Drive Sisters Drive!

It is well into Friday June 17th in Saudi Arabia as I write this and women there are demonstrating their ability and right to drive.  That is right. Drive. A car.  Women's voting rights are restricted there.  Similarly it is forbidden for women to drive.   They've been arrested.  Watch the You Tube video for which  Manal al-Sharif  was arrested when she uploaded it.  The video is of  her driving and talking about the about the driving ban and her feelings of hope that women were volunteering to join the Saudi Women Driving Campaign.

In the Washington D.C. women drove around the Saudi Embassy, encircling it,  in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday to show their support. My favorite support action thus far is the protest in Kiev where topless members of FEMEN demonstrated in front of the Saudi Embassy.

To follow what is going on use Twitter hashtags #women2drive #W2drive

Some have already reported success without problems, but one report's link to an image of a woman driving has already gone "empty."  The world is watching!   And commenting.    And supporting!!!

Drive sisters, drive!!!

When the Light Fades Before Sunset

Day 14 in nablopomo blogging month, day 5 after septoplasty surgery.  The headache I've had for several days is lessening but my heart is heavy. 

People come and go in every person's life, but no where is this more evident than in a college town.  Tucson is a military town, a tourist town, and a university town.  Together all these towns have created a fairly large city.  I know lots of people here, but I do not have many close friends. People come and go here all the time  My first friends here were post docs and graduate students connected to my husband's campus department.  I was the matron of honor for one friend who was a post doc., I stay in touch with her.  Other friends who have moved away are Facebook friends and I see them occasionally.   Other friends slipped off into independent lives in other states and are only known through the rare bit of updated information a friend of a friend conveys. 

That is how someone I will call Miss A. was, a friend with whom I'd lost touch.  Back in the 1990s she was very good friends with a good friend.  That is how we met.  She was the youngest of the women who would participate in celebratory ladies' nights.  We were wild and crazy women who marveled in each others intelligence, wit, and attitude.   We drank too much, stole keys from those who wanted to drive and shouldn't, and thought we were immune from the problems that follow such actions should they become habitual.  Some of us were.  She wasn't.  

We did not know they had become habitual for Miss A.  They had.  She was 38 years old when she died from liver disease this past Sunday morning.  Did she also have Hep C from improper tattooing? Maybe, we won't ever know unless someone from her close family chooses to share that information  with us, which isn't likely. She moved away, married, had children and drank herself to death in the matter of a little more than a decade.   She is the second woman I know who was associated with a college department community who killed herself drinking.  I'm wondering if there was a department culture, or if that is just how campuses are.  Were we bad influences on her? Why did we not all head in that lonely direction she chose.  Several of us from that group had parental abandonment issues and we didn't all feel the pull to escape as she did, our children seem fairly normal, fairly healthy.   How could a mother kill herself slowly in front of her children?  How could you do that to a child?

She was so bright, so vivacious; she should have been a physician, but she didn't have the support system to pursue that path.  Support systems.  I hear that her family did try an intervention.  Sometimes you have to push away from a family to have any chance at a normal life, but without family what kind of a normal life can you have?  And there are religions that pile guilt on individuals and have differential expectations for men and women and different types of men and women. 

Oh Miss A. I'm looking at what might have been done differently.  What might I have done differently to help?  Miss A. I'm so, so sorry.  This isn't how it should have been.  

Women, Natural Disasters, and Economic Reconstruction

Fire, floods, and massive tornadoes - this spring is one of the first truly "different" seasons that screams climate change.

I found this old post and thought it worth re-posting on the day I'm having my septum moved, corrected, or whatever.

The Women's Edge Coalition released an article in 2005 (after Katrina) that highlighted how natural disasters disproportionately take a huge toll on women.  The next year the Coalition reported on the Tsunami.  For communities to rebuild and life to return to a equitable norm, women's needs must be prioritized at the highest level of importance.   This is now referenced at the Women Thrive Worldwide site and remains pertinent. 

photo credit:  Xanderalex,  www.sxc.hu

Disasters impact women severely in specific ways which are often not recognized, especially during the reconstruction phase after the crises have faded from the news. For example, violence against women usually rises dramatically in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, as legal and social structures are shaken. In Nicaragua for example, 27 percent of female survivors of Hurricane Mitch in 1998 reported increased violence within the family, and even after the Loma Prieta earthquake in California in 1999, reported sexual assault rose by 300 percent.  (Womens Edge Coalition, 2005)

Just as is the case with any cultural imbalance, whether it be political, economic or religious in nature, women and children are disproportionately harmed by life out of balance. "Women and children first" was not a Victorian disaster catch phrase but a recognition of the disproportionate importance the mother child dyad to not only family stability but to societal stability.

Women's Thrive also has a pdf download about poverty trade and globalization that is one of the few intelligent articles I've found that touches on how the dominant economic process negatively impacts women and children.

Smart Ass Education 101 - Responsibility to One's Self

I'm a smart ass. I married a smart ass. I gave birth to a smart ass. I think it is genetic. When I was young I kept my mouth shut in public, more or less, and only those who really knew me knew that I could have a wicked tongue occasionally backed up by a sharp sense of humor.

I suppose I'm pretty smart. I know those people around me are smart, and they wouldn't tolerate ignorance around them. But smart doesn't mean jack if you are trying to reach an audience. And why would I be writing if I did not have an audience in mind? I've been thinking a lot about persona, as you may be able to tell, but I've also been thinking about responsibility, and ethics... and having a place where I can rant as regular old me and not be stepping out of bounds of the blog, nor my online identity, nor my inner self.  

This blog is not anonymous.  I use a nom d' plume that is also a nom d' tweet.  If I had a name I liked better than the one I have, I might use it, but I don't.  If I had it all to do over... I'd change my name, study computer science or architecture... and....     That "and..." is why I didn't change my name.  If we attempt to edit our identity by actual editing it seems to me that we are attempting to lie.  I use "Nerthus" as a pseudonym because she is the proto-European Swamp Goddess.   I grew up in the boggy muck and clay of what is left of the swamp, fen and kame of the wetlands of Northeastern Indiana.  I also believe that associating oneself, if you are a woman, with a goddess helps bring the concept of the feminine divine and creation into personal understanding of the organization of the universe.  Male gods seem sterile to me.  Patriarchy does not inspire me to seek either within or without.  I'm nearly 100% European per my ancestry from what I can tell without genetic testing.  "Nerthus" encapsulates much that I am and with which I identify.  It isn't a lie. 


I own my actions and I am usually careful about what I say and do, not limited nor constrained, but careful.  This blog, that I am trying to power-boost this month by constant blogging (daily to me means constant,) will contain smart ass irreverence and more statements unsupported by links than my other blogs.  I do not want to have to research and document every single thing I say.  I can back up everything I write as nonfiction.  I have been shoving facts in my brain for close to 45 years and I know a lot.  I have been blessed with a life rich in experience and travel and education.   I'm not saying I won't share links; I'm not saying that I just want to spout bullshit.  I just want to write as though I was just sitting at a table, drinking coffee,  talking to other women who can relate to me in some way and engage in women's humor.  Maybe I remind you of your mother, daughter, sister, or friend.   I'm willing to talk to men, I've actually been VERY close, lol, to some men in my life, but I have a tendency to see guys as not really interested in just talking.  And that is what I'm doing here.  I'm just saying.