Now/here no/where woman

Cupcakes made by Sugarhigh at Cranberry Bakeshop For Mt Cloud Bookshop's third anniversary, the Big Little Sister and I decided to throw a children's party. We welcomed about 30 kids, aged 2 to 12, plus their parents. We played Simon says, statue dance, and we read stories. The Monkey and the Turtle , a Philippine folktale retold and illustrated by Jose Rizal, and The Grand Parade, a story about a town fiesta taken over by children, by Carla Pacis and Nanoy Rafael. We handed out prizes to the winners and the good listeners who responded to the story-tellers' questions.  We fed the kids cupcakes and cookies. We gave them loot bags filled with stickers, erasers, pencils, puzzles, marbles and a sipa each. We gave away board books and story books provided by Adarna House . Two fine arts students from UP Baguio did face painting for the kids. Luchie Maranan launched and read her new children's book, The Pangat, the Mountains, and the River , published as part of...

Undone. Come.

Tomorrow at 4PM, Mt. Cloud Bookshop will host a very special Author's Talk and Book Signing with 2011 CNN Hero, Robin Lim. To my mind, she is a true Wonder Woman. She tirelessly works for gentle births and healthy motherhood for people all over the world, she delivers babies with her own hands day in and day out, she has raised her own family and is now a grandmother, and she somehow found the time in all this important work to write seventeen books so far! She is one of those persons that make you wonder whether she is an ordinary human. When you meet her, you will see that yes, she is human, but extraordinarily so.

Let's think about breasts and their super-powers with these four women whose work I admire. Holly McNish on breastfeeding in public. Senator Pia Cayetano on the breast-feeding law and the need to embrace the breastfeeding culture in the Philippines. Amanda Palmer responds to the Daily Mail's coverage of her boob falling out of her bra during a performance in the Glastonbury Festival. (I love it when she motions for the crowd to calm down and says, "It's just a naked woman!" Haha! The lyrics of her letter to the Daily Mail appear here .) And last but not least, Ibu Robin Lim, who was chosen CNN Hero of 2011 for her tireless work as a midwife and her worldwide campaign for gentle births and healthy motherhood for everyone. Here she breastfeeds her eldest daughter, back in 1976. Source: Ibu Robin Lim's facebook page.