April 2006 Archives

I've generated a fair amount of heat for myself because of my announced intention to stay the fuck away from Mormon feminists whose primary allegiance is to the Mormon part of that phrase rather than the feminist. I came to this decision after an experience I allude here, about finding a Mo-fem blog where a married non-feminist dude (he's a HUMANIST instead, but he tries to muster some interest in feminists, since he's married to one) came along and asked the age-old question, "But what about MEN?"

And wouldn't you know, most of the women started falling over themselves to say, "Oh, don't ever imagine that we'd forget about MEN! We're the NICE variety of feminists! We LOVE men! Oh, yes, men suffer! Men's problems are important! Men's problems are EXACTLY WHAT WE WANT TO DISCUSS HERE!"

And then I came along and left the following comment:

This entry on Dale's blog, about why it is that we buy books and don't read them and then go and buy more books, reminded me of this poem, which starts off being about that very same thing. It's another old poem, written and published in the early 90s.

And oh! Guess what! This is my 200th entry.

I've lived in some fairly miserable cities in my life--Kaohsiung and Shanghai spring to mind. Reese Witherfork tells me that Kaohsiung has gotten worse since I was there in 1986, and everything I've read assures me that Shanghai has gotten better since I was there in 1991. Still, I have no particular desire to return to either, and whenever I've felt inclined to lament the shortcomings of anyplace I've lived in the past 15 years, I can always cheer myself up by saying, "At least it's not as bad as Shanghai."

Although not as crowded or filthy or schizophrenic or cruel as Kaohsiung or Shanghai, the city I live in now isn't exactly glamorous or exciting (which I'm told Shanghai has become in certain ways, though even when I lived there you could find glamor and excitement if only you had loads and load of foreign currency, which I lacked). Instead, like so many once prosperous cities in the rust belt, it's economically depressed and culturally deprived, blighted by urban decay and bad management. Some cities have managed to remake themselves into something that can draw industry and tourists, but this place hasn't--partly because it's also cursed by crappy weather.

I can't help feeling, however, that it could be a reasonably appealing place if only someone could shape it properly, then sell that shape to other. Apparently the city council feels the same way too, because billboards have been springing up around town, bearing slogans to help residents feel good about their city.

Found this story in the Times of London on the results of--I'm not making this up--The National Housework Survey of Great Britain 2006.

This survey was commissioned by a British cable television channel, the Discovery Home and Health channel, I guess so it could create a reality TV show, Cleanaholics, which, according to the Times, will "[follow] 27 women and three men as they plough through their chores. " The website claims the show "delves into the psychology behind [the cleanaholics'] routines, and asks – is cleaning the new therapy?" A provocative question indeed!

The headline of the Times story is, "The women who think housework is better than sex," because a third of the 2000 women surveyed reported that cleaning house was more rewarding than having sex.

But I think the real gem of the Times story is the final paragraph:

Graham Peters, 40, of Dorking, one of the minority of superclean men (about one in ten), says he wishes he could cut down on his cleaning habit. “I’ve always been tidy,” he said, “but if I got a young female to clean for me, I would give up tomorrow.”

"If I got a young female to clean for me"?!

Has he ever looked into a cleaning service?

There are plenty of things I would give up tomorrow if I could get someone else to do them willingly, graciously, free of charge, for me: mowing my lawn, servicing my car, dry cleaning my fine woolens.... Oh wait! I forgot! I CAN get someone else to do those things for me, willingly and graciously! I just have to PAY FOR IT, because people tend to expect to be paid for their work!

Oh, wait: I forgot something else: People expect to be paid for their work.... unless that work is housework, and it's done by a woman.... Then it's supposed to be UNPAID. AND it's supposed to come with the added bonus of FREE SEX once the house is clean.

And yet, I imagine that given Graham's attitude, any "young female" he could find to clean for him would be one of the women who find housework more rewarding than sex. Who wants to get it on with a guy who's primarily interested in free maid service? I wonder if they asked THAT of the women who prefer housework to sex.

There are many ways in which I'm a hard-ass ball-breaker of a professor--my students assure me of this--but one way in which I'm nice as nice can be is the fact that I allow my students to make up for missed quizzes and minor assignments by watching movies. That's right: for students who are earning passing grades on major assignments like papers, I'll let them compensate for bombed or missed reading quizzes (which I never had as an undergrad 25 years ago, because it was assumed that we'd just actually read the work assigned, and we actually did) by renting a movie. Actually, they can rent not just a single movie but as many movies as they need--for students who aren't total goof-offs, I offer unlimited extra credit (although it only applies to missed quizzes and the like, not for crappy papers, which makes the writers of crappy papers upset) in the form of watching films I deem relevant and worthy. Not only that, but I email them a list of such films owned by the college library, so they don't even have to leave campus to watch these movies if they see fit.

Warning: this post is cute to the point of being cloying. If you have a low tolerance for cuteness, don't read it. It will gross you out. It might also make you think I'm kind of pathetic, but I'm willing to take that risk.

As I've mentioned, I suffer from insomnia, which I sometimes treat with alcohol (a couple of beers or a shot of vodka being my preferred alcoholic treatment), antihistamines, or prescription sleeping pills--or, if things are really bad, both booze and pills. It's not ideal but desperate means call for desperate measures.

I also have trouble waking up. I've met--and marveled at--people who stir, open their eyes, then immediately and joyfully rise to greet the day! Not me. I stir, notice that it's morning; I look at the clock and feel profound relief if I don't have to get up in the next half hour or so, then snuggle in my blankets and doze cozily for as long as I can.

Last week sucked. Crap happened and I was anxious. As a result, I didn't get a single night of chemical-free sleep all week.

Until Sunday night, that is....

Here's a story I would have only imagined could appear in something like The Onion, but according to The Daily Mail (which I admit sort of reminds me of The Onion), it really happened.

Some British guy got hauled off an airplane and questioned for three hours because he played London Calling by the Clash and Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin in a taxi, and these songs scared the taxi man. I admit the lyrics to "Immigrant Song" are scary, but only because they're so incredibly silly--I included a link to the lyrics so you can see for yourself in case you're unfortunate enough not to be thoroughly familiar with Zeppelin III.

Read it and weep: all you need now to be to be suspected of terrorist sympathies is a fondness for classic punk and rock.

Thanks to Spike for sending me the link.

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the event I think of as the hinge of my life. Twenty years ago today, when I was 22, a great dark door swung ever so slightly ajar after I slammed against it so violently I cracked a rib and got a concussion. I knew instinctively that freedom lay beyond the door, but I was too frightened, too weak and muddled, to push it any further. Instead I retreated further into the claustrophobic darkness of the tiny, stifling room I inhabited, even though there was no place for me in it: it was agonizing to live there, but it was familiar, and it was also home to everyone I loved. How could I ever leave it?

That probably sounds histrionic and hyperbolic, but hey, there are times to say "today is the twentieth anniversary of something that really sucked" and then there are times to try to capture a certain profound, visceral distress accompanying an experience that can still quicken your pulse and bring bile to the back of your mouth, even after two decades.

Here's another way of saying it:

Yesterday I came across this article (published a week or so ago) in the Guardian UK about gender, fiction and reading preferences. Frankengirl and Mysticgypsy, you'll be pleased to learn that Jane Eyre was the novel most often cited by women as having the greatest influence on them. The novel most men cited as influential was The Stranger by Camus.

The report is fascinating and draws some interesting conclusions: Women's favorite novels were "surprisingly varied" and women found it easy to discuss the influence fiction had on them, "producing a number of key moments in their life at which they unselfconsciously acknowledged that fiction had offered them guidance or solace," while men's preferences were limited to a much smaller cluster of works, and "men were more reluctant than the women to discuss the influence reading might have had on them." As for why that might be,

Jon Elek, lecturer in English at University College London, told us: "I guess that if you admit to having a watershed novel, then you're admitting to having a watershed moment, which is something that a lot of men don't necessarily want to admit to. And to admit to having five [as respondents were asked to do] - oh, come on!"

The researchers summarize some of their findings thus:

Our final top 20 of men's reading clearly shows a majority of books with strong active narrative themes - books that might traditionally be described at quintessential boys' books. No surprise there, perhaps. Except that both our recorded interviews and questionnaire responses show these choices being made on the basis of a conscious commitment to novels that take the reader in a direction of personal development. Men's reading choices tend to identify themselves with novels that include intellectual struggle. Personal vulnerability is represented as a more or less angst-ridden struggle against convention, a sense of isolation from social normality. Catastrophe and the struggle to rise above circumstance characterise the plots.

Part of the reason for this, we decided, was that, to a far larger degree than women, men's formative reading was done between the ages of 12 and 20 - indeed, specifically around the ages of 15 and 16. For men, fiction was a rite of passage into manhood during painful adolescence. Many men admitted that they had read little fiction since, though mature men returned to fiction reading in later life, and expressed increasing enjoyment in reading for "self-reflection".

Between 20 and 40, many men we talked to openly showed an almost complete lack of interest in reading which drew them into personal introspection, or asked them to engage with the family and the domestic sphere. On the other hand, those who had remained avid readers could see distinct patterns emerging in their choices which differed from those selected by women.

A final conclusion is that

men use fiction almost physically as a guide to negotiate a difficult journey (but would rarely admit to this downright being the case). They use fiction almost topographically, as a map. Many of our women respondents last year explained that they used novels metaphorically - the build-up to an emotional crisis and subsequent denouement in a novel such as Jane Eyre might have helped negotiate an emotional progress through a difficult divorce, or provided support during a difficult period at work, or provided solace when things seemed generally dull.

Even if you get bored by the reseachers' commentary on their study, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and read the summary of both Jane Eyre and The Stranger--very witty!

A silly meme I've seen around the blogosphere and decided to answer myself.

1) Who is the last person you high-fived?
My colleague, Dr. Sweet Baby Jesus, a few weeks ago, by the copy machine.
2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?
No. And then I'd be reincarnated as an English professor who is obsessed with war literature.
3) Do you sleep with the TV on?
I don't do much of anything with the TV on. And I don't like any noise while I sleep.
4) Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton?
Who hasn't?
5) Have you ever won a spelling bee?
No, but I came close. And the trauma I suffered in losing is probably one reason I became an English professor and dedicated a large portion of my life to marking misspelled words in the writing of young adults.
6) Have you ever been stung by a bee?
Not that I remember.
7) How fast can you type?
80 or 90 words a minute.
8) Are you afraid of the dark?
Nope. I dig it.
9) What color are your eyes?
Blue, about the shade of broken-in Levi's.
10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in?
Nope.
11) When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?
Last night.
12) Do you knock on wood?
Not generally.
13) Do you floss daily?
Every night.
15) Can you hula hoop?
No, but I can hula. I had real hula lessons, in Hawaii. I can belly dance too. My hips are one of the most impressive parts of me.
16) Are you good at keeping secrets?
I'll never tell.
17) What do you want for Christmas?
Cash.
18) Do you know the Muffin Man?
No, but I am intimately acquainted with the Cookie Monster.
19) Do you talk in your sleep?
No.
20) Who wrote the book of love?
Oh! I know this one! I know it thanks to Robyn Hitchcock and the song "Freeze" off the totally awesome album Queen Elvis:
I know who wrote the book of love!
It was an idiot!
It was a fool!
It was a slobbering fool with a speak defect and a shaking hand.
And he wrote my name
Next to yours
But it should have been David Byrne or somebody
21) Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes, but not well.
22) Do you wish on your fallen lashes?
No.
23) Do you consider yourself successful?
I guess. Just not as successful as I want to be.
24) How many people are on your contact list of your cell?
What's a contact list?
25) Have you ever asked for a pony?
Good god, no. My grandfather was a cowboy and I regularly rode horses when we visited him. I knew how much horses ate and pooped, and how easily they could step on you. Why would I want a pony?
26) Plans for tomorrow?
Wash my hair. Do some laundry. Pick up a visiting writer at the airport. Attend his reading. Go to dinner. Think about how much I wish I didn't have to teach on Friday.
27) Can you juggle?
No.
28) Missing someone now?
I've traveled around so much and left so many places behind that I don't very often miss anyone, even people I love very, very much.
29) When was the last time you told someone I Love You?
Sunday.
30) And truly meant it?
Sunday.
31) How often do you drink?
Depends on what's going on.
32) How are you feeling today?
Not so great. I was awakened from a sound sleep by a phone call at 2:30 a.m. and it was of course a wrong number. I hate when that happens! Then I couldn't go back to sleep until I had a antihistamine and a shot of vodka. I got six more hours of sleep after that, but I feel a bit hungover, as you'd expect. Plus the weather is all gray today. However, I am cheered by my plans to wear these really cool dark green, men's wear Oxfords today with striped knee socks and a skirt.
33) What do you say too much?
I've been told I say, "I don't know" too much, but I think it's good to admit one's basic ignorance.
34) Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?
No.
35) What are you looking forward to?
The end of the semester.
36) Have you ever crawled through a window?
I doub it.
37) Have you ever eaten dog food?
No.
38) Can you handle the truth?
I can handle the truth much better than being lied to.
39) Do you like green eggs and ham?
This reminds me of moldy leftovers I found in my mother's refrigerator.... No. I do not like green eggs and ham.
40) Any cool scars?
I have a totally cool scar: the incision at the bottom of my abdomen from exploratory surgery done when I was 14. I'm very fond of the scar, for some reason, even though I resent the surgery, which was totally unnecessary. But I like the way the thin, straight scar complicates the landscape of my body.

This meme was started by Bardiac. I found it thanks to Heo Cwaeth. I tried to do this cheater thing where I had Heo Cwaeth email me the html she used to post her entry, but it didn't translate well for whatever reason. Her version is better than mine because it has links to ALL the various texts, not just the ones she added. I'm sorry, but I'm too lazy to do that for you; if you want to learn about these other texts, you'll have to click on the link to HER post.

(Note as of Tuesday, April 11, Bardiac has compiled a list of all the contributions)

Starter Five from Bardiac:
Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko
Christine de Pisan (aka Pizan) - The Book of the City of Ladies
Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love
Locke, Anne (aka Ane Lok, etc) - A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner
Marie de France - The Lais of Marie de France

Dr. Virago then adds:
The Paston Women - The Paston Letters
Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe
Anonymous - The Floure and the Leafe(Her reasoning for this is on her blog)
Lady Mary Wroth - Poems

La Lecturess then adds:
Anne Askew - The Examinations of Anne Askew
Mary Sidney - Psalms
Anne Finch - Poems
Katherine Phillips - Poems
Teresa of Avila - Life

Amanda at Household Opera then adds:
Bradstreet, Anne: collected poems
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Fama y obras póstumas
Lanyer, Aemilia: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
Wroth, Lady Mary: Urania

Medieval Woman then adds:
Trotula - The Diseases of Women
Female Troubador Poets:- La Comtessa de Dia - "A chantar m'er" & other Trobairitz poetry excerpted.
Hrostvitha of Gandersheim (c.930-c.1002) - Plays Gallicanus & Dulcitius

Heo Cwaeth then adds:
Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Scivias and Liber Divinorum Operum
Rachel Speght (1597 - Some time after 1621) Mouzell for Melastomus and Mortalities Memorandum
Anna Comnena (1093-1153) The Alexiad
Frau Ava (1060-1127) First named German poetess. "Johannes," "Leben Jesu," "Antichrist," "Das Jüngste Gericht" (That's in MHG)
Dhuoda (9th century, inexact dates) Handbook for William: A Carolingian Woman's Counsel for Her Son (at Sunshine for Women) and a dual-language version from Cambridge UP

Continuations of this meme have occurred all over; check the comments on the various blogs listed above to find other early women writers. Dr. Crazy was the one who brought up the most obvious entry of all: Sappho. (I admit I hadn't thought of Sappho myself, and I admit I was ashamed. Doh!)

One of my favorite continuations is courtesy of Natalie at Philobiblion; she adds:
Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (A lady in waiting to the Japanese empress c. 965AD)
Eliza Haywood The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless (1751) (and much else)
Chen Tong, Tan Ze and Qian Yi, authors of The Peony Pavilion: Commentary Edition by Wu Wushan's Three Wives (1694) They were his successive wives, by the way...
Isabella Whitney, The Copy of a Letter, lately written in meeter by a yonge Gentilwoman: to her unconstant lover (1567) and A Sweet Nosegay, or Pleasant Posy: Containing a Hundred and Ten Philosophical Flowers (1573)
Elizabeth Elstob, The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715).

Given that several of the early women writers I'd add have already been mentioned, I thought I'd discuss the early women writers I personally would recommend. Bardiac suggests the list focus on women who have been dead for 300 years, but she also mentions the scarcity of attention in college courses to women who wrote before 1800, and people seem to have interpreted that as the cutoff date as well. I'm going to follow suit in a couple of cases, because it makes the list easier and more fun for me to compile.

1. Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603): My first great historical crush. The woman wrote some great letters and gave some truly eloquent speeches, AND she wrote poetry.

2. Margery Kempe (c. 1373-1440), The Book of Margery Kempe: MK is my favorite illiterate author. She dictated the story of her life to a scribe--perhaps her confessor. She cried a lot (she was rather proud of that fact) and was probably really annoying to be around, but the story of her spiritual development is fascinating.

3. Aphra Behn (1640-1689): I read several of her plays 20 years ago but don't remember them. What I do remember is reading some scandalously funny poem in an undergraduate lit survey about how some sexy encounter in a pastoral setting was ruined when the hot young shepherd pursuing the hot young shepherdess couldn't get it up.

I also remember wandering around Westminster Abbey 20 some-odd years ago, looking down, and realizing I was standing on Aphra Behn's grave--except that it wasn't in poets' corner; it was out in some vestibule. I wonder if this is a legitimate memory, or one I made up? I will have to ask Natalie at My London Your London if she can verify where in the abbey AB's tomb is.

(Note: Natalie got back to me with this passage from Maureen Duffy's biography of Behn:

Natalie also posted the question on Philobiblion; check there to see if any discussion has been generated on the topic, and also to find a link to a picture of the tomb. The engraving on the tomb reads, "Here lies a Proof that Wit can never be Defence enough against Mortality.")

4. Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672): the first North American poet, and my personal favorite Puritan poet. (And I admit I have a soft spot for Puritans, having been one for many years without really realizing it--not in the sense of being a prude but in the sense of being "an iconoclastic, language-fetishizing, constantly self-scrutinizing, fiercely individualistic, hard-working lover of The Word who is pretty sure God isn't very nice and doesn't much like me and that it's MY FAULT, and who has therefore been subject to bouts of despair, bleak and desolate despair, which I don't much talk about because when I do, most of the world tends to assume my descriptions are inflated, exaggerated, melodramatic and not especially sincere," as I once stated elsewhere.)

5. Mary Rowlandson (1637-1710): A History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, also known as The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. (You can download the whole thing here.) Rowlandson was a 17th century New England housewife who was captured by Narragansett Indians during King Philip's War, then wrote an account of the ten weeks she spent traipsing through New England in the winter as a captive before she was finally ransomed. She was very much a product of her time: racist, provincial, convinced that the events of her life were orchestrated by a god who cared about nothing so much as teaching her a lesson. Nonetheless, I find her text remarkable for its uncensored honesty, even down the gratitude she feels that makes her grasp the hand of an Indian and weep with happiness, because he has brought her good news--which she instantly regrets, for proper Puritan housewives do not grasp the hands of Indian men while weeping tears of joy. I am also always moved by her account of the death in her arms of her six-year-old daughter, who has been exclaiming for days, "I will die, let me die." I am fascinated by her discussion of her tobacco addiction and her discovery that profound hunger and fear of starvation changes forever your relationship to food--you are always afraid of hunger after that, she says. There is also some cool prose: people are "knocked on the head" (a mildly nicer term for having one's skull cracked open) and when they misbehave, told to straighten up or someone "will break my face." Students find the text thoroughly problematic, which of course is just one more reason to teach it.

In order to be acceptable to Puritan audiences, Rowlandson's text required an introduction by an upstanding Puritan male assuring readers she was writing this only to show the sovereignty and goodness of God (hence the name) and not to sensationalize her own sensational experience. Nonetheless it was hugely popular and spawned all kinds of imitators. In fact, Rowlandson created the first uniquely American literary genre: the captivity narrative, a story in which a person (generally a woman) is captured by Indians, tormented in various ways, then released or ransomed or able to escape by her wits.

6. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784): one of America's most remarkable poets. Born in Africa in 1753, she was kidnapped into slavery at age seven. English was not even her first language, she didn't possess (as Alice Walker points out, borrowing from Virginia Woolf) ownership of her own body, much less a room of her own, and she still managed to write "hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions-including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own."

7. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823): Radcliffe is acknowledged as one of the great innovators and popularizers of the Gothic novel; one website I looked at claims that The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) "was the world's first 'best-seller.'" I admit I've read more about her than by her, but one of these days I'll do it.

8. Fanny Burney (1752-1840), Evelina. I read this 22 years ago in a survey course on the 18th century novel (a class I liked so well I almost focused on that period for my graduate work) and REALLY liked it. I keep saying I'm going to read it again.... Maybe I should just read some of her other novels instead.

9. Jane Austen (1775-1817): OK, OK, I know this is kind of cheating, because none of Austen's works were PUBLISHED before 1800. But several of them--Lady Susan (special for its deliciously wicked main character), Northanger Abbey and First Impressions (which was the first draft of Pride and Prejudice), were almost certainly written BEFORE 1800. I just think it's important to remember that not only did she write really great novels, she helped shape our expectations of what a good novel should be, back when it was still rather a new form.

note (several hours later): I got an email from Spike, asking, "Where's Mary Wollstonecraft?"

Doh! So now I'm adding

10. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): One of the most important feminists in Western history, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women. A new biography of her was published last year, Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon. I haven't read it but a friend has and says it's fabulous.

OK, that's what I've got now. If I think of someone else I should add, I will.

Here are some examples of what I looked like as a painfully inexperienced 25-year-old Mormon virgin. (They're popups instead of embedded because that way they don't end up anywhere else on the internet; sorry if this inconveniences anyone.) The first is the portrait of me my mother still displays in her home:

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This next one was taken in Provo, Utah, before I went to my second mission president's homecoming talk. Check out the shoes! I still have them but I hardly ever wear them, these great peau de soie pumps with rhinestones on them.

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This last one was taken in the family room in my parents' house. I like how this huge television (by the standards of the late 1980s) is still surrounded and dwarfed by this massive wall of books. There were heavily-laden bookshelves in every room of the house I grew up in, with the exception of the bathroom--and in that room, there was a magazine rack built into the wall by the toilet. I think that explains something about who I am.

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Anyway, the quality of the photos isn't the greatest: they were scanned on an old scanner and resized with old software. Still, I think I am not flattering myself excessively when I suggest that although the photos are blotchy and blocky in the way that digitized images sometimes are, they nonetheless suggest that I was a reasonably attractive young woman--at least, I had good hair and great ankles, and I knew how to work a clutch purse.

A progressive Mormon blogger I know recently posted something about a book he's been reading, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer. One of the blogger's conclusions was that "the perpetrators (and those who support their acts) are not necessarily sick or crazed--they merely have a different way of looking at the world."

I found that statement a bit troublesome, and left a comment stating, "It's all fine and good to remember that about the perpetrators, but the world would be a better place if they'd remember that very same thing about the rest of the world they're attacking: the secular establishment doesn't promote birth control and women's rights because we're sick or crazed; we just have a different world view."

I then added,

The whole thing is just one more reason why anything that teaches people to say something like, "The church I belong to is the only true and living church on the face of the earth" [a phrase commonly spouted by Mormons] is bad. Any time you have an institution that teaches its adherents that they are singularly special possessors of a singularly complete truth, then you're going to have problems. Which is one more reason I consider being a devout Mormon and actually "having a testimony" [which means knowing, not merely believing, core precepts of Mormonism are unimpeachably true] a form of spiritual darkness, and prefer to keep my distance from such people.

The wisdom of such an attitude, of course, is self-evident and therefore unremarkable to a great many people. However, to a "devout" Mormon, even an open-minded progressive one, it's so astonishing and troubling he can scarcely wrap his mind around it. Hence the comment that soon followed mine:

Remember when I vowed that I'd never get sucked into another icky discussion with Mormon women who WANT to be feminists, but can't quite bring themselves to acknowledge the problems inherent in patriarchy? Well, I am happy to say I've managed to avoid doing that--however, I somehow forgot that something much, much worse than Mormon wanna-be feminists is bona fide Mormon priesthood holders!

Yeah, that's right, Holly's been smacked down by an avuncular servant of the lord, who finds it hard to understand why she feels the church is A) intellectually inadequate and B) inhospitable to someone like her--and this despite the fact that he all but calls her a slut! There will be more on all this later--I'm planning an entry, but it involves uploading photos, and because my software is old, I always have problems getting the photos the right size.

In the meantime, I thought I'd post something I came up with for the Sugar Beet, a (now defunct) website of Mormon satire, that expresses what I think of most Mormons' attitude toward tolerating other people's religious and ethical beliefs.

FYI: today is the anniversary of the founding of the church. That's right, 176 years ago today, on April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith hung out in some old guy's living room (Peter Whitmer Sr, to be exact) and officially organized a church which had as its basic tenet the claim that Joseph Smith was the one and only person on the face of the earth authorized to know and transmit God's will to the rest of us. And hey, in case you thought accepting bullshit like that might be a sign that you're a bit gullible, well, let me tell you, a high-minded Mormon man has told me recently that that just ain't the case!

****

(Pima, AZ) In a recent talk to the Pima Fourth Ward, High Councilman Layton Bryce warned members not to be led astray by too much emphasis on the Eleventh Article of Faith, which states, "We claim the privilege of worshiping the Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship, how, where, or what they may."

Bryce began his talk by reading the passage, then stating, "Sometimes people use the Eleventh Article of Faith as an excuse to refrain from doing missionary work. They say, 'I don't want to force my beliefs and opinions on people I have to live and work with. My friends and neighbors know what I believe, and if they're interested, they'll come ask me.'"

"But that attitude doesn't really fit in with our ideas about missionary work, brothers and sisters," Bryce added. "We know that we need to convert the world to the true gospel. I'm not saying we should force people to be Mormon, but we need to do all we can to persuade and teach people as to the right way to believe."

A couple of weeks ago I received Prime, starring Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep, in the mail from Netflix. A few days later Reese Witherfork mentioned that she was trying to get through this movie but found it boring, disappointing and "too Hollywood." Because RW is pretty freakin' astute, this assessment was enough to transform the mild anticipation I felt about the movie into vague apprehension, but as I am nothing if not dutiful, and as I eventually ran out of other things to watch, I finally put the damn movie in the dvd player, only to discover that Ms. Witherfork was right, and then some.

This movie is dreadful for so many reasons, but I'll list a few of the worst.

Here's an article in the NY Times criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for--get this!--spending all kinds of money to fix things in foreign countries when there are still poor people in Venezuela. Thanks to this article, we learn that

Mr. Chávez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs of his own country," said [Bush appointe] John Negroponte, the American director of national intelligence, in February at a Congressional hearing in Washington.

Can you imagine?! A president of some resource-rich country in the Americas, spending lots of money abroad while people in his own country go hungry, cold or naked, while there are children who are uneducated, people in their prime without work, and old people who are sick and alone? What would it be like to live in such a country? And what would it be like for citizens of other countries to know that their lives are shaped by the hypocritical meddling of a government eager to buy influence abroad, even at the expense of its own citizens' well-being?

p.s. Here's a response from Counterpunch that's pretty insightful.

Yesterday morning I went through that strange ritual of setting my clocks ahead. I have many clocks: at least two in every room except the bathroom (just one in there, but you can see it from the bathtub), plus a clock in the basement and one of the back porch. Typically when Daylight Saving Time rolls around or goes away, I adjust all my clocks BEFORE I go to bed, but I was suffering from a cold Saturday night, went to bed early and so forgot. I hacked, coughed, sneezed, snorted, tossed and turned in the darkness; when I awoke fully to glorious daylight, I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only 6:57 a.m. I felt a moment of satisfaction when I realized that it was early enough that I didn't need to get up, that I could luxuriate in my warm bed a while longer--until I remembered that DST had started and a full hour had been lost during the night.

OK, I know that within a given time zone, places in the east are, relative to actual solar time, earlier than places in the west. I'm not at all in favor of every major city figuring out exactly when noon is, then setting its clocks to be precisely accurate in terms of that. I don't mind time zones--I can live with the fact that Detroit and New York are on the same clock, even though they're more than 600 miles apart and on opposite sides of the Eastern Time Zone. (There are repeated announcements in the Detroit Airport informing you that it's in the Eastern Time Zone--apparently a lot of people think it's in Central.)

But once we accept that the sun moves around the earth in 24 hours and mark that movement in 24 slices, why screw with the system by having everyone Spring Forward and Fall Back? I don't understand why it makes life better to decree that for almost seven months out of the year a particular point in the progress of a day is 9 a.m. when that same point is 8 a.m. for the five or so months remaining. Most people have trouble getting up in the morning, so what good does it do to make them wake up earlier? Why can't we just say that what we call 8 a.m. shall remain 8 a.m., and start our day later or earlier, as convenience dictates? (I vote later: I heartily applaud those schools that have done away with 8 a.m. classes, and wish my institution would do the same.) Why do I have to move all my clocks ahead in April and back in October?