Maria Stuart's Open Salon Blog

‘Hit the Bitch’: Has an anti-violence campaign gone too far?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 14:11:10 -0500

It’s hard to believe anyone would think an online game in which you must hit a woman repeatedly until she’s lying on the floor, bloodied and in tears, is a good way to teach that violence is wrong.

But that’s the idea behind a Danish anti-violence group that has unleashed “Hit the Bitch” on the world. In the PSA-hidden-in-a-game, the viewer must manipulate a hand attached to a big, hairy arm to hit a young woman.

Each time the woman is struck, the blow is rated. The aim of the game is to move your score from “100% pussy” to “100% gangsta.” When you reach the 100% gangsta level, you’ve apparently won the game. Or have you? As the woman lies on the floor, beaten, bloodied and weeping, the message “100% gansta, 100% idiot” — the moral of the game — appears.

It’s a bizarre game, one I admit to playing through to the end so I could write about it with some level of knowledge.

As I am hitting this woman wearing a Madonna T-shirt, and who has done little more than speak to me in Danish, I think, “Is this the kind of game that will instill anti-violence lessons in teenagers?” And then, “Does this game have any educational value for my 10-year-old son?”

What is horrifying about the game is that each time the young woman is struck, she reacts with a moan and rubs her face, which becomes increasingly bruised. Through it all, she's looking right at me, right into my eyes. Her facial expression and eyes are questioning me: “Why?” It's as intimate as anything I've seen online.

But how will this affect teenage boys?

My sense — and fear — is that this game will become one that teenage boys will gather together to play for the sport of it. And it is this thought that frightens me.

If any group needs to learn these lessons, it’s our young people.

For over 15 years, I’ve served on the board of LACASA, the organization in my community that runs the domestic violence shelter and works with victims and batterers.

The one constant lesson I've learned in my years on the board is that violence destroys the sense of self and worth; its nasty legacy stretches from generation to generation, bound by ties that are always tight and difficult to break.

So, LACASA works with victims and batterers; it also does an amazing job in the community to educate people — including students — about relationship violence.

The statistics are eye-opening. Students are surveyed both before and after school presentations; in 2008, 38 percent of the students said they knew someone who had experienced physical abuse, and 40 percent knew someone who had been sexually assaulted.

Prior to the presentation, nearly a third of the students said they thought forced sexual contact is acceptable if a partner is stoned or drunk, when partners have been previously intimate, when partners have dated for a long period of time, and when a partner spends a lot of money on a date.

After the presentation, that number drops to 8 percent. It seems the message got through loud and clear without anyone having to beat up anyone else in the virtual world.

It's hard to believe this same message will come across to young people via this “Hit the Bitch” campaign.

How I lost my job and over 20 pounds

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:11:22 -0500

Losing your job opens your eyes in many ways: you consider your place and future in the employment universe; you realize that it doesn’t matter how well or hard you work; and you finally understand how fiscally irresponsible and greedy corporate America is.

Finding yourself unexpectedly and unwontedly unemployed also forces you to consider how you live, an uncomfortable but necessary process.

I lost my job of nearly two decades as managing editor of a small daily newspaper in southeast Michigan on April Fools Day. After I wiped away the last tear, I tore through the family finances, figuring out how we were going to get by. More than half our household income disappeared with the words, “your position has been eliminated,” and I was fully aware that there were no newspaper jobs waiting for middle-aged middle managers in the devastated Detroit area.

As I pored over bank statements and pounded the calculator, I was shocked when I realized how much money my little family spent eating out. That didn’t even take into account what we spent on food at supermarkets and specialty stores.

On top of the restaurant lunches I had just about every day, I often took my son out to dinner a couple times a week since my husband works most evenings. Eating out meant I didn’t have to cook or clean the kitchen, so it was a perfectly acceptable choice to make since we could afford it. And, heck, I was pooped and sore from sitting on my butt in front of a computer all day.

We ate in restaurants for entertainment, too. There were those “date-night” dinners out, and the meeting-the-friends-and-family-for-a-quick-bite-to-eat meals out. It all added up quickly.

When we quit eating out, it felt as if I had found a part-time job.

Then, I looked at our supermarket spending. I didn’t want to cut back on fresh fruits and vegetables, and, food snob that I am, I buy organic whenever I can. Since the local supermarkets are now doing a much better job stocking organic products, our once-a-month trips to Whole Foods Market in Ann Arbor were eliminated.

We also cut back significantly on our meat consumption. I’ve taken to making my own hummus and I’ve perfected what I call my “Recessionista Minestrone Soup.”

To get the biggest nutritional bang for our food bucks, I’ve been experimenting with soup recipes that include lentils and beans, and I think I’ve finally hit upon the perfect mix of great taste and healthiness. Like the true minestrones of my Italian ancestors, this soup makes short order of whatever vegetables are on hand. This recipe is really just a template that can be adjusted to your own particular taste buds.

You’ll find “Recessionista Minestrone” is a warm, healthy, satisfying meal that costs a fraction of a meat-based lunch or dinner. It’s delicious, too.

In addition to losing my job, I’ve also lost over 20 pounds without much effort. There are two reasons for that, and neither is that I am pining away for the old job.

The first reason is that I am no longer chained to a desk or a chair. I never realized how much I sat at work — at my desk, in meetings, at breakfasts and lunches — until I wasn’t there any longer.

The second is that I now have the time and, perhaps more importantly, the motivation to plan and prepare frugal yet healthy meals. Spending a little time planning frees me of having to eat out as a convenience; these days, we eat out occasionally, thoughtfully and intentionally. There is a difference.

If you give the “Recessionisa Minestrone” recipe a try and put your own particular twist to it, let me know. I am always up for new variations.

Maria’s Recessionista Minestrone Soup

Ingredients

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced (I use yellow cooking onions)

1 chopped zucchini

1/2 small green cabbage, chopped

1/2 cup frozen Italian green beans, chopped

3 or 4 stalks of celery, minced

1 clove minced garlic

4 cups vegetable broth (you can make your own, or used store-bought vegetable broth)

4 15-ounce cans of drained beans (I use 2 cans of red kidney beans, a can of cannellini beans and a can of great northern beans, all organic; I’ve been told you can substitute 1 pound of assorted dried beans to equal the four cans of beans. I will do this in the future as dried beans cost a whole lot less than canned.)

1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, including juice

2 diced carrots

4 cups water

4 cups fresh baby spinach

1 cup whole wheat, smallish pasta (I like shells or small penne)

Spices

2 tablespoons minced parsley

1-1/2 teaspoon sea salt (be sure to use sea salt, not table salt)

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

Directions

1. Heat the olive oil in a soup pot.

2. Add onions, celery, garlic, green beans, cabbage and zucchini. Stir until onions become translucent, about 6-7 minutes.

3. Add the vegetable broth, tomatoes, beans, carrots, water and spices.

4. When the soup begins to boil, reduce the heat and simmer for a half hour.

5. Add the spinach and whole wheat pasta and cook for another half hour.

6. Serve sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan or Romano cheese, and accompanied by a chunk of bread and a small glass of red wine.

This is the kind of soup that is even better on the second and third day.

Note: I've taken to cooking large batches of soup and sauces, always freezing half. This means less cooking for me, and more good food on hand to keep convenience eating out at bay.

Enjoy!

Springsteen robbed of spot on NPR's 50 Great Voices list

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:11:22 -0500

Bruce Springsteen got snubbed. So did Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, Elton John, Patti Smith, Nancy Wilson, Helen O'Connell, Tom Petty and Grace Slick.

These amazing artists didn't make the final list of nominees for National Public Radio's project to explore what listeners and music experts determine are 50 great voices in recorded history.

Also snubbed? David Byrne, Shirley Temple, Annie Lennox, and Frank Zappa. And the royal snubbing of all time goes to The Beatles: there isn't a single Beatle — not a John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr — on the list.

This ambitious project is both no-win and no-lose. It's not a definitive determination of the 50 greatest voices of all time, just 50 great voices, so there are no real winners and losers. The aim of the project, according to NPR, is to "discover and re-discover awe-inspiring vocalists from around the world and across time."

What music lover couldn't get on board with that?

Even though there are no right and wrong answers, no one will be on board with each of the 50 great voices that end up being selected for exploration. Some music lovers are already finding huge nits to pick with the list of 126 voices from which the final 50 will be culled, including me. (Seriously, they didn't include Bruce Springsteen. Bruce! What were they thinking?)

In short, this project is genius.

Whether we music lovers are pleased or pissed, we'll have plenty to talk about when the final list is released. The year-long exploration of those 50 great voices is set to kick off in January.

You can check out the artists from which the final 50 will be selected on NPR's website.

And you can enjoy a wonderful Bruce Springsteen performance with the equally incredible E Street Band below.

Keeping migraines off the menu

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:11:26 -0500

After scrubbing up like a surgeon and donning an old apron to protect his clothes, my 10-year-old son is ready for action. He’s pounded the chicken and beaten the eggs and he’s ignited the gas stove with a little help from me.

He’s ready to cook.

Me? I’m enjoying a cup of coffee nearby, ready in case disaster strikes as my son cooks dinner.

He carefully dips the chicken breast into the beaten egg and then drags it through the bread crumbs. Carefully, he slides the chicken into a pan of sizzling olive oil with just a bit of butter for taste. Tongs in hand, he watches carefully for the edges of the chicken to brown just so, a signal that the piece needs to be turned over.

“Guess what happened in school today,” he asks. I hear about kick-ball and the upcoming book fair and how he well he thinks the upcoming parent-teacher conference is going to go.

I am happy that my son enjoys these cooking lessons. Since he grew tall enough to reach the stove, I’ve been teaching my son to cook for two reasons: Everyone should know their way around a stove, and like most people with food allergies, understanding food and knowing how to prepare his own meals is a life enhancer for my kid.

Will has a “lucky” allergy, as I call it. “It will keep you away from junk food,” I always tell him. Unlike classmates who are allergic to peanuts or dairy products, Will gets migraines — really bad, really debilitating ones — when he eats food containing nitrates and nitrites, which are preservatives, and monosodium glutamate, which pumps up the natural flavor of foods. Sometimes the punishing headaches chase him into a dark, quiet room where all he can do is sleep; sometimes the headaches make him vomit; they always make him miserable.

Before I realized to what, I knew my son was allergic to something.

One doctor took a look at the dark circles under his eyes — “allergic shiners,” he called them — and prescribed a one-size-fits-all antihistamine. When I suggested we find out to what my son was allergic, the doctor shrugged his shoulders.

“What does it matter? It could be dust. It could be mold. It could be anything,” he said, handing me a hastily scribbled prescription. “This will cover it all.”

The problem was that the prescription knocked my kid out cold.

A full battery of allergy testing, which ruled out everything from dust to grass to pollen, couldn’t test for reactions to food. Another doctor figured it out, at least in a big-picture kind of diagnosis.

“He’s healthy,” she said. “Pay close attention to what he eats. If you don’t figure it out and the migraines continue, we can always send him for neurological testing.”

I’ve always been vigilant about feeding my son healthy, natural food. But as he’s gotten out in the world more, controlling what he eats has become a challenge.

Special events at daycare included McDonald’s burgers. Birthdays and holidays in school are celebrated with sugary snacks. When he visited friends, he was introduced to processed foods and baked goods, the likes of which he’d never seen at home. The occasional “bad food” days resulted in occasional headaches, but it wasn’t until he began eating in his elementary school cafeteria that the really bad migraines began.

At least once a week, it seemed, my kid had a high-intensity headache that left him looking like he just got back from a Las Vegas bender, his mood matching the dark circles under his eyes.

I give thanks for the turning point in all this, the day I arrived to pick my son up from school, only to find him sleeping off a migraine on a playground bench; none of the adults in charge noticed him there. Since noise exacerbates the pain, we drove home in silence. As I merged onto the freeway, I glanced into my rearview mirror in time to see him erupt, spewing vomit all over himself and the back seat of my car.

Frustrated, I stayed up that entire night, a mother possessed, searching the Internet for a clue, praying there wasn’t something seriously wrong with my son. I Googled “boys, migraines, vomiting,” then, “boys, headaches.” I went from site to site to site until I found these three words: hot dog headache.

At that moment I felt like the caveman surely did when the sticks he was rubbing together sparked.

I learned that some people get headaches from sodium nitrates and nitrites, preservatives that give processed meats — including hot dogs — their long shelf life and pink color. (As an interesting aside, nitrate compounds are also found in dynamite. Dynamite!) I learned, too, about the suspected link between nitrate allergies and MSG sensitivity.

These three additives, alone or in combination, run rampant through school cafeteria offerings, where sausage, bacon, flash-frozen chicken, pizza with pepperoni — and hot dogs — are staples.

Processed foods are now banished from my son’s diet. He tells people he’s “not allowed,” or “allergic,” when offered something he knows he can’t have.

The change in my kid is remarkable. Gone are the allergic shiners. He looks healthy, all pink cheeks and sparkling eyes, and his moods are steady. Life for him is a whole lot better. This leaves me to wonder how many kids with similar food allergies are treated with drugs to combat the symptoms — both physical and behavioral — when treating the cause would be so much easier.

My son began feeling so good that one day he decided to “test” his allergy and indulge himself with a school cafeteria hot dog. A short while later his head throbbed, a painful reminder and a valuable lesson.

So I’m teaching my son to cook.

As he slides the breaded chicken into the sizzling olive oil, I feel so proud of him; I smile, too, at the bonus I get.

“Guess what happened in school today,” he asks.

• • •

Italian breaded chicken

(The chicken is delicious hot or cold. It’s perfect straight from the frying pan; for sandwiches; or sliced atop salads. You can also top it with pasta sauce and cheese for chicken parmesan. This is a very simple way to prepare chicken that’s standard in lots of Italian dishes.)

Three or four boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 well-beaten egg

3/4 cup bread crumbs (Italian-seasoned bread crumbs are mighty tasty. You can buy them already seasoned, or make your own with stale bread and Italian seasonings like oregnao and basic.)

Olive oil and a couple tablespoons butter for pan frying

Pound the chicken breasts between two pieces of plastic wrap until they’re about 1/4-inch thick. If you’re working with larger breasts, you may want to hand-filet them. The thinner you can get the breasts, the quicker and crispier they’ll cook.

Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan.

Dip a piece of chicken into the egg and then dredge it through the bread crumbs.

When the oil and butter are sizzling, add the chicken. Cook until the edges of the chicken are brown; flip and cook the other side.

When the chicken is nicely browned, remove it from the pan and place on a platter with paper towel underneath.

You may need to add oil and butter as you work through the pounded chicken.

Enjoy!

Winning versus happiness: Are we confused?

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:11:51 -0500

In life, there are always winners and losers. I don’t know why that is, only that it is. For someone to win the lottery, a lot of someone elses — always including me, it seems — have to lose. For sharks to stay alive, they’ve got to eat smaller fish or swimmers off the coast of Florida. It’s the yin and yang of life, the scales of justice balancing.

So many of us, though, confuse winning with happiness. Sometimes, those lottery winners end up broke and miserable, while the lottery losers like me muddle through life much higher on the happiness scale.

Maybe it’s expectations too great that beat us down. Maybe, just maybe, we’ve not learned the difference between winning and happiness.

Given that, does it seem that instead of spending so much time and energy on learning to win, that we instead learn how to be happy? We seem so preoccupied with producing winners in life. And the thinking goes that the key to being a winner is a high level of self-esteem.

But prison inmates tend to have pretty high levels of self-esteem, according to a study from several years ago, which got a lot of attention. The study contradicted the popular theory that criminals commit crimes because they have a low sense of self-worth.

This study found that prisoners actually have extremely high levels of self-esteem, which makes sense. Why on earth would someone commit a crime if they thought they were going to get caught? Criminals commit crimes because they think they will get away with them. Criminals always think they’re smarter than everyone else.

Think about it. Why would anyone decide that the best place to live is a big cage in which anyone walking by can see them sitting on the toilet? That lifestyle has no appeal for this writer, and the thought of it has occasionally been the one thing that’s kept her on the straight and narrow.

Another study found that bullies have heightened senses of self esteem, that they bully not because they loathe themselves, but because they think themselves superior and loathe others.

So, prison inmates and bullies tend to have high levels of self-esteem. Why then, do we want our kids to participate in activities meant to raise their levels of self esteem? Are we just asking for trouble?

We’ve never pushed our kid to participate in anything. Will’s tried lots of activities in his 10 years of life while sticking with one: piano, which makes his mother happy. He’s also tried soccer, tennis, swimming and magic, and while he’s not the most athletic kid, he possesses a wonderful attitude, one which I am quite sure isn't inherited from me: The kid has fun, no matter what he does.

Will recently finished up a short season of fall baseball — or “baseball light,” as I call it — in which no scores are kept and no trophies are given. This shortened season is for kids who regularly play ball and want the extra practice, or kids like Will, who’ve never played organized ball and who’d like a taste of it before committing time and energy to a regular season.

In this shortened season, the pressure to win is supposedly off kids. As well as not keeping score, there are fewer innings played, and a rule that magically ends an inning if the entire batting order makes it to the plate. Each kid gets to play every position. There are plenty of great assistant coaches/dads who spur the kids on with “great job,” “good eye,” and “super effort.”

It’s a great experience, truly, but I think we kid ourselves. Despite the work and rules to mask who wins and loses, the adults know full well which team ends up on top. And the kids know it most of all.

“We won,” my kid said as he got into the car after a game. “The score was 24 to 7.”

“I thought you didn’t keep score,” I said.

Will shrugged.

“I scored twice,” he said. “Did you see me score?”

“Of course I saw you score,” I said.

My kid was ecstatic. Never mind that he got on base twice because the pitcher hit him with the ball, or that he walked his other times at bat. And his teammates scored not because they’re great runners, but because their coaches have them steal bases when the other team drops the ball, which is a lot.

But I say nothing about any of this. I’m just glad my kid got some exercise.

“Are you proud of me, mom,” Will asked as we wait at the traffic light.

“Of course,” I told him. “And I’m especially proud that you actually swung at the ball this game.”

Will smiles.

“It was so much fun,” he said. “I can’t wait for the next game.”

We drove the rest of the way home in silence, each thinking that we were winners. Happy, for sure, but winners nonetheless.