Gertrude Bell: Mapmaker. Statemaker. Of Arabia.

Ah, Gertrude. My soulmate, my nemesis, my role model.

She is my soulmate because we are both white(ish) women who have taken a deep interest in the Middle East, making it the object of study, scholarship, and advocacy.

She is my role model because she was a woman who surpassed her menfolk colleagues in bravery, ambition, tenacity, and, in most cases, accomplishments. Back in the 1920s, of all places!

She is my nemesis because she was a British imperialist who got all up in the Arabs’ business. But to be fair, that was definitely in vogue at Whitehall in those days.

I tend to feature historical women that are uncontroversial, that I can say with almost no compunction, this is a life well-spent. Yet here I feel I diverge from that tradition. Not to say that Gertrude Bell’s life wasn’t well-spent. As intimated in my opening lines, I deeply respect and admire much about her. But whenever you get into the Middle East— or when you, specifically, get into the Middle East by way of France, America, or Britain—you’re getting into murky moral territory. Not bad, necessarily. But murky. And with serious implications to the present.

Who was Gertrude Bell? She was a British writer, traveler, and statemaker extraordinaire whose most lasting legacy was helping to establish Iraq as a nation-state. The daughter of North England iron-workers, Bell excelled as a student at Oxford, took an interest in the Middle East, got involved with a guy who died at Gallipoli (think: Turkey, Mel Gibson, running, Adagio in G, freeze-frame dying). Rendered a single lady, Bell turned all her attentions to making political history.

Bell had traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, writing about her travels and drawing maps of previously uncharted areas. By the 1910s she was playing an important role in the British colonial government and worked with the likes of T.E. Lawrence (you know, of Arabia) and Winston Churchill, scoring an invite to the male-dominated Cairo Conference in 1921. This was the conference that helped determine the borders of the British colonies—oops, I mean “mandates”—that were established in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, of course, having so recently been ass-whooped in World War I and losing their substantial Middle Eastern holdings to the Allies (though Turkey was able to speed-build a state before the British and the French could get their grubby hands on it).

As far as smoke-filled rooms go, Bell and Lawrence were smoking on the side of the underdog. Both promoted the regimes of brothers Faisal and Abdullah, two of the leaders of the Arab Revolt—literally, a revolt by the Arabs against the Ottomans during WWI, which had been partly arranged by the British to weaken their enemies internally. They kinda owed the guys, but then a lot of promises were made back then. The British were quite the international heartbreakers.

By the end of negotiations, it was decided that Faisal would be the king of a newly-created state called Iraq, while Abdullah would preside over a similarly newly-created state called Transjordan, Jordan for short. (Okay, that name change actually came later.) These regimes would be far more “indigenous” than having British dudes run the show, for sure, but it should be noted that neither Faisal nor Abdullah were “indigenous” to the areas they ended up ruling—both were from what is now Saudi Arabia. Also, it took a while for the British to actually, you know, leave. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Gertrude Bell spent much of the rest of her life in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. She spoke Arabic and Persian, had what was quite a strong understanding of local politics, conflicts, and culture, and even helped to establish the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in Iraq. Her crazy idea was that art and artifacts from the region should maybe stay there to be featured in regional collections, rather than being shipped halfway around the world to the British Museum or the Louvre. Power to the non-European peoples.

She died in 1925 from what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills. In a 2007 review of a new book about Bell, Christopher Hitchens said that she was one of those “English people who thought other peoples, too, deserved their place in the sun.” It’s a nice sentiment, and it’s also an implicit statement on power. As I, an American with no Middle Eastern heritage, have undertaken and continue to undertake study of Middle Eastern countries, as I learn Arabic, as I go on photographic tours of Lebanon, I recognize in myself the paradox of Gertrude Bell. Is it a good or a bad thing?

(Proof that Bell is still remembered fondly to this day: Naomi Watts may or may not play her in an upcoming film. With Robert Pattinson, our most beloved star.)

How to See in the Dark

Sibyl, In the past few months, my family has suffered two major tragedies, and a few minor ones.  Now every time my husband leaves the house and doesn't answer his cell phone I think he's dead.  Most of me knows this is irrational, but until he gets home or contacts me, I'm a bit of a mess.  I can't afford the $170/hr to see a shrink, but sometimes I don't know how I'll move through the world without feeling at any moment someone I love could die or be hurt.  How can I move past this?

Sincerely,

Irrational

Dearest Irrational,

I have good news and bad news.  Since I know it would calm your anxiety to get it out of the way, let's start with the bad news.

You are not going to get past this.  It is going to become part of who you are.  These traumas, whatever they are, are changing and shaping you.  Who you become in the face of them is up to you.

We'll get to that.  Before you can worry about who you're going to be, you have to survive these first traumatized months.  First of all, explain to your husband that for right now, you need him to answer the phone every time you call.  He doesn't have to talk, he can answer with a text that just says "I'm here".  But for right now, that is what you need -- to know that he is alive.

It is perfectly okay to be Irrational right now, when life makes so little sense.  It’s okay to be a mess.  It’s okay to put your hands on his face every time he returns to you, and say, “I thought I lost you.  You’re back.  We’re home.”

If he really objects to this imposition, put a time limit on it, "I just need this for the next 2-4 weeks.  Then we can reassess."  Trauma is a huge relationship litmus test, so if he can be there for you in this, you will only get closer.

Now for some good news: you don’t have to go it alone.   Of course you can't afford $170/hour for a therapist.  Who can?  That fee is absurd.  I don't know where you live, but I bet there's a clinic or a graduate school nearby that has therapy interns that could see you for as little as $25/session.  If you live in California, and any of your recent tragedies are from violent crimes, you can get therapy through a program called Victims of Crime.

So, with a little bit of research about clinics, schools, and resources in your area, you can see a therapist that you can afford to help you through this time.  You'll have to go through this dark period of your life no matter what, but you shouldn't have to go through it without a guide.  Therapists are trained to walk alongside folks who have experienced tragedies while holding the lantern to help them see the way.

So, with your supports in place, you'll be able to dive in to the crux of the matter.  These recent tragedies have pulled the veil off of your life and you are seeing humans for what we really are: ephemeral.  Our lives, no matter how bright and beautiful, will one day pass away.  It is a horrible panic attack-inducing truth.  But it is also what makes our lives have a sense of urgency, what propels us to ever do anything of consequence, what gives us something worth fighting for.

When my beloved father died, I spent a grief-stricken winter laying face up on my bed, immobile, staring at the one lonely snowflake I had hung from my ceiling, reciting my favorite poems and feeling the chill of a world in which my anchor had been pulled up.  I was adrift.  And terrified.

So, when it came time to register for classes at my university, I signed up for an intense course in Death and Dying, in which we read 12 books about death; theological, philosophical, and personal texts.  The professor's father was dying as he taught the class.  He and I spent several afternoons in his office, laughing at the absurdity of death and sitting in silence at the horror of it.  It was insane to immerse myself so fully in my grief, but I had a therapist I trusted and my fiancee by my side, so I dove in.  I needed to make sense of the world before I could commit myself fully to living in it.

Perhaps you are not about to take such an undeniably intellectual pursuit.  However, do something to make sense of your world, or you will find yourself trying to control it in odd ways.  Pulling out bits of your hair and lining them up in straight rows, restricting certain foods to cheat death's knocking, calling your loved ones obsessively -- I've been there, I know this behavior.  But how you face these tragedies will direct a good portion of your life.  Don't judge yourself for however you experience grief, but strive to get the better of it.  Just the fact that you wrote in to this column shows you are ready to face these fears.

Finally, do something that makes you feel really alive.  Take up boxing, write a poem every day, hike the hills behind your house, sing at a monthly open mic night.  Whatever it is, choose something that brings you close to the core of life, but does not throw you over.  Grind your feet into the earth, finding your shoring beneath you.

Remind yourself why you want to remain a citizen of this world.  Give yourself visceral experiences of the beauty of this life, despite the pain we inevitably incur.  Love so fiercely that death has no lasting sting, just a dull ache that reminds you that what you’ve lost lives on in you, propelling you to further bravery in loving.

Love,

Sibyl

Barbie and the Blonde Normative

While shopping for Christmas presents for the young children in my life, I was able to get reacquainted with the toy aisle, with all the nostalgia and wonder that entails. It’s a feeling akin to what happens when I step inside my childhood closet, still so snugly preserved in my room at my parents’ house, which overflows with shelves of vintage Barbies, Littlest Pet Shops, Polly Pockets, trolls, stuffed Disney characters, and Happy Meal toys of yore.

The kid part of me rejoiced in the possibility of the toys and was immediately drawn to all those that are obviously aimed at the female gender. The social critic in me, however, registered shock at the sheer catastrophe of gender and racial normativity that the American toy aisle promotes (i.e., the marketing aimed at boys vs. girls; the way dolls default to white, blonde, straight-haired, blue-eyed). This caused me to reevaluate my own historical relationship with toys and the ways in which toys shape our understanding of the world from a very young age---and what, potentially, could be addressed to improve them in the future.

Take Barbie and her absurdly voluptuous figure which, achieved in a human, would probably point to severe physiological abnormalities and health problems. Incidentally, when Barbie appeared on the toy scene in 1959, many mothers were indignant about her “sexy” image. But despite this she went on to become the standard-bearer of dolls for the next half-century because Mattel understood that little girls often like to think forward, to what they aspire to be when they get older; and Barbie’s body, distorted as it may be, represents our society's ultimate feminine beauty ideal. Also-- while Barbie has brunette, redheaded, and minority friends, the woman herself is always as white, blond, and blue-eyed as her legs are long.

My own Barbie drawer, by the way, overflowed with blondes. I had roughly forty Barbies with an approximate demographic breakdown of 96% Caucasian, of which 96% were blonde. A good portion of the non-blondes (and non-whites, for that matter) were Disney characters---Jasmine, Pocahontas, Belle and Ariel. Other non-blondes included a Hawaiian doll and a 1996 Olympic gymnast that I named Dominique in honor of Ms. Dawes. A rainbow coalition it was not. More likely, it was probably a contributing factor to an early childhood desire to be blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and blonde.

A slightly more inclusive and educational doll franchise is the American Girl line, which features tweenish girl characters of diverse backgrounds from important periods in American history. Each doll comes with multiple cultural outfits and her own series of books. Of course, most of the characters are white and a good number are blonde, but there is an effort at representation of minority backgrounds, most notably in characters like Addy, Kaya, and Josefina.

However, these characters’ stories don’t necessarily do much to present complexity to minority stories: Addy is a runaway slave, and one of Kaya’s playsets is a horse, saddle, and tepee. While there are definite positive efforts going on here, it would be great to be presented from time to time with minority characters who aren’t merely historical and tied to a mythic essential identity---instead, maybe breaking with tradition by having a Native American girl living in the 1970s, a black girl living during World War II, and giving children of color someone to identify with in the now (or relatively now)---which, unlike white children, they often don’t have readily available.

(A possible response to the minority doll question: American Girl’s popular “design-your-own-doll” feature, which encourages girls to choose the hair color, skin color, eye color, and facial features of their doll to ostensibly resemble themselves.)

And while we're on the normativity train, lest we forget that the toy industry also has the teensiest tendency to reify gender categories and designate which types of toys boys and girls “should” want to play with, usually tying into concepts with wider implications like respective household roles, occupations, and standards of appearance. So few playthings for the over-4 set are gender neutral---really, the marketing of toys is probably one of the earliest socialization experiences we have, when it comes to gender traits and aspirations. More could be said on this, but I think this kid kind of sums it up.

I'm wondering if the upcoming gender neutral EZ Bake Oven is a sign o' the changing times? Or a testament to the power of the individual to contest the deeply-entrenched normative stereotypes in the toy industry?

When We Are Older This Will All Make Sense and It Will Be Too Late

Sibyl, I have spent a significant amount of time pursuing one career direction, and now I am unsure if that is the right way for me. This is not unusual, but I am unsure how to decide on a new direction. Early 30's still feels too old to just try out some other career paths. I have worked in religious institutions or social services or both or 5 years. Now I would like to try something more creative . . . yet I am unsure where to go or what to do. How do I explore options while still affording to live? What can I do to both explore and survive?

Sincerely, Ummm

Dear Ummm,

I am so glad you brought this up.  True confession time: Sibyl has no idea what the heck she is doing with her life.  Like you, I have invested a considerable amount of time, energy, and debt in following a life in the "helping professions", only to find that it is an unsustainable way for me to live.  So, I am striking out into the world with writing and other creative pursuits, terrified at the outcome but totally sure that it is what I need to do, anyway.

I have learned some things along the way, which I will now share with you, dearest Um.

1. A life of service will suck you dry and spit you out when you have nothing left.  

My father was social worker, and when he would get home every day, I would ask, "How was your day?"  His one word response was invariably, "Crazy."  Whenever I pressed him for more answers, he just said, "It's a thankless job."  And that, my friend, was that.

Despite this harrowing harbinger of the life to come, I idolized my father and followed his footsteps, pursuing a life of helping others.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  In college and graduate school, I heard a lot about the way the work feeds you from within, and how your thanks is in the process of helping others.  This was enough for me, in my twenties.  I worked my ass off at low-paying jobs, and did indeed find the work rewarding.

However, I realized that although I enjoyed this kind of work, I had some life goals I wanted to complete, namely, having a family.  So, I set out to get knocked up and have a child.  This is when I found that having a job that pays you very little to take care of other people's emotional needs does not work well with being a parent, which consists of being paid absolutely nothing to take care of another person’s EVERYTHING.  Like you, I realized I needed to create or I would be left with nothing.  Art poured out of me like my desire to "save the world" once did.  But for whatever money work in social services provided, art provides even less.  What to do?

2. Make a list of all your creative interests, no matter how foolish.

Let yourself really dream here.  Do you want write, paint, be a film critic, cook, front a band, report the weather?  Be ridiculous.  Write, "I just want to be Vincent Gallo."  Okay!  Now we're talking.  Look over your list.  Where do you find the MOST energy?  It is important to tell your inner critic to go take a nap when you do this.  Instead of listening to that nagging voice that says "You'll never make a living that way!", listen to the one that tells you that what the world needs is more people doing what they love, what makes them truly come alive.

There are tons of practical exercises like this in the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron.  I suggest you pick up a copy and start the twelve week program she outlines, as soon as possible.  It's a great way to start your explorations while still living your day-to-day life.

3. Get water from a stone.

Have you decided on what creative path you're most interested in exploring?  If you chose filmmaking, you don't need to know what you want to make films about, you just need to start researching film schools, and go from there.  Look up unpaid internships (I know, I know) at your favorite magazine and write for them in the time you used to spend watching sitcoms.  Volunteer at your local artist collective and talk to people who actually do make a living as art-makers.  The way they’ve pieced together their lives could surprise you.  For instance, it may make a lot of sense to combine your helping profession efforts with art-making -- they could inform each other in beautiful ways.

Again, tell your inner critic to take a vacation while you're researching artist residencies in Maine.  Or, better yet, sit that critic down, and say, "You're RIGHT.  I'm never going to save for retirement and buy a house if I follow my creative goals now.  But giving everything I have to others has not made me millionaire either.  So guess what?  I'm going to do what makes me happy.  And when I'm drowning in debt, you can say, 'I told you so', and I can go make a masterpiece on my canvas.  You're right, but I win."

Here's what you need to do, Ummm.  Figure out the very least that you can live on.  One fancy coffee per week instead of five?  Awesome.  Brown bagging it every day instead of eating from food carts with your friends?  Excellent.  Turning on the heat in only the direst of snow storms?  Pull up that blanket!  I know that you've probably been living a life of almost-poverty taking care of others for so long.  But believe me, this is different.

Investing your time and efforts in art-making actually is enriching, in the way that all our professors told us that lives of service would be.  Okay, so you don't have a living room that could be featured in Ladies' Home Journal, and you can't go on vacation and post a picture of your feet with a fancy drink by the ocean on Facebook, but guess what?  You get to be you, and you get to be awesome.

You will always be that interesting person at a party who is not just talking about what milestone your baby has reached, but has a new project or idea you're working on that you want feedback from your friends about.  You'll always have something to do on a Friday night, because you'll be in your studio.  So, you don't have all the material bullshit and security our culture seems to uphold so much, but look how that's working out for those folks?  Rich, secure, and absolutely terrified of losing that wealth and perceived security.  Be bold, risk big, and yes, get mad about the fact that art-making doesn't pay actual dollars.  Do it anyway.

3. Don't go it alone.

So, you've spent all this time taking care of other people, and you're ready to follow your own dreams for once.  Guess what?  All of that time you spent caring for others spiritually and physically was not wasted.  It was all a part of your creation as a soon-to-be artist.  You not only became a person of substance, who actually has something to create art about, but you stored up a ridiculous amount of good karma.

Being there for others means that they are now going to be there for you.  They'll say, "That Ummm, what a good guy, he came to the hospital when my dad was sick, and now he's striking out as an artist and needs a leg up, why don't I buy one of his pieces, or, at the very least, invite him over for Sunday dinner."  You've got to find your people, and chance are, you already have, since you've devoted your life to loving humans.  Lean on them now.  Let them take care of you in the ways you've been taking care of them.  Help comes from the most unexpected places.  Reach out, and see the lovely (and materialistically helpful) ways your community responds.

It will not be magical, it will happen because of all the work you have already put in.  Everything is not going to mysteriously go your way once you set your mind to what you want to do, don’t buy that bull.  However, it will flow back to you proportionally to what effort you put forth.  You want to explore?  Really excavate!  Don’t hold back.  You get out of the creative life what you put into it.  Stop ummming and start risking, give up the fallacy of security, and be who you are, big time.

When we are older, all of this will make sense to us, and we will say, “Oh!  I should have started this or that sooner.”  But it will be too late.  Right now, contrary to what you are being told, is not too late, because it is all we have.  Dive in right this second.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

In solidarity,

Sibyl

Akiko Yosano: Poet. Pacifist. Tanka Powerhouse.

The other day I happened upon a Wikipedia article entitled “The Top 100 Historical Persons in Japan” and I got historian-nerd excited. This was apparently a television program that appeared on Nippon TV in 2006, which had Japanese viewers vote on who they thought the most important historical figures in, well, history were. For me it’s exciting to get this little peek inside the historical mindframe of a non-Western nation—one that hasn’t been brainwashed into believing U.S. presidents, Italian explorers, and German composers are the most important people of all time-- but who has probably been brainwashed in parallel historical fashion, of course. Yet lo and behold, some of our “top historical figures” still ranked (Christopher Columbus came in at #75; Mozart’s #36; the highest-ranking Westerner of all, at #3, is, surprisingly, Thomas Edison).

The list is mostly dominated by Japanese figures, of course; almost all people who would not have placed on any Western country’s “Top 100 Historical Persons” list. And incidentally, one of these (#80) is today’s Historical Woman.

Akiko Yosano (born Shoko Ho) was a Japanese poet from outside of Osaka who revitalized, no, crushed the 1200-year-old tanka tradition in turn-of-the-century Japan. Born in 1878, young Akiko grew up in an oppressive household, daughter to a baker who privileged his sons over his daughters and actually kind of hated Akiko for the first years of her life for not being a boy. (Ja-HERK.) He got over it enough to realize she was incredibly bright, and was decent enough to get her a good education, as good as was possible for women at that time—but it was Akiko’s own ambition and talent that propelled her out of that house and into Japanese history.

Wandering her father’s library as a teenager, Akiko had become enamored with literature. She began writing poems and started contributing to Myojo, the literary magazine of one Tekkan Yosano, fellow poet. Akiko moved out of the family house and to Tokyo, and in 1901, she and Tekkan were married.

Like Sylvia and Ted, Diego and Frida, Sid and Nancy, Akiko and Tekkan had what can delicately be described as an interesting relationship. Tekkan had already been married twice before, and even after he married Akiko he continued to borrow money from his ex-wife. He was also regularly unfaithful, according to most sources, including with one of Akiko’s best friends, Tomiko, who died of tuberculosis at 29 and who Tekkan proceeded to write twelve poems about.

Tekkan had also helped to spearhead the anti-establishment poetry movement that Akiko’s poetry would be a part of, the revitalization of the centuries-old tanka form that had previously been dominated by an institution literally called the Old School (I know, right?). What’s interesting to me is that feminist icon Akiko’s husband Tekkan had actually written an essay in the 1890s called “Poetry Inviting National Decay: A Denunciation of Today’s Effeminate Tanka,” in which he advocated for a more “manly,” virile poetry. This went over well with contemporary Meiji nationalism, as the nation was in the midst of a war against China. Fittingly, Tekkan wrote some pretty “manly” stuff about swords and battlefields.

But by the early 1900s, Akiko was the famous one in the family. Her poetry star was on the rise; and Tekkan, naturally, began to feel inadequate. One day, Akiko came home to find him squatting in their yard, killing ants. (How sad is that? How freaking sad is that?) To make him feel better, she told him to go spend some time in France.

Akiko’s rebellion and feminism went beyond her poetic success story and her pants-in-the-family home life, though. Her poetry often focused on the emancipation of women, portraying women of all backgrounds sympathetically and advocating for their sexual freedom. One of her most famous collections, Midaregami (“Tangled Hair”), evokes a feminine image of a woman with “hair in sweet disorder”—this ran counter to the public beauty ideal that saw a Japanese woman’s hair as always straight, never out of place. “Tangled hair” could even be read as a sign of the erotic. Additionally, she founded a girl’s school where she also taught, passing her progressive ideas and literary skills to a new generation of little poet-feminists.

Akiko was also a pacifist in an era when the Japanese national attitude was anything but. Late Meiji Japan (1868-1912) was characterized by the rapid modernization of a formerly feudal nation, and over these and ensuing decades an increasingly militarized Japan turned its focus towards expansionism. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, Akiko wrote the poem Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare (“Thou Shalt Not Die”), which later became a kind of anti-war protest song for the pacifist movement.

Akiko died in the midst of World War II, and her poetry was largely forgotten for many years. She has, however, enjoyed a resurgence of late, as demonstrated by her aforementioned 2006 placement on Japan’s list of favorite historical personages. To commemorate her revolutionary-ness, and to celebrate her anti-sexism-ness, I think I’ll end with one of her steamier poems:

Fragrant the lilies In this room of love; Hair unbound I fear The pink of night’s passing.

Since You Brought It Up: New Traditions

By Ashely Schneider This year’s Christmas is shaping up to be a quiet one. We opted out on a tree and have yet to firm up any plans. With family on the other side of the country, it’s just the two of us here in Oregon. My husband actually has to work on Christmas, so the past few days have been sad for me as I picture myself alone in our house on a day that’s meant to be cheerful and merry.

I’ve given myself a number of pity parties full of Neil Young songs (Helpless is my go-to), chocolate, bad movies, and tears. Deep down, I know that the emptiness I feel is nothing compared to the pain and suffering others are experiencing. I can’t help but think of heart broken families in Newtown, Connecticut, soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, or men and women living on the streets.

Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, says it perfectly: The overwhelming majority of time I spend thinking about myself, pleasing myself, reassuring myself, and when I am done there is nothing to spare for the needy. Six billion people live in this world, and I can only muster thoughts for one. Me.

So today, I have decided to put on my big girl pants and do something good for others this season. I’ve signed up to volunteer at a local church where we’ll be serving meals to 200+ homeless people on Christmas Day. I’m not accustomed to spending the holidays this way, but I’m certain it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps in this quiet time of my life, as I wait for new things to happen, my thoughts have been centered too much on me. By choosing to let the spirit and meaning of Christmas live in my heart, I can turn to face the needs of others and focus on bringing them joy.

***

We believe we can find more joy in the holidays by squashing the little voice that tells us bright spirits and good cheer are only possible when we’re perfect.  The magic of this time of year comes from connecting with loved ones near and far, reminding ourselves of all we have to be thankful for, and . . . covering everything in twinkling white lights. 

We’re embracing our present lives—foibles and all—so we can spend more time drinking egg nog and less time worrying we’re not good enough. Imperfect is the new black; wear it with pride.

Want to lighten your load? Read the post that kicked off the series, Ashely Schneider's Down, Not Out. Add your story to the “Since You Brought It Up” series by submitting it here. 

Gossip Girl is Dead. Long Live Gossip Girl.

Dear Sibyl, I'm trying to figure out how to be a supportive friend to one person (friend A), while not feeling like I'm talking trash behind another friend's back (friend B).  Sometimes A will get frustrated about a conversation or something else that B said/did.  She has a point, and I've often supported that, but then it felt like I was entering mean girl territory.  Is there a good way to be supportive, but not nasty?  I'm also trying to figure out how to not be the go-to person for these comments, since I feel like I'm betraying B.  Sounds like I'm back in middle school, uugghh!

Thanks, Gossip Girl

Dear GG,

Friend A is involving you in a fun little game of Triangulation.  That’s when you have something you need to say to one person, but instead of making a straight line between you and them, you add a whole new angle by saying it instead to a third person.

Relationships are confusing.  Everyone needs to express how they are feeling about their friends from time to time to someone else, for some reality testing and to work out how to address it with that person.  A simple conversation of, “Uh, that was whack when she made that joke about my kid, right?  Okay?!  How do I tell her to step off without just saying ‘86 your shit’ and dropping a sippy cup on the ground?” is sometimes necessary.

But here’s how you can tell if it’s triangulation, and not normal relationship processing:

1. Does Friend A plan to do anything about Friend B’s behavior?  If she is preparing to confront Friend B, or, at the very least, put some boundaries between her and Friend B so she stops getting hurt, then you can totally walk her through that.  But if she is just using you as a validating force to make her feel better about secretly hating on Friend B while she still hangs out with her, then we need to rename her Frenemy A, because what they have is less a friendship, more a bad romance.

2. Is Friend A saying things to you that she would never, ever, say to Friend B’s face?  If asked, “Hey, you’ve seemed sorta weird to me lately.  Is everything okay?”, would Friend A fess up?  If not, then this is at best a bitch session, and at worst, a weird power play to get you “on her side” against Friend B.  You’ve got to take yourself out of the equation.

So, if you’ve realized you are indeed in a triangulating situation, then here’s what you do.  You tell Friend A that you are no longer willing, under any circumstances, to discuss Friend B.  You can do it in such a way that is not judgmental of what Friend A is doing, by saying, “I’m working on my personal relationships, and realizing that if I say things directly, it really helps my peace of mind.  So, let’s talk about us and how we’re doing, and leave Friend B out of it.”

Will it be awkward to say this?  HELL YES.  But if there’s one thing I can encourage you, Gossip Girl, or ANY of my dear readers out there, it’s this: BE AWKWARD.  We must, as a community and as a culture, increase our capacity for awkwardness in human relationships.  When things are uncomfortable, perhaps it is because we are getting very close to them being real.

If you need a warm up, start small.  Bring up your dead dad at a cocktail party.  Go ahead.  Mention your impending divorce at the library, when someone sees the stack of self-help books you’re checking out.  With a couple of these chance encounters under your belt, having not been reduced to tears when the other person looked at you askance at first but then said, “Oh yeah, this book here at the top of your pile really helped me when I had to cut my mom out of my life because she was using crack”, you may have the courage to tell Friend A that you’re no longer interested in chats about Friend B.

You’ll have to reinforce it, probably a few times.  Friend A will fall back into the old patterns of discussion, will even say, “I know we said we wouldn’t talk about Friend B, but you can NOT believe what she did the other day when she got in my car, smelling like . . .” Cut her off right there!  Don’t take the bait!  Resist your olfactory curiosity and say, “Oh, let me stop you here.  I was dead serious about my request not to talk about Friend B.  I need to have my own experience of her right now.  Why don’t we discuss your job situation---did you say you were getting laid off, or getting a promotion?  I know it was something career-related, the few months ago that we actually got around to talking about you.  Let’s not let Friend B take over our catch-up time.  Fill me in!”

It will be surprising to find how this changes your friendship with Friend B.  You may find her delightful, without that worm in your ear of all the ways she pissed off Friend A recently.  Conversely, you may realize that you don’t even like Friend B, and you were just keeping the relationship with her because you were addicted to following the soap opera between she and Friend A, and it’s time to let that friendship go.

With all that time freed up from worrying about what Friend A and Friend B are going to do next, you may have chance to talk about . . . yourself.

xoxo,

Sibyl

Do you have a quandary that you'd like Sibyl to help you with? Submit it here!

Lessons from a Christmas Holiday...

Dear Clara, So many people think that once December 25^th passes, that the Christmas holiday has come and gone.  But remember that Christmas is not just a holiday, but a season.  It’s both a time for us to celebrate spiritually but it’s also a time to celebrate on a very human scale, when our families and friends take first place, and our work and worldly obligations move to second.

• Prepare yourself for the holiday season:  There is a reason why in many calendars there is an Advent season, in the sense of a time of preparation.  From the outside world, you’ll be tempted to leap right into things, but trust me, it becomes overwhelming.  Pace yourself, make lists, consider what you can get done, and carve of pockets of time for yourself so that you don’t lose the spirit of the season while barreling forward towards the holidays and the end of the year.  It’s an investment worth making.
• Write on your holiday cards: There are a panoply of technology options that make sending cards easier.  And they’re wonderful, and many have their place.  Take advantage of the things that make sense---addressing envelopes, for example.  But keep in mind that while technology can replace process, it can’t replace you.  It’s better for your cards to come a little later, and have your own personal writing on them that shows people that you took the time for them.  It’s only once a year.
• Make every effort to be at home: Remember, this is the time of year when those closest to us come first.  It won’t always be possible---sometimes practical things like money and geography get in our way.  But if you can make it happen, be in your home any way that you can for the holidays.  Eventually you’ll have your own home, and your own family, and you’ll have to figure out what works best for all of you.  But deep down, you’ll always know where exactly you should be.
• Set an extra place at the table: It’s our Polish tradition to say that there will always be room for one more, especially on the holidays, and many visitors feel that you could knock on nearly any door on Christmas Eve in Poland and have a meal waiting for you.  It’s pretty much true.  If you have an extra place (or two) at your table, an extra guest is a welcome addition and not anything else.  You never know when you just might need to reach out to someone else and welcome them to your table.
• Be on the lookout those sad and the struggling: We should always be on the lookout, I know, but pay extra attention during the holidays.  Different people struggle with different things around this time of year and they’re not always willing to talk about it openly.  Maybe they lost a loved one, maybe they had a falling out in their own family, maybe they are too far away from home, maybe they’re struggling to keep up with all the financial demands of the holidays . . . Watch for people, even those close to you, that might need a bit of additional love and care during this time of year.
• Make room for your soul: I guess this relates a bit to the very first part, but again, it’s easy to get caught up in all of the activities and trappings that come along with the holidays, even if we do them because of our good intentions.  But regardless of what you believe in, just remember that the winter holidays carry a sense of spirit with them; don’t let that spirit pass you by.  Prepare a little room in your heart.

Wishing you all my love this Christmas and holiday season,

Mom

Making Sense of the World

As mothers, and as human beings, we are heartbroken by the tragic events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday. Words seem insignificant in the wake of such pain and yet words connect us and help us make sense of the world. Shannon wrote about her experience of finding her way through the sadness and anger as a mother. We hope others will contribute their perspectives---whether on dealing with the events personally, talking to their children about them, or grappling with topics of political and social significance.

We believe we understand each other better as human beings when we're exposed to different viewpoints and we take the time to consider them from a place of mutual respect. In the rush to say something, to make sense of tragedy, and to find our power following a situation that made us all feel helpless, it's all too easy to channel our anger into grand pronouncements that further alienate us from each other. Together, we can be thoughtful and purposeful about finding ways to make this world safer and kinder. Let's treat each other gently while we do that---we're united in our fragility; it's what makes this lifetime so special.

To help, you can make a donation to the Sandy Hook School Support Fund, which is providing support services to the families and community. If you're looking for guidance on how to speak with your children, check out Save the Children's 10 Tips to Help Your Child Cope With a Crisis and the National Mental Health and Education Center's tips for Talking to Children about Violence (both contain suggestions that can also be applied to ourselves as adults).

Christine de Pisan: Widow. Writer. Anachronistic Feminist.

A few weeks ago, on a lazy Sunday, my boyfriend and I were watching the History Channel. This is not something we tend to do, and as a self-dubbed historian I can tell you that us historians have our problems with the so-called “history” of the History Channel (often fondly referred to as “the Hitler Channel”). Nevertheless—on that Sunday, it was on. Specifically, a show about ancient Rome, and its marvels and its Caesars and its rise and its fall and all that stuff.

Through historical reenactment and cheesy voiceovers, we were introduced to Emperor Claudius and his wife Agrippina, a conniving seductress if ever there was one. We’re told that one day, poor Claudius took violently ill and died. Cheesy voiceover: “Claudius was poisoned by a mushroom flower . . . and his wife’s ambition.”

“Do they have any evidence to substantiate the claim?” I asked (the History Channel doesn’t do footnotes, after all).

“Yeah,” my boyfriend replied. “She’s a woman.”

Before you virtually slap him, note that this was said tongue-in-cheek. This is how our cynical senses of humor work.

I bring this up because, while the woman-as-seductress trope remains alive and well in many contexts—particularly in political thriller and historical biography—there was a lady who, way back in 1399, was also sick and tired of such tired and misogynist characterizations, and like me, she decided to write about it. This lady was Christine de Pisan.

Christine was born in 1364 in Venice, but grew up in the French court—her father was the court astrologer to Charles V of France. (Yes, that was a thing.) She was married at 15 to a court secretary named Etienne, had three children, and then was abruptly widowed at 25. None of this was particularly remarkable. What was remarkable was what she chose to do after that.

Most medieval women of her class would have remarried, or, if they were feeling particularly pious, gotten themselves to a nunnery. Christine did neither. To ensure the financial well-being of herself and her children, she decided to work for a living by utilizing her special talent at writing.

Here I must exclaim with delight. (Yay!) As Virginia Woolf once famously noted, there were very few women writers prior to the nineteenth century; so Christine was trailblazing a path that literally did not exist. In her career, she was patronized by the rich and powerful and produced many well-received works of poetry, practically creating what it meant to be a “woman writer” in Western Europe, and was able to provide for a family without a man to help her.

What’s more, her works are considered to be some of the earliest written examples of feminism. Now, it’s a bit anachronistic to ascribe the word “feminist” to anyone living in the Middle Ages. That said, Christine’s work impressively promoted women’s value to society and combated the “misogyny” of her male writer counterparts.

For one thing, she practically invented the whole "Your Historical Woman of the Day" concept (though I will retain all rights and privileges to said concept, thankyouverymuch): In Le Livre de la cité des dames (“The Book of the City of Ladies," also the best book title ever), written in 1405, Christine recorded examples of historical women who were known for heroism and virtue, who could serve as inspiration for women in her own time.  And in Le Livre des trios vertus (“The Book of the Three Virtues”), she discussed women’s role in medieval society and provided moral instruction for women from all walks of life.

As mentioned earlier, Christine was perturbed by certain depictions of the archetypal Woman in medieval (male) writings, particularly one satirical Roman de la Rose by Jean de Meun, which portrayed all women as conniving seductresses. So she directly engaged ol’ Jean in her critique L’Epistre au Dieu d’Amours (“Letter to the God of Loves”) and defended women against such misleading attacks. Her view was that, contrary to popular belief, women were not simply temptresses designed to lead men astray; rather, they  were valuable members of society who, if allowed to receive the same education as men, had the potential to be just as accomplished and successful.

Many feminist scholars have cautioned against holding up Christine as some kind of Light of Early Feminism. Obviously, her thinking was still constrained by medieval understandings of society and the world, and she later in part recanted her more “radical” early attacks of misogyny. And, in the end, she did get herself to a nunnery, where she remained until her death around 1430. However, her accomplishments make her quite the iconoclastic figure—a woman who made her own career in writing, who earned widespread acclaim from kings and nobles (including Henry IV of England), who promoted the place of women in a society far more rigidly patriarchal than the one we know today, whose books continue to be remembered. She even wrote an account of Joan of Arc’s early victories; and it was written during Joan’s lifetime, the only such account in existence.

Not to get cheesy, but I’m pretty sure Christine and I are sisters across the ages.

A Responsibility to Love

Last week Roxanne wrote a post titled The Responsibility to Love. I encourage you to follow the link and read it if you haven’t already, Roxanne’s writing is always timely, poignant, and thoughtful.  You should also read her post, because I’m not going to recap her words here, only the title. For a week I’ve had those four words running through my head: A Responsibility To Love.  The sheer power of that phrase has reverberated deep in my soul and subconscious.  What does it mean? What does it mean for me? A Responsibility To Love.

Love is one of those words that fits multiple parts of speech.  It can be a thing, a metaphorical place, an emotion, an adverb, and of course, a verb.  To Love. I love many people; I love my best friends, my family, my husband.  I often have very strong feelings for my first cup of coffee in the morning too, but let’s forget about loving things for now.  Love can be stagnant; I will always love my parents. But as with anything, surely it’s better with a little effort. I love my parents much more because I know them as people and individuals; I know them because I talk with them often and communicate.  So I don’t just love them as my parents, but as individuals whom I know and respect.  But perhaps that is degrees of love, and not responsibility.

What does it mean to have a Responsibility To Love?  I think first, it means letting someone know that they are loved.  If you love someone, truly deeply love them, and you don’t express that, it’s a little like the tree falling in the forest.  Love isn’t something that is meant to be hidden or silenced; it should be shouted from the rooftops. If you love someone, I think you have a responsibility to let them know: initially, often, and frequently.

I also think with Love comes the responsibility of caring for someone.  Whether it is taking care of a spouse when they are ill, helping a friend through a breakup, or offering support whenever able, if you love someone you should be, to some extent, responsible for their wellbeing.  In a similar vein, I think it is important and necessary to care for the relationship.  I have a black thumb myself, but I’ll use the analogy anyway: just as a plant requires water and sunlight to bloom, a relationship requires care and contact to thrive and survive. (Luckily I am a much better friend than I am a gardener).

Finally, on a grander scale, I think A Responsibility To Love means that I have a responsibility to act with love.  Not only towards the select group of individuals that I love, but in everything I do.  Everyone loves Someone, and in the nature of 6 degrees, if you follow the connections long enough, eventually the someone that a stranger loves will come in contact with someone that I love.  Just as I want that person to be treated with kindness, I should treat the strangers I meet with the same. There is nothing wrong and everything right with spreading a little more love in the world.  From now on, I’m looking it as my responsibility; a responsibility to love.

Michelle Obama: First Lady. Political Powerhouse.

Yes it may be a stretch to call Michelle Obama “historical” (as in, she's alive and hugely relevant), but I’m invoking my own executive privilege as YHWOTD president. Plus it’s timely. Plus no matter which way you slice it, Michelle Obama will certainly go down in history.

I was struck by this last fact as I watched Barack Obama take the stage for his election-night victory speech, accompanied by his ridiculously photogenic family: daughters Sasha and Malia, getting older every day, and wife Michelle. They waved to the audience; they turned around and waved to the back audience (you know, those randos who sit behind the stage and look awkward during speeches); they hugged and kissed; and then Michelle and the young ‘uns took off to leave the President to his important man task.

It struck me because, more than any other First Lady in recent memory, it seemed a crime that this was the only part she got to play. Just as it struck me during the debates when I would exclaim with delight over Michelle’s fabulous outfit choices, and then I would immediately feel conflicted about how this was all I had to say about Michelle.

Not that I’m denying her role as fashion icon—she certainly is one. But she’s also an incredibly accomplished woman, at least as accomplished as her husband: before Barack’s political career skyrocketed, she attended Princeton and Harvard Law School and worked several prestigious law jobs in Chicago. What’s more, she is constantly upping the ante about what it means to be a First Lady, running campaigns to promote healthier eating, making countless media appearances, and killing it at the Democratic National Convention with a pitch-perfect speech supporting her husband’s reelection.

Of course, Michelle is not the first First Lady to make that role more than a piece of set decoration in pretty dresses giving domestic tours of the White House. Notable precursors like Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton (herself a potential President—once and again?) have undoubtedly paved the way for proactive Presidential spouses like Mrs. Obama. Yet the very persistence of the office of First Lady reminds us that we’re still living politically in a man’s world (as if the countless “definitions of rape” debacle during election season weren’t reminder enough!). When will there be a First Man? (First Gentleman? First Husband? First Guy?) When will the whole idea of a “First Lady” stop seeming so patronizing? When will a family walk out onto a stage on election night, and the wife-slash-female-partner will stay?

In the meantime, kudos to Michelle Obama for being a strong, empowered, incredible role model who continues to make her husband look good. And for reminding us—every time she has to watch silently from the sidelines—that there’s still work to do.

Envy and Gratitude

For as long as I remember, I—like many girls—have loved the Anne of Green Gables series. Some of my earliest memories involve falling asleep at night to the sound of Meagan Follows reading Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea; to this day, there are whole passages of those particular books embedded in my subconscious, in Follows’ melodious voice. I have always found much to identify with in Anne Shirley; like Anne, I was an impetuous, talkative, dreamy child who used big words and was once paid money to keep quiet for ten minutes. (I succeeded, by the way.) Like Anne, as an adult I struggle with keeping my temper and tending to take life through a rather melodramatic lens. Even as a child, one of my favorite books in the series was also one of the less well-known: Anne’s House of Dreams, the fifth Anne book, which covers Anne’s first years of marriage to the swoon-worthy Gilbert Blythe. I’m not sure why, as a preteen, I found myself drawn to a book about new marriage—especially one that includes a heartbreaking subplot that still makes me cry every time I read it—but the love has persisted. Once I became a newlywed myself, and experienced, like Anne, the pangs of disappointed longing for motherhood, the book earned an even more special place in my heart.

One of the most interesting characters in Anne’s House of Dreams is Leslie Moore, the victim of a loveless marriage who is now left caring for her incapacitated husband in the wake of a traumatic brain injury. Leslie is complex and confusing, by turns sweet and sour; she becomes good friends with  Anne, but has a difficult time not being jealous of Anne’s newlywed bliss. Halfway through the book, after Anne suffers a tragedy herself, Leslie opens up about her conflicted feelings. Describing the first time she saw Anne driving into town with her new husband, Leslie says:

“I hated you in that very moment, Anne . . . it was because you looked so happy. Oh, you’ll agree with me now that I am a hateful beast—to hate another woman just because she was happy,—and when her happiness didn’t take anything from me!”

I must admit: every time I read about Leslie’s passionate jealousy, I feel something of a kinship. Envy has always been my besetting sin. I can vividly remember being fifteen years old, lying on my bed, my soul harrowed up with frustration over some now-forgotten inequality. I’ve always been prone to jealousy, coveting my friends’ lives, their children, the apparent ease that is always the illusion of a life seen from the outside. Like Leslie, I’ve been guilty of feeling anger at someone else for a happiness I couldn’t share, even when that happiness took nothing from me.

Earlier this year, I had had enough. I resolved that 2012 would be the year that I learn to overcome that natural jealousy, that I learn how to be truly content with my life exactly where it is, without feeling the need to look over my neighbor’s fence. And as I pondered, and journaled, and read, and soul-searched about the issue, I came up with a deceptively simple answer:

Live in gratitude. That was it. Could it really be that simple, I wondered? Could a life lived in gratitude have the power to overcome the vice I’d struggled with for twenty-four years?

I set about testing the principle out. I promised myself that the next time I caught myself looking with envy at somebody else’s life, I’d think instead, What they have is wonderful. But what I have is wonderful, too.

And, to my surprise, it worked. I felt myself becoming more and more aware of all of the things I loved about my life. I found that suddenly, even the things that hadn’t turned out in the way I wanted them to had become sources of blessings; I began to rejoice over all the unexpected twists and turns I’d encountered in my life and the exciting and unanticipated places they had taken me. I discovered, to my delight, that scenes and situations that had once filled me with jealousy and bitterness no longer disturbed my equanimity—unless I let them.

I was the “master of my fate,” I realized; it was up to me to decide what the condition of my heart would be on any given day. Simply the act of acknowledging my own power, and making a conscious choice to live in gratitude and let go of my envy, was bringing more change into my life than I ever could have imagined.

It hasn’t been a perfect, or a permanent, change, of course. Since that May day when I made my decision, I’ve experienced plenty of periods where I’ve let go, let frustration and ingratitude creep back into my life. Like anyone, I’ve had down days—but they have come less frequently than they did before.

As I write this, I find myself marveling over the difference that such a simple choice has made in my life. It seems silly, elementary, hardly worth discussing. But I can’t shake the idea that, this year, I have come upon the secret of happiness:

And its name is gratitude.

The responsibility to love

Life had been reduced to a stack of flashcards in the past week. The green ones contained information on United Nations peacekeeping missions: mandates, areas of deployment, challenges. The blue ones referred to peacekeeping doctrine. The orange ones summarized relevant legal citations. At the top of the flashcard stack rested a question: "What is the legal status of the Responsibility to Protect?" Affectionately dubbed R2P, this refers to the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. The questions of whose responsibility this is, how to uphold it, and where it fits on the spectrum of legal duty or interpreted responsibility are complex and controversial. Last night, at his speech upon being pronounced the winner of the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama articulated a different set of responsibilities, both on the part of leaders and of citizens. Among the many issues he touched upon, one stood out to me: his articulation of the responsibility to love and to serve. There is something refreshing, and new, and inspiring about the responsibility to love being framed as a duty in a speech on election night. At a time of prevalent cynicism, it is an exhale to hear a call for a triumph of compassion over cynicism. The inclusion of these words, and the lifestyles and ideologies they inspire, elevates them. It renders them necessary.

In my eyes, cynicism is easy. Compassion is a difficult practice. It is exactly that: a practice, a muscle that needs to be exercised. It is a stretch to be compassionate towards those who look different than we do, who behave differently than we do, who hold different values, whose ideology rests on different principles. But that is where empathy lies: in being able to extend compassion not only to those we already care about, but to those whom we do not know and whom we are not already programmed to love.

I am a foreigner in the United States (and everywhere?). A "non-immigrant", as my visa states. A "non-resident alien." I could not vote, though I do not consider the casting of a ballot the only way to formulate and articulate opinions that give one a stake in her own community. I have already handed in a midterm with many misgivings about whether "R2P is a legal duty or 'just' a responsibility." I woke up this morning, however, with no misgivings whatsoever about my responsibility to love.

After the Storm

Last Monday, my husband, James, and I were alternately cowering in our apartment waiting for the impending storm and braving the winds and rain to walk down to the river and check in on the condition of the harbor. By midday, the river down the street from our apartment was already churning and the water lapping up as high as we’d ever seen it. At night we lay awake in our bed, listening to the sound of the wind and ambulance sirens, both relentless in their shrieking. From the river itself, we heard nothing.

The next morning, we walked back to the water’s edge and it was clear that river had been where we stood. Clear that while we had managed eventually to sleep it had dashed in and then retreated as quickly as it had come, leaving bits of styrofoam and seagrass strewn in its wake. In DUMBO, a four-foot high brown water mark tattooed restaurant windows and a small lake rippled in the remaining wind at the foot of Main Street. Park benches were covered with the same mess we’d seen further down the road. The power was out and so were the neighbors, walking among the debris to survey the damage.

In the days after the storm, the subways remained flooded and so my sister and her husband walked from the East Village across the Brooklyn Bridge and over the river that separates us. They set up shop in our tiny apartment and we tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy---a surprisingly easy task when there’s a wi-fi connection and warm drinks to be had.

The heartbreaking bit of course is what’s still happening in places where normalcy is harder to come by. In DUMBO and Red Hook and Rockaway and along the Jersey Shore and the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts, there were lives and livelihoods and homes swept away with the rising tides. We’re such a fragile bunch, us humans---so reliant on the technologies that we’ve built and the infrastructure that buoys us. But as always happens after a tragedy, I am also astonished, astonished by our resiliency. If you're looking for ways to help, head here. 

Big Love to New York (and the whole East Coast)

I’m feeling particularly homesick for New York today. With so many loved ones struggling through the hurricane aftermath (including Miya in Brooklyn and many of our beloved contributors all over the East Coast), it’s difficult to believe that I’m across the country and can’t do much more than obsessively scroll through photos and check in on friends and family through texts, emails, and phone calls. Sandy proved devastating to so many, but it reminded me that the fundamental beauty of New York City lies in its people.  New York is tough and New Yorkers are tougher; don’t let that deceive you though. If you’re going to cram over eight million people into a small island and its boroughs, everyone needs to get along. I’ve yet to visit or live in a city where people demonstrate more generosity of spirit than in New York.

Maybe it’s because New York is a city of transplants and all of us remember the first time we found ourselves on an uptown express train instead of the downtown local, holding back tears while wondering if daily life would ever feel easy. Then there’s the day you become a real New Yorker and offer directions to a band of map-wielding tourists or recent grad decked out in her interview best.

In that same spirit of generosity, everyone is lending a hand while New York wrings itself out. Even before Sandy made landfall, Facebook and Twitter exploded with offers to house evacuees. And after, those with power, water, or . . . booze opened their homes---offering charging to the powerless, grooming to the waterless, and merry-making to the stir crazy.

That's how I know New York will be just fine; after all, it’s full of New Yorkers.

Oh, and see you tomorrow (Jet Blue willing)!

It’s easy to contribute to the relief effort in New York and other afflicted areas. To donate, visit the Red Cross, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or just text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Another way to make a huge impact is to donate blood. Blood supplies were severely depleted, but the need is as great as ever. Please consider scheduling a blood donation by visiting redcrossblood.org.

What I Believe

Over the weekend I was talking with a friend of mine.  We had one of those twisty conversations that covers a million topics, to trace back how we got to talking about the movie Bull Durham would require flow charts and recording devices. But get there we did. I’ve never seen the movie, so my friend was telling me the major plot points and characters.  She said her favorite part was a speech Kevin Costner’s character gives, in answer to Susan Sarandon’s question ‘What do you believe in then?’  The speech covered Baseball, Love, Sex, Politics, Holiday Traditions, and more, and my friend had it memorized.  And at the end, Kevin Costner turns and walks out the door, having said his piece. Should the occasion ever arise, I’d like to be able to rattle off a list of my truest beliefs without consulting notes or stumbling over the words.  Here’s my first draft:

I believe in kindness, goodness, luck, and the importance of good juju. I believe in the Muppets, Gene Kelley, Fred Astaire, and Bing Crosby.  I believe in cozy sweaters and keeping the thermostat low to cuddle under the blankets. I believe in family, those gifted at birth and those chosen.  I believe in books, records, and hand-written letters whenever possible, but accept digital versions as well. I believe in love. I believe marriage isn’t right for everyone, but that everyone should have the option. I believe in laughing every day, trusting the universe, and marching to my own drummer.  I believe gummi bears are better with I vodka and the time vortex is a thing. I believe in back roads, sunsets, and stopping to take pictures.  I believe in coffee, glitter, red wine, and great shoes. I believe happiness is just as worthy of a goal as a corner office. I believe in saying I Love You. I believe that time spent together is never wasted. I believe everyone has their own truth, their own journey, and their own sources of joy.

What do you believe in?

Raziyya al-Din: Sultan of Delhi. Leader of Armies.

I’m never more inspired than when I’m spending my Saturday afternoons researching the most illustrious, the most extraordinary, the most awe-inducing women of world history, and of course I haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of subjects to write about. If I could, I would plaster my walls with pictures of these women: Eleanor of Aquitaine atop her horse en route to the Second Crusade. Emma Goldman slamming her fist on a pulpit as she addresses a hall full of factory workers. Sojourner Truth standing up in front of a crowd of hostile white men and skeptical white feminists to speak about her struggles as a slave and demand: “Ain’t I a woman?” It’d be like one giant wall of daily affirmations.

Raziyya al-Din (c.1200-1240) is another historical woman who was both excoriated (because she was a woman) and exulted (because she did stuff anyway). Born into Mughal nobility, Raziyya would go on to become the only female sultan in medieval India. Histories alternately refer to her as either Sultana or Sultan—let’s be clear that she preferred the latter, because a “sultana” technically referred to the wife of the sultan, and she wasn’t no sultan’s wife.

Raziyya’s father was Iltumish, a ruler in the Delhi Sultanate. The Delhi Sultans were a series of Muslim Turkish rulers based in Delhi who, through the medieval period, controlled much of north India. Iltumish and Raziyya, specifically, came from the first Delhi dynasty: the Mameluks, or slaves.

Iltumish recognized early on that his daughter was particularly well-suited for sultan-ing. She had accompanied him on many military campaigns and was ambitious, smart, and full of leadership skills. Thus he formally nominated Raziyya as his successor in preference to his many sons. (This makes me very well-disposed towards ol’ Iltumish. What a progressive guy!)

The problem: Despite the ostensible power of the Sultan’s throne, the elite Turkish nobles (always, always those unruly nobles!) wielded a disproportionate say in court matters, and they were not happy with Iltumish’s choice. When he died in 1236, they overrode his nomination and put one of his sons on the throne instead.

Fortunately for Raziyya, they soon saw the error of their ways. Her brother was incompetent and his conniving, ambitious mother made his rule even more unappealing. They removed him from the throne and gave Raziyya her due as the new Sultana Sultan that same year.

Raziyya, for her short term, proved to be a terrific Sultan. She was wise, benevolent, tolerant to Hindus, and adept at crushing rebellions when they arose. Like past YHWOTD Hatshepsut, she adapted men’s clothing, discarding the veil and dressing as a Sultan, I suppose, ought. Contemporary historians sang her praises, and eminent Indian historian Farishta remarked, “The men of discernment could find no defect in her except that she was created in the form of a woman.”

Her reign went well for the first couple years, but her appointment of an Abyssinian slave named Yaqut to a high office and her close relationship with him (speculation abounds that they may have been lovers, but sometimes I wonder, would the same speculation abound if she had been a man?) caused disgruntlement amongst those same unruly Turkish nobles. They eventually killed Yaqut and imprisoned Raziyya in a fort in Bhatinda, outside Delhi.

Raziyya was able to escape her imprisonment by marrying one of her captors (!) and the two of them marched on Delhi to recapture the throne. They were defeated by a dude named Balban, who would later become Sultan, and were unfortunately killed fleeing from battle in 1240.

Thus ended the short life and even shorter reign of Raziyya al-Din. But she was remembered fondly. Contemporary historian Minaj-us-Siraj called Raziyya “a great monarch, wise, just, generous, benefactor to her realm, a dispenser of equity, the protector of her people, and leader of her armies.”

What I’m reminded of when I read the singing of Raziyya’s praises, the apparent faultlessness of her Sultancy, is that—as Ta-nehisi Coates noted in an excellent, excellent essay on Barack Obama—minorities, including women, who rise to positions of power often have to be “twice as good and half as [insert minority identity here].” I’m not deeply cognizant of the social context of medieval India, but it’s noteworthy that the one of the only woman to emerge, victorious, from the margins of history in this period was, if the historians' language is to be believed, a perfect ruler and practically a man.

Obviously, that’s how they rolled back then---male sultans and all---and I get that. But even today, I think it’s a good reminder to not get complacent about the advances of women. There will be exceptions to every patriarchy, as Raziyya proves—but even with her boundary-breaking, the system remained intact, as it often does, even when briefly and occasionally challenged by extraordinary women. But at the very least exceptions like Raziyya can serve as inspiration and/or fodder for daily wall poster affirmation.

For I have sinned

I am about the furthest thing from a Catholic imaginable, it's true.  But last night I was lying awake feeling guilty for a litany of failings and vices from the past weeks.  'How Catholic of me,' I mused.  And this is not to say that my own Jewish culture doesn't have a lot to offer in the guilt department.  As I flopped back and forth under the covers, I told myself to stop spinning about my various shortcomings and try to focus on all the ways I might have been effective or kind recently.  As so many of us writing here have acknowledged, it is not easy to take those night-time demons to the mat, especially when the hours are small.  Part of the struggle is feeling alone, trapped in your mind with what you imagine to be shameful thoughts and deeds. When I was finally awoken by the chattering of the baby in the early morning, it was something of a relief.  As I extracted her from the crib and set about to start the day, I decided I would engage in something of a "confessional" exercise.  Perhaps if I purged my consciousness of some of the low moments, I could make room for fresh experiences.  Forthwith, a detailing of seven mortal sins of late.  Here is hoping that cracking open my humanity can start to heal what ails me.  At least it might make you feel superior and then you can write about all the ways in which you experienced Pride :)

Wrath - I am typically fairly internal when it comes to anger, which, if you read any study on health is not ideal.  Apparently, people who externalize anger (at least express it, if not outright explode all over the place) tend to have lower levels of depression and can experience improved communication.  This article from the American Psychological Association (and there are a host just like it in the literature) describes some adaptive qualities of anger and how to use it to your benefit.  At my worst, I employ the tactic of stuffing down things that irritate me and then completely coming unglued over something relatively innocuous much later on down the road.  This is totally unproductive and moderately to profoundly confusing for loved ones.  I am working on addressing problems in the moment and being honest about my needs.  This is tricky and can feel risky to someone like myself who likes to avoid confrontation.  But ultimately, the confrontation always happens, just maybe displaced, which is no good for anyone.  Onward.  Upward.

Greed - I want more time, mostly.  Of course, I always desire too many cookies, clothes and earthly possessions, but hours in the day . . . what I wouldn't give.  The truth is that I could manage my time better.  There is certainly some whiling away the hours on Facebook/Instagram, spending late evenings watching Boardwalk Empire instead of answering emails, iChatting with a friend rather than ordering groceries.  The balance of stealing some time to which I feel entitled ("me" time) and organizing the day around prioritizing important tasks is the struggle of all good people, right?  And listen to my language: "stealing" some time . . . from what or whom?  Still and all, I want more time for work, more time with my family, more time to noodle on the internet.  There, I said it.

Sloth - Um, please see Greed.  And then sprinkle in all the moments where I sit in the chair at the studio or on the couch at the apartment thinking 'Sarah, stop flipping through the magazine and move on to the next thing.'  How about the time last week when I recalled I had read a study somewhere (I'm big on studies) indicating that dogs have fewer allergies when you bathe them less often, so . . . On the whole, I tend to push myself to make it all happen and there are times when I actually take great pleasure in physical labor and menial tasks.  There can be a wonderful meditative quality to folding, organizing, washing, etc.  But I realize I tell myself that things are just super busy now and fitting it all in will get easier over time.  This is, of course, an exercise in self-delusion.  Everything will just continue to get busier and the tasks and demands on time will simply compound.  Operation Pull it Together in full effect, then.

Pride - I post about 74,000 pictures of my daughter on Facebook every day with captions extolling her adorableness.  I talk about her accomplishments (at 9 months, these include things like almost, maybe, no definitely, actually probably not - but it really sounds like it! - uttering, "mmmmm…" when I feed her bites of something) ad nauseum.  When people ask me about her I always start with, "She is totally @#!&-ing awesome."  Sue me.  I am a new mother.  I got nothing for you here :)

Lust - There are days when I want power and I want it badly.  This is typically applicable in my business.  I want to be huge enough and famous enough that clients line up at my door, the phone rings off the hook and my inbox is brimming with messages where the inquiry goes something like this, "We really want to work with you, exclusively and specifically, and as such, we are writing you this check with a large sum.  Please deposit this check immediately and then show up on the day of our event with whatever florals and decor you feel are appropriate.  Thanks so much."  Until then, I suppose I will continue to work really hard to prove myself in the industry, hone my brand, secure the trust of clients and exceed expectations in the execution of events like my business depends on it.  Because it does.  The mogul situation is still out of reach, as it turns out.

Envy -I always think everyone else has it easier, is doing it better, knows something I don't and so on.  I believe this to be a fairly universal issue but it doesn't make it any less potent. I am particularly uncomfortable with this aspect of my personality, as my life is so relatively rosy.  As previously discussed, I have greater flexibility and more human and capital resources than most working people.  There is real suffering all around me in this big city and my concerns about finding the time to update my website or whether my daughter has enough of whatever thing-of-the-day should consume scant mental energy.  No excuses here.

Gluttony - The unending battle with cooking at home and eating "like a real family," wages on.  We over-indulge in take-out and restaurant meals where we are inevitably served too much of less healthful food.  This is a symptom of multiple larger issues in our house (see above struggles with time management, for example) and the remedies aren't coming easily.  I picture us coming together for dinner each night, discussing important matters of the day, laughing, sharing locally sourced food we have lovingly prepared, nourishing our bodies . . . then I scrape the sauce from the (recyclable?) plastic container from Dao Palate onto day-old rice, popping it into the microwave and feel awful.  Fill the refrigerator weekly, take a cooking class (or seven), continue to try and carve out the time.  How hard could it BE?!  HONESTLY.

Well, now I see why people are into this process of recounting wrongs and requesting absolution. It does feel somewhat cleansing.  The accountability piece is where things get dicier.  Maybe writing it down will catalyze forward motion.  And reading it over will help me be a little more gentle with myself as I strive to be a better . . . well . . . everything.  Wait, is that Greed or Pride or maybe Lust?  Sigh.

 (image via)

Sojourner Truth: Ex-Slave. Activist. Hardcore Feminist.

A few months ago, sci-fi writer John Scalzi published a blog piece that went viral entitled “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”. In this article, he attempted to make “privilege” understood to an audience of gamer geeks by translating it into their own language—basically, that SWMs go through life on the “easy” (or “very easy”, depending on your game) button, while various minority identities increase your life’s difficulty setting. “The player who plays on the ‘Gay Minority Female’ setting?” he writes. “Hardcore.”

Our Historical Woman of the day was not, to my knowledge, gay, nor from an era that would necessarily self-identify as such, but I’m pretty sure she was still living life on one of the highest difficulty settings possible. Sojourner Truth was black, she was a woman, and she was born a slave. She lived a life that spanned from a childhood on the plantation to the difficult Reconstruction years following the Civil War. And today, due to her lifelong campaign for both African-American and women’s rights, she has become a symbol for the intersectionality of race and gender—how minority identities can overlap and how struggles can be experienced both separately and in tandem.

She was originally called Isabella “Belle” Baumfree; she changed her name to the (beautiful and rather inspiring) Sojourner Truth decades later. Belle was born into slavery on a Dutch New York plantation around 1797, and spent a childhood being shuffled from owner to owner, separated from family, mistreated by the masters and mistresses of the estates, and marrying a much older slave to whom she would bear five children, though there’s speculation that some were fathered by her white master. All part of the common experience of being a slave woman in America; but that doesn’t diminish its tragedy.

In 1826, an emancipation law was pending in New York—within a year, Isabella would likely be freed. However, she took it upon herself to exit the evil institution a little early. She took one of her children and literally walked off the plantation, finding refuge with a Quaker family and escaping the slave life forever. Later, she fought in court for the recovery of her other children, one of whom was illegally sold to a Southern plantation, and won. This was only the beginning of what was to be a long and fruitful activist career.

What Truth may have been most famous for, not unlike the firebrand anarchist Emma Goldman, was her public speaking. Illiterate throughout her life, she nevertheless had a remarkable gift for language and, from the 1840s onward, went on several speaking tours with both women’s rights groups and abolitionists.

Her most famous speech was apparently entirely improvised. At a women’s rights convention, at which Truth had agreed not to speak in order to avoid making harmful associations between the “Negro” cause and the cause of women, it happened that several men were shouting down the beleaguered women speakers. “Women expect rights? They ask us to help them down from carriages and over puddles!” cried Manly Man #1. “Women can’t even do manual labor!” exclaimed Manly Man #2. (I’m guessing at their names.)

Sojourner Truth couldn’t hold it in anymore. She marched up onto the platform and launched into an impassioned counterattack.

“Nobody ever helped me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gave me any best place—and ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it) and bear the lash as well—and ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen ‘em most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ain’t I a woman?”

Truth then pointed a bony finger (according to her histories, something she was fond of doing) at a nearby preacher, and demanded, “Where did your Christ come from? . . . From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him.”

The crowd erupted in cheers. The manly men were publicly shamed. The white feminists who had objected to her speaking felt guilty. (Or so I like to imagine.)

If this all sounds a bit too good to be true—if it sounds like the ending of a '90s family movie—it may be because, it’s not entirely true. Sojourner Truth holds the transcendent rank of symbol in our histories, particularly feminist histories, and symbols often diverge from reality. Much of this speech was recorded by a white working-class woman named Frances Gage, who even wrote it in “plantation dialect” (see above quote, replace every “the” with “de” and “children” with “chillern,” etc). Historians have noted the potential motives of contemporary white feminists for uplifting Truth to the status of symbol: her rootsy plantation background was an ideal metaphor for the need for women’s own emancipation, and her illiteracy meant she could do little to contest the narratives of her white recorders.

Yet I like to think there was at least some truth in this landmark piece of feminist expository, even if it wasn’t quite as movie-scene-y as all that. There are many recorded instances of Truth’s resounding voice echoing through convention halls and touching the hearts and minds of all who attended. She spoke alongside Frederick Douglass—famously asking him “Is God dead?” as he enumerated the injustices being committed daily against the American Negro—and diffused tense situations with unruly, antagonistic crowds—another potentially apocryphal story arises in which she bared her breasts to an Indiana audience who questioned whether she was really a woman. (Probably because she was six feet tall and deep-voiced. And she also had the balls to challenge men.)

She even staged some proto-public transit sit-ins in Washington, DC, storming onto the “white” segregated horse-drawn carriages and challenging the conductor to throw her off. The by-this-time somewhat elderly woman ended up in a scuffle with one driver, whose company she later successfully sued. Hardcore.

Sojourner Truth settled in Battle Creek, Michigan after the Civil War, where she advocated for a Reconstruction that would address the injustices done to black America by slavery—which, by her estimation, could never be fully forgiven, but at the very least the government could begin to make amends. She died in 1883, roughly eighty-five years old, fighting for this elusive justice to the very end.

Despite the nearly insurmountable challenges set out before her, and whether or not some of the accounts about her are apocryphal or idealized, the former Ms. Baumfree built a life that became an inspiration to every seeker of social justice of the last 150 years. It's hard to imagine the difficulties she faced in her life; her status as both black American and female American, not to mention former slave, informed her experience and drove her impassioned demand for equality and justice in an often ugly American century. And so Sojourner Truth, like her name, embodies a struggle that continues to inspire, that continues to matter, that we are still fighting today.