a little red hen

WEAR A WHITE ARMBAND...PROTEST DOMESTIC TERRORISM

"Abortion doctor shot dead at his Kansas church"  

The party of  Death--a/k/a "the right to life" has struck again in Kansas.

The National Organization for Women asks us to  wear a white armband tomorrow, Monday, June 1, 2009, to protest domestic violence.  

Gun violence and violence against women and children continue to be intimately connected in America.

Make your voice heard as we move closer to the looming dystopia we have been warned about in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

 

Jon Stewart, Comedian, Marks Passover with Offense

Last night my disgust with "The Daily Show" and Jon Stewart show was tempered a bit by watching an old episode  of "Third Rock from the Sun" before bedtime. This morning I was still angry that he could use his considerable influence to demean old/elder/elderly people-- along with Jews-- by "celebrating" National STD Awareness Month with the most tasteless, offensive skit imaginable.

Did Stewart or cast member Jason Jones, who carried out the segment in a Jewish Senior Center in Miami, have a particular agenda in mind?  Jones began by interviewing an 80-something as he smiled with how his goal in life was to get as much sex as he could--by whatever means.  When Jones asked if this might amount to assault, I thought he might be going in a purposeful way toward highlighting the problem usually addressed in talking about younger men toward women.

Wrong.  The "interview" went on to belittle the Center's efforts to educate members about safe sex.  I believe the woman demonstrating how to use a condom was Miriam, The Condom Grandmother.  Remarkable person who became an educator after  losing two of her bridge partners to AIDS--women who did not demand that sexual partners use condoms--or maybe did not know they should.

When I read  Ronni Bennett's post today, "Elders and Fair Hiring Practices," on the insensitivity of journalists who give job-seekers advice  totally skewed to the not-young, I used that opportunity to express my anger about the ageism of Stewart's show.   Do you ever see an older person there?  Nancy Pelosi, Madeleine Albright have appeared.  The staff must feel quite clever in covering two invisible  categories of untouchable on the program's guest line-up--women and old people. 

Stewart puzzles many of us.  Often his humor is ironic.  But what about his own often expressed discomfort with aging?  Worried about losing his very young audience as he might be mistaken not as their bar buddy but their father?  Frequent references to himself as Jewish more toward the ironic too.  But last night, the night of the second seder for Passover, it was strictly anti-semetic as Jones played for laughs in this obviously Jewish setting in South Florida. 

Have you read the statistics on the high rate of HIV there?  Do you have a suggestion for who should get my complaint about the show?

Old people, we do not have an advocacy group.

People, You Elected Him for Change & It's Happening

Yes, yes, it's very dark out there on the economy landscape.  But so much has already happened since Obama took office.  Remember, we said (back in the "good" days of August) that he was inheriting a landfill's worth of problems.

How about some rage toward the fool in office before him? 

You think I do not have some complaints?  Certainly--more troops to Afghanistan, too much nodding toward the religious.   Of my gosh, he's not perfect.  Much less perfect is the shallow  media?  They could back off on the bankers for a moment.  And the annoying (to me) too-much-information, known in my family as TMI, about every dress/school/meal detail in the Obama family.  Actually I would like to hear from Marian Johnson, Michelle's mother about her friends on Social Security, what it's like to go from her former life to "retirement" in the White House.  Not going to happen because that might bore men and women under 50.

A worthwhile newspaper might focus on how close we've come to something like  single-payer health insurance.  Or that the administration has made moves that upset the Catholic Church and religious right who believed they had a won the struggle to make  abstinence, that bogus sex education notion, the law of the land.    Things undreamed of as within our reach  only a year ago.

The top image here was drawn on the a sidewalk at 111th and Broadway last summer.   Hani Shihada is the artist; I once watched him work  on a dark street in Greenwich Village.  By October it was still there, maybe touched up.  In January, I saw the black and white sketch  on a sidewalk at 13th and Spokane S.E. in Portland, Oregon.  Coast to coast we were very enthusiastic about Obama.  Now we live with him day by day as he tries to clean up multiple messes, some decades old.  I make mistakes so I assume he will too.

A Terrible Possibilty for Health Care Nationally

An  important alert just in from the National Women's Health Network

 Obama Considers Unhealthy Nomination for HHS

The Time to Act is Now...Today, Not Tomorrow, Please Use the Link Here!

Now that Tom Daschle has withdrawn his name, the question of the week has been "Who will President Obama appoint in his place to head the Department of Health & Human Services?"

Women's health advocates who are committed to getting quality, affordable health care to everyone living in this country should be very concerned about one name reported to be under consideration: Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. Governor Bredesen has systematically gutted the Medicaid in his state over the last six years. Below is a description from the Tennessee Justice Center of the havoc Bredesen has wreaked on the poor of Tennessee.

If you want President Obama to appoint a Secretary of Health and Human Services who actually believes in health and human services, please contact the White House at 202-456-1111 (FAX: 202-456-2461, TTY/TDD 202-456-6213) and/or send them an email by using the form provided on the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

Here is what the TN Justice Center has to say about Gov. Bredesen's health record:

In many ways, Bredesen is the "anti-Daschle": his values and health policies are the opposite of Daschle's, and he has a track record in Tennessee of not playing well with others, especially legislators. No other governor of either party can match the metrics that reflect Governor Bredesen's 6 year management of health policy in Tennessee :

• He presided in 2005-2006 over the deepest cuts in a public health insurance program in the nation's history. The cuts took $1.9 billion a year out of the state's health care system. The 170,000 disenrolled was the largest single increase to that point in the number of uninsured and accounted for a third of the entire national growth in the number of uninsured.
• Tennessee is one of two states (the other being Mississippi, where Gov. Haley Barbour also cut Medicaid) that in 2005 bucked the national trend in steadily declining infant mortality. Tennessee's infant mortality rate rose in 2005 to 9.0 per thousand. Tennessee is 45th in infant morality among the states. Memphis, the state's most populous city, has the worst infant mortality rate in the nation. Gov. Bredesen is now cutting the state perinatal network's funding by 50%.
• Tennessee ranks 50th in support for home and community-based services as alternatives to institutionalization. Two months ago, a federal court found that the Bredesen Administration's cuts in home nursing services violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by forcing people into nursing homes.

Two blogs the originate in Tennessee, Women's Health News and The Crone Speaks, have raised my consciousness about retrograde thinking in this state--on almost any issue.  What is the Obama administration thinking?

Invitation forwarded from NYC...which button wiil I wear?

Like everyone else, my expectations are high for President Barack Obama.  Far from the East Coast where I'm usually  closer to Federal action, I feel a bit disoriented.  My Elderblogging friend, Betty Reid Soskin, has flown from California with her special invitation for January 20, 2009.

As I watch from Oregon, I'll think of her, an 83 year old African American (still working as a Park Ranger) who has known discrimination on both coasts and perservered through many life changes.  Her next post at CB Breaux Speaks will be wonderful to read.   My own hopes are expressed in the many categories  listed at the end of this post.

 Sunday's Oregonian featured a long article  on Portland as the whitest city in the United States.  It's a long and sorry story that goes back to its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century.  Young Oregonians and new residents are asking more questions--a hopeful sign.

WORLD AIDS DAY: What's Missing?

December One demands my attention every year.  World AIDS Day began in 1988...twenty years and where are we?  The statistics do not seem to impress the public any longer.  Even though women are the growing group with HIV, they have no advocacy groups like those for breast cancer.  Because they are women of color?

The other day, I took a picture of my latest knit sweater  for Roxie.  For the white  background needed, I moved a framed picture.  It was a  Xractal I made titled    "Loving What's Left." At its center is a  neckpiece I made in 1993 with shells and a key, dedicated to a hope that a cure would be found soon for AIDS.  My focus has shifted since then. 

Prevention is what I speak to with Condom Amulets.  Treatment is important.  But not enough for the future of my granddaughter who will wear this little blue  sweater.  Her generation needs us to make Safe Sex as powerful a public health issue as smoking has become--in the United States.  So many are more comfortable with focusing on  HIV/AIDS in Africa--so far away, so different from us here.

The most depressing movie I saw at the recent Margaret Meade Film Festival was "Today the Hawk Takes One Chick."  Gogos, the grandmothers in Swaziland, are left to care for their HIV-positive grandchildren.  Their  parents are dying in great numbers.  Health resources are sparse.  I was overwhelmed.  The entire country seems doomed.

Taking a break from writing this, I walked into the other room.  Ron was trying to find something to watch while he spins wool.  By chance, he found "All of Us," a documentary  on cable.  Turned out to be a strong film-- sad and hopeful.  It followed  Mahret Handefro, an American residen (from an Ethiopian family) at Montefiore Hospital in the South Bronx. Her goal was to  develop a program that would move women of color to take more control of their sexual interactions with men.  In 90 minutes much territory is covered here and briefly in Ethiopia where she speaks with women who feel powerless in  dealing with men's sexual demands.  In the Bronx she works with two HIV-positive patients, with peers, and with her own issues around men. 

Mahret develops what she names a "truth circle."  She educates with hard factson the impact of unprotected sex on black women's lives--blacks who are only 12 % of the U.S. population but 68% of the HIV/AIDS population.  Consciousness raising sessions  bring it all  together.  All the women  struggle with the question, "When do you bring it [safe sex] up with a man?" One of Mahret's patients acknowledges that she's realized too late that "men were a drug for me."

 Mahret is open about her own problem with setting limits in relationships during a group meeting with her peers. As she points out, this is "true primary prevention." What's missing and more elusive is work with men.  Women can change; men have to also.  I hope you see the film, perhaps rent it to share with others.

Last summer the New York City Health Department began "The Bronx Knows," an ambitious program to reach the 250,000 people in that borough who have never had an HIV test.    Health professionals know that HIV testing carries less of a stigma when it is a routine part of health care.  Dr. Donna Futterman,  co-chair of the program,  looks forward to the Bronx  becoming "the first community in the nation where everyone knows their status.”  It is impressive that it began in June  HIV testing has increased 20% in the Bronx.

Lately I've been thinking more about the category on my blog, "Grandmotherhood Now."  Maybe this came about when I learned  that  Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, will move to the White House with the new President's family and Joe Biden's mother is going with him and his wife to D.C.  Will we  hear more about  elder concerns?  

I'm always on the lookout for ways  grandmothers--and grandfathers--can encourage ideas important to the future of young people.  Besides what I've described in the South Bronx, there's Making Proud Choices for teens at Planned Parenthood  in Portland, Oregon.    If you know of others, please leave a comment here along with thoughts you have about input elders might offer.  Of course, financial support is always crucial.    

Halloween: Yesterday's News

So I wanted to do something for the two young children on my floor. Ambivalent about this holiday, I do not like to give out candy, then have leftovers hanging around my house. The year I chose peanuts a couple of parents told me their kids were allergic. With great, good luck I ran into my neighbor Alice, Thursday night.

Alice has an enthusiasm for gifting. She expresses her child-within by creating gifts for her young nieces and others important to her. She pressed on me leftovers from last year's Halloween creations--small decorated bags and handheld puzzles.

Before we left for the dentist again in Princeton, we put 50 pennies in each, hung them on the kids' doors. In a hurry, I took the picture of the bags so Alice would know that I had indeed used her bags, goodies, and matching ribbon. My Little Red Hen in her going-shopping mode, Condom Amulet under her wing, was on the table. Been meaning to take her outside for a picture on the grass (another story). Now I'm wondering: could Halloween feel more enjoyable, more participatory for me if I gave out New York City condoms next year?

In front of my own door, I left a rubber chicken mask--birthday present from the 1990s-- that I was about to discard. With a note on orange paper "Out of town, sorry" to inform the groups that would reach the 21st floor. It was gone this morning...okay.

On our way out, stopped at two floors Alice had told me about--one just as you step off the elevator, another down a hall. I've thought about photographing these spaces floor by floor. Many have been unchanged for maybe twenty years. The influx of young families has brought a different mood. Of course, according to New York City Fire Department regulation, none of this is legal.

In the Whole Earth Organic store in Princeton, we saw the first of two women dressed as witches. An academic thing? Maybe not. A similar spirit seems to have appeared in Ohio as pictured on Kay's Thinking Cap. Possibly a national initiative that I've missed.

Missed Rhinebeck, October...but did OFFF in September

Life happens. We had a plan to trek upstate for the yearly New York Sheep & Wool event known as Rhinebeck. But I spent two hours in the dental chair last Friday, so we missed the chance to see local friends, faraway vendors we've come to know. We have a special fondness for Rhinebeck-- heralded spot where Ron was seized with the spinning urge earlier in the century. Oddly its explosive recent growth has not made internet connection more reliable--reason for no link here. Maybe that's a good thing?

Loyal to the fiber, we'd planned our September trip to Portland to synch with Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival in nearby Canby, Oregon. Seems to be known locally as OFFF, at least that's what I learned from Judy Becker of PDX Knitters. She is famous for "Judy's Magic Cast-On," and a tiny business card that illustrates her technique.

The photo of me is on her blog Persistent Illusion, the first online appearance of the Couverle (French for "lid") from Knitty.com, re-imagined as a Condom Amulet--with the addition of a double-knit pouch to hold the all-important Safe Sex accessory. It was Amanda Gale of the ManThong Condom Amulet who suggested the inside-out style for those wishing to be less modest. (Pretty Aaucania cotton yarn, hand-dyed in Chile, purchased at Portland's Close Knit on our previous visit.)

We also met Cindy, Bobbie Wallace, Monica in the PDX Knitter's tent provided by the Fest in exchange for free knitting advice to the public. All decked out in Obama buttons, though mine was new to them. We plan to connect with them again on our upcoming, longer visit in the winter.

[Big Apple Knitters and NYC Crochet provided free help for an event hosted by yarn companies for a couple of years in Union Square. Nothing was for sale so it was a drain on resources of local yarn stores to provide staff simply to raise their visibility. Good place for beginning knitters, mellow at the outset in 2000,then became very crowded mostly by people seeking freebies. Now gone.]

Of course Ron bought roving. I am in a not-buying-yarn mode at the moment. We found a beautiful small rug for a wall in our daughter's home. It was woven in Teotitlan del Valle, a village of weavers near Oaxaca, our favorite Mexican city. "Vida Nueva," a Zapotec Women's Cooperative formed this first, and only, all-women's cooperative to market their handmade rugs directly to buyers. Pastora Guitierrez, a member of the co-op, was at their booth with Juanita Rodriguez, their stateside supporter from Corvallis, Oregon. Beautiful designs; you can contact them to order or volunteer to bring their work near you by emailing vidanueva@comcast.net. .

More sightings at OFFF...connecting again with

Carol, the Oregon shepherd we met at Black Sheep Gathering in June, student from Oregon State University who told me all about the Agricultural Extension Service, and a couple of very Portland-style innovators.

SARAH CALLS FORTH OUR CREATIVITY & IRE

Leslie a/k/a Tikkun Knits was first revealed to me via Ravelry, the over-the-top knitting/crochet/fiber arts beta site (soomething like Elderexercise) that requires membership to participate.  At last count there were 100,000 members.  It's free, you just wait till your number is called, then join.  Though I have a few reservations about it, these were quickly overcome when three friends from  the KnitaCondomAmulet project told me it would be a good place for expanding interest in safe sex.

Lisa Daehlin tirelessly helped me navigate the mysteries last Fall.  So how do you find like-minded knitters among that gigantic group?  An email arrived from a woman who'd seen this blog and had an idea to start a Condom Amulet  interest group on Ravelry.  She did a fine job.  Then she disappeared.  Lisa and I have soldiered on minding the store.  There are now 85 members who have brought enthusiasm and many new ideas for amulet styles and ways to get them into the public space.

Tikkun Knits joined us, presented  finely-made Condom Amulets.  We are but one of her world-saving interests for which she knits or crochets remarkable things.  What you see here is her latest, PIGS IN LIPSTICK-- in its amulet permutation.  Of course you want to crochet it yourself.  Leslie did this as a fund-raiser for Knitters for Obama, another Ravelry group--with 400+ members.

Then there's Holly Cara Price, a blogger I met at the voter registration storefront for  Three Parks Dems on the upper west side.  She too has applied humor to this scary woman at her newly redesigned site, Snoop du Jour, with the very  appropriate title, "Baked Alaska."

Of course, these elegantly fun-poking ideas do not mask our fears.  You need to read CLOTHES LINE  where two Minnesota women blog.  First there's  information not seen elsewhere about a successful "Minnesota Women Reject Palin" rally followed by an on-the-scene report of the huge turnout in Anchorage for this week's "Alaska Women Reject Palin" rally.  Is it happening where you live?

Finally, Maureen Dowd, not often my favorite New York Times columnist, in "Barbies for War!" poked around Alaska,  found Sarah Palin's high school principal, R.D. Levno, who said:

She's a child, inexperienced and simplistic...It's taking us back to junior high school.  She's one of the popular girls, but one of the mean girls.  She is seductive, but she is invented.

Voter Registration Alert...Barackolate Cookies + Buttons ...Saturday, September 20...UWS

Get your cookie that encompasses ALL Americans:  Democrats, Republicans, Independents --light ones, dark ones, beige, and of course, nuts.  A modest campaign donation gets you a delicious treat, a little more, a proud OBAMA button.  Sign-up for bus trips to canvass in Pennsylvania.

Upper West Side, Broadway and 105th Street (in front of Liberty House), 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Holly, Ron Bloom, and I will be there. and work in the campaign?

"Polar Bears for Obama" is the title of this second-grader's picture. Met her and her parents at Three Parks Dems' Campaign storefront earlier this week.  She added her  creative touch as  Mom and Dad registered new voters, helped with changes of address--English and Spanish.

Getting out the vote needs you-- turn that ire into creativity!  

 

 

IF WISHES WERE FISHES...OR CONDOMS

Were I to drink more than my one-beer limit at a German beer hall, I'd find this on opening the door to the Ladies' Room.  Thanks, Kay Gardiner...tell me if you find anything similar on your upcoming knitting book tour.

Or I might be watching the TV in South Africa and all of a sudden--what's this?--an advert for the ladies.  And another one (is it just as snappy?)  especially for the thoughtful gentlemen who want to be safe.  Last year an award went to a the designer of of this pretty red condom applicator...an estimated 5.5 million people live with HIV and AIDS in South Africa.

If I lived in India, my cellphone would ring like this as it rested in my purse, next to my chair at Knitty City.  Hat tip to  Mike D., my neighbor who found this on Yahoo.   We were co-chairs on an Emergency Preparedness Committee in our building; different issue, similar challenge to get people's interest.  Ringtone might have helped.   A grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation made this happen.

Comrade Lei Feng Condom is promoted in China as  "stronger than [the late Revolutionary] hero's socks.  Read the backstory for more detail and other Asian ideas for glamourous men and women featured on packages. 

But I live in the great U. S. of A., a curious place.   Our politicians treat the issue as if unsure whether it's worth spending the money on programs to decrease the number of HIV/AIDS cases.  Or other STDs (sexually transmitted diseases).  Or prevent unwanted pregnancies through sex education programs in schools.

We are, however, very big on tourism right here at home. Cleveland, Ohio, may become a vacation destination when more people learn about wonders of the new Museum of Contraception,

"...world's most comprehensive collection of historical contraceptive devices, numbering over 650 artifacts." [Italics mine.]

Don't you wonder if the exhibit includes Ohio's current HIV/AIDS statistics.  I do.

NEWS FLASH:  While I was awaiting new computer, TRACT HOUSE, with its retrofitted "Knit a Condom Amulet" manifesto, wheeled into New York City from Baltimore's Contemporary Museum.  Sadly, I missed meeting visionary creator Lisa Anne Auerbach, at the opening last week, but will visit soon.   Printed Matter, 195 Tenth Avenue (at 22nd), Tuesdays through Saturdays.