Whoa. The NY Times parenting blog is freaking out. A few weeks ago, there was a guest post from a woman who was married to a man in the military who was away much of the time, they had five daughters, and they adopted a little boy. After 18 months, they decided that, since he didn't seem to be bonding with them, he would be better off with another family, and found a different family to adopt him. Comments started with things along the lines of "Thank you for sharing this painful story" but soon became pretty negative. [link]

Then, for some reason that I'm still trying to figure out, she went on The Today Show to tell the story again. [link] I kind of feel like there are huge pieces of this story missing -- she says, over and over, that she loves him but they didn't bond, but doesn't ever really say what that means -- how she could tell that a toddler had not bonded, how he interacted with her and the other kids, and so on.

edit: looking at it more closely, it looks like the youngest two biological children were born after they decided to adopt the boy, and at least one of them after he was already with their family.

Good heavens-- I'm watching an episode of House Hunters and the wife in the couple has got the same terrible haircut as Kate Gosselin. Why would anyone do that to their hair on purpose?

Good heavens-- I'm watching an episode of House Hunters and the wife in the couple has got the same terrible haircut as Kate Gosselin. Why would anyone do that to their hair on purpose?

That haircut that looks almost normal from the front, and then is all spiky in the back? I have no idea.

Hil, that woman even wrote a column about another mother who had given up an adopted child chastising her for doing so. It's all very weird. But in the end, the boy is thriving with another family and that's probably the best outcome.

Ugh. Owen is horribly congested and still feverish after two days. OTC meds are cutting it besides keeping his fever down. He's not sleeping well because of the stuffy nose and head and he's got chills and body aches to boot.

I never got George Clooney in the slightest during the ER years. Then, Ocean's Eleven came along and he was all salt and pepper and sly wit and I all of a sudden went, "Okay, yes. NOW I get it."

I am Barb. 100%. Same thing with Brad Pitt, really. He was all young and shiny but bland like an unstamped penny. Then along around Fight Club or later, he was suddenly all sexy.

That's the Robert Redford effect, IMO. Like, in The Way We Were, he's all shiny and pretty but bland. But about 10-15 years ago, he suddenly hit molten lava sexy.

Hil, that woman even wrote a column about another mother who had given up an adopted child chastising her for doing so. It's all very weird. But in the end, the boy is thriving with another family and that's probably the best outcome.

She also talks about using only his first initial to protect privacy, but in the comments on the first article, she uses his full name, and the Today Show segment blurred his face but not the faces of her daughters. And everything is about her feelings and her reactions, almost nothing about the actual child. It just seems odd that she chose to share the story, but isn't sharing what seem like the most relevant parts. (Not that her feelings aren't important, of course, but it seems odd to write about how you weren't bonding with the child without writing almost anything at all about the actual child.)

The only way that the timeline seems to work out is if she were already very pregnant when he arrived, and then got pregnant again within a few months, if she gave birth to two girls during the 18 months that he was with them.

in The Guardian: Will California become America's first failed state?

Yet California is currently cutting healthcare, slashing the "Healthy Families" programme that helped an estimated one million of its poorest children. Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit's. In order to pass its state budget, California's government has had to agree to a deal that cuts billions of dollars from education and sacks 60,000 state employees. Some teachers have launched a hunger strike in protest. California's education system has become so poor so quickly that it is now effectively failing its future workforce. The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation. Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above "junk".

Somewhat longish article. Interesting to read a non-US perspective of the mess (although the article doesn't really go too much into the political causes of the mess).

Wow. An article tracing e coli contamination in ground beef: [link] The inspection system seems like not so much a system. And the standard instructions about how to keep your kitchen safe don't actually work -- they found that a cutting board washed with soap still had e. coli on it -- the way to actually remove it is bleach, but all the safe handling instructions say to use soap. And cooking it to the recommended temperature doesn't always work, either.

And the way that ground beef is produced and tested, they might grind together meat and trimmings from five different suppliers and then test the final product, so that even if they find contamination, they can't trace it back to the source and warn any other grinders who bought from that same slaughterhouse. And according to most of the grinders (though the slaughterhouses deny it), most slaughterhouses refuse to sell to grinders who do test before grinding.

The USDA tried mandating standard procedures for how and when beef should be tested, and got resistance from the industry.

But the department received critical comments on the guideline, which has not been made official. Industry officials said that the cost of testing could unfairly burden small processors and that slaughterhouses already test. In an October 2008 letter to the department, the American Association of Meat Processors said the proposed guideline departed from U.S.D.A.’s strategy of allowing companies to devise their own safety programs, “thus returning to more of the agency’s ‘command and control’ mind-set.”

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

Why is the USDA in charge of both food safety and promoting the various agriculture industries? Wouldn't it make far more sense to have the people in charge of ensuring safety and the people in charge of ensuring profit be different people?

I WILL NOT read that woman's article or watch the interview, no way will not nuh uh.

I will report that my little man has so far had a wonderful weekend and is recovering so much better to situations of disappointment and anger (both from me and him).

I will report that my little man has so far had a wonderful weekend and is recovering so much better to situations of disappointment and anger (both from me and him).

That's great.