Harris Trump Debate - a Balancing act for smart women

Last night I watched the Sept. 10, 2024 debate and once again, not for the first time, I saw an intelligent, composed woman attempting to debate a belicose, distressed and rattled man. There is an old saying, when asked what men are most afraid of in regard to women, the rply was that they would be laughted at. Women, asked the same question replied they were afraid they would be murdered." That observation is a sedimentary layer under all relations between men and women. The overwhelming percentage of shooters are men. The overwhelming number of victims of domestic violence are women. Men have used economic power to control and force women into submission for most of our history. And one of the ways that has has endured is because until the birth control revolution, women were disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing and child rearing. We couldn't do all that and hold survival wage paying jobs at the same time. But things have changed in the past hundred yeats and everyone is still adjusting to it.

It is true in my own personal life that I have had to face up to male violence both in my family and my marriage. This implied threat is apparent to most of us women and we saw it in the Hilary Clinton debate with Trump when he stalked around her, and used loud, bullying tones of voice. And Hillaries response was so typical of the majority of women, she was polite and restrained.

Last night, I saw the emergence of the NEW woman, the professional woman, the woman who has had the tough job, prosecutor and who can be both self-controlled and focused and assertive. It is a balancing act. Intelligent women who are assertive are often called 'aggressive' and it has happened to me. Once in a group project, when the group was floundering and I had prepared a flow chart with a time and task component, I put it on the white board to help us settle down and get organized so we could finish in the time allotted to us and one of the male techers said "I didn't know you were so aggresssive!" It happened that just at that moment our first female Superintendent of Schools was coming in to check on our progress and she said, "If you show control and you are a man it is competent and assertive, but if you are a woman it is bossy anc aggressive." So true. Yet we have seen the evidence in the 20th and 21st century of women leaders who have done exceptional work. First let me begin with one of my all time favorite women leaders, Golda Meir! She led the nation of Israel in a time of desperation and conflict to rival what is going on at the present and led them skillfully and safely into the future. Second let me honor Angela Merkel who not only led Germany for 20 years as Chancellor, first woman to hold that position, but she was known as the "de facto Leader of the Europen Union." When Trump traveled to Germany he refused to shake her outstretched hand.

Even other women can get nervous when women ask for too much power in the world, as shown when Phyllis Schlafly organized middle American housewives to help her defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. She felt and convinced other women to feel that they would lose the shelter and protection of men if they got too equal and that we are not, in fact, equal. She convinced women they were safer under the protection of men than independence. She was afraid we would be drafted into the military (there is no more draft but we join and serve). She was afraid we would share bathrooms (we do have to share some unisex bathrooms but I have yet to see a crime wave resulting).

Fear! Fear of strong women has been with us through the ages. One of the arguments that has been used to support the exalted state of men in the patriarchy is that men die for us. That ignores the fact that through our entire species history women have died in childbirth at alarming rates for the whole human race. We die too.

What Kamala did in the debate was that she found the fine line of being intelligent and assertive without alarming men with her control. She faced the intimidating bluster of the orange faced bully with composure, and she hit back when he lobbed bad balls. That analogy works for me because it brings tomind the Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs tennis match which I saw again recently oon a pbs passport special called Gods of Tennis. I watched that match in a bar with my then husband. I was silent and watchful and worried because I knew there would be mockery and humiliation from the men drinking in that bar if Billy Jean lost. She hadn't wanted to play Bbby riggs but he goaded her into it. And she beat him because she was faster, stronger, more controlled and YOUNGER. That was the excuse used by several outraged male acquaintances of mine to explain this unexpected and disturbing loss on the part of Riggs. My teacher pals said, "NO wonder she won, she was younger than he was." There ha to be a reason. But what a blow that was for the rest of us women, so tired of the pinched backsides, the snide remarks, the lack of safety in dark hallways or storage rooms, or buses or speedline trains, or offices, or gymnasiums, or anywhere for that matter. It was like when the mild kid loses it finally after too much torment and socks the bully. We saw it in the Christmas movie A Christmas Story, when Ralphy beats up the yellow eyed neighborhood bully who has terrified all the children for their after-school walk home.

Kamala did it with her intelligence and composur, skills honed from her years in the courtroom, and there are more and more of us each generation, finding our places in careers and professions that were formerly denied to us: law, medicine, military service, technology, science. Our buried skills are being excavated and honed. Even in my own small town, we have our first female Mayor! She had a career as a Union Representative, another career that demands a practice of both self control and assertiveness.'

It would be the celebration of a century if we achieved our first fmale president. We have been climbing this Mount Everest for a long time, perhaps this century we will achieve the summit and the country and the world weill be better and safer because of it!

Happy Trails, Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness Project - Tom and Harry! Sept. 10, 2024

Yesterday when I was walking my dog with a neighbor friend along the railroad tracks, we ran into an old man I have passed often while walking that route, his name is Tom. He alway has a calm, pleasant expression and is good at a short but happy conversational exchange, often about the weather and our walking habit. I always tell him what an inspiration he is to me because he is 92 years old!. He looks fine and seems fine although I have a dim memory of him once telling me about his health issues, whatever they were; they don't hold him back! He enjoys the weather and the change of the season as do I and he is out in all of them as am I thans to my dog who WILL NOT take no for an answer when it is time to walk. In really poor walking conditions, we compromise and I take her for a drive. Tom is a happy man. He gets outdoors every day and looks at the world and has chats with others of us, the walkers, the neighbors, the mobile.

Tom is a happy man although he is alone and old. Today, after our walk, I took a drive to get myself a treat - a hot caramel latte' size large, and visit a couple of my favorite parks: Proprietor's Park, and Red Bank Battlefield in National Park (no dogs allowed so we just park and look at the river but don't get out of the car.) Being there reminded me of an old pal, Harry Schaeffer, who lives in National Park and I knew him during my volunteer days in the 90's and early 2000's before my heart 'episode' and hospitalization two years ago. It was my last volunteer job out of half a dozen. Harry was also a volunteer and during the hey day of volunteering at the James and Ann Whitall House on Red Bank Battlefield, we and the others, took many field trips related to our Revolutionary War history interest. We went to Princeton Battlefield, we went to Monmouth College Library to see the skull of Count VonDonop (not actually his skull as dna proved but that of a native American Woman) and William Penn's plantation among many other trips. Harry is retired now from Sunoco and he also volunteers at the Gloucester County Historical Society, in particular the Museum on Broad St. in Woobury. I used to volunteer there at the genealogy library in back. Harry is a happy man. He has interests and social events and purpose in his life and he does good and it is appreciated.

I compare these two men to people who are stuck indoors, have no interests except endless tv, and who are isolated and purposelesd and lonely. These two men, one my age the other 15 years older, have a gift, the gift of getting out and about and doing something every day! This is a big part of happiness!

Happy Trails! Jo Ann

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness Series continued - a lunchbox and a flash of memory

In an antique store or a yard sale some years ago, for a small sum of perhaps $1 or $3, I bought a battered Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox circa 1954. To be honest, I can't really remember what lunchbox I carried or if I even carried a lunchbox back in those days. I do remember my daughter's lunchboxes from a period where she was engrossed in Jurasssic Park and Star Wars. I know she had many others, but that's all I remember. Anyhow, recently I had that lunchbox out for a Seniors Group Theme of 'Back to School.'

Having that lunch box out for a week or so had an unintended consequence. Day dreams, I think, have some similarities to night dreams in that in my case, they are often inspired by an object or image or interaction from the awake world, but the imagination takes that inspiration and weaves a fictional account with it. Somethng a bit different is the flashes of memory, vague and abstract that I sometimes experience in regard to the abovementioned objects or interactions, or a song on the radio. This, I think, it a shared experience with many people.

Today, after walking the dog (Uma) and stopping at the Dunkin Donuts for a caramel latte' and then a trip to ShopRite for dog food and frozen vegetables, I was sitting on the porch basking in the marvelous early autumn weather - brilliant but gentle sunshine with equally polite breezes wafting cool air over all. And I had this distinct sense of happiness, an infinite happiness familiar to me, but one I think I have rarely recorded in my journal or here on the blog. I was taken back to a time in childhood, not an event, but a FEELING. It was a feeling of infinity, a timeless floating joyful connection with all-time. It was Saturday afteroons watching the more kind cowboy movies of the fifties, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and The Lone Ranger. These heroes were restrained, reasonable, capable, kindly and reliable, not violent or melancholy or bitter or resentful like so many anti-heroes of today. They had pals and orderly ranches and relationships with the townsfolk.

But the feeling was more about how I felt at the time, and I have had flashes of that feeling from other childhood experiences too - sitting in the wild meadow beside our housing development on a sunny free day, looking at the golden grasses waving, and watching the insects going about their busy lives. It is the feeling I had on long drives with my dad when I was young and later with my boyfriend and husband, Mike, when we traveled across Europe or across the U.S. - long quiet drives looking out the window and Quenching my ever present hunger for visual stimulation. One such drive, windows down, crossing the prairies, we were inundated with the intoxicating fragrance of sweet grass. It was a transporting fragrance, sweet and enveloping and heavenly.

These flashes of that feeling of quiet joy and infinity come when I am disengaged, after walking the dog and sitting on the porch, or driving somewhere, listening to the radio or simply sitting in silence. They are happiness, and they require a kind of neutrality in order to rise. Another one is the seashore, the smell of the salt air, especially in early fall, after the busy season is over, and it brings back my Grandmother Mabel's home, the ocean breeze lifting the sheer curtains, the peace and orderliness, and the quiet and the connection with eternity, and it brings back her, just like the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lunchbox brings back those afternoons and the black and white tv cowboy shows with my beloved godfather, Uncle Neal, a quiet, calm, kind man, comfortable with silent companionship, and safe, a self-restrained man in starched and ironed shirts, clean shaven and smelling of old spice after-shave. I loved him and I still do. Those flashes are a visit with eternity and a visit with lost loved ones and they are happiness, not fraught with grief or sorrow - pure and clear moments of happiness- a bridge to the great Oneness. Happy trails, here there and everywhere!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

Happiness continued September 9, Friday Night

It is an overcast evening and I am watching a murder mysteries series on pbs passport called Ridley. The murder is, of course, "up on the moors" but that is hardly relevent. The point is I just made a fresh blender of blueberry smoothie and my dog is asleep beside me amd the cats are all napping and I am happy.

A major contributor to my happiness today is that I went to Chair Yoga class this morning. It is the new 4 week session at The Station and it is from 10:30 to 11:15 in the upstairs gallery, so I had a chance to look at the new Halloween Art Show "eerie" before class began. It is a mild class so there is no anxiety about jostling any of my poor creaky joints. It is meditation in motion when you sincerely put your mind to it and don't just 'go through the motions' and I make that a practice. When I went downstairs, I bought take-out roasted cauliflower soup and a small container of cous cous salad to take home for lunch. It was my healthy alternative choice. I usually buy pumpkin spice latte' for a treat after class, but I want to sleep better tonight. My sleep has been a bit rocky lately.

So as it has been my habit to take note of when I am happy and to attempt to find the source, I am doing that here because this evening, I found myself happy! Unlike some, I am happy in quiet and in solitude and especially when I have a good mystery to follow.

Another source of happiness for me is lunch with friends and tomorrow, I will meet 5 or 6 former teaching colleagues for lunch at one of my all time favorite lunch places, Maritsa's in Maple Shade. I haven't been there for awhile and I haven't been out to lunch since Monday a week ago, so I am looking forward to it. All the happiness articles I have read put socializing up in the top three on the list of things that make us happy and I agree!

Another thing, I do love moving into autumn, especially this early start when it hasn't gone chilly yet, but autumn is in the air and the business of summer has bedded down.

Sadly, I don't have the frantic and funny racing around of squirrels this year. The diminishment of woodlands in what was once our Garden State, has brought owls and hawks into the yard and they are silently behind the scenes picking off the squirrels. My sister was here on Thursday and she found a large handsome hawk feather in the front yard. That's another thing that makes me happy, my sister comes over once every couple of weeks to help with chores. I call it the hundred dollar day because I pay her a hundred for 4 hours and we often, nowadays, also have a little lunch. She does a wonderful job for me, works far above and beyond, and I really enjoy her company. I am lucky to have a sister nearby and one I love and get along with. She is great company. Cosy up and settle in for the Autumn - Happy Trails, my friends!

Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com