we’ll be in our forties when we shed our virginity. Great for Hollywood, just not what I sought at age 20.

So how about this: Virginity ends the first time you engage in partnered sexual activity and have an epiphany – either during or after – with orgasm or without – when you suddenly know: “Oh, this is what all the fuss is about!” This needn’t be penetrative sex; anything that makes you seriously swoon could count.

Alternative definitions, refinements, personal stories – all are welcome in comments!

Every sex post deserves a tulip, wouldn’t you say? I’m sure I’ve already recycled Luce Irigaray’s pun on “two-lips” (that meet as one). Photo from in front of my house about ten days ago.

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Medicare for All – Part III of an Infinite Series

Or maybe, just maybe, the idea will catch fire this time, bringing the series to a merciful end? (Oh-oh … gotta watch my death panel rhetoric!)

Amid all the hullabaloo over Dennis Kucinich pledging to vote “yes” on the health care bill, which blanketed NPR for the three hours I was on the road today, I didn’t hear a peep about a simple little bill that Alan Grayson is sponsoring. Nor had I heard about it in the full week that’s passed since he introduced it. And why should the media bother with this trifling little bill? Grayson’s H.R. 4789 is only four pages long. It’s probably a long shot.

But dang, what’s not to love about the “Medicare You Can Buy Into Act”?

Grayson isn’t grandstanding with the Senate health care bill now in front of the House, nor is he undermining its chance of passage. He’s just putting forward a public option as a stand-alone resolution in addition to the mondo bill, and he’s framing it in a way makes it hard to shoot down. Here’s what he said (via John Nichols at The Nation, who rocks for being on this):

Health care reform — here’s where we are. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a Senate bill without a public option. It looks like the reconciliation amendment will not have a public option. The House bill had a public option, but once the House passes the Senate bill, that’s history.

Which is why I introduced H.R. 4789, the Public Option Act. This simple four-page bill lets any American buy into Medicare at cost. You want it, you pay for it, you’re in. It adds nothing to the deficit; you pay what it costs.

Let’s face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can’t blame them for it; that’s what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they’ve got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.

In many areas of the country, one or two insurers have over 80% of the market. They can charge anything they want. And when you get sick, they can flip the bird at you. So we need a public option.

And they face no real competition because it costs billions of dollars just to set up a national health care network. In fact, the only one that’s nationwide is . . . Medicare. And we limit that to one-eight of the population. It’s like saying that only seniors can drive on federal highways. We really need a public option.

And to the right-wing loons who call it socialism, we say, “if you want to be a slave to the insurance companies, that’s fine. If you want 30% of your premiums to go to ‘administrative costs’ and billion-dollar bonuses for insurance CEOs who figure out new and creative ways to deny you the care you need to stay healthy and alive, that’s fine. But don’t you try to dictate to me that I can’t have a public option!”

And there is a way left to get it. By insisting on a vote on H.R. 4789. Three votes on health care, not two. The Senate bill, the reconciliation amendments, and the Public Option Act.

We got 50 co-sponsors for this bill in two days. Including five powerful committee chairman. But we need more.

Sign our Petition at WeWantMedicare.com.

Call. Write. Visit. Do whatever you can do to get you Congressman to co-sponsor this bill, and push it to a vote. Right now, before it’s too late.

I just adore the line about only letting seniors drive on federal highways. Because that, in fact, is exactly what we’re doing with the public option that exists right now, right here, in the United States.

If you’re a Grayson junkie and want to hear him personally digress on the federal highways and his $10,000 baby, here y’go:

As of today the bill has 74 co-sponsors. Unfortunately my congresscritter, Charlie Wilson, is not among them. He’s still too busy flirting with his fellow Blue Dogs, I’m afraid. Wilson is proudly pro-life, and scared as a little mouse that he might not be reelected if he votes yes on the big bill. After all, Wilson already voted for the Stupid Stupak amendment last fall.

I wouldn’t be too heartbroken if Rep. Wilson goes down in the next election. And if he does, then I’d like to invite Rep. Grayson to consider relocating to Ohio. I know, I know – he’s brash. He says things that offend. But that’s what can happen when you try to speak truths, not platitudes. Right now, his blunt, sensible words could save thousands of lives. We’ll see if they can be heard over the shouts of teabaggers and the grunts of obstructionist Republican congresscritters.

Oh, and Dennis Kucinich is on board with Grayson as a co-sponsor, too. Just goes to show that if you resemble a leprechaun, you’re bound to make the news on St. Patty’s Day.

[My earlier Medicare for all posts are here and here.]

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More on Equal Protection: Ted Olson, Warrior for Marriage Equality!

Wow. As Salon’s War Room reports, Theodore Olson – who represented Bush in Bush v. Gore and served as Solicitor General under Bush – has teamed up with the opposing attorney from Bush v. Gore, David Boies. As if that weren’t weird enough, they’re both fighting for marriage equality! On behalf of two couples (one lesbian, one gay), they’re petitioning a federal court to overturn Proposition 8.

But here’s where the weirdness turns to coolness: They hope to take this challenge all the way to the Supreme Court. Their intent is apparently to set a federal precedent that would require marriage equality in all states by declaring all other arrangements unconstitutional.

Their argument? Equal protection! If both Ted Olson and I agree on it, can it possibly be wrong?

Here’s how they put it in their complaint:

More than 30 years, ago, the Supreme Court of the United States recognized that “[m]arriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival.” Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12 (1967). But today, as a result of the passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008, the State of California denies its gay and lesbian residents access to marriage by providing in its constitution that only a civil marriage “between a man and a woman” is “valid or recognized in California.” Cal. Const. Art. I § 7.5 (“Prop. 8”). Instead, California relegates same-sex unions to the separate-but unequal institution of domestic partnership. See Cal. Fam. Code §§ 297–299.6. This unequal treatment of gays and lesbians denies them the basic liberties and equal protection under the law that are guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. …

This action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeks (1) a declaration that Prop. 8, which denies gay and lesbian individuals the opportunity to marry civilly and enter into the same officially sanctioned family relationship with their loved ones as heterosexual individuals, is unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution …

(The full complaint is here in pdf form.)

I teared up when I read this. I loved their invocation of Loving v. Virginia, which is more than just an assertion of the right to marry as a basic civil right; it suggests a parallel with the right to marry across lines of color or race. Whether or not that parallel works legally, it sure resonates emotionally.

If this case really does go all the way to the SCOTUS and if the plaintiffs prevail, it could do for marriage equality what Roe v. Wade did for abortion rights. That’s both good and bad. The negative is that there would surely be a public backlash against a decision imposed by judicial fiat, as there was after Roe. But that’s no reason to hesitate. The backlash is doomed to extinction. Young people already support marriage equality in overwhelming numbers. There’s no reason for today’s couples to wait another generation until public opinion catches up with basic fairness.

Update 1, 9 p.m., 5/28/09: Via Unrepentant Hippie, here’s an actual lawyer, John Dean, discussing the outlook for this approach on Keith Olberman’s show. Dean agrees that constitutionally, equal protection ought to guarantee marriage equality. However, he cautions that other supporters of it haven’t gone to the Supreme Court because it’s by no means certain how they’d rule. I’m afraid it’ll all come down to Justice Kennedy again, and that’s not reassuring.

Update 2, 10 p.m., 5/28/09: Pam Spaulding has a wonderfully nuanced discussion of Olson and Boies’ case, which pro-marriage equality legal scholars seem to consider a highly risky strategy. All the more reason to wish that the equal protection argument had been more seriously pushed at the level of the California Supreme Court.

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Cornel West, Love, Justice … and Me

Well, okay. I didn’t actually even shake his hand, much less get to talk with him one-on-one. But I got to hear Cornel West speak at my university today, and I was both moved and impressed.

Impressed: because he’s got such an stirring delivery. If I tried to riff on the whole scale of emotion and power that he uses, I’d come across as a screeching, bombastic pedant. (Heck, I’m still trying to get comfy with wielding a microphone when I lecture!) But he’s got the voice and presence to pull off the sort of oratory that’s otherwise reserved for legendary preachers.

Moved: because he’s not just way smarter than me, and he’s not just a brilliant showman. He calls us to tend to our own spiritual maturity while committing ourselves to rooting out oppression. He takes Socrates’ injunction that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” mixes it with the blues, and inspires you to recommit to a better self and a better world. Actually, the better self is the bridge to that better world.

I’m not going to try to summarize all that West said. (He was giving the keynote at a conference on a founder of progressive Islam, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Sudanese visionary executed by his government for his beliefs, whom West grouped with Gandhi, King, and Mandela.) Instead, I’ll just share a few of the lines that I found most inspiring, yet pithy enough that I got them on paper – no small thing, because the ideas were flowing so furiously.

Indifference is the one trait that makes the very angels weep. It’s the very essence of inhumanity.

Optimism deodorizes the catastrophic. Hope allows us to confront the catastrophic.

These weren’t just eloquent yet empty phrases. While celebrating Obama’s upcoming inauguration, West called on “Brother Barack” to serve hope, not optimism. To speak out against the carnage in Gaza. To explain why he chose Rick Warren in apparent contempt of his LGBT supporters.

This, however, is the thought I’ve promised myself to repeat every day until it becomes part of my blood and bones:

Justice is what love looks like in public.

Imagine what the world might look like if that became everyone’s mantra. Imagine how different our history would be. How radiant our future.

Of course this is way out of season, but I swear it’s posted in a spirit of hope, not optimism. (The flower is a Climbing Peace Rose from early September 2008.)

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Boob Radar

Photo by Flickr user Dave Pearson, used under a Creative Commons license.

One reason I’ve been quiet the past couple of days is that I’ve been squandering loads time on the phone arguing about a rejected medical claim. As I mentioned briefly last summer, I had a mysterious little blob turn up on a mammogram in spring 2007. I got lots more mammograms plus a total of three MRIs at half-year intervals. Insurance won’t cover the last MRI unless they get more documentation from the doctors. Right now, I owe $3200 unless (until!! let’s think positively) my insurer steps up and covers the exam.

I know, I know. I’m very lucky to even have an insurance company to wrangle with.

The MRI really was medically necessary. It’s better than a mammogram in evaluating “dense breast tissue.” I would like to say that I’ve got these fabulous dense, firm, perky hooters and that’s why the MRI was needed. But in fact, this says nothing about my hawtness; dense tissue is linked with “youth” and in the universe of mammograms, I’m just a babe – chronologically, that is.

The MRI really did provide superior information in my case. It showed that my blob was regular in shape and that it wasn’t growing, both of which suggested it wasn’t malign. The last time I had an MRI in June, it showed that the blob had in fact disappeared. (Most likely, the blob was some kind of inflammatory process in a cyst. Yes, I realize I was lucky.) A biopsy might have provided the same information, but biopsies can be pretty painful, and the blob was small enough that it would have been hard to locate.

So, both medically and psychologically, the MRI accomplished what a mammogram couldn’t. I’ve stopped worrying about the blob. I feel a whole lot less alienated from my body.

But. The MRI costs roughly ten times more than a mammogram, which is why insurance demands justification.

Let’s dream a moment. What if we had an imaging technology that offered the sensitivity of an MRI at the cost of a mammogram but without the radiation exposure? That’s just what researchers at the University of Bristol hope to develop. They’ve come up with a new approach to boob-a-vision. And it’s based on … radar.

Professor Alan Preece and Dr Ian Craddock from the University of Bristol have been working for a number of years to develop a breast-imaging device which uses radio waves and therefore has no radiation risk unlike conventional mammograms.

The team began developing and researching a prototype around five years ago … [Dr. Craddock says:] “This new imaging technique works by transmitting radio waves of a very low energy and detecting reflected signals, it then uses these signals to make a 3D image of the breast. This is basically the same as any radar system, such as the radars used for air traffic control at our airports.” …

Mike Shere, Associate Specialist Breast Clinician at NBT [North Bristol NHS Trust], added: … “It takes less time to operate than a mammogram approximately six minutes for both breasts compared with 30-45 minutes for an MRI, and like an MRI it provides a very detailed 3D digital image.

“Women love it as they compare it to a mammogram and find the whole experience much more comfortable.”

The radar breast imaging system is built using transmitters and receivers arranged around a ceramic cup, which the breast sits in. These transmitters view the breast from several different angles. …

Professor Preece from the University’s Medical Physics, said … “Using this engineering knowledge we built the machine using ground penetrating radar, a similar technique to land mine detection to take four hundred quarter of a second pictures of the breast to form a 3D image.

“Women do not feel any sensation and it equates to the same type of radiation exposure as speaking into a mobile phone at arms length which makes it much safer.”

More testing remains to be done. The next round of studies will focus on young women (us of the dense, perky breasts!) and look at whether boob radar is as sensitive as other methods. But the researchers are optimistic about both the scientific and the economic utility of this technology. They think it can be produced cheaply on a mass scale.

Wouldn’t it be cool if radio imaging replaced mammograms? I already discussed the cost and precision factors. Negligible radiation exposure would be a huge point in its favor, too. I know that the medical establishment always reassures us that the risk from mammograms is minimal. But as someone who’s now been exposed at a very young age to several mammograms per year with lots of extra views taken, I’m uneasy. We were told that CT scans were safe, too, but recent research seems to indicate considerably greater risks than originally claimed, especially where kids are concerned.

I don’t suppose the inventors will pay me any heed, but I vote for the name “boob radar” for this new technology. Both words are palindromes. What’s not to love?

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Antidote to McCain’s Toxic Campaign

I’ve always liked Donna Brazile’s plainspoken, no-bullshit manner. I’ve known she’s a smart strategist and analyst. I had no idea she could be this inspirational. These words of hers – her refusal to go to the back of the bus – moved me almost as much as Barack Obama’s speech last March on race in America.

This is the perfect antidote to the hatefulness of the McCain-Palin campaign this past week:

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Waking Dreams of the Perfect Breast Cancer Prevention Drug

Photo of a lilac-breasted roller by Flickr users Arno & Louise, used under a Creative Commons license. If you came here for a lovely photo of black-and-white breasts set off by orange Sungold tomatoes, too bad; I got annoyed at too many late-night hits from visitors seeking boobie pictures, which is not what Kittywampus is about, and so I took down the original breast photo. However, this fella’s lilac breast is quite gorgeous in its own right.

So the other night I woke up in the wee hours and started thinking about breast cancer and how to prevent it. Now, the obvious rational approach is right living, on the individual side, and a much cleaner environment, when it comes to collective strategies. On the first score, I eat my veggies and I’m no lush (though also not the teetotaler that the latest study suggests all women should be). As for tidying up the environment? Unlikely in my lifetime, especially when it comes to those persistent estrogen-like plastic and pesticide compounds that are a likely driver of rising breast cancer rates.

But the great thing about half-delirious insomniac thoughts at 4 a.m. is that you don’t have to be rational. And so I started fantasizing about an ideal drug to prevent breast cancer. Clearly, Tamoxifen and its cousins that induce menopause-from-hell symptoms don’t come close to fitting the bill; they’re harsh enough that they’re only used in women at high risk. But if you only intervene after cancer is diagnosed, the current slash/burn/poison approach leaves women maimed, debilitated, and in constant fear of recurrence.

My vision was a substance that every woman could take, at least once she was pretty sure she was done with childbearing and thus wouldn’t be using her breasts to feed anyone. It goes without saying that the ideal drug would be free of side effects. (I know, I know, but it was 4 a.m., so humor me.)

You’d want a drug that would stop mutations in their tracks before the rogue cells had a chance to replicate. And you’d need to deliver it to the location where those mutations are most likely to arise: the milk factory. Since virtually all breast cancers start either in the milk-transporting ducts or the milk-producing lobules, that’s where you’d want to intervene. (I’m not discounting a third variant, inflammatory breast cancer, but that seems like a biologically different beast.)

You’d want a substance that would penetrate through the first layers of cells and selectively knock out any abnormal ones. Maybe it would induce apotosis; maybe it would stop such cells from reproducing; maybe it would just smother the bad guys. Whatever its mechanism, the key thing is that it would travel straight to the ducts and lobules and then act locally rather than systemically.

As anyone who’s nursed a child knows, the milk factory has an amazing capacity to ramp up and, well, expand. And this is where such a drug could satisfy the prerogatives of vanity as well as health: If it acts locally by permeating the ducts and lobules, why couldn’t it simultaneously cause them to inflate prettily? I’m not talking about mimicking the porn-star silicon look. I’m just suggesting that this ideal drug could cause a little bit of non-milk fluid to be retained. You’d get a little of the size and perkiness that pregnancy produces – but now without a belly eclipsing the boobs.

The great thing about this two-in-one function is that the drug would sell itself. Its developers would be reap wealth and good karma. Women would stick religiously to the dosage schedule.

The only downside? Plastic surgeons would be hanging around soup kitchens.

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Marriage, Equal Protection, and the Limits of "Tolerance"

The purpose of this post is mostly to do what my students did yesterday in class: to give a loud cheer for the California Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex unions can’t be treated as legally second class. Yay!!

I was just about as heartened by the students’ reaction as by the ruling itself. Through discussions with them, I know that a good 80% of them don’t have a problem with gay marriage. When opposition drops that low – in Ohio, for goodness sake, no bastion of liberalism – it’s a hopeful sign for the future. They will outlive the older generations who still think the sun ought to revolve around the earth.

The rest of my students still have issues with homosexuality, ranging between aesthetic disgust and religious qualms – but they’re aware enough of their minority status that they’re slow to voice their feelings, and I notice a change in this even over the past five years. That 10 to 20% probably felt alienated by the cheering. They’ll have to get used to it. Homophobia is moribund. It’s already a social embarrassment in their generation, much like overt racism is in mine. And they know it.

But if you push hard, you still discover limits to “tolerance” even in the ostensibly pro-inclusion supermajority. For instance, some students still say that they don’t understand why gay people (and here they really mean gay men) “have to flaunt it.” As if a once-a-year gay pride event with men in nothing but lederhosen weren’t totally offset by the heterosexual spectacle on the streets and in the bars of this college town every weekend – and remember, the weekend starts on Thursday night, and on Wednesday in fine weather. The women’s clothes barely keep them from getting arrested – and the displays of heterosexuality are, well, blatant! Shocking! You see boys and girls together and golly, they flaunt it!

Another gripe a few of my straight students expressed was “why do ‘they’ have to be so angry at heterosexuals – aren’t they doing the same thing as the anti-gay people?” Well, sure, it’s exactly the same – if the gay haters feel they can’t hold hands in public or be open about their sexuality at work or adopt children or walk down the street without fear. Even otherwise well-meaning young people may still have a hard time seeing how oppression creates asymmetries that make anger mean something totally different among oppressed people.

Despite the limits of “tolerance,” I still think the California ruling shows how far this sea change has come and how irresistible it will be in the future. It’s of course wonderful news for the couples who will now have a real choice about how to organize their lives. It’s also a delicious irony in that six of the seven judges on the court are Republican appointees. More power to them for embracing the law and fairness rather than caving to political pressure.

While I’m no legal expert, two things popped out at me from Glenn Greenwald’s analysis that portend well for the future. First, the court specifically left open the possibility that California could comply with its state constitution by essentially establishing civil unions for all couples, gay and straight, and leaving “marriage” to the churches. This is a solution that I’ve favored for years, having seen how successful it’s been in European countries. First, the distinction draws a clear, bright line between church and state, which benefits both in the end. Second, with that distinction already in place, European governments have had a fairly easy time implementing same-sex unions. Of course, they don’t have organized wingnut opposition – groups like the Concerned Women of America strike them as almost a joke – though some of them, like Spain, did face the Catholic Church. But keeping church marriage distinct allows religions to have their own sphere of influence without dictating public policy.

Second, while the court emphasized that its ruling was based on the state constitution and not on the federal one, its rationale – equal protection under the law – illumniates the path that I think this country will ultimately have to take, whether we keep marriage under state control or redefine it as civil unions for all. The Fourteenth Amendment can and should be interpreted to protect everyone, no matter who they love. Obviously, our current SCOTUS tilts too far right to even consider this; it’s no longer the same crew who gave us Lawrence v. Texas. But “equal protection” ought to mean exactly that, and this ought to be glaringly obvious to all of us, legal experts or not.

Dr. Rüppel clematis from my garden.

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Those Bloomin’ Taxes

I should be working on my tax return, but dang it, I haven’t filed away any paperwork since last June, so I first have to sort through a foot-tall pile of paper. True to form, I’m procrastinating. Which is just how I got into this pickle in the first place.

One of the other annoyances of tax season is how it coincides with planting season. This morning I said to heck with the taxes and planted some sweet pea seeds. Then I came inside and read about a nifty proposal that would give tax breaks for gardening! Well, not necessarily for planting sweet peas (they’re poisonous) but for growing food in our yards, similar to the Victory Gardens in WWI, except this time with a little tax incentive.

Writing in Alternet, Roger Doiron says:

I am proposing that home growers finally catch a break. Not from bugs, weather, or clunky garden shoes, but from taxes. It’s not as silly an idea as it may sound. We give tax breaks to people to encourage them to put hybrid cars in their garages and solar panels on their roofs, so why not offer incentives for solar-powered, healthy food production in their backyard? …

More home gardens would offer us victory not only over rising food and health care costs, but also foreign oil dependency and climate change. Researcher estimate that locally-grown foods use up to 17 times less climate-warming, fossil fuels than foods from away. And when it comes to local foods, it doesn’t get any “localer” than one’s own yard.

Doiron would have the government waive taxes on gardening supplies and – more significantly – offer an income tax deduction for a kitchen garden (or for rental of a community garden plot) similar to the break for a home office, based on square footage.

This is such a cool and clever idea. It won’t save the earth all on its own. But as the price of oil climbs ever higher, it might help ease the transition to the more local world that we’ll all be forced to inhabit in the future. Less lofty – but no less important – more people might discover the pleasures of perfectly fresh vegetables: tender-crisp baby lettuce, sun-warmed tomatoes, sweet buttery purple-podded beans.

By that way, that sweet feline pansy pictured above, taunting those of you who are still digging out from winter? It survived from last fall, along with most of its companions, under layers of snow and discouragement. And since it’s a pansy, it’s edible – though this particular specimen probably has too much dirt-and-oil grime from the street in front of my house.

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