Cryo Kid

I'm really disturbed by the public outrage being dumped on the hapless mother of octuplets who had the temerity to bring 14 babies into the world. At this writing, all the facts are not in, and much of the information being bandied about in the media concerning in vitro fertilization is uninformed.
First of all, some cultures, particularly in Middle Eastern countries, believe large families are a good thing. My own grandparents, immigrants to Canada from Russia, had eight children. As was common in those days, two of them died in infancy. That was one of the reasons people had large families then — so that some of the children would survive. Certainly in Quebec, where I was born (one of only two children, both of us depression babies), the Catholic Church endorsed large families. Many rural families had a dozen or more children (they needed the help on the farms). So did orthodox Jews. We more secular, urban types, with smaller families, called them "stepladder children" with considerable derision, I admit.
Secondly, apparently this current mother of seven existing children wanted one more child and did not anticipate the implanted embryos splitting, if that is indeed what happened. As a mother of naturally conceived identical twins myself, I am definitely aware that a fertilized egg can split all by itself (an electrical storm?). My twins are in their forties now.
Thirdly, as a mother whose daughter who had embryos implanted in assisted reproduction proceedings, I know that not all embryos implant. True, a larger number of embryos may be implanted in a woman who is 44, as my daughter was when her embryos were inserted, than in a woman who is only in her 30s. In my daughter's case, the first time she underwent in vitro proceedings (after 9 earlier unsuccessful attempts at artificial insemination with fertility treatments), she produced 20 eggs through hyperstimulation of the ovaries, only 13 of which were considered of quality suitable for fertilization. Only eight had cells that multiplied in the petri dish after fertilization through single injections and "egg hatching" (a delicate technique that "wakes up" the eggs and persuades them to open). In vitro methods require the mother to be anaesthetized, and the eggs are sleepy too. All of these eight embryos were implanted, but none of them "took" to result in a pregnancy. On her second attempt through in vitro fertilization, my daughter produced only seven eggs, all of good quality. Four were implanted in the fallopian tubes and three in the uterus. Only one attached itself and resulted in a pregnancy. Unfortunately, as I have written before (see Cryo Kid – Drawing a New Map, www.cryokid.com), the baby did not survive. She was stillborn, strangled by the umbilical cord a week before her due date.
So you see, in vitro fertilization is a complicated matter, and birth is a time for rejoicing.
People are angry that the mother of 14 is unemployed, that she is unmarried, that she is on welfare, that she is seeking a book deal and more (she certainly needs money to look after the kids).
I hope that she does get a book deal. I hope that she becomes a TV commentator, as she dreams. I hope that her life, and that of her kids, all 14 of them, turns out well. We don't know why she wanted all these kids, and, anyway, it's really none of our business.
The Bible tells us to go forth and multiply. This mother did. Is it better for a whole generation of women to wait until it's too late to have children and then regret that they can't have them?

Sad news from Canada from the book industry. Trade shows are no longer the way to promote books in the 21st century. According to the Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.com), both Book Expo and the Toronto Book Fair have been cancelled. The decision was prompted by the pull out of major publishers. Actually, it's hardly a surprise, one that was presaged by the long faces worn by many booksellers at the Book Expo that took place in Los Angeles this past June as books were given away (not sold) for promotional purposes in astounding numbers. My daughter commented at the time that it seemed old-fashioned to cart around all the books one could carry in a bulging book bag when a flashdrive for downloadable books could serve the purpose with ease. Yes, the times they are a' changing, but I'm sorry to hear about the cancellations just the same. What does this presage for other book fairs? For New York, for example. I just received a promotional brochure about the London Book Fair in yesterday's mail. It's a wait and see, but it sounds to me like the money has run out. So what's new?

The Chinese traditionally consider the number eight to be lucky, while Western culture usually holds the number seven (the number of the days of creation)to bring with it the propensity for luck. If you're a mother expecting seven babies all at once — septuplets — and then you get a surprise baby to make it eight, your luck is undoubtedly compounded no matter where you live. Octuplets. With all the technology at our command today, the medics didn't spot the bonus baby until it arrived. There it was, that extra umbilical cord, with a baby attached. Born nine weeks prematurely in Bellflower, California to a "strong" mother who intends to breastfeed them all, the octet (what a great way to grow your own home orchestra!) are doing well so far, although three of them are being helped with their breathing. The infants will remain in the hospital for two months. Mummy will be released next week, but I guess she'll have to do plenty of pumping breast milk for a while.

Did she take fertility drugs? That info was not revealed, and the family is trying to maintain its privacy, but, as reported in the L.A. Times ("The eight baby was the surprise," by Jeff Gottleib and Sam Quinones, Jan. 17, 2009, www.latimes.com), 80 percent of babies born with the assistance of fertility drugs are singletons, and of the remaining 20 percent, most are twins.

I remember when the Dionne quintuplets were big news. Not any more! There are many days when, luck or not, I believe we live in an age of miracles.

Fertility issues concerning both men and women have been in the news recently. I have posted few blogs while I've been in the midst of changing computers (my old one gasped its last breath), but I did note an article in the Globe and Mail (www.globeandmail.com)that reported an alarming decline in male fertility rates. This downward trend is attributed to chemical, including preservatives, in the food we consume. Although the study cited made no correlation to female fertility rates, it certainly makes one wonder, doesn't it, what's in the food we routinely consume.

When I was a little girl growing up during WWII, we maintained a victory garden in the lot adjacent to our home. I still marvel reflectively at the taste of peas fresh from the pod, and how the corn stalks grew taller than me! I ate Macintosh apples picked right off our own trees. (It's a good idea to have a pair of fruit trees to promote pollination.) I guess I'm a farmer at heart. Even when I lived in an apartment for some years, I grew herbs (oh, fresh mint in tea!) in window boxes and planted seeds in little pots on my window sills. Years later, my friend Eva, who loves all things beautiful, intertwined baby's breath with the cherry tomatoes she tended in a senior's "community" plot. Today my Asian neighbors in Encino, California, grow the vegetables traditional to their homeland on a hilly side of their garden. We have a host of fruit trees in our own garden — oranges, grapefruit (my friends, who are all on statins, won't eat them), lemons, peaches, and apples, but we do have to take the fruit off the trees as they ripen before the squirrels and other little animals get them. We're still trying to successfully grow a plum tree. Our tomatoes, cukes, and herb garden are great. We have lots of flowers too. As a Canadian transplanted to California, I still can't get over cutting roses or Birds of Paradise for the dinner table almost all year round.

True, it's expensive to buy organic products, but it seems to me that trying to grow as much of our own as we can is a good idea, especially in the economic situation we are currently facing. At least, we can get "agricultural" to the extent our urban living circumstances permit, even if it's pots on the balcony or a sill. Even if we don't really save much money with our efforts, at least we can keep the chemicals off some of our food. Maybe we can even save our fertility.

It was a true thrill to reunite with a college friend I had not seen for fifty years at her lecture/book signing in Los Angeles the other night. The college friend was Dr. Ruth Wisse, now a distinguished Harvard professor whose opinions about the Jewish people and Israel are quoted not only in rarified journals but, as she was on the front page this past week, in such respected newspapers as the Wall Street Journal (www.wsj.com). My goodness, I have just written a sentence so long it is worthy of the likes of Norman Mailer. I once counted 200 words in one of his sentences.
Dr. Wisse (whom I knew at school as Ruth Roskies, her maiden name) has written a book called “Jews and Power,” in which, among other things, she traces both the Jewish people’s political vulnerability throughout history (because of their adherence to moral values) and their unconquerability (because they believe their ultimate responsibility is to God, not to the princes of nations).
Throughout her lecture, I noticed that she seemed to look at me many times — I was in the second row — and I kept wondering, “Does she remember me? Does she remember me?” We were really acquaintances rather than friends at school, but we both took some literature and, I think, history classes in common at McGill University, where she later lectured, and often had vigorous discussions of the course content in the student lounge (which we called the “common room”).
It was the 1950s, and McGill was a very formal place at that time. Professors wore not only black robes but mortar boards on their heads for all lectures, usually delivered from a podium in large lecture halls. It was electrifying when Professor Louis Dudek, then a major driving force of Canadian poetry, as well as a poet in his own right, established a literature course where students actually sat around a long oval table. Dr. Dudek sat at the head of the table, still in his black robe, but WITH HIS HAT OFF. Students were encouraged to be part of the lecture with their own presentations, and we had lots and lots of vibrant DISCUSSION. It doesn’t sound very unusual in today’s informal collegiate atmosphere, but it sure was then.
Our good professor was also instrumental in promoting the works of Canadian poets (whose poems were circulated on purple mimeographed multi-copies because there was no way for a Canadian poet to get published in Canada in those days, let alone in the U.S.), and he took Leonard Cohen (later to become a phenomenal, world-acclaimed poet/minstrel) under his wing as a special protoge. Finally, a London publisher agreed to publish Cohen’s poems in a HARD COVER edition, provided that 500 copies were first sold by subscription to cover the cost of the book. It was well known in literary circles that publishing poetry guaranteed a loss, not a profit.
Which brings us back to Dr. Ruth Wisse. She and “Lenny” Cohen were great friends, and Ruth believed fervently in his poetry too. She showed her early organizational skills by pre-selling 500 copies of Cohen’s first book, “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” to McGill arts students for $2.00 each. It was a tough sell. Two dollars was a lot of money at a time when a street car ticket to get you to McGill’s classes cost 7 1/8 cents. At least like twenty bucks out of a student pocket would be today.
But I proudly pre-bought one. After all, we sat at the long oval table together, Ruth, Lenny, and I.
So when I bought Dr. Wisse’s book (twenty bucks!) fifty years later after her lecture at Stephen S. Wise Temple, not only did she remember me, but we had a good laugh about the two dollar pre-sale she had orchestrated of Cohen’s slim volume. “I still have Lenny’s book,” I said, “a signed copy. And now I have yours. I’ll put it on my shelf right beside “Jews and Power.” She giggled, and I blew her a kiss. It was a sweet moment of reunion.

Just like non-literary businesses, the vast majority of publishing companies are currently owned by large conglomerates. “Name” publishers, already serving as parasols for groups of smaller imprints with lesser glory and for so-called boutiques, are owned by even larger umbrellas. I learned from a fascinating article in the Los Angeles Times (Tom Engelhardt, “Closing the Book,” Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008, A38, www.latimes.com) that Simon & Schuster, a long esteemed publishing company, is owned by CBS, and many other long-established American publishers are owned by huge German (Random House is owned by Bertelsmann AG) or other foreign multimedia conglomerates (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, U.S. companies who merged their debts, but it didn’t help, are owned by an Irish firm, Education Media, that has frozen further acquisitions).

Complicating the financial picture for publishers is that the books they compete to produce, hopefully for profit, are then sent to mammoth bookstores who are free of responsibility to sell the books they’ve ordered. They simply send back any unsold books to said publishers. It’s no longer news that large publishers maintain two warehouses, one to ship books out, and another to receive them back. Once the books are returned to the receiving warehouse, the covers are removed and destroyed, and it is illegal to sell them. What was originally planned as an incentive to booksellers has turned into a disaster for the publishers, not to mention the writers of the returned books. Furthermore, as the Internet takes over book sales, and the huge bookstores who previously gobbled up little bookstores find their own sales diminished, it’s a no-win situation for everyone – because, with the economy continuing to tank for an unforeseeable future, Internet sales are declining too. Thankfully, it’s still a reading world. People are reading more than ever online, vast amounts of copy, in fact. They’re just not reading books. I wonder if the new electronic reading machines like Amazon’s Kindle will really stimulate more book reading, or if downloaded e-books will finally make the grade in popular consumption. Right now, with major newspapers beginning their slide into bankruptcy, the Internet is King.

As for me, I have just written my first article using a voice-recognition tool called Dragon NaturallySpeaking, version 10 (a Hanukah gift from my daughter and son-in-law). Actually, I have half written, half spoken these lines because I’m much faster typing them than speaking my thoughts to a computer at this moment. It will be fascinating to see if I can relieve my frozen shoulder and release my thoughts at the same time. I don’t text message from a handheld (I still create and receive e-mail on my laptop), but at least, technologically speaking, I’m moving on. And I’m thinking of buying an electronic reading machine. Hmm! Gotta help the economy, right? Why not buy a writing or reading tool now? For Christmas or Hanukah. And a few good books. Go on, spend a little.

Happy holidays, everyone! Looking forward to a great 2009!