Uhmmm, no, I think I'll stay home today

It was wet and slushy when I drove home last night, but stopped shortly after I got home. Then, this morning I woke up to snow, more snow, lots more. It sounds like we're getting at least a foot of snow out of this storm so, yes, I think I'll stay home today. Mostly because I hate brushing snow off my car.

So, instead of a needed trek to WalMart, I'm camping out in the kitchen today.

First, I boiled and pureed some potatoes. They will be used for potato bread, and there's enough for two batches.

Then, I cut two big butternut squash (squashes?) in half and those are baking. Those golden beauties will become soup at some point in the next few weeks.

Now, I have a batch of bread raising. Today's experiment is Whole Wheat Walnut and Molasses bread.

When the bread is in the oven, I'll start on the wild rice pilaf.

And, of course, it's time for another batch of breakfast beans. But, since I didn't get out to the little Mediterranean grocery today, I'm making do with Pintos.

Finally, I think I'm going to call the neighbors and see if their son will snow blow our sidewalks. I'm going to be knackered by the time I get all that done!

We need each other

Sometimes the truth pops out in the most unexpected places. I have killed my television, or rather I have disconnected the digital converter box and resorted to watching videos (when I bother to watch anything at all).

Recently I was enjoying a sort of retrospective of the Funny Ladies of British Comedy. The hostess was Penelope Keith, an actress I always enjoy. In between clips, she said this,

In the end, the plain fact is that men and women need each other. And couples take that scary plunge into married life on a daily basis.

Oh. In the middle of making fun of husbands and wives, some of it very good and pointed comedy, there sat this little gem of truth.

Yes, we need each other.

The New Sex Trafficking

Over the next several months I will write a series of posts on what I have come to call the "New Sex Trafficking". I hope everyone here is familiar with sex trafficking/white slavery where women and girls (largely, though not exclusively) are abducted or manipulated into a situation where they must earn their keep, but never their freedom, as sex workers.

This new form of sex trafficking is something women more often walk into of their own free will. They ask for it, even demand it. Even though it is a form of prostitution (selling their bodies for another's pleasure), they willingly embrace it for the monetary rewards.

This new sex trafficking is found in those practices which use a woman's body, or parts thereof, for another's profit or pleasure. "Womb rental" is sex trafficking. Egg donation is sex trafficking. These are practices which objectify women, in ways similar to pornography and prostitution. She is reduced to her usefulness to others, an object or a provider of a good or service and not a subject or a person of worth in her own right.

There will be much more coming, but for now let me leave you with just a few resources:

The Body Shop

I include the Body Shop, even though it's campaign is focused primary on traditional sex trafficking, because of the warm reception I received at my local store when I explained about the newer forms of sex trafficking (such as those I will be writing of here). You can use opportunities like this, when you shop at these stores and buy the campaign products, to open up conversations about these other forms of trafficking.

The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network

Jennifer Lahl and the CBC do stellar work in this area. Here you can read some of their articles and find links to other resources.

Lines that Divide

This is the CBCs film about stem cell research. It exposes all the dirty little secrets surrounding the ESC-hype.