Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Oh for goodness sake. I was reading an article about the completely admirable organizaton, Heifer(they do completely admirable economic development in third world countries), and what should intrude on my train of thought but my Dad's dismissive reference to our local, busy, church lady as "that old heifer".
Come to think of it, he refered to many of the sociable and social ladies of "a certain age" as heifers. Apart from the usual mild misogyny common to men who were farmers and ranchers during that part of the 1960s, what made these particular people worthy of dismissal?
I'm wondering because I am now of "a certain age" and am quite content to resemble those energetic and earnest gals. Of course I'd never refer to myself or anyone else as a gal and I certainly wouldn't ever wear those pointy-eyed, rhinestone trimmed glasses. You know, the 4H leader, precinct chairman, neighborhood association treasurer type of women.
Since I refer to myself as a general busybody I guess it is time to claim my own heiferdom. We heifers are certainly not at the head of the herd leading the charge. There are some pretty amazing women who are these days and good on them. No, we're pretty evenly distributed throughout the herd. We may not be the leaders but we're going to make dang sure that the herd keeps moving apace as we fill in, take up and start new civic enterprises; the budget committee sign-up sheet never has enough names on it. You'll add yours if you're really a heifer. You will, however, be hard pressed to get the whole motley assortment that makes up our society to your goal if us heifers get our heads down and refuse to go along.
It is not impossible to move right on past us and leave all us middling and careful examiners of position papers and voting records behind in the dust but you want to be especially careful of anyone who wants you to go there. Many of us heifers have been there and done that. At "a certain age" you've been down some long dry trails. Remember Consciousness Raising? The very fact that we're here- we're participating, means we haven't been led over those cliffs of religious extremism, political extremism, apathy and self absorption. Go heifers. And Heifers
Oh for goodness sake. I was reading an article about the completely admirable organizaton, Heifer(they do completely admirable economic development in third world countries), and what should intrude on my train of thought but my Dad's dismissive reference to our local, busy, church lady as "that old heifer".
Come to think of it, he refered to many of the sociable and social ladies of "a certain age" as heifers. Apart from the usual mild misogyny common to men who were farmers and ranchers during that part of the 1960s, what made these particular people worthy of dismissal?
I'm wondering because I am now of "a certain age" and am quite content to resemble those energetic and earnest gals. Of course I'd never refer to myself or anyone else as a gal and I certainly wouldn't ever wear those pointy-eyed, rhinestone trimmed glasses. You know, the 4H leader, precinct chairman, neighborhood association treasurer type of women.
Since I refer to myself as a general busybody I guess it is time to claim my own heiferdom. We heifers are certainly not at the head of the herd leading the charge. There are some pretty amazing women who are these days and good on them. No, we're pretty evenly distributed throughout the herd. We may not be the leaders but we're going to make dang sure that the herd keeps moving apace as we fill in, take up and start new civic enterprises; the budget committee sign-up sheet never has enough names on it. You'll add yours if you're really a heifer. You will, however, be hard pressed to get the whole motley assortment that makes up our society to your goal if us heifers get our heads down and refuse to go along.
It is not impossible to move right on past us and leave all us middling and careful examiners of position papers and voting records behind in the dust but you want to be especially careful of anyone who wants you to go there. Many of us heifers have been there and done that. At "a certain age" you've been down some long dry trails. Remember Consciousness Raising? The very fact that we're here- we're participating, means we haven't been led over those cliffs of religious extremism, political extremism, apathy and self absorption. Go heifers. And Heifers
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Two of four grandparents came over on the boat. That should moderate my response to the waves of immigration which are forming the economy from which myself and my children must wrest a living. It doesn't.
We have 8 million undocumented workers now and the president's proposal will remove whatever legal barriers there are to a huge increase in those already huge numbers. Other barriers to immigration which kept wholesale exchanges of populations between every corner of this globe and our nation have also disappeared.
When the last large wave of immigration occured, during the turn of the century, contemporaries of my Grandma Amelia (from Germany) and Grandpa Joe (from Ireland) made the decision to emmigrate as a permanent committment. There are commuter illegals now, who divide their time, loyalty and homeland between two countries. One characteristic of the undocumented workers whom I know personally is an almost complete lack of civic involvement in US public life. These neighbors of mine are law-abiding and hard working. It is, however, very difficult to get undocumented residents of the community in which I live to report criminal activity, move to correct inequitable actions by community leaders or make an investment in the neighborhood. Their residence in Mexico, their church and community are all hundreds of miles away. Their primary interest seems to be in that identity rather than the civic life of this place where they spend the large majority of their time.
We have 8 million undocumented workers now and the president's proposal will remove whatever legal barriers there are to a huge increase in those already huge numbers. Other barriers to immigration which kept wholesale exchanges of populations between every corner of this globe and our nation have also disappeared.
When the last large wave of immigration occured, during the turn of the century, contemporaries of my Grandma Amelia (from Germany) and Grandpa Joe (from Ireland) made the decision to emmigrate as a permanent committment. There are commuter illegals now, who divide their time, loyalty and homeland between two countries. One characteristic of the undocumented workers whom I know personally is an almost complete lack of civic involvement in US public life. These neighbors of mine are law-abiding and hard working. It is, however, very difficult to get undocumented residents of the community in which I live to report criminal activity, move to correct inequitable actions by community leaders or make an investment in the neighborhood. Their residence in Mexico, their church and community are all hundreds of miles away. Their primary interest seems to be in that identity rather than the civic life of this place where they spend the large majority of their time.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
I want to hear your voice on the scandalous neglect of the people of New Orleans by our government. Aid extended to the victims of the asian tsunami has been distributed and monitored much more equitably throughout that region than aid for the feeble rebuilding effort helmed by the US government in La. The main difference that I see between the two rebuilding efforts is that NGOs have been more fair minded and less politisized in their coordination of funds donated for tsunami relief than FEMA, Congress and the Red Cross have.
People who appear to be perfectly rational question whether New Orleans should be rebuilt after the devestating failure of its infrastructure to stand up to two catastrophic storms in one month. That is not a rational response to the desperate plight of New Orleans residents.
Here in Oregon we sit astride the mother of all subduction zone faults. We're downstream from millions of gallons of radioactive material that's moving at groundwater speed into the Columbia river. Downhill from Mount St Helens, an errupting volcano, we mistakenly feel safe in our little bastion. If the mountain had been pointing our way when the big one blew in 1980 hundreds of thousands of Portland residents could have been in the same sorry shape as the hundreds of thousands of wandering New Orleanians: waiting in some god-awful motel in Fresno or Pocatello to hear if our fellow Americans would care enough about our corner of our nation to come dig us out. The essensce of our pact with our fellow Americans is this: "We'll dig you out".
Margaret Edgington
138 NE Jefferson
Hillsboro, OR 97124
People who appear to be perfectly rational question whether New Orleans should be rebuilt after the devestating failure of its infrastructure to stand up to two catastrophic storms in one month. That is not a rational response to the desperate plight of New Orleans residents.
Here in Oregon we sit astride the mother of all subduction zone faults. We're downstream from millions of gallons of radioactive material that's moving at groundwater speed into the Columbia river. Downhill from Mount St Helens, an errupting volcano, we mistakenly feel safe in our little bastion. If the mountain had been pointing our way when the big one blew in 1980 hundreds of thousands of Portland residents could have been in the same sorry shape as the hundreds of thousands of wandering New Orleanians: waiting in some god-awful motel in Fresno or Pocatello to hear if our fellow Americans would care enough about our corner of our nation to come dig us out. The essensce of our pact with our fellow Americans is this: "We'll dig you out".
Margaret Edgington
138 NE Jefferson
Hillsboro, OR 97124
Monday, October 31, 2005
Two of the people who gave me form were permanently and gravely injured by botched abortions.
My aunt was elderly when Roe v Wade was decided but told me why she supported the ruling.
In the depths of the depression she was a newly married woman who found that she was married to a bounder. Bill had no intention of keeping to his marriage vows and my aunt was struggling to keep her only two living children fed and clothed while he spent less and less time providing for his family. She needed the intermittent support her straying husband contributed to supplement what she could provide for them.
Bill caught a venereal disease in his wanderings (not uncommon) and, no treatment available, passed it on to his wife. Rather than bear more children who would likely be harmed by the disease, Annie found an abortionist and had the first abortion. No contraceptives were available to her, so there were others. Each one creating scars, physical and mental.
At the same time Annie told me about her abortions, my closest friend was leaving a similarly non-marriage marriage and working and attending college. She hoped eventually to get a job which could support her two year old daughter and herself. The law said that an abortion must be available to her. Another pregnancy and another child to support would keep her from leaving an abusive and disfunctional marriage and she chose to have an abortion. No such procedure was within reach of a desperately poor, uninsured working mother anywhere within a two-hundred-mile radius. Consequently no medically supervised abortion was available. She performed an abortion on herself, hemorrhaged, tore and scarred.
The nomination of Mr Alito to join the Supreme Court brings with it the reasoning which he has already propounded that there is in the married condition itself the right of any married man to be informed of any pregnancy his wife may be carrying and to have a say in the future of that pregnancy regardless of the decision of the wife to the contrary.
Even in instances where there are no basic disagreements between spouses about the future of a pregnancy, imposing legal barriers to a woman's full control of a her choices can and has caused abominable intrusion into the marriages of couples who are in complete agreement about the woman's right to that full measure of control. Legalisms just do not move as fast a life does.
Teddy G was taken to a hospital with a life-threatening hemorrhage . An ectopic pregnancy had burst through the wall of her Fallopian tube. As she faded between consciousness and unconsciousness her doctor explained that surgery was needed immedialtely to save her life. When Teddy urged the doctor to perform the surgery he explained that she wasn't able to consent to that surgery. Because the surgery would affect her ability to bear children, her husband would have to be located and consent to having his wife saved. The law which nearly cost my friend her life when it delayed treatment that she desperately needed was not necessary in the case of Teddy and her husband because they were in agreement that a decision which impacted her so severely would always have been left to her.
As has been said about democracy, leaving the choice to terminate a pregnancy always and solely in the hands of the mother is not ideal it's just that any other choice is so much worse.
My aunt was elderly when Roe v Wade was decided but told me why she supported the ruling.
In the depths of the depression she was a newly married woman who found that she was married to a bounder. Bill had no intention of keeping to his marriage vows and my aunt was struggling to keep her only two living children fed and clothed while he spent less and less time providing for his family. She needed the intermittent support her straying husband contributed to supplement what she could provide for them.
Bill caught a venereal disease in his wanderings (not uncommon) and, no treatment available, passed it on to his wife. Rather than bear more children who would likely be harmed by the disease, Annie found an abortionist and had the first abortion. No contraceptives were available to her, so there were others. Each one creating scars, physical and mental.
At the same time Annie told me about her abortions, my closest friend was leaving a similarly non-marriage marriage and working and attending college. She hoped eventually to get a job which could support her two year old daughter and herself. The law said that an abortion must be available to her. Another pregnancy and another child to support would keep her from leaving an abusive and disfunctional marriage and she chose to have an abortion. No such procedure was within reach of a desperately poor, uninsured working mother anywhere within a two-hundred-mile radius. Consequently no medically supervised abortion was available. She performed an abortion on herself, hemorrhaged, tore and scarred.
The nomination of Mr Alito to join the Supreme Court brings with it the reasoning which he has already propounded that there is in the married condition itself the right of any married man to be informed of any pregnancy his wife may be carrying and to have a say in the future of that pregnancy regardless of the decision of the wife to the contrary.
Even in instances where there are no basic disagreements between spouses about the future of a pregnancy, imposing legal barriers to a woman's full control of a her choices can and has caused abominable intrusion into the marriages of couples who are in complete agreement about the woman's right to that full measure of control. Legalisms just do not move as fast a life does.
Teddy G was taken to a hospital with a life-threatening hemorrhage . An ectopic pregnancy had burst through the wall of her Fallopian tube. As she faded between consciousness and unconsciousness her doctor explained that surgery was needed immedialtely to save her life. When Teddy urged the doctor to perform the surgery he explained that she wasn't able to consent to that surgery. Because the surgery would affect her ability to bear children, her husband would have to be located and consent to having his wife saved. The law which nearly cost my friend her life when it delayed treatment that she desperately needed was not necessary in the case of Teddy and her husband because they were in agreement that a decision which impacted her so severely would always have been left to her.
As has been said about democracy, leaving the choice to terminate a pregnancy always and solely in the hands of the mother is not ideal it's just that any other choice is so much worse.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
In the whitehouse occupied by GW Bush and Dick Cheney, the Americans to whom loyalty is owed are not simply those who give their life's work over to serve their country. To have the your life work appreciated, you have to serve the policies and ideologies of the Bush and Cheney administration. Thus, you see the product of a lifetime of creating and managing intelligence resources for the protection of American lives destroyed by the muttered, leaked and sneaked campaign that Dick Cheney, I Lewis Libby and Karl Rove conducted to reveal the clandestine status of CIA employee Valerie Plame. Shattering a network of intelligence resources to warn the husband of the CIA agent who recruited and managed it to fall in line behind the administration's contention,(discredited) that the Iraq had WMD is a staggeringly arrogant act.
Our country's existence as a democracy depends on the ability of conflicting ideas to be heard. Dissent must always, in a democracy, test and inform the assertions of those in power. Any other system is something other than a democracy
Our country's existence as a democracy depends on the ability of conflicting ideas to be heard. Dissent must always, in a democracy, test and inform the assertions of those in power. Any other system is something other than a democracy
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
November 3 and I'm bummed. Still, I found my cynical heart moved by an eloquent and strong concession speech from John Kerry. That might be the key right there. A way to grow out of the confinement of perpetual opposition that liberal Democrats find themselves in. At least, I as a liberal Democrat, seem to be protesting each step away from belief in equal oportunity, equal rights and social justice; to no avail.
I resist our nation's shift toward the Republican's vision of our society. It's economic Darwinism that benefits the large corporate interests of our economy at the expense of small business and labor.Yet small business and workers are the core constituents of the Republican Party. Even as small businessmen and women chase after the ever dissappearing mirage of membership in the ever narrowing slice of our society which is prospering from the policies of George Bush, the big winners in the Bush Cheney firmament reap their tax cuts, harvest the support of the little guys and keep telling them to run faster, do more with less.
John Kerry reached down into his core to speak with dignity and resolve of his beliefs and his gratitude for those who made him their candidate and shared his battle for the presidency. It was a moving experience for me to listen to him. I wasn't often moved by Mr. Kerry's words during his campaign. He isn't much at scripted oration and he doesn't often lose his self-consciousness enough to reveal himself. That's OK by me. Unlike a large part of the electorate, I'm not looking for a buddy. I don't need a daddy. Don't want to have a beer with my candidate. Couldn't care less if his marriage is a positive role model. I want someone who can govern competently and humanely.
The man who spoke in Faneiul Hall on the day after he lost the election for president showed a warrior's heart and a warrior's weariness and he put into words my hopes and sadness. I don't think for a moment that my candidate has lost his will or his willingness to represent me in the life of our nation. He certainly hasn't lost my support.
I resist our nation's shift toward the Republican's vision of our society. It's economic Darwinism that benefits the large corporate interests of our economy at the expense of small business and labor.Yet small business and workers are the core constituents of the Republican Party. Even as small businessmen and women chase after the ever dissappearing mirage of membership in the ever narrowing slice of our society which is prospering from the policies of George Bush, the big winners in the Bush Cheney firmament reap their tax cuts, harvest the support of the little guys and keep telling them to run faster, do more with less.
John Kerry reached down into his core to speak with dignity and resolve of his beliefs and his gratitude for those who made him their candidate and shared his battle for the presidency. It was a moving experience for me to listen to him. I wasn't often moved by Mr. Kerry's words during his campaign. He isn't much at scripted oration and he doesn't often lose his self-consciousness enough to reveal himself. That's OK by me. Unlike a large part of the electorate, I'm not looking for a buddy. I don't need a daddy. Don't want to have a beer with my candidate. Couldn't care less if his marriage is a positive role model. I want someone who can govern competently and humanely.
The man who spoke in Faneiul Hall on the day after he lost the election for president showed a warrior's heart and a warrior's weariness and he put into words my hopes and sadness. I don't think for a moment that my candidate has lost his will or his willingness to represent me in the life of our nation. He certainly hasn't lost my support.
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