So Do We Get That Week Off?

Hattie was just flipping through Sarah's recently purchased yearly planner and came across a slip of paper with some bad news.

"ERRATA:

"Due to a printing error, the dates 24-30 are missing from the January 2010 monthly calendar in this edition of the Barnes & Noble 2010 Desk Diary.

"We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused the reader."

Obviously, they're not sorry enough to let the reader know this fact upfront, before the reader buys the defective thing and starts writing in appointments.

'Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov'

Have you seen the new home of the White House on the Web? It's really slick.

In addition to the sorts of bells and whistles the average citizen would expect to find (bios of past presidents, a place to sign up for e-mail updates), there's a blog. Our government blogs. Unfortunately, the editor in me says, our government also makes typos.

Call me a nitpicker if you must, but I believe that clean copy speaks well of any organization. A shiny new Internet presence should be typo-free, especially considering that the new-and-improved WhiteHouse.gov is the online face of the U.S. Government in general, and the new President Barack Obama administration in particular.

The first gaffe that caught my eye is a small one in the new blog's introduction by Director of New Information for the White House Macon Phillips: "Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:"

Again, call me what you will, but that should either say "center on three priorities" or "circle around three priorities." It's a minor error that would only bother someone like me, but it wasn't the last one I spotted.

A description of the "Executive Office of the President" reads, in part: "To provide the President with the support the he or she needs ... " The he or she?

I found both of the mistakes in just a couple minutes of casual browsing.

Maybe I've set my hopes too high on what the new administration can accomplish. After all, a misapplied phrase here or proofreading hiccup there isn't the end of the Free World, and focusing attention on the recent happenings in, say, Gaza is certainly time best spent. But if there's a director whose whole job is to direct new media, I hope he hires a good copy editor.

(On a related note, check out my Book Typos blog. A recent Barnes and Noble purchase yielded a gold mine of errors.)

This is not an Ostrich

We've taken several trips to Avila Valley Barn with Hattie recently. She loves looking at all of the animals, as do about a thousand other people, most of whom prove that we've come an irreparably long way from our agrarian past here in America.

I can understand, maybe, how people watching the emus call them ostriches. Maybe. But I have to shake my head at the people who call chickens ducks. Maybe these people just can't see or hear very well?

On our most recent trip to the barnyard, I witnessed two boys--maybe 8 or 9 years old--visiting the goat pen.
Boy 1: Look! Baby horses!
Boy 2: No, they're baby donkeys ... (this delivered in a voice thick with an undercurrent of "duh!")
(My wife added that another boy I didn't hear came up and identified the goats as little camels.)

While visiting the emus, I also overheard a mom explaining to her 3-year-old how dinosaurs turned into large, flightless birds and another telling her kid to keep his hands away from the chicken wire: "They'll peck your fingers off." These aren't necessarily comments made in ignorance; they just made me laugh.

I'm generally torn when I visit a place like Avila Valley Barn. I am aware that I am a parent of a young child and a member of the visiting crowd, yet I still find myself frustrated with the parents and the crowds, wishing they weren't out and about like I am--or at least that they would act civilized. Bill Buford writes in Among the Thugs, "The crowd is not us. It never is." I shake my head at the pushing and shoving and inane, shouted comments, but later wonder whether people were shaking their heads at me when I, for example, technically cut in line to buy ice cream with the Rookses. And I hate it when people cut in lines.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I'm an elitist, even though I despise entitlement. Whatever I am, here's a picture of Hattie with a baby horse:

Baby junk food

I have been very proud of the fact that through my entire pregnancy--and the first few months of Hattie's life--we have avoided getting on any mailing lists for baby junk mail. However, a couple of weeks after applying for her birth certificate, when she was 3 1/2 months old, the mail began to arrive (it kind of makes you wonder what the government is doing with your personal information). Yesterday I arrived home to find a large, brightly colored box on my front porch. It was clearly from a formula company. The outside of the box contained the following messages, aimed at families with children 9 to 24 months:

"The fact is: Many toddlers aren't getting adequate nutrition." "He's growing--and so are his nutritional needs. Will milk keep up?" "The fact is, milk lacks some key nutrients toddlers need. Next Step LIPIL gives you a better alternative."

The clear implication to both Ryan and me after reading the outside of the box is that you are depriving your older infant of valuable nutrients by breastfeeding, and only this formula can provide proper nutrition for them.

In my anger and frustration, I opened the box to do some further investigation. Upon reading the fine print of the package insert (and what average person reads the fine print?), I found that the company is actually comparing their formula to cows' milk, not human milk--but at first and second glance you would never know that. The nutrients that this "toddler formula" claims to provide are Vitamin C, iron, Vitamin E, and DHA and ARA--all nutrients that are abundant in breast milk and healthy whole foods. Also, a closer look at the packaging reveals that those nutrients make up less than one percent of the total ingredients.

The ingredient list itself is printed in the tiniest font on the can of formula. It reads as follows (with my comments in parenthesis): nonfat milk (babies need fat for brain development), vegetable oil (probably to add fat), CORN SYRUP (gross!), and 29 other ingredients (yes I counted them) I cannot pronounce. They want people to put this garbage into the body of a baby!

On the package insert, they compare the nutritional content of the formula to several "commonly consumed" toddler foods. These foods were macaroni and cheese and chicken sticks, with nutritional figures that reflect the highly processed and pre-packaged variety. Again I say gross! I'm sure that comparing this formula to anything actually considered real food would leave the formula looking very poor indeed.

The whole thing just made me sad and angry at the state of our world--that something that can hardly be called nutrition is being sent directly to people's front doors and freely marketed as superior to good food choices. There is absolutely nothing that is nutritionally superior to breast milk and healthy solid foods for older infants and toddlers.

The real fact is that breast milk constantly adapts and changes to provide for every nutritional need of a baby from birth through toddlerhood and beyond, as well as provides support for their immune system.

What is worse, this formula costs $23 per can. Breast milk is free.

I suppose the only good thing that resulted from this mysterious package arriving at our door is that Hattie loved playing with the colorful cardboard box (which I can recycle after it has been appropriately chewed and mauled).