Iceland--what a great place to be a gal! John Carlin explains Icelandic happiness in a recent Guardian UK article.

Consider that icy hunk of geothermal hinterland a fantastic demonstration project of hardy government investment in education, health, renewable energy, and families. Add in American ingenuity and ambition, subtract taboos around divorce and single parenthood.

...if Iceland is the world's best place in which to live, and one of the richest, it is because of the way governments have added enlightened policies to the island's pragmatic, inventive human raw material. 'I as a medical doctor and as a politician believe that there is an intimate link between the country's health and the quality of political decisions that are made,' said Dagur Eggertsson, Reykjavik's former mayor. 'We were the poorest of nations 100 years ago, but we all could read and we had strong women. On that we have now built strong policies. My point is that more important for the health of a country than not smoking and eating well are the social phenomena we stress here: equality, peace, democracy, clean water, education, renewable energy, women's rights.'

The quote that got me to read the whole thing?

Oddny Sturludottir, a 31-year-old mother of two, told me she had a good friend who was 25 and had three children by a man who had just left her. 'But she has no sense of crisis at all,' Oddny said. 'She's preparing to get on with her life and her career in a perfectly optimistic frame of mind.'

Now, what kind of cultural and economic factors would make it possible for a young mom to stare down this situation in a perfectly optimistic frame of mind? Free, universal preschool? Check. Socialized medicine? Check. Those are the easy liberal guesses. Carlin also points to the legacy of Viking women holding down the fort (and holding positions of leadership) and the fact that Christian missionaries never got much of a foothold in Iceland. Later in the article, young co-eds take on college and pregnancy at the same time and don't blink.

Can you imagine such a world? Isn't it great that it's possible, somewhere? (By the way, the men are happy, too.)

This is the first year that we ambitiously decided to jet about, weather be damned, and visit both sets of parents. It has been a blur of planes, trains, and automobiles. Snowy vistas, flight cancellations, Indian call centers, Afghani cabbies, airports before dawn. What was I thinking?

The very thing that I looked forward to the most--togetherness with my family and eating delicious food-became nightmarish. Of the 14 people that congregated in Northern Wyoming, 9 were ill. The toll is still mounting. All of the children and half the adults were wracked with a violent stomach flu. Others had colds and flu. No matter how sumptuous the feast-no one wants to eat when babes are puking nearby. Our togetherness became a worst case scenario of cross-country contagion.

My favorite moments, not surprisingly, happened outdoors, away from the claustrophobia of germy interiors filled with ailing relatives and barf buckets. I strapped on my dad's cross country skis and carved some trail with my aunt. The sky was stunningly blue and clear, the snow fresh and deep. In a neighboring field, some dark horses stood around a hay bale, exhaling little clouds. In the high altitude, my blood was really pumping. I followed deer and rabbit tracks through the woods. The mountain beauty was ecstatic.

Less ethereal moments no less ecstatic: building a snow woman with my sister. We made her a battle-axe, with a spectacular bust and booty. My mate and brother-in-law built a snow man with his own special features. We created a whole narrative about the snow persons, meeting at a bar. Or at the company holiday party. It was a love story of sorts. An extremely ribald one.

My dad tied a couple of ropes to the back of an ATV and pulled us in sleds up and down the snow-packed dirt road. The tobaggans skittled around, banking off snow piles and slamming into each other. Later, we played a great game I want to recommend: Apples to Apples. It's a word game that takes 10 seconds to learn, and you'll laugh your ass off. You won't even care about winning or losing-it's that good.

While we were in Northern Wyoming, I was wished a Merry Christmas by countless strangers in stores. It became a little disconcerting. Every time, I thought, "How do you know I'm not Jewish?" People here take the "War on Christmas" very seriously. Or do they? I was constantly pondering this phenomenon. Has it always been the custom to use those words--and NO OTHER EXPRESSION--or is this just what happens in areas where there is little to no religious diversity?

From time to time, marketers (or "blogger outreach representatives") solicit us MT moderators. They try to get us to review certain books, check out new products, or link to corporate websites angling for parent traffic. Guess we've been identified as bellwethers, or just a joint that can direct the desirable mommy demographic to a virtual destination.

Now, some marketing genious thought that I would be the right person to appreciate and send traffic to a Barbie blog. Not just any old Barbie blog, but a Barbie blog that is meant to "improve and inspire the lives of girls worldwide." The primary concern of this Barbie blog--We Believe in Girls.com--is the early sexualization of girls. I kid you not. The irony is as deep as Barbie's cleavage and as steep as her stiletto-ready instep.

Why me? Why us?

Barbie and WeBIG are now looking to connect more with the mommyblogger community because we know you are motivated to empower girls with a strong sense of confidence and encourage them to dream big. Like you, we're interested in the best ways to support today's girls as they move through childhood to young adulthood. We want to hear your ideas, opinions, point of view — in short the unfiltered truth.

Hmmm...the unfiltered truth. Okay, well since you asked, here goes:

Elisa and I have a friendly rivalry about hygiene: she bathes her kids religiously every day, while I let my son go a day or two between baths. Sometimes more. My son enjoys his baths immensely, and doesn't fight them. It's just that it doesn't take much for bathtime to get bumped down our priority list. Sometimes it's due to laziness, sometimes it's busy-ness. Sometimes it's poor planning. Sometimes we just prefer to socialize.

The other day, our husbands were teasing each other about our families' respective hygiene proclivities, and Markos said in defense of Elisa's high standards, "Well, Jude always has snot running out his nose." Touché! It's true--my boy sports a glistening snail trail under his nose a good half of the winter months.

Coming to the defense of my relative "earthiness" is Katherine Ashenburg, who was recently interviewed in Salon about her latest book "The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History." Ashenburg's overview ranges around the world and the centuries, describing trends, beliefs, and methods. The Roman aqueducts, the Greek's drastic exfoliation, the German's belief in the manliness of cold showers...

In general, Europeans and Christians come out the filthiest. I may go days without bathing, but I still reside on the far end of the clean spectrum compared to the 17th century French. Skunk de pew! The belief spread throughout Europe that bathing opened your pores and let the Black Death come in, so getting wet was considered perilous.

Ashenburg believes that modern American hygiene habits are "bizarrely fastidious," and that the pendulum has swung too far, surpassing the bounds of sense. There is more pressure than ever before to wash more. At the same time, people have never needed to bathe less--or at least those of us with plenty of labor-saving devices and desk jobs. Then there's the "hygiene hypothesis," which has surfaced in several Mothertalker dairies in reference to rising rates of allergies in children.

But didn't at least one doctor you interviewed argue that the most important thing for preventing disease in terms of cleanliness -- hand washing -- is actually one that many Americans do inadequately?

Yes. That's a very good point. This was Dr. Germ, or Dr. Gerba, which is his real name. He has sent his researchers into public washrooms and found that only about 15 percent of people there actually wash long enough and with soap.

So much of our current interest in cleanliness is really about appearance and not ever smelling like a human being. If we smell like mangoes or vanilla and our face looks clean and our teeth are paper white, that's good enough. But really the one seriously disease-preventing practice of hand washing is not done enough.

Today is Black Friday, and if you were out shopping at a big box store at 4 in the morning, you're nuts in my book. A masochist.

I sympathize with those parents who are a little gun-shy about purchasing toys this season, in light of all the recalls... the Aqua Dots and the Thomas trains and god know what else. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group has taken up the cause and released their 22nd Annual "Trouble in Toyland" report.

For the report, safety consultants were dispatched to stores with lead test kits, choke-test cylinders, and sound meters. The results were somewhat reassuring:

Despite the record number of toy recalls this year, the vast majority of toys are safe.

"Sometimes I'm walking for hours and am not finding anything, but I tell myself that's a good thing," said Cassady, who helps compile the annual "Trouble in Toyland" report for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. This year's report is scheduled to be released Tuesday.

The recent recalls of toys containing lead and small powerful magnets have made a difference. Cassady said she had a harder time this year finding toys with those hazards.

Ambitious and untrusting parents can acquire the same testing equipment that Cassady employed, although there is some debate over the usefulness of the cheap test kits, since they only test the surface of things. Toys made from vinyl and other soft plastics can have high levels of lead blended in to the material.
In the Washington Post story, the safety consultant indentified lead in a Curious George doll, and shortly thereafter the doll was recalled. I bought one of those kits at a hardware store a couple of years ago, because I live in an old house with peeling paint.

Currently, "No Child Left Behind" reauthorization bills are being written in the Senate and House education committees. Time to start dialing your representatives!

The unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind have been enumerated on this site--see here, here, here, and here. The curriculum complaints can be boiled down to two main problems: too much testing and too little everything else. The everything else category includes history, science, foreign languages, physical education, music, art, theater, and environmental education. With No Child Left Behind, reading and math proficiency trumps all.

Each of these subject areas have their advocates, and the advocates draw from passion as well as statistics to argue for the intellectual and emotional benefits of their discipline. When I was a child, my mother was the elementary school art teacher. She built the program from scratch and wore a t-shirt that proclaimed "You Gotta Have Art!!!" That was the only political statement she ever made during my childhood. At the time, she probably didn't think it was political, but it sure is now!

No Child Left behind has forced many of us to contemplate our own priorities: what aspects of education were most valuable to us as children? What aspects do we consider to be the most valuable now for our children? There will probably be as many different answers as there are public school parents.

Me, I want it all--band and French and throwing pots, counting tree rings and disassembling a lawn mower engine... I want my son to have a full range of experiences, just like I did. In many ways, I am surprised that education has taken this turn. It seems profoundly un-American for a schmorgasboard of curricular choices to be narrowed down to beans and rice. We're the culture that likes 50 different toothpaste varieties!

Advocates for environmental education are asking their legislators to co-sponsor the No Child Left Inside Act of 2007, which will amend the No Child Left Behind law in the following ways:

• Provide federal funding to states to train teachers in environmental education and to operate model environmental education programs, which include outdoor learning.
• Provide funding to states that create environmental literacy plans to ensure that high school graduates are environmentally literate.
• Provides funding through an environmental education grant program to build state and national capacity.

I would like to see environmental education be a standard feature of public education. A basic foundation of ecological knowledge will go a long ways toward kids becoming the adaptable, inventive people they'll need to be to face the rapid climate change that will take place during their lifetime. Plus, learning and playing outside is fun!

What sacrificial lamb would you like to see revived and protected with the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind? What curricular units engaged you the most deeply when you were a student?

The wives of the presidential candidates have been compared, contrasted, scrutinized, and psychoanalyzed more than a few times already, so I was surprised that Salon's Rebecca Traister decided to have a go. She doesn't reveal anything new about the spouses, just compiles what is already out there and organizes them along the continuum between dull and scintillating.

Not to be a spoiler or anything, but Bill Richardson's wife holds down the outer limits of likeable, normal, and noncontroversial (read:yawn!) and Judi Giuliani is a full-blown freak:

But it is the fact that Judi Giuliani once held a job in which she demonstrated medical equipment on puppy dogs who often died after or during the demonstrations that really kicks her up a notch and puts her head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.

Dennis Kucinich's wife posted the complete lyrics to "Stairway to Heaven" on her MySpace page, and Hillary's wife is/was a blowjob king, but at least they are not puppy killers!

The article is mostly a fun romp. But in Traister's run-up to the spouse list, she takes note of the new age we are entering: one where more egalitarian relationships are reflected at the top levels of political power:

In a post-Hillary universe, as the second wave and children of the second wave grow up and form more egalitarian partnerships, there are more brassy, opinionated, loud, difficult, plum-crazy partners on the arms of their front-running partners. Just consider that Clinton was the first first lady ever to have earned a postgraduate degree. But in recent years, the primary fields have been lousy with lawyers and doctors and professors.

I can only view Laura Bush as an absolute throwback--or last gasp of the traditional First Lady. She has perfected mildness, a trait esteemed by men of a certain vintage... Compare her to gals like Dr. Judith Dean, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Edwards, or even Theresa Heinz. I can't help it--a person's choice of mate speaks volumes to me about their character. And about their manhood, really. I always thought Paul Newman was extra hot for having married (and remained married to) Joanna Woodward, who seemed to exude intelligence and verve.

'Tis the season for a zillion catalogs to choke my mailbox, tastefully or garishly blaring the same messages: Gift Ideas! Hurry! Give! Celebrate! Decorate! My name has been sold to so many mailing lists and catalog companies, you'd think I was Ivana Trump with a royal flush of flexible credit cards. There's a new game in town for those of us who want to cut down on our waste mail: Catalog Choice. For free, I get to determine which mailers I want and which I wish to disappear. Take me off your list, Boston Proper and Potty Barn! No need to slay old growth forests to advertise your wares to me. Catalog Choice has a clean, usable website. It launched a couple of weeks ago and already has about 100,000 users. Check it out. Save some trees and trips to the recycling bin.

Christmas is in the air, and manufacturers are cranking out the goods in anticipation of the consumer frenzy. Unfortunately, child labor is rearing its ugly head to put a reality check on our impending binge.

The Observer ran an exposé on a filthy sweatshop in India filled with child workers, some as young as 10, sewing beads on Gap children's blouses for 16 hours a day. The conditions are squalid, and the arrangements approach slavery. The quotes the reporter obtained from the Indian children are gut-wrenching:

'I was bought from my parents' village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,' he says. 'The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we weren't fed. I've been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I don't get paid. It has been like this for four months.'

According to New York Magazine's Daily Intelligencer, middle-aged moms are seeking MBAs in greater numbers, and it's driving down the value of an MBA. Because moms are NOT COOL y'all. A middle-age mom sitting in the midst of a classroom of go-getters just kills the mood. There goes the neighborhood!

Check out Suburban Moms Sound the Death Knell of the MBA:

You know once affluent, middle-aged moms get into something, it's over. We mean, no offense to the ladies, but look what happened with, say, Juicy Couture, Norah Jones, and La Esquina. Now, apparently, this crowd has set its sights on the MBA. In a shrewd new step in their ongoing effort to ensure that no one ever goes to b-school again, the Times business section today has a trend story about Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business "Back in Business" program, which caters to mommies who want to muscle their way back into the workforce. Simultaneously, the Brazen Careerist has a column listing all the reasons why the MBA has become obsolete. Coincidence? We think not. Also, it's kind of funny how it’s called the Tuck School, which reminds us a little bit of plastic surgery. MBAs! They're the new Botox.

Alrighty. I tripped over to the Brazen Careerist to discover the reasons why MBA degrees are becoming devalued, and received another shock to the system. Behold reason number 2:

2. Business schools are compromised by a lack of female applicants.

Harvard Business School is so concerned that it's not receiving enough female applicants that it's changed the admission process to accommodate the biological clock. This means that students will have less work experience coming into the program.

In the past, business schools have said that prior work experience is important to the MBA education. But apparently, the lack of women is so detrimental to the education that Harvard is willing to take less work experience.

While the changes are beneficial for women in some respects, one has to wonder if this doesn't compromise the value of an MBA for everyone.

The author of this nugget, Penelope Trunk, must have a lot of junk in her trunk to utter that last line. Nothing like a strong blast of sexism to wake me up in the morning.

A new reality show will be flickering across your screens mid-September. "Kid Nation" sounds like a cross between Survivor, Lord of the Flies, and PBS's stab at reality on the range, Frontier House.

The producers bussed a few dozen kids to a Disney-fied pioneer town outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where, if the trailer is any indication, the kids cook, clean, drink rootbeer, scream at each other, and cry. I would never have heard about this CBS reality show except that there's a flap about it in the news: insinuations of child labor law violations, a dearth of permits, truancy and no tutors, etc. Then there are the criticisms that the children were too young to be on their own for 40 days, and that the parents were gold-diggers driven by the $20,000 prize.

I can't help but think these controversies are wholly intentional: there are no complaining children, no complaining parents, and coincidentally, the online news stories contain video trailers for the show!

I'm too much of a cynic to muster outrage over these potential violations. However, I did get fired up when I read the premise:

For 40 days in April and May, CBS sent 40 children, ages 8 to 15, to a former ghost town in New Mexico to build a society from scratch. With no access to their parents, not even by telephone, the children set up their own government, laws and society in front of reality television cameras. The goal, according to creator Tom Forman ("Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and "Armed and Famous"), was for "kids to succeed where adults have failed."

SCHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) is a popular national program that was launched in 1997 to address the growing number of U.S. children without health insurance. SCHIP was designed to help the families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but earn too little to afford private health insurance. You know, the "working poor."

Every state has its own arrangement for how they use these federal dollars. Some states run SCHIP as a program wholly separate from Medicaid, while others run SCHIP as an expansion of Medicaid. The various states also use different income criteria for qualifying, which makes sense, considering the variations in cost of living.

Our brave leader Bush is hacking away at SCHIP and putting the screws to those 16 states that allow families with incomes at 250% of the federal poverty level to qualify. That translates to $51,625 for a family of four. Where I live, a family of four living on that income would be hard pressed to afford health insurance if it was not offered through work.

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families.

Administration officials outlined the new standards in a letter sent to state health officials on Friday evening, in the middle of a month-long Congressional recess. In interviews, they said the changes were aimed at returning the Children’s Health Insurance Program to its original focus on low-income children and to make sure the program did not become a substitute for private health coverage.

One of the many problems with "returning SCHIP to its original focus" is that health care costs continue to rise, pricing out families that may be considered middle class. That's why the states expanded SCHIP in the first place!

A popular meme that has been repeated in mainstream media coverage of Yearly Kos is that the conference was a sea of white, middle-aged males. The "white" part of the equation does not surprise me, but the other two characterizations don't square with my experience. I saw and met a hell of a lot of people in their 30s, which I don't consider middle-aged. But the bit about females? My eyes saw an even split. Where were these reporters standing, that they didn't see the women? Digby had some choice words about the invisibility of middle-aged women:

I have to say that I was a little bit non-plussed by this article in the Washington Post today saying that it was nothing but a bunch of middle aged white men. It reminded me of a scene from the HBO show "Six Feet Under" where Kathy Bates takes her recently widowed pal into a department store for some recreational shop-lifting, chiding her for not fully taking advantage of the fact that middle aged women are completely invisible. Perhaps being a member of that contingent myself, I noticed that there were a great many of them present at this convention (and I think I hugged every one of them.) They were present in large numbers at every event I attended, listening attentively and asking probing questions. Next year maybe we can all wear bells or something so the press will know we're there.

I attended panel discussions on feminism, food and farming, and global warming--topics which may appeal to women in greater numbers. But my mate attended a whole other roster of panels, and he had a similar perspective: 50% women. We both joined the multi-gendered throngs for the keynotes and presidential forum. Today MissLaura on DailyKos took on Ellen Goodman, who wrote about the dominance of male voices among top echelon blogs.