Things I find

I've been seriously neglecting this blog, of late.  I take my boards tomorrow though, so hopefully I'll have more to say once that's over with.  In the meantime, some favorites from the past few weeks:

Sunset over Brooklyn

I found this fascinating, largely because I applied for Teach for America during my senior year at Smith, and made it through several rounds of interviews before being cut.  I felt a little dejected and snubbed, but found something else to do.  Looking back, I am so, so glad that I didn't get accepted - here's why (and here, too).

Birth is expensive.  During my pediatric rotation, I spoke with a family who had just received their hospital bill for the birth of their second child.  They had insurance, and they were shocked at the price tag on her epidural, in particular (I think it was around $10,000).  They asked me why it wasn't covered and I told them probably because it's an elective procedure.  The mom looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Well, what was I going to do, have the kid in my living room?"  I smiled angelically and suggested she consider that with her next child before giving her the name of the Connecticut home birth midwives' group (who charge around $4,500 flat fee for all your prenatal, birth, and postnatal care).

I liked this piece about - as a woman - being your own story, not just the supporting character in somebody else's.

Grandmothers cooking - and some beautiful photographs of food and women and kitchens.

Lots of people I know are obsessed with Netflix's new show, Orange is the New Black.  Several of these friends then ask if I'm watching it, knowing that I went to Smith (the alma mater of the series' protagonist, Piper Kerman, who wrote the autobiography on which the show is based).  I am not, and here's a pretty good explanation of why.  [Full disclosure: I tried to read the book a few years ago, and the author rubbed me the wrong way.  Probably because my best friend in college volunteered in a prison, did a Fulbright looking at prison systems around the world, and is now getting her PhD in sociology at Berkeley focusing on this same topic.  Suffice to say, I was better educated in the idea of prison reform and our country's messed up system than would have allowed me to tolerate Kerman's self-congratulatory and blatantly racist memoir.]

Expecting a lot of new mothers is something the US is particularly good at.  What if we looked at how everyone else in the world did things?