Loss

On March 16th a woman named Kelley was killed by her husband. When I first read the article that reported her missing and that the report had been filed by her husband, I knew he killed her. I have followed the story until his arrest yesterday.
I don't know much about Kelley other than that she had four children. I know she was left on the side of the ride eighty miles after she had been shot in the head.
I worked with battered women for years. And this news still hits my heart so hard.
She died on May 16th, 2010.
Sometimes when I hear of a woman's death I try to remember exactly, precisely what I was doing at the time. Did I feel, in a moment, the loss? Was I aware of the loss is some small way that I can now identify? I want to know what I was doing while I was living life and this woman lost hers .... is there some clue, some activity of molecular or soulful vigilance that gives sisterhood warnings, make us more aware of the lives around us and of their absence. If there is a sign inside me, I want to recognize it.

Abortion Rights and Hens

What cute little pictures I posted on this blog last year. Damn.
Someone should have given me a hand and asked that I stop.
I am finally feeling better and moving on to politics and art.
No more hens sitting on puppy dogs to keep them warm and safe.

Moving on to the health care vote and amnesia. Seriously.
Oh yeah it's a beautiful thing, this health care vote and it is a starting place.
A starting place for more than the right to health care.
It is a starting place for the loss of rights in women's lives.
Well of course, this health care bill was going to cost somebody something
and naturally lets charge women's equality for it ... a woman's right to
reproductive health, autonomy, self-determination .... this vote is the beginning
of an end to abortion rights. Women will have to write two checks to obtain
abortion coverage through their insurance provider. It is separate and not
equal.

A Long Damn Time

It has been, a long damn time since I have written. I keep meaning for that not to happen, the long space of time.
Today I am wrapped up in the ugliness that has surrounded the health care vote here in the United States.
The language of hate that met legislators, African Americans and gay. I feel certain the hate existed for all time,
it never went away, it was under the surface and the bigotry in practice without claiming.
Now however, a mob mentality of unleashing hatred rhetoric, and perhaps movement toward a violence that
embraces the words ... many of us watch appalled. In my mind the mob scene of screaming hate emerged anew
with Sarah Palin's political rallies ... there was an urging toward a fevered pitch of anger at anyone other than
straight white christian conservatives.
But earlier today there was a connection made of hate language and calling women lesbians. I understand well
the impact of homophobia, but I question the comparison. If an African American is called an African American
I try to imagine the exchange ... it might go something like this, " yeah, that's right." "damn right and I am proud of
it, a proud black woman" .... if a lesbian is called a lesbian then something else happens often, it is seen a hate
language. I get confused here.
More often that not in the past several years of fighting for marriage equality lgbt folks run a rather constant
comparison of civil rights' work toward equality between African Americans and homosexual communities.
However, in the language example of hate speech given above there are apparent enormous differences .... the black
man on the street cannot hide his blackness, to call a black man black is to state the obvious. Hate speech is
hurled when the bigot uses other words to describe the blackness ... "n&&&&er" for example. But to call a black man
black is not hate speech. If the bigot called a group of white people "African Americans" it would recognized that in
all probability the individual had issues, but it would probably still be considered misidentification and blantantly stupid.
However if you call a lesbian a "lesbian" it is considered extreme hate speech by many and if you call a straight woman
a lesbian then it is considered hate speech.
The fact that we can pass affects our discrimination. The fact that most in Maine are white and can pass as straight certainly affects most of our vision in understanding oppression that cannot be denied. But if calling me lesbian is hate speech it is time to rethink the whole lgbt race comparison and it is time to redefine hate speech and no mistake hate speech with homophobia.
So the pride I feel as a lesbian, the pride I feel for "my people" is impossible, but to speak my name is to commit an
act of hate speech.
I wrote a little to that affect, that often strong women are called lesbian ... and one response was that strong women are not defined by sexual orientation .... imagine for a moment, the black man stating that not only was he black but that he was a
proud black man and the response being that color does not affect the strength of a man ... yes he might say, but I am strong in my blackness and my pride in who I am gives me strength.
And I say, I am strong in my lesbianism and my pride in who I am gives me strength.

Let's talk about FaceBook.
And my age.

Supposedly women over 50 make up the fastest growing population on Facebook.
I am over fifty.

But I find the atmosphere difficult.
In the beginning every time I got an announcement from someone about an event
I sent a thank you note for the invitation. Later I realized they were not making
an individual invitation, friends were pushing one button and inviting one
hundred and fifty folks.

I quit writing the thank you notes.

And here is something else, folks that have been disrespectful of my feminist views request to
be friends ... and I don't understand. The word Friend I think must mean something else on
FaceBook. And I know I have been accepted as a "Friend" when "Friend" is really not the case.

Language appears to be not so critical on FaceBook.

More later, must run.

A Different View

And it is raining.
Very hard.
I live on the third floor in a downtown building. I see rooftops from
where I live in the back of my building. The rain smacks down and runs
for the edges to the ground. Rooftops have seasons too.
In winter a chimney's smoke rises directly up and in straight line in
frigid cold. Just cold and the smoke meanders up unhurried.
This is a new view for me, here in the back.
I lived in the front with a view of Main Street, the roof tops not so
close but still a view of the chimneys across town working against Maine
cold.
Today the rains pours and two dogs need walking.

I just like this very much!

I am allergic to cats.
Really.

Low Tide

It will be low tide at 4:51 this afternoon.
The dogs and I will be on the beach.
We like low tide for racing.
The racing is easier when the waves pull back.
We wait.

So I have a cat. A kitten to be specific.
This is new to me now. Cats are new to me. Now.
And.
I am a dog woman and not a cat woman but I am trying
to be a dog and a cat woman. It is hard.
The kitten screams and chews on electrical wires.
Also rain gear that hangs in the hallway. Plastic rain gear
that becomes less effective with holes in it.
The dogs and I put on a happy face ... or we did. The kitten
came out of an awful situation in Millinocket. Forty cats and
kittens in various stages of unhealth. I was asked. I accepted.
Milk.
His name is Milk.
For Harvey.
But he screams and chews electrical wires.

Sunday .... and I am loving it.
Moving into a new week.
This sojourn will be good for me.

damnit.

I still care.

a heavy rain

Okay so it is still raining.
I have my own flood story, I am thinking some people do ... have their own flood story.
Here is mine.
I was living alone, in my late forties, in the woods. I called it the woods.
I was in Appalachia and living on what we called river road. My house sat right in front of the river ... from every room in my house I could see the river and from every room in my house I could hear the river. Marvelous.
The water would coast over the rocks and the sound was a constant companion.
I lived there for years. And years.
And only one year did the river rise so high that it threatened my home and my life. It have been raining and raining. Sometimes the front end of the road, down
toward the four lane, would flood and you would just take the back way to town ... the beautiful back way .... climbing up the hills, by the waterfalls, twisting and turning you way to town. It took about a full half hour longer.
Anyway ... one morning I woke up in my second floor bedroom that faced the river, looked out the window expecting to see a large yard with meandering rock paths through the wisely planted rhododendron down to the road and then to the river. But there was no yard, no "rhodies" as I called them, there was no land. There was only water as far as I could see. I was Rapunzel without the hair.
And the odd thing about a river flooding is that it creates another fast track other than the one way out in the middle ... there were passages in my yard going like heck for Tennessee. Swirling hard and fast. Little rivers in the big river which wasn't that big in the beginning.
Well I was full panic when I got down to the front door. I moved the car and the truck up and in the barn with my dogs inside. I went down to check the basement and the water was more than 5 feet high. I could not in that second figure out what to do ... the yard was inching near the first step to the house and the basement still had some space ... I joked about pumping the river into the basement ... to myself ... and then I got the sump pump set up, and it began its work, adding the basement water to the yard, down the long driveway now mostly covered with river water.
In a short two hours, I could begin to see the water inching away from the house.
I felt blessed in that moment. Seriously blessed.
The slow movement back to the confines of a river bank. It took days.
The debris, the rotting things, the insects, it was devastating what was left behind.
Just devastating.
And for a long time and even now ... a heavy rain makes my heart beat faster.

rain

washes all things clean.
I certainly hope so.
It is going to rain for days and days.
I am looking forward to the cleanliness.
Seriously.

She Inspires

MEXICO: Indigenous Woman on the Offensive

FROM the Inter Press Service News Agency

Two years ago Eufrosina Cruz was
kept from running for mayor of her home village by the
traditions and customs of her indigenous community in
southern Mexico just because she is a woman.

But she refused to back down and challenged the tradition – a
decision that brought her death threats but also dreams and
achievements that she had never imagined.

On Tuesday the 29-year-old Zapoteca Indian woman presented in
the Mexican capital a new civil society association aimed at
highlighting the deep-rooted nature of native traditions and
customs in many communities especially in the impoverished
southern state of Oaxaca where a large proportion of the
population is indigenous.

If in November 2010 women can finally vote in my village
and one of them is elected mayor I will be more than happy; it
will be the best achievement of this association through which I
promise to become even more crazy which is what people in my
village say I am Cruz said in an interview with IPS.

Her group is called Quiego short for Queremos Unir Integrando
por Equidad y Género en Oaxaca (roughly we want to come
together for equity and gender in Oaxaca). The acronym was
inspired by Santa María Quiegaloni the name of her village of
800 Zapoteca Indians located in the mountains of Oaxaca one of
Mexico’s poorest states.

Quiego plans to hold workshops and organise women’s
groups first in my village and later throughout Oaxaca and
anywhere else that we can to raise awareness on women’s
political rights and help them understand that some traditions
are no good but that we are not alone and that we have to wake
up she said.

Cruz an accountant was the first woman to attempt to run for
mayor there. Although some of the men backed her up the heads
of the local assembly said tradition blocked her from
participating as a woman.

But that denial of women’s political rights had not been loudly
protested until Cruz brought the problem to the attention of
state and national authorities.

I always said things couldn’t stay this way that it was
unfair. But I didn’t imagine that all the rest of this would
happen she said.

By all the rest she was referring to anonymous
death threats that led to police protection for her as well as
the approval of a reform of the Oaxaca state constitution at her
initiative which clearly stipulates that no local tradition can
apply if it denies the political rights of indigenous women.

But she also meant the numerous invitations to take part in
conferences and in meetings with legislators and government
officials and the decision by the Mexican government of
conservative President Felipe Calderón to award her the national
youth prize consisting of 100000 dollars for her work on
behalf of women.

Last year I quit my job (as coordinator of academic
programmes in technical high schools in Oaxaca) to dedicate
myself completely to the cause of defending our women to coming
together to talk and to gradually finding a way out of this ugly
poverty and denial of our rights she said.

Mexico is the Latin American country with the largest
indigenous population in absolute numbers which is variously
estimated to make up between 12 and 30 percent of the country’s
104 million people (the smaller official estimate is based on
the number of people who actually speak an indigenous language).
The overwhelming majority of the Mexican population is of mixed
indigenous and Spanish ancestry.

More than 90 percent of the 12 million officially counted
indigenous people live in extreme poverty nearly 50 percent are
illiterate and 80 percent of the children under five are badly
malnourished according to the human development report on
Mexican indigenous people published in 2006 by the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP).

A study focusing on gender issues by the government National
Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples also
released in 2006 states that among the poorest of the
poor among the most marginalised of the marginalised are
indigenous women.

On many occasions they are discriminated against because
they are indigenous because they are women and because they
are poor. The social systems of their own communities also
frequently exclude them says the report on
indicators with a gender perspective for indigenous
peoples.

Among the country’s indigenous people there are 636720 women
who only speak native languages compared to 371083 men. And 27
percent of native people over 15 are illiterate by contrast with
a national average of 9.5 percent. But illiteracy among
indigenous women is 34.5 percent against 19.6 percent of men.

In Oaxaca 39 percent of native women and 22.3 percent of
native men over 15 are illiterate.

Among my people many women still believe that that’s how
it should be that rights are only for men that only they
deserve to study said Cruz. But I tell them that
they have to open their eyes and change even if they are
threatened horribly like what happened to me.

Cruz left Quiegolani at the age of 11 because she did not want
to end up being married off at 13 like her sister and raising
a gaggle of children in absolute poverty.


A lot of people have helped us: journalists politicians
and women’s groups. Thanks to all of them this association has
emerged but we are still searching for more support in order to
complete our dream said Cruz. (

I got one

and the dogs ran and hid.





You have seen them on television.
The dog and the cat sit motionless in their owner's lap while having their nails
filed. Ho hum. It looks so easy.
Yawn.
After years and years and years of clipping dog nails and having every single dog act as if I don't see very well, I have been wanting the simple and easy to use dog-battery-operated-fingernail-file.
At the Rite-Aid in my town, my small town, they have a shelf of "sold only on T.V."
items ... they are heavily discounted. The discount should be the clue.
I bought the dog fingernail battery operated file with the heavy discount.
I also bought super-sized not discounted batteries to make it work.
I have used it four times.
You have to cut their nails first. No lie.
The dogs you see on T.V. are comatose because they have a separate major artery connected to each toe nail and each one was probably a little bit nicked in the making of that commercial.
My dogs said so.
When I gasped about the arteries they said dogs have an automatic lever that can be turned in case of emergency ... and that is probably what happened.
They sometimes say disturbing things. Not all the time or anything like that.
Just sometimes.
And.
They still run and hide.
The instruction sheet encourages that in awhile your dogs will give up and no longer run and hide.
Oh joy.

walking in the morning

Every morning when I am about town, walking my dogs or headed to the co-op, I see a woman walking beside a man who is pushing a small cart. She is very short. Very short. And he is very tall. I am not much interested in him although I have looked to see that his demeanor is polite to her. They do not talk. They don't smile. They walk.

She is probably only 3 and a half feet tall. Just small with age. Her hair is long and red. It hangs well below her knit cap worn for the cold Maine mornings they walk. Her hand holds on the cart, so close to him that for a time I thought they walked holding hands. It would make balancing difficult because they walk all day. Her hand in his would not have physical support walking all day demands, although I understand the emotional support it would offer. The support they offer to each other is clear. Their walk is slow and determined.

I have watched her for weeks now. I want to ask for a photograph. I want to ask folks in town what they know of her .... she is so strong. Her legs, her back her mind in the determination to not stop. Walking.

to be naughty

The Naughty North is absolutely fabulous.
They are thinking on the edge and organizing actions ... just fantastic!
For the longest time I think we have been somewhat stuck in a no-response mode when it comes to objecting to discrimination, to the selfishness of capitalism .... the free-speech allowance which I often find disturbing .. the naughty have taken on a number of situations .... like the folks opposing women's right to choice that gather on the highway outside the Common Ground Fair. For a long time this group of anti-choice, really anti-woman people have been expected and ignored for the most part ... not an organized objection ... no one on the highway taking on the banners showing bloody fetuses. This group has and last year met them on the highway with antics that drew the attention away from the posters. Excellent. They also took on Southern Maine gay pride ... for their corporate mirroring. Amazing group.

The sun is out ... seems like any topic might be good for writing on a day like today.
Brightness. After a day of snow and sleet and rain is like the gift on Route One that the crows and the seagulls enjoyed yesterday .... vitamin D for the taking, a reference point in the mind radically different than the point that originates from grey.