New Moon® News

Check out Our New Blogs!

2008-03-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, readers! Thanks so much for stopping by the New Moon News blog. We're no longer using this blog, but we hope you'll check out our many other blogs, including:

- our blog for and by girls 8-12
- our blog about orb28, the online experience for teen girls
- our blog for girls and adults about New Moon in print and online
- our blog for parents and adults who care about girls

You can also check out our MySpace Page and the New Moon Girl Media page on facebook. Hope to see you again soon!

Sing a Joyful Song

2008-03-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Readers,

This is Bissy, reporting in to share a fantastic interview with you. I hope you enjoy it!

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a singer-songwriter? Well, wonder no more! We had the privilege of finding out from the creative, savvy, down-to-earth Christine Kane, a (you guessed it) singer-songwriter. She's got a Telly Award to her credit for a DVD of one of her performances, Borders Books and Music chose her CD Rain & Mud & Wild & Green as a Best of 2003, and she's performed all over the country. But she's got a lot more going on, too, like a successful blog and workshops and women's retreats that she leads. And--get this--multiple dance theaters, one among them the North Carolina Dance Theatre, have choreographed ballets to her music. Two of her major messages are to listen to your heart and to be open to the possibilities that abound when you embrace the uncommon road. Read on for more on this and other aspects of her life!

New Moon: How did you come to song writing?
Christine Kane: I always loved writing. But I never believed in myself enough to think it was possible to do it for a living. I kept a journal religiously my whole life. I was passionate about writing. Finally, I started meeting people who showed me that writers have to give themselves permission to be writers. That NONE of them know if they're any good, but that you have to just jump in and try. So, I finally admitted to myself that I loved songs and songwriting - and I started doing it. And trying it. And writing bad songs. And getting better. This is all that anyone can do when they want to write!

What's a typical day in your life like? Is there a typical day?
There are no typical days. Sometimes I wish there were. When I'm on the road, I am always in motion and doing radio interviews or finding my way to new cities and towns. When I'm at home, I try to have lots of quiet time, lots of writing time. Typically though, I have to keep up with the business side of my art - and that requires lots of extra work. The hardest thing about not having "typical days" is that writers really thrive on some kind of routine. When I'm in a writing period - I tend to have day after day of quiet time where I sit with my guitar and play a lot. I allow whatever comes to come. Then I might get up and do the dishes or walk my dog. Then I return to the guitar and begin again. It's a lovely peaceful process most of the time!

You encourage openness about career paths, letting in the unexpected. For example, in 2006 and 2007, you toured with the North Carolina Dance Theatre, playing your tunes for the ballet they had choreographed around them. What was that experience like?
The very BEST thing about being an independent artist or writer or songwriter these days is that there are so many opportunities. You don't have to limit yourself to just playing in bars and such -- though at the beginning levels, you may have to do lots of that!

The ballet experience was amazing. It made me realize how much I miss collaborating with other people (when I tour by myself, I'm always on my own) - and how much life we humans can bring to each other's work. It was fun to be the "background" person too. I liked not being the "star" of the show. There's lots of pressure when you're the headliner. It was fun to be the back-up. And it's an enormous honor to have had my music become a dance. When I watched them rehearse the dance to my CD's - I cried. (I couldn't watch them during the performance. It made me too nervous!)

Your music's lyrics have become increasingly full of hope and the message to look toward the positive. Was there a prompt in your life that brought this change?

I think that when you grow up a little bit, and you step out of your own drama, then your writing changes. That's kind of what happened. And I started reaching for more spirit in my own life, more joy and more compassion. As I did that, my perspective as an artist changed. I was worried at first because I don't like to be "preachy" - but the theme of living with more awareness just started seeping in. I didn't plan it at all!

Do you have a favorite way of nurturing your creativity?
Just being alive and present to each moment. And observing everything - both inside and outside of me. And lots of quiet time.

Have you learned anything unexpected about the music industry?
So much. I don't think I could begin to write it all down here.

I've learned that you can't take anything personally. I've learned that everyone - even the most important people - is working hard, and that no one - even the most important people - has the answers.

I've learned that getting rescued is not a great business model - and that no one really "gets discovered." I've learned that everything is changing so fast, that I'm actually more successful than 90% of the people who are on record labels. I've learned all about the publishing end of music. I've learned that the people in the industry are not the enemy. I've learned to keep my mouth shut and listen to people, rather than think my projections are the truth. I've learned most importantly to question every assumption out there about the music business.

Do you have any advice for girls?
You have to take action, even if you don't believe in yourself. I never ever in my wildest dreams would've believed I'd become a working successful songwriter and musician. And what I've learned is that you start to build self-esteem when you take action steps towards your dreams. You get self-esteem when you keep going. You have to encourage yourself and find other people who encourage you. Life is WAY too short to be surrounded by cynicism and discouraging people. Do not settle for a life that doesn't feel alive! And don't let bad days scare you away from that. Everyone has bad days and everyone messes up!

Do you have anything to add?
You can refer readers to my blog for lots of further writing on these kinds of topics!

Thanks, Christine! What an inspiring interview.

Hope your days are filled with sunshine from the inside out and the outside in, Elizabeth (Bissy!)

From former blog-coordinator, Bissy

2008-02-11T12:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers,
Let me finally express how much I've missed you. This is Elizabeth (Bissy), your former blog coordinator, by the way. I encountered some unexpected life changes that made it impossible for me to fill you in sooner. I really valued my time writing on here, and I really valued your feedback. What a wonderful experience it was. I hope that you'll stay tuned with all of New Moon's exciting changes! May your days be filled with light and sunshine and happiness!
Sending cheer,
Elizabeth (Bissy!)

P.S. Remember to continue checking out our new blogs!

New blogs, coming soon!

2008-01-25T12:20:00.001-08:00

Hi, readers! Sorry that things have been so very quiet at this blog. We haven't forgotten you! We have been SUPER busy at New Moon as we prepare to launch lots of new offerings for the new year. I'd like to redirect readers of this blog to New Moon's NEW blogs on our new website at http://www.newmoongirlmedia.com/.

Now instead of one blog, we have several, including our parents' blog, an upcoming girl blog, and an orb28 blog.

Please check all our new blogs frequently to keep posted on what's happening at New Moon. And don't forget to sign up for our enewsletters to get the latest delivered right to your inbox!

Check it out--We've got a new look!

2007-12-28T07:50:00.000-08:00

Hi girls! Thanks for being patient with us--it *has* been a while since we've posted a new blog entry. We've been working hard here at New Moon to get our new websites(!) up and running! That's right--New Moon's got a new look and a few new spots on the web for you to explore.

Check out our company website at www.newmoongirlmedia.com. From there, you can head over to the magazine website at www.newmoonmagazine.org. I encourage you to click on links and poke around! You can take a peek at the LunaVida Club website and also learn more about orb28, our online community for girls ages 13-15+.

Let us know what you think! Soon, we'll be moving the blog to the magazine website where it will be easier for YOU--yes, you!--to post entries and share your thoughts and opinions with the rest of the New Moon community. For now, leave a comment and give us your feedback!

Here's hoping everyone is enjoying the holidays--and see you in 2008!
Signing off,
Heather

Casting Call!

2007-12-09T09:24:00.000-08:00

Are you a girl inventor or entrepreneur?

By Kids for Kids (BKFK) is looking for kids aged 8-16 with a great idea or business that has already achieved some success to appear in the new television series, THINK BIG! By Kids for Kids is a company with the mission to inspire, motivate, and stimulate the innovative spirit within all young people. The television show will provide a platform for kid inventors and entrepreneurs to showcase their products, letting the world know that kids have great ideas too. Kids can plan, design and manufacture great ideas into products and services everyone can use. Want to submit your idea? Visit their website at www.bkfk.com/thinkbig.

In fact, you may want to swing by their main website, powered by the new Idea Locker, too. The company has four other contests running right now, one for designers, one for artists/writers, one for those interested in the environment, and one for sports enthusiasts.

What a fun way to explore your interests and find support for them!

Go, girls!

Sending you creative passion, Elizabeth (Bissy!)

Celebrate!

2007-12-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you took a look in the mirror and celebrated you? Or took a look inside and celebrated you? I hope that it was today!

It's the season of celebration, which includes Hanukkah's celebration of light at the moment. So it got me thinking. Ritual has such a history of importance in many cultures throughout the world, and I know that somewhere deep inside you, you probably have a ritual just waiting for you to touch it and say, "Hey come out and play, let's celebrate something about myself!" And you know what the most surprising thing might be? That way to feel good about yourself might start with realizing the good you do others. You know how when you light a candle, that candle can keep lighting others? Just like a menorah. So when you light yourself up inside, you have the potential to light up others, and you still shine as brightly!

Your ritual could be anything. Something silly, like dancing into the bathroom in the morning! Something serious, like painting the way your heart looks when you take a deep breath every day. (I know, where did that come from--but wouldn't it be cool to try it?!) Something original, like taking a pad of paper outside every day and doing equations that you make up because you just love math!

Want to light someone up with a gift this season? It's kind of cool to remember what a gift you give to others by honoring yourself. So when you're lighting up your own candle and then deciding how you'd like to spread that light, you may want to check out www.SafeGreenToys.org, sponsored by Co-Op America, an organization whose mission is "to harness economic power-the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace-and to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society."

Hmm, the gift ideas are starting to come to me... This just might call for a post about creative gift ideas... What do you think? Send one, send all, your most creative, thoughtful gift, ritual, everything celebration-ideas!

Here's to spreading that celebration feeling, Elizabeth (Bissy!)

Typing Like They Mean It

2007-12-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

I just came across quite a cool network of women online. It's a blog run by Catherine Morgan called The Political Voices of Women: Opinion and Commentary of Over 200 Women Political Bloggers.

The site lists other cool blogs like:

Antigone Magazine: A Blog About Women, Politics, Women in Politics, and the Politics of Being a Woman

Mom’s Speak Up

MomsRising

On the site it shares this from the New York Times article Women, Politics, and the Internet by Katharine Q. Seelye: "We know that women slightly outnumber men online. But at least anecdotally, it seems as if more men are on the political blogs, writing specifically about politics, reading about politics and putting in their two cents in the comments sections."
This quote struck me in particular, because I find it an interesting parallel--or contrast--with the New Moon blog. Recently, many daughters have been chiming in to appreciate their moms, and moms have been adding their two cents, too. That's also why I highlighted the mothers' blogs. It's always wonderful to see the power of women's voices anywhere.

One thing's for certain: girls are growing to be the strong leaders their mothers have led them to be--just look at the recent "Letter to Congress" issue of New Moon!

I hope that the voices of women sharing political passion adds support to your own passion! You're part of quite a community.

Your blogger, Elizabeth!

Girls Making Science History

2007-12-05T06:52:00.000-08:00

“Why do people think girls can’t do science? Where did this crazy idea ever come from?” --Dr. Nancy Hopkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

On Monday, the winners of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology were announced at New York University.

Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, two 17 year-old seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High Schoolwon a $100,000 college scholarship prize for taking first place in the team category. The girls created a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria.

Isha Himani Jain, a 16 year-old senior at Freedom High School won first place (and a $100,000 college scholarship) in the individual category. She studied and reported on the bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do.

The girls beat over 1,600 students nationwide who entered the Siemens competition. Out of 20 finalists selected by the judges, eleven of them were girls. It was the first year that girls outnumbered boys in the final round and I don't think it's because this is the first year that girls were "smarter at science" than the boys. Just like I don't think that in past years' competitions, boys were "smarter at science" than the girls. I think that adults and educators are finally encouraging girls to excel in science, technology, and math. We should all give these girls a great big science-y high five! You Go, Girl!

As a middle schooler, I really, really, really liked my science classes. In 5th grade, I got to make crystals inside a jar and watch films on the theory of continents and tectonic plate movement. For the science fair, I spent hours with my Dad building a maze for my pet hamster, Teddy.

I wanted to find out just what type of food would motivate him to reach the end of his maze the quickest. It turned out that Teddy wasn't really motivated by anything, not even peanut butter. Even though my experiment was kind of a disaster, I had so much fun working on it! I made tons of charts and graphs to monitor his progress and felt very scientific with the brand-new stopwatch my parents gave me.

By the time I started 9th grade, I had secured a seat in advanced science class. I was one of two girls who sat in Mrs. Augrum's Advanced Earth Science class on the first day of my freshman year of high school. Even though I was very proud to be there, I quickly learned that it wasn't "cool" for a girl to work so hard at science. I was teased a lot and had many classmates ask me if they could copy my homework. I'm ashamed to admit that , buckling under popularity pressure, I decided to drop out of my advanced science classes when I reached the 10th grade.

I always wonder what would have happened if I had kept going or had encouragement from my teachers to combat the teasing of my classmates. I don't think I'd be winning any national science fairs, but I might have decided to study biology or chemistry in college.

So what's your science story? Do you proudly admit that you're a bit of a science nerd or do you fall asleep in class? Do you think that if you had a little more encouragement, you could find the fun in science? What fascinates you--the stars, dinosaurs, skin cells, venus fly traps? And what are some of your proudest science moments? Let's swap some science stories! I look forward to reading them!

Signing off,
Heather

Review of Lois' album, "Butterfly Kiss"

2007-12-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

"Butterfly Kiss"
Album by Lois
Review by Abby Flowers

Butterfly Kiss by Lois is a terrific album. It has powerful songs, such as "Bonds in Seconds". It also has sweet, sad songs, such as "Valentine". The music is unique which makes it better than most music.
The song "Bonds in Seconds" says do not stay in a relationship with someone who treats you badly. This rule counts for friendships, with family, boyfriends or girlfriends. It is a rule a lot of people need to learn since a lot of people can not tell when they are being treated badly. I think this is an important rule because if you are not getting respect than you are not getting what you deserve and should not settle for less.
"Look Who’s Sorry" is about apologizing when you are wrong. It is also about showing remorse when you are sorry. I think this is important because it makes the person understand that you regret being mean and that you care about how they feel.
Lois is different from other types of music. The music is not like most music you hear on the radio. It is simple and relaxing. Her voice matches every song; on sad songs her voice is sad, and on powerful songs her voice is powerful.
One of my favorite lines is, “What do I know and what do I care for you?” from Bond in Seconds. I like this line because it is makes me feel powerful.
Another line I like is, “Like everything else I don’t know,” from "Sorora". This line relates to the confusion I feel sometimes about things I am experiencing.
Lois writes about feelings girls can relate to. She writes about being heart broken. She also writes about being powerful and standing up for yourself.
I heard about this album from my mom. My mom was sick of hearing the same music playing in my room so she called me out into the living room. She thought I should try something new. She gave me the CD. I put it in my boom-box and I loved it.
Lois is a great singer and songwriter. I hope you take my recommendation and listen to "Butterfly Kiss".

Taking in the World

2007-12-03T04:54:00.001-08:00

Do you ever receive unexpected guidance from the world around you? Like a stop sign when you're in the middle of worrying about something that you know there's a solution to if you just stop and take a breather? Maybe something even sillier--for me it's the opening line "Take a deep breath" when I open up the communication software Skype. Or perhaps you see a word suddenly shift before your eyes--the word "guidance," for example. One day, I was staring at it, and I suddenly realized that guidance has the word "dance" in it. It really is a dance, receiving guidance from anyone or anything. To take it in, you have to take part, the way dancers interact on the stage for it to be a true performance.

Or maybe it's inspiration that appears when you least expect it. Staring at an acorn, and you suddenly realize it's a great setting for your next adventure story--what would an acorn be like to live in if you were a tiny made-up character? Or the way sunlight falls on the floor of your room. That shape looks just like... And then you go off and have the solution to your geometry problem.

I want to hear your unexpected epiphanies or guidances or leadings or inspirations! Goofy, sure, but we can all use the break to take a look around and realize that there's more to the world than meets the eye. And you never know--sharing your leading may just get someone going on their latest fascination!

Wishing you many words shifting before your eyes, Elizabeth!

What Moves You?

2007-11-30T14:31:00.000-08:00

As I was typing earlier today with piano music playing in the background, I found myself looking down at my fingers on the keyboard, feeling like I was playing along with the music. It made me think about how writers are musicians in a way--I guess you could say they play the computer, but that's not exactly what I'm going for. They're musicians in their own right (so to speak). Sometimes when you're in that beautiful place of expressing yourself, you just feel the motivation, the spirit, moving through you, and it does feel just like you could be playing a piece of music.

What moves you? I want to know. I think that all creative pursuits are the same in a surprising way. That was the real realization here. That everyone--whether they express themselves through dancing, or through writing, playing an instrument, or even building a house--is, in a way, playing the same tune.

All hooking onto the same moonbeam shining down that lights something up inside and makes it want to come out and play. So let me know what makes you shine inside, all lit up and ready to pass along to the world that wonderful essence of you.

Wishing you delight in the creative expression of yourself, Elizabeth

Got Health Questions?

2007-11-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

Hey, girls! As we prepare to launch New Moon's Online Experience this spring, we're gathering girls' questions for a health column. Questions can range from silly ("Why are boogers green?") to serious ("What's the difference between sadness and depression?") You can submit questions about . . . .
-physical health
-mental health
-spiritual health or
-sexual health

Send your questions to laceyl@newmoon.org so that I can pass them on to our advice columnists. If we decide to post your question on the site once it launches, we can post it anonymously if you prefer. Also, if our columnists answer your question, we'll send YOU a response as soon as it's ready so that you don't have to wait until the launch. Hope to hear from you soon!

Help New Moon Bring Girls' Voices to the World!

2007-11-27T13:49:00.000-08:00

Help us reach thousands girls this holiday season! Help bring their voices to the world!

Take advantage of our Holiday Gift Offer. When you purchase one full price subscription at $34.95, you may add up to five additional subscriptions at a special discount rate of $29.95 each, a savings of $5.00 on each 6-issue gift subscription.

Consider giving a gift to your friends, family, local library, school, YWCA or YMCA, hospital, girl group, women's shelter, or Salvation Army--The list goes on and on!

Subscriptions will start with the January/February 2008 issue. Order online or call toll free at 800-381-4743 and ask for our Holiday Gift Offer. MasterCard and VISA accepted

Hurry! This offer ends December 31!

The Tributed Tributes!

2007-11-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed how thankfulness isn't just a two-way road, it's an entire highway and road system?! There are so many people to thank! It's the same way with teachers--handed down and around and all over, learning is a special process with many sources and routes. Here's a special message from that writing teacher I wrote about in the post An Inspiring Teacher to explain a little more about what I mean:

I am the writing teacher about whom Bissy wrote. I was flattered and pleased that my message was clear: YOU ARE WONDERFUL AND CAN DO GREAT THINGS.
I want to give a brief tribute to my own favorite English teacher, Geraldine Fehder. She was my junior year honors English teacher. She had a unique way of dressing (very colorful and eclectic) and this was the way of her personality as well. She treated our ideas with enthusiasm and respect. She encouraged us to get to know ourselves. That is a lifelong process, but she was the one who pointed out that it could be done. To be encouraged to be the best ME I could be, and to share it with others, is what she did. Thank you, Ms. Fehder, wherever you are!
Liesl, 37

Here's something to ponder: you could be a teacher, too, and not know it! You don't have to the title or a degree to be one. We're all teachers. And you could be just one of the many that someone would like to shower with gratitude. I think we should all live as though we're the secret teachers we have to thank! Just like Liesl says, "YOU ARE WONDERFUL AND CAN DO GREAT THINGS."

Sending smiles, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Call for Interview Subjects! (And Happy Thanksgiving!)

2007-11-23T06:42:00.000-08:00

*Do you consider yourself a leader? Why?
*What's your definition of leadership? How do you "become" a leader?
*What are important qualities for a leader to have?
*Do you feel pressure to take on leadership roles in your community (especially to 'get into a good college')?
*Do you prefer to learn in single-sex or coed environments? Where do you feel safest? most challenged? most engaged?
*Do you feel like you have a way to make your voice heard in your community and/or school?

Do you feel like you have something to say in response to those questions? The Girl Scout Research Institute recently released the report Exploring Girls' Leadership, which hopes to broaden the available research, through offering literature review and girls' voices, about girls' initiative and to redirect people's notions of what it means to be a girl leader. (Read the report here.) Girls deserve to be better understood and more supported in their leadership roles! (This report was recently featured in the free e-mail newsletter New Moon's Friends News--to subscribe, click here!)

Natalia Thompson, super-cool former blog coordinator, is writing an article on girls' leadership "as a response of sorts" to this report. She's looking for girl (especially teen) interview subjects, and she would love to talk to you soon! So while your mind is still whirring with all the things you have to say about girl leadership, send her an e-mail at nmthompson01@aol.com.

This Thanksgiving weekend is the perfect time to ponder your responses! Happy Thanksgiving, by the way! Did you know that turkeys are historically tied with respect for the Earth Mother? There's just always a way to celebrate the female, isn't there?

Hope your weekend is brimming with smiles, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Project Native: Growing from the Heart

2007-11-21T03:29:00.002-08:00

Project Native is a native plant nursery and more in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Native plants, as their website explains, are "species that grew in this region prior to European settlement." The operation sits on a 54-acre farm in the town of Housatonic, and its all-female crew of eight runs a host of programs, like educational outreach and a seed bank (you can read more below!). Its mission? All about inspiring "the stewardship of natural communities" and "connecting people to nature and through that empowering [them]," says Raina Weber, the twenty-seven-year-old founder and executive director of Project Native. Recently, this dynamic woman took a break from her work to share her story and advice for girls with us. I have to put her advice for girls who want to start a project young (she began it at 19) right here, right up front, because it gives goosebumps it's so good:

We all have this gut instinct of knowing something what will work, and as long as it’s coming from a good place, a good solid place, a place from love and kindness, it will work. Just keep that motivation and keep hold of that passion, and you’ll persevere. You’ll have support. You’ll find support. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. That’s what adults are for, and a lot of them are really willing to give that energy. I see a lot of young people tend to be like, “I can do it. I don’t need your help.” Quite the contrary--we can learn from people who have lived longer and have had more experiences. As long as we hold onto our gut instinct, and make sure that it becomes our project and we don’t do whatever people tell us to, we can really utilize that advice. Also, there will be rocks in the road. That’s normal, that’s life. Just keep persevering.

Wow. Thanks, Raina! Read on for the rest of the inspiring interview! And by the way, if you're a girl (or anyone) who lives in the area and would like to help out, they offer flexible internships and volunteer positions--whatever you can make work. Their contact information is at the end of the post.

(For photo credits, see end.)

About Raina's Job

New Moon: You’re executive director of Project Native. Does that mean that you get to spend a lot of time outdoors?

Raina Weber: Unfortunately, no. I’m also the founder of Project Native, so when I started the project, I spent a good amount of time outdoors, because the initial start-up involved building a greenhouse and collecting about twenty species of native perennials from wild locations throughout Berkshire County, and then propagating them on-site at our greenhouse. That was the majority of my job, but it’s also always been about fundraising and community support—raising community awareness—and then the educational program development component. As it’s progressed, I find myself indoors almost entirely.

What’s a day in your life like?

A day in my life…generally has a lot to do with grant-writing, fundraising, possibly meeting face-to-face with donors, or preparing persuasive grant proposals. I also deal with the daily operations. We now have a staff of eight here, in different programs. Our programs range from a greenhouse, which is more of our business and has earned revenue for the non-profit, to our seed banks, in which we preserve all of the 150 species that we’ve collected and propagated now. We have a landscaping component through which we do public and private restoration, as long as it’s eighty-percent native plants or more. We have educational programs, which are both on- and off-site. We also do community gardens, integrating natives and vegetables at different sites throughout the Berkshires, primarily more “at-risk” populations out in Pittsfield—homes for young women and their children, Section 8 housing. We also have a small garden shop where we retail and wholesale our plants, other products we create here, and our seeds.

Wow, so you’re pretty busy.

Yes. Extremely. We also own fifty-four acres. We have a beautiful farm that we bought at a very low rate. We spent a lot of time in our first three years here with a lot of sweat equity and a lot of fundraising and a lot of volunteer help to make this place look like what it looks like today, which is quite beautiful…We just took down three-quarters of an old dairy barn that was falling apart, salvaged the timbers, and fourth that we kept will become our first indoor classroom, an educational center, and a seed cleaning facility. So that’s exciting. It also makes the property look a lot better!

On Project Native's Growth

What was it like to watch [Project Native] grow and gain support from just starting a greenhouse?

It’s been absolutely amazing, because when I developed the concept for the project and started, I really had no idea how it would go. My background is not in botany or in horticulture. In fact I did drop out of high school and moved to Hawaii when I was sixteen-turning-seventeen and got very much into permaculture there. Not as an official career path, but just in hanging out at various farms, learning, then eventually starting my own farm there. When I moved back three years later at nineteen, I just wanted to continue to grow. I quickly found out through some of my own landscaping projects that there was a need for native plants to be used in landscaping, particularly at that time at private homes. I was trying to recreate what I found the most beautiful landscaping, which was nature’s landscaping, and finding lack of those materials.

I was fortunate enough to have a connection with a nonprofit called the Railroad Street Youth Project, and that’s still in existence today and has done very well. It was only a month old at this time, and it was started by a peer of mine from high school who had also dropped out of high school. The nonprofit recognized the need for a youth empowerment center that went beyond the normal youth centers, if you will. One that actually asked the kids, “What do you want to do? What inspires you? What kind of projects would you like to see happen in the Berkshires?” They raised the money to send me to an 8-week business course, where I built the plan for Project Native, and gave me access to mentors, who helped me learn how to grant-write and begin Project Native.

So watching it grow has been mind-blowing, really, to say the least, because we never could have imagined that we’d own fifty-four acres and have a crew of eight and have this much community support and be growing over a hundred and fifty different species. And really, we’re just growing. We have not reached a stagnant point at all in our organization. Quite the contrary, we’re getting bigger and stronger every day.

I’m so personally inspired by this story…

I was nineteen when I started Project Native, and it was challenging, because at that age, and even at my age now, there’s not a whole lot of life experience to go on. And I have to say that’s part of why this project’s been so successful, though…My friends who I was hiring and I were not bred from a place that was thinking inside any sort of box. We had no idea what other nursery industries were doing, what worked, what didn’t. So we went on our gut feelings and instincts and a lot of motivation and passion, and that’s what has really made it work to date now…

What empowered you to make this bold step in your life at such a young age?

There’s a combination of events…High school always really frustrated me. I did well. It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of learning in the way the system is structured. It was quite the contrary; I did quite well. But I was really bored—really, really bored—to the extent that it kind of drove me up the wall, which is why I made that kind of crazy and nonconformist decision to drop out of high school and then left my parents’ home six months later and flew to Hawaii with no plan whatsoever. So I guess I always had that in my blood, so to speak, that yearning for adventure and something different. But when I came back to the Berkshires, primarily for financial reasons, I very much wanted to in many ways prove that I wasn’t this at-risk youth that had no potential because I’d left school and the traditional system, that there wasn’t any possibility for me. So part of it was this strive to sort of prove something…to myself, my family, the community that I’d grown up in.

Another part of it was just I’ve always enjoyed innovative and new projects. I’ve always been that way. I never really got a job working for someone else. From the time I was young, I did things like make lemonade and bake sales, and that’s how I always made my allowance…so I guess I’ve always been entrepreneurial. And it just didn’t seem that risky. I wasn’t that attached to money, I had cheap rent, no belongings, no debt. So it was like, “Why not? Why not try to make something like this work, put my energy there and see what comes from it?” So that’s the key to doing something young, before you have kids, before get married, before you’re worried about buying a home or any of those things…to start something innovative and dangerous and many ways. You have the option to do that when you’re young, and I recognize that.

On Nature and Project Native's Mission

Your Motto is “Growing Nature’s Garden”… How has nature shaped you? What do you want [Project Native] to offer others by helping others connect to it?

[It was] one of the ways that I really became grounded in myself in growing up as a female, not really following your general path of either being a career woman or having kids and starting a family. Neither of [those paths] really fit me, and nature has always been a mentor for me. It’s always just been a place where I felt at peace, where I felt the strongest, where I felt the most inspired. When I started learning about invasive species, which are plants that originated somewhere else, have moved into your area, it doesn’t matter where, and have not evolved with the rest of your species. A lot of times, and with invasive species in particular…because they haven’t evolved, haven’t formed those niches, they can tend to take over. They don’t have checks and balances in place. So where maybe fifty, sixty species grew together in harmony, all of the sudden you have one that wipes out the entire population. When I started recognizing that most of that was direct impact from humans—we brought them here for gardens or for fencing for cattle on top of the fact that we were the number one destroyer of natural habitat just with homes and roads and cities. I just felt it was my responsibility to start giving back, to take care of the earth, and in doing so [I knew] we’d only feel more empowered and inspired.

Thanks again, Raina!

To contact Project Native:

Project Native, Inc.
342 North Plain Road (Route 41)
Housatonic, MA 01236
Phone (413) 274-3433
Fax (413) 274-3464
projectnative@yahoo.com
http://www.projectnative.com

Here are some more links you might be interested in:
Yankee Magazine's article about Project Native: http://www.yankeemagazine.com/issues/2007-07/home/gardener
Native Plant Network: http://www.nativeplantnetwork.org
Plant Native: http://www.plantnative.org

Wishing you your own fantastic feelings of growth, Elizabeth

**Photo credits: Photo of Raina Weber: unknown, Photo of crew and photo of Black-eyed Susan: Rachel Kramer

Girl Entrepreneurs

2007-11-18T17:03:00.000-08:00

Do you or someone you know have a girl-started project or business? I love stories about girl entrepreneurs and how they balance it with the rest of their lives!

Back when I was eleven and twelve (I've gotta say, a lot happened those two years!), I had a cool business with my mom making eye pillows for a local massage therapist and yoga teacher. It taught me all about math and business--I learned how to make invoices and keep track of expenses, figure in my hourly work rate, and I learned specific sewing techniques to make them. The great thing about doing it young was that helped me sort out my passions early. I learned that sewing-wise, I loved turning my attention to clothing! Perhaps most of all, I gained a remarkable sense of respect for those who work professionally in sewing, from factory assembly of clothing to alterations in dress shops.

Speaking of girl-begun companies, have you heard of Sticker Sisters? Visiting the Feminist Expo 2000 with New Moon years ago, I ran into their cool offerings and friendly founder Ariel Fox (along with Gloria Steinem and Dolores Huerta!). Begun as her project to help other girls after a frustrating year in middle school, Ariel's offering of stickers with messages like "Girls can do anything" slowly grew to a larger operation, with an increased selection of stickers, shoelaces, and more. Ariel is still running Sticker Sisters, and it's going strong--Ms. Magazine called her a "Woman to Watch" in 1999. What an inspiring story--a girl's project leading her into womanhood!

Stay tuned, because soon we'll be sharing an interview with a woman who started a native plant nursery at 19 that's booming eight years later. She has some special advice for girls who are passionate about starting something young.

Sending you showers of sunshine, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

The Good Wife's Guide

2007-11-16T11:33:00.000-08:00

This article appeared in Housekeeping Monthly in May of 1955. Or did it? There's a controversy out on the Internet where this article is fast circulating about its validity. Was it possibly written in more current times, to poke fun at the 1950s mentality? Or was it really written at the time?

Either way, people love talking about it! How could it not raise questions like, well, first: What?!

And then, since these media messages were out there at the time in some form: Did people really take these suggestions seriously? What were the relationships like day-to-day? What's the "role of a wife" considered to be today, or is there one?

One online response that I appreciated was one woman's Good Husband's Guide. What a way to get a point across while having fun!

Most of all, I think the article is also a good opportunity to ask, Who are women--and girls--to themselves first? After all, self-hood is the foundation of any relationship.

Well, readers, what do you think about this article?

Evidence of modern-day empowered women in relationships could be a great prompt for a submission to Howling at the Moon (Email them to blog@newmoon.org.).

Here's are a link about the controversy:

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/goodwife.asp

May your day bring joy, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

An Inspiring Teacher

2007-11-15T04:20:00.000-08:00

In honor of the halfway mark of NaNoWriMo, the challenge to write an entire novel in the month of November (see earlier post), I'd like to give a tribute to a wonderful writing teacher I once had. I would love to hear about your experiences with inspiring teachers, too, so please do comment.

This is my story. When I was eleven, I was homeschooled for a year. A family friend, Liesl, was an elementary school teacher nearby. I had a passion for writing. So did she. She became my friend, coach, and mentor that year, the same year I joined the New Moon Book Girls Editorial Board. (See my first post ever for more an explanation of what that was). Every week, I would meet her at her home, and she would come up with creative projects for me as well as keeping two running journals together, each with a different focus.

Liesl taught me about a lot more than writing, though. She taught me about friendship. She taught me about creativity by taking me to the art museum to write about what we saw. She taught me about fun by inviting me to her school's celebration of Dr. Seuss' birthday. She also taught me about optimism. She has Multiple Sclerosis, diagnosed fourteen years ago, and gets around in a wheelchair. But that's beside the point of who she is. Except for the strength it has given her in other ways. When I talked to her recently, she said, "I feel good about myself, and I want to have other people feel good about themselves." And isn't a teacher who gets all those life lessons across really the best kind of writing teacher? Because when it comes down to it, isn't writing all about life?

About writing, Liesl says that she writes in her journal every day and that people often tell her she should write a book. If she does write a book, she says, she doesn't want it to be about MS. Retiring this year to take care of her health, she hopes to become "more arty"--you can see her photos on this post!

I asked her if she had anything to say to girls. She did:

"We each make a difference. I do feel that I am a 'light in the world.' [I had called her that in the conversation.] I do think everybody has that, but I don't think everyone pays attention to that."

"We need to feel good about ourselves and to feel like we can do that, and I think boys are probably told that more often."

Liesl added, "For girls, anybody, it's important to know inside you is someone wonderful." I leave you with that.

Happy creativity, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Opportunity for Girls

2007-11-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

Are you passionate about gender equity in the classroom? So is the Myra Sadker Foundation, named after a late pioneer in educational research. The foundation continues her work, and one way they do that is by sponsoring those who are promoting gender equity in schools. They have an award just for students with an idea for change and how to make it. Here's the description:

Designed to encourage student ideas, activities and projects (K-12) that promote respect for group differences, fairness, and in other ways build upon the values and contributions of Myra Sadker's work. Awards range from $100 to $1,000.

You can find the application at http://www.sadker.org/PDF/ap-student.pdf. What a cool opportunity to make a difference for girls--including yourself! If you have any questions, email dsadker@verizon.net. And if you receive an award, let us know--we'd love to profile you and your project!

Sending visions of new doors opening for girls, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Getting Those Creative Juices A-Flowin'

2007-11-12T13:19:00.002-08:00

New Moon usually likes to focus on topics apart from fashion, because everywhere else, girls get so inundated with the stuff. So I want to remind you in this post--we still think it's what's inside every strong girl out there that's most important!

In September, a new magazine debuted called Kiki. Begun by Jamie Bryant, a mother who wanted better quality publications out there for her daughters, the magazine focuses on fashion and design for girls 9-14. Without the usual fluff, though (New Moon readers know what I mean--gossip, boyfriends, etc.). That's what caught my attention.

Instead, according to Bryant, Kiki takes the college fashion curriculum and tailors it to younger readers, using the fashion and design industry to explore a variety of topics, including business, geography, fine art, craft, history, world culture, and even math and science. "Kiki is proof that having fun with style and artistry is completely compatible with intelligence and creativity." Each issue of Kiki combines articles with creative pages for readers' designs and art. It also seeks to help readers gain the confidence that comes from being comfortable in their own skin, whatever their style.

Passionate sewer and designer that I am, I would love to see a copy. When I started making clothing, I actually started caring less about what I was wearing--I got so caught up in the creativity of what I was actually making. It just felt like I was a painter who wouldn't mind wearing paint-covered jeans in pursuit of her art!

Well, readers, what do you think? Have you heard of Kiki or read it? Does it do what it aims? And what do you think about fashion and design? Do you think there are enough clothing designs out there girls would actually want to wear, or do you have a hard time finding clothes that suit your age? Do fashion companies sell clothes that feel too old?

Your trusty guide, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Howl at the moments of power and sing about the good things in your life!

2007-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

Have you seen anything lately that made you proud to be a girl or is there anything that you’ve seen that has made life better for girls? Maybe it’s a commercial that broke the stereotypes of what it means to be a woman. Maybe it’s a female construction worker. New Moon would love to hear these stories! Write to us and tell us what you saw to girl@newmoon.org.

Howl at the moments of power and sing about the good things in your life!

Writers' Guild Strike

2007-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

Have you heard about the Writers' Guild strike? Maddi, 14, has something to say about this hot topic in the news. She explains the situation so well that I thought I would just pass it along in her words:

As most girls probably know, the Writers' Guild has gone on strike for better pay. The Guild is a labor union for the people who write the scripts for almost every TV show on the air. These writers are paid very little. There are a lot of misconceptions about unions and strikes. Certain corporate leaders will tell you that unions are Communist and anti-American, or that workers who join them or go on strike (going on strike means refusing to work until your demands are met) are lazy and greedy. As the daughter of two union supporters, I can tell you this is not true. Unions are sometimes rooted in socialism, but they are not communist. Unions are just groups of workers who band together to keep bosses from treating any member unfairly. And workers usually go on strike because they aren't paid enough or are made to work in unsafe conditions. With all this in mind, I make this plea to all New Moon readers: Try to either cut back on the time you spend watching TV, or better yet stop watching TV completely while the strike is going on. Kids and teens watch a lot of TV in general, and if we were to all cut back the TV corporations would lose a lot of money, and would negotiate more quickly with the Guild. You can still watch shows online and movies are fine, too. But as fellow writers, I ask you to show your solidarity and TURN IT OFF!

Thanks for sharing, Maddi!

Readers, what do you think? Have you been following the strike? Do you have something to say?

Your trusty guide, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Hugging ban enforced

2007-11-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

By now, most of you have probably heard of the 12 and 13-year-old girls who got detention for hugging their friends. The hugs apparently broke a rule against "public displays of affection" that the school had.

Here at New Moon, we've been talking about this piece of news a lot. Julia Barenboim, New Moon's Assistant Online Editor, says, "We already live in such a cold, material-based society, and now we are discouraging positive relationships in children even more. And we wonder why teens [can be] so harsh and emotionally unresponsive? Adults frequently blame this on technology, but it sure seems the picture is a lot more 3-D than that. I also thought it was interesting that they made a huge point to say they weren't 'full frontal' hugs - um, there's really nothing wrong with that either . . . can't school officials tell the difference between something sexually inappropriate and two friends connecting?"

I wondered the same thing. While I understand the school's need -- and responsibility -- to watch out for sexual harrassment, banning hugs seems like a lazy way of ignoring the real problem, which is consent or lack of it. It's pretty easy to tell by looking whether a hug is welcome or not -- when you see by someone's body language that she's clearly not welcoming the hug, that's the time to step in.

These schools say they're trying to prevent sexual harrassment or distracting romantic scenes in the school hallways. But both girls who got detention insist that they didn't do anything wrong. Although I understand where the school's policy is coming from, I have to say I agree with the girls on this one.

But I'm interested in hearing what you have to say. Have you heard about the punished huggers? Does your school have "no hugging" rules? Do you hug your friends? Do you think the rules are fair, or over the top? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment!

Generation Nature

2007-11-08T12:56:00.000-08:00

For me, the call came from within. It said (in the voice of my neck, which is quite insistent and reasonable), "I need some time off here." I was standing in the hallway of my college apartment. I knew the call meant what it said. My mother's kindness and eye for the truth echoed it. She repeatedly insisted, "Are you sure you don't need time off from school?" I had had a neck injury in ninth grade, you see, that was still hurting, in fact worsening, even as I pared down my life, everything revolving around being in as little pain as possible, which was still a lot. So I plunged into college leave, my absolute commitment becoming my health and well-being. It was very hard to step away from the main track--very, very hard. What followed in my life, though, was a miracle of self-discovery and insight into the world. And that is how I would like to introduce the recent media exchange between Thomas Friedman and Courtney Martin.

On October 10, The New York Times published an Op-Ed by Thomas L. Friedman in which he describes his impression of today's generation of twenty-somethings, commonly called "Generation Y," of which I am a part. "Generation Q" he calls us, for quiet: "quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad. But Generation Q may be too quiet, too online, for its own good, and for the country's own good." He seeks a generation to light a fire under the country with action the way the youth of his day did.

Courtney E. Martin, a member of the addressed generation, had something to say to this. In her October 22 article "Generation Overwhelmed" in The American Prospect online, she describes our generation of twenty-somethings as lost for which cause and what method by with which to change the world when such a magnitude of options surround us. "We are not apathetic. What we are, and perhaps this is what Friedman was picking up on, is totally and completely overwhelmed," she asserts. She explains that with increasing causes to defend and the diminishing effectiveness of potential remedies for each cause, we sit wondering what to do.

My answer for the overwhelm? Nature. It became and is still my answer for each dilemma, for inspiration, for joy. I think Martin is right on the money when she assesses our generation's feeling of being out of control. Nature is what my generation needs, what every generation needs, as it teaches how we are part of a balanced whole, and we have the right to control our own lives. Changing the world means, first and foremost, changing ourselves. I wanted to reform American education, and I wanted to do it right away, fast, at nineteen. Then this pain in my neck, literally, told me to slow on down. I had to reform my American education first. It is the eternal lesson: you have to help yourself before you can help others.

I know "nature" is not an adjective, so my term "Generation Nature" is a squeeze, but I think that, especially for females, nature is the answer to empowerment.

I will continue my story to further explain. "This year is going to be about letting go," I told myself, "about realizing that I have to banish dread from my life, and that I have to quiet down inside with all that fear and just embrace the safety of being a powerful woman here who is in charge of her own life." Suddenly, when I took that bold step away from the mainstream expectations and listened to my heart and body and said that I needed time off, something I had envisioned as impossible, all the impossibilities melted away. My mother and I went away while we were unable to live in our house being renovated, found a magical place in nature, and the whole time did not know that it was the plan. Everything just kept falling into place, whereas before that I had felt like I was lifting great weights to make things work. There were sad parts, like not being able to see my dear younger cousins when I wanted them to know how much I still cared even though I was far way. I knew that if I did not start taking care of myself then, though, I would not be able to be there for them at all in the future. And taking care of my neck, giving it healing time, was a full-time job, though well worth it for the lessons it wrote in my heart. More than my neck needed healing. My sense of direction needed healing, as I felt the pressure to keep up that Martin's article describes.

Nature is often a place pointed to as fearful, wild, unknown. Or as boring. But to girls and women especially, I feel, it is vital, our life source.

I took myself to nature school, walking on sunlit (and sometimes cloudy) trails, sitting in a brook, gazing at the trees outside my window, and once having a bird land on my head when I was in a state of reverie. I took joy like a pill every time I stepped out my door and breathed the air. I studied birds and habitats, taught myself to identify their calls, and once stumbled upon a lake full of geese so large in number, I gasped at the enormity of their collective honks. I am committed to more women experiencing what my mother and I experienced. She transformed as well, both of us paring down more to our essences, and she recovered from chronic illness when she was close to losing the battle. Nature, so often, is portrayed as something to fear. If we are going to save this planet, though, we must push that fear away and say, "Beautiful Mother Earth! What do you have to teach me about how to go out into that world and bring peace?" And then we have to sit awhile and listen.

These are responses I have found. She shows us having limits and reaching for the sky at once with the oak tree's pause in growth in winter yet ultimate achievement of grand stature. The fruit on the tree teaches that abundance and nourishment are meant to be birthrights. The moon teaches patience with its slow cycle and persistence with its glow through the clouds. The eagle teaches soaring and landing. The duck teaches humor with its quack or whistle and solidity with its sheltering of its young. And the black-throated blue warbler? It teaches taking a vacation with flair--the males and females winter separately in the Caribbean! In her book Wild Health: How Animals Keep Themselves Well and What We Can Learn from Them, Cindy Engel says, "One way animals reduce their anxiety levels is through grooming, hugging, and stroking themselves." We are allowed, blessed, meant to give ourselves comfort through these simple yet profound ways.

Nature, taking time for joy in it, restored my soul. I think my generation, especially the female twenty-somethings, is in danger of being lost in pursuit of something they cannot see without sweet nature's guidance. Passion, passion, passion. Balance, balance, balance. Joy, joy, joy. Before I had let myself off the hook for awhile and just said, "Ok, heal, have fun, have a blast, in fact," I never in a million years could have approached change in the world with the same appreciation for what it can be that I can now. Having a blast for me was not getting high, going dance parties or anything of the like. It was sitting on my bed passionately rereading a sewing pattern until I understood the directions enough to make the desired item of clothing. It was absorbing a book on birds to get the answers to my questions. It was silent observation of two swans taking flight from a lake. It was intense, inspired passion about the good that exists in the world. That time off was essential for me, like Shadia Wood of Power Shift described in my interview with her.

Reflection is a necessity for vision of change. Joy, as Courtney Martin said in her New Moon blog interview this summer about her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, is where the heart is in change for girls. I think this applies to everyone.

First we find joy. Then we find a solution. When we all turn to nature together for the lessons, joy, and inspiration that it can ignite within, we can then unite toward a common goal and heal this planet's ills. See the good, focus on it, and it will expand as more people learn about it and want it to multiply. Share with others how beautiful this place is, and together, we can bring back all that it can be.

Well, I could write a book on this, as you can see. Maybe I will. For now, let me add just a few more words:

I still have to listen to those voices in my body, that one voice of my true self, that gives me cues about my limits, but now I treasure those voices instead of fearing them. They teach me. Like that call from within.

I was quiet during my time away. Not the quiet that Friedman describes, though. The kind of quiet that fills a theater right before the curtain lifts.

Well, readers, I think you are going to have something to say back to this post, and I cannot wait to hear what it is. What is it like for your generation? Do you think the descriptions of Generation Y describe what you go and your peers go through, or is it different? What do you have to say? I want to know. Girls, you are precious, precious visionaries and gifts to the world. Let me know, and I will listen, no matter how different your thinking may be from mine. Just like the birds have so many different tunes but form a symphony together, our voices can join together and find a solution!

Wishing you a breath of fresh air, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Are You a Girl Filmmaker?

2007-11-08T07:34:00.000-08:00

Does New Moon's latest "The Big Screen--Get Plugged In" issue have you itching to make your mark on the cinematic scene? You're in luck! Sony is holding a contest for kids to make their own Public Service Announcements about cyberbullying to spread the message about making the Internet a safe place for everyone. This might be just what you were looking for, girl filmmakers! Lights, camera, action!

Here's the call for entries from Sony:

Cyberbullying is a growing problem among children and teenagers on the Internet. The anonymity and ease of communication the Internet provides can create a vehicle for bullying, harassment and defamation, making the Internet a hostile and dangerous place. Cyberbullying is a problem that you, as a filmmaker, can help address and solve.

Help end cyberbullying by creating a Public Service Announcement on the issue. Sony Creative Software, the National Crime Prevention Council and the Ad Council are seeking entries from independent producers and academic institutions (K - 12). The top submissions may be eligible for national broadcast, and their producer or sponsoring academic institution will receive a complete multimedia editing suite for their facility or school valued at over $18,000. Prize sponsors include Sony Creative Software, Sony Electronics, and Sony VAIO.

Judges to include: Barry Sonnenfeld, director/producer (Men in Black, Addams Family, and others); Steve Oedekerk, producer/writer (Bruce Almighty, Barnyard, and others); Justin W. Patchin, Ph.D., noted authority on social networking and cyberbullying; and members of the Ad Council's Campaign Review Committee.

The call for entries period opened September 11, 2007, and closes January 11, 2008. All entries must be received by January 11, 2008 to be eligible.

Click here for more information, prizes, rules and submission guidelines
<http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/promo.asp?keycode=64063>.

And...cut. Good luck!

You'll be hearing from me, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

New Moon® Wins Two Minnesota Publishing Awards!

2007-11-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

New Moon was honored at the Minnesota Magazine and Publications Association Excellence Awards ceremony held November 1, 2007 in Minneapolis, MN! Emma, from the Girls Editorial Board, was at the event to represent New Moon.

Our January/February 2007 “Letter to Congress” issue won a Silver Award for “Best Single Topic Issue,” and the “Go Girl” department won a Bronze Award for “Best Regular Column.”

In the “Letter to Congress” issue, girls from around the nation spoke up about the political issues that affect their lives, addressing everything from animal rights to the war in Iraq.

You can still speak up about political issues that matter to you by visiting the "Letter to Congress" webpage! You can look up your Congress people online, get letter-writing tips, and download special postcards. Then, send your congress people a letter to tell them what's on your mind! The webpage also features interviews with 14 women currently serving in Congress, bonus articles not published in the magazine, results from New Moon’s online political survey of over 1,000 girls and much more!

Also, check out our past "Letter to Congress" posts! There's lots of pictures of our trip to Washington, D.C. and much more!

"Go, Girl!" features a girl activist or adventurer who's on the go for a cause, or just for the fun of it! The article is girl written and features adventures like volunteering in Vietnam, living in China and attending a boarding school, and being the only girl on a football team. If you have an adventure that you want to write about, check out the writers' guidelines and send your story in!

Thank you to readers, staff, the GEB, CAB and girls everywhere for making New Moon such a success!

Turn That Frown Upside Down

2007-11-06T10:11:00.001-08:00

Have you ever really wanted to like a song, but there was just a line or two that rubbed you the wrong way? So you sat there frustrated? Or maybe you love the tune of one song out there, but you just don't agree with the lyrics?

This used to happen to me. It used to be that I would listen to some song that really got me going, happy, up, soothed my soul. Then when the lyric part that bugged me or just did not quite sit right with me came along, I would sit in silent protest, growing frustrated and more frustrated each time until I just decided I would give up listening to the song altogether. Here's how I got over my frustration.

I remembered listening to Rogers and Hammerstein when I was eleven, absolutely loving to sing along to "I've Got Rhythm." My friend and I would dance along as we sang it out on the deck, and one day my mom was our audience. As we sang the line, "I've got my man, who could ask for anything more?" my mom's face clouded over. She said, "Do you think there's another way to phrase that? So it's not like a man's completing your life?" And it dawned on me! "Friends--I've got my friends, who could ask for anything more?" I said. And it became our anthem. You could even make it, "I've got myself, who could ask for anything more?" or "I've got my dog, who could ask for anything more!" The options are endless!

So when I was going through my recent song frustration, I flashed on that change in mindset that the change in lyrics had allowed. I was allowed to shift and let myself like a song! Happiness could replace frustration, and all I had to do was shift my thinking and get to be creative in the process. One that I tried and really loved was for "The Water Is Wide." My mom and I had decided to learn some sing-aloud songs together, and this one was on a favorite folk album. "The Water Is Wide" goes, "When love grows old, still it carries on, then sometimes fades, like the morning dew." Well, I just was not keen on this, so I shifted to what I did want out of the feeling of that line. I experimented, and one I liked was, "...still it carries on, and grows stronger with each passing day." Come to think of it, I think I just created that one. I had always found the syllables a challenge there--proof that sometimes you just have to keep working at it until you find the right one for you!

So, enough of my changes, I want to know about your creative solutions for frustration in the musical realm! With so many songs out there, and so much brimming energy from your brilliant minds, I know you have some truly innovative ways to turn around the messages we hear on a daily basis (if you listen to music on a daily basis or just hear it in public). Maybe you go to the grocery store and seem to always hear the same song with a woman pining about a relationship she has lost. Can you turn around the lyrics in your head to make it a song about a woman discovering how strong she is on her own? What about a male singing about his lost female love? Does hearing that song just tick you off? Next time you hear it, what if you experimented, gave a chuckle, and turned that song around into an impassioned ballad about his process of discovery of a the innate power, independence, and capability of all girls and women? How he is thankful that his girlfriend established her boundaries by breaking up because it truly showed him what his relationship patterns had been, and he learned a thing or two about control?

What are your lyrics for change? I want to know, from a single word reversal that makes all the difference to a whole song rewritten to your specifications. Send one, send all (or leave one as a comment), and I will share selections on the blog. Maybe it's not even for a lyric of a song, but a poem or a common nursery rhyme. What's your vision?

When I started to shift our focus from frustration to creativity and excitement about what I wanted to hear, it made a world of difference! Your creativity can change the world, and I mean that. All it takes is a change of tune...or lyrics!

Oodles of creative passion, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

NaNoWriMo has arrived!

2007-11-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

November 1st kicked off National Novel Writing Month and with it the beginnings of many, many novels. That's right NaNoWriMo, as it is called for short, is the opportunity to pen 50,000 words in one month. With great gusto, writers everywhere are embarking on the challenge for as many words out as they can, leaving behind the inner editor and saying, "I can do it, I don't care what voice is trying to hold me back!" The goal is to just get writing, no matter what, and then thinking about any possible changes later. The Young Writers Program is just for kids with the goal of finishing a novel, so girls can join in, too!

I know, I know, it sounds out of reach. 50,000 words? New Moon said it on the blog last year and I will say it again: it can be done! It is a wonderful chance to just totally let go of all inhibitions and write! In fact, I am doing it this year, though unofficially, because I started on October 31st. This is a little late notice, but you can still join in, or just learn from the website. It is a fun one to browse, with lots of inspiration and support. Their message is all about having fun and just letting yourself go (and write write write).

So come ahead and join me and the other writers if you would like. If you begin tomorrow, you can still make it with 2000 words per day. And guess what? There are NaNoWriMo participants who have actually had their novels published (with some polishing, I think, though...).

Sound fun? Then by all means, join in.

Happy writing (or whatever activity brings you great pleasure), Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Power Shift, Part Two

2007-11-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

Power Shift, the four-day national youth summit for climate change in Washington, D.C., began yesterday. (Read more about the event itself in the earlier post, "Power Shift, Part One.") Shadia Wood, whom New Moon recently interviewed, is one of the event planners and spokespeople. Her list of accomplishments at age twenty is hefty, but perhaps most admirable has been the combination of passion, time for reflection, and commitment to joy in her life that got her there. That combination has surely made a difference in the world, too, and she has gotten noticed for it.

Beginning at seven, she was involved in an eight-year lobby campaign to halt the increase of toxic waste sites in her community that would further the resulting illness and deaths that were already present from nearby sites. For this campaign, the Hitachi Foundation awarded her the Yoshiyama Award, and the Earth Island Institute gave her the Brower Youth Award. At fifteen, she attended the Youth Summit on Sustainable Development, helping with the Official Global Youth Energy Policy Statement, and the Second National People of Color summit, where she was involved in the Environmental Justice Youth Platform's creation. She became the youngest of the Campus Climate Challenge Coordinator during her time off between high school and college (always a worthy pursuit), and has just shifted her focus to the implementation of Power Shift itself. Of her experience being biracial, she has said that she is familiar with halves and feeling in-between. Activism, she has described, has been "the whole in my life." Next spring will bring her to the American University of Beirut to study Arabic and photography. In the interim between Power Shift's end and college's beginning, she will take time with her family to rest after two years of work to make Power Shift a reality, and to determine what she wants out of her education and her "big move to the Middle East." Of activism, she says, she knows it will always be a part of her life, "but we'll see what form that takes."

Read on for the completion of our interview.

New Moon: You began very early on your path of activism--I read that your first press conference was at age two. What was it that motivated you to become involved in activism so early?

Shadia Wood: The story behind the first press conference is kind of where it all began. Obviously I really wasn’t cognizant for that press conference. My community, which is a very small, rural community in upstate New York, was sited for a landfill and an incinerator. We already have Superfund sites surrounding my community. There’s one that’s a mile away from my house. So we already had cancer clusters, so a lot of children and old people were dying because of the pollution. Clearly I don’t remember this at the time, but the community rallied and was able to not allow [the proposed landfill and incinerator] to happen.

My mom was a big proponent of that. She was a community leader at the time; she rose to that position even though she had six kids. Since I was the youngest and wasn’t in school, as all of my other siblings [were,] she took me with her to wherever [she was going.] So that’s where that came from. She put a paper bag, cut some armholes and headholes, and [it] said, “Don’t dump on me.” That kind of creativity that I grew up around--we were really poor, but we made things work. I grew up around that framework of thinking; you use the resources you have.

When I was seven, the Superfund program in my state, the money for the toxic waste sites, was going bankrupt. It hadn’t gone bankrupt yet, but there was this huge push in the activist community, to educate each other and especially the young people. I attended this kids’ conference that explained in very simple terms what PCBs were and why Onondaga Lake was the first place to ever be declared a Superfund site, which is where my grandparents live. So I was digesting a lot of this information as a seven-year-old and making the connections to why people in the community I lived in were dying or why so-and-so had to miss school all the time for check-ups, and it just really made me angry. That’s where I got involved. We did an action, and it was a lot of people from seven to about fifteen. It was right around Halloween, so we dressed up as mutant toxic monsters, and we picked a chemical to associate with that we had learned about, and went down to Onondaga Lake and did a photo op. I remember being at the table at the reception dinner afterwards, and I was standing on the chair, and so angry Those were the emotions I was going through that sparked me into funneling that energy into that organization Kids Against Pollution that was big in my community at the time. That’s the story of initial involvement of why I started so young.

Did you have any female role models? It sounds like your mom was one. Did you have any outside influences that encouraged you in your activism?

My mom is a powerful woman, and she raised six kids on no budget whatsoever. I have an older sister, Ilina, who is eight years older than I am, and was also a large influence on my life and is why I am the way I am. When she was in high school, she started getting into Ani DiFranco. At the time I was [about] six, when Ani DiFranco first came out. So Ilina got the album, and we would listen to it on the car rides, and it would [mainly] be my sister and my mom and I when we were going places. That’s what I remember, is, as a little girl, listening to this powerful woman speaking through the [car] speaker and really empowering [the listener]. She was definitely a huge influence on my life. I knew a lot of her lyrics and didn’t really know what they meant, but I kind of felt it.

Another big influence on my life has been—I really like history—the activist Alice Paul, who was a suffragist. She’s kind of written out of history. When I started getting more involved in researching activism and organizing different movements and figuring out what worked and what didn’t, I came across Alice Paul and was like, “Wow! Here’s a powerful young woman who created this movement and did direct action, and nonviolent direct action at that in a time that it was not the climate for women to be doing that.” I was very inspired by her and looked to her for leadership.

What has been like for you to be the youngest involved in many things, or one of the younger ones? What advice do you have for girls who [encounter] age bias or bias [against girls]?

I was fortunate to have a really good support system of women in my life, and I realize that not all young women have that. Especially around the ages of eleven to thirteen and fourteen, you’re figuring all of these really important things out, and it’s just this really intense process. It’s really hard to understand what your emotions are and who you are. I guess a lot of that for me was taking time to reflect on the situations I was put in. What has helped me the most was figuring out why things happened and processing them, whether it was a situation that I was in that wasn’t positive or someone was treating me like I was thirteen when I actually had a stake at the table. I [had] a voice and [had] just as good and just as valid opinions as anybody else when I was being treated like I was five or like I was thirteen. It was very important for me to reflect on that and then figure out what the best way to move from that was. It’s staying strong and what you believe in and having a really clear concept of what that is. It’s figuring out where you best fit in in a movement.

What message do you most want to communicate to girls about Power Shift? …about activism in general, too?

Young women and girls need to really be at the forefront of this. We see all the time, women are the grassroots activists, but they’re rarely in these bigger positions of power. Women are on the ground making it work, but they’re discredited or it’s just seen differently. I think it’s so important for our young women and young girls to really be taking part in whatever they can on issues like this and find what speaks to them. Some people, the 1Sky and some people it’s the polar bears are dying and some people it’s the power plant in their backyard. What is it that speaks to you? Find that, and run with it, and push people’s way of thinking. Really be OK to be out there.

I think that’s what Power Shift is for me, it’s this convergence where young people, and especially young women, young women of color, young people of color, can come together in larger numbers and stand in solidarity with one another and really figure out what does speak to them, and push for those things.

Thanks again, Shadia, and good luck with Power Shift!

Here's a link to a story featuring Shadia:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061401876.html

By the way, you can read dispatches from the summit on their website and on It's Getting Hot in Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement.

Wishing you a weekend of joy, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Weekend Reads: Rules

2007-11-02T09:52:00.000-07:00

This Friday's weekend reading comes from Marissa, 11, in New York. The book is Rules by Cynthia Lord. Enjoy your weekend and give yourself some time off, maybe by diving into a soul-satisfying book!

"Normal. Average. Regular. Twelve-year-old Catherine doesn't think least she doesn't think her family's normal. David, Catherine's younger brother, is autistic. David doesn't learn from watching others, so Catherine and her parents have to teach him everything.

Catherine is determined to create the illusion that her brother is like everybody else. So she creates rules to teach him. But he's not always is able to follow them. Every time Catherine encounters a new situation she creates a rule for David. 'Don't take your pants off in public,' or 'Sometimes people laugh when they like you. But sometimes they laugh to hurt you.'

But it's the summer where Catherine meets two new friends: One Kristi, her new next door neighbor, who could be everything she hoped for, and Jason, who can't talk, where Catherine's perspective is changed. She starts to think about what she has that Jason doesn't, and the way Kristi treats her and her brother. Catherine begins to wonder if there is only one normal or if there is an average after all.

This fantastic novel will make you think about reaction, perspective, and normalcy. I finished it in a day, the writing is great and the plot is intriguing."

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it on this October 31st! Pumpkins, apples, witches... a lot of associations come to mind when Halloween rolls around.

For me, the most powerful association with Halloween has always been expressing creativity, from costumes to activities at Halloween parties. What will I dress up as this year? I would wonder each summer. (Yes, each summer. My mom would sew my costume in the summer, when time was plentiful.) What a joy to meander in my thoughts as I stared at the pattern catalogs in the sewing store! I could be a "girl from olden times," like Laura Ingalls Wilder! Out came the blue calico fabric. Then as I came to make my own costumes with inexpensive sweatshirts and fabric paints or big sheets of poster board and duct tape, my plans would take more creative turns. I would be the universe! Out came the glow-in-the-dark paints. For me, Halloween was always about getting pumped up with my creative juices flowing, even if all I was working with one year were some pieces of fabric and lace that used to be part of my dress-up box. That, the year I had put off thinking about my costume until the trick-or-treating day rolled around, was actually the most thrilling as I wrapped and pinned and rearranged and reformed my ideas until I had the costume together over my street clothes. I don't even remember what I called myself!

Halloween is about creative expression, and it's about a lot of other things, too. What does it mean for you? Showing your creativity? Dressing up? Trick-or-treating? Staying home? Does it mean collecting for UNICEF? Working on a CD review for New Moon (see the post below)? I want to know! And I want to know how Halloween went after the fact. What's it like to be a girl on Halloween?

Whatever your choice on Halloween, I hope one thing you'll be through and through is proud to be a girl! Just think, witches are so commonly associated with Halloween, and they have got a powerful history. There's a lot of stuff out there about witches, but to me, the most compelling is that these mislabeled women were superb healers in touch with the forces of nature and the most medicinal properties of plants.

I wish you all a safe, happy day!

Until November, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

CALLING ALL GIRL WRITERS!! ---DEADLINE EXTENDED!

2007-10-31T10:58:00.001-07:00

Have you ever wanted to be a music critic? Here is your chance!

New Moon is looking for a girl writer to compose a CD review of an album that you think sheds women in a positive light for our March/April music issue, “Listen to This!”
Here are some guidelines and questions to keep in mind when creating your review:

- Choose an album by a female musician that you believe has a strong impact on women and how they are perceived.
- Let us know what you like and don’t like about the CD and why.
- Are there specific songs or lyrics that give you inspiration?
- What kinds of instruments were used? What kinds of dynamics were explored?
- Why is this CD so unique and special in your eyes?
- Where did you hear about this artist/CD?
- Make sure to keep the critique to 600 words.
- BE CREATIVE!
-Deadline EXTENDED to November 7th, 2007!!!

Email your article to Hannah at editintern@newmoon.org

We hope to hear from you!

Girls Editorial Board Featured In Ms. Magazine

2007-10-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

In honor of Ms. Magazine's 35th anniversary, the Girls Editorial Board was asked to share their voices about the future of feminism.

The GEB is featured in the Fall 2007 issue along with Gloria Steinem, Whoopi Goldberg, Alice Walker, Billie Jean King and many more. We are honored and proud that the girls of New Moon are standing side-by-side with these great voices.

Learn more about the Ms. 35th anniversary issue and add your voice to the Voices that Carry section of their website!

And of course girls, we want to hear your voice, too! Where do you see the future of feminism going in 35 years? Click on the image to the left to read what the GEB had to say!

Power Shift, Part One

2007-10-29T10:51:00.000-07:00

From November 2 to November 5, young from all over the country will gather in Washington, D.C. for Power Shift, "the first national youth summit to solve the climate crisis." The conference will be held at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Included in the agenda are workshops, panels, performances, a green job fair, and a lobby and rally day on Capitol Hill. At the summit, youth will meet in groups based on geography, building networks and learning how to carry home the lessons learned and begin action. On November 3, the conference will coordinate with a national Step It Up day, an opportunity for individuals across the country to organize actions that suit their communities, like clean-ups. You can sign up for Step It Up online and send in pictures after the event to be compiled and sent to Congress. Registration for Power Shift can be found on the website. Registration ends on October 31. As of this writing, 4,701 youth leaders are registered. It will be an opportunity for youth to share their vision of a future--and a present--of vitality, progress, and innovation. Joining voices, youth will unify and share their message of a healthy future that only a clean planet can provide.

New Moon recently caught up with twenty-year-old Shadia Wood, one of Power Shift's spokespeople and organizers. She began her activism early, and it has continued as a passion throughout her life so far. Her position just shifted from youngest Campus Climate Challenge Coordinator for the Energy Action Coalition (the organizers of Power Shift) to working for Power Shift directly on travel scholarships for youth of color and low-income youth. Here are some highlights from our interview. Stay tuned for a later post to read more of the interview and learn more about Shadia (like the first press conference she attended at two)!

New Moon: How long has [Power Shift] been in the making?

Shadia Wood: That’s such an interesting question… When we created our three-year campaign plan for the Campus Climate Challenge, which is the Energy Action Coalition’s main campaign, we always knew that we were going to be putting on a national conference at some point. We thought it was going to be the third year. We realized that [at] the rate we were going in year one, we were going to hit a lot of our goals and surpass them by so much. Because the movement and the issue is so on right now, and it’s very apparent, like California is on fire right now. There are so many glaring instances of global warming that across the country we were just hitting our goals and surpassing a lot of them. So we decided that it was actually year two that we needed to have a national convergence on global warming. We kind of figured that out last January. The actual planning—I don’t recommend this for anyone who does want to put on a conference of five thousand young people—took place in about four months… about four or five months. That is a headache and it causes a lot of heartache and it causes a lot of miscommunication, so I don’t recommend that at all, but it is coming together, and it does feel really, really good and exciting. It feels amazing that this is finally happening, and I can’t believe we’re a week away from the conference [at the time of the interview]. Make sure you plan your conferences well in advance.

The Power Shift's official three goals are to make the U.S. presidential candidates and Congress take global warming seriously, to empower a diverse network of leaders, and to achieve broad geographic diversity. What single political action do you personally think would the most difference for the environment right now?

That’s a really good question. The Energy Action Coalition as a whole is pushing the 1Sky Initiative…It’s not a policy, but it’s a policy ask. It’s probably the boldest thing we have out around global warming…Basically what the 1Sky does is it’s teaming up with a bunch of different organizations and coalitions to make sure that we’re asking for the right priorities to be taken. One of those things things, which is the biggest priority, is to mobilize America for solutions, and that creates five million new jobs. They’re trying to launch a green jobs corps. So basically it’s, “How are we helping people who have these industry jobs who aren’t making a lot of money but who are living off of these industry jobs and they’re providing for their family and that’s what they have?” So it’s, “How are we jumping the gun so we’re not in a situation where these people who are low-income are behind and they’re not trained in these new green jobs that are emerging? How do we capitalize on that and make sure that we’re making a safe space for these workers?”

Another [priority] is to secure our future. That is around the emissions reductions, cutting at least eighty percent of below-1990 levels by 2050. That also has benchmark goals, because you can’t just say, “By 2050 you probably should cut around eighty percent.”

And then we have transform our energy priorities, which is reprogramming fossil fuel and highway investments for clean energy choices, so starting with a firm moratorium on coal plants. That is something that the Energy Action Coalition was pushing heavily for—no new coal in general and no coal in general. So it’s pushing for these bold asks.

So that’s our place at the table, Energy Action and youth, is making sure that these policies that are emerging are bold and are asking for things aren’t what’s happening with these other policies like Lieberman and Warner. Making sure that these policies are actually going to be impacting everyone positively, especially low-income and people of color.

What do you think the highlights [of Power Shift] are going to be? What are you most looking forward to?

There are a couple different ones. The more informal ones are how it starts out—everyone’s going to these workshops, and they’re getting all excited, and they’re loading their brains up with all this knowledge, and they’re kind of overwhelmed and psyched at the same time, getting really inspired. And it’s the conversations afterwards, like when you’re going home at night and your brain is swarming, and you’re like, “Oh my God what do we do?” and you have a bunch of youth with you already—you have [about] forty youth leaders maybe in your group—and you sit down and you’re talking. And you are creating state networks, and it’s these initial conversations where things get started, which is so inspiring to me. Energy Action was created after a regional summit in the southeast on someone’s dorm bed, the idea of creating a coalition like Energy Action. So it’s those types of conversations that are really inspiring to me. Those are the highlights, those are the behind-the-scenes things.

Then also there’s also the lobby day and the DC rally, which is going to be really, really exciting. We’ll be on the capital, have a few speakers, and then we’re also going to be hitting up our representatives and pushing for these bold asks. That’s always really exciting to me, especially because I did a lobby campaign for eight years. It’s good to see people out in the streets and doing that.

What is the next step after Power Shift?

The next step is to go back to your homes and your communities, and take it there. It’s taking those skills and inspiration back to your community. Taking those networks that you built and creating something that can have a local impact. You can share those stories.

Thanks, Shadia! As I said, stay tuned for more of our interview. In the meantime, here are some more links to check out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BuXXqEmPfWA
http://climatechallenge.org

Girls, your voices make a difference, and it's all about what you have to say. What's your passion?

Signing off, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Name Game

2007-10-27T05:37:00.001-07:00

It is time I said it: I have a nickname. It is Bissy. (This is Elizabeth, new blog coordinator, writing by the way.) I have blog posts on other subjects in store for you, but before I could even go there, I had to get the name thing out on the table. "Elizabeth" sounds so regal, and I treasure it as my given name. But I also love "Bissy." It is the name I gave myself upon learning to speak, unable to pronounce the four-syllable version I was given. I wanted to tell you all right away, first post, but what can I say? Elizabeth is me, too. But "Bissy" really says it all. It is my essence. So from now on, you will be hearing from Bissy.

Making the decision that I would share this in a post, I realized that there was a lot more to say about names in general than just letting you know my nickname. I mean, think about it--for some of us, names simply say it all, for others they fall short of what we want them to say. They are things we celebrate, think about, modify, explain.

For women and girls, names have always had a special significance. The author George Eliot, who wrote in the 1800s, is one example. The woman Mary Ann (Marian) Evans used this name as a pseudonym. She believed that if readers could tell by her name that the author was female, they would not credit her as much as if they thought she was a male. Many female writers published under male pseudonyms, either for Mary Ann Evans' reason or because certain publishers did not accept writing by women. In the present day, I remember hearing that J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, used initials in her pen name so that boy readers would not avoid her work because she was a woman. There are many stories about women's names in history. Do you have one to share?

What do you think about names and nicknames and how they are different for girls and boys, women and men?

There are more names out there than people's names, too. Sometimes businesses name their products or their very business something to get people's attention. And it can be deceiving. Take Nair Pretty, for instance. The company tries to appeal to tween girls with the word "pretty" in its product line's name. Have you noticed other examples? I want to know.

Names shape our understanding of the world around us--words are names for concepts, concrete objects, people, everything. Different cultures approach names differently and different languages have different . Our picture of a word's meaning in one language can be completely different from the concept we have of it in a different language. Language is fluid and changing and it can shape our understanding of the world without our even noticing.

And then it all comes down to our own names. What do they mean to us, as empowered girls and women? For me, it means embracing my two names and letting myself get down to the essence with you.

Showing you more of my true self now, Bissy (Elizabeth!)

Letting her dreams take off?

2007-10-25T09:07:00.000-07:00

Rose Petal Cottage, targeted toward girls three and older, is a new toy from the kids' company Playskool. It is a playhouse (the website says "more than just a playhouse") deemed "the house of her dreams." And what do girls get to make-believe in this dream house? Why, that they are doing laundry, of course. Is that not what every girl dreams of doing when she grows up? Each "cottage" has an accompanying play-stove, and Playskool also sells a (pretend) muffin-making kit, rose motif lounge chair, "nursery set," kitchen sink, and--you guessed it--washing machine to accompany the house. Would anyone ever market the opportunity to pretend to do a load of wash to boys?

The website has an option of viewing an open house to explore the possibilities within the playhouse. In it, a girl demonstrates the various tasks possible within the dream house and its accompanying accessories. Basically, it seems to show the activities of the very stereotypical image of a "dutiful housewife." Many know that the stereotypical image of a woman whose work is at home does not fit AT ALL with what the media tends to portray. While childcare, cooking, and yes, even cleaning for some, are wonderful pursuits if that is where your heart and passion lies, it simply does not work in my mind to assume that all girls must be exposed to the Rose Petal Cottage as the "house of her dreams." It is sort of like saying, "Here girls, limit your image of your life to within these four walls." What about girls' creativity? I would like to know what young girls would have come up with as their ideal houses and seen a product that resulted from collaboration with that information. A product that would have been flexible, changeable beyond which appliances you choose to purchase. What about multiple products, different houses geared toward different girls?

Now, I have to diverge here and talk about my own personal dream house. Although I would truly appreciate some nice appliances in this image of mine, the washer just never comes up when I picture myself there. (You can tell I am hung up on the laundry bit. It is one of my not-so-favorite activities. I have been recently encountering some laundry appliance challenges.) I picture myself out in a beautiful garden, and to tell the truth I really would not mind the whole rose petal effect on the roof and chimney. I like pink, always have, love floral patterns, and did very much used to enjoy taking care of dolls. That is just me, though. Anyway, within the house, I would love a great big desk for writing, a nice big open space for moving around, a sewing room (Again, just me. I happen to love sewing, but that does not mean any other female should or should not.) The whole gender-geared thing is tough. I remember attending a joint birthday party when I was about five of a brother and sister. For the girls, the party favors were princess hats, I believe. For the boys, something like castle buckets. I adored both of these party favors and lobbied hard to take both home. I seriously thought that everyone was going to take home one of each. I was surprised when I encountered a challenge as I tried to walk away with both. Growing up girl is all about finding the voice within and fending off the world's expectations while you do that. Then making that voice heard.

The feminist world has recently experienced a new craft wave after listening to women's voices. First, society made it the status quo and basically the necessity for most women to knit, sew, and craft in other ways. Making the family's clothes, manifesting handkerchiefs, and many other tasks were just part of a woman's world. Then, as feminism hit, women began dropping their needles in protest to what was defined as a "woman's work," and in general the sentiment was that an inclination for crafts and a feminist outlook on life contradicted each other. No more forced tasks that only women had to do. Now, the general consensus seems to be that women should be free to choose about everything in their lives. No more fitting a certain image of either a traditional woman or a feminist. Just being a feminist woman, and defining that individually. A self. An expressive, empowered, and celebratory inner voice showing up on the outside.

All this makes me think about a favorite recording of mine. It is from Free to Be... You and Me. The segment I love is called "Housework," and the actress Carol Channing narrates it. In it she recites such pearls of wisdom as, "Children, when you have a house of your own,/Make sure, when there's house work to do,/That you don't have to do it alone." It is truly a stellar piece of work, in my opinion. (I listened to the CD repeatedly when I was eleven. I am going to have to diverge again to extol its virtues. I played the CD for my younger cousins, I listened to it to help me go to sleep sometimes, I sang along to it quite a bit. There's one song on the CD, "It's Alright to Cry," that I truly treasure. I choreographed a dance to it when I was fourteen. The album, which is from the 1970s but still applies today, challenges gender stereotypes and celebrates children's freedom to be themselves. OK, my ode to Free to Be... You and Me now over. I could go on, though.)

Back to Playskool, though. By now, you have gotten my opinion of Rose Petal Cottage. I would have liked to see some flexibility with it, some insinuation that girls do not have to conform to this image whatsoever, and some realistic input from a range of girls. I think it would have been pretty cool if they had thrown in a pretend tool set or maybe a science lab add-on. I would have liked those when I was younger.

What do you think? Please, please, please, share your opinion! It does not have to go along with a thing I have to say. All you have to do is express yourself from your gut. Do you think that the toy world markets fairly to girls? Do you wish toys were more gender-neutral? What kind of images do you think young girls should be exposed to in the media?

I want to know. I will be waiting excitedly to hear your responses!

Sending you a heap of empowerment, Elizabeth

School Days

2007-10-23T06:32:00.001-07:00

Why hello! We posted your responses about school in September, and it has sure kept you sharing! The school year is in full gear, and you have lots to say about what your school is like, why you go there, and what you would like to change. We all know school is about a lot more than classes. I could go on and on about education (I was an education minor in college), but for now, I want to share what you have to say. Thanks for your input! I am so excited to share more girls' voices on the subject of school:

Homeschooling

The first thing other kids usually ask me when I tell them I’m home schooled is “how do you make friends?” What I tell them is always the same. I have a lot of friends. Most of them I know through my support group. Support groups are a bunch of home schoolers who get together, often at parks or for activities like field trips or classes. My support group gets together every Thursday at different parks. Before we go to the park some people go to workshops, like writing groups and book clubs, that the moms organize.

My family has been coming to the group since I was two, and most of the girls my age have been coming to the group for at least four or five years, although we do have some newer girls. My oldest friend from my group has been coming to the group for about eight years, since we were three. Two of my other friends have been coming to the group for six or seven years—and then there is another girl, who just joined a few weeks ago. Also, because there aren’t as many girls my age in my group as there are in a school, I’m pretty close to all the eleven and twelve-year-old girls in the group. At the park, my friends and I like to play tag, climb trees and just talk! In the past we have had clubs where we play games and make crafts. We’ve performed plays, and we’ve choreographed dances for our group’s Talent Show.

We recently started a mother-daughter group called the Saturn Sisters. We meet once a month at each
other’s houses and talk about growing up and being a girl. Outside of my support group I have a lot of other friends. I go to ballet class four times a week and have become friends with a lot of the girls, especially the ones that have been in my class for three or four years. I have two good friends who are my neighbors that both go to school. I also go to summer camps and make friends there. And I will always have an everlasting friendship with my cousin, who’s just a month and five days younger then me. Over all, even though I don’t go to school I still have a lot of friends. Enough that I have trouble keeping my birthday parties small, especially when they’re sleepovers!

--Lily, 11

Private School

I have recently started seventh grade at an all girls’ school. Though some girls may think me crazy, I chose it over another school that was co-ed for a reason. At my elementary school, though I had my crush here and there, I began to get sick of boys thinking they could control us girls. I hated the way they were so arrogant and always being over-aggressive. They always got control of the play-yard, and when one or two of us decided it was too much, they ganged up on us and we ended up right where we started.

I believe that if all of us girls had decided to try and get a piece of the yard for ourselves, we could have. Unfortunately, my friends always said things like “Well, they never play football, we should let them do it for once,” “But we don’t want to play kickball,” “I don’t want to get in a fight with them, they’ll get angry.” This made me feel like the ten boys in our class of eighteen had control over us. I don’t like anything that is prejudice or sexist, especially when I am involved in it. It was usually only me or maybe one other girl trying to fight for eight of us.

The worst of it was that some boys, who were the nicest ones there, probably felt the way I did. But did they stand up to the other boys? No, they were afraid of being teased for taking sides with the girls. This is the main reason why I decided to change schools. Now I am enjoying an all girls’ school with my old friends, who didn’t want to stand up to the boys, and new friends, including someone who I hope will become my best friend.

The greatest thing about an all girls’ school is that not many girls are showing off to “get boys,” something that gives me the creeps. You can go to school with un-brushed hair, you didn’t take a shower, and no one cares! I love my new school for all of my listed reasons and hope that girls around the world can have courage enough to stand up against people who are being prejudiced and unfair.

--Kayla, 13

Public School

I go to a public Montessori school. I have been in Montessori for 6 years. I like Montessori because you can do what you want when you want to do it. So, say you really like math, then you can do a math work, like square root where you make a square out of pegs on a peg board, while someone else is doing research on a horse or something. Montessori classrooms are mixed age classrooms. There’s ages 3-6, 6-9, and 9-12. Last year one of the fourth graders was doing 7^th grade algebra. New Moon wrote that Montessori discourages testing. However, in my class we have a pre-spelling test and a post spelling test every week. Because we are a public school, we have standardized tests including math, language, and science tests every 6 weeks. We also take my state's yearly standardized tests starting in 3^rd grade.

--Cora, 10

As a ninth grader at our local three-year junior high school, I've seen a lot. Every year, the incoming seventh graders seem to care increasingly more about their images and less about their grades. Our school rules clearly state "No shorts or skirts above knee-length." and "All shirts must be sleeved, or shoulders must be covered." Nowhere in the rules does it say "Welcome seventh graders! Because you're new to this school, we'll just give you a warning every time your shorts look like underwear and your shirts are more like bikinis. Oh, and since we're letting you get off, we might as well let the ninth and eighth graders do it, too. Have a great year!" It seems to me as if the school district thinks that just because we're still in middle school, we're still innocent and the media hasn't gotten to our heads yet. I'd like to write them a lengthly e-letter explaining just how wrong they are. I don't want to make any stereotypes against these girls, but the fact that these twelve-year-olds are drinking water and picking at low-cal chips for lunch scares me. In their attempts to grow up faster and be more like the girls they see on TV, these poor seventh graders have been morphed into the likes of sophomores, and are shown no mercy by the media.

All of this on top of the fact that grades are slipping, both district- and nation-wide. It makes me wonder what will happen in twenty or thirty years, when the leaders of today are retired and the girls I see strutting through the hallways with painted faces and tiny skirts are forced into leadership. And trust me on this one, it's not just the girls. The guys are also tricked by the media. They've been led to believe that the only girls "worthy" of their attention are the skinny ones with cheer-leading uniforms and pounds of makeup coating their faces. School no longer means "education"; it's means "reputation". And honestly, I'm terrified of what's going to happen to these kids when they discover that they need more than just good looks to get into college, or get a job. Maybe some of them haven't been so influenced by the magazines and TV shows, but it's coming. The influence of peer-pressure has unbelievable powers, especially in a junior high that is so tightly controlled by the "popular" group.

Just when it seems that the hierarchy of the marketing community will be overthrown by the people, it lets another stream of propaganda into the system. Each time I think it has to end somewhere, I see another mile of lies stretching in the distance. The only thing I know is this; The next time my little brother (who is, by chance, one of the very seventh graders I speak of) asks a girl out on a "dare date", I'll march right up and end it. If no one else will put a stop to this distorted reality, I will. And I encourage every other girl out there to do the same.

--Lauren, 14

I go to a public charter school for home schoolers. Here is how it works. My parents teach me math, writing, science, history, p.e., spelling and typing. On Wednesdays I take classes with other home schoolers. I also have an E.C. (education coordinater) who my parents and I meet with every six weeks to show her my work samples. We also make a plan for the next six weeks.

The school also does organized field trips. I have not been one yet but when classes start I might go on field trips. But it depends on if kids my age go.

I am glad I get to go to a school were I can make friends but do not have to see them everyday. I am also glad there is less teasing and more fun.

--Abby 11

Thanks for sharing your unique experiences! Keep in touch with responses and comments as the school year goes on. What do you think? I cannot wait to hear more from you!

Sending happiness your way, Elizabeth

Girl's Best Friend

2007-10-21T15:10:00.001-07:00

It takes guts to be a girl in this world. There is no denying it. It is an exciting and fruitful position to have, but it takes a certain amount of courage. There are media images to combat, stereotypes to face, and the ongoing processes of connecting to and holding onto the true voice within herself. Every girl is brave.

One brave girl who has shown up in the news lately is twelve-year-old Shea Megale. Together with her five-year-old companion dog Mercer, she is trying to get the news out about Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a condition that has resulted in her use of a wheelchair to get around. Mercer, Shea, and her mother recently did a television interview to promote Shea's new book, Marvelous Mercer. Shea is remarkably well-spoken, showing the world just what girls have in store for it in terms of an ability to make a difference. "I want to do things to change the world. I think kids like us can," Shea says on the Marvelous Mercer website. She sounds like a New Moon girl!

Marvelous Mercer tells the imagined story of Mercer's nighttime adventures, taking part in the physical activities like ice skating that Shea herself cannot because of her SMA. One point that Shea's mother makes in the interview is that the Marvelous Mercer books (the book is planned to turn into a series) help take the focus off of Shea by focusing people's attention on her dog. It takes bravery to attract the amount of attention that Shea does just by going to the store, and it takes even more to channel her experience constructively by writing. Her "disability" is transformed into a heightened ability to imagine.

This leads me to my questions for you readers. If you had been inventing the English language, what would you have called the word "disability" instead? To me, it's always seemed like it shouldn't have anything that suggests a negative the way the prefix "dis-" so wrongly does. Do any of the alternate terms out there? Or does something like "unexpectedly gifted" ring more of a bell in your heart? I want to know.

What about companion animals? There are all kinds--seeing eye dogs, hearing ear dogs, the list goes on... Do you or someone you know have a special companion animal who makes a difference? In the television interview, Shea pointed out that of all the miraculous things Mercer can do for her, like turning on the lights and opening doors, the most valuable of all is being her best friend.

Bravery has many forms, and this evening I want to celebrate all of you brave girls out there.

Adios for now, Elizabeth

Let's Clarify "Pretty"

2007-10-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

I paused when I heard the name of the new product Nair Pretty. This product is targeted at girls just becoming aware of their changing body hair. "Feel pretty every day!" the website boasts. Are they trying to imply that removing your body hair makes you feel prettier? "Pretty isn't a look it's a feeling," the website also reminds visitors. This confuses me. What further confounds me is another blurb from the main website, this about the discovery of more noticeable body hair: "Chill. You're growing up...it's all good." Well, yes, growing up is a celebration.

If the company wants girls to "feel pretty every day," and they understand that "pretty isn't a look, it's a feeling," and they are also encouraging girls not to worry about their changing bodies, that it is all part of the natural progression to womanhood, then why are they endorsing hair removal? I personally feel a lot prettier now that I do not shave or remove my hair in any other way. When I used to, it only served to make me more self-conscious and occupy my mind with fitting in enough shower time to shave. I did not have as much time to value my natural beauty and listen to my internal voice. Taking a deep breath, I looked around at all the animals I saw sporting their normal hair, and trusted that if they had the guts to strut their stuff proudly, so did I. I do feel pretty every day, and it is because of a feeling rather than external cues (although I also celebrate my outward appearance, as I believe everyone should, no matter what). I think every woman and girl deserves to have the chance to choose what works for her without advertisers sneaking in ways to trigger self-consciousness.

Admittedly, the angle that Nair Pretty seems to be taking is that their product is a prettier alternative to shaving. They are not directly saying that it is prettier than no removal. However, there seems to be no implication that a girl would ever choose the very healthy option of leaving her body hair just where it is. Besides, how many times have I witnessed or heard of rashes people got from using Nair?

Well, now I want to know what you think about this new product. Feel free to voice your opinion, and feel free if you have a completely different opinion than I do. How do you feel about the pressure on females to remove their body hair? Does it seem unfair to you that there are different standards for hair removal for males and females? What about the fairness of the specific age group Nair Pretty is targeting?

I want to know. (A character in a favorite series of mine, Anne of Green Gables, always said that to the main character, Anne. You may hear me use that line a lot.)

I want to remind all you girl readers that you shine from within no matter what.

Signing off, Elizabeth

Blogging with WinJournal: A Review by Over the Moon Intern, Katherine King

2007-10-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

The software WinJournal is a journaling/diary program that allows users to write their own “journal” entries—complete with pictures, custom styles, password settings, and more. It wasn’t too cluttered either, the options were clear and easy to find and use. It offers just about everything you could think of using for a handwritten journal and then some, like links to music or websites that you enjoy. But it is not a blog.

Debatably, this is a better option than blogging, which is useful and fun for sharing ideas, but is nowhere near as secure or easy as WinJournal. Because of the security settings on WinJournal, you can write about whatever you want, regardless of how personal the topic is. On personal blog sites, the user has to be aware that anyone can access her blog and read personal thoughts that she may not want to share with the public.

Your WinJournal can be simple and professional, or fancy and personal. It allows you to write up as many separate entries per day as you want, and you can title them and search for them later on the mini-calendar provided. You can protect one entry with a password, or the whole journal. I would recommend this software to girls who would like an easy, fun, and secure place to record their thoughts and ideas!

Hi, I'm Elizabeth!

2007-10-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Elizabeth! I am the new blog coordinator, so you'll be hearing from me on here a lot. I hope that means I'll be hearing a lot back from girls! You have such valuable voices.

I know how good it feels to be a girl and have a place to use your voice, because when I was eleven, I joined the editorial board for New Moon's series of four books. They were published in 1999 and 2000, about three years after the editorial board was formed. Each book was on a different subject--Money, Friendship, Writing, and Sports--and the book series had a separate editorial board from the magazine, which we called the BGEB (Book Girls Editorial Board). First we brainstormed what would be in them at a special meeting in New York City, then we all went home (to such varied locales as Alaska, Hawaii, Minnesota, and more) and started writing. We kept in touch through the internet. Once our writing was combined with excerpts from back issues of New Moon, we got to see the galleys, the term for the almost-finished version of a book. We gave our last input, and they were published by Crown, with our names on the cover page! Even though that was a long time ago, I still keep those memories close at heart. The best part was learning how powerful girls can be.

In my bio for the books, I wrote that I loved "anything that involves making something," and that's a good way to introduce myself in the present day, too. I discovered over the past year that I could design and make my own clothing, and it was so liberating! My clothing choices didn't have to depend on what the stores sold anymore. Now in my early twenties, I am still passionate about writing and making things, especially sewing clothing, as you have gathered. My dream is to be a full-time writer and advocate for girls and women. Nature and health are my two newest interests that I know are here to stay, and I have every plan of discovering many more passions and interests as my life proceeds.

Sometimes leaps and bounds in life aren't as far away as you might expect. I want to let all of you know that I am thrilled to be the new blog coordinator--I've got lots of ideas for topics to encourage your voices. I'm going to go get reading what you've sent in!

Until next time, Elizabeth

2007-10-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Calling All Girl Writers!

Do you love musicals, or have you ever been in one?

New Moon is looking for girls to write about musicals! For the March/April 2008 issue of New Moon “Listen to This (The Music Issue)”, we are doing a feature story about musicals. We would like to hear from girls who would like to explain how musicals work in comparison to “normal” plays, or for any girl to write to us about their experience of being in a musical!
Like always, The Girls Editorial Board (GEB) will pick what stories they would like to see in the issue.

What New Moon needs from you for this feature:

* Have fun, make it interesting, and be creative!!!!

* The feature should be 600 words or so (but don’t worry if it is more!)

* We should receive your feature by November 1st; you can either send

it by email or send it to our office at:
New Moon Publishing
2W. 1st street, Suite 101
Duluth, MN 55802 !

* If you have any questions please email me at: marisam@newmoon.org,

or call me at 218-728-5507, ext. 20.

I hope to hear back from you soon!

Do you think you're Beautiful? That's 'cuz you are! *Deadline Extended to the 19th of October!

2007-10-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

It’s time to start thinking about next year’s “25 Beautiful Girls” issue! It won’t be like any Beautiful Girls issue you’ve ever seen before. Since the “25 Beautiful Girls” issue started, we’ve asked friends and family to nominate girls for being beautiful just the way they are. But even though it’s important for people to recognize beauty in others, it’s important for YOU to recognize it in yourself, too. That’s why our theme for the May/June 2008 issue is “25 Beautiful Girls: Toot Your Own Horn.” For this issue, we want you to nominate YOURSELF! Let us know exactly what makes YOU beautiful!

The deadline has been extended to Friday October 19th!

Check out the submission guidelines here. We look forward to hearing from you!

Ch-Ch-Changes!

2007-10-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

New Moon has hired four new awesome women. Keep reading to learn more about them!

Melissa Harrison, our new Managing Editor for New Moon magazine, comes to us after five years in the nonprofit and higher education world doing print and e-communications. Melissa studied strategic communications at the University of Minnesota where she met her husband Mat (yes, that's with one t) in the Tate Lab of Physics. Seemed only fitting that their first-born be named Tate. Melissa serves on the board of directors for Minnesota Women in Marketing and Communications, is a scrapbooking addict, loves reading and playing the piano (though not simultaneously), and most of all enjoys letting her hair down to be silly with her kids, Tate and Haley. Melissa does most of her work from her home in the Twin Cities area and comes to the Duluth office about once a week.

Marisa McKie is our new Assistant Editor for New Moon magazine. She interned with us this summer and we loved her so much we asked her to come back after being gone for only a week and a half! Currently, Marisa is a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is finishing up her Bachelor’s Degree in Communication, and working on minors in Journalism and Arts in Media. Some of Marisa’s favorite things to do are snowboarding, swimming, reading, camping, and playing music.

Julia Barenboim (aka Julia Barry) is a new Assistant Online Editor for the online experience for girls ages 13-15 that will launch in spring 2008. Julia is really psyched to be joining the New Moon team all the way from her home in New Jersey! (Technology is a wonderful thing!) Julia has a BA in women's studies/multimedia from Sarah Lawrence College and just finished her MA in interactive media from Goldsmiths College, London (Cheers, mate!). She loves to do ongoing projects for women's advocacy and social change, and won't give up on optimism! Julia treasures friendship, creativity, music, and swimming in lakes.

Christine Lunde is a new Assistant Online Editor for the online experience. Christine recently graduated from Indiana University-Bloomington with a degree in Journalism and concentration in Sociology. A native Duluthian, Christine is thrilled to be working for New Moon Publishing. Outside of New Moon she coaches cross-country running and enjoys Northern Minnesota’s wilderness.

Welcome everyone! We are so excited to have you on board!

These Dolls Don't Play Nice

2007-10-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I was at the Hallmark store the other day getting birthday cards when I saw a rack of Ty Girlz – plush adolescent-looking dolls accompanied by an online code which grants the buyer entry into the Ty Girlz virtual world. I was curious about what Ty (the company that makes these dolls as well as the popular Beanie Babies) had created as their world, and why lately, I have witnessed an outbreak of teenager dolls (think Bratz, This is Me, etc.). I decided to buy one and do some of my own dollerific research.

Perusing my options, I wondered why all the dolls had such downright mean and sarcastic facial expressions. It seems we Americans think that teenage insolence is the coolest thing around, and further reinforce this idea—often culturally attributed to movies, music videos, and celebrities—by selling such dolls to 6 to 13-year-old girls. (I recalled a small girl I had seen the day before in a parking lot, strutting around in a mini skirt and high-heeled boots while holding her mother’s hand. It seemed to me the sale of those clothes benefited the manufacturer more than her.) In the end, I chose Rockin’ Ruby, a rocker chick in all-black faux vinyl or leather. Outfitted with a belly-button ring, choker (wow, a whole ’nother blog could be written on why it’s called that!), platforms, and oodles of makeup, she seemed like the toughest of the lot. (They each sported heels of some sort, makeup, and plenty of accessories though.)

As it turned out, Rockin’ Ruby had just been “retired” (no more of her type of doll will be made), but I could see from her goodbye messages in Ty Girlz world that her persona was a young woman on tour with a band, a teenager whose “positive” traits of independence and musical talent were actually just a hankering to party and dress like a celebrity bad-girl. The rest of the Ty Girlz were equally as into being flirty and glamorous (aka sexually suggestive and super-duper slim) according to their bios and appearances—but who can enjoy your own snazziness when you’re so busy worrying about how you look and which new clothes you need to buy? (You apparently also “NEED” to buy the rest of the Ty Girlz dolls to complete your collection, a direct marketing effort built straight into this world for girls.)

I apologize for judging the dolls based on their external features and certainly hope I am not promoting any negative stereotypes by discussing the personality types these dolls are meant to be, but it’s important to point out that someone purposely created their “looks” and “personas” in order to turn a profit. These skinny, lollipop-headed dolls make cool the anorexic/bulimic body figure, as if feeling bad about yourself, your life, and the state of the world, is normal or even fun and desirable. They imitate the insecurity many of us feel about our external appearances, activities, and relationships—and that makes them cool enough to buy? How confusing.

The Ty company, by involving real girls in their dolls’ virtual world, have infused these toys with a celebrity effect: that of being role models despite that they’re not real people in girls’ personal lives. The Ty Girlz world is a higher-pitched, curliqued version of the commercial MTV atmosphere. As I surfed the site, loud rock or dance music erupted from my screen to accompany chat rooms, fitting rooms, and bedrooms. All there is to do is shop (for clothes or furniture for your house), chat, and play games that all center around a gabby (even catty), sexy climate—and one that ultimately is simply there to endorse the Ty product. After playing some shopping, dressing, and dancing games (whose characters ask you aloud in a girls’ voice to help them “look perfect” or “look my best”), I became hopeful that the trivia game might offer a more interesting and 3-dimensional horizon to this world. When I found that it only featured Ty Girlz “facts,” I truly felt the narrow confines of the Ty Girlz universe: It would be like living in a mall, where every fashion, friend, activity, and thought is dictated to you. For all its colors, cell phone rings, zooming cars, makeover before-and-after shots, and easily-earned Girlz world money—all you have to do is stay and play, and your bank account fills again—its shallow interactivity would not normally hold girls’ attention. But feeling bad about what they look like, what activities they do, and how much money they have compared to their co-avatars sure might.

I am highly disappointed that today’s toys—objects that used to stimulate children’s imaginations—now tell girls not only how to play with them and who they should aspire to become but also who to be now. (One could criticize traditional babydolls for influencing girls’ hopes of eventual motherhood, but Ty Girlz and other such dolls pressure girls to be chic, sexually active, and exterior-focused in their current lives.) And while the Ty Girlz dolls may be accompanied by a bajillion play options that seem to expand or improve upon real-life make-believe—She’s not hard plastic! She’s a friend closer to your age! You can buy her tons of virtual outfits in any color!—her personality, fashion sense, wishes, and ambitions are built-in and pretty unchangeable. (Yes, Rockin’ Ruby’s shiny silver panties are woven into her skin and the rest of her clothes are sewn on—not to mention, the size of her head ensures that she will stick with her current top forever. Clearly, this IS the outfit she wants to be wearing.)

Even if I consider social or community aspects offered by the Girlz world that one might not have with a regular ol’ lone toy, in addition to the confusion between doll and self caused by the online avatar world, these dolls as playthings teach girls that appropriate friendship activities are to “dress up your room” and “give your girls makeovers.” (In imitation of today’s narcissistic ‘social networking’ friendship sites, the “All About Me” section is coming soon to tygirlz.com.) The Girlz chat-room scene is equally as grim. The fact that—against a background of animated silhouettes clubbing—clickable pre-written phrases exist to aid girls too young to type gives me a clear signal that perhaps they shouldn’t be there, and that this is not a place where real friends are found. (Moreover, the fact that I signed up as a 25-year-old yet had full access to the chat rooms doesn’t make me feel any better about the security of girls who might be excited by a stranger’s flattery.)

One website cannot of course single-handedly make a girl devalue herself, no less contribute to how secure she is as she becomes a woman in her teenage years. But in a nation where girls’ (and therefore women’s) self-esteem is dropping, I would say that it certainly adds to—and profits from—the cacophony of voices telling females of all ages who and how to be.

But enough of my ideas—what do YOU think about these dolls? What are your opinions about doll ages (baby, girl, teen, adult)? Do you have TY Girlz or similar dolls with an online playspace? How are they the same and different than dolls that don’t have an online world? What do you think are the pros and cons of playing online? Feel free to disagree with anything I said or comment on a related question I didn’t mention—let your voice be heard! I look forward to reading…

Be PROUD of who you are!

2007-10-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

I think we would all agree that we all have things about ourselves that we wish we could change…longer legs, slimmer waist, etc. After all, at the end of the day, you are your biggest critic. But, what if we start embracing those little “imperfections” as perfection. These are what make you unique! Why would you ever want to look like everyone else? You would never stand out in the world! This is the focus of the organization Proud Girls, Inc. and www.hangproud.com. The company was started by two women, Carla and Diane, who were fed up with the media’s portrayal of women and the effects it was having on women and girls’ self-esteem. Part of their mission statement reads,

“Imagine not comparing yourself to anyone else, ever again.
Imagine that day when you can be who you are, finally.
Imagine helping to support other PROUDgirls who need your help.
Imagine the power of helping each other to achieve this goal.
It is time we all agree to hangPROUD!”

I don’t think they could have said it any better. Be PROUD in the things you have accomplished and accept compliments from those around you because, in the end, it’s those little compliments that give you the drive to do great things!

There are also opportunities on their website to post your own story on why you are a PROUD girl and what it means to you to be proud of yourself. This can be very inspirational to many young girls because sometimes you may not know exactly what it is that you're proud of…but you’ll figure it out soon enough. As long as you keep your proud head high you will find it!

Calling All Girl Writers!!!

2007-10-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to be a music critic? Here is your chance!

New Moon is looking for a girl writer to compose a CD review of an album that you think sheds women in a positive light for our March/April music issue, “Listen to This!”

Here are some guidelines and questions to keep in mind when creating your review:

- Choose an album by a female musician that you believe has a strong impact on women and how they are perceived.
- Let us know what you like and don’t like about the CD and why.
- Are there specific songs or lyrics that give you inspiration?
- What kinds of instruments were used? What kinds of dynamics were explored?

- Why is this CD so unique and special in your eyes?
- Where did you hear about this artist/CD?
- Make sure to keep the critique to 600 words.
- The deadline is October 15th, 2007
- BE CREATIVE!

We hope to hear from you!

Hannah Simpson
Editorial Intern
New Moon Publishing
editintern@newmoon.org

Susan G. Komen's 3-Day Walk for Breast Cancer

2007-09-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

Keep this in mind while reading:: Every 3 minutes a woman is diagnosed with Breast Cancer, every 13 minutes a woman will die from Breast Cancer. In 2007, 200,000 women as well as men were diagnosed and 40,000 lost the battle.

This summer, I had the opportunity to witness one of the most powerful events I have ever attended, the 3-day walk for Breast Cancer in the Twin Cities. Unfortunately, I did not participate in the walk, but my idol and role model did, my mother. After being cancer-free for 13 years, she decided this was her chance to give back to her community of supporters. The event takes place in 12 cities across the country (today, September 28th, marks the beginning for the walkers in Michigan) and touches peoples lives along the way. Over a 3-day period, at 20 miles a day, 60 miles are mapped out and ready to be walked . This commitment includes training and raising money. In order to participate in the walk, you must agree to raise at least $2,200. This may seem like a lot but there is still a lot that needs to be done in the fight against breast cancer. According to the 3-Day website, in the 2006 walk, $86 million were raised through donations, sponsorship and contributions. Not only is this event physically challenging in every way, but the emotional challenge is just as difficult. The walk includes those who are currently battling cancer, those who won their battle, and those who want to support the fighters. Although women were the majority, there were also men walking in support of those battling this disease! The walkers are encouraged to form teams as a way to support one another. This is extremely inspirational, not only are they helping a good cause but they are forming bonds with people that they will never forget. There are also what is called "Cheer stations". These are designated areas where the walkers families and friends can gather to cheer them on while they continue their triumphant walks. It's incredible to see their faces, all with smiles, because they know what their doing is bring inspiration to everyone around them.

The walk gives support to those with cancer, hope for the cancer survivors and inspiration for the supporters.

I think this opportunity is something everyone should strive to accomplish at some point in their lives. Next summer I hope to walk, if not for me, then for my mother.

Tales of a Female Nomad

2007-09-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

If you are anything like me, you have an intense passion for traveling and, if it were at all possible, would do so for the rest of your life. Rita Golden Gelman is doing just that. In her memoir, "Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World", Rita journals her fantastic journey across the world. From Mexico to New Zealand, she conquers the world...all by herself!

After a divorce, Rita finally sees an opportunity to do what she's always wanted to do, travel the world. Shying away from the tourist spots Rita makes it a point to live and experience the day-to-day lives of the natives, a wise choice that only made her journey more valuable. She states in an interview, “I like to stay in one place long enough to become a part of a community.” This is an important piece of advice for all travelers. Rita believes there is strong distinction between being a tourist and being a traveler...Rita, of course, being the latter of the two.

While reading this fantastic story the idea that women should avoid traveling alone began to diminish. If Rita can do it, why can’t we all?! Of course, being safe and listening to your conscience are the most important things to keep in mind when traveling. I have had the opportunity to travel a great deal, primarily in groups, but I have found that the most unforgettable experiences were being able to go off and explore on my own. The ability to choose my own path and see what I want to see is one of the most empowering feelings. Rita’s strength to grab life by the horns is extremely inspirational. In an interview, she claims she has no idea where she’ll be in a year from now, there are not many people who can say that.

At 64, Rita has no intention of ending her travels anytime soon. From her years of roaming the earth Rita has learned that “There is joy in opening up to the world and in reaffirming the oneness of humanity. And age frees us from many daily responsibilities; we have no excuses to put off pursuing our dreams.”

Update: Hardees Gets the Message, Loud and Clear

2007-09-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

After Lacey's post on Thursday (see below), plenty of New Moon readers chimed in about the offensive ad for patty melt burgers from from Hardees & Carl's Jr.

You weren't alone! Around the world, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of you protested the degrading, misogynistic ad to CKE Restaurants Inc., the chain that owns the restaurants--and they've decided to edit the ad.

It's disgusting that a huge marketing and business firm felt that Americans would actually put up with that kind of advertising in the first place, but I'm happy that they are, at the very least, listening. I know that many consumers decided to boycott the restaurants, and I'm sure financial reasons were part of the decision. But at least we know that when all of us rise up to make our voices heard, we can make a difference.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that CKE (and many businesses, for that matter) get it: "The ad was intended to be humorous and irreverent," Brad Haley, CKE's executive vice president of marketing, said Wednesday. "Since it seemed to be missing the mark with too many people, it justified making a change."

Ha. "Missing the mark" is a code word for saying that way too many people were repulsed by the ad for it to bring in more profits. And I'm outraged that a marketing VP could find that kind of objectification funny. I have to say that I doubt he would have found the same situation funny, if the gender of all the actors in the ad had been reversed.

Unfortunately, lots of people still don't think that these ads are that degrading (or inappropriate) anyways. When AOL polled over 65,000 people about the ad, a full 44% gave it a thumbs up. Makes me feel nauseous, to say the very least.

Why is it that we still live in a culture where women's bodies, presented not really as human bodies, but as sexual objects, are still seen as the best way to make dough? And why is it that so many consumers think that it's okay?

Women and . . . Patty Melts?

2007-09-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

I don't watch TV much -- And since I don't watch much TV, I didn't know about Hardees & Carl's Jr.'s new ad until someone forwarded me a link to it yesterday. Thanks to that link, I won't be eating at Hardees again.

If you haven't seen the new Hardees ad for their patty melt burger, count yourself lucky. (If you've never eaten at Hardees, count yourself even luckier). If you have seen it, you probably know what I'm talking about. The ad shows a teacher dancing provacatively at the front of her class while her male students rap about her "flat buns." What does this have to do with patty melts? One of the signatures of patty melt sandwiches is that they come served on "flat buns." (Interestingly, when I did a search for patty melt images, I found images of the woman from the commercial but not of the sandwich itself . . .).

So, why do I take offense at this ad? First of all, it refuses to take the teacher seriously as a woman professional. Second, it gives the idea that every woman is fair game when it comes to men's fantasies. Third, it perpetuates an incredibly unhealthy teacher-student relationship. Fourth, it encourages us to look at women as ojbects -- in this case, food. And fifth, it shows teenage boys as being interested in just two things: sex and food.

The Tennessee Teachers Union is protesting the ad, along with other organizations. The Executive Vice President of Marketing for Hardees says that the ad isn't offensive because it's "meant to be funny." Here's the letter I sent:

Due to your "flat buns" commercial with its entirely offensive, inappropriate, and damaging portrayal of women and student-teacher interactions, you have lost me as a customer. Moreover, I am encouraging others to stop buying from your restaurants. I make long drives through my home state about once a month, and there are half a dozen Hardees on my route. I will never stop at one of them again.

If you'd like to write your own letter, you can click on the "contact us" button at this site. Or add your voice to the discussion by commenting here.

Back to School

2007-09-11T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hello, Readers! Our September/October 2007 issue of New Moon, "The Great Debate" should have hit most of our subscribers' mailboxes and the news-stands by now, and I'm thrilled. This is one of my favorite issues that I've ever worked on -- I love to see girls take a stand, and I love to look at things from many different angles.

Although we talked about many debateable topics, we could only fit a handful in the magazine. One of the debates we didn't put in the magazine was a school debate. Almost all kids in the U.S. go to some type of school, but what kind of school is best . . . well, that's debateable! We asked girls to share their thoughts on school, and here's what some of you said about . . .

Homeschooling

I'm homeschooled , and have been for 3 years. Each homeschooler has a different way of doing their school. I do a mixture of being taught by my parents, doing online courses and finding tutors and classes in my community. Here is a typical school day for me:

7 am- Wake up; have breakfast; prepare for the day; do any recordkeeping/planning that
needs to be done.

8 am- Start school.
In the morning, one of my parents usually teaches me a 'core subject'- math, language arts, science or social studies.

11 am- I then usually either do a different subject or have a class with a tutor or at the
local homeschool co-op. A co-op is where parents teach a class of homeschooled kids. These are useful because sometimes my parents don't know enough about a specialized subject to teach me, but another parent does. It's also a good way to meet other kids.

12 pm- Lunch time! Hooray!

1 pm- After lunch, I usually have another class with one of my parents.

3 pm- I do my homework for the day and prepare for any classes I might have the next
day.

4 pm- In the late afternoon/early evening, I usually have music class, choir practice or a
gym class.

7 pm- After dinner, I write down all the things that I have done that day. In the state which
I live in, you are required to do a certain amount of hours per quarter for each subject. So I keep a record of everything I do. This also helps me to see how far I've come and what I need to do more of. And with that, school ends for the day!

I really like homeschooling because it lets me study things that interest me in more detail than I could in a traditional school. Because I take outside classes as well as learning by myself, I don't get lonely and my family doesn't get too tired of me. I enjoy learning by myself and from my parents. Homeschooling isn't for everyone, but it's the best way of doing school for me!
Lexi, 13

I have a great school experience. We home school, and my mom has been teaching me since fourth grade. I am really lucky to be able to home school. Home schooling allows us to go places, explore, and do fun things like making maple syrup. We live on an old farm in New England, so it is great for making syrup, doing backyard archeology, cross-country skiing and ice skating, swimming and learning about wildlife.

Home schooling also allows us to have a very flexible schedule. We can go to the library any time we want, I don’t have to get on a school bus at 7 o’clock in the morning, and I can go to a New England contra dance at night and I don’t have to worry about getting up really early the next morning.

I take fiddle lessons on Tuesdays. Home schooling also allows me to spend a lot of time with my fiddle, which is great.

Sometimes, we even take school on the road! Last April, we went to Washington, D.C. as part of our study of U.S. government, and the Antietam National Battlefield as part of our study of the U.S. Civil War. This summer, we went to Nova Scotia, where I attended a week-long camp to study Cape Breton fiddle and step dance.

But just like any other school, we have math, recess (thank goodness for that!), language arts, social studies and science. We are also learning to speak Spanish.

I love home schooling, and I think we are so lucky to be able to do this!
Gemini, 11

Private School

I go to a Jewish school, and have since I was five years old. I love my school, friends and teachers, but sometimes I feel like I've had enough of all this Jewish stuff! I'm really advanced in Hebrew, and my teachers don't teach things at my level. Some of the stuff teachers teach us I learned three years ago! In Jewish studies we have a fabulous teacher who is funny, nice and really makes us learn! I feel like she is one of the best teachers I have ever had. I really like our Jewish studies program this year.

Just like any other school, we also have math, science, social studies, history, geography, literature, writing and so on. Every grade after third goes on an overnight trip. In third you go to a working farm for a week where you get to hang out and do jobs around the farm. In fourth grade, you have a simulation of the gold rush where you pan for gold and try to live gold rush style! In fifth grade we go to the Marin Headlands. In sixth grade we go to Monterey and visit the aquarium and other cool places there. In seventh grade we go to Ashland,Oregon and see Shakespeare plays and meet the cast! In eighth grade we go to Washington, D.C! We are trying to have a trip to Israel but haven't gotten to that yet!

At my school, an average size class is about sixteen kids. We have two classes per grade, so there are about thirty-two kids in each grade. It's a Kindergarten-Eighth school, and I hang out with some kids who are way older then me. My brother is in eighth grade at the same school, and he only had twenty-four kids in his grade! My friends are great, and we hang out together during breaks and lunch-time. This year some of my friends are in the other class. It's not as fun without them, but we still have fun when we're together. Since we've all been with each other basically our whole lives, we're all friends with almost all the girls in the grade! At recess we all form a big group and just hang out together! We laugh so much sometimes teachers tell us to move away from the middle school area. All in all, I have to admit that I really like my school and wouldn't want to go to school anywhere else!

Shira, 10

I'm going into 5th grade at a Waldorf School. In public schools, everything went wrong for me. I was bullied all the time and everybody was noisy in the cafeteria. I was creative and they were strict, strict, strict. They didn't even let medaydream in class! At Waldorf I was welcome, and nobody has ever bullied me in my class. And in Waldorf there is art, handwork, woodworking, music, ...we even make our own books! Each day we spend over an hour outside- rain or shine. I love being with nature. There is a theme for each grade level. Last year the theme was Norse Myths andthis year it will be Ancient Egypt and Greece. Another cool thing aboutWaldorf? Your teacher stays with you from 1-8th grade! I am more like myself at Waldorf than I was in public school and we get to play games like "Elves and Pixies" and put on plays each year. School is exciting and I never get bored. Waldorf is the best educationI would recommend for a daydreaming, artistic girl.

Nani, 10

I'm in the seventh grade and I love my school!!! I love it mainly because of the fact that it is a private Montessori school. It goes from Pre-K to Eighth grade. The sixth, seventh and eighth grade classroom is called Questa. In the mornings we have personal work time (PW). During PW we can work on anything we want besides group work (GW). We have our own vocabulary books and we do one lesson (five activities) a week. We also have to write sentences that include at least one of our vocab. words each. We get tested regularly on our definitions both orally and written. You can also work on speech. This year in speech we are making a radio show that we will present at the end of the year. You can work on Personal World which is kind of helping you learn more about yourself. Finally, you can work on writing. The teacher gives you an assignment and you have to get it gone by Friday.

In GW, we get to work in groups. Everyone in the group gets to be leader of the group for one week. Eighth graders get priority, then seventh graders, and finally the sixth graders. My group has chosen me as the last leader so that if we are off target, I can get us back on target.

On Fridays we have check-off. This is where all of our assigned work for that week is checked. If it's not all completed you are considered off target. If you are off target you have to do your work during P.E. while everybody else gets to go outside and play. Also on Fridays is barn duty. If you are barn that week then on Friday you get to scoop the pigs' and goats' poop. We have two pigs and two goats. My friend and I are in charge of barn. This means we oversee how well barn duty is done. If it is done well, we sign their job cards, if it's not we make them go back and do it again.

Niki

Public School

I go to public school and I'm in seventh grade. School's ok--my favorite subjects are science and language.I like science because I love animals and science involves animals. I like language because I like to write stories and poems. Sometimes I wish I was homeschooled because sometimes I getpicked on by the other kids. But I keep reminding myself that the only reason they pick on me is because they wish they were unique. In school I have 2 friends and we make school fun.Well that's prettymuch all!!!

Rhiannon

I'm a sixth grader in my town's public middle school. I've come up with 3 good reasons why I like public school.

1 Diversity- At public schools you will find all different types of people: boys, girls, Jews, Christians, and many other types of people. Some private schools for instance are only boys, or only girls, or only Jews, or only Christians. And if you're home schooled, you don't meet as many people.
2 Choices- Along with the required academics-Math, ELA, science, and social studies-we get so many other choices. We get choose a language-Spanish, French, or Chinese- whether we want to be in band, chorus, or general music, a club, and other things like sports, the school musical, Jazz band, an so many more. I think having choices lets you meet many people.
3 Lunch- This might sound weird, and not many kids would say it, but the food at my school is pretty good. I have a friend who used to go to private school and he said he had to bring his lunch everyday. Not only do we get to buy our lunch, we have so many choices of what we can buy. Some of the choices are pizza, pasta, the main meal, salad, and so many more.

As you can see I love going to pulic school

Samantha, 11

My school is a mix between public and private, because I go to a magnet school. Most people either haven't heard of one before or are not sure what it is. A magnet school is a public school that isfor gifted and talented kids. This means that my school isfree, but you have to take tests and be interviewed to get in. One of the reasons my school is great is because it has the positives of both public and private schools. At public schools, there is diversity because it is free. My grade has poor kids, rich kids, and middle-class kids. There are Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Atheists. Everyone comes from a different background and has different customs. But at most public schools, anyone can come, so not everyone is on the same level, which makes it harder for the teacher.

I'm not saying that everyone is a math whiz and a novelist at my school, though. Everyone learns at their own pace, but usually it's almost the same. We do math for kids a year ahead (for instance, 1st graders do 2nd grade math) and do lots of enrichment. (Like long-termprojects on whatever we want). One of the beautiful things about my school is that being smart is the norm. Unlike stupid stereo-types of "smart" kids on TV, we aren't nerds. We're artists, tennis players, actors, yoga-doers, soccerplayers, writers, singers, new moon readers, and much more.

Being smart also doesn't mean being preppy. We don't like homework,tests, or studying. What we do like is politics, law, Shakespeare, architecture, and debate. But we also like American Idol and Flag Football.

Being a magnet school means that we (the students) have to take state tests that are pretty easy for us and having to follow the curriculum (what the state mandates teachers teach). We also have large classes and never enough money. But it also means that we get high test scores and think outside of the box for ways to learn. (For instance, if a teacher has to teach Ancient Egypt, instead of textbooks she'll have the class mummify a chicken!)

Our school raises money for two or three teachers per classroom and gets grants from special programs. With the money, we have gotten laptops for the classrooms, a keyboard lab, and other things we otherwise couldn't afford. We are able to partner with organizations because we are a public school. We've had dance, drama, Shakespeare, and much more! I love my school because it is a happy balance between public and private. I'm very happy being able to go to a school with lots of different types of extremely smart kids. It's a nice environment and a great place for me!

Marisa, 11

I have been to a Montessori school, a private school, and a public school. In Montessori, I had a great teacher and many chances to go outside, which I loved. In private school, I had P.E., language {Chinese}, music, and art almost every day. Public school, my favorite, is really nice. It is more diverse, with a lot more girls in my class. I think going to three different schools was a good experience because I saw different teaching methods.
Kate, 10

What about YOU? Join in the conversation by leaving a comment!

Ever Been the NuGrl?

2007-09-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I love, it's blogs. I love how they give you peeks into people's lives and personalities. I love that you can use them to chronicle the year you got your first horse or all the books you've read about broccoli. I love that they can be a locked, private haven, or a place where the world listens as your ideas take center stage. And I love the New Moon blog because it gives us lots to talk about between issues of the magazine.

Our friend, Cheryl Dellasega, creator of Club and Camp Ophelia, has created the bloggrls series -- novels about girls told in a blog format. One of the coolest things about the first bloggrl books is that a teen girl created all the illustrations. And guess what? Cheryl's publisher is looking for another teen to illustrate upcoming books. Read on to hear it straight from Cheryl.

"If you've ever been new to school, known someone who was new, or face being new in the future, check out the story of Sadie, aka nugrl90, whose life gets turned upside down when her parents split and her mom moves her to a different school district. In ninth grade, the school nurse gave Sadie a diary and suggested she write about her feelings (as if!); instead, she decides to create a blog that chronicles her year as a new girl.

Tenth grade turns out to be a year full of challenges. Sadie has to make a tough decision about the boy she loves and learns her best friend has betrayed her. Meanwhile, at home, her WS (wicked sister) finds endless ways to torment her, but at least her beloved dog, Homer, can always be counted on to provide comfort.

In addition to a "Clicktionary" of blogspeak (send me your favorite saying and I'll send you a t-shirt and cyberframe), the book has illustrations by Karina Lapierre, a teen girl who read the story and got a contract with Marshall Cavendish to provide drawings. Want to be the next girl artist who gets paid to illustrate the next book and has her name on the cover? Go to www.bloggrls.com and find out how. Or, if you're a writer and would like a chance to win an iPod, enter the Bloggrl Writing Contest--more info is also available at www.bloggrls.com"

I know there are some talented artists and writers out there -- I hope you will try your hand at some of the contests! I'd also be happy just to hear your thoughts -- do you keep a blog? Do you think blogs can work the same way as a diary? Have you ever written something in your blog and wished you hadn't? Have you ever found unexpected friends through blogging? Tell us all about it!

For the Love of the Sport?

2007-09-09T07:41:00.001-07:00

This morning, I elbowed my way through throngs of spectators, huddled in the early-morning hours to observe one of the zaniest, most phenomenal events my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin ever witnesses: the annual IRONMAN triathlon.

For the uninitiated, the triathlon is the glory of all endurance athletics. It is a competition in which mostly-buff athletes swim their guts out, run out of the water, strip out of their wetsuits and throw bike gear on their still-wet bodies, jump on a bike, attack miles of hills and other geographic formations that discourage biking, and finally abandon their bikes for the final leg of the triathlon: the run.

Full disclosure: I am a triathlete myself, and it is one of the loves of my life. I don't know if there is any sport more thrilling, exuberant, or mind-boggling. Racing is an incredible adrenaline rush.

But I am not an Ironman. Or an Ironwoman. I race at the sprint- and Olympic-distance lengths, which usually include something like a 1/2 mile swim, 13 mile bike, and 3 mile run (sprint distance) or 1 mile swim, 25 mile bike, and 6 mile run (Olympic).

The Ironman, on the other hand, is a race of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike, and a full marathon-length run (over 26 miles). It's a killer.

I loved watching the Ironman athletes as they raced out of the water, stripping out of wetsuits as they padded past the cheering throngs. I felt sorry for the athletes more than anything else: here they had just finished a grueling 2.4 miles of swimming through waters so crowded they resemble a literal sharkfest, and yet they were just beginning the day. (The fastest finishers complete the race in about 8 hours; many barely make the midnight cutoff.)

For all the enthusiasm in the crowd, the competitors didn't look particularly happy. As a triathlete, that really bothered me--when I race, I don't think I ever stop smiling. I guess the adrenaline had already worn off their faces (or maybe it was the embarrassment of waddling past thousands of people half-naked).

But why, I wondered, do people practically kill themselves to finish an almost-impossible race? Why do they devote a year's worth of training for a single day, which will not be experienced with utter joy but mainly fatigue and discomfort?

I know that many elite sports are hard to understand until you've experienced them, and I admire the Ironmen (and Ironwomen) who come from all parts of the world to brave the unknown, to challenge inner resolves they barely knew existed. But why?

What do you think...

When it comes to sports, how much is too much? Would you sacrifice hundreds of hours of your life to achieve something as superhuman as an Ironman finish? If people devote themselves to athletics because that's one of their passions, is their life fulfilling, or crazily unbalanced?

Would you be up to the Ironman challenge?

Burma, Laura Bush, and Why It Doesn't Hurt to Be a Dreamer

2007-09-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

Laura Bush: First Lady. Librarian. Education advocate. And now...radical activist?

I was shocked last week to read that the First Lady, in a highly unusual move, decided to use her voice to intervene on behalf of a populist freedom movement in Burma.

Some background: Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a Southeast Asian nation controlled by the iron rule of one of the fiercest military dictatorships in the world. The country been struggling for fifteen years to free its people from the junta. Aung San Suu Kyi (photo below), now held under house arrest in Burma's capital city, has led the fight for freedom. She's a terrifically courageous woman--probably the bravest woman I've ever heard of--and received the Nobel Peace Prize for her incredible strength.

This August saw the biggest peaceful pro-democracy protests in Burma in ten years. Around the world, activists have been joining the Burmese people in solidarity. Groups like the US Campaign for Burma have brought together everyone from Hollywood actors to U.S. Representatives in calling for freedom in Burma. Even President Bush issued a statement condemning the Burmese government for arresting protesters.

And last week, the First Lady made an extraordinary move: she telephoned the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, and called on him to denounce the Burmese government.

This is the first time the First Lady has taken a stand on international issues--until now, she's concentrated her efforts on national issues that avoid controversy, like literacy, education, and healthcare.

But this May, she joined the 16 women in the Senate to appeal publicly for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. In June, she met in the White House with refugees and exiles from Burma and wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on behalf of Mrs. Aun San Suu Kyi. And now she's called for the United Nations to draft a resolution on the human rights abuses in Burma.

She told TIME, "Like many people, especially women, I got interested because of Aung San Suu Kyi, and I learned about Burma and how she represents the hopes of the people of Burma, and how those hopes were being dashed by her house arrest and the fact that her party won the elections and never had the opportunity to have power at all...One of the things that's really important for the world to know is that the people of Burma do listen to radio, and when they hear that people around the world are speaking out for their rights, I think it gives them hope."

Mrs. Bush, 60, also responded to comments that her new role is a little unusual, saying: “I think this is sort of one of those myths: that I was baking cookies and then they fell off the cookie sheet and I called Ban Ki-moon."

I know that many of us don't count ourselves as supporters of the Bush administration. But I'm thrilled to see a woman who is willing to speak out for justice, to bring light to a cause that our country has all but forgotten. It's true that the First Lady is a politician, and her motives aren't necessarily genuine idealism. But her actions are a great reminder of the power of idealism.

Maybe her words won't make a difference. But she argues otherwise: “So ‘why bother,’ I guess, is the question people ask. But I think the answer is, ‘Why not?’ I mean, why not continue to put pressure on the regime in any way we can?”

The First Lady is a great reminder that it never hurts to try. We have nothing to lose from taking a stand for what we believe in, even if our goals might seem impossible. In fact, idealism is the only way that we've ever made progress. After all, weren't most great leaders once dismissed as dreamers? As the feminist Emma Goldman once declared, "Idealists...foolish enough to throw caution to the winds...have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.”

Today, I was lucky enough to attend Fighting Bob Fest, the biggest political event in the Midwest. Thousands of activists converge to talk politics, meet some big-time leaders, share ideas, and just have fun. One of the speakers I heard was peace activist Cindy Sheehan, who is as much a hero of idealism than anyone else. Her words stuck with me. She said:

People don't want change. They want the status quo. Why do we want the status quo? The status quo tolerates racism and sexism and homophobia...Our job is to tear down, not protect, the status quo.

No matter who we are--First Lady or first grade student--it doesn't hurt to be a dreamer. Think big. To quote Gandhi (sorry, getting a little quote-heavy now): "We must become the change we want to see in the world."

And to all those who complain that I am prone to blog posts decrying terrible things in the world, yet never leaving suggestions of ways to take action against these injustices, I leave you with a website: DoSomething.org. Do Something is a one-stop-shopping resource for girls out there looking for ways to make a difference. They'll hook you up with volunteer opportunities, activism groups, mentors, girls working on the same issues you are, and lots more resources... Best of all, they have a handy section called "Do Something Today," where they feature one little thing you can do to make the world a better place. Because little things make a difference.

And that's your daily dose of idealism, folks. Peace.

A disclaimer: Certain bloggers (ahem, Natalia) are prone to writing about politics and activism. Because that is what they feel passionate about. And we at New Moon like to share our passions. But the views of any New Moon blogger--whether New Moon staffer, guest blogger, or girl writer--do not necessarily reflect any views of New Moon Publishing. And, for the record, New Moon never endorses political candidates. We just endorse the power of girls' voices. So tell us what you think...and we'll do our best to help make your voice heard! Love, LunaOnline (that's Luna's twin sister, who spends more time wired than she should...)

Are You Totally Wired?

2007-09-07T14:30:00.001-07:00

Hey, all. If you're reading this, chances are you like to spend time online. And it's probably no surprise to you that teens and tweens your age are the most tech-savvy generation ever, or that girls spend more time on social networking sites, like MySpace and Livejournal, than boys. Our good friend Anastasia Goodstein is an expert on teens and the internet. She's recently published a book, Totally Wired, that tracks what tweens and teens are doing online. Although the book is geared toward helping parents understand the online world of their children, it still contains a lot of neat information and websites for girls. AND now Anastasia is touring to talk about teens and technology. Check out her tour dates below -- or see if you're interested in bringing her to YOUR area.

Here's a rough schedule of Anastasia's tour:

October 3-12 New England

October 15-19 Tennessee

October 22-26 DC/Virginia/Maryland

October 29 - November 10 California

Between November 12-16, Anastasia can speak in any part of the country. For more information about Anastasia and her Fall tour, click here.

But now, let's talk about you. Are you "totally wired"? How much time do you spend online? How do you feel about girls your age spending more time online than any other age group? What are the benefits and pitfalls of being "Totally Wired"? When you go online, what do you do? Do you think tweens and teens spend too much time online? Please comment and share all your internetty thoughts!

Why Aren't More Women Blogging? (Actually, You Might be Surprised by How Many Are)

2007-09-06T13:19:00.000-07:00

Last month, Jennifer Pozner wrote a great article about women and blogging--I've been meaning to share it for a long time!

Jennifer is the Founder & Executive Director of WIMN, or Women in Media and News. WIMN is an incredible, dynamic organization working to change the face of women in the media--how women are represented and portrayed--and the face of media for women--the role the media plays in womens' lives. More importantly, WIMN works to make the voices of often unheard women heard, including women of color, low-income women, lesbians, youth and older women.

And WIMN has an awesome blog, called WIMN's Voices: A Group Blog on Women, Media, AND… (you fill in the blank--women bloggers discuss everything from hip hop to human rights, to science and sports). Over 50 women contribute to the blog, creating one of the most diverse and wide-reaching blogs online (they range in ange from 19 to 64, they are everything from Quaker to Muslim, they include GLBT women and their straight allies, and about 45% are women of color).

So, I highly encourage you to read their blog. But back to Jennifer's article:

Half of all bloggers are women. Bet you didn't know that. Maybe that's why, as Jennifer points out, many journalists choose to keep asking the same old question, "Where are the women bloggers?" -- rather than actually seek them out. And there are many of them! Take BlogHer, for example: it's an online community of more than 13,000 blogging women. But when BlogHer held an annual convention in July, attended by some 800 bloggers ranging from artists to activists, grandmothers to geeks, the amazing event didn't receive a single bit of national press coverage.

As Jennifer writes, "If many believe that blogging is a primarily male sport, it is partially because old-school gender disparities in resource allocation, power and popularity long entrenched in traditional news media are replicating themselves online. In the blogosphere, young men - mostly white and mostly economically comfortable - link to, write about, promote and fund their buddies' blogs; and corporate media play star-makers, quoting, profiling and featuring the punditry of this New Boys Network. As is hardly surprising to those of us who monitor media representations of women, women who blog (especially those who write about feminist issues) are off the radar."

In other words, blogging--an amazing way for thousands to self-publish and freely distribute their thoughts through the information highway--remains an old boys' club. Women's blogs are less likely to be read. Period.

So, readers, keep reading and supporting your favorite girl- and women-written blogs! (Shameless self-promotion, I know.) But it's up to us to keep looking for ways that women and girls can use blogging to make our voices heard. The tools are there. We've gotta use 'em.

Leave us a comment and join the discussion: Do you blog? Read blogs often? Which are your favorite (or least favorite) blogs? Which issues do you think blogs cover too much, and which do you wish were covered more?

Because It's What Every Girl Needs

2007-09-05T18:37:00.000-07:00

Earlier today, Feminsting and Jezebel reported on the newest, the latest, the greatest in high-tech fashion...scented panties. What every girl needs, right?

Why does the fashion industry keep bombarding us with messages that we're just not 'good enough'? Whether they're telling us that we're not thin enough to fit a fashion model's size, or that our normal body parts' normal smells are so gross they need to be smothered by strange chemicals, we get the message: we can't be proud of who we (and our bodies) are.

Apparently, these new panties create their scent by utilizing a technology that weaves what is basically a drier sheet into the underwear's own fabric. Which sounds awfully unhealthy--like wearing a sheet of chemicals next to your skin--if not just plain gross. As Jezebel wrote, "Three little letters come to mind: UTI [Urinary Tract Infection]."

Aren't there better things that the technology world could be doing to further our fashion choices? Perhaps designers could find a way to weave little speakers into our clothing that project little messages to us throughout our day. Like "you're beautiful the way you are."

But given what we know about the fashion industry, that's unlikely. After all, why would these panties sell (and by the way, they're already sold out) if the fashion industry and the rest of society weren't already telling us that there's something wrong with just being...ourselves?

I'll leave you with the comment of one woman, who read Feministing's post: "As society has it, most women are already shy about their vagina as is. Do we really want to go forward with making a vagina into something it's not really supposed to be? Part of consciousness-raising is making women realize that the vagina isn't something to be ashamed of. This product is just doing the exact opposite."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Make Some Noise!

2007-09-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hey, girls! Here's a way cool opportunity for older teens (high school-aged) from YouthNoise, an organization affiliated with UNICEF.

YouthNoise is hosting a series of youth summits across the country this year that will provide teen leaders an opportunity to create change in their local and global communities.

What is a YouthNoise Summit? A YN Summit is a conference and cultural event for students. These FREE two-day events are about creating grassroots change in local neighborhoods. What would you change about your world? Come to a YouthNoise Summit to give your two cents, find out what others are doing, and get involved.

Who's invited? High school and college students who are passionate about finding REAL solutions to local problems.

When and where are the YN Summits?

San Francisco, CA- September 1-2, 2007

San Jose, CA-September 22-23, 2007

Minneapolis, MN-October 13-14, 2007

Orlando, FL-November 17-18, 2007

Oakland, CA-January 12-13, 2008

Tucson, AZ-January 26-27, 2008

Los Angeles, CA-February 9-10, 2008

San Diego, CA-February 23-24, 2008

Bakersfield, CA-March 8-9, 2008

Denver, CO-March 29-30, 2008

Providence, RI-April 12-13, 2008

Sacramento, CA-May 3-4, 2008

Seattle, WA-August 30-31, 2008

Why should I go? Create projects to benefit your community and get online and offline support to help you plan, develop, promote, fund, and execute grassroots civic action. As a UNICEF volunteer, you can tell others about UNICEF's work and create projects that will result in helping UNICEF save children's lives.

How do I sign up? Register online at http://www.youthnoise.com/summit.

What's happening at the Cultural Event? Local youth artists and musicians will showcase their talents at an all-ages youth organized cultural event with headliner bands, spoken word, youth art and more.

What is I'm not in high school yet? Check out the Youth Noise website! It's a youth-driven, non-profit website dedicated to providing creative ways for youth to spark movements and magnify their voices. The website is great! It's got resources for taking action on a variety of causes--from poverty to war to education, as well as a database of projects created by youth, discussion forums, info on elections, and much more. They even have communities dedicated to "empowering women," "giving girls a voice," and feminism. It's an entire community dedicated to youth taking action! Kudos to YouthNoise for their awesome work.

Labor Day Blogging

2007-09-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Happy Labor Day, readers! Before heading off to obligatory family picnics, take a few minutes to learn about why we have Labor Day--and why it's still so important to keep fighting for workers' rights!

Labor Day began 125 years ago, during a time when workers across America were involved in a surge of protest movements that demanded their rights to fair working conditions and pay. They wanted an end to 12-hour work days, paltry wages, and unsanitary and unhealthy working conditions. They wanted to unionize, or join together in workers' unions that would counteract greedy, powerful big businesses.

Mary Harris Jones, aka Mother Jones (the namesake of the modern magazine), was an important figure in the labor movement. Mother Jones, a self-described "hell-raiser," was once denounced in the U.S. Senate as the "grandmother of all agitators." But she was proud of that title and said she hoped to live to be the "great-grandmother of agitators."

Mother Jones was one of the most important members of the Knights of Labor, a major workers' union that helped establish Labor Day. She was also one of its few women members. But she was a fierce fighter for fair wages and working conditions, and she took on child labor as one of her biggest causes. In many ways, she was the mother of the modern labor movement.

The Knights of Labor created the first Labor Day celebration on September 5, 1882. They wanted to make it a national holiday. President Cleveland wasn't particularly excited to support the day, but he was also opposed to supporting the May 1 holiday that workers in other parts of the world celebrate as Labor Day, because unions had held major riots on May 1 that had brought mayhem to urban America. He didn't want a federal holiday to draw attention to those events! So he agreed to make a September Labor Day a national holiday.

Today, few people think about the history of the labor movement on Labor Day. PBS explains, "Labor Day is [now] seen as the last long weekend of summer rather than a day for political organizing. In 1995, less than 15 percent of American workers belonged to unions, down from a high in the 1950's of nearly 50 percent, though nearly all have benefited from the victories of the Labor movement." But there's still so much work to be done for workers! We still live in a world that prioritizes business profits over workers' rights. And as American businesses keep increasing international trade and exporting labor--that is, taking factory and other jobs overseas for cheaper labor--the labor movement must expand to look at working conditions in other countries. A number of international unions have been formed, but it's still the tip of the iceberg. Which bring me to my next Labor Day tidbit...on child labor.

As students head back to school this week, it's easy to forget that millions of kids around the world won't be going to school--but to work. According to UNICEF, an estimated 246 million children must go to work each day around the world. In fact, in places like West and Central Africa, 41% of boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 14 are child laborers.

What gives? Well, in many parts of the world, dirt-poor families have no choice but to use their children's labor to make ends meet. Even when governments offer families free education for their children, global poverty is so bad that many families have to choose between having their kids in school and having bread on the table. According to UNICEF, 1 billion children worldwide suffer from extreme poverty, which leaves them "vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, violence, discrimination and stigmatization.” Poor children are especially likely to be exploited by employers who force them to work long days under treacherous conditions, often with dangerous materials.

Take this child's story:

Each day, Alone Banda wakes before the crack of dawn. With only a weak cup of tea to carry him through his fourteen-hour day, he walks to a quarry south of his Zambian hometown. Like other boys in his town, Alone, eight, works as a stone-crusher. He spends the day heating rocks with flaming rubber scraps, so that the stones will fracture more easily with a steel bolt. New York Times reporter Michael Wines writes, “At dusk, when three or four blazes spew choking black clouds across the huge pit, the quarry [where Alone works] looks like a woodcut out of Dante.”

Alone is not alone. Millions of other children toil under similar working conditions--even in the U.S. Most people think that child labor has ended in America. But almost 60,000 children under 14 are illegally employed in this country, including many immigrant children who work with families in agricultural work. Amazingly enough, some children 13,100 work in sweatshops within the U.S. And as recently as 2005, Wal-Mart paid $135,000 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Arkansas.

No, child labor--and other forms of exploitative labor--is far from over. So where are the solutions?

Child labor is a huge and complex problem. Says Birgitte Poulsen of the International Labor Organization, ''[finding a solution to child labor] is like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while the tap is running."

Child labor may be an enormous problem, but there are few problems more important. And (to not finish on a too pessimistic note) there are so many solutions. A sampling:

*providing free education for all children

*strengthening and enforcing laws that protect children from child labor

*increasing international attention on child labor, including "invisible" child labor like on family farms or in private homes

*providing stronger support for children and family through crises, such as disease, war, or natural disasters

*working to eradicate global poverty in general

Hey, readers! What's your opinion on child labor, both globally and closer to home? Do you think that poor families should be allowed to send their kids to work, if it means that the family might have a chance at escaping poverty? Do you think teens in countries like the U.S. should be allowed to work even as they continue their studies? Should kids working in artistic industries, like music and film, be allowed to work? (In the filming of Kid Nation, which premiers later this month, child actors worked 14-hour days, which some say isn't unusual in the media industry.) Do YOU have a job? Leave us a note!

Summer Cookin' | Part 1

2007-09-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, summer. Now that the last sweet days of summer are before us, we can forget the dreaded heat and humidity that we complained about during the dog days of August, and reminisce on the glory of summer.

My favorite part of the season is that time in late summer when farmer’s markets burst with berries so perfect they look like they came from the cover of Bon Appetit, zucchinis so big they look like eggplants, tomatoes so ripe they explode in your mouth.

So, join in and make a last toast to the lovely days of summer. Try out these great recipes for summer foods—they’re a fun alternative to the traditional American summer fare. And if you’ve got any recipes to share, bring ‘em on! Send them to blog@newmoon.org, and we’ll share then on the blog.

Cool-as-a-Cucumber Soup
Also known as “Gazpacho Blanco.” A white version of my favorite chilled Spanish soup (if you’re curious about traditional gazpacho, check out the recipe in the Sept/Oct issue of New Moon).

2 large cucumbers
2 cloves garlic
2 cups chicken broth (use a substitute if you’re vegetarian)
1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup dry white wine
2 pieces of stale white bread
1/2 cup blanched almonds
pinch of salt

Peel and chop cucumbers. Mince garlic. Puree all the ingredients in a blender or food processor (because of the volume, you may need to do this in a few batches). Chill for several hours. Serves 6. If you’d like to, serve garnished with grape halves and slivered almonds.

Pastel de Choclo
This Chilean recipe is one of my favorites. “Pastel” in Spanish means 'cake,' but “Pastel de Choclo” is really much more like a casserole or a savory pie. Kind of like a summer casserole.

Corn mixture:
kernels grated from 3 large ears of fresh corn
4 leaves fresh basil, finely chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon flour

Meat mixture:
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 green pepper, sliced
1 tomato, chopped
1 zucchini, sliced
1/2 pound ground beef (to make recipe vegetarian, substitute 3 Gardenburger flame-grilled burgers chopped into small pieces, or another meat substitute)
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Also:
1/2 cup raisins, soaked in 2 tablespoons warm water
several sprigs fresh marjoram
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

For corn mixture: Heat the grated corn, basil and butter in a large pot. Add the milk little by little, then the flour, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Set aside while you prepare the meat filling.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium flame. Add onions and sauté until transparent. Add green peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and ground meat (or meat substitute). Cook, stirring often, until meat it browned. Season with salt, pepper and ground cumin.

To prepare the pastel de choclo: Heat oven to 400 degrees. Use a large oven-proof dish that can be taken to the table, or six small oven-proof dishes. Spread the meat mixture over the bottom of the dish(es). Add raisins and marjoram. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold the corn mixture into the egg whites gently. Cover the filling with the corn mixture. Sprinkle sugar over the top.

Bake until the crust is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Serve at once. If desired, sprinkle more vanilla sugar on the pastel de choclo as it is eaten. Serves 6.

Greek Zucchini Pancakes
I could eat a dozen of these things. Filled with morsels of zucchini and feta, these light pancakes just melt in your mouth.

2 eggs
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup feta cheese
1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint
4 small zucchini, grated
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cup flour
Pepper to taste

Whisk eggs, yogurt, buttermilk, oil, feta, and mint together in a bowl. Stir in the zucchini, baking soda, and baking flour. Add flour and stir lightly just before cooking.

Heat a griddle over medium heat. Butter skillet. Cook zucchini pancakes until golden.

Serves 4 generously. And you want to be generous with these pancakes, because they’re soooo good. If you’d like, you can also serve them with tzatziki, a light yogurt dipping sauce from Greece.

Mango Lassi
Here in North America, mangos go in and out of season without notice. Right now might not be mango season, but summer is one of my favorite times to enjoy this chilled drink. Mango Lassi is a North Indian beverage akin to a smoothie. But better.

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1 mango, peeled, stone removed, and chopped
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

Put mango, yogurt, milk, sugar and cardamom into a blender and blend until smooth. Sprinkle with cardamom, pour, and serve. This recipe serves 2.

Stay tuned for Summer Cookin' Part 2! Coming to a blog near you in the not-so-distant future...

Sweet Sixteen and Already Been...to the Polls

2007-09-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

Hi! It's Natalia here, New Moon's former editorial intern and blogger. After my internship ended, I took a 6-week hiatus from blogging to travel, write, and work on coordinating a program in my community called Madison SOS (Speak Out, Sister!) - The Young Women's Leadership Forum. Now I'm back to blogging! Stay tuned...

Earlier this week, the New York Times wrote about the current national trend towards lowering the voting age to sixteen. Was the Times a little behind the times? Well, yes--New Moon featured the topic last September in Voice Box! But we're happy to see that the conversation has continued. And this time, the whole country's talking.

I enjoyed reading the thoughtful Times article, and I would encourage you to read it, too. But I was frustrated by the way the writer stereotyped teens a few times too many. Take her opening paragraphs:

"It is a nippy November Tuesday and your 16-year-old has her day all planned out. After school, she’ll have a rehearsal of her high school musical, “High School Musical.” She’ll instant-message her friends about that ridiculous question on the trig test, and she’ll drive to the mall for a burger with her boyfriend.

Then she’ll head to the polls, where she’ll cast a vote on a bond issue for a new prison, a referendum on property taxes, and the races for governor, senator and president of the United States.

If that sounds farfetched, it’s because in this country, at least, not a lot of people spend time debating the age at which a citizen can begin to vote, let alone whether a baby-faced 16-year-old should."

It's the media's same old trap: telling us that all teens (specifically, teen girls) are about is clothes, boys, make-up, shopping... In other words, that teens can't see beyond their own noses. I would challenge that. Teens care about more than that! The mainstream media might not want to admit the power of teens' voices, but there are plenty of teens who care about issues like poverty, the environment, peace, and civil rights...we know, just from the letters we receive from New Moon readers!

Is lowering the voting age the best way for teens to get involved in the political process, to make sure that decision-makers hear their voices? That's up to you. But I'm happy to see that the US is joining the bandwagon of efforts around the world to put power in the hands of teens, and to finally give issues facing young people the attention they deserve. (For the record, countries with 16-year-old-voting include Austria, Brazil, Cuba, and Nicaragua.) After all, the article points out: if teens were casting ballots, perhaps certain all-powerful politicians might start looking more at the issues we face and care about, like the environment and education.

Above: a poster from a British campaign

But it shouldn't have to take lowering the voting age for elected officials (and other adults whose decisions dictate our lives) to start listening to us!

Join the conversation! Leave us a comment and tell us if YOU would vote at 16 (or younger!). Do you support lowering the voting age?

Celebrating Equality

2007-08-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

We're nearing the end of August and all most of us can think about is the start of school. But don't despair yet; it's time to celebrate! This Sunday is Women's Equality Day in the U.S., marking the date 87 years ago (1920) when women first earned the right to vote.

Suffragists Who Changed History

Sojourner Truth- A famous and popular public speaker of her day. She was a former slave who cared deeply about women's and African American rights. Her most famous speech was 'Ain't I a Woman?' given in 1851 at an Ohio convention.

Susan B. Anthony- A long with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she founded the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). Of the two, she was the public voice and often organized and traveled. In 1872 she tried to vote for a presidential election and was 'found guilty'. She refused to pay and no one made her. Anthony was also the first female on U.S. currency. (The coin was later replaced by the Sacajawea dollar.)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton- In her partnership with Susan B. Anthony, she was considered the theorist and writer behind the conventions. When they founded the NWSA, she acted as president. Also, she worked to give woman equal guardianship of children, give property rights to married woman and insure divorce rights.

Carrie Catt- Carrie started off by being a lecturer in the woman's suffrage movement. Soon she was involved with the NWSA and was chosen to succeed Susan B. Anthony as president. (She didn't become president until after Anna Shaw.) After the 19th amendment she continued to empower women by organizing the League of Women Voters.

Lucretia Mott- With Elizabeth Stanton she co-wrote the "Declaration of Sentiments" which is deliberately similar to the Declaration of Independence. As a feminist and an abolitionist, she struggled between the split priorities of women's and African American rights; acting as president of the American Equal Rights Convention.

These women and countless others helped the women of day earn the right to vote. It's only right that we celebrate their achievements and all that they have done for us.

Not Separated but Also Not Equal

Women are paid 20 to 50 percent less than men and have a hard time getting credit and financial services.

Two thirds of all illiterate people in the world are women.

70% of the world's poorest people are women. (United Nations)

Only 10% of legislators are women worldwide.

More than 950 American women are sexually assaulted every day. That's 3 to 4 million a year.

What Can You Do to Celebrate Woman's Equality Day?

If you're over 18, vote whenever you get the chance. Or once you turn 18, register to vote. It's so easy, you can even do it online.

Sign this petition going to prospective candidates for the 2008 elections urging them to make women's rights a priority.

Request a copy of "Women's Rights Are Human Rights" report.

Read all about the suffrage movement or rent a video about it.

Visit the Women's Museum in Dallas or the International Women's Air and Space Museum in Cleveland.

Say thank you to teachers, coaches, parents, etc. because they worked hard to get to where they are today. Women everyday make a difference by exploring new jobs and roles.

Write to your local newspaper or radio station to request that they cover this important holiday.

Visit the United Nation's website 'Women's Watch' to learn more about women making a difference and other countries' rights for women.

Bake a cake and eat it with your family. I don't know why this is important, but cake tastes good.

Most of all, enjoy being a woman and take a moment to think about the people who helped us get this far.

So everyone, have a fun weekend and a great Woman's Equality Day!

Peace, friends.

It's not 'gay'.

2007-08-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

First, I will not tell you what to believe. You do not have to think being gay is right or wrong; it is your opinion and you must make it.

Okay, that said, everyone, no matter their orientation, should have the right to learn in peace. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We hear about harassment and learn about harassment all the time, so why does it still happen? Over a third of all Lesbian-Gay Bisexual Transsexual (LGBT) students have reported that they were physically harassed. They have to go to school everyday in fear; something that nobody should have to do. "We were picked on. We were called 'queer' and a host of other homophobic slurs. We were also used as punching bags by our classmates, just for being different," said a college student about high school. That student is not alone. In fact, about 97% of students (in public high schools) report regularly hearing homophobic remarks from others. The "typical" high school student hears about 25.5 anti-gay remarks every day. Hearing the phrase "that's gay" or "you're gay" only enforces the meaning of the word as 'bad' or 'stupid'. If you think that school staff will help, guess again. 53% of students report that they heard a teacher make a homophobic statement. Now, about 80% of prospective teachers coming into the work force have negative attitudes toward LGBT people. And, even worse is the fact that teachers fail to intervene 97% of the times when a slur is made about gays. Because of the constant harassment many of these students skip school or say they won't continue onto college. (20% of LGBT students skip at least once a month because they don't feel safe.) So, any of you remember when the word gay meant 'happy'?

With all this discrimination going on all around them, LGBT students might seek guidance from counselors. Sadly, less than 20% of counselors have received training for helping LGBT youth. And if that's not a problem, having two thirds of counselors who dislike LGBT people certainly is.

Even when these kids go home there are problems. 25% of lesbians and 19% of gays report physical violence from family members because of their orientation. Because of physical violence LGBT kids are more likely to try to commit suicide. Of all the "successful" teen suicides 30% are gay/lesbian. They are 4 times as likely to attempt suicide; that means every 5 hours and 48 minutes. Sorry, but no one, I repeat no one, should ever be knocked so low were all they feel like doing is dying. Respect, people. Where has it gone? Racism is frowned upon, so why isn't being a homophobic? They go to school; picked on. Go home; harassed. "I just began hating myself more and more, as each year the hatred towards me grew and escalated from just simple name-calling in elementary school to having persons in high school threaten to beat me up, being pushed and dragged around the ground, having hands slammed in lockers, and a number of other daily tortures," said a gay high school student. You don't have to believe what they feel is right, you don't have to even like them, but please just respect them. They are people just like us. They have feelings. We have the power to hurt each other, but we also have the choice not to.

We hear people say how with all the wars and violent acts occurring, it seems like there isn't enough love in the world. Hey, there is more love, just not the kind you were thinking of. Love. Why should it matter who loves who? It's love. And we need more of that.

Here is a list of LGBT people who made history.

If you don't already, encourage your school to have a GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) program because studies show that students felt safer when they had one.

Also, there is an event on April 18 every year called the Day of Silence, check it out.

To all you girls out there who are lesbian, bisexual or transsexual: stand tall and be proud of who you are. It's hard when people say that being you is wrong. But chin up sisters, and keep showing the world that you are beautiful.

Peace, friends.

Go Wild!

2007-08-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

Do you love animals? Do you dream of working with animals? A zookeeper gets to work with all kinds of animals everyday. They're the ones who work behind the scenes at zoos, making sure the animals are content and active. Recently, New Moon sat down with Wendy Buczynski; a zookeeper from the Lake Superior Zoo.

New Moon: How long have you been a zookeeper?
Wendy Buczynski: 20 years.

Is that something you’ve always wanted to do?
Actually, no. I was going to be the world’s best veterinarian. I got a little sidetracked.

Growing up did you ever think of 'zookeeper' as a career?
No because I was going to be a vet! I want to be one since I was five.

How did that work out? Did you start off by going to school to be a veterinarian?
No. My path was clear until 11th grade. All of the sudden the thought of 8 more years of school passed senior. I just couldn’t stomach it. So I went for a 2 year associate degree in veterinary technology.

Can you go to any school for that degree or is that a special school?
It was a special school. The University of Minnesota at Waseca. A college which has since been closed down.

Are there special classes you have to take to get an associate degree in veterinary technology?
Yeah, you have to take the college biology, college chemistry, college math, all that. All that interesting stuff and then you have your practicals. Where you actually work with the animals and draw blood and take x-rays. Back in those days they didn’t let us do too much. Fill out records, file correctly.

So did you get a mentor or was it all just in-the-class learning?
No. I was working as a vet technician and you can’t live on what a vet tech makes. My husband at the time got laid off and so I had to get another job. So I got a job at the Duluth Clinic. Eventually, the clinic kept offering more hours and the vet clinic was taking more and more hours away so I just shuffled over to the clinic. And I worked there until one day my neighbor saw an ad that they were running the zookeeper test in the paper and he said ‘you should apply for this because you really like animals’. And I got the job.

Can you describe a typical day as a zookeeper? Do you all have the same job or do you come in and get assigned different jobs?
At this particular zoo you come in and your assigned to work in a certain area. And then you take care of the animals in that area. And depending on what animals there are that depends on what you have to do.

Do you have to know about every animal because you don’t know where you’re going to go?
Well, I do because I work at all the rotations. So some of us work at every single area but some only work at specific areas. And when you’re a ‘floater’ and work everywhere you’re not expected to do anything extra like enrichment; you’re expected to take care of the animals and make sure everything is done. Although if they want to do the ‘extra’ work they sure can; they’re just not required to. They do clean but if there is a problem like a pump doesn’t work they aren’t expected to fix it. They can leave it and wait for me to come back.
9. Okay, are “floaters” considered zookeepers even though they don’t have the same responsibilities as you?
Oh, yeah.

What’s the difference between you and the “floaters” then?
Well, we’re a Union so seniority rules. So the highest senior gets to pick where they want to work. And some people chose to ‘float’ because they liked the variety of working in different areas.

How about coworkers? Do you have to work with each other a lot or is it a more independent job?
Well, we work with the public a lot. Right now we are stretched really thin; we’re at minimum staff. Right now I’m training in a new zookeeper. She’ll be here for 6 months of training then she can start. It’ll be nice; we’ll get some relief.

What’s a typical work schedule? Do you have to work weekends?
My days off are on Thursday and Friday; I have to work on weekends.

How long are the hours?
Only 8am to 5pm.

Does everyone rotate so there’s always someone here to take care of the animals?
There’s always someone here. Again it’s the seniority thing. By the time they got down to me there wasn’t any weekends open.

Is there a certain schedule you have to follow during the day; like feeding at specific times?
No, it’s all pretty much common sense. You do things that need to be done. We do have a rule that there needs to be two zookeepers to work with the ‘dangerous’ animals. That’s for safety reasons.

And what are the ‘dangerous’ animals?
In my area it would be the tigers. There also the leopards, cougars, brown bears, polar bears and the lion. So when we have to go in the work we have to schedule a time with our partners, mine is a zookeeper who works in the area next to mine, to take care of those animals together.

Since you see these animals every day you get to know their behavior. What happens when something isn’t right?
In the case of a big animal I would take it off exhibit.

And how would you get the animal off exhibit?
They’re pretty well trained, thankfully. It has taken years for that to happen. Otherwise you could use food to lure them in. They’re just used to the routine. So then you’d call in the vet to look at them if it was bad enough.

What happens when an animals dies at the zoo?
When we were accredited every animal that died would have to be sent down to the state lab to have a necropsy. Now that we’re no longer accredited it’s up to the vet to decide if the animal needs to go down for an official necropsy or she can handle it here.

What is a necropsy?
That’s just the animal term for autopsy.

Being a zookeeper, what are the pros and cons?
Oh, it’s just the best job in the world. It is always simulating and it is never boring. It’s an active job, but it’s not really grueling.

So you don’t fall into a routine where you just trying to get things done.
Well, you try to have a routine so things do get done. But things are always varied and working with animals is great.

Is part of your job to educate the public?
No, not really. We have such a good education department here and that’s their job. But because of where I am working right now, I frequently have to interact with the public. All of us are required to interact with the public if the occasion arises.

Is there a special uniform that zookeepers have to wear to work?
It really varies from zoo to zoo. Mostly, though, we wear khakis and a zoo shirt. Bigger zoos will usually pay for uniforms.

Do you think this job has any difficulties for women?
No. I have never experienced anything like that. The only real problem I have is being short. It seems like everything is set up for a tall person.

So, do you have any advice for girls who want to be zookeepers?
It’s a tough field to get into because there are not many job openings, the pay is low, the hours are long, the schedule usually…sinks so you have to really like what you’re doing. But if you can get the chance to volunteer at a zoo or get into an internship (which is usually unpaid) when you can actually see what zookeepers do and experience it. If you decide to pursue it, know that more and more zoos, especially the accredited ones, require that bachelor’s degree or even a master’s degree in some kind of science. And if you want to climb the ladder in the zoo world you have to be ready to move. So you can be a zookeeper and get a lot of experience and then you’d apply to be a lead keeper somewhere. After that you could become a curator and then, the highest, the director of a zoo. They do fundraising and handle most of the business.

Is that a recommendation?
They (girls) have to absolutely love animals; they have to love everything about animals. But if they enjoy it; go for it.

What if they don’t like poop?
Then being a zookeeper is not for you. You have to love everything about it. And you have to love all animal; you can’t say ‘I want to be a zookeeper because I really love animals, but I don’t like spiders. Well, spiders are animals and you might have to take care of one.

When you first become a zookeeper do you have to research all the animals the zoo has?
It’s not a requirement, but it’s a really good idea. Also you don’t really look at what’s affecting the species as a whole; you just focus in on the animal at the zoo and look at their needs.

Is there ever a day when you just think to yourself ‘why did I choose this’?
Payday. Christmas morning when you’re getting up at 6am to go to work because it didn’t land on your day off.

You don’t get holidays off?
If it falls on your day off you get the day off. If it’s your day to work, you get to go to work. Unless you use vacation time.

What happens when there’s an emergency or bad weather and no one can come to work?
We have never had a time when no one could come in. There’s always been at least two people at the zoo. But if something did happen and no one could get in, the animals would be fine. They are all very well fed and they’d be okay for a day. I wouldn’t want to leave them for two days but for one they’d be fine.

What happens when you get a new animal that the zoo has never had before? Is there a training program to learn how to take care of it?
There isn’t a training program. Whatever area that animal would be ultimately going to they, of course, would research the heck out of it. And the person who is in charge of Animal Care would get all the paperwork from wherever that animal came from. So everyone would learn a lot from that and there would be calls back-and-forth from the place the animal came from.

Is there a lot of exchanges of animals between zoos?
It depends on if the zoo is accredited with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. But yeah there are mating programs and transfers. Zoos hardly ever purchase animal when they’re accredited because you have animals that belong to other zoos. You just house them. There are breeding loans, there’s hardly any buying and selling going on.

As zookeepers do you get to travel around and research animals?
One zookeeper right now is in Panama for two months. Her favorite species is bats; so she’s studying bats down in Panama . But she had to use up all of her vacation and all of her sick leave and took some days unpaid.

Do animals at the zoo have a different diet than wild animals?
Yes they do. We have to alter their diet but there is a commercial diet made by Purina and other companies. They make a chow for virtually every animal you can think of. We use that for most of the animals, but not all of them. Animals will also get fresh fruit. Some have to adapt to the fruits and vegetables that grow up here but you can also supplement their diets.

Even cockroaches?
*laughs* No.

What do you enjoy doing the most at the zoo?
My favorite part is the nutrition and I also enjoy enrichment. I like looking into the different diets and the different toys. I like see my animals happy.

Why do you think zoos are important?
Wow, that thought has really changed in the 20 years since I’ve been here. Then I started they were almost just an entertainment feature for people to come with their families. Zoos are very popular and they’ve always outsold sporting events and such. Then, through the years it kind of became a way to preserve animals. All these different animals were dieing off because of habitat loss, poaching, etc. So they started these breeding programs for exotics and they thought ‘we’re going to repopulate the world’. Well, that didn’t work because the breeding programs were successful but often the reintroduction programs were not. Animals still had the same problems once they were put back in the wild; poaching, hunting, habitat loss. Now, I would have to say, the zoos’ main mission is to provide an experience where adults and kids can actually see these animals from places they might never travel to. Experience what they look like and sound like; unlike the T.V. which is so sterile. Also we have the conservation and education messages we try to get out.

Some people say that zoos are cruel to animals; what do you say to them?
You can’t control those people. But the USDA, which is a federal organization, only has mandates over mammals; they don’t have anything over birds, they don’t have anything for insects. But their rules for mammals get more evolved every year. No matter what the organization, they have to come to snuff with these rules or they’ll lose their license. If you lose your license you’re going to be shut down. So the USDA is now demanding that zoos have enrichment and enclosures stay a certain size with a certain amount of animals.

Is a license different than accreditation?
Oh, yeah. Every zoo, pet store, anything that has to do with animals has to have a license. Zoos can be accredited.

Do zoos have fundraising for environment groups and other zoos?
We have a zookeeper in Madagascar we support. Basically, we pay his wages because his country can’t afford to.

Alright, since you love animals so much, do you have any pets?
I kind of down sized. Right now I only have my two dogs, two turtles and a lizard.

Do you have a favorite animal at the zoo?
My favorite animal is Nemo the lion. I hadn’t been here too long, maybe a year or so, when he came. I’ve taken care of him all his life. He’s my buddy.

Finally is there anything you want to say to girls in general; about life or growing up?
Stay in school and keeping reading everything you can get your hands on. Also pay attention to the maths and sciences because we really need some great minds to enter those fields. And if any of you out there are interested in politics, we need some great minds there too!

So if any of you girls out there are interested in being a zookeeper at all, just check out you local zoo's site. Most zoos will have programs to get youth involved and learning about what a zookeeper does.

Peace, friends.

Hey, Lefties!

2007-08-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today is International Left-Handers' Day! In honor of all you lefties out there, here is a letter by one girl who wrote in to tell us about it.

"Being Left-Handed

“The left-handed are precious; they take places which are inconvenient for the rest.” -Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

Many people who are right-handed feel discriminated against by leftie clubs, web-sites, and calendars. Many times I’ve had friends ask me where I met one of the people I hang out with on the internet. Usually it’s from some fun lefty site. They may feel bad, but look at the world through our perspective. What many people do not realize, is we are discriminated against every day.

Numbers of inconveniences follow us around, such as scissors, desks, baseball mitts, and eating (yes, sitting by righties is a bit uncomfortable). Did you know over 90% of scissors are right handed, 9% is neutral and 1% left handed. Also, if 6% of the population is left handed, why are only .5% of desks left-handed desks in schools? There are no desks useful to lefties in my school; therefore, my arm is always hanging off the desk.

Everyday language is also harsh towards those who are left-handed. The French word for lefties is 'gauche' which means: Socially awkward; lacking grace or tact in social situations, in English. The French word for righties is 'droit'. From this word we have derived words such as 'adroit', which is the same as skillful. The Latin language also displays this. Lefties get the word 'sinister', when righties get the word 'dexter', which gives us the word 'dexterous'!

Still, I love being left-handed. Lefties are more likely to be more creative. We think with the right side of our brain. This is the side that thinks abstractly, and in ways of deeper meanings. We have more people in history that have changed the world. We can claim to Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Prince Charles of England, and Prince William of England, Helen Keller, Einstein, Jay Leno, Oprah, and many more. I suggest http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/left.html as a great site to find hundreds of famous left-handers.

We are the minority, but strong enough to hold the majority. When my rightie friends think I’m excluding them from the life of a leftie, I tell them I’m not. Righties have excluded themselves over years by excluding us. Lefties have brought the world years of invention, powerful leadership, and entertainment. Any leftie will say they’d rather cut off their right hand than convert to right-handedness. We aren’t bitter, but we’re proud. We observe August 13th as International Left Hander’s Day not because we want to discriminate against righties, but in order to celebrate what being leftie means: To have a history, present, and future of great people in which you share a common trait with that only 6% of today’s population possesses.

By: Madeline Thompson
Age 13"

Like Madeline said, there are a lot of interesting sites out there for lefties. Here's just one, but there are many more; go explore! Finally, hats off to you lefties and enjoy celebrating International Left-Handers' Day!

*Have any special day or event you love? Write about it and send it in.

Peace, friends.

The Risks of "Fitting In"

2007-08-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

Breast enhancements. They are now the most popular of all surgeries (in the U.S.) followed only by liposuction and eyelid surgery. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 329,396 enlargements were performed last year; up 13% from 2005. So why are those numbers scary? Recently, a new study* came out showing that women who got these surgeries were more likely to commit suicide. The study followed 3,527 Swedish women from between 1965 and 1993. (Breast cancer patients who had reconstruction surgery were not included.)

Scientists then documented the women for as long as 29 years after the surgery. At first, the risk of suicide was the same. But from 10 to 19 years after the surgery, the risk jumped to 4.5 times higher and 6 times higher after 20 years. Other studies have shown us that, sadly, many of the women (15%) who get plastic surgery have body dysmorphic disorder. People with this disorder have rarely benefited from enhancement surgery.

Researchers also said alcohol/drug dependence and deaths related to mental disorders increased 3 times. However, some researchers discredit the study, saying that the results aren't appropriate for women today because breast augmentation is more "acceptable now than it was 40 years ago"(L.A. Times). Right. If anything, we have even more pressure to look perfect today. 80% of women in the U.S. are unhappy with the way they look (Love Your Body); so the danger is very real.

It was only last year that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lifted the 14 year ban on silicone-filled implants because there wasn't enough evidence that they were unsafe. Still, the FDA has called for a 10 year study (on 10,000 women who receive the surgery) to look for long-term side effects. Hopefully, they gather enough research to, once again, place a ban on the silicone-filled implants.

What's your opinion on plastic surgery? Is it good or bad? Should women be screened to see if they have body dysmorphic disorder before the surgery? Send in your answers.

*The study was published in the August issue of the Annals of Plastic Surgery.

Peace, friends.

Happy Women's Day!

2007-08-10T11:07:00.000-07:00

Well, belated Women's Day. Yesterday was Women's Day is South Africa, commemorating the day back on August 9, 1956 when more than 20,000 women marched to government buildings in Pretoria. They wrote this petition that protested against the law that required women and men to carry special passes that allowed them to go into "white areas". Today, the holiday is a time to look at current laws objectively and see if they promote women's rights and equality. Yay for women!

Peace, friends.

8-08-08: Olympic Equality

2007-08-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

This time next year, the 2008 Olympics will start in Beijing, China. It was only about 100 years ago that women gained the right to participant in the Olympics. Even then, it was a confused effort and women could only compete in select "leisure" sports. Historically, women have never had as many events as men and they have always had less participants. Last time, in Athens, women made up 40.74% (4306 participants) while men were 59.26 (6262 participants). Those numbers are improving every year, though. (click here to see a chart)

Originally, doctors "argued that because of the amount of energy women expended on reproductive functions, minimal energy was left for physical, psychic or intellectual endeavors." (National Women's History Museum) But soon women were allowed to participate in sports like archery, skating and crochet. By the end of the 18th century, some middle and upper class women were playing sports like tennis and golf. Then in the 1900 games in Paris, women got to compete for the very first time. Because of all the confusion with the Paris World Fair happening at the same time, the first American woman to win an Olympic game (Margaret Abbot) didn't even know it. It was only recently discovered that the golf event was registered as an Olympic game.

Gradually, women were allowed to participant in more and more events like swimming, gymnastics, basketball and skating. At the last Olympics women competed in 26 of the 28 sports and 135 events (about 45% of events). That's a huge improvement from the days when women only had 6 sports and 25 events (1952 games).

Then in the 1980's and 90's women were finally allowed to hold positions on the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic charter. In 1991 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided that if a new Olympic game was introduced there had to be men's and women's events. In 1994 the IOC had a rule that required them to promote women in sports of all levels and "act with a strict application of the principle of equality of men and women.” To help them achieve this standard they formed a "Women and Sport" group to advise their decisions.

For the first time, the Olympic games included wrestling as a women's event in Athens. Now "with the introduction of women’s wrestling, there will be few events at this Olympics in which women are not participating." (National Women's History Museum) It seems now that events and participants are becoming equal for women, the largest hurtle is the countries. In the last Olympics in 2004, 9 countries had absolutely no women athletes. (compared to the 2 countries who had no male athletes). A women's group from Europe called Atlanta Plus, says that gender discrimination is just like racial discrimination and that countries who ban women from the Olympics shouldn't be allowed to participant at all.

Women aren't equal in the Olympic yet, but at the rate we are traveling it won't be much longer. Now we can participant in 26 sports and 135 events, almost every country allows women to compete in the Olympics and gone are the days when doctors thought we had little energy for anything but babies. As the the 2008 Olympics draw near, every woman can look back and be proud at how far we have truly come.

Read about the whole journey and some amazing firsts for women athletes here.

The official website for the Olympics has some interesting facts about the involvement of women.

Statistics regarding gender from the 2004 Athens games.

Facts about women in the Olympics:

In the first Olympic Games in which women competed (Paris 1900) women represented 5 countries - USA, France, Great Britain, Switzerland and Bohemia.

The Games of the New Millennium, the XXVII Olympiad, took place in Sydney between 15th September and 1st October, 2000. There were 28 sports altogether and women took part in 25.

Between 1928 and 1956 the women’s 800 metres was only held once, it was declared unsafe for women and was banned until 1960.

The first woman to light the Olympic flame was Enriqeuta Basilio of Mexico in 1968. The first woman to take the Olympic Oath was Heidi Schuller in Munich, 1972.

British Equestrian, Lorna Johnson, became the oldest female Olympian in 1972 at 70 years.

The first married women competed in the Olympics of 1900.

A 17 year old Dutch swimmer, Wihemina ‘Rie’ Mastenbroek, was the first woman to win 4 Olympic medals. Rie won 3 golds and a silver in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Peace, friends.

Can You Hear the Children?

2007-08-07T12:14:00.000-07:00

It's been four years; four long years for everyone. The war that was only supposed to last a year has dragged on and every soldier that is deployed leaves a gaping hole behind. It's especially hard on the kids who are left trying to make sense of it all. And for more than 1,200 kids, their parents will never come home. "About 39 percent (more than 469,999) of the children of deployed parents are age 1 and under, 33 percent (more than 400,000) are between the ages of 6 and 11, and about 25 percent (more than 300,000) are between the ages of 12 and 18," a Virgina Tech study concluded. Most of the kids in the study (between the ages of 12 and 18) said that they hid their emotion, but “lashed out” at people about things they normally wouldn't have. And while some teens said that their grades were going down because of all the stress they had, other teens actually improved. In another split result, some teens said that the relationship with a home parent got worse, but others claimed they became closer. “…when he’s not there, everything is looser,” said a 13-year-old girl. “Like you know, I’ll do my homework maybe after I eat dinner and stuff. And like maybe I’ll just do things in a little different order when I’m around my mom.” It seems that there isn't just one formula on how the deployment of a parent will affect the family.

However, it was pretty conclusive that the older sibling felt they had to be "the strong one" in the family. In many of the cases they matured quickly and took on more responsibilities. “I was always, always, always the last person to go to sleep,” said Garrett Schlobohm, 17, “I always made sure everything was shut, let the dog out, tried to take care of everybody pretty much. So I think when my dad was gone, I kind of tried to take over his role.”

Now, camps and support groups are springing up virtually everywhere for teens and kids in this situation. If any of you out there have parents in Iraq, it might be a good idea to go to one of these programs just to try it out. Friends and family can be a great resource, but sometimes it's good to have others your age who know what you're going through. For anyone one who has a friend who's parent is in Iraq, try to be understanding. Be the support link and let them know you'll be there; for the good and the bad.

One teen said, “At first when my dad got deployed there was a lot of support … like people calling, people giving us, you know, food and stuff. But then as time went on, it just kind of died down and nobody really cared that he was deployed.” We can't let them forget that we care.

Voices of Children
(While I can write about girls and boys who have parents in Iraq, I have never experienced it. I think they can say it much better than I ever could.)

"I felt really sad when my dad left because I knew that a lot of people had already gotten killed in Iraq," said Sierra Kelley, 11. "I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, he's going to get killed.'”

One 17-year-old boy said, “When my dad left, I stayed separate from the family. I would really keep to myself. …my mom and my sister were constantly crying and stuff so I was always trying to comfort them. And I couldn't show any emotion … because I had to be the strong one.”

“…my mom acts different, too, when my dad’s gone. It’s like she’s not her normal self,” said one 14-year-old boy. “She’s kind of like stressed out and stuff. And her [being] stressed out affects me, too …”

"I don't want to be a daddy because daddies die," said four-year-old Jack Shanaberger.

"Did Dad love his soldiers more than he loved us?"- Richard Marshall, 16.

“(Mom) came to Ramstein to visit me and we went to restaurants, shopping, and just hung out together relaxing,” said Sal Russo, “We cooked, laughed, watched movies, and called family back in the states. She even helped me with a Business writing course I was taking.”

Find out what the Pentagon is now doing for families.

"America’s Military Kids Are Latest Collateral Damage "- an article from the Women's Media Center.

To everyone who's parent(s) has been deployed, just know that we think of you and hope.

Peace, friends.

President of Peace

2007-08-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

Many of you might be familiar with the United Nations; it's the international organization that tries to find peaceful solutions to problems. (Running on a budget less than the New York Police Department!) What you might not know is that currently the General Assembly has a woman leader for the first time since 1969. (There have only be three women G. A. leaders in history.) Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa was appointed to the post by representatives of the United Nations General Assembly. The Presidency is only a one year term starting in September. As September comes, it will not only begin a wonderful new school year (do I hear grumbling?) it will also bring Sheikha's term to a close.
Sheikha was born on October 18, 1952 in Bahrain. She received two degrees; one in Civil Private Law and one in Comparative Law. Then she became one of two woman to first practice law in her country. Now, she has her own law firm called Haya Rashed Al Khalifa Law Firm. She's also been an Ambassador for France, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain and is a Global Advisor to Orphans International. Is she a feminist? Sheikha is an 'active participant in the movement to elevate the position of women in Bahrain'. Yeah, I'd say that qualifies.

So she's the President of what? What is the General Assembly? What does it do? First, the General Assembly has member states. Member states are countries that pay to have a vote in the General Assembly. Currently, there are 192 countries listed as member states. If a country wants to join they have to get 2/3 majority. (Most every other decision is made based on majority vote). Each year the budget is divided among the member states according on their ability to pay. Some countries only have to pay .0001% of the budget. If a country is unable to for two years in a row, they lose the ability to vote. The G. A. is the only part of the U. N. were every member state gets a vote.

So what is the focus of the General Assembly? Basically anything is up for discussion; it could be AIDS or the environment. From September to December (the normal session) they follow the agenda they voted on. Sometimes emergency meetings are called "in the case of an act of aggression". The President will run these meetings as well. (There was only been 9 emergency sessions so far). The President has a growing power and responsibility as the influence of the G.A. grows. They are responsible for moving the agenda forward and getting the member states to agree. They often speak for the Assembly as a whole and give reports. Unless the General Assembly has another emergency meeting, Sheikha's term is over. But she made history as the third woman to hold this high position.

Read more about Sheikha in an interview she gave.

Click here to go to the United Nations website.

Peace, friends.

Math and Makeup?

2007-08-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

"Math Doesn't Suck". Yes, that is the title of Danica McKellar's new book that tries to get girls interested in math. "I thought it (math) was just for nerdy white guys, but it's not...I want to tell girls that cute and dumb isn't as good as cute and smart," said Danica. Oh, boy. While I think the book is getting at something important, does it really need to have "cutesy graphics and teenmagazine staples...syrupy dollops of just-between-us-girls encouragement" (Peg Tyre author of the Newsweek article) to get girls engaged? Girls today are taking as many high-level math courses as boys do. So why do we need to encourage them? Most girls take math because they need as a supplement their career choice. Hardly any girls pursue a "pure math" job, like a mathematician or engineer. "We've gotten girls to take math. We've gotten girls to use math. But we haven't gotten them to love it," explained Patricia Campbell who reviews math and science programs for the National Science Foundation. I can really understand that people want girls to learn to love math, but is this approach really going to reach girls today? Here's a sample problem from the book: "Say you have $50, and you want to buy a fabulous blue sundress that costs $62. Bummer! Not enough money. But wait, there's a sale tag that says it's 1/5 off. Do you have enough money now?". Reality problems are useful and I understand that many girls might like this angle. If it helps them get interested in math, great. However, is it necessary to have inserts like "three miniprofiles of drop-dead-gorgeous mathematicians" (Peg Tyre)? Oh, well. I really hope that this book does help girls get involved with math and see that it's a career worth pursuing.

Peace, friends.

Baking a Difference

2007-08-02T10:31:00.000-07:00

Most of us have had those backyard bake sales, but can you imagine earning $2,855.64? Jennifer Worby, Harly Griffith and Jenna Griffith did. With the help of their parents, the girls cooked and set up a bake sale to raise money for victims of the recent arson fire in MacEwan, Canada. "One lady gave us $200 and she didn't get anything," Jennifer said. Adults in the neighborhood pitched in and directed traffic toward the sale. The inspiration came when their friend lost her bedroom to the fire. "I really felt bad for people who lost their houses," said Jennifer. Other organizations helped too. Victory Christian Centre collected anything from clothes to furniture. The producers of Walking with Dinosaurs- The Live Experience donated 100 new toys. All over people are helping the victims of the $20 million fire. And just three girls made a huge difference in a lot of people's lives. "If kids did this, imagine what the adults would do. We're kind of trying to influence them," Jennifer explained. You go girls!

Read the report about the fire or the article about these amazing girls.

Peace, friends.

One in Three

2007-08-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International recently released a report that showed how indigenous women (in America) are 2 times as likely as other women to be sexually assaulted. So about one in three of indigenous women will be abused in her lifetime. Now, because of the report, the House of Representatives has set aside $1 million to create "a tribal sex offender registry" and $1 million to fund a study about the violence against indigenous women. "This vote is an important step toward justice for Native American and Alaska Native women," said Larry Cox who is the Executive Director of Amnesty's US section, "But more needs to be done."

Lifetime rate of rape/attempted rape for women, according to the Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey:
All: 17.6%
White: 17.7%
Black: 18.8%
Asian/Pacific Islander: 6.8%
American Indian/Alaskan: 34.1%
Mixed Race: 24.4%

I know this isn't the happiest of posts, but I thought it was good to know that the government is at least doing something. You can read the article here.

Peace, friends.

What's in a Name?

2007-08-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

Apparently a lot. A new study claims that if a girl has a more "feminine" name she will be less likely to study math or science after the age of 16. The study tested 1,000 pairs of sisters and found that a girl named 'Alex' was twice as likely to take math or science at a higher level than a girl named 'Elizabeth'. Partly, it is the way people respond to certain names. While there are exceptions, the study said most people will treat 'Isabella' differently than 'Alex'. "Girls with feminine names were often typecast," said David Figlio a professor of economics at the University of Florida (author of the report). Most girls are aware that people tend to assume that boys are better in math and science. "It is a stereotype, and girls with particularly feminine names may feel more pressure to avoid technical subjects," Figlio said. This doesn't mean that girls with more feminine names are any less capable than any other girl; they be just as good.

A big part of the problem, the study claims, is because teachers subconsciously have lower expectations of kids with less 'traditional' names. A teacher in London, Edyta Ballantyne, got a list of names before even meeting the kids and said it was hard not to make a judgement. "I think most people get an image in their head when they hear a name," she said, "If you treat a child differently because of their name, then they will behave differently. That is why the issue for every teacher is to look beyond their name."

Another study finds that if you remind a girl of the stereotype that boys do better in math they will perform badly. "The women start worrying about screwing up which uses up important short term or working memory which could otherwise be used performing the task," said Sian Beilock who is an assistant professor of psychology at the university of Chicago. Sian took two groups of women and told one group that they were being tested to 'see why men generally do better on math than women' and the other was told they were just a part of a math performance experiment. The group who had the stereotype test averaged an 80%; down from their pretest at about 90%. "I thought about how boys are usually better than girls at math so I was trying harder not to make mistakes," said one women who took the stereotyped test.

I must note that the study about girl names has not yet been published officially. You can make your own conclusions about the credibility of the study. Here is another side of the story that was posted on a blog. It should be interesting to see if the study is published and the effects it might have.

(According to the state Department of Education: Girls in grades 3-8 are doing better in math, where their proficiency rate of 73.5 percent edges out the boys’ rate of 71.9 percent.)

If any of you are interested in science and technology (whether your name is Elizabeth or Lauren!) check out this website. It has some links to some good sites, but I didn't check them all (over 100) so just remember that not all its' information could be credible.

Peace, friends.

Intergenerational Feature Story

2007-07-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what it would be like as a girl living in the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s or 70’s ? Well you might be able to find out easier than you think! New Moon is looking for girls to interview their mothers and grandmothers to find out what they did differently growing up! Below you will find some ideas and guidelines for writing the story.

For the January/February 2008 issue of New Moon “Through the Looking Glass (Coming of Age)” issue, we would like to do a feature story called a “Glimpse in the Past”. This feature will be about the things that were different when your grandmother and your mother were growing up. It could cover anything from dating to driving, to crazy fun stories, or more serious topics like what happened when they got their first period. The Girls Editorial Board will pick what stories they would like to see in the issue. This feature should also be in interview form, so you ask a question and they answer it!

You can use these questions as a starting base or to help you organize your interviews:

o Your name, age, where you live/ Your mothers name, age, where she lived at your age/ Your grandmothers name, age, where she lived when she was your age.
o What were the major differences in your mother/grandmother’s lives when they were your age (for example: we have the internet, cell phones, etc.)
o Do they have any crazy/fun stories that they may have done at your age?
o What advice can your mother/grandmother give to girls your age?
o What do you depend on in your life, and how does that differ from what they depended on? (example: you might depend more on email, they might have depended more on letters etc.)
o What would you like to be when you grow up, what does your mother do, and what did your grandmother do for a career?
* Please feel free to make new questions, have fun and make it interesting!!!!
* You should keep the interview around 300 words or so (but don’t worry if it is more!)
* We should receive your interview by August 6th!
* If you have any questions please email me at: editintern@newmoon.org

Hopefully hear from you soon!
Marisa McKie
Editorial Intern
New Moon Publishing
editintern@newmoon.org
218-728-5507, ext: 22

Gendercide: "Honor" Killings in Jordan

2007-07-30T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dua Khalil; stoned to death for being seen with a man from a different religion. Muqadas Bibi and her younger sisters; throats slit by their stepfather after Muqadas leaves her abusive husband. Dalia; stabbed by her father 12 times because she fell in love with a man of a different religion. All of these women were killed in the name of "honor". "Honor" killing means that a woman is killed when she "taints" family honor. When this happens tribal custom dictates that the only way to cleanse the family is to kill her. "90% of the cases that occur are based on just rumour and suspicion. So 90% of the women that are killed are still virgins at the time of death," says Norma Khouri (see * below) who wrote a book to commemorate her friend who was a victim of honor killings.

In Jordan, about 20 to 25 honor killings occur each year; accounting for 1/3 of all violent killings in the country! This number, however, doesn't include all the women who go into hiding or flee their country to escape, fearing for their lives. Currently Jordan's laws protects the killings; "A husband or a close blood relative who kills a woman caught in a situation highly suspicious of adultery will be totally exempt from sentence. (Article 340 of the criminal code)". Even if the relative is charged, they face only 3 months to 2 years in prison. "If you rob a house you get a higher sentence than for killing a woman!" said Mion Nagi a woman journalist from Jordan (picture on the right).

There is a Jordanian Women's Union that was established back in 1945 to assist women and educate them. The 10 branches of the Union focus on teaching women to read and write and also to help them understand their legal rights. Nadia Shamroukh (who runs the Union) said, "You can't separate social, political, and economic issues for women, because we believe women's rights are part of human rights." In recent years the Union's primary focus has been to raise awareness on honor killings. But no one has been more efficient at than the journalist Rana Husseini. Rana was just starting off as a journalist at the Jordan Times when she read about a 16-year-old girl who was shot by her brother. Back in the 90's it was taboo to write about honor killings. Facing public ignorance and the media's silence, Husseini decided to keep writing about the crimes. "I wanted to be their voice," she said. For her work Husseini received the Reebok Human Rights Award. Now most newspapers are reporting on honor killings, domestic violence, child abuse, and sexual abuse. Even the government is now acknowledging that the murders are happening. And while the "official" number of murders is different than those reported by Rana, she says it is a step forward. "At least the government acknowledges the problem," Rana said, "This is an important success, because then you can push them to find solutions."

While I chose to write exclusively on Jordan, it is not the only country that has reported "honor" killings; Brazil, Ecuador, Italy, Sweden, and Britain have also have these killings. The United Nations estimates that, throughout the world, 5 thousand woman are killed annually due to honor killings.

To read more about other countries and their problems with "honor" killings or to find out more about gendercide click here.

*I must make a correction. The book written by Norma Khouri, as I mentioned above, is fraudulent. I would normally just overwrite it, but I'm afraid a lot of people have already read this article. Thanks to the reader to clued me into this fact. You can read an article about the fraud here.

Peace, friends.

We are girls; not adults.

2007-07-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

Teen models. For years the battle to keep them off the catwalk hasn't been successful. But now, London's Fashion Week said that it will not let girls under 16 onto the catwalk. However, they didn't say that 'underweight' models would be banned. Back on July 11 a panel of experts for the Model Health Inquiry set out to investigate health problems in 17 and 18 year old models. "There was also strongly expressed concern that it is profoundly inappropriate that girls under 16 under the age of consent should be portrayed as adult women. The risk of sexualising these children was high and designers could risk charges of sexual exploitation," said Baroness Kingsmill a member of the Model Health Inquiry. The Inquiry board is now calling for more research to be conducted on eating disorder in the young models. They also want a Union to be formed to protect underage models. The British Fashion Council said that it will accept the Inquiry's recommendations in September (the month London Fashion Week is held ) when they are published. While this is definitely good news, will it be enough? Girls have been exploited for so long; trying to fit into an adult profession. A few studies might not have the power to totally prevent young girls from getting on the catwalk, but maybe this little event will snowball into more secure laws protecting these girls.

You can read the full article here.

Click here if you want to learn more about eating disorder misconceptions.

Here are some tidbits I found about models:

In January, a 14-year-old Brazilian girl who dreamt of being a model died, weighing only 38 kilos or about 83 pounds.

A recent study has indicated that 40% of young fashion models have developed an eating disorder.

"So if you're a 14-year-old girl working as a professional model, you can pretty much bet nine out of the 10 jobs you'll go for you'll be rejected. So I don't know if rejection to that extent is something that is very healthy for a girl of that age." - Zoe Edquist, manager of the Australian Fashion Council

Studies have shown that while 25 years ago the average model weighted 8% less than the average American woman, today's model weighs 23% below the national average.

Peace, friends.

Clinton Cleavage? Who cares?

2007-07-25T13:56:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got an email that one of the New Moon staff had sent out and it had this article attached to it. The article (called Hillary Clinton's Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory) was published in the Washington Post; a newspaper I thought was above the cutting remarks it bestowed on Clinton. At this point, it doesn't matter who the article was referring to. I'm not complaining because it's Hilary Clinton; what I am saying is that the things this journalist assumed about women are totally wrong. "Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn't necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease," says Robin Givhan, author of the article. Right. Are you suggesting that all women that wear tanktops have "confidence and physical ease"? It just made me mad that this should even be worth writing; let alone published. Why are we wasting space that could be used for valuable news? "I can’t believe they’re serious about this – it almost feels like the article is a “trap” – just to register how much outrage there is out here. And there is plenty around," Paulette Warren (New Moon's Chief Marketing Officer) wrote.

Apparently, Ms. magazine is calling for action. "...it was reassuring to see how many people are scoffing at this article. Still, that doesn't stop the fact that it made it to publication and that alone means a lot of people along the line have given it tacit approval. It's pretty disgusting," writes Lacey Louwagie (New Moon's Acting Manager Editor) in response. You can take action against the article by 1) sending this email to the editor from Ms. magazine 2) (if you don't like form letters) make your own email and send it to letters@washpost.com or 3) write a letter to the editor at: Letters to the Editor The Washington Post 1150 15 St. NW Washington, DC 20071.

Okay, rant over.

Peace, friends.

Calling All Inventors!

2007-07-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Who likes playing with toys? (Come on, admit it!) Wouldn't it be cool if you invented your own toy? This fall TOYchallenge will be holding it's national (District of Columbia and Canada included) competition where kids from 5th to 8th grade use engineering, design and science to create a new toy or game. You do have to work in a team of 3 to 6 members (50% have to be girls. Very good rule...) and there has to be a team leader over the age of 18. Other than that, your imagination is the limit to what you can create. All the information, like rules and timelines, can be found on their website.

The cool part about this competition? The program is founded by Sally Ride Science. Sally Ride was the first American women in space when she went up with the Challenger STS-7 back in 1983. She is now an advocate for improving science education and getting girls engaged in science. Her website has some awesome resources for any girl interested in space, invention and science. It also has links for science camps and other programs besides the TOYchallenge. Check it out!

Peace, friends.

A Childhood Lost

2007-07-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

I would have probably never read Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi unless my English teacher hadn’t assigned it. (It’s not too often that I wander into the graphic novel section in the library.) Most of the time we fear reading books given to us by teachers. ‘Will I understand it? Will it be drop-dead boring? Will it have gum from the previous user stuck on page 103?’ (Okay, maybe we don’t ALL fear that...) The point is, I hardly expected this book to change my life. But it did. As, I am sure, it will change yours.

It’s a world that is hard for any of us to imagine; growing up in your country as it goes through a revolution. Young Marjane (or, as in the book, Marji) is living in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. Some of us might have learned about the Revolution in school, but most of the time all we hear are the cold-cut, dry facts. That’s perhaps why it was so interesting to peek into a young girl’s life and see what she saw, feel as she felt and learn from her experiences. The Middle East is a complex area of the world where everything seems backwards and it’s hard for anyone who doesn’t live there to comprehend what is considered normal. (Sometimes the story got confusing simply because it was hard keeping up with all the political changes Iran went through. If you get stuck, I suggest rereading that part or asking your parents about the Islamic Revolution.)

The story starts with Marjane when she was 10 years old back in 1980. At first, her 10-year-old-self doesn’t seem to fully grasp what is happening to her country, but, then again, nobody seemed to. Marjane and her friends made jokes about political leaders and invented games to play with their veils. But soon girls and boys were separated into different schools. (“We found ourselves veiled and separated from our friends.” – Marjane) Slowly-but-surely small changes where becoming big changes and the restraints put on the citizens were getting harder to ignore.
Through the book we see her grow from a youthful girl who wanted to be a prophet to a pre-teen that questions if God even exists. She hears of deaths in the media and watches as many of her friends leave the country. To say the least, Marjane is lost; just trying to find a way to keep her head above the water as everything she’s ever known is thrown it doubt.

One time, Marjane sees her parents going out to protest and decides to go with Mehri (a girl that works for her family) to a rally. “We had demonstrated on the very day we shouldn’t have: on “Black Friday.” That day there were so many killed in one of the neighborhoods that a rumor spread that Israeli soldiers were responsible for the slaughter.” – Marjane.

As we read Marjane’s story it is easy to see that she is an activist. She learns to speak her mind (though probably not always to her advantage) and stand up for what she believes is right. And while her views are still forming and moving away from outside influence, she still has a powerful sense of justice. And Marjane goes out and learns on her own; determined to understand the confusing turns her country was taking almost every day. (“Cadaver, cancer, death, murderer...laughter?....I realized then that I didn’t understand anything. I read all the books I could.” – Marjane.) Many of her classmates didn’t have the same reaction as Marjane and simply watched as events way above them took place.

Still, despite her advanced comprehension of what was happening she still took ideas from the media; which was being censored to air only certain views. She, with some of her classmates, heard that a boy named Ramin had a father who “killed a million people”. So it was “my idea to put nails between our fingers like American brass knuckles and to attack Ramin,” Marjane said. Even though Marjane learns how to peacefully demonstrate, she still has moments when her first instinct is to fight. “My blood was boiling. I was ready to defend my country against these Arabs who kept attacking us. I wanted to fight,” Marjane said about the second Arab invasion.

Marjane’s story is riveting and eye-opening. It gives us a glimpse into a life we can’t even imagine unless we’ve lived it. A lot of reviews I’ve read call it short and “...conveys neither the emotional depth of Maus nor the virtuosity of Joe Sacco's journalistic comics." - Joy Press, The Village Voice. Personally, I think that to judge this book against any other is just ridiculous. Maus is powerful in it’s unique way just as Persepolis is when it stands by itself. The depth of Marjane’s emotional journey is truly extraordinary. This book isn’t a light read, and at times it made me cry, but it is “one of the freshest and most original memoirs of our day. (Satrapi’s) is a voice calling out to the rest of us, reminding us to embrace this child’s fervent desire that human dignity reign supreme.” – Los Angeles Times.

In a lot of ways I admire Marjane Satrapi. She grew up during an extremely difficult time in her country and yet was able to take that experience and teach the world. The Revolution very well could have crushed her spirit, but instead it made her stronger and more outspoken. Many of her opinions during the book are naive and childish, but that’s the point; she was a child. She tried to grow up faster because, perhaps, she was hoping that things would make sense as an adult.

I must put a disclaimer on this book. I wouldn’t recommend it for girls under 12 because it does deal with some hard topics like war, torture and questioning faith. For others of you, if you do not like reading about the effects that revolutions have on children, I would stay away. But in my opinion, anyone old enough and who can read, should read this book. If you liked this book I suggest reading Maus by Art Spiegelman (another graphic novel), A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi (I recommend this book for 14 and older; it does deal with more adult issues than the first.)

(Many of you might be wondering about the whole ‘graphic novel’ reference I made in the first paragraph. Yes, Persepolis is a graphic novel, but that is part of it’s power. Marjane was able to take just black and white and create an incredible story. I know some of you won’t like the format no matter what, but I still encourage you to give it a try.)

“...this old and great civilization has been discussed mostly in connection with fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. As an Iranian who has lived more than half of my life in Iran, I know that this image is far from the truth. This is why writing Persepolis was so important to me. I believe that an entire nation should not be judged by the wrongdoings of a few extremists. I also don’t want those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom, who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten. One can forgive but one should never forget.” – Marjane Satrapi

War and revolution; it hurts everyone. It hurts the people who fight in it. It hurts the friends, lovers, and spouses left behind. And it hurts the children; the truly innocent. They are thrust into a world where nothing seems to make sense and the place they call home is no longer safe. That is one casualty of war that is never listed on TV, like the many soldiers who have lost their lives; a childhood lost.

Peace, friends.