Friday, August 25, 2017

A dad called out this 'moms only' parking spot in a brilliant tweet.


Justin Simard just wanted to pop in to the grocery store with his newborn son when he found himself in the middle of a parking spot conundrum.

After excitedly pulling into what he thought was a primo parking spot, he noticed a bright pink sign declaring it for "expecting mothers" and "mothers with small children" only.

The veteran dad only had one question for Sobeys, the Canadian grocery chain that had placed the sign there: Uh ... what gives?

While closer parking spots for moms with young children are a thoughtful gesture, they leave out a pretty important group of people: dads.

"The wording of the sign bothered me," he told The Huffington Post. "What about single fathers? What about same sex couples? It occurred to me that the sign could be more inclusive.”

Simard's Tweet struck a nerve, quickly racking up over 100 retweets and even getting the attention of Sobeys' marketing team. The brand quickly issued a clarification and offered to change the wording of the sign.

Simard, who included the hashtag #NotABabysitter in his original tweet, wasn't trying to be snarky: The age-old idea that parenting is a women's job hurts, well, everyone.

The National At-Home Dad Network estimates the number of stay at home dads in the United States is approaching 2 million, meaning it's far from rare for a dad to be the primary caregiver. It shouldn't be considered a rarity for any dad to bring his baby or toddler along while he does the grocery shopping or runs errands.

This way of thinking pigeonholes women into caregiving roles and lowers the bar for men who become fathers, to the point where they can be celebrated for something as simple as being in their child's life at all, or find themselves praised for "babysitting" the kids, when what they're actually doing is parenting them.

Attitudes on traditional parenting roles are slowly changing for the better. More and more men's restrooms are required to have changing tables inside, and better paternity leave options for men seem to be gaining support around the country (though we have a long way to go).

And then there's this:

Within a few days, Simard's local Sobeys had updated that specific sign, along with a promise to look into changing the signs at all of their locations.

It says a lot that people are paying attention to issues like this one, and taking dads seriously as caregivers. It'd be better if Sobeys didn't need to be asked to change their sign, but Simard says he doesn't hold it against them.

"I’m sure that Sobeys meant their signage to be inclusive of all caregivers in the first place, regardless of gender, cis or trans, sexual orientation, or however it is they came to be the guardian of a small child or infant," he explains over Twitter. "Their willingness and action to change it so quickly really speaks to that."

"Thoughtless sexism," he calls it. It's not meant to hurt anyone, but it needs to be called out and addressed all the same.




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How dogs and drones are slashing rescue times in the wake of natural disaster.

Well, this is incredibly cool.


An unlikely dynamic duo is changing the game for Swiss rescue operations needing to move quickly after natural disasters.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.

Dogs...

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.

...and drones.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.

The Swiss Federation of Civil Drones has partnered with the Swiss Association for Search and Rescue Dogs (REDOG) to complete a handful of missions — including one this week.

On Aug. 23, 2017, journalists at a press event were being shown how the dogs and drones work together during a rescue exercise on a grassy plain outside Zurich, when, incredibly, an actual landslide occurred in the Swiss Alps near the Italian border.

Drones and dogs were among the resources deployed to the region — a popular area for hikers.

As of this writing, eight people — from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland — were still missing following the landslide that rocked the remote village of Bondo, CNN reported.

The tragic event — which forced an estimated four million cubic meters of mud and rock plummeting down the side of the Piz Cengalo mountain in southeastern Switzerland, the BBC reported — illustrates how vital it is to have resources like trained dogs and drone technology at the organizations' disposal.

Both organizations aim to eventually have drones complement the dogs' work on every rescue event.

“This allows us to have an eye in the air and a nose on the ground,” REDOG president Romaine Kuonen told AFP.

In the wake of natural disasters, drones are particularly helpful at scanning areas unsafe for people (and dogs) to venture, such as the dangerous terrain surrounding cliffs. At the same time, dogs are especially handy at sniffing out those who need rescuing in heavily wooded areas, where operating drones can be difficult.

Allowing dogs and drones to, in a sense, divide and conquer larger areas in the precious hours following a natural disaster — where rescue teams are racing against the clock to save lives, as they did in the wake of the Swiss avalanche — is truly changing the game.

Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images.

“The main benefit is to gain more time, to be more efficient and to be faster to find the missing person,” Dominique Peter of the Swiss Federation of Civil Drones explained to AFP.

Stay up to speed on the news unfolding in Bondo, and learn more about Swiss efforts to combine dogs and drones to save lives in a video by AFP below:




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Sen. Tammy Duckworth takes Trump to task over his trans military ban.

The Purple Heart recipient isn't messing around.


Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) knows a thing or two about the military.

In 2004, while enrolled with the Illinois Army National Guard's Reserve Officers' Training Corps, Duckworth was called up and deployed to Iraq. She participated in a number of combat missions as the pilot of a Blackhawk helicopter before being shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade. As a result, she lost both legs and partial use of her right arm.

After recovering, she put her focus into Veterans Affairs activism, eventually landing the title of assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In 2012, she ran for Congress and won. In 2016, she ran for Senate and won.

This photo from 2010 shows Duckworth when she was assistant secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images.

When Donald Trump, a man who received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, attacked transgender service members, Duckworth responded as only she could: from experience.

With reports circulating that the trans military ban, first announced via tweet in July, is making its way through official channels and inching closer to becoming reality, Duckworth shared a blistering note on Facebook about unit cohesion, trust, and national security.

When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn’t care if the American troops...

Posted by Senator Tammy Duckworth on Thursday, August 24, 2017

"When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn’t care if the American troops risking their lives to help save me were gay, straight, transgender, black, white or brown," she wrote. "All that mattered was they didn't leave me behind."

"If you are willing to risk your life for our country and you can do the job, you should be able to serve — no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation. Anything else is not just discriminatory, it is disruptive to our military and it is counterproductive to our national security."

Perhaps a war hero like Duckworth can get through to Trump.

So far it hasn't been enough for him that the Department of Defense commissioned a 112-page report on the effects of allowing trans people in the military, finding that there weren't any financial or medical reasons to ban them.

Maybe there's hope that the voices of actual trans people who have served in the military might sway the president's mind or that he can be convinced by his own words, which extolled the virtues of the military's "shared sense of purpose" that transcended our differences, adding, "All service members are brother and sisters."

Duckworth speaks at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images.

If all that fails, however, Duckworth is prepared to push for legislation that takes this decision out of his hands.

"If the President enacts this ban, which would harm our military readiness, the Democratic and Republican Members of Congress who oppose this discrimination must enact legislation that prevents it from taking effect," she says at the close of her statement."

There's no telling whether such a bill would have a shot of making it through Congress and avoiding a veto, but there's hope. After all, a surprising collection of otherwise conservative lawmakers stepped forward to criticize Trump's ban the day he tweeted it out. They may soon have the opportunity to take it beyond simple words and show their support through action.




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The story behind the viral family portraits shot on a former plantation.


It was supposed to be a simple family photo shoot. And to the untrained eye, it was.

The Mayo family: two adoring parents laughing and smiling with their sweet son and cheerful daughter in a cool, relaxing forest down in Louisiana. Their light and joy is palpable. But a closer look — and a refresher on American history — reveals that  these family portraits were anything but ordinary.

That's because this family had their portraits taken at the Tezcuco Plantation, which burned to the ground in 2002.

Photo by Katherine Lea, used with permission.

The woman behind the powerful portraits is photographer Katherine Lea, a Louisiana native.

The Mayo family hoped to have their family portraits taken at a plantation to show respect for their ancestral journey.

Lea, who is also known as scottie., scouted a different plantation home for the shoot, but when she arrived that day, there was a large crowd attending an event. Thinking on her feet, Lea drove down the road and discovered Tezcuco, a plantation built by slaves between 1855 and 1860. The home there was on National Register of historic places and briefly housed an African-American museum until it was destroyed by a fire in 2002.

Lea was unsure if Mayo would go for it, as not everyone wants to hold a family portrait session among literal ruins. (Not to mention, the site was private property, so the shoot required a little trespassing.) But once Mayo saw the site, she was all in.

"When we saw that the plantation had been burned to the ground, we knew that we were in the perfect place," Mayo writes in an email. "I truly believe that fate landed us there for a specific reason."

Photo by Katherine Lea, used with permission.

Though this wasn't Lea or Mayo's first time on plantation grounds, it was no less emotional.

Even for someone who grew up in Louisiana, Lea described her session at Tuzuco as an odd and overwhelming experience. "There's so much history and so much blood that was shed on plantation grounds," she says. "They stand for something that we would all like to actually heal from, and not just hide in the closet."

The experience stirred Mayo to her core as well. While her children are too young to know the horrors of slavery or the history of the site, Mayo felt a shift in them too. "It's always eerie and a heaviness washes over me. Not even my babies were their usual energetic selves," she writes.

Photo by Katherine Lea, used with permission.

Despite the eerie mood, the care and affection the Mayo family has for one another shone through and brightened the darkness of this horrific place.

"It was really hard to think about all of the — negative history that was associated with plantations because it was love. It was just all love," Lea says.

Mayo hopes the photographs start a much-needed dialogue about race and the parts of our shared history that few want to address.

"I wanted people to walk into our home, look at these photos, and feel compelled to have that conversation that so many people usually try to avoid."

Photo by Katherine Lea, used with permission.

After the shoot, Lea shared the photos on Twitter, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

While the photos weren't taken to make an explicit political statement, Lea posted them in response to the hateful rhetoric and violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"We've got to remember that there's love in us, even if there's hate everywhere else," she says.

Mayo is glad the photos are inspiring conservations on race and slavery that many try to avoid.

"There is still so much oppression to overcome. Let these images be a testament to the fact that the oppressed can and WILL prevail."




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A mom's sweet photo of her daughter and her 'Bonus Mommy' is giving people hope.


You know that oft-cited "stat" about how half of marriages end in divorce, and it's only getting worse?

Well here's the good news: It's not totally true! Divorce rates are actually falling among younger generations in the United States for a number of reasons, including people waiting a little longer until they're sure they want to tie the knot.

Now here's the bad news: The divorce rate is still somewhere between a half and a third, which means — when kids are involved — there are still an awful lot of "blended families" out there.

We tend to think of a divorce as an emotional process filled with rage and resentment, but it's not always that simple. Most parents would agree that they want to do whatever is best for their children. And in a lot of cases when divorce is involved, that means continuing to work together with their ex-partner, even once the marriage itself is over.

Easy? Definitely not. Impossible? Not necessarily.

Mom Hayley Booth recently shared her own blended family story on Facebook and introduced the name she uses for her ex's new wife, Dakota: She's her daughter's "bonus mommy."

Often times I have people ask me how my ex, his wife, my husband and I co-parent so flawlessly. My answer is always...

Posted by Hayley Booth on Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Booth's photo, which shows the two women walking their daughter down the hall on her first day of school, makes it clear that the exes and new partners in this family get along.

But how do they do it?

"My answer is always the same — We just love our daughter," she writes. "Seriously, it's just that simple."

During Booth's divorce, "It was hard to see past [the anger]," she explains in a Facebook message.

With time and communication, however, came healing.

"Believe it or not, we talked through our problems. We did what adults are supposed to do," she says. "[I realized Dakota] wasn't trying to replace me at all. She was just trying to love my little girl the best she could. And that helped me see past all of it."

Most research shows that divorce doesn't necessarily mean poor long-term outcomes for kids, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take hard work and a lot of love from everyone involved to make that a reality.

The whole blended family. Photo by Stardust Studio, used with permission.

Booth says thousands of parents have written to her since her story went viral, some applauding her for sharing, others desperate for advice on how to make their own complicated arrangement work. She admits that it can't always work, that sometimes there might be too much pain to overcome.

She hopes her story and her friendship with her daughter's Bonus Mommy can help some people in their own lives.

"I really hope it's reaching the right people," she says.




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Thursday, August 24, 2017

A new wellness app aims to reclaim the concept of self-care.

A look at the story behind Aloe.


Long hours and a high-stress work environment took a toll on Amber Discko, a Brooklyn-based digital strategist.

Discko spent most of summer and fall 2016 working on Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Work consumed her life, and as a result, her own self-care took a nasty hit. To help her remember to take breaks from work to do things like drink water, take her vitamins, and brush her teeth, she looked to reminder accounts on Twitter.

After the election, she built Aloe, a customizable web check-in as a way to hold herself accountable. After Inauguration Day, she shared it with the world.

Discko takes a photo with a Hillary Clinton cardboard cutout during the 2016 campaign. Photo courtesy of Amber Discko.

Following some majorly positive feedback, Discko set out to turn Aloe into a full-blown iPhone app.

Hoping to crowdsource the $40,000 necessary to build and release the app, Discko launched a Kickstarter campaign on Aug. 1 (full disclosure: I backed the project with a small donation).

OK, but who forgets to to do essential things like eating or taking medicine? A lot of people, actually.

Each year, millions of Americans forget to take prescribed medications. Even when the consequences are serious (possibly even life-threatening), these things happen. The same thing can go for other essential functions like brushing your teeth, showering, eating, drinking water, and more.

A lot of the imagery used on the Aloe site and in the app is garden-themed. This is meant to highlight the importance of tending to ourselves like we would a garden. Image from Aloe/Kickstarter.

So let's be real: we can all sometimes use a little reminder. Wearable fitness trackers send alerts informing users it's time to stand, and there's no shortage of time management and reminder apps scattered throughout the App Store. Aloe just takes that very familiar concept and gives it a fresh spin packaged with a bit of positivity.

One big difference between Aloe and similar reminder apps and alarms is the gentle approach it takes to its alerts. Rather than an in-your-face, shame-inducing alarm, Aloe simply encourages users to check in with themselves and their needs. While there, they can jot down some notes or do a little journaling right in the app.

The Aloe Twitter account offers occasional reminders to followers, and the app is essentially a customizable version of that.

"Self-care is about reflection," Discko says about Aloe's goal of making it easier for people to focus on themselves in a chaotic world.

For some people, self-care is synonymous with shirking your responsibilities. Discko hopes Aloe can help reassert and reclaim the true, very literal version of the term. "By putting something out there to redefine the word, we're making it normal for people to actually take care of themselves instead of feeling the guilt and the shame of not doing it," she says.

So yeah, maybe self-care, for some, is as simple as remembering to brush their teeth, take their medications, and eat. If it takes a little nudge from an upbeat little app to remember those things, that's what Aloe is here for.

If all goes according to plan and Discko reaches her Kickstarter goal, Aloe will be available in early 2018 on iOS and hopefully soon after on Android.




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'This shelf is rather boring': Store pulls off clever stunt in support of diversity.

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