Sweet Victory

Two weeks ago no one gave Serena Williams a chance of reaching the second week of the Australian open. The reasons they gave in the press were related to her lack of tournament play. Sportscasters decried her lack of fitness.

In my local tennis clubs the descriptive language was less kind. With a few exceptions, she was referred to as "fat" and a "diva," her choice of tennisware "outrageous." Few people were taking her seriously anymore.

I remember some similar discomfort among white people when Jackie Joyner-Kerse used to grace the track with coifed hair, loud manicures, and bright makeup. But any indignation was tempered with a tacit conviction by white sports fans that track was a black sport. Such confidence in dress and manner in a black tennis player has been offensive to many, and they "dog" Serena every chance possible.

Today Serena Williams answered her critics with an overpowering 6-1, 6-2 victory over top-seeded Maria Sharapova in the Australian Open final. I take courage that she is an "out there" minority woman. Thank you, Serena.

Send In The Troops, (Not The Soldiers --The Grandmothers!)

On January 10, 2007 George Bush announced that he will send about 21,500 extra US troops to Iraq and said that it was a mistake not to have more forces fighting the war before now. Most American politicians, a majority of American citizens, and many pundits now concede they were wrong to support Bush’s invasion of Iraq, stating that the administration lied to them about its justification. Then, why, oh why, did he deploy troops to Iraq in the first place? What were the reasons for starting a preemptive war? The Bush administration did have reasons. Theories abound regarding these reasons, but no who knows what they really are has fessed up. Likely, they believe that the truth would be too sensitive to divulge to the American people, since doing so would inadvertently also inform the enemy of freedom, the terrorists. Or, maybe they believe we are not able to understand the complex nuances of contemporary sociopolitics.

Certainly, not articulating the truth about why we are at war gives rise to the reason the Bush administration can't quite define what winning would mean.

So now we will send 21,500 more soldiers to win a war in Iraq for some reason we don't know. . . No wonder I have been humming Holly Near's "1000 Grandmothers!"

1000 Grandmothers
Words and music by Holly Near

Send in a thousand grandmothers
They will surely volunteer
With their ancient wisdom flowing
They will lend a loving ear.

First they'll form a loving circle
Around the wounded wing
Then contain the brutal beast of war
Sweet freedom songs they'll sing.

A lullaby much stronger
Than bombs and threats to kill
A force unlike we've ever known
Will break the murderer's will.

To the prisons we'll invite them
The most violent men will weep
When a thousand women hold them strong
And pray their souls to keep.

Let them rock the few who steal the most
And rule with youthful charm
So they'll see the damage that they do
And will fall into grandma's arms
Two thousand loving arms.

If you think these women are too soft
To face the world at hand
Then you've never known the power of love
And you fail to understand.

An old woman holds a powerful force
When she no longer needs to please
She can cut your shallow lie to bits
And bring you to your knees.
We best get down on our knees

And pray for a thousand grandmothers
Will you please come volunteer?
No longer tucked out of sight
Will you bring your power here

Will you bring your power here?

© copyright. Holly Near recorded on her CD "Edge"

Tune into Greenstone Media

At last women have control of a media network! As goes Gloria Steinem’s Keynote Address to the Conclave Learning Conference, Minneapolis, July 14, 2006, it is "Broadcasting: As If Women Mattered." http://greenstoneradio.com/GSM/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 We now can listen to the voices of women talk about their experiences every day. Those voices may change our lives.

I remember a Spring day in 1978 when a woman's voice changed my life. I was studying to be a nurse practitioner. It was time to get my annual physical from the sweet nurse practitioner in the Student Health Services. True to her nurturing role, she inquired about my adjustment to being far from my home to attend to my studies in another city. I was a little homesick for my roommate back home.

Had I left a man or a woman back home? Her voice echoed into some vague hollow chamber of my brain. I had never spoken nor heard words for the experience of loving a woman.

She asked me if I had found the local Women's Community. I must have looked vacant, for she continued inquiring about whether I knew about women's culture or women's music. I understood every word, but could not comprehend what she was talking about.

She made me promise to go to a women's bookstore and buy Cris Williamson's "The Changer and the Changed."

I did. I rushed to my apartment, put that vinyl on and listened, to what years later Bonnie Raitt would call "a voice like honey on a cello," "I've been dreaming in the sun, won't you wake me up someone. . . . " When I looked out the window all that had appeared green and blue before this moment now popped in vivid azure, turquoise, emerald, and gold.

She prepared me with, "When you open up your heart to the living, all things come spilling in on you." So, I was ready to hear, "Sweet woman rising inside my glow, I think I'm missing you . . letting me know, taking me in, you let it all go . . . " and by the time she sang "Love of my life, I am crying, I am not dying, I am dancing. . ." I wept and danced around to strains of "What do you do for a living, are you forgiving, giving shelter."

It all happened in a few minutes. I had suspected all along that women's lives, apart from how they were tangled up with men's lives, were significant, worth singing about. Women's lives began to take voice for me that day. And I began to love them, love them all; love myself.

Some people actually think that loving women is all about having sex with them. I suppose this is why they find the notion of feminism disgusting, as though it were some sick man's pornographic daydream.

Loving women starts with believing in their words, and celebrating their lives. To learn how to do that we first have to listen to them. So we shall tune into Greenstone Media. Someone may give voice to something that sounds vaguely familiar and palpably real.

Gracie in Norway

This is my current favorite picture of Gracie, my 14-year-old daughter. One of her backpacking girrrrls must have snapped it in July, Gracie unaware, while they were trekking in Norway.

Gracie has not shown me this picture. I found it on her blog.

Some of Gracie's classmates' parents tell me they do not allow their daughters to blog. They are worried about cyberviolence. These same parents think I am nuts to have let my daughter travel out of the country to go backpacking at the age of 14; they also worry about terrorism.

Not I. I am more concerned that my daughter will not find her voice.

I read Laurie Halse Anderson's SPEAK when Gracie was in sixth grade. Her sixth grade teacher freaked out and called me when she realized that Gracie had chosen it as her "realistic novel." She advised me to read it before my daughter did. So I did. I won't ruin it by explaining why, but the protagonist spends most of her freshman year of high school in silence.

Now my daughter is a High School Freshman. She has not yet found her voice in writing. This is for a variety of complex reasons, and I will not go into them right now. So I work at helping her travel to wherever she can get on this earth. I hope for her to experience the world, and write about it wherever she will, and however she must. For real terrorism happens to girls when they are gagged and bound by the rules of what they may not say, or by what scripts they are forced to memorize and repeat .

Missing Barbara Jordan

"I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."
-Barbara Jordan, Statement on the Articles of Impeachment, delivered 25 July 1974, House Judiciary Committee

So much for "strict constructionism" in constitutional interpretation.

What a patriot was Barbara Jordan! She definitely would have been the first Woman African American Supreme Court Justice had she not died of pneumonia in the 1990's. How different things would be going now. She would have been the protectress of all Americans.

How we now need our mothers and sisters and daughters in government!

For the text and mp3 audio of Jordan's speech: http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barbarajordanjudiciarystatement.htm

Knitting

Recently I have taken up knitting. I knit my thoughts and feelings stitch by stitch into the my creation on the circular needles. All of life's joy, frustration, sadness, happiness gets woven into the garment; and a little bit of dog hair, too.

I am making myself a sweater; but I paused long enough to make my daughter a pair of STITCH 'N BITCH HURRY UP SPRING ARM-WARMERS, from Stitch 'n Bitch Nation by Debbie Stoller. I have almost finished the first one.

My mother taught me to knit when I was a little bit older than a baby. Then she taught me to purl. That's all. I made squares, many many squares of knit, or knit and purl in every possible permutation. She told me it would be too hard for me to knit a sweater. Ever.

I recently visited my mother (now 83) in "the home". I told her I was knitting. I thanked her for teaching me. She told me she didn't believe me. Oh, yes, she believes I am thankful for her teaching me to knit. She doesn't believe that I am actually making a garment. *sigh* I will have to take it to her . . .

Mother was a nurse in post-WWII Germany. The country was effete, and all the wool had been gathered to clothe Hitler's army and weave for them blankets. She unraveled a Red Cross blanket and crafted an intricate ski-sweater for herself. She knit me a plethora of sweaters. The Red-Cross sweater was my favorite, and I took it to college. I loved her inventiveness and bravery whenever I wore it.

Gratitude is fulfilling.

Projection

"I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see wistful sadness and existential angst when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies"~ Merrill Markow

I Don't Speak Hungarian

Hungary was the birthplace of my father's family, and they spoke Hungarian when I was growing up. NEM TUDOK MAGYARUL. (I DON'T SPEAK HUNGARIAN). I can't remember much else in Hungarian. I might as well be trying to blog in Hungarian; as much as I can talk English, writing it scares the bejeesus out of me!