Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (and a regular series) where you can hang out, talk about what is going on with you, listen to music, talk about the news and the goings on here and everywhere.
Maybe you have seen some news stories that you think are not receiving enough attention and you'd like to post links to them. Maybe you'd like to just chat among friends about your life, your health, your family or social circle, your pets, etc. You can also post links to your own writings here on dkos or elsewhere. Perhaps you want to share some pictures or music or links to other things. This is your kind of place to talk about what's happening.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. If that is what you want, find another place to do it. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact. This diary series is produced by the TeamDFH group but anyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is welcome.
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Haida totem pole, mother and child, Thunderbird Park, Victoria BC Canada
Parental Doubt
Doubt, parental doubt
Is a heavy sort of thing
To carry about.
Did you realise this
When you became pregnant,
My pretty miss?
That thrity years on
You might have a
Reproachful son,
Begun in love
But now saying 'Mother Mother
What were you thinking of?'
Do you realise, my dear,
Ecstatically knitting booties
That whatever you do you won't be able to please:
Your daughter says, 'Damn you, it's all your fault, my neurosis!
'You shouldn't have left me then
I'm all screwed up
I have to be mean to my man.'
Or even, 'You did too well!
Our childhood was one long paradise
Your glittering world turns out to be all lies:
Why didn't you give us a healthy taste of hell?'
Forty years on from there
When you see them puff and slip on the dangerous stair
Trying to get up and on
Will you be too old to care
If they now say, 'Mother Mother
We know what it's all about.
How did you cope with your parental doubt?'
What a bitch Dame Nature is,
My pretty miss,
Lucky you procreate in ignorant bliss.
Elizabeth Smart, Canadian author, from her book BONUS.
Elizabeth Smart was a single-mother of four children
News
Child soldiers in Libya, their mothers pack them a lunch and their fathers buy them uniforms and then the teenagers volunteer to join the rebels
Child Soldiers in Libya
Ahmed Abdelrahmin is 15, but he is small for his age and his voice hasn’t changed. On Sunday, he sat patiently in the yard of a former high school in the east Libyan city of Tobruk as a Qatari instructor showed how to dismantle and clean a 50 mm anti-aircraft gun. Then he practised operating a battlefield radio set. In between, there was lots of marching.
Meet the arrogant Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper
Harper’s ‘arrogance’ will come back to haunt him, opposition says
Opposition MPs fired back at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s weekend display of triumphalism, saying the Prime Minister is displaying a hubris that will come back to haunt him.
In an address to supporters during the opening weekend of the Calgary Stampede, Mr. Harper said the era of Canadian Liberal dominance is over and the New Democrats’ strong support in Quebec will be fleeting.
Corn is in the news, and I don't mean corn for ethanol. UPDATED, although this article is from February 2011, the battle to preserve native corn from Monsanto's genetically modified corn continues. Mexican corn farmers have been fighting to protect their native product for thirteen years and it is not yet resolved.
Mexico Cradle of Corn, Where Native Corn is in Peril
GUELATAO, Mexico — Yank the husks off ears of corn grown in the mountains of southern Mexico, and you may find kernels that are red, yellow, white, blue, black or even variegated.
It's only one measure of the diversity of the 60 or so native varieties of corn in Mexico. Another is the unusual adaptation of some varieties to drought, high heat, altitude or strong winds.
Update from June 30, 2011:
UN Calls for Ban on Genetically Modified Corn
Update from July 12, 2011
Two Mexican States Ban GM Corn
Joni Mitchell sings about her baby daughter
Joni Mitchell finds her daughter