Hand-sculpted clay, Cat!, by Tammy Vitale of Tam’s Originals.
Those of you who watch this site may notice I am late. It is 12:23 pm. Actually, I posted at 7:30 a.m. And erased it. Somehow. I have no idea how this time. I was typing my thought for the day from a book, and wham. It was gone. I woke my husband up with my exclamation (he’s upstairs at the other end of the house from me). This is somewhere around the 3rd erasure in as many days. Deep breath.
This really has to stop. I am not sure what the lesson is, but I want the Universe to know that I’m really listening hard here and if there’s something I’m supposed to know, I’m all ears. Just please stop erasing my blogs!
Of course, time has passed, and the original blog is gone. In it’s place I will note that I have spent the last 4 hours with Husband churning over how to deal with this moving thing we’ve been talking about to get him closer to work. I think we both need to take a break. And chill. And not think about it for a week or so (well, maybe except for the shopping for furniture for the cottage part, which is fun). Retail therapy. That was the subject of my post at myspace this a.m. I haven’t needed retail therapy for a really long time. I think it is all this house get ready, sell, look for a new one thing.
On overload I tend to play computer games. Unfortunately I’ve found a great new one on Yahoo games called Mojo word, which is a cross between Text Twist (an old favorite) and playing scrabble with yourself (with each other, a family passion during winter months). So last night instead of getting my kiln load done, I browsed houses in DC in our price range (sell the cottage buy him a place in DC for weeks that are crazy….then we realized that leaves me alone a lot since a lot of weeks are crazy. Not good). And I played about 2 hours of Mojo word. And this morning we were at it again and the kiln load is STILL not done. I’m promising myself this afternoon. Or maybe I’ll go get my work out of Common Grounds in Prince Frederick (closing this weekend) and spend all day tomorrow in the studio. Or maybe I’ll go start putting down tiles on the cottage floor. Or maybe I’ll just go play more Mojo Word.
The original post was on a book called The Gender Knot by Alan Johnsen, recommended by my friend who is studying different forms of oppression for her master’s work at Goddard College (my alma mater and hers because I was so entusiastic). In the course of writing about our conversation, I referred to the 100th Monkey principal. In searching for a website to refer folks to, I learned on Wikipedia that this cherished story is, in fact, an urban legend. Way to knock the breathe out of me (and then the whole post disappeared….is it Monday again?). Still, it’s a great story, and the fact that it is so pervasively believed it, to my way of thinking, is it’s own version of the 100th Monkey.
For those who do not know the story, my version follows. As it turns out, Jane Goodall isn’t even reported in Wikipedia, although I know for a fact that she was in the version I collected from somewhere years and years ago.
Jane Goodall was studying chimpanzees on an island in the Pacific. One moneky mom learned to wash her sweet potatoes in the ocean water to clean off dirt and result in a salty taste. Her offspring spred the practice to their peers. Soon all the monkeys on the island were doing it. Then, unexpectedly, all the monkeys on surrounding, unconnected islands began doing the same thing – with no physical contact. The theory is that at some point a universal consciousness is attained that makes the idea available from the part to the whole. That this is NOT true pulls the foundation out from many of my own beliefs. (that’s equivalent to a whole rest of my life of Mondays!)
Now, perhaps, I must instead believe that it is my own technical faults that lead to erasures of my posts instead of blog imps. How much is a person supposed to take in and deal with in one day?! And it’s barely past noon!
Anyway, May 21 and 22 over at myspace were postings on gender taken from my Trinity College (undergrad) alum magazine and this post was to be a continuation of that conversation. Suffice it to say, friend said she would share the paper she is doing and that I could share it here. So I will do that as soon as I email and remind her to send it along.
In the meantime, I’ll just post this from a book written in 1996 (not exactly the dark ages):
The gender biases that structure life in society at large also are important in the art world. Art school student populations have traditionally been at least half female, while art school faculties have until recently been overwhelmingly male [Now that it’s mentioned, my teacher was male.]. I asked informants to characterize artists on the roster as active (meaning they made work and tried to show it) or inactive…..[34% of males are active while only 22% of females are active]…How can the lesser professional involvement of women be explained? Why aren’t the proportions of women the same in the smaller, more active group as in the larger population; that is, why aren’t women artists as active as men? The usual explanation for difference in professional productivity is that women have additional responsibilities – child care, food preparation, house care, community and family responsibilities. It seems reasonable that women artists are less able than men to place their personal interest in making art ahead of these other claims on their time. [emphasis mine].
It seems reasonsable, huh? 1996 and it is still reasonable for women to be responsible for all that plus working full time. Which is what apparently The Gender Knot talks about and how that changes. I am going to order the book and will give you more of it when it arrives. It is hard for me to believe that we women are still putting up with this! And it is us – although apparently The Gender Knot says that if things are to change it is the men who must start proclaiming that the way things are not only make women crazy, it also prevents men from exploring their full potential as humans. The author also apparently takes out after Robert Bly and his mythopoetic line of, um, stuff. Anyone who hates Robert Bly is ok by me.
Thought for the day: What do you do when one of your dearly held beliefs turns out to demonstrateively not be true?
