I've been overwhelmed with posts that I've had the urge to write. I started one two days ago, and it was so long and still unfinished that I realized it needed to be about five. I've resolved to take it one step at a time, and try to break things up by theme. This, oddly enough, all has to do with our decision to enroll Mikko in a German-immersion preschool two half-days a week, but I'll have to get to that later. Don't bother trying to make this post fit that topic, because it's only incidental.

Today's installment is based on a New York Times article that's making the rounds, previewing anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy's newest book, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding.

The article is In a Helpless Baby, the Roots of Our Social Glue, by Natalie Angier. I haven't read the Hrdy book, so don't take this as an endorsement. I was intrigued enough by the article, though, to continue researching the intriguing term "allomothering."

The article gives Hrdy's view on human babies' astonishing dependence, as distinct from certain other advanced primates. Because of this long period of utter dependence on adults, humans have necessarily developed a form of cooperative breeding, "a reproductive strategy in which mothers are assisted by as-if mothers, or 'allomothers,' individuals of either sex who help care for and feed the young."

Either because of this or in response to this, humans are relatively trusting and cooperative. We may deplore our warlike tendencies, but that started mostly to compete with other tribes, not among those we trust. In contrast to animals in the wild, we're pretty tolerant of each other, even in close quarters. Hrdy gives the example of a hypothetical cross-country flight:

"Chimpanzees are pretty smart, but were you to board an airplane filled with chimpanzees, you 'would be lucky to disembark with all 10 fingers and toes still attached,' Dr. Hrdy writes."

In the realm of baby care, mother chimpanzees and gorillas won't give up their newborns to others, fearing rightly for their baby's life. Human mothers, on the other hand, expect to hand the baby into other trusted arms. I found these statistics of traditional-society babywearing interesting:

"Among the !Kung foragers of the Kalahari, babies are held by a father, grandmother, older sibling or some other allomother maybe 25 percent of the time. Among the Efe foragers of Central Africa, babies spend 60 percent of their daylight hours being toted around by somebody other than their mother. In 87 percent of foraging societies, mothers sometimes suckle each other’s children, another remarkable display of social trust."

In the culture of those who adhere to attachment-parenting and continuum-parenting ideals, we're faced with a dilemma. We strive to emulate the traditional tribal ways of breastfeeding on cue, wearing our babies, sleeping close, and continuing our daily tasks — but without the tribe. Think about those Efe mothers who have responsibility for their babies only 40 percent of the daylight hours and the sort of rest and activity they could get done.

The long-term consequences of allomothering has been to encourage long childhood dependence but still allow the mother to regain her fertility quickly:

"With helpers in the nest, women could give birth to offspring with ever longer childhoods — the better to build big brains and stout immune systems — and, paradoxically, at ever shrinking intervals. The average time between births for a chimpanzee mother is about six years; for a human mother, it’s two or three years."

It's not just humans who use allomothering, though, and it was in her study of various monkeys and apes that Hrdy first started applying what she witnessed to human child rearing. For instance, allomothering in monkeys has such benefits as allowing the mother time to forage for more food and reproduce more quickly. For the allomothers themselves, it gives them practice in parenting (in monkeys, allomothers are often females who haven't yet reproduced) and cements bonds within the group — such as assuring males of their paternity and making it more likely that the baby will be cared for if the mother should die.

I really enjoyed a similar article, by Claudia Glenn Dowling, titled "The Hardy Sarah Blaffer Hrdy," that delves more deeply into Hrdy's experiences as a mother who maintained her professional life while raising three children, with the help of just such allomothers as she researched. I won't even go into the point here that no one would be speaking of such things as her family life if she were a male anthropologist, but consider it noted.

The article gives more examples of allomothers and the risks of not having such support:

"Historically, humans have made use of allomothers, [Hrdy] maintains. Allo means 'other than' in Greek, so allomothers are group members who help a mother rear her child. They may be female (older sisters, aunts, grandmothers) or male (brothers, lovers, and fathers). The absence of support networks for modern mothers may explain why so many newborns are dumped in bathrooms, Hrdy says."

Some parents are fortunate enough to live by extended family or within a network of friends who are eager to help. But many in Western culture, particularly in urban places, live independently, and any tribe we surround ourselves with we have to create. For most, the choice is limited to one of two options: Either one parent, usually the woman, stays home to be a full-time parent and has all the responsibility of caring 100 percent of the time for her young, or the family employs hired professionals for some of the care. For working parents, their allomothers of choice might be nannies or au pairs (as Hrdy was privileged enough to choose for her children), or daycare for the less affluent.

"Those experiences [as a working mother] have made Hrdy a fierce advocate for good day-care programs, which she considers the modern substitute for a tribal network of allomothers. She visits centers around the world to study their techniques and lobbies government childcare agencies for higher standards. 'Stability, stability, stability,' she reiterates. She finds it inconceivable that anyone doubts that quality day-care programs are worthy of public funding. She says the woman who drowned her five children in the bathtub in Texas is a tragic example of the need for a support system. 'She should not have been alone in that house with five young kids and a record of depression— it's a no-brainer. Not even a mentally healthy woman should have to be in that situation.'"

In fighting so hard for attachment parenting — carry your baby, breastfeed day and night — I feel like sometimes I miss the point that traditional mothers would do this with help. We weren't meant to parent alone, and our babies weren't meant to be so isolated and attached to only one caregiver.

Sometimes I need to open up my heart and let Mikko bond with other allomothers, like the lovely nulliparous (my other new word from researching this post) women who hang out with Sam, Mikko, and me every week for a small group meeting. And I've so enjoyed seeing his face light up when his aunt comes over, or hear him yell out "Nana" when a picture of my mom comes up on my screensaver.

Sometimes I have to accept that I can't be all things to Mikko, and nor should I be. And I shouldn't have to feel guilt about that (though I do, as you'll see in upcoming posts...).

He needs his mother, but we need other caregivers around us, too, for all our sakes.

I keep hoping my cool new related posts widget will, you know, actually show related posts. So far it seems random to me, but maybe it's using some algorithm I know not of, or maybe I'm expecting magical mind reading rather than technology. Anyhoo, I'll just have to keep linking the related ones myself. To that end, I'm referring to these today: yesterday's post on changing our sleep schedule and a recent post about our mixed feelings on putting our baby in the church nursery (where all your helpful comments have made it clear that we're not alone in our wishes and concerns), as well as my post on Mikko's progress with baby sign language. You don't have to read them all in advance — I only point them out to refer back to if you're wondering what conversation I'm continuing here.

Yesterday we were cranky all round because of trying to get to bed and up early and having only alloyed success at both. Mikko was what I like to refer to as fragile — sometimes calm, sometimes giddy, but on a knife's edge for turning into a howling banshee.

We decided to try out the earlier service at church, since it might fit in better with our new schedule, and Mikko was signing to nurse as we walked in, late. I went on in to the back and tried to breastfeed him, but he would have none of it. He kept straining and twisting and whining loudly during the prayer. Prompted by Sam's pained expression, I gave up and walked Mikko down to the nursery instead. He went in calmly enough without me and headed straight for the toy trucks as usual.

I grabbed a pager and settled back in upstairs with the adults to be nice and quiet.

In just a few moments, my pocket suddenly started vibrating. I leaped out of my chair as if I'd been electrocuted and ran off downstairs, forgetting to let Sam know in passing, who had his eyes closed for another prayer.

I could hear the wails as I descended, and a harried volunteer met me at the half-door.

"He keeps pointing to his stomach and head," she told me, clearly concerned that he must be dying.

"Oh," I said, reaching in to pick up my screeching son. "He's signing." I tried to reassure him and her at the same time. "That just means he wants to nurse and he wants me."

I don't think I explained it very well, but I was under some duress, what with the screaming and all. I realized she probably thought he was pointing to the places on his body that were distressing him, but really he was just using his own adapted baby signs for breastfeeding (he kind of just points to his stomach) and mother (he uses his index finger instead of a thumb for mother and father signs).

There was no going back into the nursery, even after a long session of nummies, which he accepted this time, and sitting silently in the service was still out of the question. It was such a very quiet service, maybe due to the early hour. So the three of us ended up in our old haunt, the cry room, where we bugged the heck out of some poor single guy who must have thought it was overflow seating.

What I took away from our experience at this service, good and bad:

     First of all, we all really need to get used to being up early. We've put off starting Mikko in his new preschool until next week, when we hope he'll have adjusted to our revised schedule and be able to accept a separation from us with more equanimity.

     That aside, one thing I liked about the childcare at this early service is its very features as a reduced option. It's only for 0- to 5-year-olds, and what I most appreciated was that all the children were in one room together rather than separated out by age. It also was a smaller group, about eight kids total, so it might be less overwhelming and have a better teacher-to-child ratio than during the busier main service.

     What discouraged me was not unique to this service, but it was the very fact that no one could understand my son's efforts to communicate.

Don't get me wrong — I'm not some baby-sign nut who thinks everyone who doesn't know basic vocabulary in American Sign Language is being rude to my child. I mean, you might want to learn some basic ASL vocabulary anyhow, since it might come in handy (for instance, if you volunteer in the church nursery) and just because it's fun. But I certainly don't expect it of anyone.

But the fact is that anyone who's close to my son knows his most common signs. "Nummies," in particular, they would have had a chance to see many times over if we had spent even a couple hours together. My friends and family have all learned the sign and many other of the popular ones, just by hanging around Mikko.

These church nursery volunteers, I'm having reemphasized, don't know my son or me a whit. We've never spent time talking, and there's no opportunity when I drop him off for even a few minutes to explain that he signs or give them a quick rundown on the more useful ones.

In contrast, if I left him with family, as I've done a few times, they can figure out what he's trying to tell them. Whether or not they can provide him with what he wants, they can at least reassure him that they understand his desires and can offer an alternative form of comfort.

I feel bad that Mikko was signing so energetically and, as far as he was concerned, clearly, and no one was grasping his meaning. It must have been so discouraging for him and only increased the frustration he felt at asking for nummies and me.

This happens to speaking children as well, of course, before they can be clearly understood by any but their dearest loved ones. (My poor uncle has stories to tell about babysitting me when I was a demanding but unintelligible two-year-old, for instance.) But the benefit of baby signing is supposed to be that it's easier for these verbally challenged young kids to communicate — but it doesn't work if no one's able to receive the message.

This is firming my responsibility to interpret for my son in these situations. I've told his preschool teachers that he signs, and fortunately they already learned the basics for signing with their own son. I've resolved to run through his particular variations with them when I take him there for the first time.

What to do for church I still don't know. We're going to give the early service another shot, and I think I'll try to get there with time to spare for some conversation with the volunteers.

Or we could always just scare people out of the cry room again.

As I try to steer Mikko into bilingualism* (I really need to write a post about the German preschool and my lingual hopes next, I think), I'll have to be prepared for these translation difficulties to continue. I'm looking forward to the day Mikko starts commanding the nursery staff in German while gesturing wildly. He'll get kicked out again for sure.

I used up the only baby signing photo that stock.xchng had, so I've chosen Signing Time ads for illustration instead, because hey, they fit the topic, and I'm happy to be an affiliate now with this mama-started business. I can do a full review later, but if you are interested in signing with your children, I'll just say that we love the Signing Time DVDs (and no one's paying me to say so) for painless vocabulary learning (for the adults!). I haven't tried the Baby Signing Time DVDs yet, but I just checked a couple out of the library and will see what they're like. Since Mikko doesn't watch them but Sam and I do, I figured the older-kids version was right for us! If you're interested in learning baby sign or American Sign Language as a way to communicate with your baby or as a second language, you might find out if your library has any of the series available or suggest they add them.

*Or will it be trilingualism if he keeps learning ASL?

P.S. Is that John Travolta signing "car"?

In honor of the sluggishness I feel today, I thought I'd tackle the myth of the idle night owl.

Today's lethargy is part springing ahead à la Daylight Saving Time and part a deliberate change in our schedule to move us up from vampirism to normalcy.

Sam and I have struggled with being awake during sunny hours throughout the decade of our marriage. Before that, school and parents demanded that we rise and sleep at times that were relatively consistent with the rest of the culture, although weekends and vacations always found us sleeping in and staying up late. When we graduated and started working from home, we could set our own schedules, and the schedules our bodies came up with involved staying up further and further into the wee sma's and getting up correspondingly later into the afternoons. Eventually, we would end up catching the sunrise as we irritably closed the curtains on that infernal sun so we could get some sleep.

Good thing we don't suffer from SAD, right?

The only thing that would break our ever-meandering sleep shifts was an event or appointment that forced us to be up during business hours. We would jerk ourselves into normalcy. We'd blink outside and grouse and swig caffeine and joke about what that flaming ball of gas in the sky could possibly be. Then we'd vow that we would use the opportunity to be awake during the day once again — but inevitably we would push our bedtime a little later, or we would be so tired we'd take just a little nap and then not be able to get to sleep till late, and the cycle would begin again. I even started to wonder if perhaps our internal clocks were not 24 hours long but some other variant, because we were never consistent, our bedtime always moving a little later and so our waking time as well.

Then we had a baby. And everyone told us — babies need routine!

I didn't quite believe them. First of all, newborns need nothing like routine. They live by the moment, not the clock. They don't use day planners or schedule out when next to eat or sleep.

Wait for it, the advice-givers told me — older babies, at least, need a set schedule.

I tried. Sam tried. Heaven knows we've tried. But we're not routine types.

This January, one of our New Year's hopes (I won't even bother to call it a resolution at this point) was to Get On A Schedule. We blocked it out in an Excel file in bright colors coded to each member of the family. We followed it for, oh...zero days. I didn't even get it printed out to hang up, because that required plugging in our old inkjet color printer, rather than the black laser we use for business, and I never got around to it. I guess I should have put that on the schedule.

Well, we're once again trying our hand at waking with the sun's rise instead of with its set, and this time we have motivation.

We're thinking of enrolling Mikko in a German-immersion preschool twice a week for half a day each. I'm still not certain, but I'm excited about the possibility, and that's a blog post or several in itself, so I won't go into it here. I'll just say that I was happy that the German half-day was in the afternoon, because I thought that would fit with our schedule better than the morning Spanish option. Then Sam and I blocked out when his naps would have to go to allow for our evening commitments three times a week, and leaving room for at least one of the three services on Sundays, and we realized — oh, horror, we'd have to get up at 7:30. As in, ante meridiem. I don't like o'clocks that start with seven if they don't accompany dinner.

It also means going to sleep by midnight-ish. Which means no saying, "Just a half-hour more..." to finishing up an email, or a DVD, or a blog post. And it means the time we've carved out for Mikko's nap and bedtimes will have to be sacrosanct. No errands that would encroach on that time, and we'll have to rush back from our evening appointments rather than linger to talk.

We're going to become those parents. The parents whose kids go to bed frick-all early, and who can't do anything fun at night.

We're going to be the type of parents who have a routine. (Well, maybe — you've heard enough now to be skeptical, I hope.)

So, today we started. We went to bed last night at a decent hour, even with the leap ahead. (We were tired anyway, because we'd had to shortchange our sleep Saturday morning to get to the preschool's open house.) We got up today in the dawn light and struggled our way to the early service at church. We drove right home, stopping off at only four quick places (that's good for us) so that Mikko could get back to sleep.

We're all groggy. Mikko was alternately screaming and frenetic all morning and was booted from the nursery (again, another post), and Sam and I feel like we could drop off at any moment. I know it's just the first day, but here's where I'll make my argument:

     Being a night owl does not make you lazy.

There, I said it. No one believes it, though. You don't, I can tell by the way you're reading this. (Do you feel spooked now? I'm right behiiiind you...) I don't even believe it, really.

It's so ingrained in our culture. Industrious people — early birds, if you will — get up and get going. They're up at the crack of dawn and they have the whole day ahead of them, not the whole night.

Night owls are sleepyheads, slow to get moving, bleary-eyed instead of bushy-tailed.

But what the morning larks don't see, after they've toddled off to bed at 8 p.m., is me working my tail off at 3 in the morning. Somehow it doesn't count, though, if you're industrious at 3 in the morning. It smacks of procrastination, as if you really should have done that earlier, but nice try catching up.

Consider this situation and see what your first uncensored thoughts are.

     Person A goes to bed at 9:30 p.m. and gets up at 6:30 a.m.
     Person B goes to bed at 4 a.m. and gets up at 11 a.m.

Which person is lazier? You want to say Person B, don't you? It's there; it's in our culture. People who get up at 11 a.m. are layabouts. People who stay up till 4 a.m. are not to be trusted. They couldn't be up to any good at that hour. Never mind that Person A got nine hours of sleep, and Person B only seven, because it doesn't matter. It's not how much sleep you get that makes you perceived as lazy — it's when you get that sleep.

(For what it's worth, for American up-and-at- 'em-ness, I blame Benjamin Franklin, the Puritans, and Thomas Edison.)

I happened to get seven hours of sleep last night, from 12:30 to 7:30, and it was not enough. Now, 4 to 11 would have been just about right.

If I ever have something to accomplish, I'm much better able to do it if I stay up, even pulling an all-nighter if necessary. If I try to get up early, it doesn't work. First of all, I just goof off for awhile instead of going to bed right away anyhow. Then I can't wake up in the morning and I keep snoozing the alarm. (Note that we can get up sans alarm at 11.) And then I'm not fully conscious for hours after waking. Sometime I'd like to force a morning lark to stay up to finish something just so we can all admit that we have different styles and abilities when it comes to sleeping and waking, and that that's OK.

Funnily enough, my mom realized this even when I was a preschooler myself, because she deliberately chose the afternoon half-day of kindergarten for me instead of the morning, so that I could take my time getting ready, eat a leisurely lunch while watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and then be fully conscious when it was time to interact with people.

All right, that was my insightful rant on night owls vs. morning larks (I'm loopy enough that every thought seems insightful), and a plea for good wishes as we head into becoming normal. Perhaps. Sorta. It would help if we'd maybe given birth to a morning lark, but it's all night owls in this house!

If I were any other animal, I'd probably be a nap-happy cat. Photo courtesy of Andrew Langham.

When I was pregnant and studying Hypnobabies, we were taught to surround ourselves with good thoughts about pregnancy and birth. It can be hard to do when, if you flip on the TV, you might be assaulted with the likes of an A Baby Story non-progressing C-section saga, or a sitcom "humorously" depicting birth as changing loving wives into screeching hags.

And, yet, I craved videos of true-to-life births, both to prepare and to celebrate. As someone who had never seen a birth in real life before, I wanted to see the possibilities. As someone who expected and hoped for a good birth, I wanted to witness what could be beautiful in the process.

I found my answer in YouTube. And it might not be what you were expecting.

Certainly I watched my share of homebirths, water births, natural births, and experiences with childbirth hypnosis.

But what really brought tears of joy to my eyes were watching animal births. Dogs, cats, horses, zoo animals, even water mammals — I was struck by how well these creatures embodied the Hypnobabies philosophy of having no fear in birth, no expectation of things going wrong, complete trust in their bodies.

Yes, I know animals aren't conscious in the same way humans are, and I know we're not built exactly the same, considering that they tend to walk on all fours and we prefer standing. But I took inspiration and comfort from how calm they were in the face of similar physical forces, and how effortless they make birth look. For instance, watch the giraffe birth below and be astonished at the idea of casually letting your newborn drop from a height of several feet onto straw! :)



So, if you're pregnant and thinking about birth, in this post are a few videos for looking forward to the beautiful event. There are many more if you search, although, as always on YouTube, be cautious in what you choose. Also, I don't always appreciate the human presence in the pet and livestock births, because it seems like the animal mamas are doing just fine on their own, thankyouverymuch — another inspiration for taking charge of your own birthing! Below is a necessarily unassisted dolphin birth:



Enjoy, and a peaceful birthing to you! May you be as casual as this panda giving birth to twins:



P.S. I had Mikko watch the video below today of a dog giving birth to a puppy, and he thought it was hilarious! See, nothing traumatizing to it at all.

I'm not actually bringing Dr. Seuss back to life, but I will point out that yesterday was Theodor Geisel's birthday, a fun fact I learned from an Amazon blog post. I found the Amazon post while setting up a book blog for someone, and it made me laugh. The author reminisces about growing up with Hop on Pop (one of my all-time faves — I would cover up the "NOT" in "You must not hop on pop" and then proceed to pounce on my dad) and points to a reader's review that is a hilariously detailed Cartesian analysis of Green Eggs and Ham. (Sample quote: "[Sam-I-Am's name is] a clear reference to Descartes' famous 'I think, therefore I am' statement, which we can extend upon this reading to 'I think, therefore I am Sam!')

I'm really enjoying reading with Mikko now. He's not yet to the stage where he'll sit still and listen the whole time, but we've at least moved beyond those board books with one picture and one word on each page to books with an actual story to them, and I'm thrilled.

First of all, it's much less boring.

Secondly, and more importantly, I'm getting to read all my old favorites again.

We went to a small elementary-school book sale the other day. There were half a dozen tables with printed signs marking which was which — half of the signs decorated empty tables, because there simply weren't any books in that category, I guess. No matter — Mikko ripped down all the signs he passed, anyway. Oops. He was really fast about it. We just took them from him and laid them on top of the table instead, out of his grabby little reach.

(We have given him the nickname Mikko, Destroyer of Worlds, for good reason.)

While Sam chased Mikko down the length of the hall, I combed through the haphazard stacks and piles of children's books, ignoring Baby-Sitters Club (though I have fond memories!)* and other older-kid fare, anything we already had, anything preachy, anything boooring, and anything that looked like it had been in the clutches of a child even more destructive than Mikko.

We still ended up with a nice big stack that included — do you remember? — Morris the Moose Goes to School. I wondered if it really is a good book or if I just remembered it as one, so I read it with some trepidation last night. It really is good! Bonus: It's an old library copy, and Mikko is as fascinated with the old-school checkout-card envelope pasted inside the cover as I am.

I also snagged Danny and the Dinosaur, even though I couldn't remember the plot, for the same reason of vague fondness.

*[A meandering and entirely unessential sidenote on the Baby-Sitters Club that I include for your amusement. I found the closeup at right of one of the totally tubular old covers, and this link to a review that includes notable clothing descriptions, to wit: "Short, very baggy lavender plaid overalls, a white lacy blouse, a black fedora, and red high-top sneakers without socks. Her long black hair was carefully arranged in four braids. Her makeup was blue and gold eyeshadow and magenta blush. — Claudia. Baggy yellow-and-black-checked shirt, black pants, red jazz shoes, and a bracelet that looked as though it was made from a telephone cord. Dangling jointed skeleton earrings that jump when she moves completes this ensemble. — Claudia. Stacey had on a pink sweatshirt with sequins and a large purple parrot on the front; short, tight-fitting jeans with zippers up the outsides of the legs; and pink plastic shoes." The '80s were an awesome fashion decade.]

When we saw my mom last month at a family wedding, we went to Powell's Books in Portland, and when I told her what Mikko's bookshelf was lacking, we beelined to the children's section to find Big Dog ... Little Dog (The bird's got the word!), Caps for Sale (fun to act out, I have rediscovered), and Are You My Mother? (You are not my mother! You are a snort!)

(I will complain a bit here that the sturdy and toddler-friendly new board book versions have condensed and, I am almost certain, changed some of the wording of the originals. I'm going to try to check the originals out of the library and write in the missing lines! I want my memories intact.)

One of Sam's favorites as a kid was Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, which is a rhythmic story about monkeys drumming and a treat to read aloud.

Today we were at our Bible study at a café and I was trying to distract Mikko from pulling me away from the group. I rummaged through the diaper backpack o' fun and pulled out Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, which I'd forgotten was tucked away in there. I wondered if Mikko would remember it from last time and be intrigued.

Well, he started hitting me. I persisted in reading, wondering what he was up to. I looked up and saw that he was grinning, and I realized the hitting was rhythmic and flat-handed.

He was drumming!

My little monkey, enjoying the books we love.

What are your favorites? What are your kids' favorites? I'll take recommendations and reminders of what wonderful children's books are out there. I never really did leave children's books behind, but I'm loving my very good excuse to dive into them again.

I belong to The Continuum Concept email forum, and one of the members has kindly put together and posted a reading list:

Continuum Life Booklist

The book list comprises forum members' recommendations of books that align with the values espoused in Jean Liedloff's classic The Continuum Concept.

You can find help for thoughtful and traditional parenting in the many books listed. Topics covered range from the anthropological (hunter-gatherer cultures) to the comprehensive (nurturing parenting) to the practical (feeding baby).

I'm personally checking out several of the "alternative princess" children's stories listed (meaning, those that run counter to the damsel-in-distress, Cindrella myths), and I plan to post reviews once I've read them. I love me some good liberated princess stories!

I hope you enjoy this resource and find some inspiring reading in it! Thanks heaps to Lisa for putting the time into administrating this list.

Photo courtesy of Zsuzsanna Kilián