With regard to protecting vulnerable tropical habitat and vulnerable Third World independent farmers, the critical things to look for in choosing coffee are that it be fair trade and shade grown. And unlike the "free trade" in the headline, the issue is "fair trade."

This is a critical issue facing wildlife as well as humans. Sun grown cultivars favored by large-scale growers are replacing huge swaths of rain forest with row crops.

Having just quit my job when the small company I worked for was sold to a big corporation that follows practices I'm morally opposed to, some would say I'm not qualified to talk about how to be successful in a career or how to make sound financial judgments. But when success in a career and sound financial judgments come at the expense of our core beliefs, I think it's time to reevaluate success and rethink those financial judgments. My husband supported my decision even though we'll be scrambling for money for a while. I've supported his decisions with regard to living up to his code of ethics when it meant less money, too. I've watched friends of ours work their hearts out so their companies could keep biggering and biggering, and then those friends got tossed away like used tissue when their jobs got outsourced. Success in corporate America too often really does involve prostituting ourselves, men and women alike. I'd rather work on an assembly line than in a higher position in the same company, making or quietly supporting decisions that outsource those assembly line jobs.

I grew up in a lower class home, working at a factory some summers, and I worked my own way through college--I only got to go to college in the first place because my teachers got me a scholarship. I've never been close to upper or upper-middle class. The women I knew growing up were occasionally stay-at-home moms, but more likely worked checkout at the National or Jewel or Rexall, or were hairdressers, or switchboard operators or worked an assembly line or other jobs that were exhausting but somehow didn't rob their souls. They put their time in and came home and had a drink and a smoke and got back into their real lives. Teachers were the only women I saw who worked jobs that allowed creativity and freedom of expression via work, and they were the only women I saw who brought work home with them. The women I see working those much more financially rewarding careers today have a lot more visible wealth than the working women of my childhood, but they're somehow ALWAYS at work--taking calls or emails at all hours. The working class women I knew back then had far fewer choices than we do now. But those women knew exactly who was in charge of their souls. They worked because they needed money, not because they needed some artificial construct of "success."

Moms, dads, do what you need to do to live the life you believe is the right one. Financial security is all well and good. But you'll sleep better at night knowing you're living the GOOD life. Meaning one you truly believe in.

Being a person whose career ambitions revolved around doing good for humans and birds while making enough money to pay my bills, I spent a lot of time at home when my children were small, earning my income at writing and speaking gigs. The only "stay-at-home" parents in my neighborhood were me and a friend who was a fire fighter--he worked 24-hour shifts every 2-3 days, and was otherwise at home. (His wife worked a more normal job.) He and I swapped off on childcare.

Even though I was home, I was very busy with my low-paying but fulfilling work and my kids. Once when my mother-in-law and I visited a friend of hers and brought some cookies, her friend asked, "Oh, Laura--did you make these?" Before I could say a word, my mother-in-law, who had not held a paying job since she had her first child in 1948, said, "Laura has way more important things to do with her life than sit around baking cookies."

That's why I chuckle reading anything about people disparaging working or stay-at-home mothers or fathers. There are way too many complexities to define anyone into such a narrow category. And for some reason, in my life the only people I ever hear even debating what other women or men should do with their lives are writing for the media. Real people are (or should be) too busy living their lives to be judging others.

Ma Ingalls did "stay at home," but so did Pa--they lived on and worked on a farm. Was she home with the children? So was he--children quickly learned to do field work, and were as likely to be out helping Pa as Ma. And when Laura Ingalls grew up, she worked, as a teacher. The richest family in town, the shopkeepers, had two working parents--the mother and father both worked in the store.

In my recollection of "Little Women," while Mr. March (a minister) was off as a chaplain in the Civil War, Mrs. March was busy doing something--not earning much money, but they did have Hannah to do the housework, and Mrs. March was always gone until suppertime.

So I don't think Louisa May Alcott or Laura Ingalls Wilder's experiences are a compelling counter to the claim that before the 1950s, few women were "stay at home" mothers.

I'd love to see evidence of a scientific consensus promoting GM crops. It simply does not exist, and as far as I've been able to determine, except for scientists getting paid by the corporations getting rich via GM, the majority of scientists seem to be on the same side of the debate as environmentalists.