When a person dies in Ayano Tsukimi’s town of Nagoro, Japan, she makes a doll to mark the fact that they were here.

Screenshot from Valley of the Dolls

Fritz Schumann made a film about her. The short documentary opens: “When I make dolls of dead people, I think about them, when they were alive and healthy.”

I silently asked myself, what does she do when they are mizuko, a “water baby,” lost before they’re born or have lived beyond a brief period of time? How does she craft a doll for someone who was never alive and healthy, with a fully-formed personality? Is there a template she uses for a general child? Or does she meld the parents’ features into a fabric baby? Or are those people’s lives not marked at all, as is the case for the most part in this world?

Maybe this isn’t an issue.  It doesn’t sound as if a lot of people who live there are having babies.

Her town used to be a thriving industrial town, and now it is down to 37 residents. The dolls didn’t start out as replacements for the missing people; the ones who died or moved away. They started out as scarecrows, protectors of the crops that weren’t growing. And then, in time, they became protectors of the woman herself and her emotional well-being. She set them up around the village; doing work outside or in the abandoned school. A town full of dolls to remind the woman of the people who were once important to her.

After I watched the film, I sat and thought for a long time whether I would be comforted or not by dolls in the likeness of the people I love. I am attached to objects they’ve given me. I think I use those tangible objects to still feel close to them. Wouldn’t I feel even closer to the person if I had this tangible reminder of them that looked like them? That could sit in my living room with me? Would it feel lonelier to know that it’s only a doll, or would I feel comforted in the same way that I don’t feel alone with Truman in the house. Even though he’s a guinea pig and isn’t really capable of deep conversation.

I think I’d like to be surrounded by doll versions of people if I couldn’t have the actual people. Even though I’m usually fairly creeped out by dolls.

I wondered if the other people in the town feel comforted over the idea that they’re memorialized in this way.

And then I thought about how people constantly say that the version of the blogosphere they had years ago is gone, those writers sometimes literally dead, but more often than not, they’ve just stopped writing. Some have left other ways to reach them digitally: email, Facebook, Twitter. I consider those people still around. But others have disappeared into the ether. I have no clue how they are, where they are, what their life looks like now.

What would be the digital version of a doll to mark the disappearance of a blogger?

Valley of Dolls from Fritz Schumann on Vimeo.

I am aware that I often sound as if I am one step away from smashing my mobile device and living off the grid, but this week is #chooseprivacy week — an initiative of the American Library Association — and you know that I can’t resist sharing with you one of my loving reminders about data mining.  I’m not encouraging any of us to throw out the baby with the bathwater: I fully participate in the online world and have a plethora of apps on my phone.  I write all of this to do what the ALA states as their mission: to level the playing field.  They’re collecting data on YOU, therefore, you should know about them.

Who is “them”?  Data miners.  They’re likely on my blog without me knowing definitely.  I’m sure that by downloading plug-ins, I’ve also allowed third parties to track the movements of visitors.  Before you go running to the hills, they are on ALL of our sites.  Even 60 Minutes, who recently did an expose on data mining, found many third-party collectors on their own site.  Data is being collected on every single site on the Internet and from every single app on your phone.

It doesn’t even matter if you go online or download an app; you are still being tracked: via your credit card, closed-circuit tv, GPS.

Most of this data mining is being used to target sell products.  Some of it is being used by employers or government agencies, but data miners are much more akin to mosquitoes than sharks.  They’re annoying, persistent, and aim to drain you of your spending dollars.  We don’t think of data miners as dangerous any more than we think of mosquitoes as dangerous.  But… surely you’ve seen Bill Gates’s infographic?  Sharks kill on average 10 people per year.  Mosquitoes kill on average 725,000.

Gulp.

So let’s not just brush aside those mosquito-like data miners.

I wrote a piece about the ALA’s #chooseprivacy week for BlogHer.  Would love it if you checked it out and then rocked back and forth with me, immobilized by the sheer vastness of how much privacy we give away on a daily basis.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “I Can’t Do Baby Showers…” (Disney Baby)
• “Resolve to Know More” (Waltzing in Galoshes)
• “Motherhood Mondays: What if You Can’t Have a Baby?” (A Cup of Jo)

Plus a note: I didn’t include a post because the person had copied it word-for-word from another site.  That is technically content theft.  But the second site had copied it word-for-word from another site.  A quick Google search of a phrase from the post brought up hundreds of sites all copying the same words and not attributing them to the original owner.  It’s a great post, but credit needs to be given.  I was able to trace it back to 2004, 2005, and 2007.  No name given on any of these postings.  And I don’t think anyone realizes when they read it that it was someone else’s work.  Anyone have a clue who put together the original post?

Okay, now my choices this week.

A few more great NIAW posts popped up post-NIAW.  Climbing the Pomegranate Tree has a post about why she was late with her NIAW post.  After a conversation with a friend, a comment from the discussion is bugging her and she finally realizes why it has gotten under her skin.  She astutely writes, “Infertility is a DISEASE. Yeah, it isn’t life-threatening, so I’m not upset that we’re not publicly racing for a cure the way we are for cancer or HIV or anything, but that doesn’t change the fact that the WHO classifies it as a DISEASE. And as victims of this disease, we are sometimes treated like children who want a puppy, not like women who have a disease and deserve a chance to move past it.”  Love that, right?  Go read the whole post.

Lavender Luz has a Mother’s Day survival guide.  She not only gives concrete ways to emotionally get through the day, but she has a roundup of resources, putting into action the advice she gives to connect with others in a like situation.

Lastly, Family Rocks: The Life of Peg has a sobering post about living in three worlds at the same time.  When she agreed to be her nieces’ guardian in the event of her sibling’s death, she had no idea how that decision would change the lives of so many people when it had to be put into action.  It is a very moving post about what could happen when you say “yes” to the question you can’t say “no” to.  There are no regrets about her “yes,” but it is a moving post on the far-reaching effects of a single decision.

The roundup to the Roundup: We’re giving away our privacy, and we should know more about it.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between April 25th and May 2nd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I took the sleep test.  It turns out that I don’t get enough sleep.  It’s a one minute video test:

It made a little scared of everything that I’m missing in my day-to-day world due to my sleep deficit. What will I do when the zombies come? I mean, what if the zombies come today? I can’t make up my sleep deficit in one day. Anyway, how could I sleep when there are zombies crawling around outside?

I will note that while I need an alarm to wake up (actually, I need a bunch of alarms, all set to different times) and drink lots of coffee, it takes me hours to fall asleep. Hence why I have a sleep deficit, duh.

How did you do with the sleep test? And don’t read the comments on this post until you have taken the one minute test.

My friend told me about salad in a jar this week.  Did all of you already know about this?  You make a bunch of salads all at once in mason jars, and then, due to the way it’s layered and sealed, the salad is fresh and ready to go at a moment’s notice.  You just grab, dump, and eat, so you’re more likely to eat a salad even when you’re short on time vs. grabbing something processed.  Isn’t that brilliant?  I mean, if it actually works?  Yes, I am pulling out the mason jars this week.

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Speaking of mason jars, my plan for summer is to can and freeze fruits and vegetables while they’re in season.  I want to make strawberry preserves for the year, make enough tomato soup to get us through winter, and freeze vegetables for later use.  I have no clue how to do this in an efficient, smart way.  There is, for instance, limited freezer space.  Which vegetables get my freezer space, and which ones need to be preserved in a different way?  Can you freeze all vegetables?  Will they be mushy when I go to use them later?  How do I make strawberry preserves so we have them all year?  Anyone have good resources you can point me towards?

It is going to be practically little house on the prairie over here this summer.

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On a whim, I purchased chocolate milk in a glass bottle.  I bought it because I coveted the glass bottle, but the chocolate milk turned out to be amazing.  I served it for dessert.  And now I have a glass bottle to store my simple syrup.  Oh… because I’m making my own soda.

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Making my own soda seems like a poor use of my kitchen time — aren’t we supposed to drink water? — but if I am going to drink soda from time to time, I might as well make it myself.  I’m starting with homemade grenadine and then serving fancy Shirley Temples.  And then graduating to a host of flavoured simple syrups so I can mix them with carbonated water and whip up blueberry or blackberry sodas for all my friends.  I swear, this is a fantastic idea.

How long do simple syrups keep?  Is there anything I can do to extend their life?

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Lastly, something not food related in the least (except that I sometimes eat at the field), is that baseball season has started back up and the Wolvog has graduated to traditional Little League with kids pitching vs. a machine.  It is amazing to watch the kids in action.  I mean, the Wolvog was once this tiny peanut — only two pounds — and now he is stealing second base.  I wish the me now could talk to the me from back during that NICU time and show her the pictures I took this week.  “Look at this,” I’d tell her.  “Everything is going to be okay.  One day that kid is going to be big enough to play baseball and pick fruit for you.”  Would the me back then believe it?

As a vegetarian who makes her food from scratch to avoid processed meals, you would think that I’d be pretty excited about Alicia Silverstone’s new book.  After all, she tackles infertility as one of her topics.  Fertility is even part of her title: The Kind Mama: A Simple Guide to Supercharged Fertility, a Radiant Pregnancy, a Sweeter Birth, and a Healthier, More Beautiful Beginning.

I want supercharged fertility. Apparently, all I have to do is “Eat well, get healthy, then ditch all the planning and trying and just let it flow. There’s no better way to make a baby than with yummy, soulful sex!”

Her book description on Amazon begins:

When did making babies get to be so hard? Infertility is on the rise globally, affecting as many as one in six couples. But instead of considering diet and lifestyle factors, doctors pump their patients full of expensive and invasive fertility treatments.

Oh.

So I didn’t have to do fertility treatments?  All I had to do is change my lifestyle choices?  For example (according to the book): stop using tampons?

Well, there is thousands upon thousands of dollars we’re not getting back.

Surely she’ll have something helpful to tell me about radiant pregnancy. I’ve had a lot of chemical ones, and the only one that went past 6 weeks ended early with pre-term labour. How can I prevent that?

All I have to do is eat plant-based foods and then I will “supercharge fertility; reduce your likelihood of miscarriage; infuse breast milk with all kinds of nutrient goodness that make your kids smart and healthy; and help stave off diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes.”

It took me a moment to remember that I DO eat a vegetarian diet heavy in plant-based foods. How did it go so wrong in my body? I not only never got supercharged fertility, but I miscarried, went into preterm labour, the twins were IUGR, and I produced no breast milk.

I could be the exception to the rule.  I own that possibility.  But it’s also possible that Silverstone’s new book places ideas out there that are hurtful at best and dangerous at worst.  No vaccines?  Claims that following her advice can prevent or cure “PMS, insomnia, allergies, breakouts, weight struggles, thyroid condition, lupus, multiple sclerosis—while significantly lowering your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer”?

Plant-based diets are wonderful.  Being mindful of the decisions you make on behalf of your child is wonderful.  Anecdotal evidence has been used for thousands of years in raising children, with knowledge passed from one mother to another.

And perhaps that is it.  Maybe if Silverstone spoke about her own experience with infertility and wanted to discuss the way she treated it (and if she provided the caveat that what worked for her may not work with other people with other diagnoses), I wouldn’t have such a problem with this book.  But Alicia Silverstone wasn’t infertile.  She didn’t have a “doctor pump [her] full of expensive and invasive fertility treatments.”  She isn’t passing along anecdotal evidence on infertility.  She’s parroting what others have told her.

She’s parroting anti-vaccination speeches without having done the research on vaccines herself.  She’s parroting what scientists have said about how chemicals interact with the body or what psychologists have said about child development.  And there’s a danger when a layperson parrots what she has been told vs. what she has studied in-depth or lived.

This book worries me.