Just so Mormon that I HAVE to comment

I was interested to see what Ann Romney's speech at the RNC would look and sound like.

I thought she did great, she obviously wanted to support her husband by humanizing him/making him more accessible, the crowd seemed to love her.

There were a few sentences that were just grammatically weird or flat-out incomprehensible. ("We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers" - wait.  So we're so smart that we don't/can't know that???  I listened to that part three times and finally just let it go).  But that's her speech writer's fault, or their assumption that the juxtaposition that followed it would help people get what she MEANT (even if it wasn't what they had her SAY).

 Those things aside....

It was just so SO Mormon-y, I can't get over it!

There was the teary-bleary-I'm-holding-my-tears-in-which-means-what-I'm-saying-is-true stuff.  (Now, I understand that the Spirit can be tear-inducing, but come on, it doesn't HAVE to be ALL the time)

Then there was the "You women are so awesome" stuff.  Over at Exponent II they've already commented on the parallel between the LDS church's (mis)treatment of women with that of the RNC, so I"ll just direct you there.  In a nutshell I just think it's amazing how two very powerful, far-reaching organizations do sexist and discriminatory things and then tell women how AWESOME or INCREDIBLE they are in some sort of attempt to make up for it.

(Can I just point out, most of us can see through that?  LDS leaders and RNC big-wigs, we'll still be mad that in many cases you don't listen to us, and think we're not capable of leading or making difficult decisions, and want to force us to have transvaginal ultrasounds.  Your actions give me a much clearer indication of what you think of me.)

But here's the big thing.

I resent the implication that my husband doesn't work every bit as hard as I do to support our family, or understand our family's needs as well as I do, or is less awesome than me.

Maybe women are great, but you don't have to tear down our husbands, fathers, brothers, and colleagues, in order to help us understand that.  Either we already know it, or nothing you can say will convince us of it.

Modesty (some more)

I sometimes engage in (usually pointless) discussions on a blog.  The author's stated purpose is to encourage LDS men to be more manly and what he thinks of as fulfilling their "divine roles" as men.

Usually he says things that are downright misogynistic, and on more than one occasion has stuck to his opinion despite being presented with facts to the contrary.

The most recent exchange has been about modesty, where he takes the typical "I can't control the biological response I have to a woman's body....women shouldn't dress like sluts if they don't want attention from bums".  (Those classifications of men and women are his word choice, not mine).

I'm afraid a comment I posted will hang out in moderation (cause he does that when he doesn't like my argument), so I wanted to post it somewhere:

Given Jesus' example of welcoming sinners, shouldn't we cultivate an atmosphere where we teach young people not to judge based on appearance?

So instead of saying "of course young men are going to see that immodest girl and think she's easy" would a better approach not be to say "we fallible humans judge people, often, wrongly, and that's a shame.  Why don't we teach that modesty is about appropriateness instead of inches of fabric?"

Taunting a gang member....did you really compare the sexual urges of teenaged boys to gang members who beat people up?  That's unfortunate.  But I guess it explains the difference in our approaches.

You say, and I agree with, the following:
Taunting a gang member is likely to get you beat up.

Dressing like a slut will probably get you unwelcome attention.

You say:
So don't taunt a gang member.

So don't dress like a slut.

I would offer:
So let's encourage community members to implement community action programs, create community centers, and emphasize education.  Let's offer education initiatives to try to break this cycle.

So let's teach the YM that sexual responses are normal and learning to control them and respond only in appropriate ways to them is part of growing up.  But let's also teach them that a person's appearance does not always correspond to their level of personal righteousness, because teenagers often have a variety of obstacles (lack of parental support, poverty, insecurity or self-esteem issues) in their way that prevent them from looking like a Mormon fashion plate.


I'll grant that your solution is quicker, easier, and more succinct than mine.  But ease does not necessarily equate with correctness.

This is why I could never be a Republican...

This guy is moronic.

Usually I try to do better than name calling, but in this case, the shoe fits.

I get that this mentality still exists.  There are TONS of old ideas that just won't die.  And he's not alone (well, in a sense he is).  I mean, LOTS of people have bad ideas.

But in this case people have elected this guy to public office.  And we all know what happens when the people choose to be led by corrupt officials.  And normalize violence against women.



Now, contrary to any indications in the title, this post does NOT imply any party affiliation.  But it IS a reasonable beginning of explaining why I won't let myself affiliate (though in perfect frankness, I lean left by Mormon standards....can't help it, all that liberal education I guess).  I simply refuse to be identified by/with people whose most outspoken representatives don't have a basic grasp of junior-high biology.  Or people who don't want me to own a gun if I'm not part of a militia.

Like in so many other areas of my life, I don't fit squarely anywhere.  Because where would the fun be in that??

I'll make my own decisions, thanks.

She did win!

Well, almost.

I LOVE the 800m run.  Love love love it.  It's absolutely a grueling event even though it's only half a mile.  The thing is that you have to run really, REALLY fast, for longer than it feels like you ought to be able to maintain such a pace.

A couple of months ago I wrote a little bit about Caster Semenya.  I've been fascinated by her story, cultural differences in the perception of intersex individuals, official regulation of being man/woman enough....all sorts of gender-questioning issues that I think deserve consideration and dialogue.

I really wanted her to win.  Because it's my favorite race, and she's my favorite kind of person (a "this is who I am, I'm sorry if I don't conform to your expectations buy I love myself" kind of person).

So Saturday night, late, I watched the women's 800m.  I had already reveled in the amazing capacity of the Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners to play with everyone else's pace/mind: something along the lines of "Yeah, you've led the race for 3/4 of it....I think I'm done letting you win, now, so we're going to pass you over the next 75 meters".  And the winner of the 10K with her celebratory thanks put me in mind of Teresa de Cartagena.  So I was happy.

The gun went off and I sat on the edge of my chair and watched Caster Semenya keep last place.  I was willing her to go faster but she just hung out....for 650 meters.

And then all of a sudden she was blazing.  She overtook all but the gold medalist in a little over 70 meters.  I couldn't believe it, I haven't seen that kind of come-from-behind in an 800.  I'm sure there has been one, but I've never seen it, and I was awestruck by it.

I'm glad that women get to do things like this these days.  I'm glad that my daughter can grow up to be a diver if she wants (that's what she was enthralled by.....and the 5K runners, who she ran along with in circles in the living room for the whole 15 minutes of their race), without the stereotypes of "get in the kitchen, woman, sports are for boys" or "we better not have an Olympic marathon competition....it will make the women who do it unfit for childbearing."  (The official reason for not including a women's marathon event in the Olympics until 1984!  Even though numerous women lobbied for it).

Oh, my kids

Overheard at our house in the last couple of days:

Me: (reading) Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of!"
Bee: No it's not!
Me: Why not?
Bee: I don't have to be nice ALL the time.  And I'm a girl.


Me: (seeing J jumping off the toy box) Careful bud, you can get hurt!
J: No, I not.  I'm bein' TAREFUL!

Well then.

Wisdom from flower gardening

This summer's drought has had me doing my darnedest to keep my plants alive.  I religiously water them twice a day....a good long soak once a day has not been able to cut it in the Ohio heat.

My plants are still alive, still producing, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them thriving.  They're just too stressed from the heat and the dry and the root shock of being parched most of the time and suddenly needing to wake up for a drink.  My techniques that produced golf-ball-sized cherry  and sunsugar tomatoes last year have given us marbles (though still sweet and lots of them) this year.  And the foliage on my flowers gets wilty every day.

I was pondering on my frustrations in all of this when I walked past a grocery-store manager's special rose on my counter (if there are roses on the rack for under $3 in the checkout, I buy them for us to enjoy so they don't go to waste...there are few things I dislike more than a wasted blossom....anyway).

And I realized that my flowers were giving me an analogy for dating/marriage partners.

Growing roses is like having a high-maintenance girlfriend.  The blooms are really pretty, and some varieties have an intoxicating effect because of their color and fragrance.  And people will admire them and compliment you on them.

For the two weeks in early summer that they bloom.

Get what I'm getting at here?

Roses are labor-intensive.  They'll LIVE if you leave them alone, but  if you want the best results they require time, and some research and expertise.  You have to monitor soil pH and fix it when needed, water them in multiple short doses, prune them enough but not too much, and heaven forbid at the wrong time.  Plus fertilizing.  And the best varieties for appearance and scent are often not disease or pest-resistant.  Typically with roses you get one or MAYBE two positives there - pretty or hardy or strong-smelling - but not all.

Personally, I'm more a zinnia, aster, snapdragon, sunflower girl.  The MOST labor-intensive I get is gladiolus bulbs (here you have to dig them out in fall and re-plant them in spring because the winters are too cold).

When you plant zinnias and asters, every single seed grows.  You can transplant the extras and they come right back.  If they get dried out, you give them a good soak and they'll perk up within the hour.

Snapdragons are great because the more you hack off of them, the more blossoms they produce.  I have blooms on my plants from April (I buy those) to October (ones I start myself).  And they come in all sorts of flamboyant colors!

Sunflowers love harsh conditions....in this heat and dry and in the sandy soil of my yard where nothing else will grow, the big ones got 12 feet tall this year.  The other, shorter and more colorful varieties I planted to act as trellises and some shade for my glads and tall snapdragons.  In this heat they've really needed something to lean on, and my sunflowers have done the trick.  They took care of themselves and kept my other plants alive.

So it all depends on what you're after.  If you want marvelous, exceptional, stand-out beauty that everyone will comment on and be jealous of, go for the roses (or the girls like them).  If you want a flower patch (or marriage) that will be colorful and varied and survive awful conditions that are outside of your control, go for the hardy-but-not-so-flashy flowers (or the girls like them).

Personally, I only have roses because my Uncle John gave them to me.  And I want to keep them alive just for the challenge.  I'm totally a sunflower-and-zinnia girl.

This is what you get when we stop teaching English/literature

"Seeing as how Dick – excuse me, Vice President Cheney – never misfires, then evidently he's quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media, having been written, what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years, evidently Dick Cheney believed that stuff and that's a shame."

No guesses who's whining in this pitiful excuse for something like a sentence.

And I get it that it's not a prepared speech.

But seriously, try to divide this even on a subject/predicate level.  Not to mention the repeated problems with tense (well, I guess I mentioned them).

 I find it worrisome that audiences accept and even expect this type of speech as reasonable on a program that purports to provide insightful commentary.