For a Night of Love: Emile Zola

For a Night of Love is a recent release of previously untranslated short stories by naturalist master Emile Zola. The three stories in the slim volume are all about love -- from Zola's sometimes perverse perspective.

What if the kind of man you pine for but could only attract the attention of if you burst into flames in his presence offered you a night of love? (Tom Cruise is single again, so let's use our imaginations.) That is the offer the shy, easily intimidated clerk an amateur flutist Julien Michon must respond to in the title story. He has courted the girl across the plaza by playing his flute for her for nearly a year. A haughty, convent educated marchise, she has ignored him. Then, an unforeseen occurrence in her life causes her to need Julien's body. He responds as expected, but does he achieve satisfaction?

Nantas, the protagonist of the second short story, is in a position readers of Zola and Balzac will find familiar. The young man has come to Paris from the provinces to make his fortune with only 200 francs in his purse. Two months later, he must choose between starving and hurling himself from the garret where he resides. To add insult to injury, Nantas believes himself to be a genius awaiting discovery. All he needs is an opportunity to prove his worth. Unfortunately, the busy world of Parisian commerce does not see it that way. It does not see him, one of thousands of ambitious youths in the same situation, at all.

A form of deliverance arrives at the last possible moment.

The young man decided this lady had come to offer him a job. He answered that he would accept anything. But, now that the ice was broken, she asked him bluntly: "Would you have any objection to getting married?"

"Getting married?" exclaimed Nantas. "Who would want me, Madame. . . .Some poor girl I wouldn't even be able to feed."

"No, a beautiful, rich your girl of magnificent lineage, who at a stroke will place in your hands the means or arriving in the highest position."

Nantas stopped laughing.

"So, what's the deal?" he asked, instinctively lowering his voice.

"This girl is pregnant and the child needs to be acknowledged," said Mademoiselle Chuin straightforwardly, forgetting her ingratiating turns of phrase so as to get to the heart of the matter more quickly.

Nantas accepts the offer. The capital he acquires by marrying Flavie will be the foundation on which his wealth and reputation are constructed. Consideration for her will be avoiding the scandal of bearing a child out of wedlock. One of the spouses is satisfied with the outcome a decade later. The other is not and considers suicide.

The third and shortest story in the collection is a character sketch focusing on two people -- a smug, vapid baroness and her equally depthless minister. It is a meditation on appetites and how easily one kind of desire can be mistaken for another. The baroness hungers for carnal satisfaction, the curate for gustatory delight.

Naturalism was an artistic movement that began around 1870. It was very influential into the 1900s.

In literature, [it is] an approach that proceeds from an analysis of reality in terms of natural forces, e.g., heredity, environment, physical drives. The chief literary theorist on naturalism was ?mile Zola, who said in his essay Le Roman Exp?rimental (1880) that the novelist should be like the scientist, examining dispassionately various phenomena in life and drawing indisputable conclusions. The naturalists tended to concern themselves with the harsh, often sordid, aspects of life. Notable naturalists include the Goncourt brothers, J. K. Huysmans, Maupassant, the English authors George Moore and George Gissing, and the American writers Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, James T. Farrell, and James Jones.

Persons who are sentimental might find reading naturalists and other practitioners of realism hard going.

Naturalists have been the most uncompromising realists. They believe that knowledge is acquired through the senses, and that the function of the writer is to report accurately what he or she observes. The naturalist tries to be as objective as a laboratory scientist. In their theory of life, naturalists are more pessimistic than realists. The realist believes people can make moral choices, but the naturalist doubts that they can. Naturalists believe everything people do is determined by their heredity, or environment, or both. Naturalists believe people are trapped by forces such as money, sex, or power.

In picturing people as trapped, the naturalist usually deals with the more sordid aspects of life. Characters in naturalistic literature are driven by their most basic urges. They are often brutal and usually failures. They use coarse language, and their view of life is often bleak and without hope. Yet in the best naturalistic works, there is a tone of compassion and even admiration for those characters who struggle against overwhelming odds.

I would describe my own fiction writing as domestic realism. However, I have found the uncompromising insights of the naturalists very useful in my development as a writer.

The stories in For a Night of Love are as vital today as they must have been when they were written. Love is one of those ongoing dilemmas of humans that never becomes dated. Zola is confronting the same concerns master of realism Raymond Carver does when he considers what we talk about when we talk about love.

Note: Some of the material in this entry is from the World Book Encyclopedia for OS X.

No New Nukes!

Remember the '70s-era band Orleans ("Dance with Me," "Still the One")? I can't get its Baltimore-born band leader and anti-nuke activist John Hall's old song "Power" out of my mind:

Just give me the warm power of the sun
Give me the steady flow of a waterfall
Give me the spirit of living things as they return to clay
Just give me the restless power of the wind
Give me the comforting glow of a wood fire
But won't you take all your atomic poison power away ...

With that in mind, here is an alert from the Union of Concerned Scientists. This message is aimed toward US citizens:

This week, your representative and senators are scheduled to vote on funding for the development of new nuclear weapons. This is part of the Bush administration's strategy to pursue new nuclear weapons by promoting them as "more usable."

With their enormous destructive power and radioactive fallout, all nuclear weapons are unacceptably dangerous. In addition, the administration's strategy could encourage other countries to seek nuclear weapons and build their own arsenals--a grave risk to US and global security. Now is the time to tell our elected officials that you oppose this new generation of nuclear weapons.

Please visit our Web Action Center to send a letter to your legislators. By adding a few of your own lines, the letter will be much more effective. Together, we can stop these dangerous new nuclear weapons!

Good gravy, I have another tune running through my head, this time from Dan Fogelberg (I know, I know, but can I help it if the man makes relevant music? At least it's not another Hugh Jackman reference.):

Face the fire, you can't turn away
The risk grows greater with each passing day
The waiting's over; the moment has come
To kill the fire and turn to the sun...

I've been marching and working and screaming "NO NUKES!" for more than 20 years now. The same holds true for the Council for a Livable World, which printed this classic article on September 11, 1980. The piece warns of the dangers of then-new weapons of mass destruction, such as the MX missile, which was supported by both President Jimmy Carter (who won a Nobel PEACE Prize recently, go figure) and the man who defeated him in that year's presidential election, Ronald Reagan. As the old adage go, the more things change... Oh lord, another brain-enveloping tune, this time from longtime No Nuker Jackson Browne:

Here come those tears again...

There is no time to weep. Please take the action proposed by UCS and stop the creation of new US-held WMDs. Let's take up the cry for yet another generation of world citizens, including my kids and your kids and Hugh Jackman's son: NO NEW NUKES!

Shoes

Do all kids go through a "dress-up" phase where they try on adult clothes or at least think about trying them on? I remember one instance when I succumbed to this particular curiosity. I was maybe ten or eleven. But it wasn't really clothes, per se. No dresses or hats or ties for me. It was the shoes.

They were my mother's: pumps the color of straw and of a basket-weaving design. These shoes were new, too, and they were nestled into the corner of the closet. My mother never wore shoes with heels though and she wasn't meek about her opinion on such scandalous shoes. Women who wore pumps had "horse-feet" and she told me that constant use completely ruined their feet. How was I to argue? It seemed reasonable enough to me considering the abnormal positions the shoe put the foot in.

My mother never bought those pumps. I think some trendy relative gave them to her. But nonetheless, those shoes held some sort of fascination. Was it because it made me taller? Gave me a glimpse who I would be when I grew up? Was it somehow that these shoes made me more trendy and pretty than I normally was. Or was it only false confidence?

I never had many shoes. When I had been in grade school, my shoe collection consisted solely of a pair of worn sneakers and an unsightly pair of low-heeled white dress shoes. It wasn't because my parents didn't want to spend money on shoes; they just thought the money would be spent better elsewhere. Even now, I don't have that many shoes: just some worn boots for winter, hiking boots for summer, the sneakers, the low-heeled dress shoes.

But I have a thing for shoes with heels. Once, on an emergency shopping trip looking for black shoes to go to an orchestra concert (I had forgotten them at home, 2,000 miles away), I came across a pair that would give anyone nosebleeds. They were shiny and black and had thick heels that would increase the height of the wearer by four or five inches. If my mother had been there, she would had shaken her head and adamantly had me try on a different heel-less pair. But she wasn't there.

So I bought them.

Perhaps my fascination with heeled shoes, or any shoe for that matter, that gives the wearer extra inches in height stems from my dissatisfaction with how short I really am. People don't really take you as seriously when you're the shortest person in the room. But with those black shoes, I felt more like an equal. And at moments, I could even sample a bit of the domination and intimidation powers that naturally tall people had all the time.

I rarely wear those shoes, though. They're too dangerous to handle on a daily basis.

Cross-posted on Syaffolee.

iraq's national day

Say what you will about the US, her gluttonous foreign policy, central role in global economic marauding, unnatural affection of citizens for synthetic fibres etc etc. This country may well be an internationally unrivalled producer of both paternalism and static cling. Her citizens do, however, know how to prepare barbeque with full-fat aplomb.
The Cook Out, as you may be apprised, is generally a central feature of the Independence Day festivities just past. It was my great fortune to once attend such a July 4 feast. Despite a distaste for giddy nationalism and an irrational fear of tinsel, I have to allow that I had a very nice time. It was, perhaps, after a fourth ladle of cream gravy, before a third serve of chicken-fried steak and simultaneous to a swan dive into a vat of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing that I had a fleeting if overwhelming suspicion that This Is The Greatest Country In The World.
I awoke after a sixteen hour post-prandial nap swathed in streamers, a lard hangover and an overwhelming sense of shame. I had been seduced to US nationalism, if temporarily, by cholesterol and fixins.
Now, as ASIO might tell you, I am a difficult test case for the potency of the July 4 barbeque. In my ethical past, I have marched in solidarity with Palestinians and consumed more Sandinista produced coffee than an entire Managua postal district. I have acquired a knee-jerk mistrust for all things US in my adult life and so, one would think, would be relatively impervious to the lure of fat and convivial July 4 spirits.
Not so. For a good ten minutes after my first USA style Cook Out, I was suggestible, content and perfectly happy to consider the editorial on Fox News an enlightened and well-balanced diversion. Further, I would defy even the most vegan anti-globalisation protestor to resist the charm of US suburban cheer when amplified by a tasty batter redolent of celery salt, cayenne and First World glory.
This is the heinous truth: America is propelled in her quest to conquer and forget by baby back ribs, velveeta and soporific desserts. Before you dismiss my hypothesis regard (1) US supermarket aisles stocked entirely with antacids, laxatives and other dangerous medication that allow citizens to maintain a near impossible but powerfully hypnotic diet and (2) the trace of chicken grease that is nearly always dribbling down G W Bush’s ill-defined chin.
On July 14, a mere ten days after the North American Festival of the Gut, Iraq will enjoy her first ‘liberated’ anniversary of revolution since Saddam first publicly waxed his mo’ in 1979. It is indeed fortuitous that Iraq’s National Day, commemorating the 1958 revolution, is celebrated so close to Independence Day.
As anyone who has survived an American Cook Out will attest, the Lard Over is intense and one might not evacuate the barbiturate effects of pork dripping for a good month or so after dosage. Any post-bellum guilt caused by little things like, say, Iraq’s unfortunate lack of utilities, hope or even, perhaps, provision of a real reason for the invasion in the first place, will be MUCH easier to deal with after a huge national meal.
That the US remembered their day with fireworks and that Iraq will spend theirs locating unexploded cluster bombs is a fact so much more palatable with a fry up under one’s belt.
On Iraq’s July 14, , the customary display of military vigour might be diminished somewhat. A sense of national pride or attainment could be slightly allayed by, for example, the lack of decent plumbing.
Fortunately, for Americans at least, that extra slice of Key Lime Pie might just tip the serotonin balance in favour of forgetting.

A Whale of a Tale.

A while ago, Blog Sister Andrea James posted here about the movie Whale Rider.

Last night I went to see it with some women friends, after we had dinner at a great little new place called the “Barefoot Gypsy.” I wish we had seen the movie first so that we could have had all of our dinner time to talk about it. There’s so awfully much to talk about.

Andrea was absolutely right about the movie being extraordinary on all kinds of levels, including visual.

And, I, who am so enamored of mythologies that empower women, was, of course, swept away by the tale’s affirmation of intuition and connections to “feminine” elements (water, sea creatures), ritual as art – and all that “right brain” stuff.

I’m still mulling over how I feel about the role of women in that society – which is very much like the traditional role of, say, Italian and Polish women. And that is that they let the men think that they are the bosses and then the women find ways around their foolishnesses. The men make up strict rules for everyone’s behavior (including their own) based on their interpretation of what their god or gods have supposedly proclaimed. And the women go about their lives on a whole other intuitive, connected, and somewhat devious plane. They “mother” their men, treat them like large children who can be dangerous because of their size, and so they have to be placated and manipulated into doing the right thing.

But despite my discomfort with that “woman’s place” thing, I felt in my very bones the power of the movie’s honest message. Whoever rides the whale is the one who was meant to ride the whale. Ride, Sisters, ride.

"Men are wilting away..."

In her article on the "Incredible Shrinking Y" Maureen Dowd writes:

In a new book called "Y: The Descent of Men," Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University College in London, says males, always a genetic "parasite," have devolved to become the "second sex."

The news that Dolly the sheep had been cloned without masculine aid sent a frisson through the Y populace, he writes, because men began to fear that science would cause nature to return to its original, feminine state and men would fade from view.

The Y chromosome, "a mere remnant of its once mighty structure," is worried about size. "Men are wilting away," Dr. Jones writes. "From sperm count to social status and from fertilization to death, as civilization advances, those who bear Y chromosomes are in relative decline."

Read her article here and my post about it here.

Homeland Security: Strange, but True

Imagine this: For whatever reason, you need to reach the US Gestapo -- aka the Department of Homeland Security (John Ashcroft's so-called Justice Department is its partner in crime). You look through DHS press releases for the name or phone number or fax number of a contact person for the department. But your search turns out to be in vain -- there is no contact person. Dig this, from the Hartford Advocate.

Does this set warning bells in your head? It does for me. So I conducted a search of DHS press releases and the departmental Web site -- nothing. There is no phone number listed, no fax number listed, only a snail-mail address (and we all know how useless sending mail to any gummint agency can be) and a Web-based feedback form.

State DHS offices have phone numbers, so citizens do have a place to go, and there is the DHS Fear and Loathing, um, Ready.gov site, which offers a toll-free number for US residents with questions. But the omission of phone numbers in departmental press releases presents a number of concerns, which are well articulated by Oregon-based journalist, grassroots activist, and organizer David M. Baker:

This story has VAST implications! I don't know about you folks, but this is the first i've heard that the venerable DHS is sending out press releases with no cotnact information. what's crazy here is that nobody, until this story popped up, NOBODY in the news media has said a thing about it!

Think about what this means, folks! It means that anything you've

1. read in the paper,
   
2. heard on the radio,
   
3. seen on the television

citing information from the DHS could well be information that has not been verified, clarified, or otherwise vetted by the so-called journalists receiving it.

I'm trying not to freak out...really...but i think that this story should be used as a springboard for an action. I'm thinking that this could be a WONDERFUL opportunity to challenge local media outlets on how they handle information they receive from government sources. At the very least, it provides a point of interrogatory.

Again, imagine a tired reporter on deadline. Imagine she gets a press release from the Department of Homeland Security. Imagine her printing the information from the release without verifying the facts contained within, under the assumption that the news is accurate and reliably sourced. What if the info in the release is, in fact, untrue or nothing more than governmental propaganda?

Great. Another reason to question the integrity of the media and the government.

Want to discuss the matter, along with possible actions progressives could take along the lines of Dave's suggestions? Write us.

An Independent Woman

Two great female pioneers of cinema are long-worshipped icons for me: the actors Hepburn, graceful gamine Audrey, who died a decade ago, and stylish independent Katharine. Today, we lost her too. I still miss the former... and it seems I will miss the latter for a very, very long time as well.

Miss Katharine Hepburn, who had been in poor health for a number of years, died today at her home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, at the age of 96. She was known for being an intelligent, self-sufficient, freethinking woman -- quite the firecracker, onscreen and onstage, of course, and when she was just being herself. Daily Celebrations offers a terrific summation of the screen legend's life and career.

Some of the award-winner's most interesting words came back to me today as I remembered her presence and talents. Surfing around, I found a bunch of Hepburn wisdom and thought I would share it in honor of a gifted artist and a fine role model for indepndent women everywhere.

• "Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living, " she once said. "After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four."
  
• "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."
  
• "We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change."
  
• "Without discipline, there's no life at all."
  
• "It's life isn't it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels."
  
• "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."
  
• "Life is hard. After all, it kills you."
  
• "Death will be a great relief. No more interviews."

These quotes and many more can be found at Brainy Quote.

Rest in peace, Miss Hepburn, and thank you very much.

rubs me the wrong way

I posted something on allied that I wanted to post over here too. About a site that is fascinating, if not to my mind creepy. Let me say that I'm not anti-donor sperm in general, nor am I against lesbian couples and single women having children. Wonderful parents are wonderful parents, period. But there's something about this business model that makes me suspect of those attracted to spend their money here... Without further delay--here's my post:

Have you heard about this one? The world's first "Internet Baby" will arrive next month.

No, this doesn't mean live blogging from the event, or web-cam assisted delivery, which I'm pretty sure have already taken place. In fact, the story is about man not included, a site that nearly removes the man from the conception equation.

FAQs here.

The service, which is marketed as a kind of e-marketplace or match making service between interested parties--both sperm donors and primarily lesbian couples and single women--gives me the willies. Especially the name, and the branding which has all the panache of a dot.com with a rather twisted business model. Guys--if you didn't know what you were good for before, you do now. Ante up the sperm and get lost.

I see a lot being done to ensure peace of mind and security for the sperm consumer, but I don't see fuck-all about making sure the parents to be are legitimate. I'd feel a lot better if I knew no boy children would be born from those drawn to the site.

The notion of "home insemination" with donor sperm from an online matchmaking service that overtly male bashes and now controls the most sacred of data from participants takes conception to a new level: somewhere between a back alley rape and a sterile motherboard insertion.



I wonder when they'll come out with onesies for the children? Imagine the blonde-haired, blue-eyed toddler boys of the future running around with this logo on their chests. Destiny pre-determined.

Am I being too hard on the site and its members? Maybe. But I'll take that chance.

And I'll even do the favor of giving them a tagline for free--one they would no doubt be proud of: "No guy, no lie."

Ladies who tattoo

I keep a curious eye out for the phenomenon of body art, and was sent this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the growing popularity of tattoos for middle-class women in London. It seems that a Selfridges department store has opened a tattoo department that is doing a fair amount of business-- enough for the store's managers to want to keep the department.

It's interesting the way body art is perceived. In tribal cultures, tattoos, scarification, piercing, etc. are a symbol of belonging, but in Western culture they've long been the symbol of the outsider: criminals, soldiers, rebels, rockstars, etc. They were especially stigmatic for women. Now they are becoming a fashion symbol for the middle class, acceptable even for 44-year-old housewives.

What do I think of tattoos? Well, I don't know that I'd get one for myself, because I'm pretty fickle (though I do have my bellybutton pierced), but I do find many of them fascinating and beautiful. For those that dare to go under the needle, I'm sure it can be a great form for self-expression.

Is the Sky Falling Yet?

And it's still PRIDE Month...

I don't yet know if this makes up for the crime against humanity committed when the US Supreme Court put an illegitimate ass into the Oval Office's main chair. But credit where it is due: The nation's highest court finally did something to uphold justice, ruling that Texas' ban on gay sex is unconstitutional.

Pro-justice and pro-GLBT organizations are, naturally, ecstatic by this supreme occurrence. Some fundamentalist Christians, predictably, accuse the court's justices of signing onto some "homosexual agenda."

Well, if that agenda is fairness for all, good for the justices. I'm certainly thrilled by the long-awaited verdict, even a little shocked. Cynical me, I don't always trust people to do the right thing. On the rare occasions when they do, I am generally left in a state of grateful bewilderment -- it is there I reside today. My happiness and thankfulness is, in part, due to my proud status as a queer human. But the "human" part is glad too -- today's Supreme Court ruling underscores the freedom and protection that we all are supposed to enjoy.

On the heels of Canada's recent breakthroughs in marriage equality, today's controversial high court decision makes me feel actual hope for the future of GLBT Americans; for women; the elderly; differently abled and bodied people; religious, ethnic, and pigmentational minorities; and all the world's citizens. Good stuff does happen!

So raise a glass. Celebrate! Watch for falling bits of sky. And take that, Rick Santorum.

Beautiful Woman Month.

There was an interesting article in the New York Times the other day, regarding an e-mail that’s going around. It announces Beautiful Woman Month. I got it from a friend. The NYT article takes some shots at the veracity of some of the claims made in the e-mail but also talks about the importance of size acceptance.

I was struck by the increase numbers in average weight. Apparently the numbers have jumped (their word) from 144 in the late seventies to 152 in the nineties. Eight pounds. I don’t know about the rest of my Blogsisters but I gain and lose eight pounds every month. It doesn’t seem like much of a jump.

The article does say some very cool things about a shift toward fitness and not thinness. If you have read my blog and read me rant about fat issues you might guess that it does not go far enough for me.

The article has a sales pitch for Curves. Now. I want to say that I’ve not been in a Curves. But I did hear a story about a fat woman who went in one to say that she wanted to join and get exercise but wasn’t interested in losing weight. They wouldn’t let her join. It may be a lone story.

The article quotes Dr. Kelly D. Brownell
“If there's a change so far, it may be that women have gone from being horribly dissatisfied with their own bodies to being somewhat less horribly dissatisfied. It's very hard to find a woman who really likes her body. Even if she likes the shape, she will not like her toes, her knees, her elbows or her ankles. There's always something wrong."

He also goes on to say that body dissatisfaction stems from two assumptions — that a body can be shaped at will, so that the only thing that lies between any woman and perfection is effort and that an imperfect body reflects an imperfect person.

The article includes the usual litany of fat phobia. I guess it’s OK to accept your size but not if you’re fat.

The mighty Deb Burgard, who keeps the Body Positive Site, has the last word.
"I don't see how we're going to stop eating disorders until we stop reading character into the size of people's bodies. It's stereotyping. We've made progress against other stereotypes, and we can make progress against this one, too.”

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Small personal note for anyone who normally checks my blog daily. Blogger is apparently overhauling (or upgrading or whatever) a whole bunch of blogs and I haven't been able to get into my edit page for 12 hours now. Pisses me off because I've gotten obsessively anal about posting daily. So just wanted folks to know.

Vacationing with Friends

I just got back from a week in a rented cottage at the ocean in Maine with two of my women friends. I hope that you all have friends like mine, and you can share our adventures at www.kalilily.net.

Evolution from a Female Perspective.

A post by Jeneane over on her site about evolution made me remember a book I read when it came out in the early seventies that speculated on evolution of the human female. The Descent of Woman (entitled that to contrast with Desmond Morris’ The Naked Ape ) rejects the brutish ape-man in caves theory and substitutes a vision of pre-human creatures living in a primarily aquatic environment.

In 1994, Elaine Morgan came out with another book, The Scars of Evolution. According to Ingram review of the book on Amazon:

Natural selection dictates that enduring changes to a species occur because of the need to adapt to changes in the environment. Elaine Morgan, author of The Descent of Woman and The Aquatic Ape, maintains that the human propensity for lower back pain, obesity, varicose veins, and other chronic conditions is the result of an earlier need for humans to survive a watery environment.

It’s always so surprising to me that so many women never even heard of Elaine Morgan’s theories. They make as much sense as the aggressive caveman ones, and I sure like them a lot better. But then, again, when media like the Discovery Channel opt for programs like the one scheduled for tomorrow, Walking With Cavemen, rather than a less male-centric vision of the past, it's not surprising.

A World without Husbands and Fathers

Last night on the Discovery channel here in Oz: Civilisations focused on a culture almost completely the inverse of many cultural commonalities. The Moso of China do not have an institution of marriage, and no word for "daddy." They are matrilineal and matriarchal. Promiscuity is not only common, but sought after, and jealousy over affection is mocked and discouraged. Men have no role in the upbringing of their children-- indeed, the Moso believe there is no biological link between father and offspring. Instead, uncles take on a father-like role. This unique group debunks the notion that some cultural constructs, like marriage and fatherhood, are not as universal as previously thought. I couldn't find much online about the Moso, but I did find this.

Watch out for Paynter!

He’s done it with other Blog Sister before, here, and here, and here, here, here, and, his very first, here. Well, you can look here for the whole list of those he’s unveiled.

Now he’s set his insiteview on Betsy Devine and says he’ll have his interview with her up any day now. Watch out for it. It’s bound to be delightfully revealing.

And while you’re over there, check out his post on Cyberfeminism and hacker/artist Cornenlia Sollfrank.

If we had a category for “Honorary Blog Sister”, I most certainly would want to see Frank Paynter head the list.

Booth Bitch

Popular culture has embraced many former Coat-Check Girls. These include: Liverpudlian songbird Cilla Black; willowy blonde starlet Gretchen Mol and Fabulous Disaster Mariah Carey. Any reasonable history of coat checking could not, of course, overlook celebrated Exotic Dancer Blaze Starr. Apparently she was ‘discovered’ while sitting behind her Baltimore counter. How, exactly, one demonstrates a talent for burlesque while sitting in a booth is a question I regularly attempt to address. This fascination is due less to my interest in nipple pasties and more to my recent induction into the Cloaking Sisterhood.
Coat-Checking is not, altogether, an unenviable arrangement. Certainly, the position description is more succinct than some and the job title may not command the same line of credit as, say, Chief Executive Officer. However, the pay is reasonable, the coats are, oftentimes, intriguing and, when I think about my former stint as a Senior Public Servant, the complete lack of meetings called to discuss which letter-head the Corporate Mission Statement should be printed on is refreshing.
I am, for the moment, quite content to add Coat Check Girl to my Résumé. I quite like people, for the most part, and I enjoy guarding their possessions with lady-like brutality. I am warmed by their gratitude when I produced their unscathed garments and I am often politely amused to see their coats depart with a coat they have only just met. Further, the confessional aspect of my booth permits all sorts of truths. I am the trustee of more secrets and venal sins that your average Father and, according to Cloaking Code, far less likely to reprimand.
So, work as a Booth Bitch is fine by me. I provision a dependable and useful storage-and-risk-minimisation solution to coat-wearers AND there’s enough down time to get through one decent novel per night. However, my first service industry experience in fifteen years has given me cause to recall: Some People Have No Manners.
There is a handful of people in every well populated room that live, quite simply, to Lord It. These are the sorts who love to rub one’s low-income earning nose into a big pile of crude humiliation. They like to shout at Call Centre staff, tut inscrutably at busy bar staff and roll despondent eyes at anyone near a cash register. Whether this amply expressed frustration is the by-product of Hating The Capitalist System or just a really rotten week, I am unsure. All I know is that I am aghast at the tendency of a few to make the servile feel really servile.
Two to three times an evening someone will just HURL their garment at me. At least one of these people will say ‘watch it, I paid a lot of money for that’ as though it were my habit to drag lesser raiments through a pig-sty of stinking disrespect. One of these errant customers may also (a) blow cigarette smoke into my booth (b) ash said cigarette into my tip jar and/or (c) insist ‘you’ve got a GREAT job, haven’t you?’ without a hint of empathy nor cheeky wit.
I do understand that many people wade through their weeks feeling trammelled and alone. I also understand their need to ‘blow off steam’ – or smoke into my booth as the case may be. It befuddles me, however, that such people choose to relieve themselves on relatively powerless institutions such as Coat Check Girl. Why not pick on the Big Boys?
In my effort to cleanse the world of poor manners and ill-feeling, I have now devised an information sheet for my more troublesome customers. Entitled ‘Yo, You With The Coat: Use Your Rage for Good Instead of Evil’ it suggests a number of bodies to which they might more profitably address their anger such as the World Bank, President George W Bush and the Advertising Standards Agency. (To date, this document has confused all but one parton into silence and has encouraged the emergence of at least two anti-globalisation activists.)
Respect the servile. Or you never know what kind of pamphlets they may produce!

So mad that I missed this one!

I don't know how I missed this! I guess I'm too sandwiched between cute little grandbaby and frail old mom.

People of the world take note: The women have met. They've hatched a plan. Think Seneca Falls 1848. Think healthy planet. Think: Magic hips.
So begins the report in my newspaper today about the second annual Women & Power Conference to explore self-transformation and world healing that was held last weekend at the Omega Institute -- which is less than an hour's drive from where I live. Eve Ensler, Alice Walker, and Eileen Fisher were there, along with more than 450 women from around the world, including Jungian analyst Marion Woodman and hip-hopper Rha Goddess. Plans are underway for a June 2004 convention to develop a platform for the national elections to ensure, as Ensler asserted, that whoever runs for president "cannot deny the power of women." Supposedly Ensler is going to organize the convention through her V-Day web site, but I haven't seen anything on there yet. I wonder what it would take to be named a delegate from New York?

Whakakau Paikea hei

Whale Rider is the story of a young Maori girl defying the expectations of her very traditional grandfather. You see, she's a girl, she shouldn't be learning stick fighting, or certain sacred chants, and she certainly isn't qualified to become a leader of her people because of her very femaleness. But, ironically, she becomes the one person best qualified, through courage, persistance, and a deep love for her Maori heritage; she shows herself the inheritor in a long line of great chiefs back to Paikea, her namesake. Good movie, go see it. More thoughts here.

Here's another news article

Referencing Women and IT the lack of female participation reasons for this.
Article

Reading the previous post it has me thinking that perhaps it is relevant to realize that wanting things for your children also means influencing society to see your point of view..

In Memory

On this Memorial Day, I remember my Croney grandmothers, who in this photo from the 1940s are about the same age I am now. Read the whole post here.

The Queen!

I adore the Queen and I just can’t help it.
Perhaps this is due to the excellence of the Royal vocal cords. They produce a sound so pure that even phrases such as ‘Annus Horribulus’, that would sound smutty uttered by anyone else, issue from the Royal mouth untainted. Or, perhaps I hold Elizabeth Regina in such lofty esteem because I mistook her for a relative for the first six years of my life. I thought Aunt Liz to be the most lovely scion of my family tree and kept a picture of her in a cream straw hat set with beige trim. I knew no-one calm enough to team cream with beige and I was rather smitten with her restraint.
Why do I really adore Her Most Excellent Majesty? I have been affording the matter of my affection thought on the eve of her birthday weekend. First, it must be said, she has effortlessly done many odd things. These include introducing an original, if unpopular, breed of dog known as the Dorgi. (N.B. The Dorgi’s origins were possibly unplanned and unfortunate. Although there are eight known Dorgis in the world, the breed was reportedly started when one of ER’s corgis had its way with a dachshund named Pipkin that belonged to Princess Margaret). Further, she has owned a bull elephant named Jumbo AND she is a trained mechanic who worked on heavy machinery during World War II. What a gal.
Perhaps it is Liz’s shopping refinement that causes me to love her so. As a shallow person, I am easily impressed by those who acquire and, moreover, know how to acquire Lovely Things. And HM knows, perhaps better than any living being, how and where to shop. There are those satisfied many who join the queues at hypermarkets with 500 grams of beef in basket. Then there’s Liz who has, somehow, known all her life that if Spag Bol is on the menu, the ONLY place to acquire the requisite premium hamburger is Cobb of Knightsbridge. Similarly, she knows where to go to get the best spectacles ( Dispensing Opticians Dollond & Aitchison), stationery (Frank Smythson) and Bagpipes (Hardie R G & Co, naturally).
Naturally, Maj knows where to purchase a quality handbag. And perhaps at last the good craftspeople of Launer S & Co (London) Ltd begin to provide a clue as to the Great Lady’s appeal. Please, allow One to explain.
According to Buck House press guff, the most frequently asked question of Her Majesty by her subjects is: What DO You Keep In Your Handbag? The official answer always is: HM, who leaves all money matters to the Privy Purse, carries only spectacles for reading her speeches in the ever-present bag.
A lie! The Queen is a woman. Ipso facto she has crap in her handbag. Her consistent denial of female clutter underscores the mystery essential to her role.
Always present at the monarch’s elbow is this reminder that she is Woman enough to need a bag full of used bandaids, kleenex and lipsticks past their best-before date. Yet she is Monarch enough never to divulge these contents.
I most admire the lady who has had the same mints in her purse since her silver jubilee but has never publicly chewed on one. A woman who can refrain from fiddling about in her handbag for that long has earned the title Defender of the Faith and a place in my heart. I am down with the Maj.

Catholic Heartbreak

The Roman Catholic Church giveth, then taketh away. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis was all set to honor religious-education coordinator Kathy Itzin -- until these workers of God found out that she is a lesbian.

Now I know why I don't wear much jewelry

Because, to put it simply, shopping for jewelry is a more frustrating hell than trying to find a bathing suit that doesn't make me feel like a trainee blue whale.

I spent two hours searching the mall for a pendant for my grandmother. I saw many things I liked, but most of them were too "funky" looking for my Granny, oddly twisted hearts and some lovely middle-eastern influenced scrollwork and tassled necklaces that my Mum would adore. Plain, simple, understated pendants involving yellow gold and perhaps some pelasant-coloured semi-precious stones? Nope. Not on your nelly. I waded through every department store, two jeweller's and one costume jewelry store where the clerk tried to convince me that my grandmother would just love to own a chunky silver chain with starfish hanging off it. There are very few ways to politely say "no thank you, that's much too gaudy for her" and "can we keep it under $150 please?" and I ran out of tact somewhere between Nordstrom's and Robinson's May.

Eventually I returned to Ben Bridge [>] and went with a little filligree heart in white gold, even though I know she wears yellow gold. It was the only thing that remotely said Granny to me. I was also encouraged by it being half the approximate amount my Mum told me to expect to pay.

Then I managed to pull out the wrong card to pay for it, and didn't realise until it had already been rung up, so I had to get her to viod the first transaction and start over. The second card took an inexplicably long time to clear, thus wasting an additional 15 minutes or so.

By this point I was ready for a nap, my eyes were aching from staring at so many sparkly things under bright lights, trying to search for the invisible understated pieces amongst the carbuncles, and I was well overdue for a boost to my blood sugar. I got straight on the freeway and headed home. Matt already had dinner ready, bless him.

I pulled out the package to show Matt what I'd wasted two hours looking for, opened the cardboard gift box, then the jewelery box...and proudly displayed to him an empty cream velvet interior.

NYAAAAAARGGGH!

That's right, I walked out of there with a gift box. But no pendant.

Cross posted at Painfully Fluffy [>] .

The Return of the Pig

I can't help but think that perhaps the glorification of chauvinism, violence, and sex is a backlash against the de facto political correctness that has permeated the public conscience. It is a no-win situation for feminists precisely because of political correctness. Being PC is one of the pillars of feminism. Neo-chauvinism hides behind this by saying that its very existence is multiculturalism and irony rolled into one. And feminists dare not attack it for fear of undermining their own pillar.

The core of the matter, though, is not chauvinism versus feminism but the clash of beliefs. How is one able to allow the existence of ideologies that are in direct opposition to one's own? The easy way out is to not care about what anyone else does--but that route, unfortunately, leads to anarchy. Attempting to instill everyone with respect for their fellow human being is going to be pointless if a particular group's ideology disregards respect for personal gain.

This is a difficult topic because it is easy to get trapped in circular reasoning. Humans are still animals no matter how "above it" we think we are. It is admirable that we have gotten this far, but even in the most altruistic, there is a small part that is completely instinctual and involved in self-pleasure.

Whatever the case, no one thinks the same way. People who like violent rap, laddie mags, and denigrating others have no right to call others who have different tastes elitists. The media may make it seem like this is mainstream, but exactly how many people want to attend rowdy parties 24/7? Probably no more than the segment of the population who even has a preference for classical music. Maxim connoisseurs are just as elite and obnoxious as beatnik poets.

Cross-posted at Syaffolee.

When a rose is so much more than a rose.

Self-described “nerd” and Blog Sister Betsy Devine has fun with the rose and all its scientific glories. Her piece got me thinking about the rich mythic history of that ancient pentacled flower. And so I had my own kind of fun.

A Mother's Day Rant

More meming with links to Riane Eisler and Elaine Morgan and quotes on why women need to act/up before age blindsides us.

The first Mother's Day was a call for peace.

From Sojourners website:

Did you know that Mother's Day was suggested as a day of peace in the United States by Julia Ward Howe who protested the carnage of war in her bold proclamation of 1870? Decades later in 1907, the first Mother's Day observance was held at a church service honoring the memory of Anna Reese Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia. Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized women during the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions and to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

Mother's Day Proclamation
-- Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, disarm! The Sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

International No Diet Day

Today is International No Diet Day. The first INDD was in 1992 after Mary Evans Young saw a television show on which women were having their stomachs stapled. One woman had split the staples and was in for her third operation. And then there was a young girl of 15 who committed suicide because 'she couldn't cope with being fat.' She was size 12. Ms. Young got angry. She came up with the idea for INDD.
The stories that Ms Young heard are like bookends. There are the fat people trying to get thin at any cost and the not really fat people dieing because they are so afraid. On my blog today I write about fat lives and the negative impact of dieting. I don’t know as much about eating disorders. I do know young women (and increasingly young men) die from them.
I was at a hearing to create a task force on childhood obesity in San Francisco recently. I heard a therapist say that she had one client who was close to 500 pounds when she hospitalized but the client had all the signs of malnutrition because she’d been starving herself in an attempt to lose weight. And the therapist had another client who was hospitalized at under 100 pounds but she had been eating over 5000 calories a day. And then throwing it all it up.
INDD is not about going out and having pizza and a banana split. It’s about understanding the cost of fat-phobia. It’s about understanding that there’s a difference between having a healthy relationship with food and monitoring your appetite in a hyper-vigilant manner.
So I am wishing you all a healthy AND pleasurable day with your body and your appetite.

Further illumination on the demon thing.

I don't want to take up space here, but I've posted a poem that sort of wrote itself after doing some intuitive work with my shamanic therapist -- years, years ago, during my more (ahem) sexually active era. It's based on one of my "vision quests" and was published in an anthology called Which Lilith: Feminist Writers Recreate the World's First Woman, so it can't be all that bad. I share it to illustrate the benefits of dancing with my demons in the way that I do. Lilith is an archetype that loomed large in my therapeutic work, and if you're at all interested in why, you can read Frank Paynter's old interview with me.

Is an Exorcism in Order?

I posted this in a comment over on Elaine's place, but am posting here as well, in a post since I can't get the darn comments to work.

I take issue with what Elaine says about Laurie, Meegan and Chris, and the way with which she wields shamanism and deamons as some metaphorically exciting healing dance that is by no stretch of the imagination new age.

Here's my comment:

Elaine, in this one paragraph, you make several damning assumptions. I think you'd be well advise to re-read:

"When I read what webloggers at slumberland. and notsosimple and even rageboy write about their struggles to find a way to live lives that feel satisfying and connected as well as challenging and stimulating, I want to tell them that there are other ways – ways that make the journey of self-discovery a real adventuresome and creative trip. And you don’t need drugs to do it."

You're assuming a whole hell of a lot:

1) that their lives don't feel satisfying or connected.
2) that their lives don't feel stimulating
3) that they are on some sort of magnificent journey.
4) that their particular journeys thus far are neither adventurous or creative
5) that you know what an adventurous and creative trip is
6) that they are on drugs

I think the real issues there for you have something to do with their relative youth and popularity.

In addition, in this post you imply that most new agers believe in God or some sort of spirit source, and that you're not a new ager because you don't believe in God. Those attracted to the fanatical fringes of new ageism (I would argue that most of it is fanatical) aren't there looking for God. They are there looking for them "selves" so to speak because they never developed one in the first place. Not their fault. But a magnet for the disordered.

Like I always say:

The people on meds are on them because the people who should be aren't.

AND, of course,

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a narcissist.

Dancing with your demons.

Back during the old-time 70s feminist days, there was a lot being written about women and depression, women and repressed anger (depression being anger turned inward). Lots of us opted to let our anger out – at men, at the “establishment” etc. etc. It didn’t change anything much, and it didn’t help us to understand what we really wanted and how to get it.

Being a poet, I tended to have an outlet for my anger, and I was lucky to cross paths with another poet who also is a therapist who works in a shamanic tradition – which means that he truly understands the power of personal metaphor and myth – of creating art and artifacts that seem to “magically” dissolve the blinders that the rational, literal, logical mind uses to keep out dangerous awarenesses. Being a word-person, I could talk and write reams of reasonably intelligent analyses of what was bothering me, how my past experiences contributed to my current discomfort. I could -- and did -- read all kinds of books that purported to explain the causes of my dysfunctions. But blaming the past and analyzing the present only takes you so far toward ridding yourself of those old paralyzing demons. Knowing that you want to change things about your life and actually making the changes are two very different things.

At first glance, shamanic therapy smacks too much of new age nonsense. For some, like me, who don’t believe in any personal Great Spirit, it might seem too traditionally spiritual. But I approached the whole experience as ritual theater, as symbolic expression, as an end-run around my rational, controlling brain – and, when you come right down to it, as damned good psychology. You don’t have to believe in a god or a soul or an afterlife; you just have to acknowledge that there is some part of your consciousness, your understanding, that keeps eluding you. We dream without control at night and sometimes in our daydreams. Shamanic therapy takes us into our dreamtime, where the complex metaphors and symbols of our conscious lives hide waiting to take forms that hold truths too powerful or painful for our literal minds to willingly embrace.

From: http://www.shamanism.org

Over tens of thousands of years, our ancient ancestors all over the world discovered how to maximize human abilities of mind and spirit for healing and problem-solving. The remarkable system of methods they developed is today known as "shamanism," a term that comes from a Siberian tribal word for its practitioners: "shaman" (pronounced SHAH-mahn). Shamans are a type of medicine man or woman especially distinguished by the use of journeys to hidden worlds otherwise mainly known through myth, dream, and near-death experiences.

One of the most enlightening experiences I had was taking a workshop with Eligio Stephen Gallegos, whose book Personal Totem Pole: Animal Imagery the Chakras and Psychotherapy explains the process. And that’s what we did – we went on guided imagery “vision quests” in search of our animal totems – visual metaphors for parts of ourselves that we needed to communicate with better. What my Osprey told me, what my miniature Dragon showed me, made more sense and gave me more sense of direction than hours of talk (or silence) in a traditional therapist’s office. So, when I blog about meeting a Skunk, it’s not just an attempt at cute story telling. There is something stirring in me that I need to pay attention to.

Expressive arts therapy works the same way, helping us to access our right brain smarts – the ones that are NOT linear and literal and rational, the ones that see right through those left-brain blinders.

When I read what webloggers at slumberland. and notsosimple and even rageboy write about their struggles to find a way to live lives that feel satisfying and connected as well as challenging and stimulating, I want to tell them that there are other ways – ways that make the journey of self-discovery [added after the fact for clarification] an even greater [delete 'a real'] adventuresome and creative trip. And you don’t [added after the fact for clarification] even need drugs to do it [added after the fact for clarifiction] the way that shamans use peyote other other psychedelic drugs to expand their consciousnesses so that they could take those enlightening inner journey trips.

But first you have to be willing to let your demons take form and meet you face to face in dreamtime. And, if you give them a chance, they'll even learn to dance with you.



Some other relevant info of interest on the web:

http://www.tranceform.org/ShamanicCure.html

http://www.ieata.org/home.htm

http://www.iue.edu/Departments/Social_Work/s300.htm

http://www.expressivetherapy.com/htmls/directory.html

(double posted)

I once had a deftly unkind colleague who had made it her life’s work to run screaming from the outer suburbs. Genuinely repelled by mission brown awnings, the prospect of PTA meetings and, indeed, crochet of any kind, she had fled triple fronted brick veneer the very millisecond she could. Suspicious of shagpile and eternally paranoid that she should ever be confused for someone without a Zip Code that Mattered, she developed a talent for scorn. Anxious to mark her difference from the world that had created her, she became an enviably gifted Bitch.
Although faintly appalled by this nastiness, I cultivated a certain liking for her cruel and daily observations. Hausfrau in gabardine at Twelve O’clock, she would mutter over lunch. In the city to exchange her Mother’s Day gift which was, of course, an Epi-lady. Her entire reality frame would melt should local Pizza Hut franchise run out of cheese. Tonight, invigorated by her brush with a flag-ship department store, she will tie Chuck to his JC Penney faux-Shaker bed posts with Wizard Wipes and ride him as though he were the pony of her adolescent longing.
Stop! No, please, I would beg, unsure whether to giggle or give my colleague the name of a good therapist. Ninety per cent of the time, her critique was just too brittle for my tastes. As a half-hearted suburban escapee at the time, however, I would occasionally mine some gems from the dark shaft of her self-loathing.
In particular, I recall one mid-nineties luncheon staffed by under-cooked salmon and deca-litres of Balsamic, she pointed her fish knife at some young temptress and pronounced, ‘Tracksuit Fairy’s coming’.
The Tracksuit Fairy, according to my colleague, was the only means by which the sudden change from Babe to leisure-suit could be explained. Had I not noted how in the course of days an elastic and fashionably clad young female suburbanite might metamorphose into a fleece-lined sack just WAITING to free-base Hormone Replacement Therapy? Honestly, she continued, sometimes it can happen in hours. One day, you’re in a size 8 Prada knock off, the next BAM: Tracksuit Fairy.
Malicious as were her reflections on strip-mall apparel, I had to concur: (a) some women, and indeed men, did embrace tracksuits quickly and inexplicably and (b) in a better world, this amorphous clothing would never be worn out of doors. I vowed then and there never to wear a tracksuit in any public place other than a jogging track. I swore to outrun the Tracksuit Fairy.
What am I and those countless others who have solemnly taken the Tracksuit Fairy Oath, to make of recent fashion week displays? Apparently, Trackie Dacks are the last word in chic. And not just any track suit: the really ‘hip’ ones are wrought from velour! Hello? Am I the only sentient being who perceives this double felony for what it is? I lived through the seventies, baby, and I was unwillingly clad in textured forest green velour track suits with brown trim and I ain’t going back.
Let me just repeat: consumers are being urged to wear TRACK SUITS made from VELOUR.
Couturiers Karl Lagerfeld and Valentino each own one. Gwyneth, Madonna and J Lo, who are each old enough to know better, are regularly seen in them. Catherine Zeta Jones swans about in one. One would think that her frail husband, Michael Douglas, observed enough of seventies excess to make her see reason.
The Velour Tracksuit, as some global fashion commentators would have it, is the new Pashmina Shawl.
I am tempted to trace my former colleague to see if she has ordered one of the new Juicy Couture suits. It is my fervent hope that she has refrained and is now quipping: if Velour is the New Pashmina then velveeta is the new sashimi, the ford pinto is the new Porsche and cheese-cloth tops are back. Oh wait…..

Five-thirty Monday thru Friday. Always open.

The part of my day that I must honestly say I approach with dread, will be upon me within a half-hour. It is the time when the man comes home.

Don’t mistake me and assume that I am complaining about my husband, his arrival, or being with him. That isn’t the case. What I dread is the transition time. I have trouble adjusting. I’m an outwardly easygoing, ready-for-anything, roll-with-the-changes-REO-speedwagon kind of person. Nothing fazes me to the casual observer. I’ve worked long and hard on cultivating that ability of mine to appear to the outside world as one who is never surprised. But inwardly? Transitions are tough for me.

My days, on the days I don’t work at the general store, are bisected by that approximately 5:30-ish E.T.A. When my husband pulls up in the gravel driveway adjacent our little gray-green, brown-roofed bungalow; steps out of the maroon 1988 Honda Civic that is our umbilical cord to the outside world in this small town non-public-transportating place where we live; and enters our dwelling place sporting dirt-laden clothing from his day at the nursery and expectation as to what tonight’s dinner might bring. As often as not lately, my uninspired answer is “pick which can of soup you want to open and heat it.”

Sometimes, when he gets home, I am morose, dejected. Full of remorse at books that went uncracked, writing that stagnated in my brain and fell into cerebral cracks where they may not be rescued for many moons. If ever. Dusting that went undusted. Clothes to be ironed, mounded in heaps all over the bedroom floor, a rocky wrinkled landscape testifying to sheer domestic failure.

During a recent conversation about family, children, in-laws and marital expectations, I wailed, “I don’t feel like a wife.” Which brought down the house with uninterpretable laughter from his mouth, his mind. “What makes you think you’re supposed to be...a wife??”

“What do you mean by THAT?”

“I don’t know.” More laughter.

I think he meant, he didn’t understand what it was that I was lamenting, lacking at, feeling that I’d failed at or wasn’t trying hard enough to be.

When I was growing up, my mom did everything. EVERYTHING. That there was to be done to ensure that our household (apartmenthold) ran smoothly. ALL of the washing, ALL of the cooking, ALL of the ironing. ALL of the vacuuming and toilet-scrubbing and mending and dishwashing. (Although, she never really dusted. Our house was always dusty. Other Filipinos out there? Did you experience this as well? Or was my mom “special” in her lack of attention to wiping up dust motes?)

My father participated in domestic duties not one iota, save for a handful of culinary items that he relished preparing. These included Korean moonshine, chop chae, kalbee, and the Thanksgiving turkey with all the trimmings, every year. He never did dishes, never washed, folded or ironed his own clothes. Half the time his dishes, after eating in front of the TV set, never even made it to the kitchen. I was usually the one to find and pick them up. My mother basically enslaved herself, and willingly, to the care and feeding and cleaning of the living space of him and their two children.

My Filipino grandma thought my sister and I were spoiled brats. My mom did nothing different to please Nanay when she came from the Philippines to live with us. I remember time and time again, Mom telling me gravely, “You leave these things to me. You have homework. You concentrate on your studies. You practice your piano. You have to think of your future.” All this time, she was working 40 hours a week and more as a registered nurse. Most of the time I was growing up, she was an E.R. nurse. The workload she carried was in sharp contrast to that of the bulk of the moms of the kids with whom I attended school. Mainly Irish-American homemakers who, yes, cared for broods of 8 to a dozen kids in most cases, but who didn’t work outside the home for a living. And, whose kids were fully expected to pitch in at home.

Flash forward to today. Me, at age 35. One year younger than my mom was when she birthed me. No kids, no full time job, and a husband who works 40 hours and more a week. And completely pathetic, decrepit, even, at the most basic of household tasks.

Today I did a modicum of cleaning. Laundry, mostly M’s dirt-encrusted work clothes. Vacuuming but no sweeping because I am averse to push a broom. Some trash removal, some sorting of small piles of crap into one large pile. It looks better in here, and I didn’t die in the process like you would think I would expect to, the way that I avoid chores of all kinds. Spoiled brat, I feel my Nanay looking down on me with disapproving eyes. I do feel badly, I do feel ashamed, I do also know that I will never change.

I will try harder on some days, and my house is for the most part, presentable. But I will never change. I don’t want to make the sacrifices that my mom did. That she still does. I don’t want to give up my time for reading and for writing, to immerse myself in scrubbing walls and toilet bowls and removing dust bunnies. Not any more than I have to.

I am lucky right now. I realize this from the pit of my being. One day, maybe I will be a mother. It’s not out of the question. And one day, maybe I will work a great deal more than I do now. And not have this luxury. Of time, open and unfolding in front of me, day after day. To do with it as I see fit. As only I dictate.

The car door has slammed. The man is home. I savor the last few sips of my margarita. I hope he doesn’t mind that there’s no more tequila.

[cross-posted at cocokat in slumberland.]

The Chicks Bear to Bare.

On the eve of their U.S. tour, the Dixie Chicks -- who raised a ruckus last month with lead singer Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush and the war in Iraq -- have blasted back with both barrels, CNN reports.

I missed their interview with Diane Sawyer last night because I got a free last-minute $176 ticket to the Eton John-Billy Joel "Face to Face" concert. Couldn’t miss that and didn’t have time to set my VCR.

When you’re as comely as the Dixie Chicks are, it doesn’t take much guts to bare your body on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (as they are doing, with a variety of epithets stamped over unstrategic body parts.)

Given the conservative politics of the many of the country music fans who are their bread and butter, however, I give them credit for having the courage to publicly affirm their opposition to the war. (Bruce Springsteen said it right on his site.) Actually, doing so might even work to their career advantage, bringing what they offer the music world more into the awareness of those who don’t share the politics of their traditional fans. And exposing their only slightly compromised positions on a magazine cover can’t hurt either.

I was a big fan of country music in high school -- hung around with a bunch of friends who had a country-western band -- learned to play three cords on a guitar and loved Kitty Wells ("It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels"). Obviously, my taste in music had broadened considerably, but I still can't get into Rap. Maybe it's my age, but lyrical introspective story-teller/poets/musicians like Billy Joel remain my preference. As a side note, it was not surprising for me to note that 99% of the audience at the "Face to Face" concert was white, middle-aged, and very self-controlled.
(double posted)

It could be worse.

But this is pretty bad. In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the third-highest-ranking individual in the Republican party, said:

I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations?

While we're posing questions, Senator, I have one for you: Do we ask people to repress who they are, who they love? You seem to suggest that it is fair and tolerant to acknowledge the existence of homosexuality while outlawing the practice thereof. Senator Santorum thought that he hadn't stuck his foot deep enough into his mouth, so he continued:

We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does.

Uh-oh, Senator. You clearly mean business. I may be interpreting your backwards statements incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure you just declared homosexuality to be anti-family, insinuated that it "undermines the fabric of our society," and equated it with bigamy, polygamy, incest, and adultery. How can you make any sort of parallel between healthy, consensual relationships and immoral, inequal, and often dishonest relationships? I know you're busy, Senator. You must have things to do other than digging yourself a tidy political (and moral) grave. Unfortunately for me and tragically for you, you still have more to say:

It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

If we wanted to run with the foot-in-mouth metaphor, I'd say that Senator Santorum is pretty much feeling his toes against the back of his throat right now. He audaciously contests the validity of abortion rights, of contraceptive rights, and of personal privacy.

It is scary when conservative values are used as justifications for legislative actions. Just ask the Right, whose very own Cybercast News Service insisted that gay rights groups owe Santorum an apology for chastising him for his belief in the Bible.

They're missing the point. Senator Santorum can believe in the Bible all he wants for all I care. He can be a strict Catholic, or even a priest, if that suits him. But he's not allowed to let that guide his policy decisions. He is a member of our federal government, a government whose founding principle it was to separate church and state. If he wants to be a decent representative of Pennsylvania's citizens (whose population includes 21,000 same-sex households), he'll think with his head and not his Bible.

Shame on you, Senator.

(cross-posted at Fire & Ice)

Earth Day 2003: Celebrate and Protect the Planet!

This can be a valuable day for do-gooding, but let's start with a reality check:

Earth Day 2003 – A Time for Mourning, Not Craft Fairs
By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

“Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing. Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago. Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls picked them, every one. Oh, when will they ever learn? Oh, when will they ever learn” -- Pete Seeger

"Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too." -- Frederick Buechner

The list of events planned around the US for Earth Day 2003 is chilling. While deadly pollution harms US soldiers, the people, and environment of Iraq and the surrounding countries, while the Baghdad zoo has been ransacked and the animals either killed, let loose, or stolen, while innocent Iraqi children suffer from US-inflicted injuries, and while tens of thousands of people worldwide die from soil, air, and water poisoned with pesticides and scores of toxic chemicals, Earth Day craft fairs, discussion groups, and lectures will be held. Lost is the passion and sense of urgency that heralded the first Earth Day 33 years ago.

The 33rd Earth Day this year will mark an unprecedented time of resource consumption and environmental violence against the Earth and our health.

On Earth Day this year, while speeches, conversations and trinket sales take place:

603 people worldwide will die from exposure to pesticides and countless more will suffer serious health threats from chronic exposure.

5,400 to 11,000 children will die from diarrhea from polluted drinking water.

27,000 children will die from curable infectious diseases.

164 babies will be born that are effected by mercury poisoning because their mothers ate contaminated fish, while government agencies recommend that pregnant women eat several servings of fish each week.

Over 103,000 animals will be killed for fur coats.

Nearly 2 million gallons of engine oil will be poured down the drain and will enter our nation’s waterways.

Over 41 million pounds of trash will be dumped at sea worldwide. About 77 percent of all ship waste comes from cruise ships.

Over 3 million pounds of hydrocarbons will be released into the atmosphere just from jet skis, lawn mowers, boat engines, and other 2-cycle motors.

At least 1,200 gallons of oil and fuel will leak from aging and malfunctioning pipelines in the US, polluting groundwater, lakes, rivers, oceans and soil.

313 million gallons of fuel - enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer trucks every minute – will be used in the US

18 million tons of raw materials will be taken from US soil.

Miscarriages will continue to take place among women of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe in Washington State, possibly from pesticide contamination in cranberry bogs. Earth Day has become a time when the right wing corporate, industrial, and political leaders probably rejoice in the passivity of the population. Of course, there are exceptions and a number of groups throughout the nation will be mindful of the significance of the day.

See the rest of Jackie Alan Giuliano's piece here.

Want to be part of the exceptional? Today's Earth Day. What are you going to do about it?

The EarthDay Network has lots of suggestions.

Be a responsible parent and a good steward of the planet: Share the holiday with your kids. Here's a coloring book with an enviromental focus; the wee ones will love it and learn much. They'll dig the Kids' Domain site too.

This Earth Day, go on an energy fast.

Spend some time with Envirolink, the online environmental community.

And focus on the theme for the 2003 observance: Water for Life. The theme comes at a time when the global water situation demands our attention.

One really good thing to do for the enviroment: REGISTER TO VOTE!

Final suggestion: Make every day Earth Day!

WAR on ANWR

[This is an article from my blog that I posted last Monday after the White Hose pushed through legislation the Friday night before to allow drilling for more oil in America's crown jewel, the Wildlife Refuge on Alaska's northern edge. Future posts will follow.]

These are members of the Porcupine Herd. Once upon a time, they used to number in the millions. Now, depending on who you talk to, they count between 100,000 and 150,000. Their numbers dropped significantly after the pipeline was built and are just recently (30 years later) getting back to a position of stability. Remember the movie "Never Cry Wolf"? That's what the wise ones blamed the lower population on--very hungry wolves that evidently could eat many thousand times their body weight in caribou. Emergency legislature was passed, authorizing the offering of a bounty to catch the little varmints, which was just recently clipped because the wolves had almost been hunted to extinction.

Caribou need to range free (migrate) for many hundreds of miles through Canada and Alaska to the north coastal plain because they need to eat, give birth, and run into the water during summer when the flies and mosquitoes literally threaten their lives and their sanity. They have this all figured out already. The animals and plants all used the last million years to figure out everything they need to survive, creating a perfect, symbiotic, ecological balance--and without any help from us. This is why their calving grounds were protected by law and named: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Then, oil was discovered. *cue Beverly Hillbillies music*

So when Alaska Senator Ted Stevens says the animals can just "go around" the drilling aparatus, and that it won't bother them, I think it shows his hard-headed ignorance.
When Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski bangs his fist on the podium in his peculiar mini-filibusters where the veins on his neck pop out, demanding the passage of drilling in ANWR, I think he wreaks of desperation from outside pressure.
When Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton flips from being an ok conservationist to a yes-woman, saying that drilling won't hurt the animals, it's because she's feeling pressure from her boss who is feeling pressure from the oil industry to get a move on.

Back Door Men
In an article dated April 7, 2003, by the Natural Resources Defense Council it explains the results of a 12-year government study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey on the harmful effects drilling will cause. The caribou are 'particularly senstive' to disturbances in their environment and would "most likely avoid roads and pipelines." So, the Back Door Men and his cronies said they would do their own study. "They didn't like the results of the 12-year study, so they ordered a seven-day rush job to get the results they really wanted," said Chuck Clusen, NRDC's director of Alaska projects.

The Union of Concerned Scientists writes: "Drilling pristine Alaskan lands is a short-sighted and ineffective strategy tantamount to placing a band-aid over a compound fracture." In the year 2000, "the U.S. imported 54% of its oil production sending $180,000 overseas each minute." On their pie chart, the biggest piece goes to transportation at 67%. Yet, Bush and Co. keeps voting down even a paltry 5% decrease in emissions, tax breaks for consumers trying to buy hybrid engines, and stalling any effective research and development on alternative energy sources. Note: "alternative" means: NOT oil. Bush has a legacy tied to oil that is common knowledge. This is a no-brainer.

The Dance of the Seven Veils
I'm not proud of it, but there were times when I took employment as a stripper. Usually forced by economic reasons, my dancing job would commence after my day job ended. I would already be tired when I got there. Then these horn dog losers would follow me around for eight hours and the conversation would go something like this:
"Will you go out with me?" "No." "I'll take you where ever you want." "No." "I'll spend all my money on you." "No." "I want to take you out, when should I pick you up?" "Never." "Where do you live?" "I'm homeless right now." "You could come live with me." "My boyfriend wouldn't like it." "He wouldn't have to know." "No." "You're a stuck-up bitch. Whatr ya, a lezzie?"...for eight hours. I wasn't a hooker, or looking for love, or looking for a date. I was just looking for those single dollar bills to make ends meet, that's all.

Bush is dancing for those Bills, too:
I want to drill for oil up there in Alasky . Everybody: No. Bush: But I want to, I promise the animals will be safe! Everybody: No they won't. Bush: But it will end our dependence on foreign oil. Everybody: No it won't. Bush: But we'll get a whole bunch of crud outta there! Everybody: No we won't. Bush: Stuck up. I'm not playing with you anymore.

And he sulks off to whisper behind his hand to get these frickin' bills passed BEFORE next year when he has to start campaigning all over again.

From CNN.com, Terry McCarthy writes: "How Bush gets his way on the environment. With the nation distracted by terrorism and the economy, the president has quietly maneuvered to challenge limits on drilling, mining, logging and power generation," rolling back "three decades of environmental policies." His strategies boggle the mind with his use of sleight of hand. He also uses jedi mind control techniques, telling everyone over and over how sincere he is, how concerned he is for the environmental causes while appointing lieutenants from those same energy corporations the laws were made to protect us from. They take their place on the dais with a pre-conceived list of regulations they need softened and successfully chase down loopholes in the legislature. He instructs the Republican party members to refer to themselves as "conservationists." It's just a mind dance, behind smoke-colored veils.

When the Interior's assistant secretary for land and minerals management, Rebecca Watson, delivered a speech to a pro-energy group, she "decried America's low-energy I.Q. as hampering any discussion of the role of the [Arctic Refuge] in contributing to our domestic energy supply." In other words, we're too stupid to know that ripping up the North Slope will solve all our problems.

The amount of available oil has been (generously) estimated at between 16-19 billlion barrels of oil, but usable oil? maybe 3.2 billion barrels, spread across 30 small deposits that will require a vast network of roads and pipelines macrame-ing hundreds of thousands of acres to reach and connect them all. And estimated time for blastoff of the crude orgasm? Not until the year 2010.

And now to help out here come the Mighty Teamster's, smelling lucrative government contracts and full benefits, jumping on the bandwagon with their hefty powers of persuasion to help lobby the passing of this legislature, because gosh darn it! that's the kinda guys they are. (Note to self: don't feed dog tonight.)

As thirsty America sucks down 20 million barrels a day, even if we could use all that was drilled in the Arctic Refuge, it would be less than six months' worth, although oil industry puts that estimate much longer, of course, used in combination with imports--to several years' worth. But by that time, the flora and fauna would have suffered irreversible, irreparable damage. And there is more oil than that off the Florida coast. (Oh wait. That's where the "other" Bush lives. Never mind. He probably wouldn't want to look out his window at oil derricks.)

It's not just that the caribou herds will suffer and may be deccimated entirely, and that several Native tribes have lived on those herds for thousands of years, no; there is a world teeming with life in the aptly named Wildlife Refuge (see the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for descriptions and pictures) of: rare plants, slow-growing tundra, 160 species of birds, Arctic wolves, Arctic fox, grizzlies and polar bears, even a survivor from the last Ice Age, though endangered now--the shaggy musk ox, distant cousin to the wooley mammoth, Wooley Booley.

So....if you're the President and you want all those kickbacks promised to you by the oil industry, and everybody keeps telling you no....how do you get to those dollar bills?

You start a war, silly.

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I was just wondering how I can delete away this blog fr. my blogger?
Thx!

As Expected

This is why I don't align myself with narrow-acting groups who claim to speak for women. They don't speak for me. They don't speak for many women, I'm assuming not even for some feminists. Groups that form strictly to influence politics, more often than not, become politically motivated, lose connections with the people they were formed to support, and even more often they morph into some unrecognizable coalition that fits the cause of the moment. To me, that makes them ultimately politically, not humanly, motivated.

Wouldn't have been a pleasure to see NOW come down on the side of Laci Peterson, who grew this baby for more than 7 months and quite obviously wasn't thinking of aborting him when she was murdered, rather than acting in haste to oppose the double-murder charge because of what a ruling could mean to NOW's side of the abortion battle.

Shame on you, Now.

IT article brings up encouraging women in IT

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp?liArticleID=120704&liFlavourID=1

Resounding cheers of victory...and then?

After weeks of saturation of the airwaves suddenly there seems to be no Iraq any more. Is it because we are burned out and the media fears loosing our interest? Somehow I doubt it.

The lack of news now is as worrying to me as the complete overkill and ignoring of any other issues was a couple of weeks ago.

Can't the media learn to find a happy medium in it's levels of coverage?