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Mamapalooza Media strives to bring stories about women (with a special empasis on mothers) to the forefront.
 
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Karen Brody, founder of BOLD, playwright of Birth
 Karen Brody is a writer, birth activist and mother. Birth, her critically-acclaimed play about childbirth in America, is currently performed to more than 10,000 people worldwide every year as part of BOLD, an arts-based global movement inspiring communities to create childbirth choices that work for mothers. Brody is the founder and Artistic Director of BOLD. In 2007 Brody produced and directed a short film about BOLD, Being BOLD.
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Independent female artists who have joined in singing out against domestic violence. Uplifting and unpredictable, songs vary in style and topics. We go from blues to rock to pop, and with songs from CHOCOLATE to BEAUTIFUL--starting a brand new life without fear. Come along for the ride!
The BEAUTIFUL CD features performances by fourteen Southern California women known collectively as WOMEN ON THE MOVE: Joan Enguita, Harriet Schock, Teresa James, Anna Montgomery, Debbie Hennessey, Kelly Zirbes, Julie Gribble, Linda Geleris, Evonne Rivera, Tracy Newman, Holly Jurgensen, Andrea Ross-Greene, Karen Hart and Trish Lester. Songs are in a variety of styles (pop, rock, blues, country,) and encompass various aspects of being a woman: following your dreams, love, breaking up, and leaving an abusive relationship.
First Woman Swims the Atlantic Ocean
By DANICA COTO
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Feb. 8) - Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month. Jennifer is 56 yrs old.
Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean — a dream she'd had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if neededThe 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast on Jan. 12, battling waves of up to 30 feet and strong winds.
David Higdon, a friend of Figge who kept in touch with her via satellite phone, said she had originally planned to swim the Bahamas, but inclement weather forced her to veer 1,000 miles off course to Trinidad, where she arrived on Feb. 5.
Figge plans to continue her odyssey, swimming from Trinidad to the British Virgin Islands, where she expects to arrive in late February. The crew won't compute the total distance Figge swam until after she completes the journey, Higdon said.
Then it's home to Aspen, Colorado — where she trained for months in an outdoor pool amid snowy blizzards — to reunite with her Alaskan Malamute.
"My dog doesn't know where I am," she told The Associated Press on Saturday by phone. "It's time for me to get back home to Hank." The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa's western coast on Jan. 12, battling waves of up to 30 feet and strong winds.
"I was never scared," Figge said. "Looking back, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool."
Her journey comes a decade after French swimmer Benoit Lecomte made the first known solo trans-Atlantic swim, covering nearly 4,000 miles from Massachusetts to France in 73 days. No woman on record has made the crossing.
Figge woke most days around 7 a.m., eating pasta and baked potatoes while she and the crew assessed the weather. Her longest stint in the water was about eight hours, and her shortest was 21 minutes. Crew members would throw bottles of energy drinks as she swam; if the seas were too rough, divers would deliver them in person. At night she ate meat, fish and peanut butter, replenishing the estimated 8,000 calories she burned a day.Figge wore a red cap and wet suit, with her only good-luck charm underneath: an old, red shirt to guard against chafing, signed by friends, relatives and her father, who recently died.
The other cherished possession she kept onboard was a picture of Gertrude Ederle, an American who became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
"We have a few things in common," Figge said. "She wore a red hat and she was of German descent. We both talk to the sea, and neither one of us wanted to get out."
Figge arrived on Trinidad's Chacachacare Island, an abandoned leper colony, at 5:20 p.m. She plans to leave Trinidad on Monday night. During this brief respite, she has avoided the hotel pool and nearby ocean, opting instead for the treadmill.
NOW TO HONOR JOY ROSE
You are invited to the
National Organization for Women New York City's
29th Annual Susan B. Anthony Awards
February 19th, 2009
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South
6:00 PM
The Susan B. Anthony Award honors grassroots activists dedicated to
improving the lives of women and girls and advancing equality.
2009 Honorees
Pauline DeMairo
Director, Teen Outreach Reproductive Challenge
Olivia Greer
Director, EMANCIPATE
Irshad Manji
Director, NYU Moral Courage Project
Chanel J. Clark Rose
Director & Producer, Miss NYC Plus
Joy Rose
President & Founder, MAMAPALOOZA
For more information, to purchase a journal ad to congratulate an awardee or to reserve a seat by making a donation,
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Peaceful Revolution: I Love Seeing Babies at Work!
By, Joan Blades
Originally Posted at Huffington Post on January 6, 2009 | 11:13 AM (EST)
 A Peaceful Revolution because it is about envisioning and embracing culture change that enables parents to excel at home and at work. Win-win solutions are more accessible than most of us realize. This weekend the New York Times highlighted such an opportunity that far too few businesses are taking advantage of: babies at work!
Yes there are jobs for which this is simply not possible, but there are also millions of jobs where keeping your baby with you is the most natural thing in the world. When you consider that the birth of a child is a leading cause of a “poverty spell” in America, this solution is one simple answer and it turns out it is good for business! (Paid family leave also diminishes the financial strain for new families and has been shown to increase employee retention as well. In CA a new parent can take six weeks of paid family leave, plus mothers who give birth get 6 weeks paid medical leave.)
The Parenting in the Workplace Institute has a database of more than 120 companies that welcome babies at work. They even have a book available “How to Start a Babies-at-Work Program” — complete with guidelines and paperwork for employers to use so that they can ensure that having babies in their workplace will be a good experience for everyone. Bottom line: Work continuity, worker loyalty, and goodwill created by supporting a babies-at-work program pays off.
Imagine, then, being able to bring babies to work until they are six months old or crawling. Now that is civilized and it provides some economic security for new families! I still have a hard time accepting that some mothers in this country go back to work days after giving birth because they can’t afford to both feed their family and care for their babies. (Have I mentioned that the U.S. is one of only four countries out of over 170 that have no paid family leave for new mothers? California, Washington, and New Jersey are the only states that provide paid family leave). With or without the benefit of paid family leave, businesses are discovering that welcoming babies at work at 4 weeks or 3 months is a smart move as well as a caring way to support parents who must work to care for their families.
Babies-at-work programs are not just for high-end jobs. As I read the stories about companies that took a chance on working differently, I am heartened that these companies are having peaceful revolutions that they are now sharing with others. This kind of thing can change our world. It’s not for everyone or everywhere, but it works for far more than you might think.
A Peaceful Revolution is a blog about innovative ideas to strengthen America’s families through public policies, business practices, and cultural change. Done in collaboration with MomsRising.org, read a new post here each week.
Read More: A Peaceful Revolution, Babies At Work, Babies-At-Work Programs, Birth Of a Child, Childbirth, Moms Rising, Parenting, Parenting At Work, Parenting In The Workplace Institute, Parents. www.huffingtonpost.com
Mothers Linked World Wide by Rebekah Spicuglia
They met in Toronto and cemented a movement of mothers that now promises a global network, with a website and a wide-ranging set of objectives. The author helped film a documentary tracing their progress.
 Beginning December 1, 2008, mothers around the world have had access to the first global consortium of motherhood organizations. Marking ten years after the Association for Research on Mothering (ARM) was founded, mothers’ organizations in North America and around the world came together in October for the ARM annual Toronto conference on motherhood and emerged as an International Motherhood Network (IMN).
The website is live and inviting members to join, but IMN does not officially launch until March 8, 2009 (International Woman’s Day). At the Toronto conference, the founding organizations agreed to hold off the launch in order to include as many mothers’ organizations around the world as possible on the big day. With 35 founding organizations already linked and committed to publicize events in the month of May, and a conference planned for 2011, IMN plans to influence public discussion for a more mother-centered world.
My husband, Marcarthur Baralla ( Defendshee Production), and I filmed the conference and interviewed more than 30 women for a documentary—“The Motherhood Movement: You Say You Want a Revolution”—being produced for the Museum of Motherhood. Exploring the movement’s evolution over the last 50 years, the documentary will be a highlight of the museum, which was established online in 2003 and will soon be a physical museum located in Seneca Falls—home of the first U.S. women’s rights convention in 1848. The museum, founded by ARM and the Motherhood Foundation, is a long overdue project to honor the achievements of mothers.
For the documentary, Andrea O'Reilly, founder and director of ARM and York University professor, spoke about the effect of motherhood on her work in women’s studies. “I realized that the topic of motherhood had scarcely been mentioned. Violence against women, health, work, education, beauty myth, sexuality were the topics under discussion in the women’s studies curriculum,” she said, explaining why she designed her own course on motherhood. “The few times motherhood was mentioned, it was usually done so negatively…a patriarchal trap.”
What was obvious from our interviews is how wide-ranging the movement has become. From LiteraryMama to Mamapalooza, Mothers Acting Up to CODEPINK, SisterSong to Welfare Warriors, organizations raise awareness about the impact of mothers on their communities. MomsRising in particular has made great strides over the last year with an activism that combines swift online force with in-person delivery, taking action against toxic toys and demanding that politicians improve workplace policies.
For the camera, Joy Rose (Mamapalooza, Motherhood Foundation) spoke to women about the economic value of mothering, mothering the differently-abled and the feminist mothering of boys. In Toronto, not every mother in the room would identify as a feminist, but a common theme was empowerment. Amy Richards (co-founder of Third Wave Foundation, author of Opting In) referenced the long history of media hype, pitting feminism and motherhood against each other, leading people to ask, as Richards does in her book, “Can you be a feminist and a mother?” Richards offers her own definition: "Feminism is about realizing that we aren't different, but our definition of what is normal is skewed. Most of us have something that makes us feel insecure… We continue to let these experiences or facts diminish who we think we are… Feminism is changing that—both by making these ‘facts’ less ridiculed and also by re-framing what we consider normal. If we are all exceptions, there are no rules." Certainly a broader, more welcoming definition of feminism from what I was raised with, but then, my definitions on just about everything have expanded with my life, beginning with motherhood and family.
It is this open sensibility that roots the Third Wave Foundation and, I would argue, the mothers’ movement on a whole, as the National Association of Mothers’ Centers have exemplified for more than 30 years. In an interview for the film, NAMC Executive Director Linda Lisi Juergens spoke of the “louder voice” now possible through “mutual support for common issues.”
The International Mothers Network is sure to boost awareness of and support for mothers’ organizations around the world, ensuring that mothers can find each other—and themselves. No matter how marginalized an issue may be, motherhood is the connector: I was able to collect resources and research to use as a noncustodial mother (see my website, NonCustodial Parent Community). One thing for certain, there will be an extremely rich Mothers’ Day to celebrate in May 2009. The International Mothers Network (IMN) is the first ever, global consortium of motherhood organizations. There are currently over 25 mothering organizations taking part. More...
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Joy Rose with daughter Zena
