While my wife was pacing the basement floor experiencing the first throes of labor, I spoke with our midwife to pass the time. “So what are the different kinds of people who do home births?” I asked.

People on the “margins,” she said, those who question mainstream society: Amish, hippies, farmers, certain groups of Christians; in the nineties, some people in the urban “grunge” movement.

She said that farm families are more comfortable with home birth because they see birth all the time in their animals. I said that it was interesting that the Amish would work with outside midwives; you’d think that they would have a midwifery tradition of their own. She commented that sometimes Amish birthing rooms actually have electricity available. Later my wife and I remembered that one of our midwives in California had worked with Midwestern Amish groups earlier in her career.

I suppose my wife and I fit into the category of those who question authority – in this case the nearly total authority that the medical profession claims over our bodies when we submit to its system of care.

Our second child, a son, was born early on Christmas Day, not long after the last post! We are thrilled to welcome him into the world! The last few days have been busy ones as we’ve been caring for him and my wife.

The photo above was taken several hours after birth. It’s amazing to think of that little person leaving his mother’s body and entering the world. The photo isn’t in very good focus, but you can see something of his red newborn’s skin.

The home birth went well, and our midwife, Melissa (Mel) Cathcart, got here in plenty of time for it. My wife began experiencing contractions at about 7:30 pm on the 24th. By 8:30 we had called Mel, and she was here about an hour after that.

Mel and I helped my wife as she went through early labor. But as we found out shortly before the baby was born, my wife’s labor progressed more rapidly than we realized. Mel said that my wife did not give the typical warning signs that the final push was near, perhaps because she has a high tolerance for that particular type of pain.

The result was that Mel was surprised when my wife went into the final stages of labor at around 1:30 am. A scant twelve minutes later and the baby had emerged, “in the caul,” as Mel said, or still in the membrane that covers the fetus in the womb. The birth took place in the cramped space of our basement bathroom, with Mel unwrapping the umbilical cord as the baby emerged, then catching the baby and removing the caul, if I remember rightly.

It’s a cliche to call birth a miracle, but that is how it seems. How wonderful to witness it in this season of miracles.

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and Christians will be remembering the birth of Jesus. In our household we’ll not only be observing the celebration of that ancient birth but also awaiting the birth of our second child. Our new child’s due date is actually Christmas Day, and so far, after a couple of episodes of false labor, my wife has not yet given birth.

We’re doing a home birth for the second time. Although home birth is quite rare in our culture, my wife feels strongly that it is better for her. I’ve come to agree with her that it is a better option for many women. I haven’t done much research on the issue, but my understanding is that home birth is much more common in Europe than it is in the U.S. and that Europeans have a much lower rate of Ceasarean births.

Home birth seemed more common in northern California, where we were living when our first child was born. There one of our midwives lived five minutes away and the second was only a half hour away. Here in Minnesota our sole midwife is at least an hour away in Minneapolis – two hours away in bad weather.

Fortunately, the hospital is only five minutes from our house. However, we we don’t want to go to the hospital if we can avoid it, and so I’ve received some training in what to do if the baby comes quickly and under what circumstances I should call 911. My wife’s mother and brother are here now, so we will have help available.

Of course all of this has added a lot of anticipation and a certain amount of drama to our holidays this year. I pause now to give thanks for what I’ve been given, and I pray for poise and equanimity for the new birth, the coming year, and what I hope is a long career of fatherhood and Christian discipleship.

Peace to you all this holiday season.

It’s been nearly a week now since the Bali climate talks ended in a last-minute agreement that involved compromise on both sides: the sides, in this case, being the United States and most of the world. After being booed and hissed, the U.S. delegation, led by the Bush administration, finally agreed to continue talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Here is a summary of the agreement from an excellent Dec. 16 article by New York Times reporters Thomas Fuller and Andrew C. Revkin.

The world’s faltering effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions got a new lease on life on Saturday [Dec. 16], as delegates from 187 countries agreed to negotiate a new accord over the next two years — pushing the crucial debates about United States participation into the administration of a new American president.

Many officials and environmental campaigners said American negotiators had remained obstructionist until the final hour of the two-week convention and had changed their stance only after public rebukes that included boos and hisses from other delegates.

The resulting “Bali Action Plan” contains no binding commitments, which European countries had sought and the United States fended off. The plan concludes that “deep cuts in global emissions will be required” and provides a timetable for two years of talks to shape the first formal addendum to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty since the Kyoto Protocol 10 years ago.

I recommend reading the full article for a sense of the drama of the talks and of U.S. foot-dragging regarding substantive, timely action on mitigating global warming. The U.S. was shamed into action, and in acknowledging that I feel a sense of shame about my country.

Here are some more excerpts from the article, including the description of the two-track approach that the U.S. agreed to, in which developed and nondeveloped countries would come to separate agreements on the response to climate change:

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I attended the Minnesota Department of Transportation presentation on a major highway here in Northfield, Highway 19. It was the second open house on the MnDOT Access Management and Safety Plan for the highway. The presentation was made by MnDOT planner Peter Waskiw.

Mr. Waskiw laid out the reasons for doing the plan, principal among them crash reduction and improved traffic flow. He described the classification of this stretch of 19 between I-35 and Minnesota Highway 3 as a minor arterial shading into a principal arterial. He had lots of data on traffic volume, turning movement counts, and crash history. The latter showed 187 crashes between 2002 and 2006 – a higher rate than with similar highways in MnDOT District 6. Rear-end collisions made up the highest component of those accidents, numbering 64. Read the rest of this entry »

The City of Northfield Transportation Plan has begun to take shape, and interested citizens can take a look at the plan web site. I’ve seen a draft of the Transportation Plan goals and objectives (not yet posted online) and they look promising in their commitment to a sustainable, multi-modal transportation system. One item I was encouraged to see: “Objective 4.3 – Establish an area transportation advisory committee with the state, counties, and adjacent municipalities and townships to coordinate and strategize regional transportation planning initiatives (TH 19 between Northfield and I-35, Cannon River Crossing/CSAH 1 Preservation, NW Corridor).”

Does anyone know, are there models out there for this kind of regional advisory committee, ones that Northfield might emulate?

This past year turned out to be a record-breaker for Arctic warming, according to scientists quoted in an article by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press science writer. The portents are not good and should embolden us to act more aggressively to curb carbon emissions.

Below are some excerpts from the article. Warning: some of the quotes from the scientists are among the most alarming that I’ve seen on the climate change issue.

Greenland’s ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer’s end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo. Read the rest of this entry »

So much is happening now on the issue of our response to global warming. Here’s a quick overview of a few major developments:

• The United Nations Climate Change Conference is occurring in Bali, Indonesia, December 3-14. The conference will look at changes to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the Kyoto Protocol. Here is a description of the goals of the conference, taken from its web site:

What is needed is a breakthrough in the form of a roadmap for a future international agreement on enhanced global action to fight climate change in the period after 2012, the year the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires. The main goal of the Bali Conference is threefold: to launch negotiations on a climate change deal for the post-2012 period, to set the agenda for these negotiations and to reach agreement on when these negotiations will have to be concluded.

A very important meeting indeed.

• The U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee approved a landmark bill that would call for a 70 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, partly through the use of a cap and trade system. (Environmentalists favor cuts of 80 to 90 percent.) The bill would need the support of ten or twelve Republicans in order to pass.

The legislation is sponsored by Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia, the latter a Republican. Warner’s rationale for taking action, stated yesterday, is good: if we don’t take action on this, then China and India can hide behind us, saying that they don’t need to take action. See a New York Times article for more info.

Contact your senators, folks, and tell them to pass this bill. This is one of the most important issues of our times, and we can’t sit on our hands.

• Here in my state, the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group continues to meet and has approved its first recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a comprehensive list of those recommendations in the media, but the group is not scheduled to conclude until early February. See the Transportation and Land Use Technical Work Group document for more info on that topic.

Yesterday the StarTribune published an opinion piece by a former Republican state legislator from Rochester, Dave Bishop. It reveals another crack in the facade of Republican unanimity on the “no new taxes” policy espoused by our governor, the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, and national leaders such as Grover Norquist. Some Republicans are waking up to the fact that a reduction in tax receipts can have seriously negative consequences – as it does, for example, when inflation eats away at our state gas tax and our transportation infrastructure deteriorates due to a lack of funding.

Starving our government of funding starves our society of needed services in education, transportation, and more. Yes, we need to limit government in order to limit the tax burden, but we also need to have government do what the private sector cannot or will not do. As Mr. Bishop writes, the “starve the beast” view of tax policy is an example of “extreme” conservatism; we might also call it radical.

Here are some excerpts from Mr. Bishop’s brave essay: Read the rest of this entry »