Posted: 12 Dec 2009 06:44 PM PST

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fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Duggars 19 Babies: Meet Josie Brooklyn Duggar! - RightFielders Women in Sports

Posted: 12 Dec 2009 02:04 PM PST

And baby makes 19 Duggars! Meet Josie Brooklyn Duggar, the newest member of the Duggars family who was born on December 10th, 2009. Read all about her really huge family and premature birth while we admire the photo and listen to the video below.

Just 6 more Duggars and they will have a full squad for a football team including special teams and backup quarterbacks. We loathe to see the day but understand that you, dear readers, cannot get enough of the 19 Duggar babies. Why is beyond me.

They are the largest family in the nation after all, which means they are eating a lot of food and taking up a lot of stadium seats. They are the kind of family that is constantly getting up for hot dogs and pee pee, and blocking the aisles for us home team fans. Imagine sitting in a giant mini van and hearing "are we there yet" so many times each minute.

Josie Brooklyn Duggar makes for the latest Dugger baby. She has 18 siblings and 1 unfortunate niece who was born to Josh and Anna Duggar. No, not a case of inbreeding but instead she married into the family. But can you imagine being a niece to 18 aunts and uncles all pinching your cheeks and asking about your report card?

To continue her birth biography: Josie Brooklyn Duggar weighed only 1 pound 6 ounces at birth. She was way premature with the original due date in March 2010. As we lament the Duggars, we can be thankful for modern medicine which allows miracle babies to survive.

Pictures of the Duggar babies can be found all over the internet. We are boycotting their cuteness.

All of the Duggar children start with the letter J. Here is the complete list of baby names in order of seniority so Josie Brooklyn Duggar can keep things straight:

Joshua "Josh" James
Jana Marie
John-David
Jill Michelle
Jessa Lauren
Jinger Nicole
Joseph Garrett
Josiah Matthew
Joy-Anna
Jedidiah Robert
Jeremiah Robert
Jason Michael
James Andrew
Justin Samuel
Jackson Levi
Johannah Faith
Jennifer Danielle
Jordyn-Grace Makiya
Josie Brooklyn Duggar

So what do you think of the Duggars these days. Is Josie Brooklyn Duggar the unluckiest baby on the planet or what?

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger

Stephanie Nielson - Chapter 9: Heavenly fire - Arizona Republic

Posted: 13 Dec 2009 01:30 AM PST

Chapter 9: Heavenly fire

At the end of June, a quick thaw one warm weekend melted the snow on the tip of the mountain and left the hillside green. From her window, Stephanie could see the trail - a bald line zigzagging through scrub oak to that immense Y.

She could see the scars on the mountain where the fire had burned back the tree line years ago, exposing pink rock and bare slope.

"It is still beautiful," she thought.

Almost every summer that mountain would catch fire - mostly small flare-ups, quickly extinguished. The big fire happened during the summer of 2001 when Stephanie was pregnant with Claire. The 525-acre blaze sent steel-colored smoke billowing over the city. It burned fir trees centuries old. She had watched from a different window then, arms folded over her growing belly.

Stephanie found ways to cope with the pain now: Percocet, an antidepressant, another pill to dull the pain from nerves coming back to life. She felt it still, a burning every morning, like her entire body had been rubbed raw with carpet or rope. Electric pulses of pain traveled like a current beneath her skin. Everything itched and ached.

But there were hours when she felt joy, too: riding her bike again, the wind strong on her face, or on Sundays, listening to Claire and Jane clamor over who would sit next to her at church. During the service, Christian liked to hold Stephanie's hand, their compression gloves pressed together. He traced the exposed tips of her scarred fingers with his own.

At church, or out shopping, Stephanie liked to watch the moms with grown-up daughters, the way they laughed together like old friends. "That looks so fun," Stephanie thought. "That's how it's going to be."

She thought of her friendship with her own mother, how they loved to talk for hours on her mother's bed. Growing up, her mother was the safe center of her small world.

Gratitude began to grow inside of her.

"I can be at my girls' weddings," Stephanie thought. When Oliver and Nicholas had their first dates, she could stay up late and wait for them to come home, quiz them on being gentlemen.

There would be braces and birthdays, school supplies and makeup lessons. She would be there for all of it.

"I get to enjoy my children," she wrote on her blog, "even if my fingers don't work."

To think she had asked God to end her life.

Lucy had her baby, a girl. Cradling Lucy's daughter, Stephanie felt a question weighing upon her. Ten babies, she'd always said.

She was ready to know if she could have more children,too.

Stephanie and Christian went back to the Maricopa Medical Center in Arizona.

She was nervous and asked the doctor about everything else: Christian's scarred upper lip, her tight neck, her face.

She was having trouble breathing through her nose, she said. The scar tissue was contracting against her airways.

Dr. Salvatore Lettieri, chief of plastic surgery, outlined a plan: skin transfers from her back to her neck, from her forehead to her nose, revisions to her lips and cheeks, a hand specialist, surgeries for years.

Stephanie sighed, thinking of the long path ahead.

When her back was to the doctor, she finally asked: "I can still have babies, right?"

Her voice shook.

She turned to face Lettieri. He eyed the burned band across the bottom of Stephanie's rib cage. He poked and pulled the pink swirled skin. Stephanie winced. It was a tender place.

Her body would need more time to heal, Lettieri said, and Stephanie would need surgery to add skin panels that could accommodate a growing baby.

But "yes," he told her, "in a few years, you can."

In the car afterward, Stephanie and Christian grinned at each other. They would name the next baby Charlotte if it was a girl.

For now, she focused on the mountain.

It loomed in her window each morning. The anniversary of the crash was nearing.

Stephanie practiced yoga again on a mat in her family room, her daughters mimicking her movements. During child's pose, Stephanie would ask Oliver or Nicholas to lie on top of her back while she curled over her knees. Their weight stretched her taut skin for the hike. When she stood up afterward, there was blood on the yoga mat where her knees had been.

Her insurance benefits were running out - no more home health care. Physical therapy in Salt Lake City was too much time away from her children, and insurance wouldn't cover therapy closer to home. Counseling made her feel weird. Stephanie took charge of her recovery.

She practiced running on a quiet lane behind her house where no one could see her awkward movements.

She drew fairies with Claire and Jane, felt her rigid fingers yielding. She reached up to put away dishes in cabinets and stretched the stiff spot underneath her arm.

Her thoughts now turned to the words of Washington Irving she had taped to her fridge: "There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity."

There were days when Stephanie could find that spark in the mirror. There were days when she couldn't.

Christian couldn't stop apologizing.

What if he had never started flying? he would say. What if he had opened the burning door?

"I'm so sorry for what happened. I'm so sorry I left. I thought you were behind me," he repeated.

"Leave it," Stephanie told him.

She needed him to move forward, to let her forget.

But later, when Stephanie and Christian told the story of the crash to others, they would explain it differently.

She wouldn't mention the moment when she woke in the plane, alone. She would talk instead about the way that her husband kicked a path for her. It would sound like he had saved her.

She wanted to think only about how he had tried.

Christian would let her tell it that way - on her blog, even on national television.

Maybe her memory was trying to save her.

Maybe, in the revision, in the excision of their memory, she was trying to save him.

"I think it's just something we do for the ones we love," Christian said.

Her climb up the mountain would "be the beginning and also the end," Stephanie had decided, "a letting go."

She would greet her old self during the climb - the teenager who sat on a rock and dreamed of baby names, the woman who went up the trail the morning she gave birth.

At the pinnacle, Stephanie would also tell that woman goodbye.

Read Stephanie Nielson - Chapter 10: Perspective and peace >>

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger