May 16, 2008
The Women’s Center has just received word that the National Network of Presbyterian College Women will be holding a national conference this August 6-10 in San Francisco. The theme, “The Power of Poverty,” sounds intriguing. Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Cannon will be the keynote speaker. More details, a downloadable brochure, and access to online registration are available at the website of the Network (here).
May 14, 2008
We’ve just received a copy of the Summer Newsletter put out by our neighbors and associates, the University of Louisville Women’s Center. We thought it was worth a look.
[N.B. This great image of a woman driving a Royal Mail van during WWI came from the British Postal Museum and Archive exhibit on moving the mail, here.]
May 11, 2008
Today is Mother’s Day in the United States.
Americans’ uniquely individual, all at the same time expressions of affection and regard for their mothers in the culturally sanctioned medium of dollars spent is big business. Mother’s Day is the 3rd ranked spending holiday, after Christmas and Valentine’s Day. It will account for something like $15.8 billion in retail sales, including $2 billion on flowers (which makes it vital to the cut flower industry, and the low-wage economy of Ecuador and Chile, key competitors in that sector), $3.5 billion on full-service restaurant meals, making it the leading eating-out holiday of the year, $2.7 billion on jewelry, and over $650 million on greeting cards. (Sources: Forbes, Godweb, Rabobank, National Restaurant Association)
None of this was what Anna Jarvis had in mind when she vowed to her dearly departed mother, Anna Maria Reeves Jarvis, to create a holiday to honor and celebrate mothers and their importance. She seems to have been thinking less mothers’ importance to the economy, and more their importance in the lives of their children. Some of her early allies in the campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday, including retail giant John Wanamaker and prohibitionist forces in Congress, may have had something like this in mind after all.
The annual consumer festival would not have pleased Julia Ward Howe, either, who in addition to being the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, one of the founders of the National Women’s Suffrage Association, and a fundraiser for the Johns Hopkins University medical school - on the condition that it admit women - is credited with the original US Mother’s Day concept, “Mother’s Day for Peace.” Howe authored a proclamation of the day in 1870, calling on mothers to leave home and hearth and take counsel together for the general interest of peace. (Full text of the proclamation.)
Recently, a group of US celebrity mothers have joined together to revive the Mother’s Day for Peace concept, by producing a video encouraging viewers to think about motherhood and the interests of peace. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps only predictably, the group’s recommendation of something their audience can do to act on the commitment to the peace concept is donate money to an organization that benefits children in Iraq. Not that this is a bad thing. Just that it’s interesting how the way we Americans communicate what we care about, whatever it is, is to spend money.
Maybe I should suggest donating money to the Women’s Center Fund as an appropriate way of honoring mothers. The Center could use some of that $13.5 billion.
The Women’s Center does support motherhood, after all - as a risky and sometimes deeply rewarding possibility for human relationship, as one womanly vocation among others, and as a vital and dignified human activity that is often, ironically, cited as justification for practices that oppress women.
But let me suggest something else: namely using the occasion of Mother’s Day to consider whether spending money on mothers really constitutes an expression of affection and regard, or whether there might be some alternative representations of these sentiments that would be both more genuine and more substantive. Advocating for national policies that safeguard the interests of mothers - like, say, making sure mothers will be able to obtain health care for themselves and their children - comes to mind as one alternative. No doubt there are many others. We might all be able to think of them, if we were not so distracted with making sure we have bought the right color flowers and chosen the perfect card.
May 10, 2008
Many thanks to everyone who helped make the Women’s Center’s Open House late yesterday afternoon a reSOUNDing success — starting with the terrific jazz quintet of LPTS Alums-Students-Faculty-Administrators Jorge Gonzalez, Cory Germain, Loren Townsend, Kilen Gray, and Chris Baker (who had reportedly only assembled for this gig, but sounded like they’d been playing together for much longer).
The music created a marvelously festive ambience in the Women’s Center and a fluid aural backdrop for the group — one astute observer counted 50 people as folks came and went during the afternoon — that ebbed and flowed through our new space (WE LOVE IT!!).
We lost count of the number of guided tours of the Center we gave, and more people conducted their own unofficial tours. A few comments: “This is great!” “How wonderful!” “I didn’t know you had this much space!” “Nice!”
We had a taker on our small collection of children’s playthings, and a generous offer of more to come.
Someone offered us a table for the work/small conference room, which we think we will take up, but we need to measure the space first.
We received a housewarming gift of a tea kettle (which we really, really need) — our donor said “they didn’t have the one you put on your list, so I got a nicer one” — THANK YOU, and we appreciate that spirit!
The food was delicious (thanks, Ted and all contributors) — especially Laura Wells’s chocolate cookies with coconut filling! and Sherry Arconti’s hummus and tabouleh! — we had a number of comments on the punch (thank you, Amy, whoever you are, for this recipe).
We congratulated one another and said over and over “we need to do this again” — mark of a good party!
Now, we just need to get the pictures developed! Stay tuned, and once again, thanks everyone for celebrating with us!!
May 7, 2008
May 6, 2008
Today is primary day in Indiana, where I live and vote, so I get to participate in history and a closely-watched election.
I get to do this, as a woman, thanks to the efforts of other women who never got to cast a ballot, some of whom are named in this timeline of the women’s suffrage movement. The 19th Amendment passed Congress on June 4, 1919; Wisconsin was the first state to ratify it, on June 10 (thanks to which, the Wisconsin Historical Society maintains a collection of documents on women’s suffrage).
Today, I am thinking particularly of Carrie Chapman Catt, who led the National American Woman Suffrage Association to its ultimate political victory in 1919, with the passage and ratification of the 19th amendment, and who also founded the League of Women Voters to aid newly-enfranchised women in exercising their civic responsibilities wisely.
The mission statement of the League of Women Voters is full of noble language, like “empower citizens to shape better communities worldwide” and “citizenship requires knowledge, as well as the ability and will to act” and “the responsibility of good government rests on the shoulders of its citizens” — language I didn’t realize how much I agreed with until a few days ago, when I was driving somewhere (as usual) with my daughter, and we fell into a conversation about voting. Since it was coming up. And school. Which is forever coming up.
And I said “Every citizen of this country ought to be able to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper, that gives the good reasons for their opinion . . .” It’s our job, the citizens’ job, to make sure our elected officials do their jobs, I said, to my daughter. We are supposed to be informed and involved, I said, to my daughter. This is why we send you to school, I said, to my daughter. So you can be free.
Well, I said it to my daughter, but probably just as much to myself. I don’t like to think I’m naive, so naive as to believe that voting will change everything. I’m inclined, at least sometimes, to agree with the graffiti, reportedly found in a bookstore restroom, that goes “if voting changed anything, it would be illegal.” (As proof, we might note that in places where it actually might, it is.) Apparently, a lot of women — according to the organization Women’s Voices, Women Vote, especially unmarried women — stay away from the polls for all the reasons people stay away from the polls — in the end, presumably, boiling down to the calculation that it is not worth doing whatever will have to be done to make the giant electoral machine take their one vote into account.
On the other hand, on election days, like this one, I cannot help remembering the Suffragists, and how a person like me — a woman person — would not have been able to go to the old fire station and fill out a ballot 100 years ago, without being taken to jail. I am compelled to remember, as well, that a person like Fannie Lou Hamer – a black woman person – couldn’t go to City Hall even 40 years ago to register to vote without being taken to jail, and being beaten up in the process.
And I vote. If for no other reason — and this election, there are plenty of reasons — than that I don’t like to treat lightly something that cost so much.
May 5, 2008
Cinco de Mayo — today — is a Mexican holiday that commemorates the Battle of Puebla, which occurred May 5, 1862, and which marked indigenous forces’ defeat of the French army then occupying Mexico. The battle definitively established Mexican national sovereignty. It is apparently actually a more popular holiday in the United States, among Mexican-Americans, than it is in Mexico, where it is overshadowed by Independence Day, September 16.
The manufacturers of alcoholic beverages in the US seem to have a definite agenda for the celebration of Cinco de Mayo, to judge by the promotional material that graces Mexican restaurants at this time of year. A different way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo might be to read up on the Zapatista movement — a contemporary (yes!) revolutionary liberation movement among indigenous people in Chiapas province, Mexico. Since its beginnings in 1994, with the adoption of NAFTA, the Zapatistas have struggled to maintain independent local communities in the face of mounting opposition from the Mexican national government. Women are actively involved in the movement, and have held 3 international gatherings, most recently at the end of 2007.
A good place to begin in this regard might be the Zapatista Women * Mujeres Zapatista site that is part of the ZAPNET project of the University of Texas. It contains some substantial documents that pertain to the early years of the movement, including a couple of papers by Diane Goetze on the historical significance of the Zapatista Women.
The best source for up-to-date information about the Zapatistas seems to be the online site of the Chiapas Support Committee, an Oakland, California-based group dedicated to organizing support for and distributing information about the Zapatistas. [Also, the source for the gorgeous image at the top of this post.]
Other recent reportage includes a January 7, 2008 article by Naomi Klein in the Nation, a lengthy report of her attendance at the 3rd Zapatista Women’s Gathering, entitled “Revolution of the Snails”, by Rebecca Solnit, in the Common Dreams online newsletter, and
an April news clip from Kristen Bricker of the Narcosphere.
[A word of warning for those who'll want to surf for more info: a lot of Zapatista sites seem to have been abandoned since the late 90's, so there are a lot of broken links, and perhaps worse, automatic links to who-knows-where.]
The Women's Center at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary is (1) a space for women and men to gather, to discuss issues that affect women, women's ministry and ministry to women as members of created humanity and (2) an agent of mission. The mission of the Women's Center at LPTS is to educate on matters of concern to women, advocate for justice and equity for women, liberate prisoners of rigid gender roles, and celebrate the gifts and achievements of women in the Church and the world.
