"True, much of the dated advice ... is now amusingly camp,
but the potential thrill of being single still saturates each page."
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Monday, November 29, 2004
I was reminded of her view of children as property when I heard an NPR interview. The author wrote, "Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood.". His name is Steven Mintz. In the book, he actually traces the achievements of the childsavers. It is really impressive.
I often thought silently as Melli derided such people in class that "child saver" was something they could put on my tombstone and I would be proud of it. Now I know that is the truth.
This book should be a must read for all the ditto heads that think that children are valued as sacred new life. I listen to them talk and it is all about the "rights" of the unborn child. The PREborn. The book exposes how much we value life once it turns from the fetus into the child.
Children are precious commodities in the world all right. Children are bred for their parents redemption, financial and emotional. Then in the U.S., all the rest of the people have to pay for it.
Over 1/2 of the slaves in the world are children - the other half are woman. We still breed those we can use, instead of becoming what we need. And we also breed, of course, out of a biological drive which is no longer beneficial. This is why abortion is good. Choice is good.
The most interesting thing in the book is about children "rescued" from the Indians. When children were captured by the Indians and raised by the tribe, their parents sometimes tried to ransom them back. Most children refused to return. When they were forced, they sobbed as they were being dragged away from the tribe. They said they lived a beautiful life in the tribe compared to what they came from in "white" society.
In the Martha Stewart case, this is the first time in history — that I know of, and I did the research on this — where they charged an individual with false statements, without her signing the statement or without a tape recording that she even made the statement. And not under oath."
"I keep an ever changing roster I call my Hail Mary list - a reminder to say prayers for people I know who are going through bad times. Right now, Martha is at the top of it." - Dominick Dunne, in this month's Vanity Fair
Diva Down
What the rest of us have to fear from the fall of Martha
Elizabeth Koch
So says Diane Lori Kleiman, a lawyer who worked for the federal government as well as the Queens District Attorney's office. "They absolutely look for these cases and they grab onto them. It isn't necessarily an issue of right and wrong. It's an issue of taking the case to trial and getting the publicity. That makes your career," she contends.
Diane Lori Kleiman, an attorney (and Fox News commentator) who has seen it from the inside, reveals for the first time an inside view of how and why it is that a person like Martha Stewart is sitting in prison today. Kudos to John Crudele at the NY Post has been on the story from the beginning. He has been asking he same nagging question as we: Why Martha? As events unfold, we are gradually learning the answers to that question.
Insider Trading on Capitol Hill? -- TMF
Few of us have probably ever looked forward with great anticipation to the publication of an article in a financial academic journal. But there's one appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis that may make for gripping reading. It raises a troubling question: Are there financial shenanigans going on on Capitol Hill? Specifically, are (some) senators engaging in insider trading, acting on early knowledge they may have regarding what legislation will be passed when, which companies will be awarded big contracts, and which companies' drugs will be approved?
No more mail for Martha?
Alderson prison overwhelmed with thousands of letters...fans write to Martha's mom instead
DON'T WRITE MARTHA, JUST BUY! -- Page Six
MARTHA Stewart can't read all the fan mail that's coming to her in prison, but you can show the domestic diva some love by buying her products. That's what fans who write to inmate #55170-054 at the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, W.Va., are being told in a return form-letter from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. "She's cut off from her mail," cried John Small, the operator of the SaveMartha.com Web site.
But Small's solution — to send letters to Stewart's mom, "Big Martha" Kostyra, at Turkey Hill in Connecticut — has other fans incensed. "Asking thousands to burden Martha's elderly mother with pieces of unwanted fan mail is beyond reproach," a reader e-mailed us. "To take it upon himself to add to Mrs. Kostyra's already compounded grief and agitation without permission from her or her family is unforgivable and lacks decent human respect. "
A spokeswoman for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia said, "Martha is very touched by the enormous outpouring of support and sorry that she cannot respond directly."
Save Martha responds to these uninformed charges
Are fans who write to Martha's mother being cruel and insensitive? Are we, by suggesting that they do so? Evidently not, according to a spokesperson at MSO. After receiving a letter from the company last week which asks for people to stop writing to Martha in jail until she is released in the Spring, we thought it would be a nice idea to send holiday cards and letters to Big Martha. But a few readers evidently did not agree, and in fact became suddenly protective and upset, thinking this would put some kind of burden on Martha's 90 year old mother. And now the latest Martha mini-scandal is all over Page Six.
The very idea of Martha's mom getting post fan-letter stress disorder is completely ridiculous. As if SaveMartha would do anything to put any more of a burden on Martha or her family. We'd rather give up creme brulée forever. Having sat through six weeks of the trial and the sentencing hearing, having spent countless hours on this campaign to do whatever possible to help Martha and her company survive the most ridiculous scandal of all time, that would be the very last thing on our minds. But just like Martha, sometimes one cannot help but be a little bit misunderstood.
If you would like to write to Martha or her mother, we believe you are free to do so. But we will always inform you of any information that might help you make that decision more wisely. And if Big Martha wakes up one morning to a nice big pile of mail telling her how much we appreciate what her daughter Martha has done, then we plead guilty to the offense of warming a mother's heart while her daughter awaits freedom sometime in the Spring...
I want to add my own thought to this and will do so later tonight as I have the time.
To: The President of the United States
Dear Mr. President:
A terrible injustice has been done to Martha Stewart. Her only real crime was to be too successful,
thereby eliciting the enmity of misguided and misinformed citizens who feel that she represents the face of corporate crime.
It is our belief, Mr. President, that Martha Stewart was put on trial and aggressively prosecuted in a
criminal court because of who she is. Please allow us to explain.
There is an awful irony in the Justice Department's victory against Martha Stewart. Ostensibly the
message has gone out that justice has triumphed: the good guys won and from now on no other corporate malfeasance will be committed with impunity.
But consider the Ken Lays of the world who ravage their companies' and their stockholders' wealth as
they amass their own personal fortunes.
In Martha Stewart's case we are facing the destruction of a corporation that was not only enriching its
stockholders, prior to media leaks by investigators about Martha Stewart's case, but was gainfully
employing hundreds of people in a company that seemed destined to blossom and continue to support a steady economy. Martha Stewart did nothing to damage her own company or its employees.
After investigating Martha Stewart for insider trading, there was not enough evidence to bring the
case to criminal trial. Instead, the Justice Department tried to levy a charge that Martha Stewart
engaged in securities fraud merely by saying she was innocent, a charge which was rightfully dismissed by Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum. We shudder to imagine the outcome of this had she not had the wisdom to do so.
Now Martha Stewart has been convicted of lying, in a meeting where none of the questions were written down, and for the obstruction of justice in an investigation where she provided all the documents and information that were requested. For her cooperation, she now faces years behind bars, while those who do not cooperate still walk free.
This show trial has resulted in the loss of over a billion dollars in Omnimedia shareholder wealth,
thanks in large part to leaks from sources close to the investigation to the media, not anything Ms.
Stewart did. It has cost taxpayers millions of dollars to support the investigation and the subsequent trial, and has resulted in no clear restitution in cases where a company's CEO was accused of draining employee retirement funds or scamming unwitting shareholders.
After the trial, one of the jurors said this was a victory for the little guys, but it appears it's the
little guys, the taxpayers, employees and shareholders, who really paid the price.
Sir, we implore you to empower any agency that might offer some relief from the terrible injustice done to a woman who has brought happiness, personal enrichment and joy into the lives of millions of her devoted readers, viewers and fans. Martha Stewart has venerated the core of American values - the home. We believe that sending her to prison will send an awful message.
Finally, the likely loss of jobs that will result from the destruction of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
Inc. should Ms. Stewart be incarcerated is in itself a tragedy - one that can be avoided.
It is our assertion that Martha Stewart deserves a presidential pardon in this case and we are humbly
asking you to grant it.
...Apparently talking about our age never goes out of style.
But it was race, rather than birthdates or preference for flats, that really separated our feminist grandmas. As far back as the 1800's, race had put them in different camps. The movement for universal suffrage broke down when white women leaders realized that black men would get to the ballot box before them. Feminists were still unsettled about the issue of race in the 1970's as they raised their consciousness. So in 1980, when women of color produced an anthology about the movement, they picked a no-nonsense metaphor for the book's title, ''This Bridge Called My Back.''
Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, the book wasn't the she-said-she-said some may have expected or wanted. Instead, women of color wrote candidly about their own racism and that of white feminists. Moraga wrote, ''We are afraid to look at how we have failed each other.'' Now a new book edited by Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, ''This Bridge We Call Home,'' brings the question of differences up to date, and suggests that now looks something like back then. One young writer, Kimberly Springer, wonders if she should attend ''the Black Student Union protest or drive to a Clinic Defense in suburban Detroit? The United Coalition Against Racism meeting or the Take Back the Night March? Like the 1970's Black feminists I would later study, I was torn between two lovers.''
Like those before her, Springer comes to the conclusion that identifying politically with those who look like her doesn't result in instant sisterhood. Being of the same race, national origin or class background is often a good and much-needed starting point, but it doesn't mean shutting the door on everyone else. It requires, as Anzaldúa writes in her introduction, ''knowing when to close ranks to those outside our home and when to keep the gates open.''
Unlike our sisters 200 years ago or even two decades ago, we now have more contact with each other. We have e-mail. ''Woman'' is one of many identities that we can share. Both young and old feminists now find themselves in unlikely alliances. A chicana lives in Norway with friends from Pakistan, Kosovo and India. Palestinian girls grow up with Puerto Ricans in New York. And likewise, the writers in ''This Bridge We Call Home'' are mixed-race graduate students, gay fathers, chicana schoolteachers and first- and fifth-generation Americans.
None of this makes talking about race and feminism any easier than it was back in the 1800's. We joke about gray hair, the news on hormone replacement, the baby fat, the acne, how time passes -- all while riding on the elevator to the office. But talking about race we leave for trips to the bathroom. We check in with each other about whether we sounded racist talking about hair or the Middle East. We add lipstick and exchange that ''can you believe she said that?'' look. A writer in ''This Bridge We Call Home,'' though, talks about it more honestly: ''Being the white mom of an African-American child has not made me more conscious of racism. Nor has it made me a better anti-racism activist. It has made me more vulnerable.''
With the anniversary of Sept. 11 close at hand, ''This Bridge We Call Home'' is a reminder that it's a good time to talk about what keeps us apart and what brings us together. Deborah Miranda warns in the book of ''solidarity on the one hand, silence on the other.'' She's describing the relationship between women of color and Native American women, but the same could be said of feminists in general and, beyond that, of Americans. Solidarity and silence. We're together in sisterhood or tragedy, but our questions and fears don't necessarily get talked about. Instead we put them aside and history, herstory, the story repeats itself.
Table of Contents Comment? (1)
Consider two books on the subject that have just come out this month that try to validate this lifestyle both historically and anecdotally, as if it were a fringe phenomenon rather than a rapidly growing segment of society:
Betsy Israel's ''Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century'' (William Morrow)
and
''Solitaire: The Intimate Lives of Single Women'' (Macfarlane Walter & Ross) by Marian Botsford Fraser, a Canadian journalist.
Both suggest that single women are still perceived as a special-interest group, although, according to Ms. Israel's book, they number a staggering 1.95 million in New York City alone. (The Census Bureau puts that number at 2,060,000.)
''Single women have always been portrayed and depicted in the mass culture in a negative and nasty way that influenced the lives of many women, and at the same time was competely untrue, and these images, some of them 150 years old, are still being played out and the ideas are just being recycled,'' says Ms. Israel.
''Bachelor Girl'' traces the trajectory of the single woman in America, from the turn of the 20th century to the present, from the spinster -- working immigrant women who literally spun for a living -- to ''outspoken and very cool-looking single celebrities'' of the 1960's and 1970's like Gloria Steinem. There are thumbnail sketches of poster girls for singlehood like the Brontë sisters, Louisa May Alcott and Florence Nightingale. (Who, despite her status, was not exactly a role model for single living. After revolutionizing military nursing standards during the Crimean War, she took to her bed more or less permanently at the age of 40 with a mysterious malady.) Rife with Dickensian detail, Ms. Israel's book provides a useful (if depressing) history of single working girls and new women of all stripes, from the shopgirl to the Gibson goddess to the swinging single.
Ms. Fraser's book calls single women ''a potentially powerful socio-economic group'' but one that is ''still widely perceived as disadvantaged or insignificant, subordinate or invisible.'' As evidence she collects oral accounts of 150 women she interviewed across Canada, from a nonagenarian living alone in a trailer on a remote farm to young professionals at work and play in Toronto, to the hospice care of a terminally ill woman by her coterie of friends. The collective voice of these single women is decidedly ambivalent.
''I think it's human nature for there to be ambivalence about stuff like this,'' Ms. Fraser says. ''I think people want the freedom, the autonomy, the independence and in some cases the greater security of being single, but they also want to be in relationships. No matter how well you put your life together, it's still nice to have sex now and then.''
It's hard to imagine their male counterparts being subjected to similar treatment, a history of single men, say, or a book about bachelors that didn't celebrate their sexual prowess with Rat-Pack-style martini glasses or a winsome picture of Hugh Grant or some other signifier of this debonair demimonde on the cover, excerpted, perhaps, by Esquire or GQ.
The cover of Ms. Fraser's ''Solitaire'' is stark, showing a pair of self-clasped workaday female hands. Ms. Israel's book makes a game effort at presenting a positive image, with two broadly grinning flappers on the cover who at least look as if they are having fun. But having shuffled the deck of single-women stereotypes from the old maid to the mistress, she sadly concludes: ''If distinct single archetypes seem for the moment to have blurred, the conviction that single women are social outcasts -- odd women who require constant translation -- remains intact. Wherever she is, perhaps in a waiting room or lost in the morass of the Internet, she'll eventually find a story about her uncertain future and her inevitable regret.''
''The media refrain has variations,'' she writes, ''but in essence it remains the same: no matter what the single woman says, she can't really be happy. Her life is barren and disappointing.''
Carolyn Dinshaw, the director of the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at New York University, questions the terminology itself. '' 'Single women' strikes me as very outdated,'' she says. ''I would suggest the term 'women,' because 'single women' problematizes the single woman as if the standard is the couple, and it seems to me that we have really gone beyond that.''
Just in time for Thanksgiving travel, the doctors and nutritionists at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) have rated 10 of the top airlines for the availability of healthy vegetarian and vegan entrées.
Vegetarian and vegan (dairy- and egg-free) meals are naturally higher in fiber and lower in fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol. Unfortunately, healthy food seems to be one of the first things to go when airlines seek to cut costs. As airlines have moved away from standard menus in favor of buy-on-board meals, passengers’ access to meatless and dairy-free food has decreased dramatically.
At the time of PCRM’s last Airline Food Report in 1996, most large airlines offered vegetarian or vegan meals. But today, such major airlines as Continental have discontinued their vegetarian options. With many healthy, cholesterol-free items now gone, passengers looking for wholesome meals often have two choices: pack their own food or go hungry.
Bad Timing
It is the wrong time to cut plant-based entrées from airline menus. More than 44 million adult Americans are now significantly overweight, and diet-related disease rates are skyrocketing. Seatbelt extenders are in high demand. And pity the traveler in seats B or E, those middle seats where travelers get squeezed by super-sized customers. While airlines can’t stop the obesity epidemic—any more than they can make all smokers quit—they can model a healthier lifestyle by serving more healthful food.
A nutritional analysis of two meals demonstrates the difference between non-vegetarian and vegetarian fare. A ham sandwich (offered by United) averages 394 calories, 22.5 grams of fat, seven grams of saturated fat, and 59 milligrams of cholesterol. American Airlines’ vegan bistro bag (featuring a veggie pita, baby carrots, pretzels, and an apple) totals 253 calories, one gram of fat, zero grams of saturated fat, and seven grams of fiber.
Travelers wanting to prevent diabetes, cancer, and other chronic health problems will look for vegetarian entrées. Unfortunately, these healthy options seem to be disappearing from the carts that roll down the center aisle of the aircraft.
The Rankings
Superb Service: Song.
This airline, which is operated by Delta, offers healthy vegetarian and vegan meals as part of the buy-on-board menu on all flights.
Plan Ahead: Alaska, American, United.
These airlines offer vegetarian and/or vegan options, but travelers must usually special-order such healthy meals before their flight.
Falling Behind: American Eagle, Continental, Delta, Midwest, Northwest, US Airways.
These airlines make only a rudimentary effort at providing vegetarian and vegan meals—or they offer none at all.
What the Airlines Offer
Airline
Vegetarian meals?
Vegan meals?
The Methodology
Research was conducted in October of 2003. Only domestic flights were considered. Meals served in first class were not considered. Some major airlines, such as Southwest, AirTran, and America West, were not reviewed because they do not offer any meal service for economy class. Many airlines now offer a buy-on-board option for travelers wishing to purchase a meal for their flight; others still provide standard meals on some flights. PCRM dietitians reviewed both types of meal service by locating menu information on airlines’ Web sites when it was available and contacting the airlines for additional menus and information.
Buy-on-Board
Six reviewed airlines now offer buy-on-board meals. Four of these exclusively serve buy-on-board, and two (Delta and Northwest) offer buy-on-board on some flights and standard meals on others. Of these six airlines, only two offered vegetarian lunch or dinner options. Breakfast choices were a little better for vegetarians, although only the same two airlines offered a vegan breakfast item.
Buy-on-board programs do not offer the option of special meals (including vegetarian or vegan, kosher, low cholesterol, low sugar). Also, many available options—such as ham or roast beef sandwiches—are high in fat and cholesterol.
SONG a new low-fare carrier operated by Delta, stands out in the buy-on-board category. It not only offers a variety of vegetarian and vegan breakfast items, but also consistently serves vegetarian and vegan lunch and dinner items. The current menu offers a vegetarian Garden Greek Salad and a vegan Rock n Roll Sushi meal. Veggie sushi is a healthful meal that averages 286 calories, three grams of fat, zero grams of saturated fat, and two grams of fiber. Those looking for a healthy meal will find it easily on Song.
Many buy-on-board meals are far from healthful. But Northwest serves one of the worst: a ham, salami, and provolone cheese sandwich on ciabatta, plus chips and a chocolate bar. This meal totals approximately 800 calories, 40 grams of fat, and 20 grams of saturated fat.
Standard Meals
Of the airlines reviewed, six still offer free in-flight meals, depending on the length of the flight. Vegetarian meals never appear on most airlines’ standard menus. Travelers are usually stuck choosing between one high-fat, high-cholesterol entrée and another.
In the past, many health-conscious travelers called ahead to airlines to request a vegetarian or vegan meal. However, such special-order meals are no longer widely available. On four of the seven airlines offering free in-flight meals, a special meal (such as vegetarian) can be ordered in advance. However, only two of these airlines—American and United—offered a vegan option.
Continental Airlines recently eliminated all special meals. This leaves a traveler with special dietary needs, or anyone simply looking for a healthier meal, without any options other than packing their own food.
Top choices in this category include American Airlines’ special-order vegan bistro bag. But passengers flying American should be careful to call ahead. Those who don’t special-order this meal will be stuck with a turkey and cheese sandwich, chips, carrots, and a cookie, which total 705 calories and 33 grams of fat.
......................there is a lot more to this article ........click here to see all the charts
Recommendations:
The doctors and nutritionists at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine urge all airlines to include one option that is both vegan and kosher in buy-on-board and standard meal services. This one option should be designed to satisfy all special meal requests. This would mean people looking for vegetarian, heart-healthy, kosher, or high-fiber meals would always have an appropriate menu item available when they fly. Many tasty, healthy options would fulfill this requirement. Possible menu items include:
roasted veggie hoagie with hummus
bean burrito with pinto beans, rice, and salsa
hearty green salad topped with chopped vegetables, baked tofu, and beans
whole grain bread with almond butter and strawberry preserves
curried tofu salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato in a pita
Offering such meals would both increase customer satisfaction and save the airlines money. In addition, these vegan items would provide an optimal choice for any passenger looking for a healthy meal.
One of the great international correspondents of our time, Georgie Anne Geyer has traveled the world interviewing the kings, queens, and statesmen. She's noted for her books and columns about world leaders. But her latest book is about an altogether different royal line: cats.
Best Friends editor Michael Mountain talked with her about When Cats Reigned Like Kings - On the Trail of the Sacred Cats.
Michael Mountain: You've interviewed some of the world's greatest leaders, from kings and presidents to prime ministers and dictators. Now you've written a book about cats. Why?
Georgie Anne Geyer: Well, the truth is I got awfully tired of human beings while covering wars in El Salvador and Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Iran. I had my two wonderful cats, Pasha, who was an Egyptian god cat lost on the streets of Chicago, and Neko, the little Japanese bobcat cat I have now. And as I roamed around the world doing these other stories, I saw that so many of these other countries had made cats, of all the animals in the world, into royal and sacred creatures. I love history, so I began to collect the histories of cats in various countries. Of course, all cats are royal and sacred, as we know.
M.M.: There is a definite spiritual essence that runs all the way through your book. For example, your description of how in Egypt cats were seen as actually being able to carry the souls of people after they'd died.
G.G.: So many ancient societies - Egypt, Siam, Japan, China - believed in the transmigration of souls. And they believed that the cat, again alone out of all the animals in the world, could carry the soul of his human friend into the next world. Herodotus, when he visited Egypt in 500 B.C., wrote about this.
And of course Egyptians made the cats into gods. I had a very joyful, precious day when I went north of Cairo, and I visited the ruins of the Temple of Bastet on the Nile, which is where the cat Goddess Bastet held court. That's [the famous statue] where she's poised beautifully with her little paws in front of her and wearing her necklace and her earrings. There were thousands of cats there, roaming around the altars, and they were not only revered but actually honored and prayed to by Egyptians who came there from all over the realm.
M.M.: You suggest at one point that cats answer our own deepest spiritual yearnings - how do they do that?
G.G.: Well, this is a curious thing, and I sort of play with this idea in the book: Did we make cats into gods throughout history because of our need to find a creature who could embody the spiritual? Or did they come to us with the spiritual message and tell us about it? You can see through the history of felines across the globe, across the centuries, that there was something in the cat alone that brought out the spirituality in mankind. Dogs, as wonderful as they are, were gatekeepers often at the palace, and they were honored as hunters, and so on. The Egyptians had many, many animals as gods - crocodiles, falcons - in various localities, but only the cat was a god across the whole realm. Only the cat was a god in all of these different cultures.
M.M.: Do you have a slight yearning yourself for mankind to return to a time when all the animals were recognized as spiritual beings? There is one sentence in your book where you write, "I believe that all cats are beautiful and that they share in that sacred and royal spirit that they exemplify in themselves and inspire in us humans." And that comes across as your own credo
G.G.: Yes, I do believe in that. I think we're missing so much when we don't try to understand animals on all kinds of levels. And anyone who has lived with a beloved dog or cat would feel and know this. Historically, every cat is royal and sacred because every cat came out of Egypt - they originated in the African wilds and were domesticated and then made into gods in Egypt. Then when the Romans came in 350 B.C., cats were taken all over the world - to Europe and to Asia - down the trade routes. So all cats share in the royalty and sacredness of ancient Egypt.
Later on, cats went through a very bad period of Judeo-Christianity in the Middle East and Europe, because when you have one god, you couldn't have animal gods. But then in the late 19th century, you had the breeds come in Britain. And this was almost a new kind of royalty - a royalty of the democracies, where cats could be recognized (and dogs, too) and cared for and shown as beautiful. At the first cat show in London at the Crystal Palace, people were just amazed suddenly to see these cats who had been out on the street, lounging on velvet pillows looking as beautiful as of course they do look. But they didn't have breeds then; they showed according to colors. So in the book, I traced how they went from being royalty in the ancient days to now being a new kind of royalty - the cat who's loved as a precious part of the family.
M.M.: You must be the only person anywhere who meets world leaders and talks with them about cats. Like when the governor of Bangkok tells you that "cats and politics are a little bit similar."
G.G.: Yes, I found myself seated next to him at a luncheon one day, and I'd been told that he had had 11 cats, and he did say they were like politics - something about how both involve you intensely.
M.M.: Does anybody particularly stand out in terms of kings, queens, prime ministers, whatever, who have a particular thing with cats?
G.G.: Probably the late King Hussein [of Jordan], whom I interviewed a number of times when I covered the Middle East. He had several - always several - little cats which his wife bought him in London. And I foolishly did not ask him what kind. But he said that they would wait for him at the bottom of the staircase in his palace every night and would walk up to bed with him.
And Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher El Sayed of Egypt, whom I talked to three years ago, was a very charming man. He was just in the middle of one of the endless Palestinian problems and quarrels, and I told him I'd been up to the temple of Bastet in the north and he said, "That's so wonderful, oh, that's so wonderful. I can't wait to tell my wife and my mother!" It's been funny being in these conversations with these world leaders and then talking about cats.
M.M.: Now you've talked about cat gods and goddesses and the cat kings and queens, but there's the other side, too - the naughty cats or the bad cats. What did you find out about them? Because there's a whole duality there.
G.G.: The duality is really striking. In Egypt, for instance, I had always heard about Bastet, sitting primly with her little paws and her beautiful necklace and always the earrings. And then one day I suddenly heard an Egyptian friend of mine say, "Well, there's always the bad cat, Sekhmet, the roaring lion cat." I was just starting my research then, so I hadn't run across Sekhmet. But yes, indeed, there is Sekhmet, who is called "the mangler" and "enforcer," and she was the other side of the good Bastet.
Bastet brought good things and was also seen as the mother with the basket in the very famous sculpture in the Egyptian Museum. But Sekhmet was the bad god of thunder and lightning and the mangler - the bad side of humankind. And there's the same duality in Japan and in Siam in those wonderful cat treatises, which strangely enough are not known to many people. There are good cats and bad cats. They had exact descriptions of the good cats in your life and what they would bring you. And the same with the bad cats. So man's duality of nature and spirituality is also ... do we say imposed on the cats or reflected in the cats? That's where I left off and let everyone's imagination take over.
M.M.: So there is a possibility that we're simply reflections of cats?
G.G.: I'm not going to say that's wrong! It's too much fun to think about.
M.M.: You actually found cats who are both sacred and royal in all parts of the world?
G.G.: Yes, and I made a genealogical chart of all the cultures and when the cat became sacred in those cultures. And there's also the part of the book called "The Family of Cat," in which I did profiles of all of the popular breeds today. Anyone can look and see what mixture their cat is. All cats, of course, are mixtures now, but you can tell the different breeds by the beautiful pictures and the little profiles I did.
M.M.: And you can't help but go and look up your favorite cat, so I immediately went to look for the heritage and line of Squeaky Pop, who is one of my cats, and he's a sort of Maine coon, big and fluffy, and you have a whole story about Maine coons and how they may have come over from France after Marie Antoinette was executed there.
G.G.: You know, I think that story has a very good chance of being true, because there was an attempt to spring Marie Antoinette before she was killed in the French Revolution. And she had sent her beloved cats ahead, the story goes, and it seems to ring true to me. There was this British ship captain and [the French queen] was going to join them and come to the New World, but she was taken and killed. According to the story, Captain Coon, the ship's captain, did bring them over. And of course cats were on all the ships in those years - they were on the Mayflower.
The Maine coon were beautiful cats. They were the first American cats. The first cat shows, in the 1800s in New England, were only for Maine coons because those were the only cats. And another interesting thing is you look at the Maine coons in New England, the Siberians in Russia, and the Norwegian Forest cats in Norway, and they are all very similar - big beautiful cats with long hair, beautiful faces, sort of gentle giants, and they all adapted to the winters in all these northern climes and developed these heavy coats. So you look at the pictures in the book or anywhere else, and you'll see how similar the northern cats are.
And [it's the same] with the southern cats. The Siamese and their offspring are very silky and beautiful. And bobtails started in Singapore and worked their way up through China and Japan. I find the history to be fascinating because cats have their own maps and their own heritage. They have their own royal palaces in Siam, and their own temples in Egypt.
When Cats Reigned Like Kings - On the Trail of the Sacred Cats is published by Andrews McMeel.
Best Friends Vacation Information
Through a brief review of Iran and a few references to post-Soviet Azerbaijan, the interplay between local and global factors in shaping the course of women's movements and feminism is demonstrated.
Attention is paid primarily to the positive impact of two specific aspects of globalization on women's movements and feminism in these two societies: the international human rights regime (comprised of the United Nations and international nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) and global feminism (comprised of feminist discourses, the international women's movement, and transnational feminist networks).
As in other countries, it is the history, internal developments, and dynamism of each society, particularly the social praxis of women, that have played the main role in shaping the course of women's movements in Iran and Azerbaijan. But external factors also, both during colonial times and in the present era of globalization, have influenced women's movements and feminism in Muslim and non-Muslim societies. In the past, the global and external factor for women in the Muslim world was predominantly of a colonial nature.
In colonial and postcolonial studies of Muslim societies, the gender- and class-based differential impacts of colonialism (in countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq) or of Western hegemony (in countries that were never colonized, such as Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan) have been extensively studied. On women's rights movement and feminism also, colonialism or Western domination left contradictory impacts. (1)
The external/global factor, due to the much more deeply penetrating and transformative processes of globalization, is distinct from the colonial system of the past. Globalization, replete with contradictions, is more akin to the Industrial Revolution in its impact on societies, its intervention directly into daily life as well as economies, institutions of governance, and world order (Giddens, 1994; Held et al., 1999).
Because of increasing globalization, no gender regime and therefore no women's movement in any locality (country or community) can be studied and understood without taking global influences into account.
An obvious, recently illuminated case in point is the situation of women in Afghanistan. Women's status and rights in Afghanistan cannot be accounted for without understanding the interaction between the local (history, geography, geopolitics, political economy, culture, and Afghan women's own agency and struggles) and the global or international factors, including the intervention of the superpowers (the Soviet Union and the United States), the regional powers (including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran) and the subsequent interventions of international human/women's rights groups and feminist networks.
Before reviewing the case studies, some conceptual and theoretical clarification and definitions that make up the framework of this study are offered.
Globalization and "Global Feminism"
Globalization processes, especially since the 1970s, have affected feminist mobilization for change in many different societies. Feminist interventions, in turn, have aimed to affect the parameters and direction of globalization processes (Eschle, 2001: 192).
The increasing globalization and integration of the world through international trade, migration, faster and less expensive transportation, and new electronic communication and information technology, have led to a situation in which a growing number of women and men belong to more than one community. Communities and group identities are overlapping and de-territorializing, and an escalating number of individuals who become multicultural and multilingual are adopting more fluid and multiple identities (Jaggar, 1998; Appadurai, 1996).
Globalization is accompanied by intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole (Robertson, 1996: 8; Giddens, 1994: 5-7). This and other effects of globalization have important implications for gender relations and women's status in all societies.
Anthony Giddens, for example, points to the indirect impact of global processes on social pressure for democratization in the form of "the expansion of social reflexivity and detraditionalization" (Giddens, 1994: 111). As they become better informed about new and varied political alternatives in the world, populations become less likely to accept traditional models of political and gender regimes.
Globalization "allows for the subversive possibility of women seeing beyond the local to the global" (Eisenstein, 1997: 17).
Even those who never physically leave their communities of origin are more likely now to evaluate their own lives by placing their rights, options, and restrictions in a comparative and global perspective (Jaggar, 1998).
Exposure to geographically disparate influences and to issues framed in a global context can encourage the reflexive scrutiny of localized traditions and behavior patters and lead to the construction of new social relationships" (Eschle, 2001: 147).
Women, especially in the global South, are located at the center of contemporary globalization processes. Although local/national contexts are the primary sites for feminist struggles and intervention, global/international forums such as United Nations world conferences and transnational economic structures such as the IMF, World Bank, and transnational corporations have become more important in women's lives, hence requiring feminist intervention.
Throughout the world, the debt crisis; severe "structural adjustment" policies; unhealthy and unbalanced patters of consumption; plant relocations by multinational corporations from the global North to the global South; environmental degradation in both "worlds"; militarism; the trade in heroin and cocaine; and sex tourism and international traffic in women are among the main adverse effects of globalization that concern many feminists, especially in the global South, both in the areas formerly known as the "Third World" and the "Second World," now usually called post-Soviet, post-Communist or new transitional economies, including Azerbaijan. (2)
Culturally and politically, women are situated in the vortex of contending social forces: centripetal tendencies toward increasing globalization and integration and centrifugal tendencies toward nationalism and fragmentation (Jaggar, 1998: 7).
As in Iran, a main concern with respect to the cultural and political impacts of globalization is that women "are frequently taken as emblems of cultural integrity, so that defending beleaguered cultures becomes equated with preserving traditional forms of femininity, especially as these are manifest in traditional female dress and practices of marriage and sexuality" (Jaggar, 1998: 7).
In response to these global challenges and practical concerns (such as violence, democracy, universal human rights, morality, and ethics), a global discourse community is emerging among feminists (Jaggar, 1998; Eschle, 2001).
This emerging global feminism is an outgrowth of globalization and at the same time a critical response to it. The beginnings of global feminism are visible in official and semiofficial venues, such as the regional and world conferences on women sponsored by the UN since 1975, and especially their accompanying forums for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
The emergence of global feminism is also evident in a multitude of ongoing interactions among grassroots groups and transnational feminist networks addressing regional or global concerns, such as the Network of East/West Women, Encuentros Feministas, Women Living under Muslim Laws, and the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights (Jaggar, 1998: 8).
The Interplay of the Local and the Global or the Particular and the Universal
Intensified globalization has made conventional demarcation between the "internal" and the "external," or the "local" and the "global" or the core-periphery model somewhat artificial as it is becoming more difficult to determine where the local stops and the global begins.
The "cultural flow" of globalization is not simply from the global to the local, but also the reverse (Abu-Lughod, 1991: 132) and forces from various metropolises that are brought into new societies tend to become indigenized in one way or another (Appadurai, 1996: 32).
Although many feminists feel compelled to "think globally and act locally," some actions have to be carried out globally if certain changes are to take place locally.
(3) Given the situation of Afghanistan, for example, no local improvement in women's status can take place without a global action to alter present devastation.
The concerns of women around the world have to be addressed, then, in the historicized particularity of their relationship to multiple systems of subordination and oppression: patriarchy and/or male supremacy at local levels (family, community, and nation) and international sexism and economic hegemony at the global level.
As Uma Narayan (1997) puts it, "we need to articulate the relationship of gender to scattered hegemonies such as global economic structures, patriarchal nationalisms, `authentic' forms of tradition, local structures of domination, and legal-juridical oppression on multiple levels."
While women's movements and feminism have become increasingly global, sisterhood is not global in its romantic sense, nor is it local.
Rather, women's solidarity has to be negotiated within each specific context (Mohanty, 1998; Sharoni, 2001; Bayes and Tohidi, 2001). Amrita Basu, for example, warns us against making sweeping generalizations about commonalities among women ....(TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE click here
The old nursery rhyme tells us: “Row, row, row your boat...Life is but a dream.” We have to keep doing what we can--rowing our boats, working for what we believe in--all the while realizing we ride on a moving stream we don’t control. We flow, we float, we paddle, steer, and redirect. But we can’t get back upstream however hard we may try. There is little use in always going against the current, resisting, fighting the flow, which can be just another form of clinging and attachment. You may feel “out” of the great flow, but it always flows right through the middle of your life, and through you, too. You may feel far from “It,” but rest assured that it is never apart from you.
On this journey, merriment is helpful. Lightness will help us get where we’re going, without capsizing and sinking. Travel light, and you will soon arrive.
SEE: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/155/story_15547_1.html
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