The blogger’s dilemma: what to write about and when to write it

The New Neo Posted on by

Bloggers are continually having to make decisions not just on what to write in any particular piece, but how to choose topics and the timing of topics: what to write about, how long to make it, how much variety to have, how often to put up a post. That sort of thing.

Group blogs have it easy in a way, because they can push out content at a regular clip without straining any one person unduly. But as a single blogger rather than a group blogger (although I also post sometimes at the group blog run by law professor William Jacobson, Legal Insurrection), it’s just little old me who makes all these decisions at neo-neocon.

I’m not complaining, not exactly, because I like the autonomy. But it’s not easy to figure out how much content is enough and how much is too much. I’ve fallen into a certain pattern over the years of a few posts a day with some of it political but maybe at least 25-30% of it non-political. I’ve never figured out the exact proportions; I just do what feels right at the time.

I generally have more fun writing the non-political posts than the political ones. Although sometimes the non-politicals go faster, sometimes—particularly when there are a lot of YouTube videos involved, for example with my dance posts—they take a long long time to compose and especially to research. But often they’re so much fun to research that I would be doing it anyway even if I never wrote a thing on the topic. Sometimes posts like those YouTube-heavy dance posts are very popular and draw a lot of comments. But sometimes there are only one or two comments and I begin to question whether other people think the topic is quite as fascinating as it is to me.

Now and then I wonder why it is that I’ve decided to spend my semi-Golden years digesting political news and spitting out my opinions on it. But as with the arts posts, a lot of the political stuff is intrinsically interesting to me and I’d be reading it and thinking about it even if I wasn’t writing about it. It’s also in the process of writing that I refine my thoughts, so there are rewards for me beyond the blog and its audience (although the audience is a big big plus).

So now it’s Christmas weekend, one of the biggest holidays of the year. Traffic goes down online for just about everyone during a holiday, and if this year is anything like all the other years it will go down here. So, for example, I have a big long draft of a big long post on the topic of the GOP’s tax bill and its effect on charitable giving. That topic has the advantage of being timely in two ways: the bill is newly-passed, and December is traditionally the time when a great deal of their money (about 1/3 of the entire year’s haul) is taken in by charities.

But I’ve decided to wait till after Christmas to post it. I find that it’s not a good idea to publish bigger, heavier posts during a holiday because not enough people will see them. The holidays are for holiday-ing, after all—and to that end I hope your weather’s better than mine’s supposed to be.

Much of New England is in the throes of a snow/ice/rain storm right now, for example, and the same is predicted to happen for a goodly portion of Christmas Day. At around 3:30 PM this afternoon I ventured out of my home and ventured right back in again, encountering at least an inch of uneven ice, and a drizzle of what they like to call “mixed precipitation.” No reason to be out unless you have to be.

I’m getting a bit stir crazy and cabin-fevered—more than a bit, to be honest. On Christmas Day I was planning to drive a couple of hours to a friend’s house for dinner and conviviality, and I was looking forward to it. Still am looking forward to it. But I have my doubts as to whether driving will be advisable that day.

We’ll….see.

Lebkuchen recipe for Christmas

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Regulars here may remember that most years I put up a family Christmas recipe. And here it is again.]

This recipe was brought over from Germany sometime in the mid-1800s, and was my favorite of all the wonderful treats cooked by my great-aunt Flora, a baker of rare gifts. She and my great-uncle were not only exceptionally wonderful people, but to my childish and wondering eyes they looked very much like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus.

The name of the treat is lebkuchen, but it’s quite a different one from the traditional recipe, which I don’t much care for. This is sweet and dense, can be made ahead, and keeps very well when stored in tins.

Flora’s Lebkuchen:

(preheat the oven to 375 degrees)

1 pound dark brown sugar
4 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 oz. chopped dates
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. orange juice
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. lemon juice

Sift the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon).

Beat the eggs and brown sugar together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms the ribbon. Add the orange juice, lemon juice, and extracts to it.

Add the dry mixture to it, a little at a time, stirring.

Add the raisins, dates, and walnuts.

Grease and flour two 9X9 cake pans. Put batter in pans and bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester to see if it’s done). You don’t want it to get too dark and dry on the edges, but the middle can’t still be wet when tested.

Meanwhile, make the frosting.

Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, and 1 Tbs. almond extract. Add enough confectioner’s sugar to make a frosting of spreading consistency (the recipe says “2 cups,” but I’ve always noticed that’s not exactly correct). You can make even more frosting if you like a lot of frosting.

Let cake cool to at least lukewarm, and spread generously with the frosting. Then cut into small pieces and store (or eat!).

Enjoy!

Was the Steele dossier the FBI’s “insurance policy”?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the question asked by Andrew C. McCarthy, who so far has written the most consistently insightful and in-depth articles on the subject of the investigations of Trump by various government agencies.

It’s another of those “read the whole thing even though it’s long” articles. But I’ll offer some excerpts anyway:

According to the now-infamous text message sent by FBI agent Peter Strzok to his paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, it was in McCabe’s office that top FBI counterintelligence officials discussed what they saw as the frightening possibility of a Trump presidency.

That was during the stretch run of the 2016 campaign, no more than a couple of weeks after they started receiving the Steele dossier ”” the Clinton campaign’s opposition-research reports, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, about Trump’s purportedly conspiratorial relationship with Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia.

Was it the Steele dossier that so frightened the FBI?

I think so.

So, the timing was right. But it wasn’t just the timing:

The Obama-era FBI and Justice Department had great faith in Steele because he had previously collaborated with the bureau on a big case. Plus, Steele was working on the Trump-Russia project with the wife of a top Obama Justice Department official, who was personally briefed by Steele. The upper ranks of the FBI and DOJ strongly preferred Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, to the point of overlooking significant evidence of her felony misconduct, even as they turned up the heat on Trump. In sum, the FBI and DOJ were predisposed to believe the allegations in Steele’s dossier. Because of their confidence in Steele, because they were predisposed to believe his scandalous claims about Donald Trump, they made grossly inadequate efforts to verify his claims. Contrary to what I hoped would be the case, I’ve come to believe Steele’s claims were used to obtain FISA surveillance authority for an investigation of Trump.

The rest of McCarthy’s article contains the details of why he says what he says.

Speaking of refrigerators…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and we certainly have been speaking of refrigerators lately—

I read my new fridge’s manual yesterday. I was looking for instructions on how to integrate some little egg holders that came with it: where do they go? What is the little metal gizmo that came in the bag with them?

Alas, the manual was mum on the subject. But it had a lot to say to the people who apparently like to use their refrigerators in unusual ways limited only by the human imagination.

Here are some quotes. I’m going to assume that this first one is directed at children:

“Do not swing from the door or bottle racks on the door.”

And this was really puzzling at first:

“Do not use electrical appliances inside the refrigerator.”

But it was explained—sort of—by this one:

“Do not use a hair dryer to dry the inside of the refrigerator.”

And then we have this:

“Do not place lighted candles in the refrigerator…”

WTF? Lighted candles??? But the rest of the sentence was quite a bit more—illuminating:

“…to remove odors.”

Okay, so somewhere there’s a block of people who put lighted candles in their fridges in an attempt to remove odors. But does that instruction mean it’s okay to place lighted candles in the refrigerator to do something other than remove odors? Inquiring minds want to know.

Then there’s:

“Do not spray volatile materials such as insecticide on any surface of the appliance.”

The need has never come up in my entire life, but I’ll take it under advisement.

Then we have some more practical advice:

“Food consumed daily should be placed on the front part of the shelves. This can avoid unnecessary delays in door opening as well as expiration of the storage period because you forgot to eat it.”

I do often forget to eat food and it goes bad, which makes me very sad. But it’s not food I ordinarily eat on a daily basis and have forgotten to put in the front.

And did you know?:

“Do not store foods with high moisture content in contact with the inner walls. Otherwise the food may freeze to the walls.”

I must say that in all my years of using a refrigerator I’ve never faced that problem, and I bet neither have you.

More advice:

“Some vegetables, for example onion, garlic, ginger, water chestnut and other prismatic foods, can be stored for long periods at normal temperature. There is no need to store them in the refrigerator.”

Prismatic foods? Whaaa?? I looked it up online, and there is no such thing.

Also, there’s a troubleshooting part of the manual in which one of the entries is “Refrigerator is dirty.” The solution they propose is that you clean it. Thank you, manual writers!

Organizing takes time

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m puzzled by the number of things-to-do on my things-to-do list. Many of the tasks are large (“re-do blog template”; “plan vacation”; “write book”) and some seem smaller but end up taking a lot of time anyway (“get present for X”; “do laundry”; “buy a tenkeyless keyboard”—and no, I’m not a gamer, but that sort of keyboard is most comfortable for me).

And there are many, many more things on that list. One of them—“get new fridge”—I’ve taken care of. But like many such tasks, that turns out to not be the end of it. The fridge continues to be great, and it’s much fuller now—

—and I still like it, although every now and then it makes the odd groaning noise that I’m informed is normal, and I’m still getting used to its stylish-but-annoying lack of a handle. However, the acquisition of this wonderful fridge has led to the need to organize the innards of that fridge better, which yesterday led to a trip to Target to get some innards-organizing stuff (you can see the lovely carousel on that top shelf, for example, one of yesterday’s purchases).

This all takes not only money and time, but thought. You may laugh at that—how much thought can it possibly take? But organization of my spatial surroundings doesn’t come naturally to me, although I crave it. I tend to let things accumulate for years, ignoring the clutter which isn’t on a hoarder scale but still is more than I like to see. I’ve got a small place, and my closets and cupboards are brimful of stuff that I put in there long ago and no longer need. I have no idea what at least half of it is—it’s been in there and up there so long, untouched, that I’ve forgotten.

I’m on an organizing kick now. It’s taking far longer than I thought it would, although I’ve been hard at work. But I get up on a stepstool and pick up an object and then stand there, pondering. Do I really need this? That takes a while. Then, if I think I still might want to have it around, where best to put it? That takes a lot longer, and often involves going through a whole other bunch of stuff in another cupboard, in an organizing chain-reaction.

The upshot is that it’s taking more time to do this than I ever thought it would, my place is a mess at the moment and has been for a week or two, and yet my cupboards and closets are looking a lot better. And all this despite the fact that I haven’t even touched the stuff—mostly photos and scrapbooks and paper—I brought to my place when my mother died five years ago. I did some preliminary weeding and filing back then, and after that I just shoved the remnant into a few boxes where they still sit in an obscure and difficult-to-see corner.

I’m in awe of people who are always organized and whose homes are always clean. How do you do it, folks? And yes, I’ve read how-to-declutter books. But clutter isn’t really my problem; I don’t have so much stuff, I just have a small space and not that much storage.

Know-nothing McCabe

The New Neo Posted on by

Andrew McCabe works for the FBI. He was the deputy director beginning in February of 2016, then from May to August he was the FBI’s director, and now he’s the deputy again.

On Wednesday McCabe was called in front of the House Intelligence Committee and questioned for seven hours:

On a number of occasions, when asked about what in the [Trump] dossier had been corroborated by the FBI, McCabe gave answers such as ”” these are not precise quotes ”” I can’t answer that, or I don’t know how to answer that. Indeed, that was McCabe’s answer when he was asked for the most important piece of information in the dossier that the FBI had been able to verify.

At one point, McCabe was reminded that another top FBI official had months ago told the House that the bureau had not been able to corroborate the dossier. McCabe’s response was noncommittal.

After the questioning established that McCabe would not verify any substantive allegation in the dossier, he was asked if he stood by its veracity. McCabe said he did.

All this information about McCabe’s testimony comes from leaks, by the way, because it’s a closed-door session. From what I’ve read, it’s not clear to me whether McCabe was saying he just didn’t know the answers or whether he was saying he didn’t feel it was right to offer the answers. If he thought that his responses were unlikely to remain a secret, one can understand why. But if that was it, why not say so?

Here’s a little more:

When pushed for examples of what was verified in the anti-Trump dossier, McCabe was only able to identify the fact that Trump campaign advisor Carter Page traveled to Moscow ”” McCabe could not even verify anything about the meetings that Page supposedly had.

“The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall ”” despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.”

Clear as mud.

Never trust a man over 30

The New Neo Posted on by

The saying became a cliche (see above), but the idea that you shouldn’t trust anyone over 30 was coined during the Berkeley Free Speech movement of the mid-1960s. Those who said it, and believed it, have now been untrustworthy (over 30, that is) for many a long year.

I was reminded of the saying when I saw the headline to this article about Jodie Foster’s recent comments on the sexual harassment accusations in Hollywood and elsewhere:

“It’s every industry,” the actress said Wednesday. “It’s not just one socioeconomic bracket or one complexion. Pretty much every man over 30 has to really look and start thinking about their part. And I guarantee, lots of it is unconscious. When you’ve been in a privileged position where you haven’t had to look at your part, you didn’t 100 percent understand you were in a bubble. It’s an interesting time for men.

Oh, it’s an “interesting” time, all right.

And why the exception for those under 30? Foster added:

“I have two sons (ages 16 and 19), and I know their perspective,” the 55-year-old told the newspaper. “They go to a great school that has put them through the wringer about what consent is, what is humanism, what’s integrity. I just wish my generation had the benefit of that, and that everybody had the benefit of that.”

Perhaps some day we all will have the “benefit” of being “put through the wringer” of PC education or re-education. Till then, though, we’ll have to rely on our moral betters such as Foster.

And yes, yes, Foster is a lesbian. But I don’t think that’s so strong a factor here. What Foster said is non-controversial—maybe even mild—compared to the more strongly anti-male statements of some women who are quite heterosexual.

And then there other factors unique to Foster that may have been more relevant. I happen to basically like Foster as an actress, and remember her as an exceptionally talented (and precocious) kid actress. And because I remember her as a kid actress, I wonder what things she was subject to back then.

For example, you may remember (I certainly do) that Foster played a child prostitute in the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.” The prostitute was supposed to be twelve years old, and (unlike with many such situations, where the child is played by a somewhat older actor or actress) Foster herself was only twelve years old at the time.

That seemed like a bad idea then and it still seems like a bad idea now. Foster appeared to be a tough and mature kid, but twelve is twelve. It may have made for a better film, but (according to something I found by Googling it just now), Foster says it was very uncomfortable during the making of that film:

“They were very uncomfortable about my character. Nobody knew how to direct me.

“Scorsese would say something like ‘unzip his fly’ and just start laughing and not know what to do so he would hand it over to Robert De Niro and then Robert would tell me what to do.

“And he was even more ‘Robert De Niro’ then, even quieter and more strange.”

Just to be clear—this was all done in service of the script, not as some private exchange. The men seem to have been uncomfortable with it, too, and yet in the atmosphere in the 70s (this was roughly the same era as the Polanski rape, for example), it probably seemed tame and harmless enough. But I think the role itself was a form of institutional child abuse of a mild sort.

Child actors have been exploited in Hollywood for a long time—just look at the life of Judy Garland if you aren’t aware of it. But the roles they used to play back in the 30s and 40s and 50s were squeaky-clean. That certainly wasn’t true by the time Foster was acting.

Foster also was the target of another incident that must have been confusing and terrifying, at a still-young age. You may recall that Hinckley, Reagans’ would-be assassin, became obsessed with Foster in that movie:

Hinckley was suffering from erotomania and his motivation for the attack was born of his obsession with actress Jodie Foster. While living in Hollywood in the late 1970s, he saw the film Taxi Driver at least 15 times, apparently identifying strongly with Travis Bickle, the lead character portrayed by Robert De Niro. The arc of the story involves Bickle’s attempts to protect a 12-year-old child prostitute, played by Foster. Toward the end of the film, Bickle attempts to assassinate a United States Senator who is running for president. Over the following years, Hinckley trailed Foster around the country, going so far as to enroll in a writing course at Yale University in 1980 after reading in People magazine that she was a student there. He wrote numerous letters and notes to her in late 1980. He called her twice and refused to give up when she indicated that she was not interested in him.

Hinckley was convinced that he would be Foster’s equal if he became a national figure. He decided to emulate Bickle and began stalking President Jimmy Carter. He was surprised at how easy it was to get close to the president””he was only a foot away at one event””but was arrested in October 1980 at Nashville International Airport for illegal possession of firearms.

There’s much more—but the gist of it is that Hinckley turned his attention to Reagan and was nearly successful in killing him. What effect this all had on Foster can only be imagined; at the time, because Reagan and others were so gravely injured, it was not the focus of the story. In addition, Foster hasn’t spoken much about it publicly, and here she suggests that she has had to employ some survival techniques to stay grounded.

I would imagine that’s very true; she’s been through a lot. But blanket statements about whole swaths of men probably shouldn’t be one of those coping mechanisms, and it’s always a bad idea to think you know all that much about what’s going on inside a teenager’s mind, boy or girl.

The tax bill propaganda

The New Neo Posted on by

If you read Democratic reactions to the tax bill just passed by Congress, you’d think it orders that poor people and the middle class be shot at dawn. If you read Republican reactions, you get a spectrum of reactions from “pretty good although somewhat flawed” to “good.”

In other words, they’re analyzing the provisions of the bill and the effects of those provisions on the economy and segments of the population very very differently.

What are we, the American people supposed to think? How are we to evaluate the actual effects of the actual bill? After all, this may not be rocket science, but it certainly isn’t easy to look at something as complex as our tax code and as iffy as how it will actually play out in the real world and know the effects of this legislation. That’s one of the reasons I don’t do my own analysis and tend to rely on experts. I pick my experts carefully, though, based on previous track records of those experts and my own perceptions of their relative objectivity.

I’m not even going to link to most of the Democratic analysis, because unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you’ve seen it. Here’s a roundup of those saying it’s “theft,” just as an example. And here’s one link about the “People will die!” folks. A counter to that appeared in the WaPo, of all places. And of course periodicals on the right have a host of articles that try to explain why the bill will be good (see this, for example).

But bills like this play out on two levels: their practical financial consequences and their political consequences. And right now the perception the majority of Americans have has been formed by the Democrats and they believe it will hurt them:

According to a recent CNN poll, only 33 percent of Americans support the GOP bill, while 55 percent oppose it, a figure that has grown by ten points since early last month. Several other major polls have put approval ratings for the tax plan in the same low ballpark.

One obvious reason for this unpopularity is our almost equally unpopular president. Donald Trump’s approval rating hovers around 37 percent, unprecedentedly low for a president just a year into his first term. And because the tax-reform bill is a GOP initiative, it is inextricably tied to our GOP president, which means that Americans who dislike Trump are automatically inclined to dislike the GOP tax-reform effort.

But another crucial component of the bill’s stunning lack of popularity surely stems from the amount of misinformation floating around about the substance of the bill, perpetuated by biased media outlets. Just this morning, for example, the New York Times opinion newsletter called the bill “a huge handout to corporate America,” completely ignoring the fact that the bill will lower taxes for a shocking 80.4 percent of Americans, according to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center.

Ah, but once the bill goes into effect, won’t people revise their opinions? Maybe. (That’s the sort of reasoning that those who passed Obamacare used, by the way.) It really depends on how positive the effects of the bill are, and how easily people can perceive those effects and connect them to the changes enacted by the bill. Perhaps (as Bill Clinton used to say) it all comes down to the economy, stupid. But I’ve been very impressed in recent years by how powerful propaganda is, and how it can shape perceptions even in the face of reality.

And of course it all depends on the effects of the bill actually being good for people in the real world. Another factor is when people might actually notice those effects. Some have taken place already; see this. Some are delayed, and some are very delayed—till after the 2018 election takes place. It’s complicated, like almost everything connected with our federal tax laws —and those complications make the entire topic especially ripe for propaganda.

Best movie dance sequence ever

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a rousing demonstration of dance as male competition. As part of 1954’s “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” (which has a plot that would never, never fly these days) it features actors who were mostly dancers, and thrills and chills via daredevil stunts. Stick with it—it just builds and builds and builds, and the risks they take are phenomenal.

Choreographer Michael Kidd was a genius. But without the virile energy of Tommy Rall (red shirt) and Matt Matox (yellow shirt) in particular (both of whom I’ve seen on Broadway in later roles) it wouldn’t be nearly as successful. Russ Tamblyn’s (blue shirt) acrobatics are wonderful as well, and Marc Platt (purple) is excellent but not as acrobatic. Some of the townie guys are no slouches, either. The great ballet dancer Jacques D’Amboise (green shirt) is underused; it’s really not quite his genre, I guess. You may notice that the guy in the orange shirt (Jeff Richards) barely dances. That’s because he’s not a dancer, so he’s shoved to the back or way on the side or off-screen. (More here.)

Enjoy:

Choreographer Kidd is the smaller dark-haired guy dancing in this next video.. I’ve searched and searched, but couldn’t find whether he choreographed this number or whether it was Kelly:

I’m getting nervous about 2018

The New Neo Posted on by

New Year’s Eve is coming up. But it’s not that transition I’m talking about.

I’m talking about the election of 2018. Every single day when I look at the news I see the articles about how well-positioned the Democrats are for the next election—how they are poised to take over both houses. I have no idea whether that will happen or whether this is just more of the relentless propaganda we see in the MSM. November is many months away, and there are a lot of events that could intervene—including a soaring economy, which could make people more favorably-disposed to the GOP by then.

You might ask why I care—after all, the GOP in Congress hasn’t exactly been a shining example of what I’d want to see. Nevertheless, I believe that a Democratic-run Congress would be far worse. Of course, we still have a Republican president who is more disposed than I thought he would be to promote and sign conservative laws (and, perhaps more importantly for this discussion, to veto liberal ones). But he’d better be quick at appointing more and more judges (and Congress had better be quick about approving them) because if Congress falls into the hands of the Democrats that entire process is likely to shut down.

A great many people on the right don’t seem to care what happens in Congress and/or to actively wish to punish the GOP members of Congress by not voting for them. But the right only hurts itself that way and one only has to think of the judges to realize that. This is an old argument we’ve had on this site for years (probably over a decade), and I’ve never changed my mind about it at all.

President Trump can veto any bill passed by a Democratic Congress—until 2020, that is, when all bets are off for the presidential election. He can also go about continuing to dismantle some of the more onerous examples of Obama’s executive orders, and Trump can do it by executive order. But that’s not the same as passing legislation, and then there are those all-important judges.

But the larger question—the one that troubles me—is the phenomenon of these wide swings in the behavior of the electorate. I still consider that we’re moving in a leftward direction. Each seeming victory by the right seems more temporary than ever, and the stock of the left keeps rising. The Gramscian march continues apace, and has been mostly victorious, as the young people who are the product of our educational system and a propagandist MSM grow to voting age.

Maybe I’m just having a gloomy day, which often happens at this time of year. But there’s good news—we’ve passed the day of the earliest sunset, and the sun is setting a tiny bit later each and every day. Hope.

Baby, it’s not cold outside anymore

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Hat tip: Instapundit.

The title of this post’s a riff on my recent piece about the Frank Loesser song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” But this topic is very different.]

It was a long and frozen wait—twenty-four years, to be exact:

A Tennessee woman gave birth last month to a baby girl who was frozen as an embryo in 1992, when her mother was just a year old.

Tina and Benjamin Gibson became the proud parents of Emma Wren on Nov. 25. Emma weighed a healthy 6 pounds, 8 ounces and measured 20 inches long.

According to staff at the University of Tennessee Preston Medical Library, Emma holds the all-time record for the longest-frozen embryo to come to birth.

In case you’re confused by the way that was written (some of the commenters at the site certainly were), Emma is not the Gibson’s biological child. Emma (who was not yet “Emma”) was conceived twenty-four years ago when her biological parents underwent treatment—most likely for infertility—that resulted in extra embryos that were frozen for possible future use and never implanted, and then apparently donated. In the case of Emma, this meant that her non-biological mother Tina Gibson (who, as far as I can tell, can now be called Emma’s birth mother, since she did give birth to Emma) happened to have been eighteen months old herself when Emma was originally conceived and frozen.

Freezing of unused embryos is a relatively common thing during the process of in vitro fertilization, and the frozen embryos present a dilemma:

IVF doctors must try to find a balance between retrieving enough eggs to give a couple a reasonable chance of obtaining a pregnancy and running the risk of potentially creating so many embryos that many are destined to remain unused by the couple that created them…

Hence, infertile couples are often faced with the dilemma of what to do with their remaining frozen embryos. Unlike England, where a deadline for storage of frozen embryos was implemented, the United States has no criteria for disposal…

There are 5 options to be considered by couples:

Keep the embryos frozen because you intend to use them in an IVF transfer sometime in the future.

Discard them

Donate them to another recipient

Donate the embryos to research

None of the above

At the link you can find a fairly lengthy discussion of some of the practical, legal, ethical, and philosophical considerations for each move. One also wonders whether there are medical ramifications of the long storage process. The frozen egg dilemma is an enormous responsibility that most couples undergoing infertility treatments have probably not considered before they start the process, and it’s one I’m glad I never had to face.

The embryo that developed into Emma was taken out of storage by a faith-based group called the National Embryo Donation Center. Couples such as the Gibsons have taken a leap of faith, as well. I wish them and Emma the best.