Parents are busy. New parents especially are stressed and exhausted. It takes its toll. You must understand how ridiculous it sounds to the parents when they have to answer to the authorities. They had just made the ultimate mistake, and all they could come up with is the horrific utterance, “I forgot.”
critical race theory
“I recently moved back to my hometown of Fort Thomas, Kentucky, located just across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio. I promised my husband, who’s Hispanic, that it is more progressive and more diverse than when I was growing up. I also sold him on the fact that it is one of the top school districts in the state. But, as I sat in a community meeting in our local high school auditorium and listened to my fellow community members make public statements about a proposed elective course on social equity, I worried that I was wrong.
Read the full column at the link below.
Many of the comments at the microphone were in favor of teaching social equity. Some shared a personal story to illustrate why it’s important to them. But those who spoke out against the course hammered home the same sound bite that’s been echoing across the country as states seek to ban critical race theory (CRT) from public education.”
Life doesn’t happen inside neat little schedules. Plus, my zest for life doesn’t quite match the illness’s demand that I slow down.
In this article for Subaru Drive magazine I take the reader through our backyard conservation projects to remove grass, establish pollinator gardens, install rain gardens, and turn our turf lawn into a clover lawn.
I like a lush, inviting yard. Grass? Not so much. Grass isn’t “green” – it’s wasteful, costing homeowners time, money and energy in an endless cycle of planting, watering and cutting. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that landscape irrigation accounts for nearly one-third of all residential water use, totaling almost 9 billion gallons per day. Grass is actually considered America’s largest irrigated “crop,” beating out even corn.
Read the full article below.
For a simple step-by-step guide to install your own pollinator garden click the link below!
Read more articles by Bonnie on the environment HERE
“Both driving and public transportation are heavily subsidized, but drivers are either unaware of that or OK with government support of personal transport. People get upset when states start talking about toll roads and bridges. Ironically, these tend to be the same people who think public transit should be self-sustaining. It’s not, and it never has been.”
“They’ll understand when they’re older.” It’s meant to be comforting: When our kids are parents struggling to do the right thing, they’ll realize how tough it all is. But the part no one tells you is that just because they may one day understand that you did the best you could, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll agree with your decisions.
A lot of recent conversations with my 19-year-old daughter have revolved around parenting decisions I made in her childhood that she disagrees with. She feels some have even caused lasting damage. Ouch. That hurts. I love my children, but love doesn’t make anyone a perfect parent. We’re all still human, just doing the best we can. I know my intentions, but I also know that I still don’t agree with every parenting decision my parents made. My goal was to be better than my parents, but I’m not any better—I’m just different.
Despite an October 20 court order issued by the Ohio Court of Claims, the Ohio Department of Health still had not released complete records as of late Wednesday night, claiming they needed several days to release information from a database that is updated daily. Read the full story below.
Read more pandemic Coverage from Bonnie Jean Feldkamp HERE.
This story went from slow motion to fast forward this week. It started 7 months ago when we tried reporting on bed and vent counts in Ohio Hospitals only to be shut out. Eye On Ohio took them to court. After a months long back and forth the court ordered Ohio Department of Health to hand over the hospital data we requested in our public records request. We’re still waiting on the data. Meanwhile Court News Ohio ran a story on the ruling and other media is picking it up. So yesterday we were off to the races to cover our own story. Written with Kathiann M. Kowalski. Please read and share.
Our report from seven months ago:
Read more of Bonnie’s clips HERE
Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is an award-winning freelance writer and columnist. She is the Communications Director for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, member of the Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial Board, and a board member for the Cincinnati Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. She lives with her family in Northern Kentucky. Find her on social media @WriterBonnie.
I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to put my thoughts down for this historic event.
It’s hard to wrap my brain around what this election means to me. It means progress. Even though there’s another white man as president and that’s not anything new.
Bonnie Jean Feldkamp
I hope you’ll read the full column at the link below.
In some ways, humans have it better than other mammals when it comes to having babies.We can control (most of the time) whether or not we want to become pregnant. If assistance and/or drugs are desired for labor and delivery, they are available to us. A newborn giraffe doesn’t have the luxury of assistance. He drops six feet from mom’s womb to the ground. Ker-Plop!
Think about water mammals like dolphins and manatees. At least a human baby doesn’t have to nurse under water. In this video we see the bubbles escape from the baby’s nose as she exhales with her gulps, but she must swim to the surface to inhale her next breath. It’s really cool to watch!
1. Morning sickness is a pregnancy symptom exclusive to humans. This is one way we’ve been screwed by evolution. Humans have a relatively dangerous diet. It seems that food aversions women experience are usually to the most risky foods in our diet. According to a Cornell University Study “nausea and vomiting in pregnancy is beneficial by expelling such foods as meat and strong-tasting vegetables that historically and still may contain harmful toxins and microorganisms.” This symptom typically happens in the first trimester when the fetus is most vulnerable. So, though unpleasant, this is the body’s way of protecting the fetus from potentially harmful food-borne bacteria, parasites, and toxins.
More details on that study here.
2. Labor and delivery for a first-time human mother averages nine hours. For our closest primate relative labor takes two hours. The evolutionary cause is two-fold. First, because we walk erect, our pelvis has added responsibility. To walk erect our pelvis needs to remain somewhat narrow. However, to give birth we need wider hips. A woman’s pelvis is wider than a man’s which gives her a little sway in her gait, but it’s not as wide as it could be if humans still walked on all fours.
Secondly, our babies are born large yet physically inept. Most mammals are born at 3% the size of the mother. Humans, however, are 6% of their mother’s size at birth. This makes for an arduous labor.
In utero, our energy goes to brain development. Studies even show the extra cushion of fat an infant has at birth is to support the baby’s brain development. The chubby physique is to make sure the body has good fat in reserves to support further brain development after birth. Other mammals are born skinny in comparison. If humans were to have a gestation period comparable to other mammals, a woman would carry a child for 23 months in utero. Instead, a fetus is carried for as long as possible (9 months) then delivery happens just before the fetus’ head grows too large to pass through the birth canal.
Even then, 1/1000 births are delivered surgically (*via cesarean) because the baby’s head it too big. This requires our infants to depend on mom much longer that other mammals do after birth. More details found here.
*Yes, there are many other reasons a baby is delivered via cesarean but this statistic focuses on head size.
Like this Post? Follow Bonnie on Twitter @writerbonnie or like her Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/WriterBonnie Bonnie Jean Feldkamp is a writer and mother of two.
