My brother kindly forwarded yesterday's Morning Edition piece on Lender's bagels, which was great because I hadn't heard the whole thing on air. The timing neatly correlates with a cold breakfast paradigm shift I'd previously observed myself. 


Girl Scout troops often plan for a cold breakfast at the end of a weekend long campout to make clean up go faster (no wood fire to put out, ashes to cart away or spread). In the 1970s and early 80s, my Girl Scout troops always chose mini cereal boxes and Sweet 16 doughnuts for Sunday breakfast. And fruit or juice when urged to keep it balanced by our troop leaders. We'd always try to do the thing with those boxes where you cut open the flaps and the waxed paper lining would hold in milk, but it only worked about half the time. 


By the 1980s and 90s when I was a camp counselor, I'd help the girls plan a cold breakfast for the middle Sunday   of our 2-week session, when the cooks had the morning off. By now, campers increasingly often asked for bagels. Puzzled, I'd ask, "You understand I'm talking about ideas for a cold breakfast on sleep-in Sunday?" And they'd say, "Yeah, bagels are good cold." The really cool part was that we'd be able to actually purchase them through our restaurant food delivery service -- and later still we could buy bagels at the Food Lion in Heathsville, Virginia. Crazy.

I'm glancing at reviews of the Hunger Games movie. The reviewer at STACKED reflects on an audience of enthusiastic young fans, "Cheering and applauding for the death of children is nice, isn't it?" And that reminded me of watching Return of the King, I believe it was, and while I was getting choked up over families gearing up the elderly and their children for the apparently futile battle (of Helms Deep, I guess?) an 11 year old boy broke into whoops. (The dark side of me figures he's old enough to be fighting in our current futile battles and perhaps views things differently, if he's survived. Or perhaps he's one that's gone violence-mad?)

Girl Scout Week

On Monday, GSUSA turned 100. As I tweeted, "Because of Girl Scouts, I have confidence, leadership skills, tons of great memories, and friends worldwide. #GirlScouts100."

Also notable:
-  My first paycheck came from the local GS council for my job as a camp counselor
- The first "long-distance" driving I ever did was from home in Midlothian to camp in Northumberland County.

 (1984?)

- GS didn't take me to as many far-flung places as it takes some, but I did go to the Edith Macy training center in New York (1997; below) and a GS convention in Kansas City.

- I've made life-long friends -- sisters -- across generations.

- I've earned stuff.

 (1981)

- and honored others for their achievements.

 (1997)

 (1999)

My college classmate Karen Middleton (now president of Emerge America) shared an article from the Daily Beast about women in leadership roles. Above are the related links that algorithms suggest people reading about women ("women in the world" as the tag suggests) need to see. Two are marked as advertisements. Three items are about women; two of them appear to proliferate the objectification of women. Is it any wonder women don't imagine themselves cut out for leadership roles when this is how we are taught to see ourselves?

(I clicked on and will link to the item on teen feminist bloggers in hopes of helping clear up for the search/ad bots what women might want to read about ourselves.)