Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t going to be that technical. Women have always been information managers. What comes into the home and family sphere, what goes out; the interaction of the personal spheres of interaction between larger systems such as commerce, education, religion, and families has been the purview of women. Men have traditionally been more involved with concepts and systems concerned with organizing elements outside of the home such as political and military concerns of the larger community and interactions between communities. At least in the western world this has been the generalized trend until the Industrial Revolution.
Since that time everything has gotten all mixed up. Some places, like America, got the general trajectory correct by working toward equality and democracy while still valuing individual effort and the separation of church and state. The trend in Europe and European influenced countries since the Protestant Reformation has been to move toward a less rigidly hierarchical system through the dismantling of the bundle of religion, governance, and the military into a triumvirate of male authority formalized by the Emperor Constantine and his Nicean Council.
From my perspective, one that is ultimately anthropological, the whirls and eddies of organizational forms in the flow of human cultural history are the norm. Our society is a recent invention that stretches back only a few thousand years. While our culture is much older, the cooperative interaction of governments and social institutions coordinating and regulating the behavior of the citizenry on a global scale is a rather recent invention.
Change, major change, is an option for our society. We know we have to make change if our families are to be able to continue to live well over the next few centuries.
Power does not really exist at least in any way that can be defined as a constant in all human systems. Influence does exist. There are people we listen to, respect, learn from, and from whom we willingly take direction. Coercion can work over the short-term, but over the long haul people act according to their beliefs.
So if women want to change the world, what do we have to do? Simple, we have to act according to our beliefs in the areas in which we have influence. We must speak out about the things about which we care. Just our speaking out, our putting our thoughts out there changes things, others who read or hear you then know they can speak and the cascade can be mind-blowing. Without sharing we cannot find commonality and build a better world from those areas of agreement.
And there is the legacy effect. Documenting women’s actions, thoughts, and dreams in a way that is being preserved for the first time in history will have tremendous influence over future generations.
We must all be the indices or signposts for all those in our spheres of influence. Women’s networks of knowledge have always existed and provided the foundations of informed action and culture in communities, but with our ability to communicate around the globe instantaneously we have broadened the reach of our information and the influence it has as well erecting new signposts for others to discover and use.
Do you appreciate how much influence you have?
I Want to Write About Fashion Not Death
I woke up today thinking I would edit my “fashion/non-fashion” post for a GenFab “blog hop.” I came out to the living room, realized my husband had not made coffee after being awakened at 4 a.m by our 5 month old, 75 lb. guard puppy barking out the front window over at the neighbors, wandered over to the coffee grinder and began the routine for morning wake-up. MSNBC was on in the background as it most often is when Hubby is home. The whir of beans being ground as filtered water fills the carafe. Good. I managed to complete the ground coffee, filtered water, and activation sequence without spills. “This is a good day,” I think as I take a seat near Hubby and open up Twitter to see what the buzz from online community might be this fine morning.
Then I look up at the Farenheit 451ish 4th Wall (TV) and see Roxana Green speaking. She is featured in an ad by Mayors Against Gun Violence. I watch a “news” cycle and also see that Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly have started a PAC (political action committee) to work its influence counter to the GUN lobby and PACs. Then I watch the woman who kept a shooter / mass murderer from reloading two years ago to the day in the town where I live, Tucson.
It is January 8th. Oh crap, of course, I knew it was coming up. I had tried to ignore it. I think of my bloggedy friend Suzi who was shot 3 times that horrible day, and who lost a dear little friend, the 9 year old neighbor girl and pal, she brought with her to meet Gabby that day. I go to her blog. She inspires me all over again with her positive framing of today... the day we live in… the day we always live in, while we live. She is doing great and wonderful things.
Me, I’m just going to be conscious as I do what I can and what I have to do:
- edit that fashion piece
- talk to my therapist about the evolving series of dreams I’ve been having about family and the county where I grew up
- send a few tweets about the PAC and about Roxana Green’s ad, and ask folks to support the efforts
- remember the 20 babies, Veronica Moser Sullivan, and Christina Taylor Green, Briana Flores , and all the innocents who are gone from the world because they were killed with guns, and hold them in the light in my heart. I pray for their rest even though so many speaking their names
- plan what to do for Valentines Day – V Day – this year
- figure out more on the new BoomHer site
- figure out what to say about the role of women in this new effort to create sane gun laws as well as in
- creating supportive, nonviolent infrastructure for our society
What I haven’t decided is whether to place flowers somewhere today, and if so, where to place them. I head a talk at a Semiotic Conference at Indiana University long ago about the semiotics of place in mass tragedy. I want to look more at a book on a similar topic, Shadowed Ground. I’m leaning toward flowers at the site where the vigil was and the memorial grew outside UMC at the University of Arizona.
Oh Geesh, Mommy Wars Erupt Around Tragedy
The children, the babies, are not yet buried and the “Mommy Wars” have started over blog post responses to viral posts. I have many other pressing tasks to do, including traffic court today for forgetting to register my car, and I don’t want to spend the day researching. I probably should because I am a damn good researcher, actually trained in both library and social science methodologies and could probably expound with amazing clarity about the main players in the drama over “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” a post that went viral (just Google the phrase and you will see what I mean) from a mother with a very troubled child. Now bloggers are saying that the writer of this piece is the one with mental illness, not her son. I didn’t help. I forwarded the link and the original blog address after I read a republication of the post. I should have done research before forwarding, but really now, does anyone really do research on the info every single time before re-tweeting something? I don’t know what the truth is. And neither do any of us outside of the situation, and from what I can tell there are several truths (perspectives) inside the situation.
And you know what? I don’t care what the truth is. Truth is a personally constructed value. There are facts. There are data. I cannot be the judge of others. I wrote another piece last year, A Cautionary Tale :: Blogs, Lies, and Screen Captures, on a different blog that discusses a different tragedy and the intense emotions that come into play when mothers attack via social media. (Wasn’t When Mothers Attack a B-grade Fifties Monster Movie? Sorry, but I need some levity in these sad, sad days in which the whole country is regrouping.) Everyone who can text is a writer these days. Folks skilled at the art of deception tweet, post and blog. Mothers who are at their wit’s end tweet, post and blog. People who hurt and want to find the reason for their pain also tweet, post and blog.
There are sessions at blogging conferences on the experience of having your posts go viral. Sometimes it is because you did your research, sometimes it is because you let your son and his best friend dress alike for Halloween just like they wanted to do, sometimes it is because you were “shot in the ass.” Memes happen. You cannot know your post, or blog, will go viral. You cannot know when you will become a celebrity.
Geesh girl friend(s), just lighten up. I know, I know, we can’t lighten up about the situation that broke the heart of a nation. But there is civility. Remember civility? Remember Tucson and our call for civility after January 8th, 2011? There is a fund for civility that grew out of that. The desire for a civil society, for people acting civilly, for build a true civilization is real.
I can be snarky, too quick to offer up my sharp tongue, but please, please know that I try to never be intentionally critical of an individual. I haven’t always been successful. My political posts can get very heated at times, less so than they used to be, but let’s just say I learned my lesson. After having lobbied and protested in my congresswoman’s office, met and talked to her at fund-raisers, written scathingly about her being propped up by big money and political machines and specific influence groups, and after seeing her chief of staff’s jaw drop when she saw and recognized me from DC at a local Tucson even, to have her, my Congresswoman fall victim to an attempted assassination that injured and took the lives of many others — well — let’s just say that I can now vehemently disagree with someone while still loving them for being who they are. I learned that even politicos with whom I disagree can be inspirational and have good motives.
I hope the Mommy Wars component of this hoopla fades away quickly. Nothing is more fierce than a woman protecting children. Yes, there are terribly disturbed children in our society. Yes, there are mothers who are mentally ill in our society. Yes, we have too long allowed politics fueled by profit to compromise the well-being of our citizenry. The lives of our children depend on actions, not our words. So let’s work to protect our children and not attack each other.
Black Friday, Shop Local Saturday, Buy Nothing Day and Walmart
If I lived in Bedford Falls I might enjoy the hustle and bustle of Christmas Shopping with the rest of the townsfolk, excluding mean ol' Mr. Potter. But I live in a metropolitan area with over a 1,000,000 other souls and no freeways. I am not your typical American Shopper. I consider shopping to be in line with gathering and hunting in that for me shopping is about taking care of my family at the highest level. I grew up on a farm so one of the earliest lessons I remember learning was that taking care of family extended to taking care of the land. Quite simply working for short term gain or whimsical needs were villainy in my family culture that was pretty much in line with the U.S. and world's previous agrarian culture.
Hippies loved mom, the “organic” egg lady who composted, used hand loomed rag rugs, and connected with their philosophy if not their actions. Me, I was born the same week as Sid Vicious so I wasn't quite as keen on hippie-dom. But I was the Practical Punk so to speak and I incorporated things that first and foremost made sense to me, as did most of the Later Born Baby Boomers who were far too young to be Hippies.
The first house a boyfriend and I bought, and boy was that a mistake but that is a story for another post, largely came about because financial adversity has followed me throughout my life. At 16 there was the mid-1970s gas shortage and the economic crisis that was the first bubble bursting in the sudsy falseness of 1950s and 1960s America. Prime interest rates were over 17 percent when in 1980 when he and I assumed a mortgage with a 10 percent interest rate that seemed like a deal at the time. People back then assumed that property always increased in value. Back then people were stupid. The person we bought the house from paid too much for it, and the boyfriend whom I shall call Sluggo gave her $5000 more on the house than she had paid. (I remember disagreeing while standing over the stove as green peppers and mushrooms sautéed but I was cowed by this guy and he had convinced me he should make all the financial decisions.) So basically, we were fucked from the get go, but it did not really become clear until a couple years later when Ronnie Rayguns began building his new world order by sending emissaries like Rumsfeld to meet with Saddam , breaking unions, and allowing foreign agents, like Murdoch, to buy and control “American” media which had never been allowed.
So anyway, I blame the patriarchy, war, and greed for so effing up our country and economy that people are still convinced that buying created-in-China by essentially endentured servants, petroleum-based plastic crap from Wal-mart is somehow a traditional American way to spend Thanksgiving weekend. This is just downright delusional. Do you have the money in your pocket to buy those out-sourced, your brother in law in Indianapolis lost-a-job-making-televisions-to-that-company, products , or if you want the ease and few protection perks that using a credit card can give you, do you have the cash amount in your bank account to pay off the total amount before interest charges begin to accrue on that purchase? If not, then maybe you need to take a step back and re-evaluate your holiday traditions.
Don't be a Scab!
Even though I grew up on a farm, the land was a couple hours south of Detroit, and factories had invaded our lovely countryside mid-Twentieth Century. My dad was one of the few remaining farmers who didn't run a farm AND work in a factory to make ends meet. This was before all women worked outside the home. All she did was raise and preserve from a huge garden that fed our family, raise and take care of up to a couple thousand chickens, sell eggs from home and manage a weekend egg delivery route as well as be active in the Ladies Auxillary of the Thorncreek Volunteer Fire Department so they could supply the Volunteer Firemen, their husbands and sons, with protective equipment. We were a hard working community and you did NOT cross a picket line.
This second video below is to a Rebel Diaz video but if you want to hear a more current interpretation listen to this Ani DiFranco from this past year
Rebel Diaz
Natalie Merchant
And just for grins, a link so you could listen to Pete Seeger doing one for the Union Maids and Ladies Auxilary.
The woman who wrote the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On” Florence Reece was an amazing woman. Here is a video of her singing a bit of her song that she wrote after SCAB thugs broke into her house to rough up her husband but instead terrorized her and her children.
and some info about Florence from Wikipedia:
“Which Side Are You On?” is a song written by Florence Reece in 1931. Reece was the wife of Sam Reece, a union organizer for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky. In 1931, the miners of that region were locked in a bitter and violent struggle with the mine owners called the Harlan County War. In an attempt to intimidate the Reece family, Sheriff J. H. Blair and his men (hired by the mining company) illegally entered their family home in search of Sam Reece. Sam had been warned in advance and escaped, but Florence and their children were terrorized in his place. That night, after the men had gone, Florence wrote the lyrics to “Which Side Are You On?” on a calendar that hung in the kitchen of her home. She took the melody from a traditional Baptist hymn, “Lay the Lily Low”, or the traditional ballad “Jack Munro“.[1] Florence recorded the song, which can be heard on the CD Coal Mining Women.
Anyway, back to the topic of SHOPPING, er, I mean Thanksgiving…
Black Friday
I confess I have never understood the fascination with this national day of shopping. I suppose that is because I have never really had enough money to just go out and shop, shop, shop. My husband makes a good salary, finally, but when he was an Assistant Professor, going blind from cataracts at age 40, and I was working for between $14 and $24 K for full-time on call all the time (really) and expected to be at work from 7:30 to 5:30 every weekday and dealing with what turned in totally debilitating depression while raising our daughter and while my step daughter was still in high school and college, well, let's just say that shopping was not top thing on my mind.
I've had a pretty good life as an adult, we have a comfortable home, but neither Hubby nor I ever went for coordinated new sets of furniture or the like. I had antiques from my family and Hubby's mom worked as an antique dealer when he was a kid, so we both expected craftmanship in furniture. Neither of us ever liked synthetic fabrics for clothing. We liked to cook real food and when I served anything that had come from a package Hubby noted it, he ate it but he began cooking more and more because I would buy the occasional frozen lasagna. I guess neither of us ever bought into the more is better and shiny plastic is okay mentality.
It is crowded on Black Friday, I don't want to get my granddaughters plastic crap. My poor Zilla had to make do with computer learning based games; we never bought her Nintendo, PS any number, and the like. I have never shopped on the most crowded shopping day of the year. This year with Walmart workers striking, I will not be there shopping either. But then I haven't been in a Walmart in years and years.
Buy Nothing Day
Not only do I not shop on Black Friday, I participate in Buy Nothing Day. The activities can be really fun. This year I think I will park in Walmart's and other open on Thanksgiving day vendors' parking lots on Thanksgiving night and blast versions of ” What Side Are You On” to the throngs of zombified shoppers. Relaxation rather than action is also a very good way to just hang out with your family, start some traditions, and be with your family while encouraging stores and corps. to back off the brainwashing, because we want National Holidays days when people don't have to work. Make holidays into Holy or Precious Days to be spent with families having fun or doing things together. There is plenty of time to shop. A month is a long time… and OMG… you could wait for the after Christmas sales if there is an expensive appliance or toy that you have to have. But before you convince yourself that you have to have something, ask yourself some questions.
QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF BEFORE A PURCHASE
- Do I really need this?
- Why do I want this?
- Will I wear it or use it?
- Can it be reused?
- How long will it last?
- Did advertising convince me that I need this?
- Can I really afford this?
- Would the money be better put toward something else?
- Who made this?
- Who makes the profit on this item?
- Is it made from a non-renewable resource? (Petroleum based plastic, for example?)
- Can you be sure no coercive, or slave-like worker conditions we involved in it's production.
- Does the manufacture of this product use threatened or endangered component parts from fragile ecosystems?
- Does this purchase make the world better or worse for my children, grandchildren and descendants?
Shop Local Saturday
Shop Local Saturday is a campaign of American Express. That in and of itself was enough to make me suspicious, but that is just me. I do wonder why we don't make every day a shop local day? Try locally owned first, before going on to regional, national, and international merchants. I suspect the American Express backing of this local concept has benefit to AmEx that most folks do not stop to think about, such as recruitment of local small businesses to accept AmEx Cards while it encourages potential card carriers to equate local shopping with credit use. These pairings do not immediately come to mind at the moment. But AmEx is attempting to change that.
I still think I will shop local and pay cash when I can. Money stays in the local economy that way. And I don't want to give the big banks and financial institiutions any more business than I absolutely have to give to them.
Why Bother?
Ultimately our consumption patterns determine energy use, waste production, and have impact on the biosphere of Earth and the weather patterns within it. We must change everything we do, how we do it, and how we think about it if our grandchildren are live in a habitable world when they are our age. As the people who drive this consumption machine, we have a choice.
The choice I am making is to be conscious. I will not participate in Friday's buying frenzy. I will not buy from retailers who are open on Thursday. I will support striking workers. I will keep my purchases to well thought out ones that support concepts I believe in, because I know I make a difference. I am even going so far as scouring thrift stores, of which Tucson has an abundance, for amazing finds. I have found several wonderful, unused treasures and beautiful vintage pieces of jewelry and hand craft their wrappings and give them with pride.
We all make a difference by what we choose to do.
HOW, Exactly, Arizona Elections Are Being Stolen
Crappola. I want to be a regular old empty nest blogger and non-political writer, but I am cursed with awareness of events and the power that single voices can have. So instead of writing about Pinterest posts that serve as #ff or Follow Friends or Follow Fridays or Friend Feed or whatever the heck it stands for, I am writing about the theft of elections in Arizona and how they are being accomplished in at least one county, Pima County. Pima County, the county in which I happen to reside, is supposed to be a bastion of liberal sense in a sea of Christian/Mormon and Wingnut Libertarian Wack-a-doodlery.
I've posted this clip with a simple introductory sentence on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ to attempt to get the word out for the original Election Integrity folks, Audit AZ, not to be confused with Rovian election “integrity” folks who usurped the phrase and applied it to their thugs who were challenging voters throughout the U.S., possibly as a decoy to distract from the real way provisional ballots were planned to be created.
Rove and his smarmy cadre of Machevelian actors steal from the best. The old confuse a cat routine of distraction coupled with boredom works. It is a variation of the desensitization experienced when someone cries wolf so often that real information is lost. No one pays attention to Arizona because of the Right wing wacko reputation of the state. What better place to test out manipulation and theft tactics than a place no one takes seriously anyway? This reputation exists in spite of the huge Latino and First Peoples populations, the fact that Raul Grijalva, the Congressional Progressive Caucus leader, and massive bipartisan cooperative recall efforts, such as the one that recently removed the, now former, President of the Arizona Senate, Russell Pearce. A rather large progressive community in Arizona is far less credible than it should be by the caricature that has taken hold in the mind of most people in the U.S.
I wrote a Master's Thesis in Anthropology about cultural incorporation of the elements most threatening to the status quo by the larger “governing” cultural system so as to maintain its primacy. I believe that some of the left's most effective protests against the Rovian machinations of the Bush II's administration were absorbed, probably consciously, but possibly unconsciously, by the Kochian Right that continued the Bush assault on democracy after the Bush administration. I see potential for the early borrowing and reframing of progressives memes that the Right shaped into the Tea Party that began in the likes of progressive and cooperative street theater such as that done by CODEpink and Yellow Cake groups.
I witnessed early Tea Party-esque protest memes put together at a Convergence Center for the Phoenix Presidential Debate 2004. This was when I was helping put together an Arizona presense for CODEPINK in 2004 was the model for the Right Wing's Tea Party theme. We progressive to downright leftist groups (all the way from early players in what was becoming the Progressive Democrats of America, to environmental groups, Nadar supporters, anarchists of several stripes, and the general dissatisfied voice of youth) chanted, “We're Joe Six Pack and we've come to take our Country back,” while a “let them eat cake” Cake Street Puppet danced by the dangerous fretful and antsy hooves of Phoenix P.D. cavalry, when we were caught between the Darth Vader armor clad and shield weilding Phoenix Arizona Storm Troopers and the aforementioned calvary.
Many folks here in Arizona have been attempting to out the massive manipulation of elections as well as the testing of public sentiment manipulations and desensitization tactics for years. I understand that no one wants to believe this. It is extremely disturbing. But it is happening, and once again I have to say, “I'm reserving my right to tell you, 'I told you so!' when, down the line, this becomes widely known and accepted.”
What All This Means, Provisionally, In Arizona
Did my early ballot get counted? I have no way of knowing!
I watched the last days before the U.S. election via CNN International from outside the country. I then anxiously monitored election returns via Twitter feeds in airport boarding areas. The mere opportunity to have these vantage points for this process signals that I am a fortunate person in this life and the world.
Hubby and I spent more money than we have to send my hubby to a conference and for me to get to visit one of the places in the world that inspired the educational and career paths of my life. I, however, know this experience is not one that bestows or signifies the quality or value of my life. I am no better or worse a person than a woman who may never get to travel beyond her community or outside the borders of her state. Status, opportunity, achievement, and the “worth” of individuals are either distinct attributes or non-existent constructs.
The status quo in the U.S.A. is eroding. The ideas and ideals behind our constitution are growing. The American status quo does not embody our constitutional values. The change we are seeing does embody the essence of what has always made America great: an expansively democratic governance. This is not the same as expansive government. Yes, we are a representative democracy guided by an inclusive constitution at the highest levels. But there are eddies of absurdity that are pulling elements of our society into total dysfunction.
So what have we learned thus far and what do we do with it?
The simplistic assessment that “Pot, Gay Marriage,and Science are the Winners in this Election” has some truth in it. Liberty requires the pursuit of happiness. If individuals are not free to control their bodies, their most personal behaviors, and trust the science that guides collective policy, if something stops them from having time to dream, create, and problem solve, then our great nation will die an inelegant death through ignorant actions.
As an Arizona resident who is quite disappointed, but not surprised by, the reporting of Republican wins in the political races in my state with over a half a million uncounted early and provisional ballots, I expect my state to get what it deserves from allowing the essential democratic process to be violated consistently over the last many elections. If all this stands, there will be infrastructural spending in the next four years, but Jeff “no earmarks” Flake will see that Arizona does not get our fair share of public works money, just like Kyl did, and McCain will be right there with him. “Earmarks” that benefit constituents will be lost, but corporate kickbacks will be alive and well. The small government wackos will funnel questionably allocated funds into private prison systems, the contemporary tool of enslavement, rather than education. Propaganda works best with an uneducated populace. When they are imprisoned it works even better.
Allowing idiots to manipulate democracy in a state to the point where Neo-Nazis have been allowed to patrol the border, religious minorities have gerrymandered our political districts, state governance districts do not reflect the population of the state, has handicapped the ability of our institutions of higher education to attract the best students. What brilliant minority or foreign student would want to attend university in a state with AZ SB 1070. This in turn handicaps commerce when it attempts to draw upon a skilled, innovative, and renewable population of scientists, business innovators, and elastic well-educated labor networks that can respond to change.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor a leftist malcontent. I am an anthropologist who understands cultural systems, population trends, and trajectories. What has been going on in Arizona for a while now is dangerous and impacts democracy in all of America.
The Arizona example, along with Ohio and Florida, shows what assaults on democracy look like in the contemporary United States elections. Links to some of the Arizona Problems follow:
- Could voting irregularities sway the election? This mentions Flake’s robo-calls to Democrats telling them the wrong polling place.
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Arizona: More Than 600,000 Ballots Remain Uncounted Over half a million uncounted votes show a significant problem beyond individual irregularities.
- Count Every Vote in Arizona Petition. We have to petition to have our votes count? Apparently so.
More than anger, I am feeling nauseous, disheartened and a profound need to do something. I think this is how revolutions start. Anger is a short term irrational act. I am tired of giving up my time, energy and income to fight the right wing attempts, thus far rather successful ones, to violate the the will of the people as shown by the manipulation of elections by all levels and branches of government. I have already spent the better portion of five years of my life acting for change against wars waged due to the lies of selected rather than elected administrations, if I have to go out in the streets again, I am stepping it up this time. I am a matriot and the U.S. ideal of democracy and representative governance means the world to me.