Picking up on Dru’s suggestion posted here and here, I spent Black Friday creating this fleece poncho for my grandson and learning how to create a pop-up image. That’s in addition to creating a dozen new Blog Sisters, who read about us in the NY Times and emailed me to join. Not bad productivity for a cold and snowy Northeast day.
Today is my one-year blogiversary. I started my old weblog, which is still out there, a year ago today, after my son b!X got tired of my sending stuff (mostly political) to post on his site. With his urging and help, this non-techie tentatively reached out to Blogger, and Kalilily Time emerged.
I had planned to “create something” today, and I was leaning toward hand painting a rising phoenix t-shirt for Shelley as a gesture of support and encouragment, but, as official Blog Sisters registrar, I’m being inundated with requests to join. The article in the NY Times apprarently struck a chord in women all over the world. As a result, Jeneane and I have to come up with some policy guidelines and I have to keep responding to the requests. So, I guess my creative efforts today (as a counter-effort to Black Friday spending) is probably going to be sitting here at the keyboard creating new Blog Sisters.
My alternative creative project was going to be visiting an artist/teacher friend of mine who’s been working at a New Hampshire college and commuting every once in a while to her home in NY, which she shares with the man in her life. We were going to play in her studio, scan some of her art work, maybe put together a digital collage — my poetry and her images. We’ve been talking about doing that for years, but time goes by and bye and bye and bye. My favorite creation of hers is a little table that she adorned with plaster casts of her nipples and then painted white. Oh well, maybe I can find time to get over to her studio tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I celebrate today the way I celebrated November 29, 2001 — at the computer, weblogging. Although tonight I might work on the booties-that-look-like sneakers for my grandson. I couldn’t find a pattern that I liked so I’m inventing my own.
And so, for all those out in Blogdom who criticize women bloggers for posting about knitting. Stuff it!
Isn’t it great to feel that there is nothing we can’t do and that it is soooo OK to enjoy all kinds of activities that are productive and life-affirming! Yeah! Yeah! Go Blog Sisters.
As I was getting ready to run out and buy a few copies of the NY Times (and some beer, since I left what I bought yesterday in the bottom rack of the shopping cart — and Cool Whip for the Key Lime cream cheese pie that’s for dessert today since I like to start my own traditions), it occurred to me that all of the successes in my life were achieved by riding on someone else’s coat tails. I have often credited my son b!X’s for getting into weblogging in the first place. I’m running out to get the Times because I rode into this one on Jeneane Sessum’s. The jobs I’ve loved the most were those in which I was someone’s “Special Assistant,” with lots of influence and no need to find the buck stopped on my desk. And my thanks to the great female archetypes of Lilith and Kali and the many-breasted Artemis for giving me the encouragement to get on in the first place.
So, my thanks to all of the coat tails of the world for the great rides.
I’ve got to start the Thanksgiving cooking. My brother has just walked in with the turkey.
Happiness is not getting what you want; it’s wanting what you have. Have a Happy Thanksgiving.
That thought occurred to me as I was commenting on Blog Sisters, and it seemed important enough to mention here in terms of the “girlism” issue. And it ain’t whatcha wear, it’s how you abuse it to manipulate.
In a comment on Shelley’s weblog, Frank Paynter says God I love a girl in a skirt and nylons and CFM shoes who smiles at me and makes me feel good to be a man.
There’s nothing wrong with that (except for the CFM shoes, which are hell on the feet!) if it’s just that — that simple visual acknowlegment that we appreciate the visual gender differences. It’s when the “girl” or “woman” proceeds to apply her female feminine wiles to manipulate that male’s “good feeling” to get what she wants that it fosters sexism. And it’s when the man confuses that “feel good” feeling with permission to treat the female in any way but as a human equal.
It ain’t whatcha got; it’s how you use it, how you abuse its latent power.
While Burninbird is posting here and here (I’ve repeated what she wrote at the end of this post), even my dreaming is filled with the same frustration!!!
In the wee morning hours this morning, I dreamed that I went with my mother to visit some family who lived way out in a rural area. While there, they suggested that I go and join a bridal shower going on for their daughter. Their (really cute) teenaged son was supposed to give me directions on how to get there (which was quite far away), but he kept telling me to get on roads I never heard of. So I asked if he could give me landmarks or major intersections that I would recognize because I probably knew how to get to those — and then I could find my own way, even though it might take longer. In my dream, the young man continued to do it his way, even taking time to go to his computer and look for a map. At one point I remember telling his mother that I remember reading that women prefer getting directions that give them landmarks. The dream continues like this as my frustration and anger grows and the young man refuses to give me what I need until it’s too late for me to leave for the party. ARRGGHH.
And this is what Shelley posted, in her frustration, while I was dreaming my nightmare.
Shutting down the conversation
What’s particularly difficult about writing something such as my posting Girlism? is seeing the gentlemen in the community linking to Halley’s post, but not my refutation. Huzzahs for Halley’s refreshing honesty and blowing the lid off the terrible games we women play.
Perpetuating the myth by controlling the links, and thereby controlling the discussion. Well done. Is this another lesson we women should learn?
But then, I’m picking on Halley with my posting, aren’t I? And members of the same community are not supposed to do this. We either agree, or stay silent. Another lesson to learn.
Why are more women’s voices not heard in technology? Because men control technology’s voice. I guess the same could be said for weblogging.
It’s in the air, friends, it’s in the air.
It is well known that an awful lot of bloggers are cat lovers. Dean Landsman does a great job of proving that fact. Like so many of us, he’s a pushover for sweet helplessness
My next door neighbor, Clara, died last week, alone in her small apartment, with only her cat to witness the second most crucial moment of her life. When a friend couldn
Among his ongoing commentaries about the politics and poker in America today, bix links to Ellen Goodman
In a post on a new “humans first” weblog started by Jeneane Sessum (the originator of other weblogs such as Gonzo Engaged and Blog Sisters), Tom Matrullo says
Here’s a human thing: boredom. Ennui. acedia. Spleen. taedium vitae. It is a great teacher and rewards study. If humans saw more deeply into ennui, perhaps they would have less tolerance for that which kills the spirit.
Existential ennui. Diminished spirit. Borrrredddommm. What happens to us that we find ourselves here? Of course, what I mean is, what’s happening to me that I find myself here? I am bored with dancing. Bored with writing about dancing. Bored with reading the kinds of novels I’ve always loved. Bored with the people I know (except for my kids; they have never bored me and I doubt if they ever will).
My dreams take place in complex worlds that seem more real and much less boring than my waking times. My dreams are like watching Lifetime television from 8 to 11 every Sunday night — all of those women struggling to stay healthy, stay ethical, stay compassionate, stay authentic, stay loving, stay alive. Stay Alive.
I used to find the world around me inexhaustibly engaging. Maybe it’s that I’m now finding the world around me frighteningly alienating. Is it age? Is it the Age?
Maybe it’s not boredom. Maybe it’s the fear of/the feeling of being surrounded, overwhelmed by the inhuman. Maybe one of the human responses to feeling inhumanly alienated is to retreat into boredom. Into watching Lifetime television from 8 to 11 on Sundays. And Buffy. And Alias. And Judging Amy and Crossing Jordan and………
My horoscope from Rob Brezny’s Free Will Astrology:
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Dear Dream Doctor: I dreamt I
was caring for a beautiful golden fish in a room with two
aquariums. The fish kept leaping from one aquarium to another,
and my job was to scoop it up and return it to the water if it
missed. I felt bad for it because it couldn’t decide which
aquarium it liked better. One was big and classy but sterile, and
the other was small and funky but had lots of cool castles and
toys. As soon as the fish jumped into one aquarium, it was
already looking longingly at the one it had just left. What does
my dream mean, O Wise Oracle?