4 Sites for Women (& Men)

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

I've been all over the map today, trying to focus in on what I'd write about in this post. Nothing seemed to be gelling, but I often find when I'm stuck in some way that doing anything is often better than doing nothing. And now I've ended up liking this post just fine. I hope you do, too.

Here are four websites and blogs by women I know or have happened upon in my webly travels:

Juicy Tomatoes - Ripe living after 51, with Susan Swartz. On February 25, Susan wrote a blog post called "Women's History...Once More with Feeling." Her opening paragraphs read:

Why do we have to keep dredging up women’s history? Why do we need all of March to talk about it? I mean, that was then, this is now. Can’t we just move on? After all, we’ve got Hillary. We’ve got Nancy. We win Olympic medals. Women make history all the time.

Yes, but we still have a couple of thousand years of male-dominated history to balance.

Learning and Violence - "The site is one step towards a long held dream of a virtual international institute for research and innovative practice to understand and address the impact of violence on learning. The vision was germinated by Jenny Horsman with the help of Elizabeth Morrish and Judy Hofer and incubated in discussions with educators and researchers from many different countries."

Native Women's Association of Canada - a message from President Jeannette Corbiere Lavell:

"...I am proud of our association’s distinguished, three decade long history of dedication to restoring the positive social, economic, cultural and political well-being of Aboriginal women in Canada.


Over the years many strong women have dedicated their valuable time to achieve our association’s vision of advocating, educating, and promoting gender equality for our current and future generations. Our work is more important than ever, and as we continue to participate in high profile government and community initiatives we aim to keep you up to date by providing this information on our website. I encourage women of all ages to stay informed by visiting our website on a regular basis."

Center for Women's Global Leadership - "The Center for Women's Global Leadership (CWGL) develops and facilitates women's leadership for women's human rights and social justice worldwide."

Word Wonder -- kind

Friday, January 22, 2010

1. Gentle and considerate in behavior; goodhearted; benign. Archaic affectionate; loving. 4. Obsolete Natural; appropriate; lawful.  [from the Old English word gecynde]

1. A class or grouping; type; variety. 2. The distinguishing nature or character of something. 3. Obsolete Nature in general; the ordained and proper order of things. [from the Old English word gecynd]
- Funk & Wagnalls Canadian College Dictionary

The word "kind" and its many relatives came from the Old English words gecynde and gecynd, two virtually identical descendants of the ancient Indo-European root, genə-. The root "genə-" means "to give birth or to beget." Many of the words that derive from this root have to do with procreation and with family and tribal groups: gender, general, generate, generic, genesis, genital, genius, genre, gentle, genuine, genus, germ, germinate, ingenious, innate, kin, king, natal, nation, native, nature, nee, noel, pregnant. Quite a list!
- Dictionary of the English Language

Notice that the dictionary entries above give several archaic and obsolete uses of the word "kind": affectionate, loving, natural, appropriate, lawful, nature in general, and the ordained and proper order of things. These older uses of the word provide a bridge from our modern understanding of "kind" back to the original meanings having to do with procreation, family, and the tribe.

This investigation of the word "kind" took me much deeper than just the academic examination of words and roots. It engendered images in my mind of ancient people living together in their family and tribal groups. Doing my best to go beyond sentiment and the visuals portrayed in Hollywood movies, I probed within myself for the feelings and facts of everyday life back then -- the requirement that families stick together and that tribes grow stronger by having children and staying close to kin who could be relied upon to protect and nurture. The root, genə-, implies that people have always seen the need for not only physical survival but emotional connection, as well.

They would have seen animals caring for their young. They would have witnessed birth, death, and regeneration and would have known they were part of it all. Genə- would have been a basic concept of everyday life. And so their languages, which developed out of everyday life, also shaped everyday life. Today we are the same-- part of birth and death cycles, shaping language and daily activities to meet our needs and the needs of those around us.

Most people value being part of a group, whether it's their family, a club or church, or a larger community or culture. Yet many, many people do not feel they belong anywhere. Whether we face our "own kind," whatever that means to each of us, or we face "others," we can choose to see the connections of genə-, of begetting and being kind and gentle, of the natural order of our connection to one another.

Excuses, Excuses...?

Thursday, January 21, 2010

For some reason, I haven't been able to get anything written on this blog for the past week and a bit. Couldn't think of a topic, focused on other projects, whatever. I'm not sure. Sometimes I find it's hard to tell the difference between an excuse and a reason.

Was it reasonable to work on other writing projects so much that my committment to regularly write on my blog lapsed? Hard to say, since my committment to those other projects is strong, too. That might -- might -- count as a reason. Maybe the extra time daily tasks have taken as a result of living on crutches for the week constitutes a reason. However, because of the knee and the crutches, I've also spent a lot of time sitting...so maybe I could have gotten to the blog after all? Such a quandry. It's certain that playing those second and third games of solitaire (nearly every day) is an excuse. Okay, that was too easy.

In mulling this over, I've not only come up with a topic for today, I've also seen yet another way our upbringing, gender, culture, age and other factors affect us. Reasons and excuses are both closely tied up in what we have been taught about work and leisure, success and failure, a person's value. As life goes on, we add to those teachings or change them, but it can sometimes be hard to shake loose old ideas that don't actually work for us anymore.

So, for me? I'm deciding today to be grateful for the positive examples of encouragement, honest effort, and satisfying results with which I was raised and to add a dose of forgiveness. Then I'll try not to let this happen again, but if it does, I guess I'll have to consider writing about time management.