IF PREGNANT WOMEN RULED

When I read about Spain’s new defense minister being seven months pregnant I started thinking what if all the leaders in the world were with child.

If all the world leaders were pregnant, what a summit meeting we might have. A regular hormonal convergence, heavy on the oxytocin, that hormone of love and bonding that comes on strong in pregnancy. Turns women into nesters.
That’s what the world needs now. More nesters at the top.

I watched Carme Chacon, the first woman to head the armed forces in Spain, her stylish white maternity top fluttering over her third trimester belly, inspecting the troops and wondered what it would be like if all the people in power were pregnant.
I think priorities would be different if those in charge had their own vested interest growing under their blouse to remind them what they’re doing to the world.
To begin with, they’d all have one major thing in common. Pregnant women, no matter where they come from, speak the same language. They pray for the same outcome. They don’t need an ingenuine lecture on family values. Their hearts and minds and aching backs all are pointed to the future.

They get very emotional over anything dealing with children. Pack the UN with pregnant leaders and show them photos of desperate toddlers scrambling for bits of rice on a dirt floor and I bet they’d come up with a way to fix world hunger.
A group of leaders, soon to produce the next generation, would not take kindly to a trumped-up war. No more mothers throwing themselves on small coffins. No more little kids caught in a firefight. Take half that military budget and shift it into health and education.

Full of hopes and dreams, they would certainly demand to know what’s wrong in a world that causes some babies to grow up to hate and kill and wrap themselves in explosives.
Were they to hear of one nation committing genocide on another maybe they would march in like mother bears and make them stop. No matter whose trade agreement it threatened.

I know. We have no proof that if women ran the world we’d not still be dealing with hunger and a poisoned environment and one senseless war after another. But with men in charge it’s pretty clear that’s what we’re getting.
If pregnant women ruled we would be baby-proofing the planet. Fixing the blackened skies and fouled rivers. The world would pay attention to a bunch of riled-up mothers saying, “Clean up this mess before I count to 10.”

Among the pregnant and powerful, negotiations would be serene and calm. No red-faced screaming, no grand-standing, no macho boasting. No late night deal-making over cigars and whiskey. Pregnant women require more sleep and maybe some ice cream to get through the day. They try to avoid stress and conflict. At the same time they are good at sticking to business and could march through an agenda as fast as they could paper over a wall with birds and butterflies.

If pregnant women ran the world there would be safer toys, better child care, mandatory paternity leave and more bathrooms. If pregnant women were in charge there’d be fewer guns lying around.

And why not? Pregnant women believe in miracles.
As for the prospect of someone waking them at 3 in the morning with a crisis?
Not a big deal.

susan swartz
www.juicytomatoes.com

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BAG THE PLASTIC

Being a dog owner I say I have an excuse to collect plastic bags. Mostly I get them from the two newspapers delivered to our house, which continue to come wrapped in plastic long after the rainy season.

Like many responsible people I’ve tried to wean our household of plastic dependency, although I’m still not convinced that cloth veggie bags do as good as job keeping the broccoli crisp. Yet, I’ve seen the pictures of floating plastic sludge in the Pacific said to be twice the size of Texas, and know I’m partially to blame.

I do like the idea of toting my own reusable go-to-market shopping bag. Makes me think I’m in Europe with the little Old World string bag just the right size for a baguette, some cheese and a bottle of wine.

And we have no lack of reusable enviro-friendly shopping bags. We have shopping bags made from canvas, oil cloth, straw, burlap and what claims to be heavy duty recycled plastic with assorted store logos. In all colors, enough to go with every outfit.

But I forget to take them with me. I walk right out the door to go to the store and leave them behind. Or discover they’re in the other car. And then I’m at the store apologizing to the grocery clerk for being neglectful and spending another buck or two on one of the store’s own reusable bags that match the same ones I have at home. Or, even worse, guiltily accepting more plastic bags.

I think I’m typically American. Many people I know are bad about the bags. It takes a long time to change habits, to go from knowing to doing. And that is why they’re getting tough with us. In San Francisco there’s a ban on stores using plastic bag. Soon it may come to our part of the Bay Area, or the state will decide that if you use, you lose and make it a law that customers have to pay up to 25 cents to get a plastic bag they don’t want and know they shouldn’t have.

Why is this so difficult? We don’t leave home without our car keys and wallet. We don’t get as far beyond the front sidewalk without our cell phone and sunglasses. So why do we forget the bag?

Where I live you now can recycle plastic bags. You can take all those bags, even ones from the cleaners and gather them into big bag, tie them up and pop them into the blue recycle bin.

That eases some guilt, but I’m not sure it solves the plastic problem. The recycling people say that the bags go off to a recycling manufacturer to turn into decking and carpets. I know that repurposing can work. I have a very cute clutch bag made out of old beer can flip tops. But giving us an easy way to dispose of plastic will not end our plastic dependency.

So to celebrate Earth Day I resolve to tote that bag. Hang them by the front door, keep them in the car.

And then I have to switch from newspaper bags to biodegradable doggy-do bags. If we’re going green, the dog’s going too.

Susan Swartz
wwwjuicytomatoes.com

I WANNA BE GORDIE

My husband’s Uncle Gordie turned 100 this month. You might have seen news of his birthday celebration on TV. He was the guy from Richmond California hitting the century mark by driving 105 Miles an hour in a Lexus sedan and 130.4 miles an hour in a high speed boat on the San Joaquin River Delta.

Gordie made the perfect media star. We like seeing an old guy doing something wild that makes the rest of us whoop and holler. It makes everyone 99 years old and under feel that maybe they, too, will never be over the hill. Gives you hope. All that inspiring feel good stuff.

Reporters ate it up. There was white haired grinning Gordon Miller breaking the Guinness World Records for the fastest 100 year old man. On that day’s news cycle he was the perfect antidote to sour reports about the economy, the war and the latest political sex scandal.

Gordie warmed to the cameras and microphones. When asked how he felt to be turning 100 that day, he said, “not much different than yesterday.”

Maybe it’s those healthy ions that come from being on the water all the time that’s kept him going. He’s been hooked on boats since he was a young man and he and his wife Margaret have always found a way to live on the waterfront.

Twenty years ago they sold their house on the Richmond side of San Francisco Bay where they’d raised two sons and moved to a retirement community. Worst decision of their lives, Margaret, said. They hated it. Too quiet and too far from salt water. They made their way back to the bay and moved into a condo.

Reporters always like to ask old people how they managed to live so long and so well, especially ones who look good when the cameras zoom in. “He sure doesn’t look 100,” said the CNN anchor.
There are many ways to choose to live when you’re young but when you get old, there’s not a lot of alternatives and most don’t seem very attractive.

Gordie makes living 100 years look like something you might want to do if you got the chance. He’s charming and mobile, has a lot of family and friends. He’s a little hard of hearing and doesn’t jump on and off slippery decks as ably as he used to. But he has a lot of moxie, a lifetime of bar toasts and enough boating buddies to go sailing at least once a week.

Gordie credits Margaret for keeping him going. She makes sure they eat well and take vitamins. Margaret says another secret to Gordie’s longevity is that the man is almost always happy.
I asked Gordie about that and he said that when he was a kid he saw a sign that said “keep smiling.’ And so I did,” he said.

Is it that simple? You find someone to love who makes you take your vitamins. Then you pursue a passion that keeps you wanting to get up every day and put on your windbreaker and tennis shoes. Then you just keep smiling into the sun and the wind.

Susan Swartz
www.juicytomatoes.com

NO MORE MUCK HILLARY

For a while I was saying I got my split lip from being in a bar fight defending Hillary’s honor. Actually it had nothing to do with that. I fell at a friend’s house in Phoenix, but there was a political connection in that during the visit we watched an Obama-Clinton debate where I was sorely outnumbered. The best part was that the Obama supporters included a Republican and an Independent.

But there has been a lot of bloodying in this campaign and it’s starting to create some ugly scarring. Especially if you’re a concerned Democrat. As the two candidates have proven to be on the same side of many issues, they and the media have done everything possible to turn them into rivals. And we’ve wandered into the muck.


The muck is what we were supposed to avoid. The muck is what we need to get past.
One of my daughters has been an active Hillary Clinton supporter from the beginning. She wears the buttons and puts the stickers in her windows and calls foreign states, like Texas, on behalf of her candidate. She spent 45 minutes on the telephone with a man in a border town one Sunday. He told her, to “Please tell Miss Hillary” for him that he thinks the wall going up along the Texas-Mexico border is a bad idea and that the government would be better off spending the money to help war veterans.

As things got contentious between the candidates my daughter emailed the Clinton campaign headquarters of her worries. She said, “Don’t get personal. Don’t get dirty. Get out of the muck.”
But Hillary ignores her.

My daughter’s becoming disenchanted, like a lot of Democrats. Not just with Hillary but with politics and the muck.
How many more bloodied lips can we afford? We need to get over Clinton’s embellished sniper story on Bosnia. And get past Obama’s being AWOL at his early morning committee meetings.
It’s exhausting. And demeaning. And if this keeps up we’ll end up handing over the whole bloodied mess to McCain.

So, here’s my idea. Dump the muck. Right now.
Clinton and Obama start campaigning from here on out as if each one were indeed the Democratic presidential candidate. Challenge the establishment. Challenge McCain. Pledge to each other - you take the high road and I will, too.

Stop campaigning against each other like Rocky rivals and start running against McCain. That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Who would be the best to take on McCain. So show us. Tell us what you’d do about the war and jobs and housing and health care. We need a leader not a street fighter.

If this were to happen the media would have nothing to report but what Obama and Clinton each believe they can do for America. Then let the best campaigner win come August. And the other one will continue as a dignified proud statesman or woman. Or maybe even a vice presidential candidate.

And we’d all feel cleaner. And we’d d all be winners. Well, some of us anyway.

Susan Swartz