second try, this was set back to me this am, wrong address, left out a
letter--

Dear Roberta,
Sorry I have taken so long to respond to your various notes, actually I've
wanted
to write to you ever since you first introduced yourself. You have made such
wonderful contributions, but now I am losing track of all the things I wanted
to
say. You most recently replied to my <patriarchy, commercialism, technology>
piece, and as soon as I read your note, I was leaving (last Thursday am) for
four days, so this is my first day back at the computer, and since NOMAIL, I
don't even know what has transpired on lactnet in the last four days (I'm
retrieving the log now, retrieved this one log for one week in 15 parts!). I
agree with you there is nothing wrong with us making a living at our work,
that is not really what I meant by commercialism.  What I meant was how
commercialism has become a driving force-- that something can become quite
quickly well known, or culturally important, etc., if there is some way that
someone can make ALOT of money off of it, but it will remain an unknown,
hidden, apparently unimportant part of the culture, if no one is actively
advertising it, making it visible in the media, etc, and this latter only
happens if someone or some company can make a lot of money off of it. This
triad of patriarchy, commercialism and technology really resonated with me,
because before I heard Marsha Walker articluate this, I had already focused
myself on the feminist perspective (can't help it, my basic bias), and had
also concluded that we needed to imagine what it would be like if this were
already a breastfeeding culture and not a bottle feeding one, what would it
be llike, what this culture would be like, if it were only a little bit
different, and everyone were breastfeeding, but otherwise it was this same
culture, and what I pictured was stores and malls and companies falling all
over themselves to provide convenient places for moms to
nurse, and all sorts of gimmicks and products aimed at the bf dyads. All
those things (slings, nursing tops, etc) now sold by mailorder and one to one
by LLL moms would be available all over the place, there would be whole
stores devoted to them in every mall, with a little breastfeeding room off of
each one...
And finally, I was very struck by your wonderful notes on Mexico, and the
lack of
technology, and how it has benefited you, your baby friendly hospitals that
we
still don't have etc., because of the push here for technology. I'm afraid
I'm
rambling. It's late at night, I just got home, and I need to reread some of
your
prior notes to remind myself of what I wanted to reply, but mostly,   I just
want you toknow how much I appreciate your comments and your perspective, as
well as your sense of humor--
 Tina Smillie