Strategies for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

For my internship with the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA, I get to do a variety of activities, many of which I've written about as they have occurred.  Some of these activities have had me doing something new, like leading middle school confirmands through bread baking.  This past week's internship activity was a writing task, not anything out of the ordinary for me.  But it was satisfying nonetheless.

Way back in the summer, my internship supervisor and I had brainstormed ways that I could be useful, and writing for the e-newsletter was one of them.  We looked ahead at upcoming events, and one of them was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, on Nov. 25.  Back in the summer, that day seemed so far away.

I wrote to one of the Synod staffers who has been hired to coordinate women in ministry to see if she had anything planned.  I didn't want to duplicate efforts or step on her toes.  I had been thinking about an article that talked about the day and offered ways for ordinary people to do something.  There are lots of days that have us discussing various issues.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed, and I thought a list of possible activities would be a good counterpoint to despair, cynicism, and hopelessness.  My supervisor, when hearing of my proposed article, said, "Go for it."

I made the list, and I put it in a bulleted form so that my supervisor could edit it if need be.  Much to my delight, he didn't.  I turned it in Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon, it was online.  Go here to read it; I like that it's a mix of educational, spiritual, and advocacy type activities.  There's a bit of politics, but it's the non-partisan type.

Back when I was planning my week, I thought I would have the whole week to work on it, but I'm happy to have had the due date of Tuesday.  Later today, Quilt Camp starts, and I am happy to have almost everything else cleared off of my schedule.  I am ready to lose myself in fabric in the best possible ways.

Assorted Facebook Posts from December Worth Saving

Before we get too far away from December, let me go back through my Facebook feed and preserve posts worth saving, while I can still find them.

Why are they worth saving?  They make me smile.  They help me remember a specific time.  They may contain seeds which could be developed into interesting larger ideas.


Dec. 21, 2019

I am watching a Nigella Lawson Christmas special, and I'm struck by how many PBS cooking shows end with a group of disparate people around the table, eating what the cook has been preparing. If anyone ever needs an eclectic looking woman at the outer edge of midlife for one of these shows, I'm available! I promise never to upstage the chef! I am gifted at the art of feeling ecstatic as I toast the cook or eat the first bite of something delicious.

Dec. 18, 2019

I would like a grant to study the effects of having a working kitchen (with baked goods regularly emerging from said kitchen) on college student retention. The grant would cover both the cost of installing a working kitchen on my campus and the cost of baking supplies and ingredients. An administrator can dream of such things in this holiday season . . .

Dec. 17, 2019

From a distance, this patch looks like a strange corner of grass outside the parking garage.

Look more closely, and you will see the leaves of pumpkin plants. How did they get there? From the rotting pumpkins that I tossed over the wall of the second floor of the parking garage. Just call me Kristin Pumpkinseed!

earlier on Dec. 17, 2019:

If you had the power to prevent sad partings/departures, would you want that power? Would you see it as a terrifying responsibility or would you prevent all sad separations? No, not a philosophical conversation over the dinner table, but a philosophical prompt based by the departure of a colleague who is moving away to be closer to family.

Monastic Poetry Week-end: Thinking about Habits

While I am away at Mepkin Abbey, I'm leaving some poems inspired by my time there:  one per day.  And in case criminals read this blog post, don't think about breaking into my house; you'll meet my spouse, and it will not end well.

Back to poems!

Tomorrow it will be time to reenter the world, to wear the less comfortable clothes of the workplace.  Long ago, I wrote this poem which reflects on the differences between the life of monks, particularly in the area of clothing, and the life of women in the weekly world.  I originally titled it "Monk's Habits," but I think I like "Monastic Habits" better.



Monastic Habits

To put on a robe that would forgive
her for a heavy meal, so unlike
her tailored suits. A robe made of rough
material, no need of special laundering.
Goodbye to astronomical dry cleaning bills.
No worrying about matching accessories.
Always a drab color, day after day.

That robe could buy her anonymity,
invisibility in the world,
no eyes disrobing her, no leers.
That robe declaring her off limits.

And housework, those boring tasks, always renewing
themselves, would confer spiritual
discipline, instead of complaints about her ineptitude.

Even silence, that vow which mystified
her teenage self, more so even than chastity,
now calls to her. She sees herself enshrouded in silence,
no carping, complaining, or criticizing.
She sees herself surrounded by like-minded companions,
rising early in common pursuit, breathing
air perfumed by incense and rising bread dough,
as prayers rise to the heavens.

Friday Delights

Yesterday was full of delightful moments, even though the work day was long:

--I had coffee with a friend and reconnected after the holidays.

--The meeting with my department went well.  We even had lunch, which our school has not always been able to afford.  It would have been great to have taken the faculty to a fancy restaurant, but given the stresses of the past few years, I was profoundly grateful for lovely trays of sandwiches, perfect fruits, and delectable veggies, all delivered on time by a colleague in a different department.  So much could have gone wrong during that meeting and lunch, but nothing did.

--After the meeting, I hung out with my friend who meets with me periodically to exchange short stories.  She told me again how much she likes my work, how happy my work is.  I said, "It's a good thing I never went into an M.F.A. program--they'd have seen my work as light and fluffy."

--I challenged her to write a story with a happy ending, maybe a marriage.  She looked aghast.  She challenged me to write a story in which the narrator realizes she's dead.

--As I spun my way through spin class, I thought about the possibilities. 

And this morning, I started composing!  Will one of the characters be telling the story from the dead?  Or am I simply writing an apocalyptic story like the ones I read over Christmas break?  I'm not sure yet. 

My plan is for the narrative to be broken up with chunks of text like the one below, with which I am well pleased:

I am the pianos abandoned in the early miles of the Oregon Trail, and later, the finer furniture, and later still, all the possessions of any weight at all.  I am the bones of a hungry people moving north, desperate for water, finding only stone.

But it occurs to me that perhaps those chunks are poems that have wandered into my short story.  Or maybe they'll appear in both.  Hmmm.

It makes me happy that I spent some time on fiction this morning, even though I'm not sure where the story is going or how it will fit into my longer manuscript of linked short stories.

What else is making me happy today?  My essay on getting more rest and rejuvenation is up at Her Circle.  Go here to read it.

I'm also happy that my poem "Conserving the Scraps" has just been published in the latest edition of New Plains Review.  What a lovely journal.  If you haven't discovered it yet, you should.

Here's the poem, for your Friday reading pleasure:


Conserving the Scraps



The homeless woman sits in the library
and reads about the art of quilts.
Surrounded by all her worldly possessions, three
grocery bags full, she discovers the history
of this odd art, born
out of desperation
and poverty: the lack of basic supplies, the need
to conserve every scrap.

The homeless woman thinks of her own clothes, patched
so many times that she can’t remember
the original contours of the cloth.
She fingers her garbage bags,
the modern feedsack with multiple uses,
many a rainy night made bearable
by their plastic presence.

The homeless woman reads
the tales of modern quilters and their quest
for quality fabrics.
Unlike them, she appreciates
the durability of polyester, a rugged fabric
well suited for life on the streets.

Later, the homeless woman settles
her garbage bags around her in the shadows
and waits for scurrying sleep to come.
She thinks of cheerful quilt tops,
the differences in batting,
and wishes for warmth to call her own.

Lessons Learned from Writing the Academic-ish Essay

Three weeks ago, I'd have been finishing my essay that explores women poets who use Greek mythology to explore the workplace, primarily workplaces outside the home.  It was an interesting experience, and before too much more time slips away, I thought it might be useful to talk about what I learned in doing it.

I've said that the idea for this essay came about in an ideal way.  I went to a conference to present a paper on female poets and the use of both mythology and fairy tales.  During the question and answer session, I remember saying that I observed that female poets tend to use mythology to talk about work and fairy tales to talk about home.  So when I saw the call for essays for a collection on women poets and mythology, I thought back to my comment and wrote up a proposal.

I still think that women poets use fairy tales to talk about home life.  I didn't discover as many female poets using Greek myth to explore the workplace as I thought I remembered.

Luckily, I am one of those poets who uses Greek myth in just that way--and my proposal was clear that I would be using myself as a case study.  So that was fortunate.

I did write to a wide variety of poets, just in case they had any obscurely published/unpublished work that I wouldn't know about.  Most of them did not, but everyone was uniformly kind.  I'm aware that most people sincerely want to help, and it was great to have this potent reminder.

The essay had to be between 2700 and 3300 words.  I thought my largest problem might be in keeping under the word count.  After all, I remember writing papers of double and triple that length in grad school.  Nope--my essay came in at just the right amount, and there were days when I thought I might have trouble getting to the minimum.  That was a fear of mine when I wrote essays in grad school too.

Notice, though, that I said days.  Yes, it took me days to write this essay.  In grad school, I would routinely finish several papers in a week, or even a week-end.  Of course, I'd done more researching and planning and preparing--there was less writing to discover what I had to say.

The benefit to a longer writing process:  I could return to the writing and say, "Wow.  That's clunky.  Jeez--there's no transition between these chunks of the essay."  I could say, "This bit is interesting, but it's off topic--throw it out."  To be honest, I didn't make those kind of cuts until the end.  Just like when I was a grad student, I wanted credit for all the work I had done.  I twisted that chunk into all sorts of shapes trying to make it fit, but in the end, I had to admit that it didn't.  I felt oddly proud of excising it.

I even wrote a poem, because I needed an example to support a point.  Perhaps I shouldn't admit this.  I can hear graduate school professors recoiling in horror.  But I thought it was kind of cool.  My immersing myself into the topic left me inspired, and it was neat to be able to use one of the poems that I had written in response to the academic writing I'd been doing.

It's good to do this kind of writing again, to remember what it's like to do it, to have a bit of a taste of what our students go through.  It's good to feel the achiness of these writing muscles--and good to feel them limber up again.

My Essay in "Her Circle"

You may have thought that I couldn't possibly have more to say about Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, but you'd be wrong.

I've written an essay  for Her Circle which explains what this book has to teach us as individuals, as activists, and as artists--and much more cogently than past blog posts.

I'm so impressed with the photos and pictures that the magazine used with my essay.  Let me give credit where credit is due:  I wrote the essay, but other talented people did the layout and found the accompanying photos and illustrations.  What a beautiful presentation.

I hope you'll go here to read my essay!