a little red hen

Beautiful Yetta, a Jewish Chicken to love...

The city where we live, Portland, a northwest bubble, in the larger bubble, Oregon, is sunny and crisp today.  Summer seems to have taken time off; we wear light jackets.  We're sorry to have left high heat to our New York family.  We have also moved into an ethnically-challenged environment where all the women are white and the men are not bad looking and white also--to badly paraphrase Garrison Keillor.

Why a bubble?  Another glorious Saturday Farmers Market can distract from events that seem far away.  Issues with much traction  here revolve around the land and the environment--important, but what about threats to democracy?  

Terrible trouble is being brewed on the other coast by uneducated people blindly following a crazy fool whose cause is stoked by a woman who perverts feminism with every breath she takes.  I choose not to speak their names on this site.  Two blogs I read regularly for their insights Darlene's Hodgepodge from Arizona and  Citizen K from the state of Washingon enlighten readers on the dangers seeping from this execrable duo.  I thank them for doing the work. 

To celebrate the possibilities of diversity which might expand my own new city's bubble, I offer a children's book I'm about to mail to granddaughter Roxie in New York.  Each of my grandkids has been indoctrinated into my love of hens.  When they are older, I'll try to explain the reason behind this obsession.  I believe my maternal great grandmother in Poland must have raised chickens; this is an invention since no one was kind enough to share any of my ancestor story.

Ron, however, brings chickens closer to me via his paternal grandfather, the one who was brought to America from Bialystok, Poland by his sons who'd come before World War One.  The Blooms love to tell how this ultraorthodox Jewish gentleman, a ritual slaughterer (mostly chickens I assume) and scholar, arrived on the boat at Ellis Island with an explanation.  Wind had blown his professional certificate out of his hands and into the sea.  Now he could devote himself to religious study and be supported by his three American sons.

[Aside:  My sister-in-law, M.M., who reads my blog, is older than spouse Ron, will--I hope-- correct inaccuracies  in this story.]

Yetta, Jewish Chicken, entered my life through NPR.  Scott Simon of Weekend Edition Saturday has a long-running friendship with the writer, Daniel Pinkwater.  They entertain themselves and listeners by reading children's books together laughing as they go.   With four grandchildren (and on my own for suggestions),  I decided it was time to track down Pinkwater's books of which there are many.  Yetta is the most recent, a treasure even if you are not a chicken aficionado--lovable illustrations by Jill Pinkwater.  The text mostly in kids' book English plus much Yiddish, and a little Spanish too! 

Beautiful Yetta The Yiddish Chicken seems a timely addition to Roxie's (laundry helper on her June visit) poultry collection in New York; her family is about to move from the only home she has known for her first four years.  Tucked into its quirky, child oriented text about a lost chicken who lands in an unknown place is a message.  The book's flap, explains:

"Moving from city to country...appearing different from others, or adjusting to change...Jewish tradition teaches how we are to treat newcomers....From the Torah, 'The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.' "

Yetta, Roxie, and I want you to join us in hope that rises above and beyond what happens today.  I close my eyes and remember a conference in 1964.  Martin Luther King speaks of his dream to New York City teachers.  We rise to our feet; we are true believers.

Full Moon over Portland, Oregon, August 23, 2010

Walking uphill, evening, Broadway, near Portland State University.

"ella," lower case contraceptive pill, tip toes here

How far did I have to go to find this picture?  To the UK where ella, the new "You have five days to take care of your unprotected sex encounter" pill    is now available.  Approved this week by the FDA as available by prescription in the U.S., none of the stories about it showed what its packaging looked like.

Call me paranoid, but this seems just another symptom of how frightened officials here are about making this breakthrough contraceptive pill available.  If you don't see it, will it go away?  Please.

In a braver time for women who demanded control over our own bodies, there's  this heartbreaking pin in my jewelry box.  Every now and then it appears on my shirt.  Probably has no meaning for women with no memory of time before Roe v. Wade.   Each time I look at it, I feel the sadness of my own experience and exasperation about the unwon battle for reproductive justice.  A recent find of a hangar slipcover left from our son's wedding in New Orleans (the year before Katrina) moved me to think about writing a post, "Meditation on a Hangar." But celebrating ella is more upbeat and hopeful for the future of my grandchildren.

My English friend Gillian who lived downstairs in my 4th apartment in Manhattan in two-year span and the one I returned to after my own illegal 1957 abortion, would  entertain as she described the dime store wedding band almost slipping off her ring finger during her visit to the NYC Planned Parenthood (link not historical indicates the ongoing struggle).  Why were we laughing?  We had cried so many times.

That was New York City in the 1950s when the only way a woman could get a diaphragm was visit to a gynecologist for a prescription.  Expensive.  The cheaper alternative was PP.  Gillian developed a complicated story for the doctor there.  At the time, the gyn would ask the patient supplicant to see if she could use the device properly.  And so the ring began to slip.  Her story became more hilarious when she returned to PP for a new diaphragm the following year and saw the same woman doctor who remembered her.  Gillian was seriously challenged to update her marital story.

All this to say, I wish the organizations that support CHOICE would spend some of our support bucks on powerful imagery.  Then get a couple of those "girls" on the TV show "Mad Men" to appear in national advertising with one on their breasts. From what I can see here of the ella pill, that would be a fine design, surrounded by the message, "Five days to Choice."  Sure, you can think up a better one but will the orgs listen to old ladies?

UPDATE:  The one place that gets my money in this never-ending struggle is the Center for Reproductive Rights.  Check their site for all their important legal work that could use your support .

Ancient Woman looks like my mother...and her shoes are more comfortable than mine!

Before you know it, I will look like this too. Known as La Mujer de las Palmas, she seems familiar,  "short, spry, slightly graying hair."  Kind of  like the dress, her big stick--the slightly curved staff, could be helpful any day now.  The shoes look like a leather version of my green (Iguana) canvas Keen's.   All together it is  a smart and comfortable ensemble, with a pair of fused glass earrings, and a NO WAR patch.  That's why bumper stickers read, "Stop Endless War."  Might qualify for a special edition of Advanced Style.

Links to Ancient Woman and her story offered here along with another recent discovery, oldest leather shoes for your consideration on astounding progress made by modern man (yes, we ladies had nothing to do with urge for "betterment"--bras and high heels).

PIETOPIA, update and backdate

Once upon a time I dreamed of being a pie-maker.  Unlike just about every other old lady blogger I never had a mom or grandma whose luscious pies would sit on a country window sill and tempt the neighborhood.

Aside:  At  a 1990 conference, a drama therapist and I did a performance on "The Idea of  "Home."  It began with my opening the oven, removing a baked good, raising the window described above, placing the pie.  Very powerful fantasy enhanced by 1930s and 40s children's books and print ads.

When Ron was on the faculty at Oberlin, we went to dinner at the psychology chair's house. In the kitchen I was spellbound as  his wife (those were the days) made a pie with such grace and ease that the memory is still clear forty years later.  Would have been perfect to learn from her but did not happen.  "Crisps" are my forte, as the rhubarb one pictured above.

Three pies were winners in the recent Pietopia event.  Most striking was the text for Margit Beerli's "Rinky Dinky Pie."

 "My life is simple right now because I choose to live uncomplicated and because I am in the third third of my life."  [italics mine]

Love that phrase. Perfect addition to my recently developed  employed (not retired) life script.  Comforting too that someone over thirty entered the contest.  If you lived in Portland, Oregon, and hung around food, you would get this.  Margit lives in Seattle which I'm told is more big city than PDX.

To remind readers once again to take notice of what is happening in the big world, here's Pietopia-innovator Tricia Martin's "Rhubarb Custard Pie:  The Pie of Unemployment II."  She did this one in 2009.   She, like my 20th century self, like many women and men all around us every day, has had her own frequent experiences with joblessness.  And uses her considerable creativity to get through the days.