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Recently in Salon Mothers Who Think

Wild in the streets
What better place to find a hottie than at a riot conveniently taking place in my neighborhood?
By Annie Culver
[12/03/99]

Taking a chance on love
Suddenly, we would be allowed to adopt a baby -- if we could accept the very real possibility that, one day, he would be mentally ill.
By Jane Smith
[12/01/99]

Giving in to Ritalin
I hate it, but my son needs it.
By Karen Shoemaker
[11/30/99]

Close the door on open marriage
Read our lips, say readers: Open marriages don't work.

[11/29/99]

She jokes, he sulks
Kids! Cut the posturing and hostility!

[11/29/99]

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My thoughts, as I nervously realized that I was not going to be able to exit this intersection without some kind of confrontation, were not about world trade, or the environment, or about how I was going to get to the meetings I was scheduled to attend. My thought, instead, was this: What kind of shitty mother am I to let myself get into a jam like this?

Also Today Wild in the streets What better place to find a hottie than at a riot conveniently taking place in my neighborhood? By Annie Culver   The three horsemen of globalization Critics fear increased cooperation between the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund will spawn an 800-pound gorilla. By Monte Paulsen   The great straddler Free trader Clinton veers left in Seattle. But will his act be enough to keep Al Gore's Democratic Party intact? By Todd Gitlin

I work for the U.S. Department of the Interior because of a deep and hard- wired love of nature. I spent my childhood summers near the tidal bays of New Jersey, where my mother and father taught me celestial navigation and drop-lining for blue-claw crabs. I was the New Jersey press secretary for Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, having joined the effort because I was appalled by what the Bush administration was doing to clean-air regulations. I came to Washington to work for Bruce Babbitt, the secretary of the interior, partly because he was a card-carrying member of the League of Conservation Voters.

True, the Interior Department hasn't always had much to do with world trade. But now, with the satellite-quick speed of globalization, we have to make sure that migratory birds, endangered butterflies, national parks and the people who love them are represented at these trade negotiations. So I was dispatched as the leader of a lonely delegation of two, to begin our department's nascent presence in WTO trade talks.

This was only the third time in four years that I had been away from home for more than one night. I've got two curly-headed babies there, one recently emergent from toddlerhood, one just about to dive in. There has to be a pretty good reason for me to leave them: a romantic anniversary weekend away with my husband, for example; increased globalization of world trade, for another.

I've always liked how my work on the environment is another way of taking care of my kids. I wipe their noses; I chop broccoli into microscopic pieces and hide it in macaroni and cheese; I push for a permanent source of funding to purchase more parks and wildlife refuges. All in a day's work.

But these threads of my life got somewhat tangled in the streets of Seattle.

Shortly before 7 a.m. I walked to the Westin Hotel, where the U.S. delegation held its morning briefing for members. Afterward, several of us walked across the street to a Starbucks (I know, I know) and sat down with coffee and food. Soon after, the capped boys ran past, pounding the windows of the coffee shop and spattering the door with lapis-colored paintballs. One opened the doors and yelled inside. " Join the people, goddamn it!"

I was slightly stunned. I agreed with these people: There needs to be more openness in the proceedings; there needs to be more care taken with protection of the environment. That's why I came here -- to change the rules. I have, after all, been speaking for the trees for a while now. I've even got a environmentalist husband who favors tactics similar to those erupting around me. But here I was, for all the world just another suit sipping rain-forest-destroying coffee before meetings with global-trade puppeteers.

Next page | I felt the animal instinct kick in