GladRags Gab

I’ve recently been checking out some other feminist and woman-centered blogs, and among my favorites is Feministing.  Its mission is that “Young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures. Feministing provides a platform for us to comment, analyze and influence.”  Contributors draw our attention to items in the media that directly affect women.   It’s great to read writing by women, for women, about things that other media outlets tend to leave out.

Recent posts have highlighted what some folks have done to get rid of horror movie ads that depict violence against women; a woman who runs an organization in New York City that teaches oral journalism to young people; and the Harry Potter star Emma Watson, who calls herself a feminist.  It’s updated daily with lots of juicy goodness, and the comments that follow posts add rather than detract to the main story (unlike on many other blogs).  Well, just go there for yourself and see! http://www.feministing.com/

- Elizabeth 

I’m getting ready for my son’s second birthday. Usually, this would be a fairly easy event to plan—cake, balloons, a few gifts, and get the family together. But I’m stalled. I feel overwhelmed with the task, unable to come up with a birthday plan. Not because he’s turning two, but because he’s turning two on July 7, 2007, better known as 07.07.07. What can I possibly create for a two-year-old’s birthday to match the auspiciousness of it falling on 777, the luckiest number of our culture? In Lisbon, Portugal, in their largest national venue, they are unveiling the new Seven Wonders of the World on that day. Their guest list includes the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Hilary Swank and Neil Armstrong. I can’t exactly compete with the new Seven Wonders of the World. (But I will be logging on to www.new7wonders.com to find out what they are!) Across the world, SOS (Save Our Selves) is hosting Live Earth, a series of concerts on 07.07.07 to “use the global reach of music to engage people on a mass scale to combat our climate crisis.” Genesis, Madonna and Metallica are playing in London, Dave Matthews, Bon Jovi and Melissa Etheridge in New York, Shakira and Snoop Dogg in Hamburg…you get the idea. And that’s just one organization. Other people are hosting photography contests, festivals, or gathering to pray and fast. People are feeling preemptively lucky and are making big plans. 07.07.07 is shaping up to be the most popular wedding date EVER. Hotels, chapels and wedding planning websites are reporting triple their usual number of weddings for that day. Some places are turning couples away by the dozens. Las Vegas is looking at its busiest day on record, with one chapel marrying 113 couples on that day. It doesn’t help that July 7, 2007 falls on a Saturday in July, one of the busiest wedding times of the year. We can’t get married, gamble, go to a huge concert or to Lisbon for my son’s birthday. Jaden was two weeks late, and on July 7, 2005 he came in a rush for a very memorable home birth, no planning required. Maybe that’s what this will be like. All of the sudden, we’ll get to the day and…magic.

-michelle 

I’m reading the astounding Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder? Initially, I didn’t want to read it. First, out of disgust for this disorder-for-everything kind of culture we live in and secondly because I couldn’t believe, have we gotten to that point already? But I am wrong on both counts. In the first case, Richard Louv, the author, states right away that this is not a medical diagnosis, just a way of describing the growing separation of nature from childhood that he had been keeping tabs on for the last decade. And in the second, I find out that people have been concerned about this issue for years. Since 1877 (!) a non-profit called Fresh Air Fund out of NYC has been providing inner-city kids with free country vacations so that they could get the obviously health-enhancing benefits of…nature. Okay, point(s) taken.

It’s sad that we have somehow become so removed from nature that we have to advocate to be near it. Louv sites, among other things, the decline of the family farm, intellectualization of the natural world (understanding acid rain but never playing in the river), the rise of community associations that place strict rules on natural space, and our recent tendency to scare our kids out of wandering out into nature as characteristics of this, the “third frontier”. He provides mind-boggling facts like, “between 2000 and 2003, spending on ADHD for preschoolers increased 369 percent,” and tells the story of the three boys who built a tree fort in their yard only to be shut down for not having building permits.

The tone reminds somewhat of Deep Economy , the book that Brenda blogged about earlier. With these important but rather gloom-and-doom books, I try to hang on to what positive points I can. There are always helpful solutions at the end and the hope that we can make the right decisions. And I hang on to simpler things: watching my kids play outside in our yard, making “soup” out of hose water and yard debris, and our mutual delight in butterflies. And for my myself, when I notice the changes in my body—that it’s almost time to grab a GladRag out of my drawer—I know I’m keeping a connection with the lunar cycle and the aspect of nature that is my very own body.

–Michelle 

    I am usually not very political, but I must say that the prospect of having a female President of the United States has got my ears pricked. The only reason why a woman should not be President that I can ever remember anyone giving is that she would be too emotional and unable to make decisions, especially during “that time of the month”—that is to say because she is a menstruator. I have heard this reason more than once, most often in semi-jest, and honestly I haven’t heard it in a while, but I remember these kinds of comments as a young girl. What other reason could men give? Menstruating is what makes us different. Then there is the whole school of thought that women are NOT different. We can do anything men can do. I think there are a masculine and a feminine principle at play here. Generally, women tend to carry more of the feminine principle than men, and men more of the masculine than women, but we all know lots of exceptions to that rule. To tell you the truth, I am more disturbed by women who have made their way into government and business only to act just like men. Clearly, women should not be discounted because of gender and in most ways are not actually different than men. And yet, I think embracing the contrasting way the feminine principle governs a nation and in this case would influence the world is vitally important.
    In my neck of the woods in progressive Vermont, so far the buzz is all about Barack Obama. I’m mildly surprised that everyone is not jumping at the chance just to get a woman (does she even still menstruate?) in the White House. Maybe you all can fill me in on how she’s managed to turn people off. I’m rooting for a female President because I think what the world really needs is the female principle and woman are more likely to carry it than men (especially in politics). But if Hillary Rodham Clinton takes the election and perpetuates the masculine model and Barack Obama becomes President and embraces the feminine, I have to wonder—how important is it to have a full-blooded (pun intended) menstruator in the White House? And I’m sorry, I can’t help it, a menstruator in the “White” House, maybe they are afraid they’ll never get the stains out!

Michelle

I just got a brand spanking new laptop. First time I’ve ever owned one. I immediately took it down to my favorite coffee shop and went online. From that little cafe in my little town, my laptop picked up more than six wireless connections. For people in big cities, this is small beans. But to me, it’s astonishing. It’s easy to see a whole wireless world just around the corner with all of us connected, sharing information and photos and music through this invisible line that we couldn’t have imagined not that long ago. I am struck by the fast forward motion of technology juxtaposed to the ancient concept of GladRags. I like to live this way: one foot in, one foot out, I call it. I don’t want to eschew modern culture even though it appears to be problematic in so many ways, and I also don’t want to give up reaching back for the more sensible and sustainable ways of living that technology seems to be gobbling up and spitting out. So, I’m happy with my GladRags; I know that this reaching back is right. And I’m happy with my laptop; this reaching forward is exhilarating.

Michelle

I had a great birthday. For one thing, my favorite former employer, GladRags, asked me to blog for them (joy of joys). Secondly, we have a fantastic new tradition in our multi-generational house (I live with my parents, husband and two children in Vermont—I know it wouldn’t work for everyone but it’s working out really well for us). Instead of buying each other gifts for all the birthdays and holidays, we decided to put that money toward a project that the birthday person gets to choose. For my birthday this May I chose to make a medicine wheel garden in the front flowerbed. I spent the weekend digging in the dirt, mending the rock wall, and preparing the flowerbed for all the cool new plants I got to buy with my birthday gift certificate to the local plant store. My shopping spree included a bird bath, gazing ball and all my favorites: lavender, lemon balm, sage, strawberries, roses and thyme. Hoo-ray! Medicine wheels or shields are a Native American tradition used to create sacred space. I built mine on the principles found in The Medicine Wheel Garden: Creating Sacred Space for Healing, Celebration, and Tranquility by E. Barrie Kavasch. I associate them mostly with safety and have built small ones out of stones on my dresser to symbolically represent one that would surround my home or me.

I happened to read New Moon Rising: Reclaiming the Sacred Rites of Menstruation by Linda Heron Wind around the same time as I was working on this garden. Wind describes how to make a belly shield, which I quickly noticed was the same concept as a medicine wheel garden. Belly shields can be made either physically or mentally as a way to protect your belly from the negative energies in life. She also said something that struck me: that women also need a space to go to during PMS time where they don’t need to have their belly shields up, a place and time to be open to what I think of as the higher calling of menstruating: inspiration and understanding. Maybe my medicine wheel garden can be a place like that for me…although it is in the front of my house where all the neighbors can see as well as traffic going by. Do you think they’d mind me washing out my GladRags out there?

Michelle