Mananitas?

Here's one for the Blog Sisters, since we seem to have Sisters from just about every ethnic group on the planet:

I'm trying to find out about the origins and history of the "mananita," which, according to a photo in a yarn catalog, is a lacey shawl knit in a spiral. I can't find anything on the Web. Does anyone know???

Hello there. Lovely to be part of a Blog Sisters. Just an addition to the 350 periods. I've calculated exactly 289 for me and I don't have any kids! Whats even more of thought provoking is that each month at least one egg was unfurtilised. (we know about multiple eggs right?). So, when I think about my 25 years and 8 months of worth of periods, I think about that. I know that millions of sperm get released each time a guy ejaculates, but to me, that's waaayyyyyyy different. Is that wrong? Anyway, thats all I have to say about that. Come and visit me if you like at http://xsclothingwoman.blogspot.com and read about my adventures and thoughts!
Nothing flash, just some fun stuff!

b!X's birthday bash?

On October 26, the day after his 33rd birthday, my son b!X will be marching in San Francisco to protest our government's warmongering policy on Iraq. I hope that it becomes a birthday bash and not a head bashing for him.

So, if any of you are in SF at the same time and run into him, give him a big birthday hug and kiss from his Momma, who hasn't had a chance to do that for years and years now.

And may all of you marchers and protesters be safe and successful. And so may all of us who don't believe that waging war against Iraq is going to make life better for anyone but those who are already protected by power and money.

In celebration of 350

The way I figure it, today I began my 350th period. I figure it this way--I started at age 10 (yes, young), which means I've been having my period for 30 years. At 12 months in a year, that's 360. Take away the 9 months of pregnancy and 1 month it stayed away after, and that brings me to my 350 milestone.

Why a milestone? Because it means I've lived through 350 episodes of stinking PMS, that's why. And this month was a doosey. Ask Halley. She talked to me during my downward spiral last week. "I don't know, Halley. Nothing's really right. Everything's basically wrong. It's pretty much useless." Those kinds of things. Anyone familiar with them?

Swiftly, without giving my household or my mind time to switch gears, the old hormones had me rocketing into anger mode. "WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THAT??!" "JENNA STOP IT OR GET TO YOUR ROOM!" "DID I SAY I WAS ANGRY??" Holy cripe, I couldn't even stand myself. All the while, I wasn't sure what was up because I was a week late and vascilated between wondering, am I pregnant or did i mix up when I last had my little friend?

Let me tell you, the relief last night when old 350 hit was palpable. Children slept. The neighborhood dogs stopped baying. Birds began chirping from their quiet nests. The clouds parted to show a massive sky dotted with sparkling stars. Husbands around the world sighed. And me, I was suddenly Glenda, the good witch of the North again.

So for anyone wondering, 350's a charm.

Hope Springs Eternal

(this is a double post; also on my weblog)
Periodically, I get emails from various anti-war friends to sign an email petition or some such thing. Thanks to the education b!X has given me about separating the internet wheat from the chaff, I have learned to reply to such emails with a version of the following message -- which I just sent to the dozens of people who also received the latest email and whose addresses were at my mercy in the body of the message.

You should know that this effort is bogus and is just a waste of your time. There are several sites that you can check for the validity of similar efforts and other rumors spread over the internet. One of these is http://www.snopes.com/index.htm. If you go there and search for "United Nations Peace Petition," you will find an explanation of this untrue rumor.

Also, just a helpful hint for when you send out mass emails -- it's wise to enter those addresses in the BCC: box so that all of those addresses are not visible. (For example, I was able to send this message to everyone who was on the mailing list along with me.)

Finally, if you want to keep up with all kinds of non-mainstream information about "King George" and his efforts to propel us into a warring frenzy, check out www.poxamericana.us.

hi sisters!!

first of all..thanks a million for invitin me to be one of the blog sisters..such an honour.. well anyway..i juz wanna know what u guys think abt this topic..
Should divorce be banned?
i got it for one of my examinations topic and well..i guess i didnt do my best on it..
its reali a good question eh??
anyway..blog away and tell me ur comments..
hehehe....

Voila!

The new design is in place. The most observant of you may notice that the archives are a bit funky. I'm blaming it on Blogger, because I can't think of anything I'm doing wrong to make the February link show March dates (though the more recent archives seem to be working just fine).

At any rate, I hope y'all like the new look. If you have any specific, pressing concerns (like that brownish color scheme I chose makes you succumb to epileptic fits, etc.), please do let me know. I have no intention of being the Tech Nazi. :-)

More activism.

Hi sisters! I'm still really new to the community, but I thought I'd throw this link out there (and hopefully it hasn't been discussed earlier). I caught about 10 minutes of Oprah today, and was really drawn to what was being discussed.

Its the story of a Nigerian woman, who is in danger of being stoned ... and we can help.

From Amnesty International USA's website:

AMINA LAWAL, a 30 year-old Muslim woman, was sentenced on Friday 22 March 2002 to stoning to death by a Shari'ah court at Bakori in Katsina State in northern Nigeria. Amina allegedly confessed to having had a child while divorced. Pregnancy outside of marriage constitutes sufficient evidence for a woman to be convicted of adultery according to the new Shari'ah-based penal code for Muslims, introduced in Katsina State. The man named as the father of her baby girl reportedly denied having sex with her and his confession was enough for the charges against him to be discontinued. Amina did not have a lawyer during her first trial, when the judgement was passed. But she has now filed an appeal against her sentence with the help of a lawyer hired by a pool of Nigerian human rights and women's rights organisations.

The hearing of the appeal by the Shari'ah Court of Appeal of Funtua, Katsina State, was set for May 27, 2002 but adjourned twice, after her lawyer argued for an early hearing to take place instead of having the hearing postponed until next year as previously proposed by the court. Amina Lawal is still weaning her baby. Such a long adjournment of the case would have not served any useful purpose and would have deepened the climate of uncertainty created by the whole process. The terms of the bail have also been reviewed. Under these new terms for bail agreed by the court, Amina Lawal will no longer be reporting fortnightly to them. The only condition, however, is that Amina Lawal had to have a 'surety'.

On 8 July 2002, Amina Lawal made the submission of her appeal before the Shari'ah Court or Appeal of Funtua. The hearing of her appeal resumed on 5 August 2002 and the prosecutor presented his case and urged the court to maintain the sentence, death by stoning, passed by the Shari'ah court of Bakori. On August 19, Amina’s appeal was denied. She now has thirty days to make another appeal to the Supreme court in Abuja, the nation’s capital.

Go to the site and send an email off to the Nigerian ambassador. In fact, sign up for the newsletter. There's so much we can do, if we just invest a couple minutes here and there.

Warning: Design Ahead

As the first major undertaking of my office of "Technical Blog Sister Support", and at the behest of Jeneane and Elaine, I've done a little markup revising to give Blog Sisters a new look and more compliance with web standards, etc. This means that I will be changing the Blog Sisters template, and it will be looking pretty different by the time I'm done.

The day of the change is coming soon (rough estimate at this point: by the end of the week). If you'd like to offer your two cents before that happens, feel free to email me (Andrea). Hopefully this redesign should accomplish two things: to give the Blog Sisters web site a more distinct and unique appearance, and to make sure that it's relatively readable and visually consistent in all different kinds of web browsers, on all different kinds of computers.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. :-)

Throwing off the Veil of Oppression

Wow.

Not that I'm a condoner of violence, but that was a pretty brave, gutsy thing to do. I don't have much commentary to add to the article other than that.

Found via The Avocado Couch.

Matchmaking the "Brightest People"

Now here's something for the single Sistahs to consider:
Psychoanalyst Frederick Levenson, who practices on Long Island and in Manhattan, has begun marketing TheraDate....... The concept is that "The people using psychotherapy to improve their lives are some of the brightest, most verbally adept and success-oriented people in America," Levenson said. They would be more likely to have successful relationships with others who recognize the value of self-reflection and are prone to talk about their feelings, he said. And who better to match them up than therapists, who do marriage counseling every day and whom Levenson calls "relationship experts"?

He's got a website at www.theradate.com, but I've yet to be able to get on it.

::blush:: Hehe

Hey! I was just quoted here ~~> Random Blog Quotes for my last blog entry!!

I'm so tickled I can't stop giggling!! ::grins hugely::

Just had to share that with my Sistahs!!!

Good vs. Evil, Us vs. Them

I just posted this over on my blog and I'd love to hear what my Sistahs think about the subject. Basically, it's regarding a discussion my son and I had this evening while watching the new Twilight Zone that got me thinking, and I wanted to share :D

Thanks for any input/insights/wisdom you'd like to share!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Blog Sisters News Alert!

1. We have had an influx of new Blog Sisters over the last month or so. At the moment, our official membership registration stands at 85, and there are about 20 invitations that have been sent out for which I’m still awaiting replies. Our voices are being heard, and our words are encouraging more and more women to exercise their own unique voices. Keep it up, Sistahs!
2. Because I’m the one who sends out the invitations to join, some of the new members might not realize that our Great Founding Sister is Jeneane Sessum, not me. Jeneane continues to be our inspiration and motivation for keeping this weblog a place where women can feel safe speaking their truths. (And sometimes we find that we have as many truths as there are Blog Sisters posting. And that’s just fine.)
3. We’re taking on an additional administrator to help with the technical aspects of the site. Andrea R. James, who is a consistent contributor to Blog Sisters and a talented techie, has agreed to be the person you can contact if you’re having technical difficulties. She’s also going to work on giving the look of this weblog a little creative massaging. You go, Andrea.
4. Because we’ve had such a constant flow of newcomers, I’m not sure that I have everyone listed in our blogroll the way I should. So, please check for your name over on the left and make sure that it links to your personal weblog. If there are any mistakes or you want anything changed, just let me know at kalilily@nycap.rr.com.

And now, back to our regular programming.

A Way to Help Survivors of September 11 Victims

Hi, Blog Sisters. I'm Ginger, I'm a thirty-something technical writer who lives in Houston and this is my first post to Blog Sisters.

Several jobs ago, I worked as a paralegal for a lawyer who practiced immigration law, and I keep up with immigration issues even though I no longer work in the field. I found out something yesterday about the immigration status of foreign survivors of September 11 victims that really bothered me, and I would like to ask the sisters to help.

It turns out that the blanket authorization for survivors to stay in the US regardless of how long they were supposed to be allowed to stay otherwise expired on Wednesday, the anniversary of the attacks. Technically, many of these survivors have no basis to remain in the US once their spouses were dead. The Attorney General has authorization to help them on an individual basis on the PATRIOT Act, but that requires a lot of effort to bring individual cases to his attention.

Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey sponsored a bill in the Senate to help the survivors on a permanent basis, but it won't pass this year. Meanwhile, he has a bill in the Senate to extend the blanket stay for another year. If it passes both the Senate and the House before the end of the session (October 4), the President can sign it into law and the foreign survivors of September 11 victims will be able to remain in the United States legally.

It's particularly important that this bill be enacted into law now because of some provisions barring "overstayers" from reentering the United States. Under current immigration law, anyone who is in the United States without authorization, i.e., illegally, for six months is barred from reentering for three years. Anyone who is in the United States without authorization for a year is barred from reentering for ten years. That's without thinking about what might happen if they were deported instead of leaving voluntarily when the INS catches up with them.

I ask that anyone reading this talk to their senators about S.2845, which extends the legislative relief to which survivors of those killed last September are entitled under the PATRIOT Act for another year.

[If the link to the bill doesn't work, use the lookup from Senator Jon Corzine's homepage.]

S.2845 is currently sitting in committee, and the time for September 11 survivors is running out. If nothing is done for them, and that means retroactively fixing their status, they'll be deported. The status of those survivors who would have had to leave before now has already expired. While the world mourned their spouses and parents, they became illegal aliens.

If S.2845 is not enacted as a stopgap until the next Congress can offer all survivors of September 11 victims permanent legislative relief (as opposed to the discretionary relief they get under current law), these survivors may become illegal aliens. They may become subject to the three-year or ten-year reentry bar for overstaying. They may be deported.

If you think the survivors of those who died on September 11 deserve to stay in the United States, please write, email, or better, call your senators (find them here) and urge them to support S.2845. Contact your representative and ask him or her to sponsor and vote for a companion bill in the House. And spread the word.

Thanks for reading.

I Heart My NY

Nobody posted anything on September 11th, and I thought it was appropriate for something to be said, even a day late.

When I first entered this world, the world I entered was New York. My first sense of place and space and home was shaped by the streets of Manhattan. New York is mine because when my school was under construction and the student body was homeless, the city was my classroom; my uniformed classmates and I traipsed all over New York with our teachers, learning from the city instead of simply within it. It's mine because I once spent four hours sitting on the steps of the public library people-watching. It's mine because I've been reading the real estate section of The New York Times since I was eleven to try to figure out which New York neighborhood will still be semi-affordable when I graduate. It's mine because I've left my mark there: I carved my name on a tree in Central Park, I scraped my knees on sidewalks, I once lost a tooth in my favorite playground on East End Avenue. It's mine because being there gives me comfort and not stress: when I felt suffocated by the monotony of New York suburbia, it was my escape, and the only escape I ever needed. It's mine because it has forever imbued in me open-mindedness, street smarts, common sense, confidence, a love of culture, and a rejection of ignorance. This is my New York.

New York was always mine, and I was always proud, even snobby about it. I clung to what New York was for me, and turned my nose on what it to many tourists: an urban Disneyland whose highlights included the Manhattan Mall, the Statue of Liberty, Time Square, F.A.O. Schwartz, and the Bronx Zoo. When I passed by obvious tourists -- camera-and-umbrella-toting, too-large-"I-heart-NY"-shirt-wearing, subway-map-squinting tourists -- I sighed. How could they love -- or even "heart" New York --when they didn't know it at all? I was more partial to shirts that read "Welcome to New York!" on the front and "Now get out" on the back. But when I showed people around, be it my clueless born and raised in suburbia friends or enthusiastic visitors from out of town, I showed them my New York, what was, to me, the real New York.

On September 11th, something suddenly changed. New York was not just mine; New York no longer belonged exclusively to New Yorkers. New York City suddenly was real for everybody, and truly belonged to everybody. It belonged to all the tourists whom I'd scoffed at, to all the people who'd never made it there, to everybody who had ever loved anybody or anything. I love New York with everything in me, and I have for as long as I can remember. But on September 11th, we all mourned together. We all loved New York together.

A year later, nobody has forgotten. Everybody I know still has a soft spot for New York that they hadn't had before. When I was in the wilderness of western Canada a month ago, a local asked me where I was from. I told her. She replied only: "Where were you when it happened?" One year has passed, but the memory of that day is so vivid and the pain so fresh, that it hardly seems possible. I'm no longer eager to claim New York as exclusively mine. Every citizen of the world has stock in what New York City and its people have come to represent. I only hope that the anniversary of September 11th is marked by genuine remembrance and reflection, not by blind patriotism and kitsch worthy of the Manhattan Mall. We shouldn't need plastic flags and TV specials to help us remember. As President Bush was quoted as saying on December 11th, "In time, perhaps, we will mark the memory of September 11 in stone and metal, something we can show children as yet unborn to help them understand what happened on this minute and on this day. But for those of us who lived through these events, the only marker we'll ever need is the tick of a clock at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day."

originally posted by me at Fire & Ice

Men, depression, relationships, families, and two good books

I'm in the process of reading two excellent books by Dr. Terrence Real, a family therapist and author about whom Jeneane Sessum has been posting. And so I'm dedicating my next few posts on my own blog to sharing information from these books. Given what I've been reading here and in the personal blogs of some of our Blog Sisters, the information that Dr. Real is sharing is very relevant. If you don't have time to read the books, read my posts, so far here and here. Stay tuned for more.

let it flow.

I have something on my mind and I'm wondering where the Blog Sisters stand on the issue. I have been, for my past 4 or 5 menstrual cycles, using washable, rather than disposable products to collect the flow. I first became curious about washable menstrual pads through the many ads for them in 2 of my favorite magazines, Bitch and BUST. For years, I did nothing but wonder, who out there would have the time, to say nothing of the desire, to wash out blood-soaked rags throughout their cycle. Especially those women with heavy flow. We're talking washing out pads maybe 4 or 5 times a day, over the course of 3 to 7 days. Aren't disposable tampons and pads a revolution in themselves, liberating so many women from the endless drudgery of scrubbing that our foremothers endured? Isn't that the definition of "better living through chemistry?"

Then I started reading. I was alarmed, and then increasingly horrified to realize something that should have been obvious: that the dioxins and other chemical agents used to bleach paper products, substances that I know are harmful to the environment, are the same toxic chemicals used to bleach tampons and disposable pads that I would regularly wear close to the most delicate area of my body during my period. Further reading turned up evidence of links between tampon use and diseases such as endometriosis. The more I read, the more I thought, I need to get over my squeamishness and my wanting to avoid extra time with my handwashing. In addition, I thought about the sheer volume of menstrual trash that would be eliminated by my ceasing to use tampons and throwaway pads. For that reason alone, I thought, I should at least give washable menstrual pads a try.

Now that I've done it for several months, I know I'll never go back to my disposable ways. They're comfortable, they don't have that nasty plastic liner to deal with in your panties, they're safe and - the big bonus - they're incredibly cute! You can go to Lunapads, the Rag Hag, or Urban Armor to see for yourself. My question is, do any of the Blog Sisters use these products, and how do you like them? I have brought up my newfound love of them to a few friends, progressive ladies all, and the responses have been mostly mild curiousity. I currently don't know anyone personally who also washes their pads (unless they just haven't told me yet!). I do have some links to purveyors of the pads displayed quietly on my blog under the heading "good for the planet."

I'd be interested to hear your responses. Also, if this topic has been raised in a previous discussion, then please point me in the direction of the archives and I'll read there happily.

This is my first time here, and I'm honored to be a new Sister. Thanks.

A comment from the father of my offspring

He left this poem he wrote as a comment on my weblog. I think it deserves repeating here.

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS
Little girls are nice
but we do them wrong
fussing with their hair and dressing them up
like dolls --
teaching them from the start
they are playthings.
Better we should feed them
words and numbers and tools
to remind them
that before women, they are people.
Teach them love and caring and nurture, yes,
but not as the entirety of their being,
else those qualities become walls and prisons.
Give them, as well, wings
and teach them to fly --
in case later in life
someone builds walls around them.
Little girls are nice,
but daughters who are their soaring selves
are better.

Interesting take on gender difference

I found this very relevant passage in a "trashy" novel I just finished reading that gave me a kind of "Aha!" Here's the condensed passage: (It's a novel written by a woman about a novel that's being written by a man.)

"Women readers aren't turned on by nice heroes any more than male readers lust after heroines who are too virtuous. There should be a hint, maybe at least a promise, of corruptibility."

"You don't have to worry about Roark in that regard. Women readers will love him.... He's very male. His responses are intinctually masculine. He looks at everying in a sexual context first, before expanding his viewpoint to include other factors, like morality...... He declined her invitation to have sex, demonstating that he knows where the lines of decency are drawn."

It seems to me that the same concept is often true in the non-fiction world. Men and women start out from different sexual/emotional places. And, if they're "evolved" enough, expand their viewpoints so that their attitudes can meet up somewhere in the middle. Whaddya' think?