Karen Armstrong wrote about it in a memorable article in the Guardian back in 2006. She touches on the banning of nuns in Britain, and on the British reformer in Egypt who "had cynically exploited feminist ideas to advance the colonial project. Egyptian women lost many of their new educational and professional opportunities under the British, and Cromer was co-founder in London of the Anti-Women's Suffrage League.
As a child growing up in an oppressively religion-bogged household, the ONLY thing that would have persuaded me to adopt the attire preferred by that religion (shaved head after marriage and shapeless clothing, carefully covering arms to the wrist and legs to the ankles) would have been if I were told I couldn't choose to wear it. The only thing worse than oppression from inside your own group is oppression from outside it.
Carol @90 after translating a demi-infinite number of mission statements, I can safely say yours is the best, ever.
Abi@66: Not emphatic - poetic - and let me know if you want some more of the same yarn (it's a delicious brown alpaca that I inherited; it wants to be shared.)
And the book - very NotClutter - is a joy and an heirloom in progress. (It holds poetry, as promised.) Thanks so much for being its maker!
Abi, your quilt is beautiful, all the more so for being in use. (And yes, I have adopted your phrasing about clutter. With attribution. If your ears itch, it's just me, attributing.)
The other quilt photos linked in this thread are magnificent. *Almost* enough for me to want to learn how to do it. Instead I will be an admirer, I think.
And yo, all you other sock knitters! You-know-who (the usual culprit*) has figured out yet another way to revolutionize sock knitting. Now she knits a sort of ball and puts in an afterthought leg! (It's not exactly toe-up, although it is... ...you have to see it to believe it.) The book will be out on the 24th. I. can't. wait. She even has a sort of promo for it on YouTube, with details and pictures. And scary-beautiful socks!
*Ë™ÇɹoÉŸÇq ÇɔıÊʇ ʇı Çuop ÊŽpÉÇÉ¹×ŸÉ s,ÇÉ¥s ¿Çs×ŸÇ oÉ¥Ê Â¡ÇsɹnoÉ” ÉŸo 'ıɥpɹoq ʇÉÉ”
U.S., Washington State, 2007 figures:
1. 20.5%
2. 30.1%
This is for my family as a whole - my husband and I are equal partners in a small business, we have two children.
WA has no state income tax; sales tax in the range of 8-9% (depending on something; I haven't figured out what, exactly, even after 8.5 years here. I don't think it's a matter of arithmetic or geography; phase of the moon seems more likely...).
That includes catastrophic health insurance (oh so aptly named), out of pocket expenses for an expensive year (glasses, dental, various etc.).
If we'd have met the deductible on the catastrophic insurance due to some catastrophe, we could pay as much as everything we own and then some - the insurance covers 80% of anything over $5150. That goes up *really* quickly.
There is no meaningful way of counting the number of hours I work per week. Anywhere between "all waking hours" and "whenever it pleases me to work" (I have an extraordinarily good profession.)
As Abi & Teresa have pointed out in @10 here and in (um?) elsewhere, the way to make this stick is through story.
So... can we find a story for each of the items, and add it to the email?
Here's my go on the last of the 24 items(call it 3:8): in 2001 I insured my family for $252 a month. I had to buy the insurance myself, because I own a small business, but hey, it was affordable and covered all our needs. By 2005 the cost had risen to $800 a month for the same family, without even adding children. And the coverage with the same company shrank to 1 million lifetime from 2 million. We switched to catastrophic insurance plus an HSA. The cost of *that* is rising, too, and the coverage is dropping. Will a catastrophe make me drop insurance just to pay current bills? Like, say, the not-entirely unforeseen catastrophe of aging?
And Candle@5, I had the same problem with the mythbusting section (2:1 through 2:8).
Teresa @92, I think you're saying that the only way to handle this is through storytelling. Tell a compelling story of why universal and reformed healthcare will be good for YOU-audience-member, a specific case of your general principle about story being a force of nature.
Did I read you correctly?
Michael @48 - you're absolutely right, of course.
Which probably means that the game is over and we've lost. :-(
Frumiousb @25 - that's the point I was trying to get at: talking down to people alienates them.
Counter examples involving people who may be identified as "real Americans" (ie., people that the anti-healthcare individuals may have seen around them and identified with) are a good, non-data-intensive idea.
Lee @16 - that's what I'm afraid, too. I think our entire political discourse me have been hosed by profit-mongers and fear-mongers and so forth. But I love America's people and culture (it has brought forth some wonderful things and some horrors. The ones I love are the former, not the latter) and will remain here until certain red lines have been crossed. It is quite possible that America will go bankrupt and restructure itself enough to align life here with my values again, but if I'm not here to fight for it, I'd never forgive myself (after 30.5 years of yearning for it from afar, living here is a big deal for me.)
Michael @14 - that's why "I'm trying to figure out how" rather than saying "here's my brilliant plan, let's do this, that, and then the other thing and they'll all come around to our way of seeing things."
It is a WHOLE lot easier to shatter a discourse by beating people into a frenzy than it is to rebuild a discourse after such a frenzy.
Michael @12 - I hear you and agree with you. But I'm not the problem, 'cause I *already* want healthcare that is free-at-the-point-of-service.
How do we get the people who are in a frenzy of fear to hear that, consider it, and decide to risk their lives on it?
My point is that the people who are afraid aren't necessarily evil or crazy. They're misinformed and terrified and unwilling to trust their lives to anyone.
I'm trying to figure out how, functionally, to help them over the gaping chasm of their fears - when the fears shut their ears to facts and reason.
It seems to me a particular case (in reverse form) of the "one day *I* may get rich so I don't want rich people to be hurt" variant of optimism.
The line of thought goes like this: if there is government involvement in healthcare, there *will* be mistakes. If there will be mistakes, I *may* be hurt by them. OMG! CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN! GET GOVERNMENT OUT OF HEALTHCARE!
That's a fear-based response, and when people are working from fear, they don't think too well, they don't respond to logic or data coming at them from the outside, and they tend to engage in fight or flight responses. I think we're seeing mostly the "fight" option, because realistically, there's nowhere to flee TO.
So they're fighting.
And since the healthcare resources are not infinite, the "healthcare will be rationed" trope is actually correct. It isn't "death panels" but there will indeed be cases where the question of whether to allow a particular patient access to a particular resource will be decided by people. In panels or boards or groups. And sometimes, they'll say "no".
For people who are well aware of their own biases, and that there are other people with similar biases against them, that must be terrifying: if they need a treatment and the people-they're-biased-against are on the panel, they are afraid of being discriminated against.
(Imagine a panel of white people in a racist region deciding yea or nay on a very expensive treatment to a black patient. Not a nice thought.)
The way we usually get around this sort of thing is by putting rules in place and allowing appeals and so forth - but the people who are so terrified of universal healthcare don't believe anyone would obey rules if their life was on the line. So they're afraid of being left behind and cheated out of a system they paid for, with no recourse.
Those fears aren't crazy. What I'm not is sure how to alleviate them when the population feeling the fear is being worked up into a fearful frenzy by skillful manipulators.
When you're out there eating locally? tip high.
Join a CSA.
When you're walking in your community, greet people. Smile. Make eye contact. If the community is small enough, conversations will ensue. The words *sound* something like "pretty chilly today" "oh yeah" "can't wait for spring" but they *mean* "I see you and celebrate your uniqueness as a human individual".
Support local theater and music. Live theater and music, the kind that makes you cry if you're paying attention. Good theater dips into the undercurrent of a nation's psyche and lets us preview it.
Erik @52: Elinor Kapp wrote Rigmaroles & Ragamuffins: Unpicking Words We Derive from Textiles - I heard an interview with her on episode 73 of Cast On.
Kapp used to be a psychiatrist & child psychotherapist. After retirement, she took up a degree in textile art. Hearing the interview with her heightened my sense of the extent to which words about fiber are woven into our language and life.
Debbie @23 - oooh! Indeed, a kindred spirit.
Erik @35 - I think Fragano is casting on the purl.
My sister-in-law has asked for knit or crocheted vegetables, to go with the toy kitchen her husband is making their two year old.
I can't think of anything quite as much fun to knit than toy veggies. And fruit. Except maybe the set of toy insects I'm making for my daughter's birthday. I have lovely soft brown alpaca wool for the cockroaches, and darker matter for the spiders (I'm using pipe cleaners for the legs, inverting the concept of an exoskeleton in favor of structural integrity).
As to needing yarn... doesn't that mean you just need someone to knit up the toys for you, Abi?
Deciding (in 1989) to fundraise for a fanzine with a publisher who somehow didn't make it to the conference.
I took one step into his office and the entire world fell away, changing my life - and his - forever.
A local inauguration party is has flyers, with appropriate illustration, entitled "Yes, we can-can".
There are several versions available, some being pulled by HBO, others being put up.
Thanks for posting that, Patrick. It is a song I love, and a singer I love. I only wish I could rejoice properly; it's a little hard with bodies still being pulled out of the rubble over in you-know-where. The depth of despair over one and the heights of hope over the other are doing a fair job of shredding my capacity to feel.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 20 |
| 2008 | 92 |
| 2007 | 59 |
| 2006 | 23 |
| 2005 | 47 |
| 2004 | 1 |
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