....(mostly) women build peace.

Women as torchbearers of peace are making a difference in hot spots of every region of the world. Palestinian and Israeli women have joined forces and work together as advocates for peace. In Nepal, women who were victims of violence are seeking representation in peace talks between the government and Maoist rebels. Women’s Peace Caravans venture into the most treacherous conflict-ridden interiors of Colombia to protest against the civil war and negotiate with the guerillas. Throwing themselves into peace processes with enormous courage and determination, women in politics, through their often unseen and unsung work, are bringing peace to many troubled countries.

Read the larger story here.

July 27, 2004

EEEuuuuu!

The tomato horn worms are attacking my garden. I thought they were just cute little catepillars when I noticed one and removed it from my garden a couple of weeks ago. And I forgot about it. Now, lots of the stalks are eaten dead.

My neighbors tell me I have to pick them off and squish them dead. EEeeeuuu! I'm heading over to a garden center tomorrow to see what kind of spray I can use.

July 26, 2004

From President Jimmy Carter's speech at the Democratic convention:

You can't be a war president one day and claim to be a peace president the next, depending on the latest political polls. When our national security requires military action, John Kerry has already proven in Vietnam that he will not hesitate to act. And as a proven defender of our national security, John Kerry will strengthen the global alliance against terrorism while avoiding unnecessary wars.

At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul.....

AMEN. AMEN to that.

Three's a magic number, and I'm all for making magic.

And so on with the Sorority Saga of the adventuresome fourteen.

We all wondered if we would recognize each other after more than forty years. All of us had been married; four of us are no longer, and of those four, one is a widow. Almost all of us have kids, and, of those, as far as I could tell, all have grandkids; at least one had a child who died; almost all of us had taught at least for a while. An alarming number are breast cancer survivors. We all have a few extra pounds -- some more, some less. Five do not color their hair, and three of those are wonderfully white. (I made sure I touched mine up the week before the reunion.) The years showed on all of our faces and our bodies -- some more, some less.

What was funny was that one of the sisters admitted that as she walked into the bar and looked around for the others, she found herself searching the faces of the twenty-something females who were there. That's how she was remembering us all -- as we were the last time she saw us.

How did we recognize each other? Mostly BY OUR VOICES -- both the actual physical voice and the "selves" that we revealed in WHAT we voiced. We all (aurally) sound the same as we did when we called to each other up and down the stairs of the sorority house. As we had a chance to chat and catch up and reminisce, it became apparent that those of us who were more conservative back then, still are -- some even moreseo. And on the other end of the spectrum are one of my apartment roommates and, heh, me.

And our eyes are still the same -- not the skin around them, but the souls they reflect. We also recognized each other by our eyes.

No one passed around photos of their kids and grandkids (well, I admit I did whip out a goofy photo of my grandson to show two of my ol' roommates). Instead, we spent our time together remembering and laughing (loud and long), and adding to the legends and lore of our girly days.

In between, we caught up on where we were in our lives, chatting in small groups or one-on-one with those to whom we were closest.

Who says you can't time travel! We did. We took ourselves back more than forty years and, for one night, we were carefree, fun-loving girls again.

OK. So you want to see "then" and "now" photos, right?

Well, here are three of us hanging around the sorority house in our pajamas in 1960. (Somewhere I have a photo of the four of us and when I find it, I'll replace this one.)

And here we are as we are, at least on the outside. On the inside, where our true voices begin, we are as we were as we are.

And so, as way to keep sharing our voices, I've begun setting up a gangblog for us, since we all have computers (although some are more adept at using them than others). And so Beta Zeta (which no longer exists at our college) will move into the virtual 21st century, laughing all the way.

Hats off to thee, BZ!

July 25, 2004

I'm interrupting my sorority saga to point out some of the good, bad, and ugly in today's news. And I do this recognizing that a couple of my "sisters" who will probably be checking out this blog when they get back home do not agree with my politics:

First, the good: Bloggers offer inside view to convention

Delegate bloggers play a different role than traditional media or even other bloggers, said New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who is covering the convention for his blog.

Many delegate bloggers supported Howard Dean, whose Internet-based, grass-roots campaign set fund-raising records and attracted a large following. Some say they want to keep that online effort alive even as they transfer their loyalty to John Kerry, the party's presumed nominee

Second the bad. Well, it's bad for the current administration but good for everyone who believes in truth and honesty:

Setting the Sept. 11 record straight

At the time, it was understood that all of the hijackers had entered the country legally and done nothing to draw attention to themselves; Osama bin Laden had underwritten the plot with his personal fortune but had left the details to others; U.S. intelligence agencies had no warning that al-Qaida was considering suicide missions using planes; President Bush had received a special intelligence briefing weeks before Sept. 11 about al-Qaida that focused on past, not current, threats

But 19 months later, the commission released a final, unanimous book-length report Thursday that, in calling for an overhaul of the way the government collects and shares intelligence, showed that much of what had been common wisdom about the Sept. 11 attacks at the start of the panel's investigation was wrong.

Third, the ugly. The uninformed thinking of people like this 77-year old American woman really scares me. I couldn't find a link to this brief piece that appeared today in my local newspaper:

from Voters voice

...I'm sorry that this cournty has to be the policeman throughout the world, but somebody's got to do it...What we've got over there is a volunteer army, and there's no drafting. These men and women signed up, and they're getting paid. I'm sorry they have to be over there, beause they're volunteers...but we've still got to do it.

...I'm concerned about Medicare and prescription drugs even though I don't have a problem gettng insurance myself..but sometimes people abuse drugs when they're free. They take them just because they're there. It's like Medicare: Some people go to the emergency room just because it's a place to go.

When the revolution comes, I know what side I'm going to be on.

He remembers dancing with me, he says -- the guy who ultimately married one of my roommates. I certainly remember him, too. He was one of the best Lindy dancers around -- easy to follow, smooth and sassy. He says that what he remembers about me was that I always wore bright colors and make-up to match. Remembers that, in terms of whatever boyfriends I had, I was known to be "flighty." A "free-spirit."

Free spirit.

That word comes up often when my long-time friends say what they remember about me. Free Spirit. And Beatnik. That's who I was, or at least what I aspired to. No wonder I am who I am now.

The three husbands who joined us after our dinner were all from the same fraternity. There were lots of pairings between their fraternity and our sorority over the years. If we were sisters, they were our brothers-in-law. I liked these three then and I still do. Good guys, these guys.

I liked hanging around with guys back in college in the late fifties because they had so much more freedom than we girls did. And flirting was an art we all enjoyed. But it was innocent flirting. It was all before drugs seeped onto campuses; it was when guys (at least the guys we knew) understood and accepted that No means No.

So now they all tease me about my tendency to push the envelope of expected female behavior. It was, after all, just about the timeframe of Mona Lisa Smile. I guess I was just born to be a feminine feminist.

The memories that spill out of our aging brains complement each other, fill in some blanks that we each have.

I had forgotten that I used to sit by myself and play my aunt's old guitar. I only knew three chords but could play just about all the old Everly Brothers songs. And Web Pierce's "There Stands the Glass." I'm sure now that my rudimentary attempts at guitar playing were as much for effect as for any great desire on my part to actually learn to play well. Beatniks, after all, sit alone in a corner and play the guitar. We become what we imagine.

I had forgotten that, in grad school when I lived in an apartment on an inner city side street with three other sorority sisters, I was the one who called the police because we had a prowler on the roof. We lived in a three story building owned by "Aunt Liz," an Irish washerwoman who did the laundry of others in her basement. Our shared bedroom was the attic that had a big skylight, and we would lie in our beds and night and tell each other our dreams and share dirty jokes. One night we heard footsteps on the roof. I don't remember calling the police and laughing so hard about the whole thing on the phone that the cops thought I was joking. But my roommates remember. They also remember that, when the cops finally arrived, they found a ladder against the side of the building and someone's sneaker left behind on the roof. They remember the cop pulling out a gun. I just remember my annoyance at having our privacy invaded and my surprise that my roommates were as upset as they were. I guess I should have felt more violated than I did, but back then, in my own mind I was invincible, untouchable, immortal.

Enough about me. What follows will be more about them, those golden girls who, I think, glow more compellingly now -- and for some it's 44 years later -- than they even did in what we all remember as our sweet golden glory days.

"Beta Zeta hats off to thee. To our colors true we will ever be. Young and strong united are we........."

We did sing it, but not in the bar or in the restaurant. We sang it in a cirlce, just as we used to do forty years ago. We sang it at about midnight in one of the hotel rooms as we ended an evening of boisterous and loving reminiscences.

I couldn't help notice that we sang it a lot slower than we did forty years ago. But it probably meant even more to us now then it did then.

There are stories to be told about this reunion of what turned out to be fourteen women and the husbands of three of them who remember the same time of innocence, that time of boundless energies. A time when we were all learning together how to figure out who we wanted to be. A time when draft beer was 10 cents and girls would be confined to their dorms at night for a week if they stayed out later than 1 a.m. (midnight if you were a freshman).

I want to get up early enough to meet them for breakfast before they leave the hotel and the past behind. But for now, I sit here grateful for all of their reminders of that girl that I was, for remembering me as I remember me. For reminding me that I am still that girl.

July 23, 2004

It was 1957, and I was on my way to college because
1. I wanted to get away from home.
2. I wanted to avoid adult responsibilities as long as possible.
3. I wanted some new fun experiences.
4. I wanted to learn about the world and myself.
5. I eventually needed to work and teaching seemed like a good idea.

Actually, it was all a good idea and I did get all of the things I wanted. I also got into a sorority -- which was not something I ever even thought about. It just seemed like another one of those good ideas.

Actually, it was a good idea, and those "girls" became my good friends. We lived together both in the sorority house and in apartments. We TGIF-ed together, drank together, cried together over boyfriends gained and lost. We wore bermuda shorts and maroon and grey sweatshirts. Not only did I go through one of those traditional "hell nights," but I and my best friend/roommate wound up being "Hell Captains" the next year.

I'm sure that I remember things about them that they've long forgotten. I wonder if my housemates still remember how, once a week, they would gather up all of the clothes I left around our room, bundle them in my quilt, and throw it all in the closet -- forcing me to do the picking up I never bothered to do until I had nothing clean to wear. There were four of is in that room in the sorority house. I've seen two of them several times since we all graduated; the fourth I haven't seen since she graduated, a year ahead of me.

More than forty years have gone by, and we've all moved away, moved on.

Tomorrow night, fifteen of us will be together again. Most of us haven't seen each other in all that time, and we wouldn't even be getting together now if it weren't for the persistence of one of us who lives in Massachusetts. She's another one I haven't seen in forty years.

I can't help wonder if we'll even recognize each other. We're going to meet by the hotel bar. Fifteen women in their 60s singing "Beta Zeta hats off to thee..."

I'm definitely bringing my camera. Who knows if we'll ever do this again.

I worry about terrorists. I don't obsess, and it's not on my mind every minute. But I think the Bush administration has set up a self-fulfilling prophesy.

So when I read Ann Jacobsen's article in the Women's Wall Street Journal last week, it made me nervous. Because, given the tenor of the times, I probably would have been seeing and feeling what she was seeing and feeling:

After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.

Jacobsen's tale is long but compelling and worth reading.

Even more worth reading (and a lot shorter) is lawyer and Stanford Ph.D. candidate Clinton Taylor's research and analysis of the happening.

It used to be easy to tell books by their covers. Sometimes you still can. You just know that this one is sure to be a bodice-ripper.
This one is too, in it's own way, but it's harder to tell. (This new "romance" category with strong, brave kick-ass females and strong, brave, tender males is one I plan on writing more about.)

I've had doors held open for me by Goth-garbed kids and have been given the finger by guys in suits driving SUVs. You can't tell the good guys from the bad guys any more. Or gals either for that matter.

Who knows what wickedness lurks behind the pleasant facade of a little ol' granny.

UPDATE: For more on the fall-out from the airplane story, go here and scroll down.

UPDATE: I like Betsy Devine's take on the whole thing, that ends with:

So, taking my own advice, I think that prosthetic shoes, etc. should not be off-limits to airport security searches. I think the rule that you can't question more than two people of any ethnic group, if such a rule exists, is dangerous hooey. I think that questioning people about their flight plans, etc. does not violate their civil liberties. I think that people who do weird stuff on airliners should be told by flight attendants to behave themselves. I think that airline passengers who intentionally scare other airline passengers should be charged with assault.

July 18, 2004

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Alexander. Now, Alexander was a very special little boy, especially to his Grammy, who loved him so much that she wanted to do something very very special for his second birthday – especially since she lived far far away from him and missed him very very much.

Sometimes she would get into her car and go and visit him. She was so glad to see him, and she always wanted to give him a great big hug.

So, Alexander’s Grammy sat down to think about what she might be able to give Alexander that would be very special – that would make him happy, healthy, and smile – that would help him to feel safe and loved – that would be soft and snuggly and remind him of her – that would be there to hug him even when she wasn’t around

“Hmm, now what does Alexander like?” Alexander’s Grammy asked herself.

“I know that he likes bright yellow school buses and juicy orange lollipops. I know that he likes to see the moon in the blue blue sky, and he really likes his new green Converse high tops.”

“Hmm,” she thought. And thought. And thought. And thought. And then she had an idea.

I will make him a Magic Gypsy blanket,

with yellow the color of bright school buses

and blue the color of an early summer night sky

and orange like a juicy lollipop

and green like his brand new Converse high tops.

I will make it soft and cuddly.

I will make him a Magic Gypsy Blanket.

And……….

She did.

-------------------------------------------
And then his mommy made him a yellow bus birthday cake, and we all had a big happy birthday party.

July 17, 2004

It hit me thirty years ago as a newly single mom. And it seems like it’s a challenge that each new generation of women faces all over again – how to take care of yourself first so that you have the energy and will to care for others.
 
It sure is a dilemma, and that’s why lots of us went into therapy 30 years ago; that’s why we formed consciousness raising groups to help us figure out how to survive in a world that expected much too much of us at the expense of our own hopes and dreams.
 
Adding pressure to that struggle for women of this generation is all of the ongoing fear of “codependency.”  Heaven forbid that we should worry about anyone else but ourselves! 
 
I'm remembering a little story that was part of Marlo Thomas'  “Free to Be You and Me” recording back in the 70s.  It was about a little girl who always insisted “Me first!  Me first!”   Now it’s “Self first!  Self first!”
 
I'm all for taking care of myself.  I read, I blog, I knit. I go out with my friends, I get my hair done. I give myself pedicures and long showers. I watch the tv programs I like and take long walks in the park. And I take on free-lance writng jobs.  But I also take care of my mom, help out my kids, drive my 91-year old neighbor grocery shopping, and try to be there for my friends when they’re having a hard time.  I don’t hesitate to give my opinion, but I also support them in their choices.  See, all that money and time I spent on therapy actually paid off!
 
It’s not always Self First.  It’s a constant balancing act.  Otherwise, you’re liable to wind up like the woman in this little satiric story who takes the Self First approach to an extreme
 
I’ve been thinking about my experiences with my married/committed women friends over the past thirty years, and I see a pattern that reflects why some women are still being pulled off-balance – and it usually has to do with the expectations of the male partner that he doesn’t have to share household and child-rearing responsibilities.  These women are comfortable with and enjoy caring for others.  What they don’t want is total and automatic responsibility for taking care of everyone around them.  That’s probably why I’m still unremarried.
 
It’s true that first you have to learn to take care of yourself.  But you do that, I think, so that you are then free and able  to extend that caring to others, to live by the Golden Rule.
 
Balance.    Balance.     Balance.    Balance.

 It’s what it means to be human.

July 16, 2004

ACLU Says White House Is Engaged in Patriot Act Misinformation Campaign; Releases Point-By-Point Response to Bush Falsehoods

It's Freedom Friday, and I'm wearing a red T-shirt. I don't think it's going to make a hoot of difference. But I try to practice what I preach.

I'm also eating the reddest most delicious tomatoes that I've ever grown. They're the first of my crop, and I'm not even sharing them with my mother. Today, on Red Friday, I'm the Little Red Hen.

And, finally, red is for all the Rage.

no conscience

when there are no shoulders
left for tears
no firm hands to touch
all there is left
is to scream
into the heartless void
and shit your losses
where you sleep

July 14, 2004

All of us who are parents want our kids to figure out what they're good at and then go and do it well. Sometimes they wind up becoming even better at doing what their parents are pretty good at themselves. Such is the case in this family.

I've blogged about b!X's citizen journalism before. Many times.

And now my daughter has a lovely short story published in the latest issue of the online magazine, DreamVirus.

I was a reasonably good mother. She's an amazing one. And now she's publishing fiction. I just blog.

Their Dad also has been acknowledged as a playwight. I failed to point this out last month when the audio performance of his The Killings Tale beat out Garrison Keeler in the 2004 Audie Awards category of "Audiobook Adapted from Another Medium."

I can't wait to see what creative path my (now) toddler grandson winds up taking. His dad is an illustrator. I mean, what are the chances of this kid winding up a CPA???

I'll see the little guy for his second birthday this Sunday. The car's already packed to the rafters with new clothes (including a t-shirt I made for him with his face in the cockpit of a cartoon rocket heading into outer space), a kid-sized pillow covered with a moon and planets fabric, a toy rocket, a kid's toy kitchen (hey, he likes to pretend he's making mac & cheese), and, of course Grammy's Magic Gypsy Blanket (along with a little booklet that tells the story of how Grammy came to make it).

So, now there are two generations pushing out into the world ahead of me. . But I'm still hanging in there. Pant. Pant. Wheeze

Duck Kirk, a Texan combat veteran eloquently stands up for peace and against Bush:

....The thing that really stands out is that the vast majority of those who feel free to label their fellow citizens as un-patriotic, un-American, traitors, wimps, etc., especially those of us who actually wore the uniform and went to war, is that they themselves, for whatever reason, never wore this country’s uniform and never went to war. The arrogance of people to call anyone, let alone combat veterans, wimps and un-American is astounding!

My right to criticize was born in the thick of war. Your right to criticize was born in your front rooms from watching 30-second sound bites on Fox “news.” My right is carried by sacrifice, yours by privilege....

Read the whole passionate piece, posted by Portland (OR) disabled veteran Jack Dalton at Intervention Magazine, that ends with:

I could go on for a long time enumerating the theft of Iraq, but time and space prevent that. Be that as it may, one last thought on the “liberation” of Iraq: For those willing to use the brain’s memory cells, you will recall that in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, not one time was “liberating Iraq” part of the discussion. From the beginning, it was weapons of mass destruction, mushroom clouds over Manhattan, and the link between Saddam, bin Laden, and al Qaeda, all of which has proven to be false and deliberately so! It was when those “reasons” began to unravel that Bush’s adventure morphed in to a war of “liberation.” This was deliberate deception, just like with Vietnam.

I for one am really tired of Bush and company pissin’ on my boots while trying to convince me it’s raining. The crazy part is how many of you are reaching for umbrellas.

July 13, 2004

An interview here with Jay Rosen, chair of the New York University Department of Journalism and author of the Pressthink weblog, links to b!X's blog in this statement:

....blogging doesn't have to be journalism to be good. Sometimes it is journalism, of a kind, which often depends on the daily output of the professional and commercial press, in the way that a second wave depends on the first. Sometimes it's just good information about a place-- and that's journalism.

b!X's experiment in "citizen journalism" is a success in every way but financially. One of his Portland "participatory journalist" blogger colleagues had to quit, at least for a while, because the rest of his life wasn't getting enough attention. b!X's life is pretty much his weblog and all the work that goes along with being a full-time citizen journalist. But that doesn't put food on the table and pay the rent. I've got my fingers crossed that some organization or individual in Oregon will recognize the value of what he's doing (both in substance and as a civic experiment) and pay him to do it. Hope springs, all seasons.

UPDATE: b!X also got linked:
("Sneak and peak" warrants have come under scrutiny following recent cases where US citizens were wrongly charged by the FBI with terrorist offenses.)
from an article in the Christian Science Monitor on the Patriot Act.

OK. Now isn't there some way for him to get paid for providing such "good information?"

It's a puzzlement why the NY Times won't accept an online subscription from me. It's a good thing I have a friend who sends me all the good stuff, like the op ed piece from Paul Krugman today that includes this:

A little background: at the Republican convention, most featured speakers will be social moderates like Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger. A moderate facade is necessary to win elections in a generally tolerant nation. But real power in the party rests with hard-line social conservatives like Mr. DeLay, who, in the debate over gun control after the Columbine shootings, insisted that juvenile violence is the result of day care, birth control and the teaching of evolution.

Here's the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay's brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?

What we see isn't what we get.

July 12, 2004

So now they're trying to find ways and reasons to scare us into accepting that it might be necessary to postpone the presidential election. Add to that the fact that computerized voting can result in an even greater debacle than we saw in the Florida chad disaster last time, and it might well be time for some major intervention.

And my eloquent blogger pal Frank Paynter has posted an open letter to the United Nations that begins:

I am a citizen of the United States of America and I grieve for democracy in my country. Since the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the appointment of George W. Bush to the Chief Executive's Office in January, 2001 I have considered requesting United Nations supervision of elections in my country until such time as democracy may be restored. The time has come for me to put thoughts into action and write to you for your guidance and support in helping the people of the United States to extricate themselves from a complex situation involving compromised leadership.

If you think Frank is making a valid point, go on over, read the whole letter, and leave a comment. You might even want to ask to be a co-signer. Outrageous acts require outraged reactions.

I'm in.

Molly Ivins is a Wise Woman. The following excerpted from here.

Luntz described his methods with appealing pride. His job is to "set the context" and "frame the debate," which he learns how to do through focus groups, polls and dial sessions. But he kept drawing the line at the word "manipulation." No, no, he doesn't manipulate people, he insisted, he merely gives them a context for the message, he merely discovers what it is they want to hear and how best to say it to them.

Luntz has discovered that the 4 percent of Americans who still have not made up their minds about this election to tend to be working women, younger, new mothers and fairly low-wage earners. I was pleased to hear Luntz explain how he'd uncovered the most interesting thing about these women.

[snip]

"You have to empathize," he said. "The very first thing you have to do, it's not about issues, it's about empathy. They have to know that you care, that you understand them, that you understand the frustrations." Say a candidate of his - say George W. Bush - is at a town hall meeting. He'd say, "'Now I want to talk to the ladies in the room' ... 'the women in the room' is how I would put it ... and you say: 'Well, I'm gonna throw this out. I want you tell me if I'm right or not. Ladies here, I'd say that your lack of free time is one of the greatest challenges.' And they'll all sit there, and they'll raise their hands, and they'll all nod yes. At that moment, you have bonded with those women."

Which is all well and good, except then I'm trying to envision what George W. Bush says to them next. The National Women's Law Center released a study in April, called "Slip Sliding Away," on the erosion of women's rights.

[snip]

All in all, it's kind of hard to see how Bush could convince "the ladies" that he has helped take stress out of their lives. Unless, of course, the lady is married to a guy who makes $1 million a year - then she'd have $92,000 extra a year to spend from the Bush tax cuts.

Go and read about how the quality of life for women is "Slip Sliding Away," thanks to the manipulation of the Bush administration.

UPDATE:
Maybe we need to start a list of "BlogWomen Against Women" and put Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Allen Greenspan, with her BusyBusyBusy at the top of the list. (Thanks to the Busy reference from Mr. Bill in the Comments at Brooke Biggs' site.)

July 11, 2004

While I'm on the subject of women, a bunch of Stitchin' Sedition knitters in Portland Oregon got really pissed off and put together this website to counteract the effort of the Bushites to try to claim that "W is for Women."

Hee. Hee. They have a whole lot of pointy sticks and they're not going to take it anymore, they say. They're compiling a list of all the things that "W" really stands for in Bush country. If you've got some good ones, let them know.

(Got this from b!X. Now there's a son a feminist mom can be proud of!)

Over at Blog Sisters Brooke Biggs asks for input about what we women have been doing wrong in trying to change our country's policies -- 200 words or less. Well, I couldn't do it in even twice that many. But here it is, anyway:

It was 1975 and the first Stepford Wives movie had just come out, Ms Magazine was three years old, the book Fascinating Womanhood was getting big play, and the Vietnam War had just ended. I was a vocal feminist, a disgruntled housewife, a struggling mother, a war-protestor, and I thought that Gloria Steinham should rule the world.

Along with thousands of other women, I marched and argued for women’s rights – to choose, to earn salaries equal to men for equal jobs, to be treated with respect and collegiality, to share family chores with our spouses so that we could also pursue our career dreams. We were the ones who read Ms Magazine and stopped wearing bras. Some of us even burned them. We gathered together in what became known as "consciousness raising groups" as a way to explore ways to help ourselves and each other.

We couldn't understand why so many of our "sisters" were against our vision, our values. But plenty were. Not exactly Stepford Wives, but almost.

It's just about thirty years later. A new version of the Stepford Wives is out, with the villain, this time, a woman. Women against women.

Women are still trying to get equal pay for equal work, still fighting for the right to choose. Code Pink is out there marching and arguing and exploring ways to help ourselves and each other. But there’s also the strong media-enforced "Fascinating Womanhood" message of The Swan and all the women who watch and wanna be. Because that’s what they’re told men want. And the message we keep getting is that we can’t have a man and our true selves at the same time. It's an old message. It hasn't changed in generations.

What we still have not done right yet is convince enough women to turn away from buying into the values that historically have enabled male leaders to get and hold power. There are still too many women against women. What we have not done right yet is convince enough men that there are other and better ways to govern and relate and succeed. There are still too many men happy with their Stepford Wives. Too many women afraid to step off the pedestal, no matter how damaged and precarious they know it is. They are the ones who vote conservative.

I think we need to find a really good public relations firm to market our cause. Maybe we need to co-opt the tool of our successful antagonists and use it against them. And maybe we need a whole lot more Gloria Steinhem types.

Finally, some great Steinhem one-liners that, sadly enough, are still true thirty years later:

• I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
• We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.
• Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
• Most women are one man away from welfare.
• A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
• I don't breed well in captivity.
• A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
• If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?
• The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.
• Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age.

Certainly the last is true of me.

Cross posted at Blog Sisters.

July 10, 2004

For me, the overwhelming complexity of what it means to be human is to let things be simple, to perceive as deep what seems so very uncomplicated.

Sometimes we just walk in, laugh for a while, and kiss a baby hello.

My Blog Sister Jeneane writes (excerpted above) about watching her friend deliver her third child. Jeneane's clear notice of life's deepest moments is legendblogdary.

If only it were really that easy to "let things be simple." It seems that they are for some and for others, well, not so.

I really do wish I believed in Karma, in some divine purpose. But every day is a crapshoot. We are at the mercy of those little steel balls in some quantum pin ball game.

Taking a deep breath helps. (Even though doing so also makes me cough these days.) Going with the flow; trying to enjoy what there is of the ride when it's not being trying. Letting the things that take care of themselves take care of themselves. And then taking care with the rest. Escaping into another realily every once in a while. You know -- headology.

My mother's shingles seem to be coming back. She is 88 and tired of those random little steel balls. Everything hurts. I try to take care. I want to laugh and kiss a baby hello.

I used to be able to get to the NY Times online. All of a sudden, I can't. I've make sure my cookies are enabled. I tried to register again, using another ID. Nope. So while I can't get to this piece about the presidential candidates' clash over values, I can link to it. I know it exists because it's reprinted in my local newspaper today. The final paragraph of the article slips in this little bit of, it seems to me, important information:

On another front, the Pentagon said military payroll records that could more full document President bush's whereabouts during his service in the Texas Air Natoinal Guard were inadvertently destroyed.

A further search leads to this AP article, which I can't get to on the Times but I can on my local paper online. Included is this important reminder:

Bush was in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968 to 1973, much of the time as a pilot, but never went to Vietnam or flew in combat. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential candidate, is a decorated Vietnam veteran, and some Democrats have questioned whether Bush showed up for temporary Guard duty in Alabama while working on a political campaign during a one-year period from May 1972 to May 1973.

I can't wait for a movie of Bush's devious life path to come out after he loses the electons. Down in flames.

July 08, 2004

Hitching a ride on Rage Boy's ragged coat tail and then letting go --

From the end of a very long paper, Ars Brevis, Vita Longa: The Possible Evolutionary Antecedents of Art and Aesthetics by John L. Bradshaw of
Monash University, posted here on the web site of the American Psychological Association's Division for Psychology and the Arts.

We are left with one final possibility, depressing perhaps to the evolutionary theorist, but maybe somewhat reassuring to the artist who is primarily preoccupied with his or her art; it is that art may indeed be without any evolutionary significance or adaptiveness whatsoever - a mere by product (or "spandrel", to use the marvelous metaphor of Gould & Lewontin, 1979) of a disengaged brain which enlarged under quite different evolutionary pressures (and see also Aiken, 1998). If so, maybe we should after all just sit back and enjoy it. Indeed, to deliberately misquote Plato:

A life without the arts is just not worth the candle.

Live long and prosper. And voice your art, no matter how fleeting and finite and financially futile.

Every afternoon around 3, my mother falls asleep in my deceased dad's old ugly green frayed recliner. I let myself into her apartment to throw my laundry into the dryer, and she doesn't hear me. (My apartment is too small to fit a washer and dryer.) She doesn't even wake up when the dryer coughs into its grating hum. I stop and take a moment to make sure she's still breathing. Shallow. But, yes.

I have seen a lot of dead faces in my life. My dad was an undertaker and we lived above the business. (Like in that move, My Girl.) Totally relaxed, my mother's face is getting that look -- that lips-tight-against-teeth, waxy-skin look. I make myself watch her. It's how she'll look someday in her coffin.

When my dad was dying from cancer, it was his eyes that I watched as they grew more and more sunken. It wasn't his mouth; it was his eyes, hungry and despaired and so, so, sad. So much unspoken.

And now it's my mother's mouth. Closed.

Chris Locke is riding the bus. Long story. Very long sad cash-depleted, car-re-possessed story. Interesting to me because b!X has always ridden buses. His is also, a very long cash depleted story, but with a much different plot. My birthday present to b!X each year is paying for his monthly bus pass. "...another word for nothing left to lose.."

I'm picking up on Frank Paynter's email offer of a ticket to ride Chris Locke about being what, to me, is one of the most crafted and consciously engineered blogvoices out there -- a fact that, as Frank Paynter points out, blares in contradiction to what Locke purports to admire and advocate.

When he was riding up front on the Cluetrain, Locke make this statement:
"Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived."

Paynter sits hard on that statement, and I'm grabbing the seat next to him.

My voice that speaks through my fingers manipulating the keyboard sounds much different than it does when I open my mouth and manipulate my tongue. This visually arranged voice is carefully (at least usually carefully) contrived. And so it is with just about all of us whose thoughts ride through time and neurons and muscles and fingertips and little square buttons before they boom out into what becomes our blogvoices.

Frank's piece is a great example, and he's given us a ticket to ride this horse yet another time.

Giddyap.

There's a message going around to

WEAR RED ON FRIDAYS IF YOU'RE ANTI-BUSH

Red. Blood. Passion. Defiance. Anger. Challenge. Pay attention!!!!

Wave the red flag. Olé. Olé.

(I own one red t-shirt. With a little embroidered image of Betty Boop.)

July 05, 2004

Diane Cameron, my favorite local columnist, had the following (excerpted) things to say about art in yesterday's newspaper:

Art concentrates on thoughts and emotions. Artists see underlying truths and reflect them back to us.

To grasp the real life signficance of artists as political agents, we have only to remember Camodia, Russia, Chechoslovakia and China. In those countries, as in Latin America, the first citizens sent to the "re-education camp" were the artists.

She quotes Solzhenitsyn: "Art serves to battle lies and preserve the moral history of a society without the transitory and debasing rhetoric of bureaucrats."

Michael Moore and his Farenheit 9/11 exist in Solszenitsyn's "artist as social critic - artist as catalyst for change" arena. In Cameron's words, they "made a point about the role that arts play in protecting our culture and society."

So, where does that leave so-called artists like Thomas Kinkade, who was featured on 60 Minutes last night.

His fans would say (and did pretty much say on 60 Minutes) that he does concentrate on thoughts and emotions and see underlying truths and reflect them back to the viewer; and he does ask us to see what is and imagine what might be.

It seems to me that there's no escaping the fact that we don't see the world as it is; we see the world as we are. Those who collect and admire Kinkade see a much different world than Moore. But it's the world that Moore sees and reflects back to us that is destroying any chance of idylls such as Kinkade envisions and his fans wish for.

I don't really have anything against escaping into idyllic fantasies. As matter of fact, I've just discovered a whole new genre of "romance" novels that are set in the future and have kick-ass female protagonists. (Check out this one and this one and any of J.D. Robb's ".... In Death" series. ) And, while I've never particularly found typical romance novels at all interesting, these offer a whole new escape hatch.

But I certainly wouldn't consider them literature, just as I wouldn't consider Thomas Kinkade an artist or any kind of catalyst for social change. What a world. What a world.

July 01, 2004

What to do when your gross coughing keeps you from entering the outside world:

-- sit at your comuter all morning in your pajamas
-- read every email and, except for spam and porno, follow the links
-- buy $60 worth of stuff from Avon.com
-- blog politics
-- put your grandson's latest photos into a slide show
-- avoid cleaning anything
-- eat
-- blog about being sick

You can call Michael Moore all kinds of things — loudmouthed, obnoxious and self-promoting, for example. The anorexic Ralph Nader, in what must be an all-time low for left-wing invective, has even called him fat. The one thing you cannot call him, though, is a member of the "liberal elite."

So begins a NY Times piece by Barbara Ehrenreich that ends with

So liberals can take comfort from the fact that our most visible spokesman is, despite his considerable girth, an invulnerable target for the customary assault weapon of the right. I meant to comment on his movie, too, but the lines at my local theater are still prohibitively long.

and, in the middle points out the evil ways that the Republicans continue to spin out the fallacy of the "Liberal elite" in America.