My Sister's Keeper

At my mom's club book club session tonight we had a great conversation about My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult.

It's about a couple who finds out that their 3 year old daughter has cancer, and on the advice and help of their doctor to implant the perfect embryo, they decide to have another child so they can get a perfect match of cord blood to save her. The story takes place 13 years later, as Anna, the second daughter, tired of being the child who exists to save the first, refuses her fourth major medical procedure: donating a kidney to save her sister.

There are many other plot twists, but the critical questions came through very starkly:

• Can you ever love your children equally?
• How do you balance the interests of one child with another in the same family?
• As a mom, or a dad, how dedicated and obsessed should you be with saving your dying child?
• Is it ethically right to conceive and grow a child with the thought of organ and tissue donation?

The family in the novel was an extreme look at these issues, involving a court case to allow the 13 year old to wrest medical power of attorney from her parents (which she won), a pyromaniac older brother trying to get attention from his firefighter father, and a big, big lie that is revealed at the end of the story. We were all quite disgusted with the mother of the story, who was truly dismissive of her other two children in the guise of saving just one. She decided she had to be in control of saving her daughter herself by giving birth - misplaced heroism as one Mom insightfully pointed out. But the issues about balance, ethics, and genomics were very real.

We had two nurses and one pediatric nutritionist in the group. They had lots of very interesting stories to share abuot real families and how they deal with sick children. It turns out the latest thing is training parents to deal not just with their sick kids but their whole families. It's common for the sick children to be infantilized, spoiled, and developmentally behind their peers, and for the other kids to become quite troubled as well.

And no one could answer my question about whether they'd consider having a child to save a child. Everyone seemed to be saying, I don't want to be like that mother, but it would really depend on the situation, wouldn't it? What if that were the only thing you could do to save your child? I found this both understandable and quite frightening.

Revelling in Affection

I realize that I am a very lucky Mom right now. And that I should memorialize this reality while I can.

My 2 year old son is so affectionate and loving, it is amazing. He starts his day by kissing and hugging me hello in his crib. These are quick kisses, and I have to ask for them each time. He hugs and kisses his bear, Didi, and often asks me to do the same. I kiss and bite his toes while changing his clothes, and can his forehead as much as I like while he's getting dressed. Every time we walk downstairs together, I squat at the bottom to reward him with a big good job kiss and bear hug. Today I walked away before doing it and was reprimanded. "No mommy, (kissing noise)!"

Whenever I am away from him, and I or he comes back to the house, he runs at me with huge open arms, screaming "Mommyyyy!!" with big open arms and if I am not down on his level to receive his hug, he wraps himself tightly around my leg with selfless devotion, sometimes with his best reunion kisses. Every day, usually twice a day, we have a go to nap and then bed ritual which ends with me turning out the light while he sits on my knee to sing songs. He used to sit on my lap quietly while I sang but recently he's turned himself to lie sideways against by body and trails his hand up and down my arm, and sometimes he even plants tiny whisper kisses up and down my arm, his glee in feeling close to Mommy kisses. At the end of the song, we trade cheek kisses, at his insistence, three times before I put him into his crib. When he gets there, his refrain is "more (kissing noises)" and I have to promise more once I've gotten him his bed-time water. Then I get a full tight-mouthed heavy duty smack and hug, and then he lies himself down, face on top of Didi, to get ready to rock himself to sleep.

The last kiss of the day is the most romantic. From his rocking position and my position at the rapidly closing door, we look into each other's eyes from across the room and blow each other one last kiss, to last each of us until the next day.

That's probably about 20-50 kisses a day between us. How delightful it is to be loved by a toddler!

We're Sick!

Jake and I both had slight fevers today. Which meant he made out like a bandit. Got to have Didi and his bottle with him all day, ate only his favorite foods (we are so thrilled that he'll eat at all when he's feverish), watched an incredible amount of Blues Clues and Baby Einstein, and good for me, took an almost 4 hour nap. He was still cranky at dinner, trying to get away with throwing a handful of shredded cheese on the floor, turning his bowl of peas upside down on his slice of bread (both were worthy of experiementation but unworthy of being eaten), and finally, laughing huge uproarious belly laughs that warm the soul until you realize they can only be the creation of an extremely exhausted child. These were his reactions to both Daddy and Mommy trying to kill an errant but vastly annoying mosquito flying lazily above our dinner table. He laughed and laughed, even after Daddy smushed the culplit on the ceiling and then wiped off the remains, and kept repeating "More do!" By snorty time, our after bath mostly quiet play ritual, he downed a children's tylenol and motrtin cocktail, and seemed to have a second wind, playing with his car garage and his new Fisher Price train set, doing a few long run and jumps into a folded-up feather bed, and finally getting tucked into his crib at around 9pm. LONG DAY!!

Blogging and Social Enterpreneurship

This whole blog thing is fascinating, and still a bit mysterious to me.

Is it narcissism, ego, the most democratic form of publishing, educational, what?

Does anyone really care about my daily thoughts enough to come back and read them more than once (besides my mother)?

Do I care about others enough to do the same? Or is this really a big mutual exhibitionist exercise?

Honestly, the jury is still out, for me.

For a test, I went surfing today for blogs in my field, Social Entrepreneurship. SE refers to the efforts of some people to create entrepreneurial organizations and companies to bring innovative solutions to societal problems.

Social entrepreneurs work in both the nonprofit and forprofit sectors and examples of their work are familiar to all of us: Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's brought social advocacy to consumer products, Paul Newman of Newman's Own showed that a forprofit company can devote itself to charitable purposes, Habitat for Humanity has had incredible impact on low-income housing through its low-cost volunteerism model, and last but not least, the big kahuna this year, Muhammed Yunus of the Grameen Bank, has proven that microlending can develop real wealth and independence in the developing world, and recently won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his 30+ year effort. There are thousands of other examples and the words and topic are quite hot in business and philanthropy circles right now.

My work concerns both investment and entrepreneurial perspectives on social entrepreneuership. I've invested in them and consulted to them for over 10 years. I teach MBAs about them, help give prize money to promising plans for them, help investors find them, and consult on both around the country and at times around the globe.

And yet, I have done most of my work through in person meetings, reading books, and reading websites, and direct research. Before this week, I had, I'm not sure I have EVER looked at an SE-related blog.

My question was: what exists in blogs that I may not know about or might help me in my work?

Some of the interesting things I found:

From Tribeca to Tanzania - I had previously found the Acumen Fund blog, which they seem to be using as a live newsletter for staff and colleagues to post newsworthy items and thoughts in between their quarterly email newsletters. This is different. This is the online journal of one of their new fellows, who is documenting her learning process in their training program before going to Tanzania to work with one of their SE companies producing anti-malarial bednets. So what's interesting here? She posted the curriculum they ended up creating for the fellows (one of my former students, Eric Cantor, a fabulous guy, was leading that effort) and their guests and topics were impressive. Also interesting are the notes of a very smart young person making sense of all that Acumen can bring to her in understanding the world. Going to a NY strip club, for example, with a social entrepreneur from India working in sex trade trafficking. She has a journalistic writing style, though still personal, that makes for very compelling reading, I thought, for about 10 minutes that I spent there.

The host of her blog is Social Edge. They have about 10 different blogs they host, alongside Keeley's, above, like this one on Scaling. Or this one from Paul Light of NYU, who seems to be using the blog format to post chapters of his paper funded by the Skoll Foundation. Whose idea was that? Why is it better than on a website?

Social Edge the site, which it seems she helped create, is overwhelming in scope. They have bulletin boards on questions that would seem hugely helpful, like how to navigate the legal issues between nonprofits and forprofits and hybrids, but the postings are so random as to be somewhat painful. Still, a good place to peruse when bored. (note: am I ever bored??)

I feel similarly about the Omidyar Network, the uber-blog created by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, as part of his charitable work. Its subject is all things SE. I have been there before, I realize. And I rarely find things of use.

Oxford Alliance, is run by some guy named Tom, no last name, who id's himself as a social entrepreneur in the UK. He has some good posts on the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship, though his posts reveal some lack of depth in experience with some definitions and ranges of activity within the field. I'd go back, though. Again, for the personal voice and approach. I must like this better than the random community comment board?

My blog search also revealed some SE things that are not blogs, like STVP Educator's Corner, a collection of videos for people like me to use in their classes. Again, useful in a very direct way.

Global Ideas Bank - this looks to have a much more complete summary of the Skoll World Forum, for those interested.

I also found more blogs used as news delivery sites, like 4Nonprofits, or Xigi.net or SocialROI. My research is complete for today as I must actually go do some real work.

I think my conclusion so far is that I like blogs that have a strong personal voice. The ones that are miscellaneous lists or news or questions asking for help seem much less interesting. I do also need to spend a bit more time reading blog responses to posts, but I think my take on that is that they are nececssarily light because there is no internal organization past a simply linear reply that gets posted underneath the last one.

So, that's my 2 cents on blogging for today.

Fathers and Mothers

A new article in an Ottawa paper says that Fathers who stay home to caregive do it differently from Moms - they do part-time work more often and they socialize less with other Moms:

"The author of a new book about fathering says men’s reality is at such a remove from the conventional image that she wonders whether the term “stay-at-home dad” is even relevant anymore.

“So many do keep a hand in the labour market, whether through a bit of part-time work or through some studying/retraining, because so much of male identity is tied to earning or achieving or simply doing something apart from caregiving,” said Andrea Doucet, author of Do Men Mother? “I think that men do not face the same fatherload because they do carve out time for themselves, even when they are at home with the kids. Perhaps there are some interesting things that we can learn from men.”"

The article is based on interviews over 4 years with stay at home Dads. Some of the things ring true and many of them, as usual, seem to descibe my husband and me perfectly - only backwards. For example:

Archie says that fathers in general respond to children “in a less feminine way. If a kid falls and hurts himself, women would probably rush over more than men. I say, ‘Come on, toughen up.’ I think there are more differences there. I am not sure how to characterize it.”

The author points out this is often the first difference among moms and dads that her subjects mentioned to her. I actually rush in less often to comfort after a fall than my husband does, but when I do, I comfort just as much. Ah, the limits of stereotypes!

Fall: Back into the Groove

Here are some pix from when Grandma was here. The top is Jake and Gram in the yard on Halloween night right before we went trick or treating. Gram is our neighbor, and was an adorable cowboy. (And Jake, of course, refused his costumes, but as you can see was in quite good humor about it.)

Not much new to report today. Am too tired from my travels and work deadlines! Once I got back from Boston, I needed to get my new syllabus together and posted session by session on the university intranet so that students can start bidding on classes. Got that done yesterday. And got some early compliments on it from my invited guest speakers. That was nice!

Also, since the weather has been so balmy (76 today!) for early November, we've been spending a lot of time outside. We've had about 4 out of 6 meals out in the past 3 days, including a great dinner on the downtown mall in the dark last night. Today Jake and I emerged from the main library downtown with about 30 books and then hiked through a field to visit some horses at a nearby vineyard. He kept repeating "Bye, horsies!" all the way home.

Our leaves are now about 80% down and are covering every inch of our yard. Mike needs some help with the gutters. I'm hoping tomorrow the weather won't be as nice so I can turn my attention to the inside of the house, which looks like a cyclone hit it. Yikes!

Over the Boston Harbor

That's where I've been looking most of the day.

I'm in Boston, at a board meeting and conference. I'm co-chair of the board of a nonprofit whose members invest in socially-responible and environmentally sustainable companies.

Our board meeting went very well. The org's leader for over 5 years is on sabbatical this year, and amazingly enough, we are also flush with cash for the first time ever. The staff is doing a great job and we decided to give them a generous bonus pool for the year. That felt very good and they sure do deserve it.

And tonight several old friends appeared and I got to catch up with them. One is a guy who worked for me about 5 years ago. He's now living in London, working at an investment firm chaired by Al Gore, and has an 11-month old girl at home. My friend is a born networker and schmoozer but now hates travelling and tries to spend as much time as he can with her.

His wife is working three days a week, and while she works the daughter is at home with an amazing nanny. They'd like to move back to NY but he cannot imagine he'd ever get to see his daughter if they did. Living in Manhattan, he said, they'd both have to work more and if they moved somewhere affordable out of the city, the length of commuting time would also cut into his daughter time. He says London is easier - great nannies who are affordable AND people just work less, period. He seems quite happy, though apparently the kid's American grandparents are heartbroken that she's so far away.

Another interesting family/work challenge - they do seem to be everywhere when you start to look!

One of our org's members, Matt S., read to us tonight from his book, called Waking. He made an impassioned, very moving argument that the impulse that drives us to want to make our money more connected to the planet is similar to the one that connects our minds and body. He was in a car accident at age 13 and became a paraplegic. His story is about disconnecting, and then reconnecting, his own mind and body. It occured to me that babymaking and parenting also require a new kind of connection with your body. Biology prevails. As will the planet, whether we choose to stop polluting it and exploiting its resources or not. Matt now runs a yoga studio and has invested in social companies for over 12 years. Great guy. And he signed a book copy for me. I feel honored!

Empowerment

Oh, almost forgot. I voted today. Absentee, since I will be out of town next week. Felt very powerful and liberal here in my very conservative state. Not only did I get to vote for Democrats but I also got to tell the state of Virginia that I do NOT want them to take away domestic partner benefits for all state and state-funded workers. Have a feeling I will be outweighed on that one - the ballot was framed as a vote on gay marriage:

Ballot Issue: Shall Article I (the Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to state: “That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.

It was only in the second paragraph that it mentioned the state and state-funded workers would lose their domestic partner benefits. Sneaky, eh?