The good doctor didn’t always disagree with Mildred. He found it “absolutely fair to expect children to go to bed at a designated hour.” Late in his life, he credited vegetarianism with helping to restore his health. Also like his mother, he recommended less meat for children and even mentioned the benefits of fresh air! “Cool or cold air improves appetite, puts color in the cheeks, and gives more pep to humans of all ages.” But his recommendation was for playing in fresh cold air, not sleeping in it. Spock warned against putting babies and children to sleep in too cold a spot because “that could lower their body temperature to dangerous levels.”
THE MILDRED EFFECT
Spock denied that he wrote his book to rebel against his mother. And though Dr. Spock’s book was widely acclaimed, he wasn’t comfortable until he found out what Mildred thought of it. “[A] young man’s book on child-bearing might be thought of as a possible criticism of his mother,” he later admitted. But when Spock asked her opinion, Mildred, 70 years old and widowed, looked at her son and gave him the answer he least expected. “Why Bennie, I think it’s quite sensible,” she said.
Mom Pops Her Cork
When you pop open a bottle of champagne, it’s a cool, clear, fizzy delight. This wasn’t always the case, and we have a French mom to thank for setting things right. Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin married a French winemaker, Francois Clicquot, in 1799. The two had a child before Francois’s untimely death three years later. Madame Clicquot took over the business and turned it into a champagne dynasty.
Nicole is rumored to have invented pink champagne, but her most valuable contribution to the wine industry came in 1816 when Madame devised a way to rid champagne of the troublesome sediment that accumulates in a bottle as wine ages. Her table de remuage allows bottles to be rotated so that sediment gathers in the neck of the bottle and can be easily disgorged once the champagne is mature. No sediment equals nice, crisp, and clear bubbly!
You can still enjoy wines from Madame Clicquot’s vineyards today. Just look for the yellow Veuve-Clicquot-Ponsardin label to experience some trés magnifique wine!
Good Moms Movie Festival
It’s the maternal instinct—at 24 frames a second! Herewith a sampling of films featuring some of the best moms the cinema has to offer.
Aliens—Wait a minute, you say? Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley may be a xenomorph-killin’ action heroine in this classic 1986 sci-fi film and she even saves a little girl, but she’s not a mother. Ah, just go to your local video store and rent the director’s-cut version on DVD and you’ll discover that Ripley is indeed a mother, who learns to her grief that she was 57 years late to her daughter’s 11th birthday party because she was floating in space for all those years. This maternal grief and guilt provides an extra dimension of depth to her subsequent bonding with preteen alien-attack survivor Newt (Carrie Henn) and illuminates the lengths she’ll go to in order to protect her, including fighting hand to hand (well, claw to mechanical claw) with the 20-foot-high queen alien in the film’s climactic scenes. It’s a “good mom/bad mom” kind of thing. Shame that Alien 3 came along and ruined everything. But forget about that and just enjoy Ripley’s fierce maternal instinct, backed up by guns. Lots and lots of guns.
Bambi—The world’s most selfless mother. First she raises the child of the ruler of the forest as a single mother, with no help at all from the dad. She teaches her child the ways of the forest, explains about evil (“Man was in the forest”), and then, when that evil threatens her child, sacrifices herself so her child can live. Only then does Dad show up (yeah, nice absentee parenting there, pops). Bambi’s mom is so selfless that she doesn’t even get her own name. Go on, see if you can think of it. The death of Bambi’s mother famously traumatized generations of tiny filmgoers into an aversion to killing deer so pronounced that it actually has a term in wildlife management circles: “the Bambi effect.”
Dolores Claiborne—In a slightly different take on the definition of “good mom,” Kathy Bates plays a hardscrabble Yankee suspected of murdering the woman for whom she works. As the film goes on, we find out that this isn’t the first time she’s been suspected of killing someone—and that the previous suspected murder has to do with Dolores’s now-estranged daughter, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. The movie is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, but the film both elaborates and centers on the contentious relationship between mother and daughter and just how far a mother will go to protect the innocent child in her care. Not cheerful, but certainly gripping.
Stella Dallas—The world’s most selfless mother, human division. Ironically the film shares some plot points with Bambi. There’s a mom raising the child of a powerful man as a single mother, teaching the kid the ways of the world, and then sacrificing herself for the good of her offspring. In this case, however, mom doesn’t take a bullet, she just sends her kid to go live with the rich and powerful dad. The story is not unfairly described as a politically incorrect melodrama by critics, who are legion, but as film historian scholar Leslie Halliwell noted: “Audiences came to sneer and stayed to weep.” If you’re interested, this film comes in three flavors: the hard-to-find 1925 silent version; the classic 1937 Stella Dallas, which features Barbara Stanwyck as the selfless mom in question, and the more recent 1990 version Stella, which features Bette Midler. Whichever one you choose, keep the tissue box nearby.
Almost Famous—Frances McDormand plays a mother who lets her 15-year-old son, a budding journalist, tour with a rock band in the hedonistic days of the early 1970s. Normally this would probably qualify someone as a bad mom. But McDormand’s character is neither stupid nor clueless, and shows how a good mom is not only the mother to a child, but the midwife to the man that the boy will become. She understands and trusts her son enough to let him have the adventure—one which does ultimately open his eyes to the world. Which is not to say mom passively waves good-bye to her kid as he goes on the road. One of the film’s best scenes has one of the rockers picking up the phone to charm McDormand and getting slapped down by her no-nonsense awareness of what’s really going on out there on tour. Anyone who can humble a rock star deserves your respect.
“You have this myth you’re sharing the birth experience. Unless you’re passing a bowling ball, I don’t think so.”
—Robin Williams
You Say Mama, I Say Mada...
Can you match the language to the mom?
How do you say mother around the world? Surprisingly, most countries have remarkably similar words for “mother,” which is defined as “a woman who conceives, gives birth to, or raises and nurtures a child.” Some linguists theorize that the sound comes from the baby-talk sound “ma.” Whatever the reason, a mother can be called “mama” in countries that are as far flung as Lithuania, Hungary, Indonesia, and Turkey. Despite these similarities, cultures have still come up with distinctive ways to cry for mommy.
MAKING A MOM MATCH
Match these words for “mother” to the proper language or country of origin. For you experts, we’ve thrown in a couple nontraditional examples. See if you can root them all out!
____
1.
mada
____
2.
mamangu
____
3.
anne
____
4.
mutter
____
5.
ngambaa
____
6.
madre
____
7.
ne’ni
____
8.
mitera
____
9.
matka
____
10.
e tsi
____
11.
janani
____
moeder
____
13.
moder
____
14.
ma’
____
15.
haha
____
16.
mama or makuahine
____
17.
mami
____
18.
yum
____
19.
mere
____
20.
maht
____
21.
patrino
____
22.
sosoy
A.Cherokee
B.Chinese (phonetic)
C.Polish
D.Dutch
E.Esperanto
F.French
G.German
H.Greek
I.Hawaiian
J.Jamaican patois
K.Japanese (Romaji)
L.Kamilaroi (Aboriginal Australian)
M.Klingon (yes, as in Star Trek)
N.Potawatomi
O.Russian
P.Sanskrit
Q.Spanish
R.Swahili
S.Swedish
T.Tibetan
U.Turkish
V.Vietnamese
ANSWERS: 1. J; 2. R; 3. U; 4. G; 5. L; 6. Q; 7. N ; 8. H; 9. C; 10. A; 11. P; 12. D; 13. S; 14. V; 15. K; 16. I; 17. B; 18. T; 19. F; 20. O; 21. E; 22. M
Mama, You Puzzle Me
We all know the fear of not being able to find our mamas. Put those fears aside and locate mama in the puzzle. As always, she is the key to success.
Across
1Dogpatch creator
5Scarlett of Tara
10“Born Free” lion
14Another, in Andalusia
15Fit for a king
16Hefty regular at Cheers
17Graf ___ (German warship)
18Blow one’s top
19“___ that barge...”
20He gets paid for doing nothing
23“Twelfth Night” count
24Highlands tongue
25“Three Days of the ______” (Redford film)
28MIT and RPI
32“... _____ will!” (threatening words)
35What the three long entries each have two of
36Dog cousin
37Nutty
41Reveal all
42Floored
43Newsman Koppel
44Nebraskan natives
45Accepting willingly
48Spiced Indian tea
50Vamps
542002 Jennifer Lopez romantic comedy
59Opposite of ecto-
60Sound of amusement
61Blood: Prefix
62Laugh-a-minute type
63Fudd who bugs Bugs
64“____ soft, gentle, and low,” like Cordelia’s voice
65Besides
66Some leather workers
67Sit a spell
Down
1“That ___ Girl” (one who reads a certain mag)
2How some bonds are sold
3Targets, with “on”
4Like a Browning line
5It shows the way to Salem
6Munich Mister
7Chills and fever
8Busta Rhymes, for one
9Hitching post
10Dig in
11Weaver’s apparatus
12Mexican miss: Abbr.
13Prayer ender
21“It’s ___-win situation” (2 words)
22Hoop star Thomas
26Leave it to beavers
27Hideo Nomo’s birthplace
29Three-handed card game
30Container weight
31What Rosebud was
32Melville novel set in Tahiti
33All ears
34Logical start?
36Dagwood Bumstead’s boss
38Short, amusing account
39Rice-and-fish fare
40Soldier of the ‘50s
45Appropriate
46Arts-supporting gp.
47Get together
49Chipped in chips
51Martin or Garvey
52Chair designer Charles
53Horse’s sound, at times
54No more than
55Blue dye
56Some vows
57“Alas!”
58Not e’en once
Answers on page 302.
Koko Kares for Kitten
A kitten and an ape change how we think about gorillas.
Scientists are still debating whether animals can reason the way humans do. It’s an age-old debate, with recent evidence indicating that intelligence and the ability to feel emotions aren’t limited to humans. Weighing in heavily (about 300 pounds) on the side of animals is Koko, the famous signing gorilla.
LEARNING TO SPEAK HUMAN
In 1972, Francine “Penny” Patterson was a young graduate student in psychology at Stanford University when she met Hani-ko, a year-old gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo, and began teaching him sign language. Within two weeks the little gorilla, nicknamed “Koko,” was signing for food and juice. Project Koko became the longest continuous attempt to teach language to another species.
Today Patterson states that Koko has a vocabulary of more than 1,000 signs in American Sign Language and can understand 2,000 words. The gorilla has participated in (with human help) a live e-mail chat on AOL and conversations with famous folks like presidential speech-writer Peter Forbes, Apple CEO John Scully, and celebrities like William Shatner and Robin Williams. Other animals have since learned to sign, but few are celebs like Koko, whose initial rise to fame was linked with mothering a little kitten named All Ball.
KOKO’S KITTEN
Among young Koko’s favorite toys were books with pictures of cats. In 1984, Koko signed to Patterson that she wanted a cat. As an experiment, abandoned kittens were brought to the gorilla compound, and Patterson let Koko chose one for a pet. The gorilla picked out a round, gray male kitten with no tail and named him All Ball.
Koko mothered All Ball in devoted gorilla fashion. She tried to nurse him and carried him on her back, imitating the way gorilla mothers carry their babies in the wild. When she wanted to play with All Ball, Koko often signed the word “tickle,” and she would gently tickle the cat.
The Ron Cohen photo, “Koko and Kitten,” showed Koko cradling All Ball. Though her large arms could crush the seemingly helpless kitten, she cuddled it carefully and gazed at it fondly. That now-famous photo surprised the public, who were fascinated by the gentleness of a supposedly ferocious animal. Koko’s good mothering of All Ball won her millions of admirers.
KOKO IN MOURNING
Tragedy struck when All Ball died suddenly. In December of 1984, he escaped from his enclosure and was struck by a car. Koko seemed distraught and signed words like “cry,” “sad,” and “frown” when shown a picture of a kitten that looked like hers. Disagreement raged in the scientific community over whether or not Koko could actually grieve for her lost kitten and feel emotions in the same way that people do. Despite the arguments, the public had no trouble believing that Koko could feel a mother’s pain and loss. Expressions of sympathy and offers to replace All Ball with another kitten poured into Woodside from around the world.
ALL BALL’S LEGACY
Koko’s reaction to All Ball’s death and her ability to communicate those emotions sparked more research and heated debate about behaviors once considered exclusively human. Today she stands as a diplomat for the gorilla community, once believed to be bloodthirsty. Koko’s mothering and sadness at the loss of her kitten made many people rethink traditional ideas of what it is to be human and what it is to be animal. Perhaps there is more going on than we think.
Today the famous Koko cares for a gray pet cat, Smoky. Now she wants a gorilla baby to mother and love.
The Joke’s on Mom
What’s the difference between a Rottweiler and a mother?
Eventually a Rottweiler will let go.
Did you hear about the cannibal mom?
She had a husband and ate kids.
What�
�s the difference between an Italian mother, an Irish mother, a Chinese mother, and a Jewish mother?
The accent.
Mom’s Brave Brain
Science has discovered that a mom’s brain isn’t only smarter—it’s braver too!
Confronted by the myriad problems of raising kids, moms can feel a bit better about themselves. Research done by Dr. Craig Kinsley, a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond, has given moms a much-needed boost of self-esteem by showing that being a mom can make you smarter. Kinsley has found that moms’ brains do change (for the better!) because of pregnancy and child rearing.
FOLLOW HER NOSE, IT ALWAYS KNOWS
Kinsley did studies with rats, believing these studies also apply to people. He found that female rats with offspring were smarter. And they stayed smarter even after their pups had grown.
Motherhood doesn’t only change mom from the neck down. It also changes the brain with what Kinsley describes as “dramatic alterations.” Pregnancy and breast-feeding hormones seem to nurture the brain cells involved in learning, memory, and spatial skills. Kinsley measured these effects by setting up a maze with a Fruit Loop reward at the end. When Kinsley sent female rats through a challenging maze, he found it was always the moms who were best at finding the Fruit Loops at the end of the day. They learned faster and remembered more than the control rats who’d never mothered. Rats who were lactating (the equivalent of breast-feeding human moms) did best of all.
“Reproduction shapes and alters a female’s brain in significant ways,” Kinsley has said. The rats who were best had actual physical changes in their brains. In nursing mama rats, the hippocampi (the part of the brain used for learning and memory) contained twice as many neural connections as those of their childless sisters. The more neural connections, the faster and better the brain works. And the good news is that the brainy improvements from motherhood continue throughout a woman’s life and may help ward off senility as she ages.