The big news this week: Disney makeover of the brave and tough Merida into sexy vamp provokes outrage, and Disney dials it back.

She loses the archery gear, and now she’s got a sparkly, off the shoulder dress, a curvier body, and perfect, sexy hair rather than the messy locks of our active heroine.  

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Merida was crowned as Disney’s 11th official princess last Thursday at Disney World. Sadly, it wasn’t the sassy Scottish lassie who won her own freedom with archery and willpower who took the stage at the coronation. Instead Disney marketing missed the target again where the good of little girls is concerned and sexed-up the character with more cleavage and a vapid look.

“Is that the Evil Merida?” a 7-year-old girl asks the writer.

Media studies professor and author Rebecca Hains: ”That’s right: Although Merida was created by a woman as a role model for girls, the male-dominated consumer product division at Disney has ignored the character’s intended benefits for young girls, sexualizing her for profit.”

Brenda Chapman, creator of Brave, called it a ”a blatantly sexist marketing move.” 

There is an irresponsibility to this decision that is appalling for women and young girls… Disney marketing and the powers that be that allow them to do such things should be ashamed of themselves.

Melissa Wardy at Pigtail Pals points out that this makeover did not take place in a vacuum. It’s part of the drip, drip, drip of sexualized marketing that now overwhelms our kids. 

“This is how girlhood is marketed. Is this okay with you?” asks Melissa Wardy

And a Change.org petition garnered nearly 190,000 signatures. That’s a lot.

Rebecca Hains reported on Monday that the new version was removed from Disney’s website and replaced it with the original image. It remains to be seen whether Disney will continue to market the sexualized Merida merchandise to little girls.

Does this make you angry?

You can still sign the Change.org petition to let Disney know what you think, and leave you comments here. 

Here’s what the letter said:

“We are examining the possibility of having all 9th graders in the fall of 2013 use an iPad to enhance learning.  Students and teachers would use the iPad to improve research, engage in one-on-one and small group instruction, access most current and relevant information and materials, reduce reliance upon print textbooks that are invariably out-of-date and expensive, and otherwise discover better ways of teaching and learning.  The end is not to learn how to use a device; rather, it is to learn how to be better organized students and more effective instructors.”

I’ve started to compile my questions. Here’s what I have so far:

1. Instruction in schools today is expected to be evidence-based. What research are you relying on that indicates the educational value of tablet computers for 9^th grade?

2. If students are using the tablets for consuming even more media than they already do (an average of over 7 and a half hours a day) will there be media literacy education – critical analysis of music videos, Youtube videos, websites, etc. – to go along with technology use?

3. An important part of media literacy education is learning to produce media – positive media. But tablet computers are best for consuming media, while desktops or laptops are best for producing media. How will the production part be taught? Would it make more sense to spend the technology funds on equipment that allows students to use it more actively and creatively, rather than equipment that allows mostly passive use?

4. I’ve been reading about the harm of distracted learning. When using the devices in classrooms, will students be playing games, messaging friends, looking at other pages? Will they be distracted at home if they are supposed to be reading their textbook on the device, but are also instant messaging, listening to music, watching youtube videos? What is your plan for this?

5. Costs:

What is the total cost? Are there costs beyond the price of the device? Will there be any cost savings projected? Are those projections realistic?

Are you going to go out for bid, or are you going to just choose Apple products, and why?

Will we get locked into an upgrade contract or requirement, and will the costs go up later?

Will we be tied to this company’s apps, accessories, etc, and what will the costs be? And will they go up in subsequent years ?

Do you expect an overall cost savings from putting textbooks onto the device? I found this:

Regardless of the approach, schools must consider the life expectancy of the device purchased and future expenditures needed to keep the technology current. The total cost of an iPad 1-to-1 launch is greater than the cost of the device. Schools will need to consider cases, applications (apps), network improvements, security measures, and other related costs. It is our experience that an iPad 1-to-1 program will not, and cannot, be sold to constituents as a cost-saving initiative.

Do parents need to invest in wifi at home? What is the cost?

The letter said that parents would be required to insure the machine. What is the cost of insurance? Is it reasonable or fair to expect families to insure a machine that the school has determined students need?

Parents are already paying a lot in fees to participate in sports, music, theater, and other extra curricular activities. Is it fair to impose another cost?

6. Is this the best use of scarce education funds?

Would it be better to spend money to help students learn how technology works, i.e. computer programming, which teaches logic and problem solving? Computer programming is truly a 21^st Century skill. It’s my understanding that the district once had a computer programming class but dropped it due to lack of funding. What other educational opportunities we are missing out on by spending our money on tablet computers?

7. If we move all the textbooks to the device, in order to save money or keep more up to date, are there health issues with adolescents, who are still developing, doing so much reading on a computer screen? Are there potential vision issues? What research have you consulted on this issue?

8. Corporations are willing to spend billions to get exclusive access to children through schools, where they are captive audience, get the implicit endorsement of the schools, and can sometimes groom customers for life. Apple is a pioneer in marketing in schools and is heavily marketing the 1:1 ipad concept.

By requiring Apple products, the school is essentially endorsing this huge corporation’s product. Is that appropriate? How does that benefit Apple to the detriment of the students?

There is an anonymous donor. Is the anonymous donor actually Apple?

Even if Apple is not the donor, were you influenced by Apple’s marketing to choose the iPad?

According to the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado:

“Overall, marketing activities in schools actively threaten high-quality education by causing psychological, healthrelated, and academic harm to students. Commercial activities offer children experiences primarily intended to serve the sponsors and not the children themselves; they are therefore inherently  miseducative,” because they promote unreflective consumption rather than critical thinking and rational decision making.”

Have you considered this potential harm?

Why can’t I choose any tablet computer – the one that is in my opinion the best value?

9. How does giving children portable computers affect parents’ decisions about parenting?

The American Association of Pediatrics recommends keeping the computer in a public area and controlling how much screen time kids have. I already have trouble distinguishing when my teens need to be on the computer for homework and when it’s just an excuse for doing homework in front of a screen with the distractions of Facebook, Twitter, email, music videos and video games. The research on how all this screen use affects the brain is not yet conclusive. If I want to set limits on the time my child uses a computer at home, but he tells me he needs it to do school work, how will I know when the usage is for school and when it’s not? How do I keep a portable computer in the public areas of the house? 

How do I keep my child from using the device late into the night? There is research that shows screen time near bed time interferes with sleep.

Extreme, violent porn is easily accessible online today. Will porn be blocked on the machines? How? Will Facebook, Youtube and violent video games be blocked? If so, will that infringe on media literacy opportunities? Will students stay up late in their bedrooms looking at porn, or youtube videos like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8TREN0CkB4? What other harmful media are student potentially going to be exposed to if they have access to the entire internet, and what is the school’s plan for dealing with that?

(And again, will there be media literacy education to teach critical analysis of these things?)

Are you aware that in other schools, students have figured out and shared ways to get around blocks for porn,  Facebook, etc.?

If parents are able to block these things through their home wifi, will kids go to other people’s houses where there are no controls? Will they and their friends find open wifi connections that are readily available throughout town?

Will there be parent training on how to apply controls? How can I check to be sure they are still in effect?

And even with blocks, it is almost impossible for kids to avoid soft porn online. Even on news sites there is “link bait” – women in skimpy bikinis, salacious article headlines, all intended to get people to click. How does the school feel about these things showing up on kids’ screens while they are looking at the iPad in school, and possibly sharing them with friends sitting next to them? Would the school be condoning sexualization of girls? Will the school be creating a hostile environment with what amounts to sexual harassment of female students?

Have you considered these issues? And do the benefits of an iPad outweigh the costs?

These are my questions. Readers, what are yours? Please let me know so I can have a comprehensive list.

A hunger strike at the United States’ military penal complex at Guantánamo Bay is now in its third month and has grown to over 100 and possibly 130 of the 166 men still held there. They are protesting terrible conditions, poor treatment, and indefinite confinement.

Most are being held without charges. Many were cleared for release years ago.

Meanwhile, President Obama and Congress dither and play political games and fail to act.

A first person account from the New York Times:

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.
I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

Another from Guantanamo journalist Andy Worthington:

I have just received a brief message from a credible source inside Guantánamo, about the situation in the prison today, which I wanted to make available because it exposes how four prisoners are close to death, as a result of the prison-wide hunger strike that is on its 80th day, and yet the guard force are behaving with brutality and indifference.

The source stated that it “looks like GTMO is going backward,” with the guards “putting people in isolation and all day long making lots of noise by speaking loudly, running on the metal stairs and leaving their two-way radios on all day and night. People cannot sleep.”

The source added, “There are at least four people that are at the very edge and one named Khiali Gul from Afghanistan is in a bad shape and cannot move and cannot talk or eat or drink. When other detainees tell the guards about him, they say, ‘When he is completely unconscious, then we will take him.’ The chances are that he will die.”

The source also explained that he has been trying to get an Afghan lawyer “to notify his family to at least call him and they might have a chance to talk to him for the last time.”

Andy Worthington writes: “…Barack Obama is the President, and the Commander-in-Chief, and he has failed to adequately challenge his critics, or to stand up for the principles which so many of his supporters at the time of his election had been led to believe would result in a thorough repudiation of the Bush administration’s hideous novelties in its brutal and ill-conceived “war on terror.” Instead, we have the return of kangaroo courts and indefinite detention without charge or trial, as we had under Bush, no release for prisoners cleared for release by Obama’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force, no prosecutions for torturers, and no end in sight to the endless war that the Bush administration started, and which Obama has ramped up with drone strikes and assassinations.”

Instead of working to resolve the issues that have led to the protest, the United States finds ways to defend the forced feeding.

From the New York Times editorial Board April 14:

[Guantanamo] became the embodiment of [Bush's] dangerous expansion of executive power and the lawless detentions, secret prisons and torture that went along with them. It is now also a reminder of Mr. Obama’s failure to close the prison as he promised when he took office, and of the malicious interference by Congress in any effort to justly try and punish the Guantánamo inmates.

There are still 166 men there — virtually all of them held without charges, some for more than a decade. More than half have been cleared for release but are still imprisoned because of a law that requires individual Pentagon waivers. The administration eliminated the State Department post charged with working with other countries to transfer the prisoners so those waivers might be issued…

Just as hunger strikes at the infamous Maze Prison in Northern Ireland indelibly stained Britain’s human rights record, so Guantánamo stains America’s.

Yesterday, Obama said again that he would close the prison. He’s been saying that for years. He said the situation was “not sustainable.” He said, essentially, that he’s going to give it another try. Not sustainable? Give it another try? That’s what he has to say about 130 people starving themselves to death because of his policies?

Regarding the remarks yesterday, Benjamin Wittes, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, had this to say:  

“The President’s comments are bewildering because his own policies give rise to the vast majority of the concerns about which he so earnestly delivered  himself in these remarks. Remember that Obama himself has imposed a moratorium on repatriating people to Yemen. And Obama himself has insisted that nearly 50 detainees cannot either be tried or transferred.”

It’s a disgrace. It’s a crime.

It is a shameful, shameful moment in the history of our nation.

Is this the kind of country we want to be?

What you can do: Write to the president, your senator and your representative in Congress and demand an immediate resolution to the concerns of these unfairly imprisoned people and their treatment.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup

and sign the petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-close-detention-facility-at-guantanamo-bay

More on the situation at the prison camp and Obama’s failure to act: 6 horrifying facts every American should know about Guantanamo Bay and the ongoing hunger strike.

When the news reached us, we were on the West Coast, near the beach. Then, the messages came – by text, Twitter, Facebook and email. “Are you ok?”

A friend of mine is serving in Afghanistan right now. Even she sent a concerned email last week. “We’re fine,” I said. “How are you?”

When something momentous happens, people seek connection. If they are not there, they reach out to people they know who might have been there. I hated being away from Boston last week. I felt disconnected from this thing that had happened where I live, and from the people who were there and experienced it.

Being separated, though, gave me a chance to look at the bigger picture. I thought about those people who live with wartime violence and terrorism every day. I thought about how terrified my neighbors were and what it must be like to be the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other places where terrorism and war are happening all around them.

So why did the bomber do this terrible thing? The suspect, it appears from various sources, felt disconnected from American life and may have sought connection via extremist groups. ( US officials also told The Associated Press that Tamerlan Tsarnaev read jidahist websites and extremist propaganda, including Inspire magazine, an English-language online publication produced by al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.)

Here’s a picture that circulated last week on the internet: Syrians reaching out for connection to Bostonians. Others wrote, “Today we are all Bostonians. Tomorrow, can we all be Syrians?” Could greater connection across cultures help end war?

On to the question at hand, here at MMC: How to help kids deal with the media images they are seeing.

My advice to parents when something frightening happens: Limit exposure of young children to news images and stories on TV. Of course you are glued to the TV, anxious for every update. But young children don’t understand what is going on. The TV images keep repeating, and kids think the bad event – the explosions – keep happening over and over. They don’t know where it is happening and think these bombs are nearby, or getting closer. It can be traumatizing for young children. Even when they don’t seem to be paying attention, be aware that if you are interested, they pick that up. At times like this, I remember what a friend told me after 9-11. A news junkie, she had been glued to the TV the entire day. A day later, she noticed her son building tall towers out of Legos, and then flying his little model airplane into them. He was only two years old – she didn’t think he had been watching.

Here’s a message from the past (This photo of Fred Rogers circulating on social media):

For more, go to the Boston Children’s Hospital pediatric health blog:  Helping children process the Boston Marathon bombings

“The most important thing any parent can do in a time like this is reassure their children that as a mother or father you will do everything in your power to keep them safe.”

 

 

Did you notice your kids acting out the explosions? Did they ask any tough questions? Please let me know your experiences.

Also, a petition has been started asking Huffington Post to stop demeaning and objectifying women in their “news” articles. This is a strategy of posting photos of half naked women with salacious headlines, also known as “link bait.” That one has just a few signatures so far.

@EverydaySexism is on Twitter calling out Facebook for its hypocritical policy on rape pages.

Facebook claims not to allow depictions of violence, threats of harm, bullying, harassment or hate speech. But pages about rape and rape jokes, and jokes about violence against women are regularly condoned. Also Facebook doesn’t allow nudity, so depictions of breastfeeding are removed.

@EverydaySexism has been alerting advertisers that their ad may appear alongside a rape page.

Hi @surveymonkey are you OK with Facebook displaying your ad on this racist, misogynistic rape page? twitter.com/EverydaySexism…

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) April 10, 2013

@everydaysexism We’re glad this page was deleted, not for us but for the rape victims all over the World!

— SurveyMonkey (@SurveyMonkey) April 10, 2013

.@surveymonkey Sadly @facebook still contains similar pages, where advertisers content could be displayed

— EverydaySexism (@EverydaySexism) April 10, 2013

Apparently the president said something inappropriate about the California attorney general, supposedly a compliment, but essentially diminishing her professional achievements by calling attention to her appearance.

This writer explains “The Rules” on when you can compliment a woman:

This entire premise is flawed. The idea isn’t to identify some specific set of “rules” so that you can get away with as much as possible. The idea is to interact respectfully with women and treat them like human beings. You don’t need to learn the rules, you need to change your ridiculous dinosaur brain.

Women didn’t set up this system—you did. These so-called “rules” that you’re finding so oppressive, about when and how you should compliment women? These rules aren’t the system—they are negative space pushing against the system. They are a reaction to the millions of rules set up by a patriarchal culture that has told women for millenia how to behave and dress and interact with men. YOU are the one with all the rules. We are trying to break them.

What is the ultimate expression of the sexism and the objectification in our culture? Teen girl kills herself after photos of gang rape distributed.

He’s right of course, that the highest-sugar cereals are specifically marketed to children. Here are two of the latest studies by Yale’s Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity on marketing unhealthy foods to kids. (Thanks to Melinda Hemmelgarn, the Food Sleuth, for bringing these to my attention.)

In one study, researchers find that cereal companies – the third biggest food marketer to children – use sophisticated online marketing techniques to target children.

“Our research demonstrates the effectiveness of digital media as a vehicle to market unhealthy foods like sugary cereals to children,” said the study’s lead author, Andrew Cheyne of the Berkeley Media Studies. “We found that sugary cereal websites with the most interactive features engaged children for longer periods of time and inspired children to return to the sites more often than sites with little interactive content.”

The Froot Loops game page for kids.

(By the way, here is the Environmental working Group’s report on sugar in children’s cereal, which finds that popular brands have more sugar than Twinkies and Chips Ahoy.)
Another study found that despite an industry pledge to reduce unhealthy food and beverage advertising on TV programs for children, and despite a reduction in food ads seen by kids since the effort began in 2004, there is still a long way to go.

Researchers found that more than half of the food and beverage advertisements viewed by children are not subject to the industry’s guidelines, because of the way the industry defines a child-centric program – leaving out, for example, a ‘Shrek the Halls’ holiday special.  The authors concluded that the guidelines should be expanded to cover more shows watched by many children.

Meanwhile, restaurant chains are also doing a fairly poor job, in terms of children’s nutrition, under industry self-regulation.

Nearly all of the children’s meals at America’s top chain restaurants are of poor nutritional quality, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. The group found that 91 percent of about 3,500 kid’s meal combinations do not meet the nutritional standards of the industry lobbying group’s Kids LiveWell program. (97% don’t meet CSPI’s standards.)

But there’s a good news story here:  All of Subway restaurant’s  kids’ meal combinations met CSPI’s stricter nutrition criteria. CSPI said Subway is the only restaurant chain that does not offer sugary drinks as an option with its kids’ meals.

Another positive story comes from Michelle Simon at Appetite for Profit: MOM’s Organic Market, a small retail chain based in the Baltimore area, announced it would stop carrying products featuring children’s cartoon characters on the label.

Company CEO Scott Nash blogged last August about how his young daughter begged for a cereal she never tasted because of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” on the box, putting the store’s policy into motion.

So even though the food at this store is often healthy and organic, and even though the characters are from educational or positive shows, this retailer realized that the characters unfairly manipulate children.

The streets of Boston are notoriously tortuous, poorly marked and filled with over-the-top aggressive drivers.

This street sign, reflective of the situation, always makes me laugh as I drive by. (There was a lot of honking as I paused to snap it due to the impatient nature of Boston drivers.)

While it’s pretty funny all by itself, what really cracks me up is that this sign suggests some order to the intersection ahead. The wary driver is not fooled:

• There are only two lanes approaching this intersection.
• There is actually one more choice, not shown.
• Drivers can make any one of those choices from any lane.

I couldn’t go to every session, alas, so here are a few proposals from some of the speakers for what you can do. I’m hoping that others who were there will add their own key takeaways in the comments!

Alex Bogusky, a top advertising executive who famously declared that advertisers should “just stop” advertising to children.

Message: “Once I knew a certain amount” about how a child’s mind works, “it became immoral” to advertise to children.

Proposal: As people learned about the harm from smoking, it became hard for the agencies that worked with tobacco clients to recruit the best talent. So educate students in advertising schools about the immorality of advertising to children. This will make advertising to children taboo, like tobacco advertising, and agencies will just stop because they won’t be able to hire the most creative people.

Lenore Skenazy, Free Range Kids

Message: Children, just like adults, respond positively when we let them know we believe in them.

Proposal: Give your children the freedom to develop a sense of independence and confidence in themselves. Let them know you believe in them by letting go of the fear and hyper-supervision.

Kids need freedom to explore on their own

Dr. Diane Levin, professor of Education at Wheelock College

Message: The research is clear that violent media harms children. Even if they don’t kill someone after playing violent video games, that isn’t evidence that violent media isn’t causing harm.

Proposal: Demand that corporations that profit from marketing violence to children pay for the societal costs.

Dr. Michael Rich – also know as  “The Mediatrician” – of the  Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital, Boston

Message: Since the 1950s, the average CQ – creativity quotient – has gone down even while the IQ has gone up.  A brain that is distracted by media entertainment doesn’t have the chance to get bored, which is where creative ideas happen.

Proposal: Take a digital sabbath each week.

Bored kids get creative, make gladiator costumes out of paper

Dr. Sharon Maxwell, clinical psychologist

Message: Marketers teach children that desires must be fulfilled, pushing them to seek pleasure at the expense of joy.

Proposal:  Ask your children, “Who are you? Who gets to decide?”  Make sure they have time for the silence they need for reflection. “Please value silence,” she says.

Josh Golin, associate director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

Message: Advertisers take advantage of the authority of schools as a marketing tool to target children, but the amount of money schools get as a result is often negligible. It’s not worth it.

Proposal: Demand that school officials provide revenue numbers from advertising in terms of annual revenue, per pupil revenue and as a percentage of the total budget. And then don’t be surprised if selling kids to marketers brings in just .03 percent of the budget.
Also, tell schools that want to advertise on school buses that they open themselves up to a First Amendment lawsuit if they try to limit the kinds of advertising they will accept, and may end up with this on the side of the school bus:

Makani Themba, executive director at The Praxis Project

Message: Industry funds PR campaigns to encourage people to place all responsibility on parents, leaving corporations free to exploit children for profit. The industry acts as if we are having a conversation about “values” like freedom.

Proposal: Envision the kind of community you want to live in – maybe a place of “peace and self determination, children and families thriving, unfettered, shaped by each other and our very best selves.” And then work toward that.

Update: More commentary by Michael Prager and Jason Tammemagi.

Also, a Storify by SPARK Movement.

So I’m just going to link to some writings of others.

CNN’s coverage, preoccupied with the devastating effect the verdict had on the football players “such promising futures … watched as their lives fell apart” juxtaposed with The Onion’s perfect satire forseeing the whole thing as basketball player is able to “overcome his rape.”

Blogger who “complicated” the case by collecting evidence from social media, at xoJane.

The problem of Toxic Masculinity in our society, by Jaclyn Friedman at The Prospect

Or, as former NFL quarterback and newly-minted feminist Don McPherson recently put it, “We don’t raise boys to be men. We raise them not to be women, or gay men.”

Plus, efforts that are showing promise to lead to a change in attitude.

Rebecca Hains, on teaching boys about consent and respect at age 4.

Ask Moxie on teaching young boys about not being a bystander.

Henry Rollins comments on the rape verdict

It is obvious that the two offenders saw the victim as some one that could be treated as a thing. This is not about sex, it is about power and control. I guess that is what I am getting at. Sex was probably not the hardest thing for the two to get, so that wasn’t the objective. When you hear the jokes being made during the crime, it is the purest contempt. So, how do you fix that? I’m just shooting rubber bands at the night sky but here are a few ideas: Put women’s studies in high school the curriculum from war heroes to politicians, writers, speakers, activists, revolutionaries and let young people understand that women have been kicking ass in high threat conditions for ages and they are worthy of respect. Total sex ed in school. Learn how it all works. Learn what the definition of statutory rape is and that it is rape, that date rape is rape, that rape is rape.

And, I might add, comprehensive media literacy.

“Touch-Me-Not”

From his statement about his work: “Advertising slogans take on new meanings in landscapes where figures confront geopolitical crises in real time.” Read more here.

(Below is embedded the mini-documentary about him that I produced, directed and edited. As I learned more about media literacy by writing this blog, I came to understand the importance of learning production. And so I learned to make films. Please let me know if you like it.)

***********************************************
And here is a poem written by my friend in Michigan, Mindy Holohan, who has been working to reduce marketing to children through her organization STOK – Stop Targeting Our Kids.

I Want
I want my children to know what yeast is
To see dough rise
To watch shoots inch their way from the Earth
To spy pollen tucked in a bee’s back pockets
Observing, delighting, revering

You want them to buy their bread sliced
To seek nourishment in aisles 7, 3 and department 5
To crave lab-formulated this and hyped-up that
To wrestle with endless cellophane and choices
Ravenous

I want my children to know the smell of rotting leaves
To wonder at a seashell
To savor a tomato
To rejoice in a bud, in a flower, in a gift
Experiencing communion and satisfaction

You want them glued to one screen or another
To be buried in plastic, discomfort, seduction
To recognize a swoosh or a googly-eyed sponge in an instant
To be defined by clicks and likes and swipes and posts
Needing another fix of something– anything–always

I want my children to revel in the miracle of their being
To cherish their unique journeys
To be comfortable in themselves and with others
To value the unquantifiable
Treasuring time, solitude, quiet

You want them with power buttons ON
To purchase identity and subscribe for intimacy
To size up and compare and individualize everything
To suck it in or push it up or puke it out
Never, ever, enough

I want my children to cherish life
To honor others
To know the depths of love
To perpetuate peace
Listening, negotiating, creating

You want them afraid
To be steeped in, yet immune, to violence
To control and manipulate
To compete and to conquer
Controlled and manipulated

I want my children to be in relationship
To experience unfettered joy
To find freedom from fear and consumption
To connect to the mysteries
Knowing holiness, oneness, gratitude

You want
Their dependence
But
You depend on them

You study
Them
But
I study you too

And maybe
That will make a difference

mindy holohan for josie, mary & colin holohan
winter 2013
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The Art Show, episode 3: Edward Monovich