not keeping up with the Joneses

It's no surprise that while visiting in Massachusetts, I went to the shopping mall with my daughter and grandson. He had taken some money out of his piggy bank to buy himself a toy. And, of course, I had planned to subsidize some additional treat.

As we three strolled down the main mallway, we were accosted by a jovial gentleman with a microphone followed by a quiet guy with a news station videocamera. At first, I wasn't going to stop and be interviewed, but when my daughter heard that the interviewer was looking for a family of three generations, she opted to talk to him. And so I agreed to join in.

"You've heard of 'keeping up with the Joneses', haven't you," he asked and then proceeded to explain that he was interviewing people about how much they buy into that concept. And he was wondering how that changed over the generations.

I went first, explaining that, because my parents had been upwardly mobile and my mother very conscious of what she had in comparison to others, I rebelled against the stress of that lifestyle, opting to go into education -- which really doesn't pay that well. I think I said that I started out as a teacher because I wanted to contribute something to the world. While there was some truth to everything that cam e out of my mouth in that spur-of-the-moment monologue, the rest of the truths are even more relevent. But I never got a chance to get into all of that. So, instead, I sounded like a poster mom for "family values." If you read my blog, you know that I'm a far cry from that.

My daughter's brief statements also reflected only part of her truths. She said that she left the workforce to stay home and raise her son; that it was hard living on one income, but she felt it was worth it. All of that is true.

What neither of has had a chance to say, however, was that we were never interested in "keeping up with the Joneses" because we began our adult lives being more interested in following our dreams than making a lot of money -- her dream being acting and mine being writing. Ultimately, as it turned out, we chose lives that center around the people we love. I guess we are just not competitive enough to have gotten sucked into that "keeping up" rat race.

Relative to all of that, I recently read an article in The Week stating:

A growing number of new mothers are quitting their jobs to devote their full-time attention to their children. Is the traditional family making a comeback?

The article also includes these statements:

A growing number of companies are offering to let moms telecommute or work flexible hours to avoid losing them altogether. If employers had done this earlier, they might have avoided their current jam, says Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings. Most mothers would prefer to keep working, she said, but are “pushed out by workplace inflexibility, the lack of supports, and a workplace bias against mothers.” In a recent survey, 86 percent of women said obstacles such as inflexible hours were key reasons behind their decisions to leave.

and

“At the height of the women’s movement and shortly thereafter, women were much more firm in their expectation that they could somehow combine full-time work with child rearing,” said Yale historian Cynthia Russett. “The women today are, in effect, turning realistic.”

As a single mother, I had no choice but to work. My daughter has a choice, and I have a feeling that her experiences growing up under my roof contributed a great deal to her making the one she has. And I think she made the right one.

(Cross-posted at Kalilily Time)

Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice

A blessed Solstice to you all!

the anti-woman new Wicker Man

I saw the original Wicker Man in the mid-seventies. It was by far the most gut-clenching film I've ever seen. From here:

The Wicker Man is a cult 1973 British film combining thriller, horror and musical, directed by Robin Hardy and written by Anthony Shaffer. The film stars Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt and Britt Ekland. Paul Giovanni composed the soundtrack, a recording cited as a major influence on neofolk and psych folk artists.

The original Wicker Man film focused on an island population of pagans that included both men and women -- all of whom were engaged in determining what was to befall the "hero." I remember that the film was steeped in a ancient eroticism as the island population struggled to find their balance between all of those natural forces of opposites.

The new Wicker Man is devoid of male-female tension and eroticism of any kind; the pagan population is totally female (except for a few drones). The new version attributes only to women the chthonic spirit that the original movie rightly attributed to all people who followed the pagan ways. The unspoken message to us in these times is "watch out when those women take over" especially those females who find personal strength in the mythic histories of their gender. They are dangerous. They will destroy you.

The primal darkness in all of us is a powerful and dangerous force. The original Wicker Man captured that terrifying power. The new Wicker Man is a weakened and distorted version of what was once a truly horrifying tale.

(Side note: The star of the original Wicker Man was Edward Woodward. In the new version, the name of the "hero" is Edward Woodward.)

I don't know if you can rent the 1970s Wicker Man, but you can buy it here.

It's worth the price.

(cross posted at www.kalilily.net)

The Writer Ratio

People's perceptions of who reads what are definitely skewed. But what about authors on the publishing end? Do authors self-segregate into particular genres or do editors have some say in what kind of author get published?

I came across the Broad Universe Bean Count which has some very interesting statistics on how many women and men are published in the speculative fiction field. Of course, compared to the romance genre (where most men still work under pseudonyms or with female co-authors), science fiction and fantasy appears to be a bastillion of equality. But nonetheless, the numbers aren't that great. It's true that over the years, the percentage of women winning awards has gone up, but for most of them, the split is still not fifty-fifty.

Some other observations: Male reviewers prefer to review books authored by other males. The majority of stories in anthologies of speculative fiction are by male authors. However, is it possible that this is also a function of how many female speculative fiction writers are present in the first place? The membership of SFWA is not an accurate indicator of how many writers there are--you have to get published first before you can be a member. But according to Strange Horizons, about a third of their submissions were from female writers. I am very curious as to whether this is true or the exception compared to submission statistics to other magazines, agents, and editors.

And another question: Does the sex of the authors also influence what kind of readers are drawn to a genre? With the quality of writing being equal as well as the male/female ratio of writers in whatever genre--would this equalize the readership as well? Or will people still be too hung up on convention and formula to read a book for the story?

(Cross-posted at Syaffolee.)

The Museum of Kitschy Stitches

If you're searching for the perfect holiday gift, if you're having friends over a lot in the coming weeks and want a great conversation-starter, or if you just need to laugh until you're wetting your pants, check out The Museum of Kitschy Stitches: A Gallery of Notorious Knits, by Stitchy McYarnpants. Stitchy is the nom de plume of a Boston-area woman who likes to collect supremely tacky old knitting and crocheting patterns (mainly from the '60s and 70s). She illustrates a few dozen of them along with hilarious commentary in this book.

I saw her a couple of months ago at the local Barnes and Noble, where she was doing a booksigning. She'd brought along a trunkful of hideous creations collected from yard sales and ebay. I bought the book, and it's been generating an evening-ful of reminiscences every time someone has spotted it. At a book discussion I hosted last month, we spent more time discussing this than the book we'd all read. I brought it on a business trip recently and showed it to a female colleague in our hotel room. She insisted I take it to a dinner party hosted in the CEO's home to show his wife. It pretty nearly took over the whole evening.

Stitchy has a website: http://www.stitchymcyarnpants.com/
and I posted a blog entry about her booksignings, which has some pictures of Stitchy and of the treasures in her trunk: http://cicilycorbett.blogspot.com/2006/09/stitchy-mcyarnpants.html.

RAD

It's fall, colleges are back in session, and RAD classes are starting up all over. RAD (Rape Assault Defense) is a comprehensive self-defense course for women. The course teaches awareness, prevention, risk reduction and avoidance of dangerous situations, usually with hands-on training. A typical class lasts for five sessions and costs about $5 per session.

RAD is designed for women of all ages and levels of physical conditioning. Mothers frequently attend with their daughters; elderly women living alone attend. High-school and college women concerned about date rape attend. Women learn to recognize dangerous situations, and learn how to handle them. They engage in realistic scenarios with the instructors, practicing defense techniques. The education and experience give them power and confidence.

Classes are held in community centers, YMCAs, on college campuses, and so on. My state alone has dozens of locations. Classes are also offered for children and for men. To learn more about the program, or to locate a nearby center, visit www.rad-systems.com.

Nerve

I've been a member of Blog Sisters for quite some time and have enjoyed reading all of you but this is my first post. It's a double post from my blog today and I apologize in advance for that - I just felt like I wanted to vent to other women - to other mamas - in hopes of finding some good ol' female empowerment and support.

What better place than here?

**********

Over the last few weeks, I've been asked for updates on my "baby making" status. I anticipated this but have been surprised by how quickly I've grown tired of responding. I am now kicking myself for ever publicizing (in blog or casual conversation) that my husband and I are actively trying.

Update - I am not pregnant.

However, if mine and my husband's schedules ever synchronize and I become less stressed, I have confidence that it will happen for us.

The second irritating factor to this whole topic are the comments I have received from several people along the lines of:

Well, you're not 16 anymore....your body isn't going to just snap back the way it did!

[Really? I'm impressed that you think it "snapped back" at all.]

At your age, I bet you'll find that you have to really work to get the weight off this time.

[Well, then my four years as a certified personal trainer and nutritionist will come in handy.]

The sad fact is that my first response is to defend such statements with, "Actually, women on both my mom and my dad's side of the family have had children in their mid to late 30's and managed to recover their figure with little effort; genetically, most of us have nice shapes."

What I really want to respond with is, "Why is this even a discussion that you find important and appropriate to broach?"

I will openly admit to a level of vanity - one that I now consider to be fairly healthy. As a little girl, the way I looked drew a lot more attention than the grades I made or the way I behaved. Consequently, I learned to value this aspect of myself over others for a long time. Fortunately for me, however, I have since had numerous humbling experiences - to include childbirth - which have put things in a more balanced perspective.

In fact, when I posted a few months ago about my anxiety over trying to conceive, my body image was not among my concerns. I have no idea why others deem it as noteworthy.

Update - Should I get pregnant, I may gain a few pounds that, this time, don't come right off.

So fucking what.

If you REALLY want to send me into panic mode, remind me about how kids can wreck a home faster than a tornado.....

I'm far more obsessed with how my house looks than I am my ass.

strep n fetch it.

One of the things Jenna brought back on the plane was strep. soooo that's what I've been up to the last couple of days. Fetching tissues for her to spit in and tissues for noses and wet washcloths for skin that she says feels soooo hot mommy. And soup too. Don't forget the vegetable beef soup.

Amazing Omnicef. She's bopping around today, getting back to herself quickly, though nebby treatments have begun. Looks like ENT-ville again and the tonsil discussion. I hear it's outpatient these days, which is awesome. I remember going in the night before, then being wheeled into the OR and telling the surgeon I was going to throw up as soon as I smelled that ether. They said no you aren't; it just smells. I said yes I am, and I puked all over the operating table. They freaked out and sent me home. I had to go back to kindergarten WITH my tonsils and fess up to throwing up. A few weeks later we tried again. This time, no puking and byebye tonsils.

I'm hoping better things for jenna, like no problems if it has to be, and lots of ice cream. Please don't tell her that you really don't care about ice cream when they finally get around to giving it to you.

Tags: strep, tonsilitis, tired mom, parenting, kids = Powered by Qumana

how did we miss this??

Frank Paynter posted about it, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't pick up on the implications until I read what he wrote. He begins his post with this:

This post is not about the grim and twisted irony of the violence of a school shooting in Amish country. Rather, I want to draw attention to the unspoken horror of the misogyny, the hate crime against the female gender that it represents.

Frank links to several female bloggers who posted vehemently and accurately about what seems to be an increasing number of hate crimes against females. He ends his post with this:

Misogyny is everywhere. It’s in the burka. It’s in the genital mutilation of so-called “female circumcision.” It’s in the Chinese infanticide of baby girls. It’s practically a human condition. Yet once slavery was a human condition too, and now, except for a few corporate monsters, some backwards nations, and the perversion of sexual slavery it has largely been wiped out. Can we make progress against misogyny too?

I wonder why we aren't all posting about how the status and safety of all of us females is consistently being eroded. Why aren't we mad as hell.

Tapping into the Ex-Employee Network

(first posted on BlogHer.org)

Betsy The Devine's post on the "Puff Club" Reunion flickr photos got me thinking about business. Yes, believe it or not, a baby reunion summoned thoughts of jobs past. Specifically about the companies I have left, or who have left me, over the years, and all of the reunions I've attended (and run like hell from, depending) in the ensuing decades. These are the events during which old employees -- and sometimes current employees -- get together to drink alcoholically and laugh hysterically until the wee hours. They remind you 1) why you are glad you don't work there anymore 2) how much you miss your old workmates, and 3) why you took smoke breaks every 20 minutes.

There is something to be said for reunions.

When I was relieved of employment (along with the engineering group and a couple other mid-level management stragglers) post-childbirth by one dysfunctionally enmeshed technology company in the 90s, we ex- and current employees were so inextricably linked that reunions happened weekly. As the ex-company grew at a faster rate than the current comapny, and our ex-work-force established a more effective communication network than the internal version, company news was transmitted faster and more efficiently to non-employees than it was to employees. This generally frustrates businesses, some of which put in place policies that discourage fraternization with ex-employees.

Here's a call for companies to do just the opposite. Rather than carving the line between your ex-employees and current employees in concrete, why not encourage -- heck, even sponsor -- regular reunions where past and present employees can get together for conversation, laughing, complaining, mocking, and the like. Instead of pretending that these get togethers -- and these conversations -- aren't taking place (because they are), embrace them. Stand unafraid in the crosshairs of where past and present employees cross paths. What do you have to gain?

1) You will create emissaries of good will, fueled by the ability to be honest.
2) You will show that you are defined by every human being who has entered your doors at one time or another.
3) Often the best talent is the talent that RETURNS to the organization after going elsewhere--you will keep in touch with them.
4) You will tap into the most effective local/regional grapevine available--your ex-employee network. It's already operational. Why not add your voice?
5) You will demystify the "outside" which generally seems pretty damn alluring from the inside.

It's like the cheese bra lady. Her best ideas--and creativity--will now be used outside of her former company. There is no going back for her former employer and its clueless decision to axe her because of her cheese-like non-dairy bra. However, inviting her to the next company reunion -- even honoring her, admitting the company's shortsightedness in a funny way -- might bring that business one step closer to getting a clue.

Or at least getting some laughs and head nods.

Tags: business, human resources, technology, wisconsin, Betsy Devine, employees, employee reunions, competition, business, retention = Powered by Qumana

the hug thing

hadn't seen it. simple. significant. strong.

Tags: free hugs = Powered by Qumana

half way to 18.

My baby turned 9 yesterday--that's where I've been.

Not every kid shares Buddy Rich's birthday.

Or his mood swings. Or his uncanny time.

You know me. An emotional amusement park sometimes. My kid. 9. So that's where I've been.

Between having a half-grown child and rescuing a stray puppy from the highway (and then having to give it back to the less than scrupulous owners), then re-inheriting two cats from our newly married neighbor who is moving back in with his ex-now-current wife--and did I mention I have re-decorated the hamster cages in pink and blue bedding, pink for mom and blue for the boys?)--life has been a river, not of news, but of heartbeats.

New life, old life, life moving.
At the speed of me.

At the YMCA a few days ago a woman had her newborn baby with her--precious tiny baby girl in pink. I said to her, "She is so beautiful," and then ducked behind the drape of the changing room to cry quietly.

Every now and then I remember that the ablation I had means I can't carry anymore babies. In my mind fact that we weren't going to have any more babies is completely unrelated to the fact that I can't.Part 1 does not lessen the grieving for Part 2. That's how estrogen works.

Driving past Jenna's school the other day I realized that her turning 9 means she is now halfway to 18, noticing how fast the first 9 years went, realizing that the next 9 will go at least that fast.

Will I make it? Will we? And then what? Where does my heartbeat go? Do I keep it? Or send it out from me?

Of all the layers to my identity, being my daughter's mom is the one I think about the most, where doing it right means every day is one day closer to being left. That little fact is not lost on me.

In my family, we have a hard time raising children to send them out into the world. We don't like letting go. We are smotherers, keepers, hoarders. It takes conscious reminding every day for me to keep from doing what I know.

Ah fuggit. I'm not sure this is making sense. I hear her downstairs now, laughing with her dad. They are watching a show. Her voice rises and falls--fits and jags--loud guffaws, she is nothing if not intense. I am re-amazed so often. heartbeats.

I had coffee with my mother today. Something I haven't done in 4 years.

Nothing is for sure.

Tags: mother, daughter, 9 years old, birthdays, parenting, children, blogging, culture, grief, starbucks = Powered by Qumana

BizBlogBoys - SacBee, you should know better?

I didn't go looking to do another post on why no women; really I was searching for recent business blogging articles to see what new is being said. Instead I found an article from today's Today's Sacramento Bee called Going to the Blogs, which does a cursory overview of business blogging--which misses the point of business blogging really, blogs aren't written by businesses (at least good ones); they're written by PEOPLE who happen to (maybe) work somewhere. In the business sense, blogging is most effective when it's the most meaningful, and it's most meaningful when human beings are connecting and building relationships (love.hate.lukewarm) as human beings first. Human connection = primary. Business relationship follows Human relationship.

Here's a nicely clueless quote from the author of Blogging for Business:

"More and more people are finding local businesses using the Internet," he said. "Blogs make your search engine popularity so high that you are suddenly ahead of your competition."

Sure. Let's boil it all down to SEO and call it a day.

NOT.

Aside from the cursory treatment of the topic in this article, which bugged me to begin with, I couldn't help but be bugged secondarily by the absence of women in the article. I'm amazed that the author didn't trip over the women bloggers in Sacramento and surrounding areas, not to mention the opportunity to do a phone interview as was done with Tony Perkins).

It's annoying. There are references and/or quotes to and/or from 10 men in the short article. And even if you want to play "Use the best man for the job" argument,  well, READ the thing. The article could use some... um... help.

Ask Toby Bloomberg to comment on business blogs, or Marianne Richmond. Ask Shelley Powers about where blogging has come and gone--maybe even be adventurous enough to bring up the 'women thing'. Find out how blogging is part of a larger picture when it comes to creation and commerce (wecommerce). Please try a little harder before you write another fluff piece on an overdone topic featuring talking man heads . Because that is just so 2005.

Tags: business, blogging, tech, PR, advertising, women, technology, marketing, Internet, SEO, wecommerce = Powered by Qumana

{posted first on BlogHer)

Torture Bill Haiku: Mad Kane Has Moved

Here's my haiku inspired by the disgraceful torture legislation:

Torture Bill Haiku

The Constitution
Was cast aside by Congress.
Hideous corpus!

Also, I want to let you know that I've moved my Notables political blog to Mad Kane's Political Madness.

Look Them In The Eye And Smile

I haven't posted here in ages...though I read the posting regularly. Bad, bad blog sister. But I've written something that I wish to share. Forgive me if I've overstepped.

For me, it started sometime in the mid 90s. A woman had been abducted from Parmatown Mall, raped and brutalized then murdered. Our local Karate studio.. the one right next door to my gym.. offered an all-day Saturday class for women of self-defense.

The biggest tip I learned: when you are walking anywhere, look each person you pass or see in the eye and smile. It's a way to remember their faces, and it can discourage a small-time thug from choosing you as a victim.

I've made this tip part of myself. When I am out and about, I look people in the eye and smile. Last year I wrote "The Culture of the Path":

There is a walking path in my town that runs the length of the street (about 2.5 miles). It is used daily.. and all day long.

BUT, most of the travelers practice a uniquely charming habit that has never been formalized. It's a variation on the standard practice of nodding when you pass someone on a p

The first time you approach a fellow traveler each person
1. makes eye contact, smiles, then
2. says "good morning/afternoon/evening".

and here's the really unique part:
because most of us walk part way up the path, then turn around and return to our cars, we often pass some of the same people a second time. and the common practice here changes:

1. make eye contact and smile again...
2. say "have a good day, now".

It's a very subtle way of acknowledging all around that "I see you, and though I've seen you and greeted you earlier today, I will likely not see you again today."

Simple. But a whole lot of sub-text exists in these phrases. And a lot of respect.

Now all but the dullest reader will see that travelling a path is an easy allegory for moving through life... How many different ways do we pass by each other?

In real life... driving on the freeways, standing in line at a store, sitting at nearby tables in the coffeeshop. Online, we might be reading blogs, making comments, reading the same mailing list. We interact in casual ways in all these situations.

All fraught with chances for misunderstandings... or ripe for finding commonality.

How can we as a SOCIETY develop habits/guidelines/methods of interaction that acknowledge each person in an inclusive way? How can we build a "community of the path" on every path in life?

Again, it demonstrated the importance to a society of looking each person in the eye and smiling.

These past three weeks I've spent time in a nursing home and time in assisted living. Many folks, to stave off boredom and loneliness, sit out in the hallways or in the lobby. Their affect is quite passive. So I again made it a point to look each one in the eye and smile as I passed them by. And like the culture of the path, I said "good morning/afternoon" to each.

Suddenly folks would sit up a little straighter; their was life in their eyes and looked once again like members of the human society. At the MILs hotel, they are beginning to recognize me; we have small interactions when I pass through.

So my suggestion for everyone along whatever path you find yourself travelling: make eye contact and smile.

hanging in a jar

For I once saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?' " she answered, "I want to die."

I thought of this quote today because my 90 year old mother has been crying a lot lately, and when I ask her why, she says she wants to die. Like the mythic Sybil, she's in some kind of stasis -- neither really living nor finally dying. She spends most of her days walking around her rooms -- walking and moving objects and dropping used kleenex like breadcrumbs. While she walks, I sit, busying my hands with crocheting. I'd rather be reading, but I don't like being interrupted when I'm reading, and she interrupts frequently --

...where is my money? ...where is my brother? ...are you my mother? ...where are my glasses? ...where are the men? ...are you going dancing? ...is it raining?..... ..what should we have for supper? (this last asked an hour after we had supper)

If I run over to my computer to check email or such, she is in her doorway, calling "Elaine....Elaine!" I'm stuck an audio clip from The Graduate.

Back to Sybil. Several years ago, I blogged a piece about Sybils and such that I still like and am reprising below. Interesting enough, while googling for additional information about Sybil, I happened upon a wonderful blog that I had never seen before. It is written by a woman who is indeed a kindred spirit. I will have to find the time and go back to read more of her posts, many of which echo my sentiments exactly.

Meanwhile, here's my old post about...

Cybill Sibyl Symbols

I am an old woman with a deck of cards

A witch, an Amazon, a Gorgon

A seer, a clairvoyant, a poet.

I have visions of becoming and

I dream in female
--(Barbara Starrett, 1974)

I adored the character that Cybill Shepherd played in her '90s sitcom. Raunchily relevant in menopausal splendor, she laughed a lot --mostly at herself -- loved largely, and dreamed in female. The Lady of Situations.

Sibyl is another gut-grabbing female, one I first encountered the first time I turned to the first page of T.S. Eliot's "Wastland." (I still have verses from that epic endlessly looping through my brain: Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyant/ has a bad cold nevertheless/ is known to be the wisest woman in Europe/ with a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, / is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor (those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) / Here is Belladonna, the Lady of Rocks, / the lady of situations.)

*****************

For I once saw with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her, 'Sibyl, what do you want?' she answered, 'I want to die."

The quote which prefaces T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland," "NAM Sibyllam quidem Cumis . . ." is taken from the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, a Roman of the first century B.C.E. The Sybil is a prophetic character who, when granted a wish by Apollo, asked to live for as many years as there are grains of sand in a handful. She forget to ask for eternel youth, however, and is confined to a bottle so as to prevent her body's disintegration..... The Sibyl, then, is a bit of a paradox: she strove to live eternally yet ended up in constant danger of decay and pain. Her quest for eternity was a failure that Eliot finds terribly important yet terribly dangerous. His goal is not to end up like the Sibyl, but to free her. (quoted from a link that is no longer active)

Cybill and Sybil, symbols of women with strong voices -- strong with meaning, with intention, with visions of constant becoming -- with guts full of female dreams and hearts used to surviving great tides of sorrow. A lot like the many women bloggers I know and love.

The road I drive into town is edged with farmland. During first days of autumn, I pass so many signs of endings -- fields of corn stalks the color of caramel; acres emptied but for the baled rolls of hay; wayside strips of sunflowers, heads bowed low with their burdens of shedding seeds. I am, these days, envious of endings.

Taking Care and Care Taking and getting away

Ahh -- Elaine finally got away on vacation. I'm glad to hear it. I can feel the autumn air - and time passing - in her post:

Sunday was a deliciously fattening breakfast at the newly opened Cheescake Factory in Albany. It's amazing how much has changed since I moved a year ago. New mcmansions being built where the nursery was where I used to buy my plants; the strip mall where I would hunt for bargains at TJ Maxx, empty.

And we are changing, too, as each, in her own time, reaches retirement age. Four of us had careers with state government, so our pensions are better than most. The other two are worried that they will never be able to retire, since their work histories are different. One, for example, works for the post office. Her retirement pension will be only $7000 a year.

Tags: kalilily time = Powered by Qumana

Dealing Effectively with Energy Vampires

I already wrote a really long post on my own weblog on this subject, so I'll try to be brief here as an overview. If you find the idea useful and interesting you can learn more about how to apply it by reading the full post on my blog.

Basically the idea is that the only way energy vampires are a danger to you is if you decide that you need to stop them from taking your energy. If you want them to not get your energy, you have to either sheild yourself from them (which takes energy to do, so is still exhausting) or get away from them (which can be difficult in many situations and lead to a life of isolation for a really sensitive person, since most people are energy thieves at least part of the time).

Yet even for a super-empath like myself there are ways you can "feed the vampires" that actually will energize both you and them.

There are 4 key understandings necessary before this is possible: 1) you have to let go of the idea of a world of separate beings who are supposed to each get only what they have earned, be punished when they get something for nothing, and be rewarded when they somehow "earn" any joy they receive; 2) you have to also let go of the idea that the only energy available to you is that to be found within your own separate body and energy field; 3) you have to recognize that all energy is just energy. There isn't bad energy you need to be afraid of and good energy you can allow in. There's just energy; and 4) you must be willing to help people meet their needs even when they are utterly incompetent at knowing what their needs are or at pursuing them in mature, non-violent ways.

If all of this sounds like something you are willing to do... check out the full article at http://www.indigo-ocean.com and also consider picking up a copy of The Ever-Transcending Spirit by Toru Sato, which introduced me to the idea of allowing the energy theft to take place, which I had never considered before. Most of the rest of these ideas you won't find in that book (no infinite source of energy, etc.), but there are a number of other really valuable ideas that are also in the book, plus the general idea of energy exchange and ways of lifting one another up is fleshed out much, much more thoroughly, and productively so.

The Unbalanced Ratio

Lately, I've been following an interesting conversation over at ScienceBlogs. In The Pipeline Problem, Chad Orzel, a college physics professor, argues that the lack of women in the sciences is not his fault. Sure, there are sexist pigs in every field, but he implies that the problem lies primarily in the grade school years where girls are discouraged from going into the sciences by disinterested teachers and peer pressure. Suzanne Franks posts a rebuttal: one cannot pin all the blame on elementary and high schools. Even university professors must shoulder some of the responsibility--their lectures may be turning young women off or their faculty ratio may not be so great. More subtly, they may not even realize that they've only invited male speakers to a seminar or show only pictures of guys on their recruiting website.

Although Orzel is a bit naive in his views (how can he be really sure his colleagues are not doing any harassment?), both do bring up good points. Science on a university level can be intimidating even if all the male professors are Very Nice People. Being a minority is both alienating and lonely and many people, whoever they are, cannot handle that kind of isolation for very long. I went to a science-oriented university as an undergraduate--less than 30% of my graduating class was female. It was not due to the admissions process, which was fifty-fifty, but the critical point when prospective students visited campus that severely skewed the ratio.

Elementary, middle, and high school weren't better--although, I wouldn't say the problem was with male teachers as much as with female teachers with low expectations and an ill-hidden distaste for the sciences. Physics teacher? She didn't think we could do the math. Biology teacher? She didn't believe in evolution. Chemistry teacher? She blabbed about how great her sons were instead of teaching orbital theory. With all that negative stimuli during my formative years, one could wonder how I retained any shred of love for science at all. I'm pretty sure none of my female classmates from high school have. They all wanted to become lawyers or psychiatrists or political activists or artists.

(Cross-posted at Syaffolee.)

Walking to Cure Crohn's and Colitis

My brother and his family are walking to raise money for the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America. As you may remember, I wrote that my nephew was diagnosed with Crohn's earlier this year. As you also know--if you know anyone with Crohn's--it is a difficult and painful disease. My nephew has been quite ill. There are medicines that help ease some of the symptoms, but as of yet, no cure. So they walk.

Their family goal is to raise $500. They are up to $120. I would appreciate your help in blowing past their goal.

CCFA Facts...

CCFA was founded in 1967:

Today Crohn’s and colitis affect more than a million Americans.

Approximately 30,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

Each year, more than 100,000 children suffer from inflammatory bowel disease.


Dollars raised will go toward:

Summer camps for children with IBD

Information and education for 1.4 million patients and their families

Support services and research programs

Nearly 81 cents of every dollar CCFA spends goes directly into research and educational programs.

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I'm off to donate now.
Thank you.

Tags: Crohn's Disease, Colitis, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America, Cure, Illness, Family, Philanthropy = Powered by Qumana