On A Woman's Right to...Speak

One of the things that hounded me throughout my working life was having a reputation as a bitch.  I struggled mightily with this.  It hurt me deeply that I always seemed to be making people angry or resentful when I spoke, even when what I had to say was valid and had no malice behind it, only a desire to facilitate understanding and move a job forward.  I could never comprehend why my motivations were always misconstrued.  I was too negative.  I was too critical.  I was too smart…or, at least, I was routinely resented for allowing any public demonstration of greater than average intelligence.  Surely such a display was meant as a purposeful insult to those of lesser intellectual standing!  I remember a male district manager advising me, in the course of a discussion about why I was not terribly popular with upper management, "You don't always have to be so right!"  Excuse me?

And then there was the time I slammed my keys on the counter and turned to walk off a job when my immediate superior (a man) remarked to my face in the middle of a disagreement, “Well we all know who wears the pants in YOUR family…!”

To be sure, I had a blind spot when it came to changing my communication methods in order to avoid the labels I so dreaded.  I just kept thinking that as long as I was honest and earnest, people would eventually get me.  I could never quite embrace the truth that no matter what I said, the source of irritation was not how I said it, it was the fact that I said it at all.  I was always proud that I had enjoyed (very limited) success in a traditionally male-dominated career (restaurant management.) And for years, I labored under the misconception that I had been fortunate enough throughout my working life to have avoided sexism in the workplace.  Who was I kidding?    

After awhile, I just stopped talking at work.  If every time I opened my mouth I pissed someone off, I would just hold my peace.  I preferred a reputation as uncommunicative and surly over the “b” word.  Which, of course, was not a good choice either.  One of my last bosses called me into her office and berated me for being silent or giving one-word answers.  Apparently, that behavior was as threatening as having an opinion.  I couldn’t win for losing.  Any wonder why, shortly thereafter, I chose to “retire” from the workaday world and jump into entrepreneurship with both feet?       

I stumbled upon this Washington Post article on Facebook:

Famous Quotes The Way A Woman Would Have To Say Them During A Meeting

In it, author Alexandra Petri takes famous historical quotes (uttered by men, naturally) and re-works them using the kind of language women are expected to use when attempting to be heard in the average business meeting.  For example:

“Let my people go.”

Woman in a Meeting: “Pharaoh, listen, I totally hear where you’re coming from on this. I totally do. And I don’t want to butt in if you’ve come to a decision here, but, just, I have to say, would you consider that an argument for maybe releasing these people could conceivably have merit? Or is that already off the table?”

   
Wow.  What a reality check!   Petri may go a hair too far to make her point—the mealy-mouthed apologetics in the feminized quotes are over-the-top, to say the least.  But any woman who reads this, at the exact moment when she starts laughing and wheezing, “That’s ridiculous!” will develop an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach that the author’s core idea—that women are held to an entirely different semantic standard than men—is spot on.  And every woman who has ever worked outside the home can offer up corroborating examples from her own exploits in the workplace.

Great strides were made, back in the late 20^th century, to abolish both racial bias and gender bias, in the American workplace, and in society-at-large.  We Boomers made earnest moves in that direction, when we were young and robust and full of ourselves.  But we didn't finish the work.  We didn't eradicate discrimination.  We merely covered up the most blatant examples, and ignored the more insidious ones.  All it took was a couple of decades of ascendancy of a Conservative agenda to pull us backward at least one step for each step forward we made; to make us understand that the work we believed DONE not only was not good enough, but is in no way safe from being UN-DONE. 

Get angry, ladies!  Know when you're being disrespected!  Fight for the right to speak openly and honestly! No person should ever be held to a different standard of behavior based on her gender, any more than on the color of her skin, her religion, or her citizenship status.  We need to recognize discrimination for what it is, whenever and wherever it occurs.  We need to apply ourselves to rooting it out and replacing it with a fair standard for every American in the workplace—male, female, black, white, immigrant or native.  And we can never, NEVER relax that vigilance.  Because we can never be certain that the good changes we put in place will last forever.  Or even past our own generation.        

  

Falling, Itching, Walking

I don't know what it is about Fall.  For me, it's a time of churning, yearning for change.  Of  looking at my life and thinking it's not right.  It needs something.  Something I should be doing, somewhere I should be going, some change I should be making.  I  itch.  Itch almost out of my skin.  Itch with the pulse of energy that has built up...  Preparing...storing...overflowing...  Waiting  for the right thing to throw it at.  And the thing has never come.

Since I was a teenager, this has been my challenge.  The wind freshens, the light slants, the leaves change and fall...and I can't sit still.  I burst out of the house and into the outdoors and just...walk.  Hundreds of miles, turning things over and over, puzzling, dreaming...walking. 

I'm not a teenager any more.  Now the itch is aggravated by memories of things tried and things failed.  I itch no less...maybe more.   Fifty years of itching, and no clue yet what I'm itching for.  And time...is running out. 

Kind Words

I've never been one to chase after the unattainable beauty standards of American culture.  I've gone through life flat-chested, short-legged, waistless and with a mouth full of crooked teeth, but I never felt all that self-conscious about it, and I never felt that I was bullied or teased about it.  But, being the person of artistic bent that I am, I've always maintained a wardrobe that spoke to a heightened design sense, and I never, NEVER leave the house without arranging my hair in some non-scary fashion and putting on at least a minimum of makeup.  I like to look in the mirror and think, "There.  I won't make anyone run away screaming today."   I ceased entertaining the thought of  inspiring appreciative looks or actual compliments about twenty-five years ago. 

But lately, I've been feeling just...ugly.  I don't feel like I'm making a graceful physical transition from middle age to old age at all.  The skin above my eyes has begun to puff and sag to the point that it is interfering with my vision.  And, of course, one eye is leading the charge over the other, so I look perpetually...asymmetrical.  And my hair, which has never been my crowning glory, has decided to surrender to my never-ending struggle with it by simply...falling out.  My core muscles have deteriorated significantly over the past few years, putting stubborn bulges in places I didn't even know could bulge.  These days, I'm looking more and more like a bald, pot-bellied, snaggle-toothed Buddha than anything I would equate with a gracefully aging former hippy.   And the clothes that are out there now--the ones I can afford, anyway--are not designed to flatter this problematic sixty-year-old figure.

Even so, I do take pains to look my best, whatever that may be, whenever I go out in public.  Just because I can't stand the idea of not looking at least marginally put-together  when I'm out among other people.  If I look bad, I feel bad.  So I indulge myself.  To that end, every Saturday night this summer, I have carefully chosen an outfit to wear to the Sunday market the next day.  Always adding a touch of sparkle or a scarf or something, just to make ME feel good.  And keeping in mind that I'm going to be working.

This past Sunday was our last market of the season.  I have been in a strange mood lately, what with suffering from the uglies and struggling with the realities of my marriage.  And market days are a day of intense interaction with the husband:  90-minute drives to the site and back, and then the 8-hour stint at the market itself, just him and me.  I have to hand it to us, we have been handling the togetherness rather well.  After a somewhat rocky start, we fell into an understanding of, "You do what you do, and I'll do what I do," and we're actually very careful not to step on each other's toes.

I don't really remember the exact conversation, but I remember remarking that I was just...ugly.  Of course, he said, "Oh, no...you are not."  And of course, that has little meaning coming out of the mouth of someone you know is trying his best to maintain a positive equilibrium between you and himself.  Not that he didn't mean it.  That's just how I tend to view most compliments, or denials of my self-bashing, that come out of his mouth.  It's definitely MY problem, not his.  I wallow, and he does not seem to have the magic winch that can drag me out of this particular mud hole.

Later that afternoon, though, something did happen that managed to pull me out, at least a bit.  The wife of the guy with the booth next to ours came up to me, completely unsolicited, and said, "You always look so pretty!"  (And there is no way she could have heard my earlier remark, since their booth is an enclosed wooden structure and we are right next to the speakers from the band, so the music makes it hard to hear our own customers, much less conversations going on in the next space.) 

Imagine that.  Not just an appreciative look.  An actual verbal compliment, from a stranger.  Something I hadn't expected in a million, billion years.  Sometimes, the Universe throws you a bone that you don't even know you are in desperate need of until you get it.

So let me just say...if the Creator inspires you to compliment someone today, DO IT.  You never know just how strong a lifeline one kind word can be.   

Anniversaries

We have a wedding anniversary coming up in less than two weeks.  Our 39^th.  Sometimes I just find it impossible to believe we have been married for so many years.  Those years have slipped through our hands like greased aquarium tubing.  Getting more slippery and falling through faster with each passing day.

We have had our issues, issues that had us setting up our separate camps as far apart, emotionally, as we could get while living under the same roof.  But we’ve always managed to turn back toward each other and clasp hands on the actual day of our anniversary.

This year will be different, though.  This will be the first anniversary to come up since I surrendered.  Since I gave up on the idea of ever getting back to the place of loving connection that we used to share.  Or at least, that I always believed we shared.  Maybe we never did.

After nearly forty years of trying to keep that connection alive…well, forty years minus the five hellish restaurant years that delivered the death blow and drove the nails into the coffin…I get that we don’t have that kind of relationship any more.  If we ever did.   I guess the fact that I had to try so hard to keep the connection alive casts doubt on whether it existed to begin with.  Or, at the very least, whether it was ever a vibrant, integral part of our partnership.  I suspect it was always just a pipe dream.

We are friends.  We like each other, most of the time.  We can live together in peace, for the most part.  I’ve found that my appetite for arguing has almost disappeared.  Fighting is only worthwhile if you’re fighting for something.  Since nothing is going to change, why bother?

So I am left wondering how exactly to “celebrate” adding another year to a marriage that has, in the end, fallen so short of what I had hoped it was, or would be.  It’s difficult for me to wax too rhapsodic about the length of the partnership…I feel like I’m being asked to celebrate quantity over quality.  I suppose it is wonderful that we’ve been together this long.  But I’m having a hard time working up any excitement over why and how we’ve made it this far. 

Because, to be honest…I don’t really know.     

  

 

 

Going Forward

After living through another year of watching the blog change character and lose audience, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will have to change my tactics or I will stop writing altogether.  With that in mind, I have decided this: Since this is my blog and I want it to continue to be a place that I come with the things I need to write about, I’m going to begin posting more of the kinds of things that I used to think unworthy, and frankly, BORING, to put out there for the eyes of the general public.  I am in a dark-ish place right now, and my personal writing is going to reflect that, and I know that people don’t really want to read that kind of thing.  But since the “general public” is SO unlikely ever to come here voluntarily, and even the “public” I used to write for mostly…doesn’t, I can’t think that my personal posts will chase anyone (else) away.

I will, from time to time, compose “op-ed” pieces on subjects of more general interest and post them here.  And to those, I will post links on Facebook.  But these…others…will simply appear, quietly, with no fanfare. 

So as a general rule, if you somehow receive notice that I have updated the blog, but haven’t seen a post on Facebook about it, be warned that it will be a post of a personal, and likely melancholy, nature.  Stay away if you have no appetite for that…

We Are Surely Doomed

For the past several weeks, I've been bombarded with news stories that have almost...ALMOST...brewed enough ire in my soul to come pouring out through my pen. Donald Trump.  Kim Davis.  Sandra Bland.  Planned Parenthood videos.  Maybe I've just...had it.  Maybe there's nothing more this god-forsaken country can churn out that shocks or horrifies me enough to comment on. 

I've been riding this political roller-coaster since 2003.  Maybe there simply is no drop death-defying enough to entice a screech--or even a startled gasp--from my throat.  We've already gone over the edge...where else is there to go?

And then, this morning, there was this.  It popped up innocently on my Facebook news feed, as the Peterson Field Guide page is among those I have "liked."

https://www.audubon.org/news/adorable-moustached-kingfisher-photographed-first-time

It got no notice at all from any of the liberal Facebook entities ...not Mother Jones, nor Daily Kos, nor Salon, nor Occupy Democrats.  No outcry from PETA, nor the SPCA, nor the IAPF.  In case you haven't clicked on the link and read the story, I'm quoting it in its entirety here:

"The Moustached Kingfisher is an elusive bird—the cartoonish species had not been seen in the wild for decades, and until earlier this month, it had never been photographed. But two weeks ago a group of researchers led by individuals from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) happened upon one while surveying endemic wildlife in the mossy jungles of Guadalcanal, the biggest isle in the Solomon Island chain, and snapped some winning photos of the bright blue bird.

"AMNH biologist Chris Filardi and his team were traipsing through the dense forest when they heard what they thought was the call of a large kingfisher. Moments later, one of the surveyors spotted something moving in a nearby thicket: A blue-and-gold bird flourished its crest for a moment, before vanishing in a blur of color, Filardi wrote in his blog. "A methodical tail pumping behavior that caught my eye" helped him recognize it as a male Moustached Kingfisher—a bird he'd sought for more than 20 years. 

"There have been very few sightings of Moustached Kingfishers to date, and none of them have been male. Prior to this discovery, the only real sources of information on the species were three female specimens spotted in the 1920s and 1950s. That doesn’t mean the birds are particularly uncommon—they just prefer a very specific, and hidden, habitat. Moustached Kingfishers tend to roost in tall patches of closed-canopy forest and nest in holes in the ground. Their anonymity may also come from the fact that very few ornithologists have explored Guadalcanal over the last century. The stately birds tend to be crepuscular—only active at dusk and dawn—making them even harder to spot and giving them their ghost-like reputation.

“Initially it was a surreal, childlike sense of a mythical beast come to life, Filardi says. 

"In the days following the sighting, Filardi and his team eavesdropped on several more kingfisher calls. They were finally able to catch one in a mist net—“a gorgeous, strong, and raucous” male, Filardi says. The researchers got to work right away photographing and filming the bird’s behavior. Ultimately, with the blessing of the local community, the team decided to euthanize the bird so they could bring the specimen back with them for further study, in hopes of answering questions about lineage and evolution of this cryptic species.

"Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to clarify that the bird was euthanized and the specimen collected. Paul Sweet, collection manager for the Department of Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the researchers on the team, told Audubon that they assessed the state of the population and the state of the habitat, and concluded it was substantial and healthy enough that taking the specimen—the only male ever observed by science—would not affect the population’s success."

An American scientist. Obviously one with the economic and academic chops to mount a major research expedition.  Traipsing through the dense jungles, among the fantastical array of flora and fauna, enough to thrill the heart of any researcher worth his salt, he happens upon the rarest of birds, hardly seen and never photographed.  He hears its telltale calls and noises, catches a quick glimpse of it flitting away...   Ah! A story that calls to mind the adventures of Stanley and Livingston, or Jane Goodall.

But it quickly becomes obvious that this guy is no Jane Goodall.   "The team" first contrives to CAPTURE the bird... ( The red flag in my head immediately goes up.). WTF?  Why did you have to do that?  Not stealthy or patient enough to wait for it and observe it undisturbed in its natural habitat?

As if that weren't bad enough, the real shocker comes at the end of the article, where the author mentions, almost as an aside, that the scientists eventually EUTHANIZED this lovely, wild creature ...so they could take it back to the lab and study it further.  (No more red flags in my head for this one...my head just explodes.)

I stare at the screen.  What?  WHAT?  Am I really reading an article on the Audubon Society website that has just reported the killing of a rare bird as if it were as commonplace and perfunctory as "collecting a specimen"?

Just like human beings.  "Ooh! pretty!  I've never seen one of those!  Gotta HAVE it!  And if I KILL it, It can be mine forever and I can show it off to all my friends!  Won't they be jealous??!?"

DO NOT try to tell me that this is standard scientific procedure.  Yes, I know Audubon himself routinely killed birds in order to study them, and is still considered one of the greatest naturalists of all time.   This has always seemed creepy and morbid to me, yet I can cut Audubon some slack, since he did not possess any of the technological advances that are at the disposal of today's scientists.  Today's researchers can get their hands on tools that John Audubon would habe thought miraculous...or devil-possessed.

But we HAVE those things now.  We HAVE digital photography, and "bird-cams", and powerful microscopes and chemical testing equipment.  We don't NEED to kill an animal in order to study it.  

So I can only conclude that this was yet another (poorly disguised) instance of trophy-taking; no less than the murder of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe this past July.

Cecil's violent and untimely death at least earned the shock and and outrage of much of the world community.  

For all the good it did, in the long run.  

Because, apparently, if you call yourself a "scientist," the world gives you a pass on trophy collecting.  So this beautiful, elusive bird, every bit as senselessly murdered as a famous, beloved lion, got a couple dozen outraged comments on the Audubon website...

And from the rest of the world...crickets.

Jon Stewart has retired.  Jimmy Carter is dying.

And American scientists comb the jungles of the world for rare specimens...to kill.

Whatever spark of faith I had left in the goodness of human nature in general, and any American claim to that commodity in particular, is rapidly turning to ash.

Things To Do

Twenty pounds of fresh apples that I bought at a roadside stand.

A large bowl of tomatoes from my garden, sitting on the counter.

 “Coming to Terms…”

What do these three things have in common?

They are things I wanted, things I worked for, things I went out of my way to get my hands on.  But it’s going to take some work to turn them into something beautiful and useful.  Work that, at any given moment, I’m not altogether certain I want to invest. 

But I made the apple sauce yesterday.  And I’ll probably tackle the pasta sauce today.  Hope that determination and creative juju will then carry over to the blog.

Twelve years.

Have I run out of words?