Woman, ranting

So tell me, my feminist sisters, do you ever just want to grab other women by the throat and scream, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? I do. Yesterday I went to see an exhibit of paintings by a local artist--a feminist artist--that was so smug and mindless it actually made me shudder. It was a series of portraits of women, all sitting in gardens holding various fruits of the earth. The paintings were pretty bad, but most paintings are. I wouldn't hold that against anybody. No, the problem was the artist's statement and the captions she wrote for each piece, which kept identifying the women's bodies with nature and talking about how the world would be at peace if men would just ... well, be more like women.

Given my Wiccan sympathies, I suppose it might seem a little surprising that I would be so disgusted by the idea of the uterus as a vessel of peace, but I actually think it's a profoundly woman-hating, anti-feminist notion. It's one thing to embrace a consciousness of the feminine aspects of nature, and to value our place in the endless cycle of birth and death. It's something else entirely to reduce individual women to some kind of faceless femaleness, and to suggest that biology bestows moral purity. That's exactly the kind of thinking that any feminist worthy of the name should reject. There's no difference between saying (as fundamentalists of every stripe still do) that a woman's body is filthy and sinful, and saying that her clit is a sign post to the divine. Both ideas rest on the assumption that women aren't rational and have no moral intelligence.

What I hate most about the Mother Earth brand of faux feminism is the gutless passivity it promotes. Don't get me wrong--I'm all for peace, but we live in a world where peace is despised. Peace is not going to happen because we wish for it. We have to demand it. We'll never get it sitting in the garden with our heads up our cunts.

Love is so complicated

Avising the bright beams of these fair eyes
Where he is that mine oft moisteth and washeth,
The wearied mind straight from the heart departeth
For to rest in his worldly paradise
And find the sweet bitter under this guise.
What webs he hath wrought well he perceiveth
Whereby with himself on love he plaineth
That spurreth with fire and bridleth with ice.
Thus is it in such extremity brought,
In frozen thought, now and now it standeth in flame.
Twixt misery and wealth, twixt earnest and game,
But few glad, and many diverse thought
With sore repentance of his hardiness.
Of such a root cometh fruit fruitless.

By Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). Text from Poetry Foundation.


The Death of Hyacinth, Jean Broc, 1801. Image via Web Gallery of Art.

Long night

The death toll from last night’s tornadoes has topped fifty. Not surprising, I guess. I can’t remember such long bout of severe storms. Usually these violent fronts move through quickly, and it’s all over in an hour, often less. This round was an all-night ordeal, ten hours straight. I’m not especially jumpy where tornadoes are concerned, but it’s still incredibly nerve-wracking, sitting around wondering how much attention to pay to the warnings. Even if a tornado has been spotted in the area, it’s usually a waste of time and energy to take shelter, since your odds of being hit are as slim as winning the lottery. That’s what’s so cruel about tornadoes. They wipe out a family here, a home there, but leave everyone else unaffected--except for the fear.

Almost everybody feels the fear, even my dogs. Pearl and Kobi each have a special ritual response to the rage of the thunder god. Pearl is of the “duck and cover” school. At the first sign of bad weather, she finds a place to hide and hunkers down, trembling violently, until she decides the danger is past. Kobi is the panicky girl. She pants, whimpers, drools, attacks the water bowl, claws the walls, etc. etc. I’ve tried tranquilizers, valerian, Rescue Remedy, behavior modification--you name it. Nothing really calms her when she gets going. She will not tolerate being crated or tied. I usually resort to sitting beside her with my hand on her collar, just to keep her from hurting herself or destroying my house. Sometimes even that won’t work, in which case I just open the back door and let her go apeshit outside. It’s not the safest option during a really violent storm, but she actually seems to prefer it. If she ever gets hit by lightning I’ll feel guilty, but as I said, dealing with storms here is all about playing the odds.

Nio, the blissful boy dog, is oblivious to threatening weather, although he does enjoy howling along with the tornado sirens. He’ll watch the girls go through their various conniptions and look at me as if to say, “What ails them?” I wonder myself. Sad to say, I think the phobic pups have spent their lives a little too close to humans. Nio spent his first two years outdoors, untended, and he’s a little more at peace with world and all the things he can’t control in it. He’s not going to worry about the worst until it happens. I wish we could all be more like him.




Tornado in Howard, South Dakota, 1884. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Five reasons I look forward to death

1. No more Pap smears, mammograms, telemarketers or evangelical Christians. (I know that last one's not a sure thing, but I'm hoping for the best.)

2. Somebody else will have to mop the damn floor.

3. I can finally stop worrying about all the things I haven't read.

4. No more guilt over my carbon footprint, my failure to recycle and my secret addiction to Johnny Mathis songs.

5. I'll never get another whiff of Tresor.



Death and the Maiden, Hans Baldung Grien, 1518-20. Image via Web Gallery of Art

A post for Dave

The Flower-fed Buffaloes

The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie flowers lie low:--
The tossing, blooming, perfumed grass
Is swept away by the wheat,
Wheels and wheels and wheels spin by
In the spring that still is sweet.
But the flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
Left us, long ago.
They gore no more, they bellow no more,
They trundle around the hills no more:--
With the Blackfeet, lying low.
Withe the Pawnees, lying low,
Lying low.

By Vachel Lindsay, from Anthology of Children's Literature, 4th ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 1970)

Western Kansas, Albert Bierstadt, 1875. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Ready for Fat Tuesday?

Be sure to break out your favorite Hové or Bourbon French perfume to complement that perfect Mardi Gras ensemble. If you're just not in a carnival mood, click here to watch a video from this year's Barkus parade. That oughta do the trick.


Photo from Wikimedia Commons

You had to be there

Today was definitely not a day of rest in the woods. The warm weather is hanging on, and all the birds and furry things were busy enjoying it. Lots of singing, chattering, bark nibbling, etc. I was enjoying it, too, trudging along the top of a ridge, when I heard a loud rustle of leaves below me. I looked down to see a group of ten deer charging through the trees--odd behavior for the early morning, when they're usually busy feeding. They saw me and came to a stop, looking sort of flummoxed. I wondered if somebody's dog was loose down there, giving them a hard time.

I walked another 20 yards or so and saw saw something with a canine gait moving up the hill, coming from the same direction as the spooked deer. I indulged in some unkind thoughts about negligent dog owners. Then I realized that the dog was actually a coyote--a big one, pretty in his heavy winter coat. He had something in his mouth, and he seemed very pleased with himself, carrying his goody back to the den. He crossed the trail about twenty feet in front of me and never so much as looked my way. The deer were still locked in place behind us. I can't imagine they had much to fear from a lone coyote, but they clearly did not approve of him.

Coyotes are pretty common here--not as much of a nuisance as they are out West, but they do cause problems with livestock and chow down on the odd pet cat. We hear them near our house all the time, but it's rare to see one casually going about his business the way this guy was. He wasn't doing the usual coyote slink. He was trotting along, head up, with his russet-tipped fur being ruffled by the wind.

He was gorgeous, and I was sorry for a moment that I didn't have a camera with me so I could share him with you. I almost never carry one into the woods. I find they suck all my attention toward looking for good things to photograph, and away from the experience of being where I am. The camera turns me into a tourist, which defeats the whole purpose of being out there. So, the Canis latrans above, courtesy of the US Fish & Wildlife Service, will have to stand in for him--but trust me, my coyote was prettier.


Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Versatility is the key to success

Indian, 19th century, Gouache on paper. Image from Greg Kucera Gallery.

Perfect timing

It was gray, cold and sleety here today, but I braved the weather and was rewarded with the sight of crocuses. It's nice when nature does things right on cue. What could be a better hint of spring than a crocus on Imbolc? Okay, they hadn't actually bloomed yet, but the shoots were unmistakable, tucked under a big beech tree. So, as far as I'm concerned, winter's on its way out, no matter what the groundhog says tomorrow.

It's amazing to see how much the atmosphere of the park has changed since the dry, desolate days last summer. The streams that didn't flow for weeks are about to top their banks. The recent warm spell has tender grass coming up, so the deer are eating well. It's a pleasure to see them content, because they were looking pretty ragged at the end of December. This mild winter has been kind to them after the summer drought. The birds appear to be having a tough time, though. They empty my feeders even faster than usual, in spite of the fact that their numbers overall seem to be down.

The rabbit that hopped across my path looked healthy enough, if not exactly hasenfeffer material. He was busy looking for his own share of sweet greens, and it occurred to me that pretty soon I need to do that, too. Nothing's better in the spring than a salad with sorrel or young dandelion greens gathered from the yard. I just need to find a fat rabbit to go with it.


Photo from Wikipedia

It's Imbolc

Tell a story, milk a cow, pet a lamb--or just feel grateful that winter is coming to an end.