NavigationSyndicate Recent FeaturesCheck out all of our amazing and thought-provoking articles, essays and stories in the Features section! click for more.... |
news aggregatorCelebrate 15 Years of Hip Mama and Meet the New EditorAfter 15 years, Hip Mama is getting a new editor! The Spring '08 issue--the one I'm working on right now--is the last issue of print zine the Hip Mama I'll edit. I plan to stay on as Yo Mama & a consulting editor, but I'm passing the reigns to the amazing Kerlin Richter, a writer/editor, visual artist mama, and theology student. Kerlin will of course bring her own vibe & vision to Hip Mama--and maybe even get back to putting it out 4 times a year--but the "mission" stays the same. Hip Mama is a feminist, pro-choice, reader-written zine for progressive families. Yes indeed. The post office box is the same (P.O. Box 12525, Portland, OR, 97212), but the new email address, as of the next issue, is hipmamazine at gmail dot com The online version of Hip Mama is still published by Bee Lavender and all contact and submissions information remains the same. Also... MOTHER'S DAY PARTY & VARIETY SHOW IN PORTLAND! ADS FOR THE SPRING ISSUE SUBMISSIONS Onward with love, Lucky 13: Punk Parent Questions for Jessica Mills by China MartensEditor's note: China Martens is the author of The Future Generation: Zine-book for Subculture Parents, Kids, Friends & Others (Atomic Book Company, March 2007). Jessica Mills is the author of My Mother Wears Combat Boots (AK PRESS, November 2007). They're both great books, go check them out! Jessica Mills is a partnered mother of two children, ages 7 and 1. She is also an activist, artist, a touring musician (who plays saxophone with Citizen Fish), and a first time book author. I've been reading her column of the same name in Maximumrocknroll (MRR) for years. We've traded zines, emails, and crossed virtual paths as "mama-writers" (although not in person yet, but will soon!). In 2007, both of us came out with our first books on independent, small presses. I called her on the phone to chat about the process of becoming a first time author. We come from the same background (zines, mutual aid and DIY community) and so it was really cool to talk with her; after we had gotten our book deals, we also shared the overwhelming fear at a certain point that we were not up to this opportunity. In Jessica's case, she told herself "don't be a foolish loser – this is your dream, take it." For me, I leaned on the support of writer-mama and radical-librarian friends, which helped me through the terror of the process of writing a book, which had always been my dream as well. We have our differences, too: I'm a single mother and she isn't; "Daddy 'Nesto," as their two daughters call him, gave Jessica a lot of support and encouragement for which she is very thankful. Also, instead of having an 18-year-old daughter, like I had, who encouraged me and left me alone to work on my book, Jessica had to write this book with a new baby! --read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahooThe Family Bed: A Story In Generations by Abigail DotsonIf I had been born at home, surely it would have been into a family bed. As it was, my parents brought me home from the hospital, where I was promptly given a place aside my mother in the bed which slept us all: mom, dad, my brother and I. I nursed until I was nearly four, when the arrival of a younger sibling forced shared privileges. I was not, as a rule, thrilled with anything that wasn’t mine alone and so gave up the breast and my place between my parents for slightly more independence on the outskirts of our small country. I slept on the edge (had my parents been a bit more intuitive, they may have recognized this as foreshadowing, and thus been more fully prepared for the journey of parenting a true Sagittarian daughter). By that time, the eldest Dotson child had moved on and now slept in a wood framed bunk bed hand crafted by our father. In a family of five, he was the only to sleep solo. This left me as the senior child in the family bed, a title that lent me a certain amount of privilege, and these are the days I remember most when I think back to the last time I slept in the same bed with someone under the age of two. --read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahoo"Rockin out" During Nap Time by Shawnee Shahroody SpitlerThey are down. I tiptoe past their doors barely breathing, listening for a sound. Please save your applause, my two boys (3 months old and 2 years old) are sound asleep AND at the same time, no less. With extra bounce, called glee, relief, freedom call it what you like, I fly down the stairs open the front door and place my note on the doorbell. "Please do not ring or knock, babies sleeping, thanks!" Really it says, you touch that f*&%$!g door or bell and I will mow you down. Do not disturb the sacred naptime. Don't you dare. The high sets in and I am giddy with options, I could call my best friend, email, pay bills, spend an hour on the phone with the health insurance representative, work out on the Stairmaster, do sit ups, drink gallons of coffee and eat cookies, read, write, sleep, sit on the couch and stare out the window, laundry, watch DVDs, cry, pluck my eyebrows, paint my toes, pumice down the calluses on the bottom of my feet, clean every messy, disorganized drawer, shelf, and closet in my house that grates on my nerves, I could paint walls, caulk around the sink, and sweep the floor. I could clean toilets with a vengeance! I could do any of these things, but I don't. I plug my headset into my ears and turn up the iPod, really loud, so loud I can feel KT Tunstall pulsing in my chest and am assured I am killing the eardrums and bringing early on set of senior citizen deafness. My husband would say it's too late. "Huh, what did you say, honey?" " I feel like walking the world, you can tell she is a beautiful girl, beautiful girl…" "Suddenly I see, this is what I want to be, suddenly I see, suddenly I see, why the hell this means so much to me..." --read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahooThe Teenager Formerly Known as Me: Or How Baby Got His Groove On by Cheryl Dumesnil"You'll never guess what Jess' dad offered me." Through the phone, I heard the freeway rushing past Tracie's open car window, warbling the sound of her voice. "What?" I asked, sitting on the edge of our bed, short of breath from rushing my seven-and-a-half-months pregnant self down the hall to answer the call. "Tickets to the Prince concert." "What?! No F-ing way." My wife, Tracie, works with children with autism. Occasionally the grateful parents of one of her clients will bestow upon her an unexpected gift. Well, this time her client Jess had scored an appointment with an impossible-to-see specialist in Chicago on the same day that his parents had tickets to see Prince in Oakland. The little boy's dad called to see if Tracie would be interested in the tickets.--read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahooWitch Hunts by Julie BrillFirst Ricky Lake made a movie, the Business of Being Born, inspired by her own homebirth and actor John C. McGinley (Scrubs) and his wife Nichole had a baby at home and People magazine wrote a nice blurb about it. Then ACOG (the American College of Obs and Gyns) felt so threatened they issued a press release reiterating their "long-standing opposition to home births" in which they state: "Childbirth decisions should not be dictated or influenced by what's fashionable, trendy, or the latest cause célèbre. Despite the rosy picture painted by home birth advocates, a seemingly normal labor and delivery can quickly become life threatening for both the mother and baby." Apparently childbirth decisions should only be influenced by celebrities choosing planned cesareans, despite that being a much riskier option.--read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahooThe End of Something by Debra Monte-WetzelFallen leaves Sunshine strong in And This Unto You by Abigail DotsonMy mom says I was born tense. Tense and intense. When she tells the story of how I was born, amidst the drama and gesticulation, I feel a little sad to know that I am this child she speaks of. When she talks about the way she could hear me screaming day and night in the nursery just a few doors down, and of her helplessness in coming to my rescue, I feel the aftermath both of her helplessness and of my own. It's a feeling I can't seem to shake. When my incessant wailing finally subsided and my parents were able to hold me, as my mom goes on to tell the story, I still could not calm my nervous body; She speaks of the way I would never relax, how even in sleep she would watch me and my curled toes and clenched fists. And I have this vision of my young mother's eyes, peering in on her sleeping infant the way I imagine every parent does. The way I have watched my own daughter sleepily after midnight feedings when my eyes won't close again. And I think of the way my mother must have viewed me, that as she watched me sleep, she must have cried for so much love...--read more >> Bookmark/Search this post with: delicious | digg | reddit | google | yahooThe Unknown SoldiersThe reality of the suffering in Iraq has been rendered invisible by media hype and partisan battle. One doctor, who has treated some of the thousands, speaks about the war wounded.
Mother Lode"My son is involved in a deadly situation that should never have been."
Excellence in Failure or Education for All?One enforces standardized tests, the other promises a federal trust fund; one pushes shame, the other promotes equality. Contrast and compare the Bush and Kerry approaches to education in America.
Poetry Far from HomeThe Translation Project seeks to track the rich tradition of Persian poetry in the Diaspora since the 1979 revolution, now that so many Iranians reside outside of their home country.
Personal Voices: Staying up Late to Vote EarlyNew voters hold their ground and stake their tents at Camp Out for Change, an event to mark the first day of early voting in Florida.
Annalee Newitz: Wiretap This!A setback for all the spies of the world, the CryptoPhone's entire operating system has been hardened against wiretappers.
Jim Hightower: Who Needs American Workers?Instead, you, too, could become an "American accent and culture trainer."
Arianna Huffington: Will Bush Spark a Seismic Youthquake?All indications point to a radical turnaround in young voter turnout in the coming election – a turnaround fueled by a force more powerful than all the electoral hurdles placed in young people's way.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: Good, Bad and Ugly in Bush's Civil Rights RecordBut do the good outweigh the bad and ugly?
DrugReporter: Ice Ain't Nice: A Cautionary Drug TaleIs ice, a highly refined form of methamphetamine, really as bad a problem in the Midwest as recent reports say? One thing is for sure: the stuff is hard to shake once you start.
Election 2004: Will Bush Spark a Seismic Youthquake?All indications point to a radical turnaround in young voter turnout in the coming election – a turnaround fueled by a force more powerful than all the electoral hurdles placed in young people's way.
MediaCulture: The Adolescent Mind of WashingtonienneAs author of the famed blog Washingtonienne, Jessica Cutler gleefully published the sexual secrets of people she purports to care – and it's this, not her libido, that should incur our eye-rolling.
|