Conference turris::womannotes-v5

    
    	"Being a mother is a noble status, right?  So why does it change
    	 when you put "unwed" or "welfare" in front of it?"
    
    				-- Florynce Kennedy

"...

The Little House books are stories of long ago.  The way we live and your
schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning
easier.  But the real things haven't changed.  It is still best to be honest and
truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures;
and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong."

    Is that by any chance from a school program put on by Historical
    Perspectives for Children?  I ask because I'm auditioning for them (oh,
    stop your laughing, all of you!) later on today, and Laura Ingalls
    Wilder is one of the women whose life they portray.
    
    E

re:. 185

No, it's from an actual letter written by Laura Ingalls Wilder on her 80th
brithday to her fans.  It's on one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder web sites ---
I wish I could find the URL, but I don't have it bookmarked.

	june

    your wish is my command:
    
    http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/p_greetham/letter.htm

    ah.  I was just wondering.
    
    E

An ox at the roadside, when it is dying of hunger and thirst, does not lie
down; it walks up and down--up and down, seeking it knows not what;--but it
does not lie down.

                 Olive Schreiner


We must do the things we think we cannot do.

                 Eleanor Roosevelt


Nothing in life is to be feared.  it is only to be understood.

                 Marie Curie


You will do foolish things but do them with enthusiasm.

                 Colette


It is necessary to try to surpass one's self always; this occupation ought
to last as long as life.

                 Queen Christina


One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

                 Helen Keller


My friends are my estate.

                Emily Dickinson

 

[Indian women] ``had rights on this land before Columbus came, that women
today still don't have.  Indian women feared [gaining U.S.] citizenship
because they'd lose their rights as women.'' 

"We contain the scripture.  We contain Divinity.  We are Divinity.  We are the
church, the synagogue, the ashram.  We need but close our eyes and feel the 
energy of the sacraments, the sefirot, the chakras, as the origin of our own
power---as the energy that fuels our biology.  Ironically, once we realize the
stuff of which we are made, we have no choice but to live a spiritual life."

    
    <---Amen! 

    "I am also very proud to be a liberal. Why is that so terrible these
    days? The liberals were liberators - they fought slavery, fought for
    women to have the right to vote, fought against Hitler, Stalin, fought
    to end segregation, fought to end apartheid. Liberals put an end to
    child labor and they gave us the five day work week! What's to be
    ashamed of?" 
    
         - BARBRA STREISAND 

"I believe Euro-Americans waste the resources and destroy the environment in 
the Americas because they are not spiritually connected to this land base, 
because they have no ancient mythos or legendary origins rooted to this land."

    And her explanation for why the euros waste their own resources and
    destroy their own environment is what? And what about the south
    americans? Africans?

Gee, I wouldn't know.  

Nor would I speak for her, but perhaps they take their cue from us?

The quote by Carol Sanchez is from her article "New World Tribal Communities:  
An Alternative Approach for Recreating Egalitarian Societies," in *Weaving 
the Visions:  New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality*, ed. Judith Plaskow and 
Carol P. Christ, 1989.  (Sanchez is a poet and essayist of Laguna and Sioux 
ancestry)

It's quoted by Jane Caputi in her book *Gossips, Gorgons and Crones:  The 
Fates of the Earth*, 1993, intro. by Paula Gunn Allen.  (Jane Caputi teaches 
at the U. of New Mexico, wrote *The Age of Sex Crime* and co-wrote *Webster's 
First New Wickedary of the English Language* with Mary Daly)

    
    "Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comfortable".
    
    			Dorothy Day

    
      "Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until
    they arrive, & it is only by this meeting that a new world is born ..."
    
    			Anais Nin (1903 - 1977) 
      		        French/American Writer

"Any tool can be weapon if you hold it right."

                            Ani Difranco

    There is so much wisdom in the quote following this line or two.  When
    one finds that one is married simply to prevent one from being lonely
    can be a sweet awakening.  Marriage is for those in love with each
    other.
                ------------------------------------------------
    
    "To fall in love is very easy, even to remain in it is not difficult;
    our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth
    making to find a comrade through whose presence one becomes steadily
    the person one desires to be."
    
      	                Anna Louise Strong, 1885-1970
    	                    Radical journalist and writer
    

"Neoliberalism is a set of global economic policies which weaken national 
governments and make groups like the International Monetary Fund and the 
World Bank, the entities which determine the economic future of millions. 
These policies, through the implementation of agreements like GATT and 
NAFTA, have created extreme poverty for millions and centralized power for 
a select group in the world accountable to no one. This centralization of 
power disenfranchises millions and denies the human right to the 
fulfillment of basic human needs like food, housing, and employment. 
Weakened national governments prefer to dedicate important resources to the 
protection and subsidy of corporations and deny protection to marginal 
groups, such as women, children, the elderly, the indigenous, etc. As a 
result neoliberalism promotes the militarization of societies in response 
to the needs of the weapons industry and increased social unrest."


(Sisters Across Borders is a collaborative effort of diverse women from the
US and indigenous women in Chiapas, Mexico to break the cycle of poverty
and violence imposed on women in both countries by neoliberalism.) 

    My word!
    
    I have such strong disagreement with the preceeding statement that I
    hardly know where to start.  I have spent years trying to understand
    the way the world economies work, including the origins and
    influences of the institutions named, and my understandings are
    vastly different from those of "Sisters Across Borders".  I do NOT
    agree that current economic policies "have created extreme poverty
    for millions".  To the contrary, I think that the policies of the
    Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) and the
    trade agreements of GATT and its successor, the WTO, together with
    other trade agreements such as those of the EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR,
    ASEAN, etc, have instead provided the opportunities to Billions of
    people to work more productively, competitively, and efficiently,
    and in so doing provided meaningful work and livelihoods to far more
    people than would ever have been the case in the absence of these
    institutions and agreements.  Among others, I am at present reading
    Dean Acheson's book, "Present at the Creation - My years in the
    State Department" in which he describes the background of trade
    policy as it stood before, during, and following World War II.   
    The horrible lessons of that war include the notion that absent
    effective trading relationships, nations will go to war to protect
    their economic interests and competitive access to materials and
    markets.  These institutions have not served to completely avoid the
    negative aspects of competing industrial nations, but they have
    certainly served to structure their relations in ways that permitted
    growth for all while checking the impetus for war, in countless
    ways.  
    
    The statement does more than condemn these institutions and
    agreements without understanding- it condemns what it calls the
    policies of "neoliberalism" behind them.  I also disagree with
    them about this.  I don't agree that the priorities of governments
    supporting these policies have resulted in unaccountability, in
    disenfranchisement, in protection for corporate elites at the
    expense of the poor, or in denying "the human right to the
    fulfillment of basic human needs like food, housing, and
    employment."  To the contrary, it is precisely to protect and
    deliver this right to the largest number of people possible that
    these policies are followed.
    
    Not that it is done perfectly.  Not that there aren't terrible
    abuses.  But to deny the decades of success and the hundreds of
    millions who are participating now in the global economy, to decry
    the system which delivers it by painting its motivations falsely,
    this is an unworthy and unhelpful method of political argument.
    
    To this I object.
    
    DougO

!

I guess maybe some folks (across some borders?) see things differently ...

I believe there's some discussion of these matters - esp. in relation to 
indigenous peoples - on the internet; maybe elsewhere too, 

D.

    
        You have to stay in shape.  My grandmother, she started walking five
     miles a day when she was 60.  She's 97 today and we don't know where
     she is.   
    		              Ellen DeGeneris
    

"Whenever we take on too much, we can never accomplish enough."