13 grandmothers

Celebrations galore! In the next 6 weeks, we will celebrate Christmas, New Year, my birthday, and the birth of our new daughter; but are 4 celebrations sufficient, or should I be asking for an additional "push present" for gestating her?

I see this "thanks for the baby, have some diamonds" trend around me - it makes perfect sense on some level: we, as mothers, do an incredible job of nurturing a little one into this world; and we are expected to do so much more from then on. The sacrifices, the societal inequality, the martyrdom, it's all there. But what if the level it makes sense on is connected to acquisition purely as a by-product of ingenious marketing (we could, instead, be offered daily naps or a reprieve from cooking post-partum).

So I've been thinking about stuff lately. Stuff. Consumerism and the planned obsolescence of stuff from The Story of Stuff.

Incidentally, I was reading around to see what reactions were in different circles and liked the following:

Is The Story of Stuff just preaching to the converted? No. (Though note, as a friend says, that there's a reason and rationale for the clergy to preach to the congregation every week -- it reinforces, deepens and sustains commitment and understanding.)
The Story of Stuff is something you can show to anyone (or ask anyone to view online). It's persuasive but not a sermon. It's sophisticated but not esoteric. Its tone is light but its content is serious. It's narrated by the irrepressible Annie Leonard with passion but no pretense.
Annie, who is a former colleague and good friend, casually mentions at the start of The Story of Stuff that she spent 10 years traveling the world to explore how stuff is made and discarded. This doesn't begin to explain her first-hand experience. There aren't many people who race from international airports to visit trash dumps. Annie does. In travels to three dozen countries, she has visited garbage dumps, infiltrated toxic factories, worked with ragpickers and received death threats for her investigative work. Her understanding of the externalized violence of the corporate consumer economy comes from direct observation and experience.

Go ahead and watch it. I'll wait right here.

The Stuff is clearly an environmental and sustainability problem (If I had more time and energy to have more guts, I'd be well on my way to becoming The Christmas Greench); it's a why don't individuals have more rights than corporations problem; it's a global social justice problem (the externalization of cost; the massive inequalities based on which country The Corporations work in cohute with and against) which clearly leads to a "deficit of trust" and geopolitical instability ; it's completely anti-yogic in its pursuit of hoarding (Is hoarding in reaction to fear and insecurity?).

The United States of The Stuff is not working for the majority of people; certainly not for those who contribute to the 2.5 trillion dollar US consumer debt nor the poor kids who thanks to Bush's watchful eye won't have to leave the private health insurance sector for a federally funded program nor Texas' teen moms and repeat teen moms nor the mothers of micro-preemies and others in fragile healthcare insurance situations (It's an issue dear to my socialist-raised, occasionally US-bashing heart. And an issue that's been getting closer as this time around I face unpaid maternity leave, no maternity nor child allowance. Finding private health-insurance was no piece of cake, and others around are unable to acquire an ultrasound or health insurance because of their (legal) immigration status, or 'prior condition' known as pregnancy). Though it is getting somewhat better as North Carolina improves heart attack care by putting profits first.

Is it possible that the world of Stuff is still standing because everything is so compartmentalized? With the wheel of politics and politicians on one hand; the world of corporations and dividends and profits on another; the world of home and family and friends and humanity on another (stay with the yoga analogy; we are now on #3 of Shiva's many hands); nature on another; and so on.

I know it might seem like I'm bundling together a host of very varied problems; but that's my point: from the perspective of each person who can't make ends meet financially, who gets through the work week only with the prospect of weekend shopping or drinking, who can't get through the month without antidepressants and/or a visit to the shrink, and that's the majority of the US population right there, this isn't working.

It took a woman to launch ecology,

Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT's first alumna, was troubled by the toll industrialization was taking on the environment, evidence of which she discovered by analyzing the local water whenever she traveled (in 1903 she would conclude, "It is hard to find anyplace in the world where the water does not show the effect of human agencies"). To Richards, the home, the natural world, and human health were all interconnected, so she believed that science should be interdisciplinary. In 1892 she gave a talk proposing a new field called "oekology" (ecology), to be grounded in that holistic principle. The speech made quite a splash in the Boston Daily Globe, but it soon became clear that the science establishment dismissed her concept. Her idea ran counter to that era's trend toward specialization: with many new branches of science--such as limnology and bacteriology--coming into existence, scientists were more interested in focusing on their fields than in forging connections.

Does it take 1 woman, 13 grandmothers, an Obama, or something else to look at the problems more holistically and take a fresh-eyes human-centered view of society?

PS: Btw, darling if you're reading, my preference for a push present for our bundle of joy would be some BPA-free glass baby bottles. Or a day at the spa prior to the birth. Whichever, really.