"Stressing the importance of faith in the Great Pumpkin, Linus states that one must never say “If the Great Pumpkin comes”, but rather, “When the Great Pumpkin comes”; a lack of sufficient faith, he avers, might cause the Great Pumpkin to pass one by at the critical time."

In the words of Charlie Brown, “Good Grief!” But maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Linus. He has a psychological need for various “security blankets,” a phrase coined by the Charlie Brown strip.

Status of Women Canada (SWC) is the federal government agency which promotes gender equality, and the full participation of women in the economic, social, cultural and political life of the country. SWC focuses its work in three areas: improving women's economic autonomy and well-being, eliminating systemic violence against women and children, and advancing women's human rights.

1. Feminism helped me establish my career. At 28 years old, I'm on the faculty in a professional (primarily male-dominated) college, as a contributing member of a larger academic environment. Not too shabby. If I ever want to be reminded of where I could be, I could just look at the testosterone-filled portraits of past engineering graduates in the hallway to my office to the estrogen-filled portraits of past "home economics" degree holders found in another building (yes! there was a 4 year college home ec degree for women to take). I'm appreciative of the opportunities I have today, thanks to the hard work of women who came before me -- while there's still room for improvement in the employment arena of today, we have indeed come a long way.


2. Speaking of which, Feminism helped me overcome the (mis)teachings of a lot of the biblical passages I was exposed to, growing up. Hey, Apostle Paul? Remember saying: "I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent"? -- guess what? Every day I have authority over classrooms full of men. I remember going to my Sunday school classes, and from high school onwards, women weren't allowed to teach mixed-sex classes -- unless, of course, they were aided by their husband. Women couldn't even work as an usher or speak from the pulpit. Feminism includes a radical concept that women have the same footing as their male counterparts -- even when it comes to matters of spirituality.


3. Feminism gives me the ability to decide when (or if) I want to become pregnant. Speaking of religious extremism, there are many out there who would rather women not have access to forms of contraception -- stating that sex's sole purpose is for procreation, and that women are biblically subjected to their reproductive cycles. I'm thankful that women for the past 100+ years have been fighting to ensure we can control our baby-outputting, and choose whether or not we bear children.


4. Feminism taught me that I have the abilities to play/compete/work alongside the guys, from an early age onward. Growing up, I was often the only girl on a boys' soccer team (or league), and was the first certified female referee in Savannah. I knew that I could do it, and my favorite thing to hear yelled from the sidelines was "you let a GIRL take the ball away from you" -- damn right. Nowadays I'm passing on the same type of empowerment to the little girls of my Brownie troop -- and, should I have a little grrrl of my own, I'll pass it on to her, too.


5. Most of all, though, Feminism teaches me that women aren't necessarily better than men -- but we are equal to them. Feminist philosophy has been degraded into a dirty "f" word these days, unjustly maligned by many into an ideology that solely debases men in order to exalt women. That's not true feminism. Feminism is about making the ways equal for all -- men, women, citizen, immigrant, red and yellow, black and white. Extremist ideologies aside, that should be something we all go for -- true equality of opportunity, wage, and employment.

At his photo op, Bush said, "This country doesn't torture, we're not going to torture. We will interrogate people we pick up off the battlefield to determine whether or not they've got information that will be helpful to protect the country."

DEAR SHOCKED: Please stop being so hard on yourself. You advised your daughter’s friend to do what most other parents would have. What you failed to take into consideration was the fact that many teens live in homes where there is violence, abuse, drug problems and incest.

A year ago here in California, there was an attempt to legislate “parental notification” into law. Fortunately, it was voted down. It’s teens like your daughter’s friend who would have been harmed by this kind of law. They certainly cannot go to their parents — and I have never believed that the law can successfully force this kind of communication with the home.

Of course parents want their children — regardless of age — to come to them if there is a crisis. And I am told that seven out of 10 teens who find themselves pregnant do exactly that. However, those who don’t usually have a good reason for not doing so. Teens like the girl in your letter need counseling and care, not laws forcing them to face abusive parents. I’m glad you wrote to me. Your sad story is a lesson for other well-meaning adults. [link]

"the ad serves up an impressive smorgasbord of cliches about hetero male anxiety along with a sizeable dollope of homosexual undertones (what could be gayer than a man shouting 'I will eat this meat'?)

... In its incoherence and confusion over sexuality, the ad could be seen as a tidy summation of current attitudes toward and discourse around masculinity and femininity, unable to articulate what it means to be a man except to be a meat-eater."

We got to have a spirited debate with my mother after Joy saw the show. My mother says she enjoys believing in God. And so that is that. And you know, I think that’s what most people think. I don’t feel any hostility towards my mother, in fact we are getting along better now than ever. But I keep mulling that over in my mind, enjoying believing in God. Yeah, I think I enjoyed it too. But I think you can only enjoy it if you don’t think about it too deeply or look at it too closely.

from Julia Sweeney's blog

Later this week I'm pre-ordering her new book/CD.

In other news, check out this newly-published Bible that cuts out all the "unused" and unpopular parts:

A new publication of the Bible by a Dutch organization could take a lot of the stress out of reading the Holy Book's instructions for contemporary Christians, according to its publisher.

That's because those troublesome verses about justice for the poor, responsibility for the rich to address their neighbors' needs, and all that talk about money, are gone. Not just edited out, cut out.

... The publication, so far, is available only in Dutch, from the well-known Christian publisher Buijten & Schipperheijn. It has discarded passages of the Ten Commandments, sections of Isaiah, the Proverbs, and the Sermon on the Mount. It contains just holes where the original texts urged "radical" actions around money, justice or affluence. [link via]

This FRONTLINE documentary was first broadcast on PBS on April 18, 1983.

It was filmed at a clinic in Chester, Pa., a small city which at that time had a 30% unemployment rate. The clinic was chosen because it was representative of abortion clinics in the United States. The clinic also offered individual counseling in which the reasons behind the decision are explored.

During their five months at the clinic, the film's producers met with hundreds of women. The two whose abortions are shown in this film are single, white and young -- as are the majority of women who have had abortions in the United States over the past 30 years.

The hour-long documentary just as relevant as it was 20+ years ago -- only that I don't think you'd be able to find such an honest portrayal of the debate today.

Approval of Republicans at a record low: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With congressional elections less than three weeks away, the Republican party's approval ratings are at an all-time low, with approval of the Republican-led Congress at its lowest point in 14 years, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.

Forty-seven percent of respondents said they were less in favor of keeping Republicans in control of Congress, compared to 14 percent who were more in favor of maintaining the current congressional makeup, according to the poll.

So I've been on the lookout for something wonderful to happen, because of this story I heard recently: Carolyn Myss, the medical intuitive who writes and lectures about why people don't heal, flew to Russia a few years ago to give some lectures. Everything that could go wrong did -- flights were cancelled or overbooked, connections missed, her reserved room at the hotel given to someone else. She kept trying to be a good sport, but finally, two mornings later, on the train to her conference on healing, she began to whine at the man sitting beside her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far.

It turned out that this man worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said -- gently -- that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born -- and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.

I believe this to be true.

From Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott
(one of my most favorite reads)

"When you hold it up to a promise of $8 billion, I don't know how good I am at math, but I know that's less than one percent of a promise," says Kuo.

Part of the problem, he says, was indifference from "the base," the religious right. He took 60 Minutes to a convention of evangelical groups – his old stomping ground - and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.

"You’ve got homosexuality in your kid’s school, and you’ve got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," Kuo remarked. "Not a mention of the poor."

"This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda - as if this culture war is a war for God. And it’s not a war for God, it’s a war for politics. And that’s a huge difference," says Kuo. [full transcript here]

"Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel could be a train."

Origami
Ani Difranco

I am an all powerful amazon warrior
Not just some sniveling girl
So no matter what I think I need
You know I can't possibly
Have a need in this world

Come and come for that sweet sweetness
I'll be your never ending vending machine
I could never need to be alone
Never need to be my own
As much as you need your queen

I know men are delicate
Origami creatures
Who need women to unfold them
Hold them when they cry
But I am tired of being your savior
And I am tired of telling you why

And since when did this me me me
Become the be all and end all of me
Oh listen to you talk to me
Long time love has got to breathe, babe
You got to let it ebb and flow
If you want a ball to bounce
You gotta let it go
Just let it go

I know men are delicate
Origami creatures
Who need women to unfold them
Hold them when they cry
But I am tired of being your savior
And I am tired of telling you why

Environment Canada Weather Forecast

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City of Saskatoon
Issued at: 4.00 PM CST Sunday 15 October 2006

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Tonight..Rain changing to snow overnight. Wind east 40 km/h gusting to 60. Low plus 1.
Monday..Snow. Amount 2 to 4 cm. Wind northeast 30 km/h. Temperature steady near minus 1.

They admired my staunch, unquestioning sense of what was right and wrong. Looking back, it's clear I was pompous, self-righteous, and unbearably certain of myself. But I had the total peace of mind that only comes from a worldview with no shades of gray.

My certainty and peace of mind were not to last, however. College showed me that life is full of gray.

[...]

The more I learned the more I began to let go of my carefully held certainties. After my worldview took on a few more shades of gray, my friends started telling me about their abortions. I had to come to terms with the fact that the women against whom I had so emphatically protested in high school were good people, people I knew, people I would want for my friends. What to do with that? Love the sinner, hate the sin? Fairly easy to say in Christian theory, but my friends didn't seem like sinners. They seemed like girls who had fallen in love, or been taken advantage of, or even raped.

I started to wonder about sin, and why so much sin in the Christian tradition falls on women, centers around women's bodies.

Read the rest of the essay here.

ANNE PROVOOST: ... Before I had children, I was already collecting their books, you know. And there's a wonderful book that I'm sure many people here in the United States will know or remember. It's a picture book by Peter Spier. And it only has pictures. But it's the story of Noah and the ark. It's an old book and what you see, at some point, is you see the animals embark. And then you'll see a bunch of animals sitting outside in one frame, and then in the next frame, in the next picture, you'll see they're all, you know, they all have wet feet. And in the next picture, you only see the trunk of the elephant right above water level, and the nostrils of the giraffe. And in the next picture, all you see is water. And that was really, really confrontational to me. And that's really what made the twist in my head thinking, you know, let's look at this story from the other side because it's such an interesting story.

BILL MOYERS: Well, your account looks at the story of Noah and the ark from the flood up. From the victims, from the drowning people. The people not on the ark.

ANNE PROVOOST: From the people in the shadow.

BILL MOYERS: Those people in the shadow of the ark. The original story in the Old Testament looks at it from God's angle, and Noah's experience.

ANNE PROVOOST: It's the old story of the, you know, whether it always depends. If you're going to report on a battle, you can always tell it from the side of the winners, and of the losers. I'm not saying that in my book, I've changed the winners and the losers. But I changed the perspective. And it's always very useful because even when we talk about history in terms of war and peace, what we say is completely colored by who turned out to be the winner. I mean, how would we have spoken about Germans if the Germans had conquered us all? And we would have been much more oblivious. And our attitudes would have been completely different. But of course, I will talk to people all the time who will say, "This is my childhood story, you know. You're taking it away from me. Because I always thought as a very positive, gentle, optimistic story. And I never thought of the people who were left behind. And I don't want to think about them because it's very confrontational." But that, of course, is what, as an author, you want to do.

My perspective: I think the research methods and statistical analysis presented in this report are sound. I do not know the authors personally, and I cannot say to what degree personal bias did or did not affect the results. But I do believe this report more closely reflects reality than other body counts I have seen. This is not a popular position to take in my office, but quite honestly, I think the mounting cost of the war on the Iraqi people is the elephant in the room that no one in the present federal administration or DoD wants to talk about. That is not a criticism — as a military officer I am bound not to criticize our commander in chief — it is a personal assessment of my environment, right or wrong. [full post here]

Book Sale
Sponsored by CFUW(Canadian Federation of University Women) Saskatoon Inc.

WHEN: October 12 and 13 from 9:00 am - 9:00 pm
October 14 and 15 from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
WHERE: 2510 Jasper Ave

Proceeds for Scholarships at University of Saskatchewan
To donate books call 477-1308

I think I'm just now starting to reach that uncomfortable stage of pregnancy. What was my first clue, you ask? My husband's numerous complaints that our bed is getting "too small."

25 weeks down, 15ish to go. Oy.

BILL MOYERS: What is the message of IN THE SHADOW OF THE ARK?

ANNE PROVOOST: There's 500 in every page. I can give you a couple. One of them definitely is that the story of people who get space or get a spot or get room on the boat, it's not over yet. That we still are fighting for a spot on top of everybody else. The pyramid is still there, and everybody's struggling to be above. And that we're leaving out many people. That we should build a bigger ship that implies all. That we have messages of doom hanging over us and that we're not reacting to them. That it is dangerous to tell each other that you're, or tell the others that you've been, chosen. That there is the possibility to escape through solidarity. You can smuggle stowaways on board if you want. You can try. That it is worth putting your honor over your life or other things at risk for doing that, for making a big gesture. That some things are worth a lot. That's just a few of the messages. [full transcript here or watch the program online here]