It's a Kid Kid World

Lori Borgman

A British environmentalist group has declared that children are bad for the planet.

The paraphernalia that accompanies babies from the hospital ought to have been their first clue. It’s a wonder babies aren’t declared bio-hazards from the get-go.

You have disposable diapers for those messy eruptions on the bottom half and soft washcloths for volcanic explosions on the top half.

You have the blue bulb suction gizmo for secretions clogging the nasal passages, anti-bacterial creams for diaper rash, cotton buds for ear wax and no-tears shampoo for flakes on the scalp.

Once babies become mobile their haz-mat factor increases even more. They are carriers for dirt, germs, bacteria, slime, pet dander and assorted insects. They pocket assorted refuse like bird feathers, rocks, acorns, old candy wrappers and snake skins.

To top it off, they often smell. The kids, not the refuse. Sweat pollution.

The Optimum Population Trust says the greatest way to help the future of the planet is to have one less child.
It is true, children do consume the planet’s resources. They use their share of electricity, water, fossil fuels – and, yes, a lot of them have developed the nasty habit of breathing air. Kids. What can you do?

The environmentalist group says that having two, instead of three children, (couples should produce no more than two) will make a much greater impact on the planet than switching off lights.

Someone may have switched off lights on the environmentalists.

Kids may consume, they may even generate dust storms and small whirlwinds, but they are also producers. And part of what they will produce is our future.

Fifty years ago, 16 workers paid into Social Security for every retiree who drew benefits. Today, there are three workers per beneficiary and over the next few decades that number will fall to two workers per beneficiary.

Fewer babies? In developed nations, we’re already there. A fertility rate of 2.1 is considered a birth rate able to replace the current population. The British fertility rate is below replacement levels at 1.7 and the European Union average hovers around 1.5.

In the United States, our fertility rate has fallen below the replacement rate as well.

Philip Longman, a demographer that studies fertility rates has some interesting findings. He says that today, the average woman in the world bears half as many children as did her counterpart in 1972.

He also notes that progressive cities tend to have smaller families than conservative cities. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are only 19% more dogs than kids.

Who would have thought the dogs would one day outnumber the kids?

Longman also points out that people who attend church regularly are far more likely to have three or more children than people who seldom attend church.

Today’s children, whether they come from large or small families, homes where the dogs outnumber the kids or the kids outnumber the dogs, will become the workers that fuel our economy and support a rapidly aging population.

My mother hung a cross stitch in her kitchen that succinctly articulates what so many of the demographers stop short of saying: “Be kind to your children, they choose your nursing home.”

Children are not bad for the planet, they are the future of the planet.

‘Y’all c’mon ovah f’r Alpo-fittahs, y’heah?’

Lori Borgman

I fall faster than a wobbly soufflé for each and every one of those cooking shows. I don’t know if the draw is the soothing background music, the sinks that never hold a tower of dirty dishes or the well coiffed cooks with the French-tipped nails. No matter what they are cooking, it looks wonderful.

Take Paula Deen. The woman could whip up a batch of fritters made with canned dog food and they’d seem like a bonafide Southern treat.

“Now, y’all jes’ take two cans o’ dis Alpo, add a li’l salt ‘n peppa, a stick o’ budda, an’ mix it up real good. Now take a hanful an’ pad id in a paddie an’ drop id in the deep frya full of hot awl! Mmmm! Don’t dey look purdy!”

I’d be on the other side of the television screen thinking, you know, dog-food fritters don’t look half bad. Maybe we should try some for dinner.

The real secret to Paula’s cooking is her voice. She could accidentally turn her oven up to 500, set peanut butter cookies on fire and the entire time be giving a colorful narration that would have viewers asking themselves, “Why can’t I make cookies that turn out charbroiled and set off the smoke alarm?”

Last week I made the “World’s Best Guacamole” following instructions from a large male chef. The recipe called for the juice of three limes. The guy on the tube juiced each lime with nothing but his bare hands and a flick of the wrist. I had to squeeze, wring and twist the limes, stand on my toes to get better leverage and had lime juice squirting me in the face.

The allure of the cooking shows is that they smoothly bypass the grittier parts of reality – the juice in the face, the list-making, the grocery-shopping and the never ending job of clean-up.

Years ago, when Martha Stewart’s cooking show was fairly new, she was doing a Halloween themed show, standing at the kitchen counter mixing ingredients, and the camera caught a hand coming up from beneath the counter, feeling its way around and eventually removing a dirty dish and a spoon. I knew then, that was the kind of kitchen I would need if I were ever going to become a truly good cook.

One of my other favorite cooks is Ina Garten. I like the cooks that actually look like they eat the food they make as opposed to the ones who look like they might spit it out once they’re off camera. Ina also goes by the name Barefoot Contessa. At the end of almost every show the Barefoot Contessa’s friends come over to eat the marvelous food she has prepared.

If you watch closely, you will see that Ina’s secret ingredient is laughter. Ina and her friends laugh constantly.
“I think you’ll love this tarragon chicken,” Ina says. She then tosses off a chuckle. Her friends chuckle in return. She passes the chicken, her guests laugh. Her guests pass the chicken, she laughs.

“I’ll take the fruit salad down here!” someone calls. More laughter. A priest, a minister and a rabbi laughter, but nobody is telling jokes, they’re just passing food and laughing.

That never happens at my house. Not even when I serve the World’s Best Guacamole

Maybe I don’t watch Food Network for the food nearly as much as I watch it for the fantasy.

Nature deficit disorder takes root

Lori Borgman

The closest a lot of kids get to nature these days is watching an animated movie about penguins in an air-conditioned theater while eating buttered popcorn
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Many of them will grow up thinking a worm is something that infects the computer and that a weed is part of the drug education program.

I just finished a book about rescuing children who suffer from nature-deficit disorder. Nature deficit-disorder isn’t an official medical term, but it probably should be.

Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods,” talked with a fourth-grade boy from San Diego who summarized the situation well. He said, ”I like to play indoors better ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

I’ve always been of the mindset that kids and the outdoors go together. The kids claim I sent them outside every opportunity I had. They will tell you that if there were two feet of snow on the ground and a wind chill of 5 below, I still sent them outside to play. Maybe I did, but it’s not like they were alone. The guy driving the snowplow was outside, too.

Today, more and more schools are cutting back on recess to focus on academics in an attempt to raise test scores. More and more parents are simply afraid to let their kids outside. With dwindling time for playing outside, I don’t know who to pity more, the kids, the parents or the teachers.

We had it made in the neighborhood where I grew up. The subdivision bordered a large wood with dense trees, thick underbrush and a winding creek. In some parts, the creek was shallow enough you could jump from rock to rock and cross without getting wet. Further down it ambled along and made a bend where the water stood still and deep and formed a lagoon. The boys dog paddled in the lagoon, shook themselves dry and then peeled off the leeches stuck to their legs.

We wandered those woods and hop scotched that creek with our imaginations two steps ahead of us. Twigs and leaves from the pioneer days crunched underfoot, ferns the fairies danced among brushed against our calves and carpet moss was royal velvet to the touch.

The woods held delights like trillium and lady’s slipper, momma opossums lumbering across the trail and box turtles nestled along the bank.

Every kid who trampled those paths had the joy of cleaning mud from shoes, picking cockleburs out of socks and could tell the difference between a water moccasin and a copperhead.

We learned the call of a Bobwhite and the melody of a cardinal, how to spot poison ivy and the burrows where the groundhogs hid.

We not only witnessed the changing seasons in those woods, we walked right through them, winter, spring, summer and fall.

Today’s nature deficit is exacerbated by technology -- laptops, cell phones, iPods, and assorted buds one can plug into the ears. Why listen to crickets and bullfrogs when you can have radio Disney everywhere you go?

This summer a host of kids will get their allocated nature fix by going to camp. They will have opportunity to lie in the grass and watch the clouds float by. Maybe they’ll watch a finch build a nest, or simply sit, unplugged, and listen to the locust, as the shadows grow long and the mourning doves coo.

The nature thing will happen, but it will be timed, regulated, highly structured and under adult supervision. The lazy days of Tom and Huck have gone adrift.

. . . but can veggies bring back my youth?

Lori Borgman

Last week a newscaster excitedly introduced an expert who could – and I quote -- “HELP GET YOUR BRAIN BACK!” Talk about timely. I was just getting ready to send out a search party.

I’d like my brain back, all right. The left half, the right half, the part that remembers my glasses, my car keys, the punch line to the joke I heard yesterday, and where I put the coupons I just had in my hand.

I’d also like to get back the part of my brain that sets the speed. Call it a pipe dream, but I’d love to be able to go from zero to 60 in under two weeks.

Not too long ago I misplaced a container of chicken salad. I retraced my steps and looked in every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen. I looked in the garage, the car, on the patio, in the freezer, the washer, the dryer and the dishwasher.

“What kind of container was it in?” the husband asks, standing before the open refrigerator.

“It was in a plastic square just like that one on the middle shelf,” I huffed. Like the man thinks he can find what I’ve spent an hour searching for.

“You mean this chicken salad?” he says. Chicken salad. Refrigerator. Front and center.

My brain. It never writes. It never calls.

The expert said the way you get your brain back is to control your blood pressure, manage your cholesterol, get enough sleep, exercise regularly -- and then she said what the experts always say. Actually, they don’t say anything.
The camera slowly pans to a large tray filled with yellow and orange vegetables and lots of dark leafy greens.

Every expert on every news show has the same solution. It doesn’t matter if the problem is diabetes, obesity, male pattern baldness, your car leaks oil, the airline lost your luggage, or your dog ran away from home -- the answer is always the same -- eat more yellow and orange vegetables and dark leafy greens.

I’m not saying vegetables aren’t the answer to every crisis, I’m just saying when there is talk of the cost of gasoline going higher and the camera pans to sweet potatoes, I’m getting a little suspicious.

But hey, if spinach and kale are a cure-all and will help get my brain back, they’re worth a try.

While we’re in recovery mode, there are a few other things I’d like back as well.

My waist, for starters. I don’t know where it has been hiding, but the joke is over. (Come back! I miss you!)

I’d like my knees back, too – the ones I had when I was age 6. The ones that I could crouch on for hours on ened and not have to worry about them punishing me later.

I’d also like to get my eyes back, the ones that didn’t have to squint or hold a book at arm’s length.

There are a lot of things I'd like to get back. The cynic in me simply has a hard time believing it is going to be as easy as eating more vegetables and leafy greens.

If what’s inside counts, why not nurture it?

Lori Borgman

USA Today is reporting that Kelly Ripa’s bellybutton was airbrushed from an outie to an innie for the cover of Shape magazine. It’s good to know, isn’t it? I know I’ll sleep better tonight.

America Ferrera, the star of “Ugly Betty” the popular television show that stresses internal beauty more than external beauty, has had a royal makeover for her cover spot on W magazine.

They gave the lovable Latina voluminous hair, luscious lips, smoky eyes and a come hither look. So much for all that noise about “it’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery reports that the biggest rise in women seeking cosmetic procedures comes from women under 35. Twentysomethings are seeking botox.

You have to wonder what the ratio is between the time and money we invest in our external selves and the time and money we invest in our internal selves.

Hair and make-up: 40 minutes.

Personal reflection: None.

Treadmill at the gym: 30 minutes three times a week.

Assessing important relationships: Not now.

My mom kept a calorie-counting book that she kept in the kitchen drawer when I was about 12 years old. I vividly remember the little book being printed on gray paper with a drawing of a lady on the front. Long eyelashes, turned up nose, perfect chin and hair piled high with dangling curls. It was a somewhat swooshy profile in purple ink.

On the inside back page was a personality quiz you were to take each day after you tallied your calories. Calorie-counting and character-counting; not a bad combo.

In the evenings, my mom would sometimes sit on one end of the couch and I would sit on the other, and she would run through the little quiz with me.

“Were you the first to smile at someone today?”

“Were you the first to say hello to someone today?”

“If you saw someone new, did you introduce yourself?”

“Did you say something encouraging to someone today?”

“Were you kind today?”

“Were you cheerful today?”

It made me feel grown up to know my mother asked me the same questions that she asked herself. It also made me feel as though I had the possibility of one day becoming as lovely as the pretty lady on the cover, although without the purple lines.

There were about 15 questions, and the correct answer was always yes. I fudged occasionally to help myself along in my mother’s eyes, but I think she fudged on her calorie count, so in retrospect, we were even.

The questions were a good inventory, in that they put the focus on others. They were benchmarks of thoughtfulness, courtesy and consideration.

We’re not oriented to focus on others today. Well, we may focus on others but it is usually in a voyeuristic innie/outie bellybutton sort of way. For the most part, our checklists are primarily about us: Me, myself and I, the ultimate shallow trio.

When our daughters were in high school, they began placing a small card with a scripted word each day in a pretty clip on their desks. There were about 10 in all; tenderness, gentleness, loyal, loving, kind, honest. I’d like to say they got the idea from me, but I’d be fudging again.

Wherever the idea came from, any female possessing the capability of seeing and developing her inner self as well as her outer self is rather, well, lovely.

The purple lady would entirely approve.