First egg

At least one of our garden hens has matured enough to start laying but they’re totally free-ranging so we have had no idea where to find the eggs. As Bill said, it’s like every day is Easter here. Then we discovered the eggs were being layed (and broken) in stupid places, like on top of the dryer so we decided to take some action and the hens have been getting to know their chicken coop again (for half days) and like magic – we have our first egg!

It feels wonderfully unreal, like our garden ornaments suddenly produced food.

The nightmare of cooking with your kids

It is so Montessori to let your children cook with you but oh my fucking gawd.. ‘what it is like to cook dinner without your kids versus with your kids’ from Adrienne Hedger over at nickmom is absolutely perfect.

On devastation and grief

Just a heads up, this post is about suicide.

This story in the Sydney Morning Herald is lovely. It is lovely because this man had the courage to approach strangers and intervene in this incredibly sincere and gentle way:

For almost half a century, Don Ritchie would approach people contemplating suicide at the edge of The Gap, just 50 metres from his home in Watsons Bay, his palms facing up.

Mr Ritchie told his daughter Sue Ritchie Bereny he would smile and say: “Is there something I could do to help you?”

And this whole piece on Joe Biden’s recent speech in Politco is absolutely stunning about the experience of being suicidal and going through profound grief.

Vice President Joe Biden, in a moving speech to families of fallen troops on Friday, recounted the dark days following the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter and talked about understanding thoughts of suicide.

“It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out – and I probably shouldn’t say this with the press here, but no, but it’s more important, you’re more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide,” he said. ”Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again.”

It reminds me of two things, the wisdom of those who have lived through awful times and the genuine humanity that still drives some politicians.

An incredibly good-looking pregnant man

This photo shoot, called Baby Boom from Steven Klein is pretty amazing because it is playing with all sorts of strongly-held ideas about how pregnancy should be represented.

Klein has male model, Chris Fawcett in trans-friendly Candy Magazine posing as if pregnant with guns, bondage gear, lovers and dildos. Consider yourself full of interesting new thoughts. (Is he taking his folate tablets?).

 

Vote for this cool female scientist LEGO idea pleeeeeease

Behold!

On fathering and giving daughters bodily autonomy

We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.

From Will Smith at Colorlines.

Making things, also mess

I like this ‘tinkering’ parenting stuff which is being covered here in The Wall Street Journal. The photos are especially inspiring. What’s not so inspiring is the way they still emphasize this kind of parenting as being especially important for boys, rather than for all kids.