October Song

This is the first time in over a week that I have had a chance to write a post, and I can hear thunder in the distance, signaling that I may have to shut down the computer or that I may lose the satellite signal that connects me to my virtual world. Bummer. In the meantime, though, it's beautiful. We still have a lot of gold and bronze leaves on the trees and the rain and wind are knocking them off -- they're swirling past my window, high contrast against the grey/black storm cloud to the south. There's a soft sibilance as the rain hits them and tiny splatting noises as they hit the deck. And as a counterpoint to that, there's the sound of clucking and squawking as a flock of fifteen turkeys straggles past the open window, chattering among themselves. As I write this, the sky is getting brighter and the gold leaves are glowing. No more thunder; I may even get this done and up.

I have just been playing around with Facebook, a toy world which the YD seduced me into several weeks ago. It's a champion time waster at the moment, but it is allowing me to get my trip photographs up and indexed so that the friends we went with can see them. I had meant to do a travel post, but this is easier. I may still get the post done as well because I have some really good pictures. Or at least so says my BIL, who is an amazing photographer and whose opinion I value highly. Plus he's a tech whiz and I now know how to shrink my photos to easily loadable sizes without hauling them through a photo paint program. Well, I'll get it done if I can refrain from adding things like Visual Bookshelf to my Facebook page -- fun but a real time eater.

Do they give out championships for procrastination? Is there a twelve step program? Timewasters R Us? Although I don't count time looking out the window at the world as wasted, exactly, it isn't getting the laundry done. Nor the six or seven documents sitting on my desktop waiting to be edited. Nor the letter for the Hall Committee. Nor the fundraising phone calls. I've got a pile of sewing and mending including Little Stuff's Hallowe'en cat costume. If it would ever stop raining, there are flowerbeds to put to sleep, and a lot of tidying up around the house. Wednesday morning it did stop and we raked leaves. You would never know it. But here I am, eating cookies and typing and thinking about the old joke about work. 'I'm not afraid of work! I can sit right here beside it and do nothing.'

Posting, for me, is not work. It's my virtual window to the world and time spent looking through it is not wasted. How I love to read about what all of you are doing and thinking. Pause there while I took some photos of the leaves pattering down. The big sugar maple by the corner of the deck has a circle of gold below it and the wind is whisking more off all the time. And the sky is darkening again. More thunder. More rain now. There's a pair of soggy blue jays vacuuming up the corn that the turkeys left behind. And I have to stop for a minute and close the windows since it is really raining hard now. Wonderful. I get back and the satellite is now down.

Well that gives me time to download and edit the leaf pictures I just ran out in the rain to take so that I could illustrate this post. And to think about the flying feet of time, since I have just spent the morning writing this, playing with it and dealing with a series of phone calls. eheu! fugaces labuntur anni. Not to mention minutes, seconds and hours. I don't want to stop time. Nor even turn it back. But I would love to have more of it. Time to do things well, without scanting other things. Time to look out of the window without worrying about the unwashed clothes. Time to write really good posts about meaningful things, instead of babbling on. Well, this babble will have to do as the satellite is now back up and I have to get back to the real world. Always vowing to do better next time. To stop squandering the time I have. Hollow laughter. And that's not a noise the turkeys are making.

More Book Stuff

In September Bub and Pie tagged me for a meme about books. Five questions about books, as a matter of fact. And then last week she produced a meme answer to a question created by Veronica Mitchell. The question:

Ten Literary Characters I Would Totally Make Out With If I Were Single and They Were Real But I’m Not, Single I Mean, I Am Real, But I’m Also Happily Married and Want to Stay That Way So Maybe We Should Forget This.

B and P's book posts are always memorable, but she has surpassed herself with the 'Snoggably Delicious post. After I managed to stop laughing, I just had to do it. And so I am combining the questions.

Here we go.

Total Number of Books
I had to do this calculation for another meme I did a while ago. A bit over 1000 and still accumulating, in spite of the number I give away, sell second hand and lose when the YD raids my bookshelves. Augmented by about three a week from the library, those I borrow from a neighbour with a similar obsession about Sci Fi and Fantasy and those I borrow from the YD (and, mostly, return.) Number read. All of them, many more than once. Lenses on my glasses? really thick.

Last Book Read
A library book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, The conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain. 432 pages, plus notes.

This is a somewhat overwritten and heavily layered treatise on left and right brain dichotomy and how it affects society. In spite of this rather turgid style, I found the thesis to be persuasive. Writing, he says, is left brained, linear and 'masculine' and societies that adopt it go through identifiable phases of austerity, misogyny and madness because they deny the right brained, intuitive and feminine parts of themselves. Our society, he says, has come through this and because of photography, typing and computer literacy is entering' a new Golden Age' with increased values of 'tolerance, caring and respect for nature' and for the rights of women. I love this prediction. The man is working on a macro time scale, however, and it is unlikely that I will be around long enough to see if he is right.

Last Book Bought
Teaching is a Learning Experience, A For Better or For Worse Collection by Lynn Johnston. This is a comic book.. Johnson has been putting out these collections for a long time and we addicts rush to buy each one as soon as it hits the shelves. If you don't know her work, I commend it to you. The best introduction is The Lives Behind the Lines. If you do know it, here's notice that the '07 collection is available.

Five Meaningful Books
1.) The King James Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1939 version. The language in these books informed and intoxicated me from about the age of seven upwards. I loved the sonorous, rolling periods, the antique words and constructions and the sheer opulence of the language. I read through the whole thing the first time looking for the amazing stories, skipping what I did not understand or what bored me. Then I started over again. And again. When I discovered that Jane's father, in LMM's Jane of Lantern Hill, also reveled in the language and stories, I felt a strong sense of identification. Speaking of LMM, I would have to put in a nomination for beddable character for Kenneth Ford's father, Owen Ford, in Anne's House of Dreams. He's far more fleshed out than Kenneth.

2.) Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I read The Hobbit first, and when I discovered TLOTR, in my first year at university, I was hooked. The language, the world he created, the depth and colour. I had been reading all the fantasy books I could get my hands on all through high school, but this was so much more.
Beddable character? How about Gandalf? How cool would that be! Or if you want a slightly more approachable version, Barbara Hambly's Antryg in the Windrose Chronicles or Ingold in the Darwath Trilogy.
3.) The Last Days of Pompeii. I tried to take this out of my school library when I was, maybe, eight. It was not on my grade's approved shelf and the librarian made me read her a page of it before I was allowed to take it home. This, of course, meant that reading the whole thing was a point of honour. And I discovered classical Rome. And historical fiction. And the rest, as they say, is history. My favourite historical fiction series is Dorothy Dunnett's Chess sextet. Francis Crawford has got to be one of the most toothsome males ever created. And highly skilled, as Dunnett makes quite clear.
4.) Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. I read this when I was supposed to be revising Lucretius' De Rerum Natura for a final exam. A whole world of new things, places and ideas spread out before my enchanted eyes. I've never reread it, but I've been an avid consumer of natural history books ever since. And I failed the exam, needless to say. A snog connection? Lucretius and Darwin both strike me as having been dry old sticks and down on women. At a real stretch, however, I did a make up course in Latin which included Catullus. Milia basia, deinde centum? Hmm.
5.) Jane Austin. Persuasion is my favourite. There is not, for me, a beddable character in the lot, however, mostly because I don't think Austin took her imagination that far. Now if you consider Darcy after Elizabeth has been married to him for a while and has managed to loosen him up, I might be interested. If we weren't both married.

Snoggability
To catch my interest, a paper guy has to appear to know how to give a girl a good time. And not too overtly either. That's one of the best things about Lord Peter -- Sayers leaves the details to the reader. You can have Jondelar; he never varies his technique. In Bub And Pie's comments, Nikki mentions Jamie Fraser, which is a thought, but he is so married. It's not the good body thing that does it for me, either. I am struggling to remember the title of an historical fiction novel in which the heroine goes to bed with a man with a deformed spine, simply because he needs her so much, and is wonderfully well served. Sigh. Short term memory short circuit. It was set in Italy or Spain, I think? Ring a bell with anyone? Speaking of bells, I had an adolescent crush on Hemmingway's men, but I don't think I would be turned on now. The silent type could quickly pall. Which lets out Lawrence's Mellor, fascinating as I found it when the book was illicit. Illicit is a turn on. Anne Rice can sure do that. Better stop this!

Tags
I've been too disorganized to know who has done either of these memes. If you haven't, and like the idea, you're tagged. Please let me know, so that we can continue in this delightful vein.

Goodbye, goodbye to everything

Two of our neighbours died this week. One was a man of sixty-five, father of three, grandfather of seven; the other a woman two decades younger. Both were unassuming people, good members of the community, both in their own ways lovers of the countryside, the place in which they lived. Both were and are shining examples of courage and grace, in their quiet lives and in how they faced their deaths.

Liz had cancer. A woman who loved life, delighted in her animals, laughed a lot, she was tall, with a curious stalking grace and an infectious smile. She faced her diagnosis with determination and dignity, endured the treatments, went into remission and resumed her life. I chatted with her at a gas station in early summer and except for being very thin, she seemed fine, laughing with me about the weather, running in to pay for her gas with her heron gait. Today I read the obituary she wrote for herself, in the first person. It's just beautiful. It reminds me of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem in which the little boy says goodbye to the farm: it's sweet, moving and pure Liz.

George took a lot longer to die. Complications of diabetes first put him on dialysis, then necessitated a kidney transplant. Eyes crinkled with laughter, back straight, George kept on running his business, working in the sugar bush, giving of himself to the community, loving his life and his land and enjoying his friends. He lost a leg. He kept on hunting and working and being the centre of his big, busy family. He lost a second leg. He was making plans to rig up his four wheeler with hand controls when the kidney transplant failed. I think that he believed that his family had been through enough; he refused to go back on dialysis and he died quietly and with dignity last Saturday.

He had mentioned that it would be nice to have his funeral held outdoors in the midst of his beloved maple trees. So that is what his family did and the fact that it was cold and wet and miserable did not deter the many, many mourners, the honour guard of twenty fire fighters or his little grandkids. Several of his eulogists mentioned that George would have said that the trees needed the rain.

We sang 'Amazing Grace' at George's funeral. And the phrase has stayed in my mind. These gentle people died as they had lived, with such amazing grace.

Hi, Me.

I'm answering five questions from Julie Pippert at Using Your Words. Here are questions four and five as she gave them to me.

4. What do you appreciate about your relationship with your children and what do you wish you could change?

5. If you were to mentor a young woman (say college age or thereabouts) in what area would you mentor her and how would you guide her.

These two questions tie themselves together in my mind, as my children are two daughters, now forty and forty one, so I sailed with them through that age range. 'How did you mother' and 'how would you mentor' are pretty close to the same question although mentoring young women not your daughters is in many ways easier than dealing with your own. (Speaking from experience, here.) They're less likely to think you know nothing, for instance.

The thing I appreciate is that I do have a relationship with my daughters, a good one. The phone rings and a voice says 'Hi, it's me'. Although they are not and do not look a bit alike, their voices are very similar on the phone and so my stock answer is 'Hi, me.' And we laugh. It's a ritual. They might be phoning with an invitation to dinner or lunch, with a request for babysitting or a mock plea for help ('I need to sort out my closet. Come and help me?') Or just to chat or to talk something over. They enjoy family meals chez parents on occasions like Thanksgiving, they come out from the city for a day to walk or cross country ski or help their father in the woodlots. And I haven't had an argument with either of them for a very long time. We laugh together when we are together.

I'm almost fatuously proud of both of them. They're clever, athletic and well spoken. They have amazing careers. They're funny and thoughtful and good citizens. 'A credit to you' would have been the comment in former generations. But they've really done it themselves, capitalized on their opportunities, worked hard and intelligently. If I could change anything it would be the old 'mother instinct' thing -- I wish they didn't have to work so hard to succeed, take crap from time to time, have problems. I would remove the pea from under the pile of mattresses, bumps from the road, stress from their lives. Except that they seem to thrive on stress. I well remember my mother carrying on about how hard I worked at that age, how much I had to do, and I remember thinking she was making far too much of it. So I keep my mouth shut (or try to), even when they are up to their asses in alligators.

My mothering when my daughters were small consisted mainly of supplying them with opportunities to learn, both about themselves and about the world around them, providing them with clean clothes and snacks, taking them to hospital when they broke something, and keeping an eye on them. When they turned into teenagers I continued to do these things, sat through their drivers' tests and restrained myself from screaming or laughing at inappropriate moments of teenaged angst. I also delivered occasional lectures which were received about as you would expect. Although the YD, in particular, used to turn up when she was in her twenties from time to time and say things like 'Remember when you told me drunken women were repulsive? Well, you were right!' Validation. Hah! I lost my temper with them about the usual number of times, threatened them with hanging by their thumbs from the clothesline more than I should have, and loved them. A lot.

As for mentoring -- I always felt that you do that along with the mothering. Life skills 101. I told the girls many times that they needed to learn a skill with which they could support themselves (boys are always told that, aren't they?) so that they never would need to batten on to some man to look after them. I would give a young woman the same advice today, but with a different emphasis. Too many young women (and young men) find themselves, after they graduate, locked into a job that demands a huge investment of hours and effort and erodes their private and family life. I hate it that young women seem to have to put off having children until they are established in their careers. To fix that we need to change the whole corporate ethic in the 'developed' world. But in the meantime, girls, in particular, need to develop a range of skills and interests so that they can look after themselves (and more easily juggle career and family) without getting locked into either a high pressure office or a series of low paying jobs.

I hate to see 'college age' girls so preoccupied with a boy friend that they neglect the benefits of things on campus such as late night bull sessions, cultural events, volunteering opportunities or sports. And they should run like a rabbit if the boy friends want them to curtail their educational choices and activities. I also hate the sexual flaunting and risky promiscuity that are not new (I went to University in the sixties!) but seem to be more widely publicized if not practiced. I still think drunks are disgusting. My major mentoring advice would have to be that a young woman not let herself get talked into doing anything she really isn't sure she wants to do, whether it is a course choice, sex or a stunt on a motorcycle. To learn her strengths and apply them. To stop worrying about things she doesn't do quite as well. And to expect to have to be flexible.

I'm presently reading a book of essays by Barbara Kingsolver, High Tide in Tucson, where she writes in an essay called 'Somebody's Baby'

Who really understands what it takes to raise kids? That is, until after the diaper changes, the sibling rivalries, the stitches, the tantrums, the first day of school, the overpriced-sneakers standoff, the fist date, the safe-sex lecture, and the senior prom have all been negotiated and put away in the scrapbook?

She's right on, but what I would add to that is that the scrapbook only contains material pertinent to the kids you have raised; it doesn't make you an expert on child raising. The best I can say is that I had really good material to work on and that I didn't screw up.

QandA -- Part One

I've got the five question challenge from Julie at Using My Words. If you haven't been to her blog, do go. You get two for one at the moment, as her sister is guest blogging for Julie. They're both thoughtful and really funny; top quality.

Anyway, here are the first three questions and my answers, because the answers are sure stretching out.

1. What are your beliefs about household chores … who should do what? And to what degree (as in, how high or low is your tolerance for messy and dirty)?

Ideally, the residents of the home split the chores evenly among themselves. Providing they are of an age to push the vacuum rather than ride on it, that is. Chores can be split to a certain extent by preference but the split has to be fair. In Utopia, this happens. In my Elder Daughter's house it almost happens, providing she threatens the teenagers with death and dismemberment at frequent intervals. In my house, things did not and do not happen in any way like that. We have a last century gender split on a lot of tasks -- he does the cars and I do the meal planning. He stokes the furnace and I do the laundry. When we do switch tasks, he has to check the furnace and I have to refold the towels.

Sheepishly I confess that I find it hard to give up control of my laundry room. I want laundry done my way. So my family have always had their clothes washed, folded, ironed (!) and placed in their rooms. I do things like iron sheets and dish towels. I want the towels folded in thirds. I'm totally weird about laundry. (Boy, is this embarrassing or what?)

The rest of the chores do not affect me in the same way, but I do want them done thoroughly. So I used to do a lot of the picky stuff myself. For instance, pulling the teenaged girls' waist long hair out of the bathroom drain after they cleaned their way. Digging Barbie doll shoes out of the shag rug. Wiping fingerprints. I have a low tolerance for dirty dirt. Messy I can live with, but JG can't, so I've always picked up a lot. The kids had a toy box on wheels when they were toddlers and the game every night consisted of me supervising a wheel through the downstairs while they threw things into it. The toy piles morphed into piles of wet dirty boots in our (tiny) front hall as they got older and so, when we built this house, we put a huge walk in closet in the (very large) front hall. Also two walk ins in the master bedroom. Stuff is out of sight. JG is happy. As for me, I have a cleaner now. I tidy up before she comes, and I do the stuff she misses after she leaves. And I'm happy.

2. Who are your closest friends and why?

My closest friends are books. I have good people friends from as far back as high school and some neighbours that I count as wonderful friends, but where I go if I need amusement, solace or information is to a book.

I can lose myself or distract myself with an old favourite, sit up into the small hours with an exciting plot, find a reference or quote faster in Bartlett or the Oxford Companion than from Google, learn something or find something to mull over. I put myself to sleep at night by continuing plot lines or working myself into a favourite -- I can be at school at Avonlea or wander in Lorien or dock at Meetpoint with the Pride.

I probably have four hundred books in this room alone, and as many more stashed elsewhere around the house. I go to the library every three weeks (it's a half hour drive) and bring home a dozen more. I borrow from my friends. I buy books at bookstores and on line. I give a lot of books away. I sell some. But the stash continues to grow. It's good to have lots of friends.

Why? I suspect because with a book, I am in control.

You know, I'm not coming out of this looking very good at all.

3. If you could write a letter to yourself in the past, what age would you choose and what would you tell yourself?

Not much point in giving good advice, because I wouldn't listen to myself any more than I listened to adults as a child and good advice as a young woman. Nor would the young woman I was want to know what she would become. But if I could, I would warn myself about one specific event that took place when I was sixteen. My math teacher made a really horrible racial remark about one of my friends. We were so astonished by this that I, and all my classmates, sat in utter silence and did nothing about it. We were '50s kids who were trained to be quiet, passive and polite. I would love to write myself a letter explaining what was about to happen and warning myself to be prepared to stand up, protest and leave. I've regretted ever since that I did nothing.

On the letter thing -- I am writing a series of letters to my granddaughter, lest death or disability remove me before she's old enough to relate to me. I have a great curiosity about my own grandmother, who died when I was around three years old and would love to have more of her than her (beautiful) embroidery and a few bad photographs. I cherish every word I have that my mother wrote. I think the mommyblogs may prove a treasure to the children of the 21st century.

Baring our Breasts

This button came from The League of Maternal Justice, I think, although there are several good sites and posts in other places. ( See Major Bedhead and Her Bad Mother, which my computer will not allow me to load this morning.) The problem? Facebook is categorizing pictures of breastfeeding as obscene. The answer? We're bugging them.

I looked, but I don't have a pic of myself breastfeeding. In the 1960's you did not get your picture taken while nursing the kid, in my family. In fact, my MIL always ushered me into a bedroom when I was visiting her and firmly closed the door. The 'Flower Children' might have been exposing their breasts on the west coast, but in Ontario and Quebec, no concessions were being made. Which brings me to my favourite breastfeeding story.

We took the younger daughter to Expo '67, the 'we' being JG and his parents. She was two months old. In the whole Expo site there was one (1!) child care station. And it poured with rain while we were touring. I had the YD jammed into a backpack and had made a raincape which tied over the backpack and her fuzzy little head. Mostly she slept contentedly, but when she got hungry she could be pretty noisy about it. So we took to stopping in restaurants so that I could feed her. One stop was in the Russian Pavilion, which had a huge cafeteria. We got our lunches and settled down in a quiet corner while we all ate. I always wore a jacket and blouse and to nurse and so I unbuttoned these and stowed breast and baby under the loose cloth. And I had a paper carton of milk with a straw in front of me.

YD was very hungry and took to gulping and swallowing air, giving herself an airbubble. And, of course, started to scream. I hiked her up across my shoulder to get the airlock fixed but she was pretty cross about it and it took a while. Meanwhile a waiter, observing this, came trotting over and asked me politely if he could warm the baby's milk for me. (Paper carton and straw!) My FIL burst into gales of laughter, the poor miserable waiter finally figured out what was happening and slunk away in disarray, poor man. And the baby finished her lunch.

Belonging

Crossposted at BlogRhet

What part of yourself do you have invested in the online community? A good number of the posts and comments at BlogRhet over the last few months have either addressed or resonated with this question. There have been posts and comments about race and culture and how the differences among us in this respect colour our perception of the blogging world. There have been comments about inclusion and exclusion, ranging from the sense of alienation many of us take away from high school, through the discussions of tagging and sub groups inside the mommy bloggers' orbit and often touching on commenting and response to blog posts. What all the discussion seems to have in common is good will, the determination to make the community work and the willingness to speak openly and expose deep emotions in the cause of making this happen.

'I was always on the outside in high school' is a very common comment. 'I wasn't one of the popular kids'. 'I felt alienated'. 'I'm shy and inhibited face to face'. 'I don't feel confident about meeting people' -- a statement a lot of us made, while discussing the BlogHer conference and at other times. A recurring theme among those of us who answered the BlogRhet meme was that the online contacts were somehow more engaging and fulfilling than 'IRL' day to day interactions. (I think IRL is short for In Real Life - one of the things I have had to learn fast is the acronyms, short forms and references that are in common use in this on line world. What's a 'MILF', anyone?) Those of us not part of the 'white' dominant culture express concern about feeling that an important part of ourselves is not valued or ignored.

There are two areas where my experience closely matches that of the comments and posts I've been citing. One is in feeling that the online lives I touch and the discussions I have here are more fulfilling than most of my daily contacts. The other is that I am a minority; because I'm a senior I'm sometimes treated differently or with indifference by people who deal with me face to face. While agism is not on the same page as racism, getting put down or ignored because of white hair and wrinkles sure gives me empathy.

What I have invested in my blog and here is my love of writing and a commitment to write, to stretch myself, to participate in as many of the threads and tags and challenges as I can. The bloggers that I feel the most kinship with are the others of you that are doing that. The quality of a lot of what I read, and the quality of the women and men who are writing is thrilling. The encouragement, the positive responses and the wonderful way in which ideas and techniques are shuttled from person to person through the mommyblogging community is enriching, I believe, to all of us.

Some of you have invested your hearts and souls, your most cherished ideas, your emotional responses, your deepest selves in your blogs, reaching out to others in so many ways. You discuss race, religion, your personal fears and triumphs, your intimate lives. You not only write, you read, and the comments you leave when someone needs a response or comfort or advice are generous, perceptive and often hilarious. The courage of some of you, who meet very difficult days with laughter and share the experience, is immense.

When we write with this intensity, however, it is not hard to be nervous, even fearful, about the response we will get. I know that I sometimes have an inner insecure self who worries about how what I write will be received, who is disappointed when there are no comments, who feels down if something doesn't get noticed. I find it necessary to stomp on this tendency as soon and as often as possible. Because the mommy blogosphere is full of generous people who read, comment and respond and who feel guilty when they can't do so. I can't get to all the posts I want to read as soon as I would like and most of the people I know about are much busier than I am. It continues to amaze me that there is so much comment and exchange when I know how short of time and energy many people are.

Getting comments fosters a sense of belonging. So does the receipt of one of the various awards that bounce through the blogs -- things like the Just Post, the Perfect Post, The Thinking Blogger, the ROFL. Getting 'tagged' to do a meme is also a boost to the camaraderie quotient. I think these are all good things. But they come with a price. To get one of the post awards, it is necessary to write that kind of post. It is also gracious to look for posts that fit the criteria and nominate them. Established bloggers go out of their way to select newbies for awards and tags, which is one of the things I like a lot about them, but they can't include everybody. It is not productive to be hurt if you aren't selected for something: tags, for instance, only work if they are consistently spread. We should participate as much as we can and understand that others are doing the same, without being too dependent on this kind of recognition.

The forum here at BlogRhet has one of the best formats I have found. I stuck my neck out and volunteered to be part of it, as a real newbie, was welcomed in and am really glad I joined. It's inclusive, stimulating and fun. It's managed by a bunch of horrifically busy women and so the bus wheels may occasionally wobble but, by and large, it's amazingly smooth. And really worthwhile. If you're reading this at my own site, please pop over and scroll through it. You'll be glad you did.

But in the final analysis, the feeling of belonging is something each of us has to create for herself. It comes from confidence that what we write will resonate with others and that other writers will appreciate our comments. Most of all, it comes from the satisfaction of having done well in what we set out to do.

Veiled Comments

We seem to have a controversy in Canada, especially in Quebec, about modesty face coverings. This is in a country that a Time poll just rated as one of the most free in the world today. Elections Canada has ruled, if I have it correctly, that a woman can vote with her face covered if she has someone with her that vouches that under the face covering she is who she says she is. People are pretty annoyed with this. Funny. Up to a very short time ago, a Canadian could walk into the poll, say 'I am Mary Smith of 123 Street, and be handed a ballot. And the poll clerk would maybe not glance up from her book and ruler at all. Now we are going to be 'ID"ed.

I don't have much patience, myself, with women who cover their heads and faces, at least in North America. If they live someplace where they are going to get arrested or beaten, that's another matter. Women who cover their faces when it is not required have a problem. Either their menfolk are making them do it or they have bought into the mystique so much (the word 'brainwashed' springs to my mind) that they have lost their common sense. I have heard such a woman speak of the sense of privacy and security that a veil gives her. Maybe. The fact remains that a woman so cumbered cannot see colour properly, cannot cross a street safely, should certainly not be driving, and in most places would be hot. I wear a black fly veil in May here in the Ottawa Valley, and that is what happens to me when I do.

I want to make a clear distinction between the burka and niquab and the hijab or even the chador. I have nothing against 'modest dress', whether it is the woman's personal choice or a cultural identity or a religious requirement. A headscarf (hijab) is completely innocuous. Perhaps a few of the more extreme manifestations of religious dress can be pretty silly and even unsafe; for example, I am thinking about a nun I saw in a pre John Paul starched white wimple that framed her face like a horse's blinkers. The problem was that she was driving a car and had no peripheral vision. If a girl is playing soccer in a hijab, it should not do that. Otherwise, what is the problem! Usually, though, cover up clothing seems to me to be purely a matter of personal choice. Some of the 'required dress' conventions might be cumbersome, hot or impractical (wearing a wig over your own hair? A body suit under your dress? An ankle length coat in August?) but that's the wearer's problem, not mine. And when I see how some teenagers choose to dress, I really wish I had a few chadors to shove them into. But a face veil and deep scarfed hood are pretty extreme, and as for the burka, it's punitive.
The banning of hijab in schools in France and the ban and debate in Turkey has got to be a political statement. And making a ban makes the wearing of the hijab even more of a political statement than it would be otherwise. Think about it -- if you are a teenager, how better to get up your parents' noses than to put on hijab when your family doesn't. If you are a 'fundamentalist' male, how better to make a statement than to make your female relatives wear it, even if it prevents them from going to school. (And maybe that is also a wanted result?) The authorities are doing a silly thing, I think, because banning something makes it both high profile and more desirable. To make a martyr, provide an opportunity for martyrdom.

In yet another category are the religious leaders in places like Iran who are sending out the clothing police to arrest women who don't meet the code and the menfolk who ( I read) beat their wives and daughters for leaving the burka at home. I gather that the concept behind this 'cover up, woman!' imperative is that women are distracting and take men's thoughts away from important things. Not unlike the mediaeval Christian teaching that women are inherently sinful and sex traps, to boot, and that they are property to be kept subjugated because they love sex and sex should be only for procreation for the glory of God. Some women affirm great pride in the testament to their faith that a distinctive dress or dress code provides. A lot of the nuns who went into modern dress at the call of Pope John Paul were sad to lose their distinctive habits. A lot of genuinely devout girls see their hijabs as a statement of their faith and identity. But it's a cause for weeping that women and girls are forced into these customs and the thought patterns behind them.

It's those thought patterns that have been occupying my mind to-day. Some of the women who wear various versions of Islamic modest clothing seem to enjoy the sexual aspect of it. They aver that their femininity and sexuality is hidden but there and that in their own space they can flaunt it and enjoy it. I have seen comments that imply that Western women just don't get it and that to be a 'hidden woman' is better for sex. Maybe. How would someone like me ever know?

What I think these women are saying is that they buy into the concept that they are just so sexy and desirable that they have to hide themselves so that men will not be distracted. This goes with the idea that men think about sex all the time, or every six minutes anyway, and can't be expected to control themselves about it. And isn't that silly. I can pass by a coffee shop oozing delectable odours from every crevice, even though I love the stuff. Ditto the bakery. Most people do the equivalent, unless they are, literally, starving. No one is shutting down coffee shops, here or in the Islamic world either. Alcoholics recover, brave souls, and manage to live productive lives in a world full of chances to drink. Sex can't be much more compelling, can it? So you're distracted? Refocus. I feel sorry for women, veiled or not, who are out to be distractions. And for men who play that game.

If you want to get a man's attention, I have found, it's easy enough for a woman to do. My technique always involved making eye contact. Worked like a charm. And you can do that in anything other than a full burka with a peep hole. Even then, the flash of a painted nail, scent, the way you walk, all these could send a message. Veiled prostitutes in classical Greece wore sandals that printed 'Follow Me' in the dust of the street. If a man is primed to think that way, the sight of a black tent that has a woman under it is a signal. Ooh, hidden delights. It's probably just as much of a signal as a thong panty coming out of low rise trousers. If you have nothing else to occupy your mind.

I guess what I'm saying, if you've followed the train of thought around all these curves, is that the world is full of other things to do if you're following current events and trying to make the world a better place, or learning, or working to feed yourself or your family.
My value system says that public life should not be about sex. No flirting in the office. Public dress should not be an incitement to riot. (Including you, the guy over there in the jeans with the carefully constructed bulge in the front.) Advertisements should tell me something about the product. Beaches are for swimming. Life is for doing all kinds of things.
In Canada, you can wear your veil to vote. Unless all the guys hissing and spitting all over the place get the rules changed. You can wear it to school. You can be interviewed on the radio talking about how you love to wear it. Note that in Canada, this woman is voting, going to school and taking part in public life. And I really hope that both those things continue to be true.

The Painted Mapole is making up and organizing the Monday Missions this month. She's got a great post up with a neat take on horoscopes. And when I put this post up, I forgot to link to the site. I hereby award myself a blogger blooper award, and am contemplating what kind of hind end to put into it.

Agitarious

Sign: Chicken

Moon Alert:
Whatever phase of the moon it is, it's wrong for planting something.

Star Chart:
That's a falling star, not the whole sky, for pity's sake

Monday's Horoscope

The signs are clear that you will find something to worry about today. Do not make important decisions until after you have read at least two more horoscopes. Try not to bite off that last fingernail until after 4:00.

If your birthday is today:
You share it with Chicken Little, Mrs Bennett and The White Rabbit.


Two of the several sides of my brain are nagging at each other -- I am sure this happens to you from time to time.

Right Brain: That horoscope sucks. Were you trying to be funny? Pretty lame.

Left Brain: You were supposed to help -- you're the one with the creative creds, after all. Anyway, it may not be very funny, but you should think about it. It's your horoscope, worrywart.

RB: That's not funny either. I'm not like that.

LB: Oh? And who's been fretting about her daughters all week? For pretty silly reasons.

RB: Was not, either.

LB: Was too. Did the YG not end up getting exactly what she wanted?

RB: Well, yes, but……….

LB: And hasn't she fallen on her feet, just the way she always does?

RB: I guess so.

LB: You know so. Stop trying to wiggle out of it. You spent a whole two weeks fretting about nothing. Didn't you?

RB: Uh, yes.

LB: So have you learned anything?

RB: I guess, maybe.

LB: And you're going to stop doing this stuff, right?

RB: Well, I thought I might phone Little Stuff's mom and just see how ………..

LB: Hopeless. You're hopeless!

I've just spent some happy time editing my photos from Vancouver Island. Gritting my teeth and throwing out some of the repetitions and bad focus: straightening crooked horizons (bad photo technique!) and cropping. I am really sloppy with a digital camera, mainly because I know I can do all of this, and so I take shot after shot and then have to discipline myself. I do put the originals on a disk and file them since I once had a virus that ate a year's worth of .jpg files. I also have every negative I ever shot with film. Packratitis, bad chronic case. Anyway, here are the best of the sunset shots. Something to cherish.

Peach Sunset

Red Sunset

Sunset Reflections

Sand Beach Sunset

Water Pattern Sunset

Gulls Take Wing

I'm sitting here doing what my mother called 'stewing'. If I weren't typing, I would be chewing my fingernails. Not because there is anything in my life to cause anxiety attacks; rather, both my daughters are going through traumas of various sorts and I can't do anything about any of it. And I can't even lay the problems out here, because they are not my problems and not mine to tell.

We all know the symptoms. Inability to concentrate. Shortened tolerance for annoyances. Lost sleep. A general lost savour for the little things that make life good. Seeing the negative side of things loom larger. Mountains out of molehills.

I like to be positive about things both big and small. If my daughter takes off for a four day hike into the Namibian desert, solo, I tell myself that she is capable, fit and a good problem solver and can convince myself that she will arrive at her destination, on time and in good form, having enjoyed the adventure. I believe myself, mostly. Especially when, in due time, said daughter does arrive at her destination intact and joyfully describes her journey. I do not lie awake at night worrying about lions, usually. I am not kept awake by someone who is tossing and turning and fretting about them. Mostly. But right now, I'm not listening to myself very well.

It's a funny thing, worry. It probably is hardwired right into all our genes, as the ability to foresee the lion and figure out a way to stay safe is the ultimate survival trait. Little kids' trepidation in new situations is part of it. This caution, I think, turns into the anxiety about fitting in and succeeding at things that most adolescents suffer. A lot of young adults can seem very cocky, but the blessed 'I can do this' stage is pretty short. For me it only lasted until I acquired seven odd pounds of squawking baby and realized that I was IT -- the go to person to ensure that this infant would survive and thrive. The baby's father is faced with a similar, maybe slightly more diffuse, reality check. It's time to really work on the spear and the stockade. And make sure there's enough wood to keep the fire burning all night.

Only, the defenses might not be enough. Maybe there will be two lions. Worrying can be a constant weight on the mind and a drain on the body. Especially when the dangers are diffuse or unknown, or the problems are affecting someone you love. It can be really, really hard to stop overpreparing, to let your mind and body rest. I know people who never seem to be able to let things alone. Their minds turn up more and more problems and they fret about things they can't identify, let alone solve. Have you ever watched a flock of birds feeding who, whenever a shadow flickers over them, fly into cover? The shadow might be a predator. It almost never is, but the flight defense is innate and so they go, over and over again.

My mind is full of shadows this morning.