Sometimes I have trouble finding the words to talk to my kids about the violence that hear about in the news, the injustices that they see in our own community. As a human rights lawyer, it is my job is to document and expose human rights abuses. But I have always struggled with how to communicate to my kids what human rights are and why they should care about them.
Recently, however, I was preparing for a project that involved interviewing children about their experiences. Experts advise that interviewers use simple language when speaking with children about difficult topics. “Simple language” means avoiding big words, of course, but it also means using simple, direct sentences. Straight-forward grammar – subject and predicate in sentences; basic speech parts – nouns and verbs and adjectives. I suddenly realized what I was doing wrong in talking about human rights with my kids. Rather than explaining complicated concepts, what I needed to do was break it down to the core values that everyone needs to live fully in this world. I needed to start with the basic building blocks of language: words.
Once I realized this, I started to see human rights words all around me! Words like:
and
and
Verbs like
and
and
and
Nouns were all around me!
and
and
and
I saw adjectives, too!
and
I started pointing out these words to my daughter, who is seven. Just last week, she was running past the table in the entryway where we put our mail. Suddenly, she came to a screeching halt in front of the stamps.
“Look, mommy,” she said. “The stamps are speaking the language of human rights!”
My daughter was exactly right. The stamps said: equality, justice, freedom, liberty. Powerful words that convey basic human rights concepts.
The current Weekly Writing Challenge got me thinking about children in one of the most adult-oriented of all places – the workplace. Yes, I admit that I have brought each of my three children to work with me at various times, usually because of an unlucky confluence of sickness and pressing work deadlines. It certainly isn’t my first choice, but in my experience it has worked out fine for short periods of time. (Unless you count the unfortunate incident when my co-worker Peder accidentally got his finger chomped by my oldest son, who was teething. New baby teeth are razor sharp. Peder claims that he saw stars, just like in the cartoons.)
But whether or not to bring children to work is an issue that many working mothers have grappled with at one time or other. It is, in fact, the issue that has made European Parliament Member Licia Ronzulli so popular with moms like me. The photo above, taken in September 2010, of Ms. Ronzulli at work with her baby has made her a cause célèbre for working mothers around the world.
Although she doesn’t bring her daughter to the European Parliament regularly, there are other photos of Ms. Ronzulli and her daughter Vittoria. During a vote on the Eurozone debt crisis on February 15, 2012, reporters snapped several photos of Vittoria with her mom at the European Parliament.
Now two years old, Vittoria was back in Strausborg – and the European media – just this week. I think that the reasons that these photos resonate so much with moms here in America is that they symbolize so perfectly the work-family balance that all of us working moms struggle with every day. Ms. Ronzulli’s employer, the European Parliament, has rules that allow women to take their baby with them to work. Unfortunately, this is just not an option for most working moms. So we share the photos on Facebook and hope for a day when working mothers have better support.
Support such as adequate parenting leave, for example, is important. But Ms. Ronzulli herself was entitled to a parenting leave, but chose to take only 1 month of it. She makes the point that it is about personal choice. In 2010, she told The Guardian “It’s a very personal choice. A woman should be free to choose to come back after 48 hours. But if she wants to stay at home for six months, or a year, we should create the conditions to make that possible,” she said.
I think that Ms. Ronzulli is right. I think that we should create the conditions to make it possible for a woman to choose the best thing for both her family and her career. Sometimes, that might mean bringing the kids to work with her. (And yes, I think this goes for dads as well.)
Like most mothers, I spend a good deal of time preparing meals for my family. Most mornings find me in the kitchen, making lunches as the sky lightens from deep blue to pink, and so on to sweet orange. Brilliant shafts of sunlight are spilling through the back door by the time I pack the lunchboxes into my kids’ backpacks. Honestly, I don’t always love this part of my parenting job description. While I want my kids to eat healthy meals, meeting this inexorable human requirement for sustenance can be grindingly tedious. So it comes as a welcome break in the routine when I travel for work, as I did to Nepal last month.
When I travel to developing countries, however, I am always reminded that I actually spend very little time in the kitchen compared to women worldwide. Surveys in a wide range of countries have shown that women provide 85 – 90 percent of the time spent on household food preparation.According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American women in my demographic spend just over 60 minutes on food prep and just over 30 minutes on cooking every day. Indian women, by contrast, average 191 minutes, while Mexican women spend 373 minutes and Turkish women spend 377 minutes on unpaid domestic work like food preparation and cooking. When you add to this the time spent gathering fuel and fetching water, the numbers shoot up even more – up to 5 hours in some African countries. So I really have nothing to complain about.
The other thing that always strikes me when I return home to the United States is how much food we waste in this country. According to a recent study, Americans throw away forty percent – nearly half – of their food every year, waste worth roughly $165 billion annually. In other words, the average American family of four ends up throwing away an equivalent of up to $2,275 annually in food. It’s hard not to feel how wrong that is when you have just returned from interviewing young people who only get one meal a day; a mother who hasn’t eaten for 36 hours because she gave her refugee camp rations to her children. And hunger remains a problem right here in our own country. If we reduced the losses in the U.S. food supply by just 15 percent, according to the National Resources Defense Council, we would save enough to feed 25 million Americans annually.
This American habit of wasting food is of relatively recent acquisition – there has been a 50 percent jump in U.S. food waste since the 1970s. So this is not a problem created by my Grandma Edna’s generation, who survived the Great Depression by saving and using every bit of food they could. (She even saved the bacon drippings, using them to make her Cornflake Cookies.) This is a problem for which MY generation, those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, must acknowledge some responsibility.
There are some good tips out there for reducing food waste in your home: making (and keeping to) a shopping list, buying only the amount you need, freezing things before they go bad (bread, cheese, avocados, bananas), composting, using up leftovers. I do these things, but my major focus is on the leftovers. I make chili with the leftovers from Taco Night, enchiladas with leftover chicken. There’s a kind of analytical beauty to finding a repurposing solution, the same feeling you get from fitting all the pieces into a puzzle. But mostly I want to model for my kids the economy, the efficiency, the responsibility to avoid wasting food when so many don’t have enough. What I want my children to understand is that the small personal choices they make, both to act and NOT to act in certain ways, can have an impact on others. Small acts of personal economy are, in fact, a way of showing that you care about the world and the other people in it.
The task of using up leftovers is infinitely easier during Soup Season. The sad, wilted veggies on the bottom of the crisper meet old parmesan cheese rinds in Minestrone Soup. Leftover mashed potatoes are transformed into Potato-Cheese Soup (or, equally delicious, Potato Soup with Pesto). Corn is scraped off the cob for Southwestern Corn Chowder. The bottom-of-the-bag salad spinach adds a beautiful green tint to Winter Vegetable Soup (my family’s favorite).
So when I returned from Nepal last week to find that the evenings had turned chilly and, consequently, that the kitchen counter was piled high with end-of-summer tomatoes, I knew exactly what I had to do.
Welcome Soup Season with Tomato Basil Soup and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches!
Here’s my recipe so you can welcome Soup Season, too. Bon appetit!
Tomato Basil Soup
1/4 cup olive oil
3 medium onions (about 3 cups chopped)
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped or pressed
1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped + up to another 1/2 cup chopped for serving
1/2 tsp salt and freshly ground pepper
bay leaf
3 lbs fresh tomatoes, chopped (including skins and seeds) (can also use canned tomatoes -2 28 oz cans whole tomatoes in juice, cut up)
32 oz container of chicken or vegetable broth
In soup pot, saute onions in oil until golden. Add garlic, basil, salt and bay leaf. Saute another 2-3 minutes. Take out bay leaf and add tomatoes and broth. (If I have any leftover tomato paste, I add a couple of tablespoons here; if I have leftover tomato sauce, I add up to a cup of it, too.) Bring to a boil and cook for 10-20 minutes (use the shorter time if you want the tomato taste to be more fresh.) Adjust seasoning (I don’t use much salt, so you may want to add more.) Let cool for a few minutes and then puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches in a regular blender. When soup is smooth, add additional chopped basil. Serve hot or cold.
Options:
Roasted Tomato Basil Soup: Toss the tomatoes, onions and garlic with olive oil and roast at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Follow the rest of the recipe.
Pasta: On this particular night, I added leftover cheese tortellini to the soup but sometimes I add 1/2 to 1 cup of cooked elbow macaroni.
Cream: If you like your tomato soup creamy, it works to substitute out one cup of broth for milk or cream. Add cream after pureeing.
Cheese: I have added each of the following depending on what I am trying to use up (but not at the same time): 1 cup crumbled feta, 1 cup shredded parmesan, 4 oz fresh chevre (goat cheese)
Grilled cheese sandwiches: My grilled cheese depends entirely on what I have on hand. I’ve made delicious open-faced sandwiches with artisan bread and aged gouda, but on this night we had cheddar on whole-wheat bread. Until the cheddar ran out and I switched to provolone – which I actually thought tasted better.
My daughter in Norway in August 2010. For many in Norway, the terrorist attacks on July 22, 2011 represent the loss of innocence.
On the morning of July 22 last year, I read the breaking news of a car bomb attack in Oslo, Norway. I clicked on the link to the NRK live coverage, forgetting that my three children rise and swarm, like mosquitoes from tall grass at dusk, at the slightest potentiality of a video.
“WHAT IS HAPPENING?” yelled my then-9-year-old son.
“It looks like a car bomb exploded in downtown Oslo.”
Gasps all around. We had been in downtown Oslo less than a year before. We had been in that part of town and I think we may even have walked down the street where the explosion damaged several government buildings.
“WAS ANYONE WE KNOW HURT?” screamed my then 6-year old daughter.
“I don’t know yet,” I replied. “Let me listen to what they are saying about it.”
I was trying to remain calm; I was struggling with a decision. As a parent, you have to make a choice about what horrific events you introduce to your children. And you have to decide – often on the spot – how to talk to them about tragedy and violence. You have to find the words to explain the evil that exists in the world while you simultaneously reassure them that, for the most part, they are safe. Obviously, this is not easy and there is no manual. But it is part of your job as a parent to help them make sense of life as a human on this planet.
“IT’S LIKE NORWAY’S 9/11!” blurted out my then-nearly-12-year-old son.
Presciently, in hindsight. It was that statement that decided me, that hardened my resolve. You see, like everyone else, I have a story to tell about 9/11. That’s a story for another day, but, suffice it to say, it committed me to engaging my children in a year-long discussion about the tragic events of July 22, 2011.
The Norwegian media were cautiously talking about how preliminary evidence indicated a terrorist attack. So we had a fruitful discussion (or at least what passes for a “fruitful discussion” when your kids are 6, 9 and 11) about 9/11 and the impact of those events on America. My children do not remember our country before 9/11. It was good to talk to them about the need for security, as well as the need to balance security with the protection of individual rights, including discrimination based on race and religion. They were engaged. They asked questions. Then, with the request to be kept informed of the emerging news of the Oslo bombing, they went on their way to do whatever it is that 6, 9 and 11 year old boys and girls do on a bright summer day.
But as the day went on, the news from Norway got dramatically worse. Eight people were killed and nearly two-thirds of the 300+ people in the government buildings were injured (and had it not been 3:30 pm on a Friday in the holiday month of July, there would certainly have been many more casualties). But the car bomb in Oslo was merely a distraction. Less than two hours later, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Brevik, dressed as a police officer in a fake uniform that he bought on the Internet, took the ferry to the island of Utøya in nearby Buskerud. There he killed 69 people – mostly under the age of 18 – at an summer camp for politically active young people in the AUF (Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking), which is affiliated with Norway’s Arbeiderparti (Labor Party).
AUF describes itself as “Norway’s largest political party youth organization and champion for a more just world (“AUF er Norges største partipolitiske ungdomsorganisasjon og kjemper for en mer rettferdig verden”). Anders Behring Breivik carried out the massacre in cold blood, coming back to shoot again those who were lying injured, shooting kids in the water as they tried to swim to safety. He later claimed that he was trying to save Norway from Muslims world by attacking Social Democrats, Norwegian immigration policies and the concept of multi-culturalism.
This photo of participants at the AUF summer camp on Utøya was taken July 21, 2011, the day before the massacre.
It was one thing to talk to my kids about car bombs and 9/11. It was something else entirely to talk to them about Utøya. I didn’t tell my kids right away about the massacre. I waited a few hours, sifting through the emerging stories of horror until the basic narrative was clear. When I did tell them, what they most wanted to know was:
“WHY?”
I said something about hatred, but there was really nothing I could say by way of explanation. Far too many lost their lives on July 22, 2011. And Anders Behring Breivik’s hateful, violent acts stole not just the future of scores of young people, but also the innocence of a peaceful nation. Just as we demarcate contemporary US history as pre- and post-9/11, so for Norway is tjueandre juli (22 July).
Luckily for me as a parent, stories began quickly emerging about what happened on Utøya. Amazing stories of luck and bravery. Young people not much older than my own children who showed great presence of mind in an unthinkable situation. Leadership and sacrifice. These are stories – and there are many – that deserve more space than I have to give here. But we followed these stories in the days and months following 22 July. They gave us hope. They showed us that ordinary people – most of them still kids – could do extraordinary things.
There is much in our interactions with the world that we cannot control. We can control, however, how we act; how we REact to events and actions by others. This is a lesson I strive to teach my children. I don’t always provide a good role model, but Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg certainly did. I’ve been reading the speeches of Jens Stoltenberg this summer. From the beginning, he encouraged Norwegians not to give way to fear and hate and prejudice. He urged Norwegians to react to the attacks of 22 July by being MORE welcoming to the outsider, to the foreigner. Invite him in for cake and coffee, the Prime Minister suggested. Invite her to take a walk. Get to know one another.
When local elections were held in September 2011, fear was not used as a campaign tactic in Norway. I showed my kids the AUF campaign materials which said, “This summer, our democracy was attacked. The terrorist chose cowardice and ruthless violence over argument and political debate. Our answer is not more violence, but more democracy.”
I’ve heard people say that Norway’s response to July 22 was simplistic. Idealistic. Naive. Maybe it wouldn’t work in other countries. But if you doubt that words matter, let me tell you what happened after the trial of Anders Behring Breivik began on April 16, 2012. Breivik had testified that a particular song, Barn av regnbuen (Children of the Rainbow) by well-loved Norwegian folk singer Lillebjørn Nilsen, with its concept of living together in a multicultural Norway, was brainwashing children into supporting immigrants. This is a song that Mr. Breivik, apparently, detests.
Folksinger Lillebjørn Nilsen and a crowd of 40,000 sing Barn av regnbuen (Children of the Rainbow) at the trial of Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo (Source: NRK)
This is a song that I learned many years ago. It is actually a Pete Seeger song called My Rainbow Race, translated into Norwegian by Lillebjørn Nilsen. I did a rough translation of the lyrics of Barn av regnbuen in a blog post in April. The song’s title comes from the verse:
Sammen skal vi leve
hver søster og hver bror.
Små barn av regnbuen
og en frodig jord.
Together we will live
every sister and every brother.
Small children of the rainbow
and a flourishing world.
One night last week, I heard my now-10-year-old son singing in his bed. He was singing Barna av regnbuen. He sang the whole song, the refrain and every last verse. And then he sang it again.
There will be many tributes on July 22, 2012. Remembrances and roses to honor the innocents who lost their lives one year ago, the survivors who will never be the same again. Add to them this tribute, from a kid in a bunkbed half a world away. A kid who, hopefully, has learned something from the tragedy of 22 July.
Photos of European Parliament Member Licia Ronzulli with her daughter keep popping up on my Facebook news feed and Pintrest. My friends are mostly moms, so I speculate that they had an emotional reaction when they first saw the photo of MEP Ronszulli with her baby. I know that I did. I cheered and teared up a little, almost simultaneously. Then I stopped and asked myself, “Why?”
The photo of Ms. Ronzulli at work with her baby is not a new – it was taken in September 2010. While this photo caused a splash in Europe in 2010, it took a while for it to catch on here. That’s about right – as a country, the US is generally well behind Europe in terms of policies that support mothers.
Although she doesn’t bring her daughter to the European Parliament regularly, there are other photos of Ms. Ronzulli and the now-toddler Vittoria. During a vote on the Eurozone debt crisis on February 15, 2012, reporters snapped several photos of Vittoria with her mom at the European Parliament.
The media coverage I have seen has focused on the cutesy (“awwwwwww”) or “hilarious” aspects of the photos. That’s too bad. I think the media missed the opportunity to talk about WHY American moms like me are cheering for Ms. Ronzulli.
Here are a few reasons:
1) Ms. Ronzulli’s employer, the European Parliament, has rules that allow women to take their baby with them to work. Most American women do not have that option.
2) The photos perfectly symbolize the work-family balance that all of us working moms struggle with every day. The fact that, according to media reports, the photo of Ms. Ronzulli with her infant was taken during a vote on proposals to improve women’s employment rights makes it all the more poignant.
3) Ms. Ronzulli is showing the world that childbirth does not automatically flip the offswitch on our female brains. Women continue to be productive employees even after they become mothers. The Daily Mail, which ran the February 2012 photo in an article titled “Does my vote count, mummy?”, describes the 36-year old Ronzulli as seeming “in complete control in spite of having her baby on her lap throughout.” Why is this such a surprise? I know that I, for one, have become better at multitasking and more efficient at doing my work since I had my first child.
4) In the 2010 photo, it appears that Ms. Ronzulli is choosing to keep her 7 week old infant with her as much as possible. In my experience, that’s important for babies who are still so little. Yet 6 weeks is the typical maternity leave in the U.S. That doesn’t mean that it is paid leave, however. The U.S. is also one of only a handful of countries with no national law mandating paid time off for new parents.
5) Ms. Ronzulli was entitled to a parenting leave, but chose to take only 1 month of it. She makes the point that it is about personal choice. In 2010, she told The Guardian “It’s a very personal choice. A woman should be free to choose to come back after 48 hours. But if she wants to stay at home for six months, or a year, we should create the conditions to make that possible,” she said. Amen, sister!
6) She looks GOOD! I know I never looked that good 7 weeks after labor and delivery, but many of my friends very quickly looked like their pre-baby selves again. I certainly didn’t look my best when I was the sleep-deprived parent of a toddler, but the world didn’t end. Moms like a little reminder now and then that a having a baby doesn’t slam the door on our ability to look and feel good. Sometimes it sure feels like that, but really it’s just a temporary setback.
7) Ms. Ronzulli probably didn’t have to nurse baby Vittoria sitting on a toilet in the ladies room. That’s something I had to do at some point or other with all three of my babies here in America.
So thank you, Licia Ronzulli, for giving us American moms something to cheer for today and a reminder of what we need to continue to work towards tomorrow!
So, in the spirit of the “Best of 2011” season, I decided to put together my very own top 25 list. The only problem is that these days there is precisely one thing in my life that is entirely within my control – my Facebook status updates. Welcome to “Best of My 2011 Status Updates”! I’m posting it now before Facebook – through random-number generator or Mark Zuckerberg’s pet rats in a Skinner box or whatever means they use to decide these things – tells me what my Best 2011 Status Updates are and then posts them in my friends’ News Feed. (Which I predict will happen on Monday, December 26 at 9:36 am EST.)
Best of My 2011 Status Upates
#25 It just seems like you shouldn’t have to start your day with the sentence, “Hey! Don’t pee on your sister!”
#24 It’s snowing. Both the front and the back doors are open. The refrigerator door, too. Come on! Work with me, people!
#23 I was looking for a wineglass but I found Darth Vader in HEAVEN!
#22 “Don’t throw up on the iPad!” And how is YOUR Friday night going?
#21 ”If you’re going to get out of bed, for God’s sake bring the throw up bowl with you!” And how is YOUR morning going?
#20 Taco Tuesday for those family members who did not throw up today. Everyone else gets pablum.
#19 ”Can you make us turkey waffles?” Happy Thanksgiving!
#18 Most of the time, I think I’m just a normal mom. And then I do things like yell, “You boys stop fighting or I’m going to get Nonviolent Peaceforce up in here!!!” Which makes me think I’m not so normal.
#17 A day that starts with threatening your sons with international non-governmental organizations could really only end with teaching your daughter the difference between flipping the bird and the Vulcan “Live long and prosper” sign.
#16 No Comment.
#15 Is it wrong that my first reaction to the Demi/Ashton split is, “Oh no! What will happen to their foundation that works to eliminate sex slavery?”
#14 Burnt the toast. Threw it out the door. Squirrel caught it and scampered away.
#13 I’m thankful for my (ZOMBIE!!!) family and friends.
#12 “No, honey, they are poppy seed muffins. Not hockey seed muffins.”
#11 Today is “World Toilet Day.” That is all.
#10 Better to be a friend hole than that other kind of hole.
#9 Had a brief, friendly chat with my boyz about what to do if a coach wants to bear hug you in the shower.
#8 Accidentally made a reservation for brunch tomorrow at a restaurant in Australia. Stupid World Wide Web!
#7 Apparently my “mom” pheromones are so strong that random German AND Greek children fall asleep on me on transatlantic flights.
#6 That’s right, sweetie. It’s a “coffee blender”, not a “margarita maker”.
#5 Now is as good a time as any to introduce the small fry to Spinal Tap.
#4 Sometimes, it is best just to remain silent. For example, when your 9 year old son says, “Mom, you are a brick house!”
#3 Daughter: “Can I get a Barack Obama Barbie for Christmas?”
Me: “Ummmm…I need to focus on making dinner right now.”
Daughter: “So, is that a YES?”
#2 My Friday night involved a 4th grader, a saxaphone, some sheet music, and two Youtube videos of Boil Them Cabbage Down.
#1. 9 yo son (critiquing little sister on the way she is carrying her babydoll): “You’re never gonna make a good mom.”
6 yo daughter: “Your shirt is on backwards.”
Oops! My Top 25 list is all filled up and I only got as far back as October in my Facebook “Older Posts”! Wait a minute – this is how these these “Best of” lists actually work, isn’t it? They are really just the highlights from the last quarter with maybe one or two standouts thrown in from earlier in the year?
Once Again, No Comment
Postscript: You may be wondering what any of this has to do with human rights. It doesn’t really. But I have learned from working in human rights the importance of humor as a coping mechanism for dealing with the tough things in life. I’ve done a couple of posts on this already: You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up – Part I and You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up – Part II. I consider this post to be You Really Can’t Make This Stuff Up – Part III.
I first heard about “The Sharing Table” when my son came home from kindergarten and exclaimed, “No snack for me today! I had three hot dogs – plus my home lunch.” I pictured the Oscar Wienermobile pulling up at his school, tossing hot dogs like Mardi Gras beads. “Where did you get three hot dogs?” “The Sharing Table, of course.”
The concept is simple. If there is something in your school lunch that you don’t like, you leave it on the table. If there is something in the school lunch that you want more of, or – if you are like my children – you would like to supplement to your home lunch, well, you can just help yourself. I couldn’t find any official Minneapolis Public Schools food policy, so I quizzed the kids.
Me: “So, how did you find out about The Sharing Table?”
Oldest son (age 12): “Duh! It is right next to the Allergy Aware Table. You can’t miss it.” (This one has a peanut allergy.)
Youngest son (age 9): “I didn’t really know about it, but then I think the Lunchroom Teacher told us at some point. The Lunchroom Teacher is kind of mean. If you forget your lunch, you go to The Sharing Table.”
Daughter (age 6 1/2): “It’s right there! Kids put their grapes there. I like it when I can get the ‘mandrigan’ oranges. Sometimes I take something and put it in my lunchbox for a snack later.”
All three agreed that the only real rules were that the items on the Sharing Table had to be from the school lunch, i.e. pre-packaged. Sometimes the pre-packaged school lunches bum me out. When I was growing up in Louisiana, the lunches were not pre-packaged. They were made in the cafeteria kitchen by large African-American women who always seemed to be stirring giant stainless steel pots and having a grand old time. The East Baton Rouge Parish schools offered up jambalaya, shrimp creole, crawfish etouffee, cornbread, buttery rolls, yams, succotash, John Marzetti casserole, iced spice cake – for only 90 cents a lunch. My high school cafeteria had both a “hot lunch” side and a gumbo/salad bar/milkshake side.
Those East Baton Rouge Parish school lunches were some of the best in the world. The melamine compartment lunch trays (which I recall as being pastel green, orange, yellow, and blue) came back to the kitchen clean as a whistle – except when greens were served. Nobody EVER touched the greens. The greens remained on the trays in the perfect ice cream scooper-formed mounds in which they were served. The rumor was that the greens were actually grass and, in fact, there was some circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis. Not only did they look exactly like grass, but I myself observed over years – at Magnolia Woods Elementary, at Wildwood Elementary, at Glasgow Middle Magnet – that greens were always on the menu THE DAY AFTER the janitors mowed. At Baton Rouge Magnet High, where students came from all over the parish, we did an informal survey and discovered that this was happening in all the school cafeterias. Harbinger of the locovore movement? Or just coincidence? You be the judge. All I know is that nobody EVER touched the greens.
One greens day when I was a sophomore in high school, I brought my lunch tray back to the kitchen. My tray was clean, except for the greens. On the conveyor belt, there was a long line of trays with ice cream scoop mounds of greens waiting to be dumped. The cafeteria lady who was spraying down the trays looked me in the eye and said,
“Y’all is wasting perfectly good greens. Y’all must not know what it’s like not having enough to eat.”
Y’all, in case you don’t know, can be used both in the singular as well as the plural. I understood exactly what she was saying that day – she meant both. The only possible response to this was, “Yes, ma’am.”
By which I meant, “I’m sorry.”
Last year 65% of kids in grades K-8 qualified for free and reduced lunch. I think The Sharing Table is a fine way to make sure that all of these kids get enough to eat. At my kids’ schools they also have R.O.T., where the kids have to sort the remains of their lunches into recycling, organics, and trash. I think that’s a good idea, too.
This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the many blessings in my life: for my family, my health, the opportunity to do good work. I rediscovered my love of writing this year and I’m grateful for that, too. I’m thankful to that long-ago Baton Rouge High School lunchlady. And I’m also thankful for The Sharing Table. My children are learning lessons at school that are not in any curriculum. They are learning a lifestyle of avoiding waste and paying attention to what happens to their garbage. They are learning, by giving and taking equally, that if you have more than you need, you should share it. If you need more than you have, you can take it without questions or shame. It’s not political, it’s just about being together in a community. Today I am thankful that I am not alone in raising these children to be good citizens of their community.
Throwdown* Crawfish Etouffe
1 lb. crawfish tail meat (can also use shrimp or catfish)
2-3 teaspoons Tony Cacherie’s Creole seasoning (if you don’t have that, use 2 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. garlic powder and 1/2 tsp. cayenne)
1/2 stick of butter
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 bunches scallions (green onions), chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can Rotel Tomatoes (diced tomatoes with green chiles)
1 can Campell’s Cream of Mushroom soup (the TRUE secret of Cajun cooking!)
Mix seasoning with crawfish and put in refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Over medium-high heat, melt the butter in a heavy pot. Add the chopped onions, celery and garlic and saute until the yellow onion is translucent. Add the seasoned crawfish and mix real good. After about a minue, add the can of soup (no water) and stir. Then add the Rotel tomatoes and mix. Lower the heat, cover the pot, and cook the rice. Stir the etoufee often and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes. Season to taste with more Tony’s.
*The lazy version
JOHN MARZETTI CASSEROLE
Not my recipe, but I ate a whole lot of it and make it for my family now. I do wonder how a dish from Ohio became such a mainstay on the EBRP public school lunch menu. Here is the source for this version of the recipe.
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
¾ lb. mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 lbs. lean ground beef
3 ½ cups tomato sauce
1 ½ lbs. cheddar cheese, shredded
1 lb. elbow macaroni, cooked and drained
In skillet, saute onion in oil until limp, about 3 minutes. Add mushrooms and fry until juices are released, about 5 minutes. Add beef and cook, stirring, breaking up clumps, until no longer red. Remove from heat and mix in tomato sauce and all but 1 cup of cheese. Transfer to greased 9- by 13-inch baking dish and add macaroni. Toss gently to mix. Scatter remaining cheese on top. Bake, uncovered, in 350-degree oven until browned and bubbling (35 to 40 minutes). Serves 10 to 12.
At some level, I’ve known since before my oldest son was born that this moment would come. But when it did, it took me utterly and completely off guard. I was driving a car full of boys home from a soccer tournament last week when my 9-year-old son piped up from the back,
“Hey mom! I’ve got a funny joke. I’ll ask you a question and you say, ‘Ketchup and rubber buns'”. “I’ve heard this one,” chuckled my 12-year-old son. Snickers all around from the soccer players.
Apparently, I was the only one who didn’t know what was coming next.
“What did you have for breakfast?” “Oatmeal and ketchup and rubber buns.”
“No! Mom! Just say ketchup and rubber buns.”
“What did you have for breakfast?” “Ketchup and rubber buns.”
“What did you have for lunch?” “What did you have for dinner?” Etc. etc. And then we get to the punchline:
“What do you do when you see a hot chick? You catch up and rub her buns!” Peals of laughter from the boys.
To my very great credit, I did not run the station wagon off the road and into the ditch. I kept driving – silent, hands gripping the wheel, looking straight ahead. It was a perfect autumn day. The sky was brilliant blue and the afternoon sun was catching the full color of the orange and yellow leaves on the trees along the highway. It was a beautiful, perfect day but inside I was angry. I was mortified. I was disappointed. I was desperately struggling to think of what I should say.
Every once in a while, though, it is helpful to have gone to law school. “I don’t think that joke is funny. You know, if you actually ran after a woman and touched her in an offensive way like that, it would be called “assault and battery”. It is a crime. You could be arrested.”
“You could be arrested for THAT?” “Yes. Plus, the woman could also sue you.”
Silence descends.
“Also, I’ve actually had that happen to me. How do you think it feels to have a stranger grab your butt?”
“WHAT? That actually happened to YOU?”
“Sure. More than once. Usually at parties.”
“That’s kind of making me feel sick,” said the 12-year-old.
More silence.
From the 9-year-old: “I remember you saying that you didn’t like running past construction sites because the construction workers whistled and yelled things at you.”
I didn’t remember telling them that, but it’s true. When I was a teenager, I used to go way off my normal running routes just to avoid running past a construction site. Good, they were listening.
“So what are you going to say the next time you hear someone tell a joke like that?” “Stop, Mom! We get it, ok?”
Teachable moment: ended. I decided just to leave it there – for now. These are intelligent boys, good kids who love and respect their mom and their sister, their grandmothers, their female friends and teachers. But they, like other young Americans, are deeply impacted by the culture that they live in. Children are exposed to an estimated 16,000 images every day. They are powerfully influenced by their peers (I know they didn’t hear THAT joke at home). How can that not impact the way that they view girls and women? And isn’t it only going to get worse as they move through middle and high school?
The Ketchup Joke was a call to action for me. I need to do more to raise these boys to recognize the problem and, hopefully one day, to speak up when they hear someone tell a sexist joke. Thankfully, there are a lot of resources out there – research, organizations, websites. The Advocates for Human Rights has developed a Challenge the Media workshop and resource list. And I know that other parents have successfully managed to raise their sons not to be total jerks, but to be men who respect and treat women as equals.
I’ll report back periodically on what I have found. In the meantime, I would welcome hearing about what others have learned. But first, I’ve got a date with my sons. We are going to see Miss Representation.
We've still got a long way to go, but we've taken the first step.
The Human Rights Warrior 
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