Pages

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Leaves

This is what I'm looking forward to most about our first summer here in [our town]:



I have four tree seedlings--two of them rather sizeable, and two rather not.

I really, really, really hope I get at least a few figs out of this.

It doesn't have to be enough to make all the fig things I'm planning--fig jam, fig ice cream, fig pie, roasted fig and blue cheese salad, fig and chevre pizza, etc.

But, you know, some figs would be nice.

What would you make if you had an abundance of figs?

Friday, April 11, 2014

What I've Been Reading This Past Week

I'll say something intelligent about this one when I stop crying.  Hold on.  Nope.  Still crying.  "He was the only chicken they named."  That's exactly what it's like.

Instead of opening up the Bible, reading a random verse (or a tiny collection of your pet verses) and confirming what you already knew anyway, maybe try this.  Plainspoken yet profound advice on reading the Bible.

Friday, April 4, 2014

What I've Been Reading This Past Week

My friend Laura . . . well, I don't even know how to tell you why you should read this.  But you should.  You should read it with a copious supply of tissues nearby.  And then you should go hug your babies, or your mama, or someone who wasn't expecting a hug today but needs one, and thank God for the oft-unlooked-for miracle that is quotidian life.

I've been swinging maniacally between appalled and delighted at this story: human-leather-bound books re-discovered at Harvard library.  It's just so wrong, but if I had one, I think I would kind of love it.

This one made me happy for two reasons: A Different Kind of Walker.  Number one, obviously, everybody likes something that makes life a little cheerier for special-needs families.  And this one is so especially clever--who knows what sorts of developmental leaps might be enabled by putting kids in a "normal" position for their age, leaps that were previously understood to be precluded by the disabling condition itself rather than by the absence of a typical developmental experience?  But, number two, go moms.  Who knows what sort of therapeutic advances might be facilitated by listening to more caregivers, leaps that were previously dismissed as not being worthy of "serious professional" attention because they came from "mere" moms?

Also, Vive le Francais! Actually, some of these are pretty dumb reasons.  There is really only one that matters.  You should learn French because then you will be more motivated to visit France some day, and if you do, you will be able to eat Mont d'Or, and macarons, and financiers, and Marmite Dieppoise, and fifty-year-old Calvados.  (And if you do, you should take me with you.  Because I haven't been back in ten years, and I still cry sometimes about that.)

Thursday, April 3, 2014

How Many Clueless Men Does It Take To Host A Radio Show?

I'm so glad so very many other people are commenting on the sheer stupidity evidenced by these two children masquerading as men.

It saves me the trouble.

Well, since it's not out of my way, I'll go ahead and state the obvious:

Sure, dudes, let's go ahead and make women responsible for cutting open their own bodies to avoid you missing a baseball game.

I'm sure your children, too, (will) appreciate hearing that you think they should schedule their neediness around your professional lives.  Being born surely takes a back seat to 1/162ndth of a single baseball season.  Thanks, Dad, for putting that into perspective!  I'll mark you down as a "no," then, for high school and college graduation, shall I?  And I won't dare to plan a summer wedding, don't you worry!

You know, now that you put it this way, I'm sure all parents will be nodding in agreement, that parenting is exactly just like that--you can arrange every detail of a child's life, from conception onward, to suit yourself.

Also, no one can respect a man that stops doing a life-or-death activity--you know, playing baseball--to do something stupid like hold his wife's hand after she, you know, does nothing of any importance whatsoever.  Real masculinity requires, positively obliges, men to be ready to dismiss at a moment's notice and for any reason, anything done, or valued, or said by people with ovaries.

And it's totally true that biology teaches us something important about ethics: men don't have boobs, so they're pretty much useless after they donate their sperm.  They can get on with more important things, like playing baseball.  Sure thing.

Yes, you're the one "putting food on the table" with your Really Important Work.  The fact that I can produce food with my very body--not important.  At all.  You're feeding us.  It's all you.

Also, the thing where you endanger women by casually tossing around your disgusting opinions about their bodies and their medical care so that you can have a cute little reputation as a "controversial" commentator--totally okay.  With all of us.

I'm definitely pointing you out to my sons as role models to follow.

Oops.  I think I may have gotten a little sarcastic there.

Despite the above sarcastiplosion, the idiocy, the ignorance, the appallingly willful and unabashed misogyny evidenced by these two men is not really the thing that troubles me about this video.

What troubles me more is the possibility that this will shift the conversation about child-bearing and -rearing toward the collectively-bargained rights enjoyed by a few privileged men and away from the lived experience of women who still cannot afford to exercise what few and inadequate protections they have.

Working mothers will hear every one of Esiason's and Carton's contemptuous dismissals of their needs as mothers, every one of their contemptuous rejections of a father's role in nurturing children, and gnash their teeth at being told by one more pair of assholes that it's their job to breastfeed the babies, alone, while their husbands go off and do "real" things, things that matter, things that put food on the table.

But they will also hear, in the background, everything contemptuous thing their co-workers and bosses say about "breeders," about women who take maternity leave at "inconvenient" times for the company, about women who "owe the profession" a single-minded dedication that leaves no room for child-bearing at all (much less child-rearing).

(I'm not making this up.  I've actually been told that it's my job as a woman in academia to delay childbearing until I have tenure, or forgo it entirely.  I've been told that it's what I owe the profession, and especially other women in the profession.  I mean "been told" literally, here.  Like, by a person, speaking to me.  In those exact words.)

They'll read all the articles cheering Daniel Murphy for doing such a "sweet" and "important" thing as showing up for his child's first week of life, and they'll remember all the times they, as working women, were criticized for doing the same thing, or for their failure to do so.

Women are criticized by traditionalists for failing to handle all the nurturing on their own, and they're criticized by supposed progressives for failing to protect The Company from the inconvenience of their functional reproductive system.  (I guess they're supposed to be grateful for the sort of "progress" that allows them to work for pay at all, and not pay attention to such things as maternity leave, lactation accommodation, and health insurance for dependents.) 

I was extremely grateful to my colleague at [my former college] for covering my classes for me the first two weeks of the spring semester after the birth of my third son, because it allowed me to have a full month's maternity leave.

But the insanity--the stark, raving insanity--that Amos's birth will forever in my mind be linked with all of the professional obligations he didn't interfere with (fall semester exams, grades due, seven Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services)!  I swear, I am not making this up: I have never once spoken of Amos's birth without joking about him "helpfully" waiting until the day after Christmas to be born "because of all of our pastoral responsibilities."

And the insanity--the stark, raving insanity--that I've met actual, real, live, educated, professional women who have told me that they went back to work within a week of giving birth because they "couldn't afford" to take maternity leave!

Please hear me: I am among the privileged few in the world, even if you can't tell it from my bank account.  My colleagues are other privileged women--women with terminal degrees in their field, with professional clout, with publications and numerous speaking invitations per year, women who've been on NPR, even.

If my colleagues and I have to worry about this . . . what on earth is going on in the rest of the world?

No.  I don't get worked up by the fact that a pair of idiotic men said some idiotic things about men taking paternity leave.

But I am worried that a bunch of men will use this as an excuse to spend their time wagging their tongues what wealthy men do with their legal rights and collectively-bargained contract protections, and ignore--once again, still, always--the needs and rights and near-constant vulnerability of women and children.