A comment from loupmojo warrants its own reposting, so those who have already seen my blog today will see it as well. It is a perfect humorous illustration of my chopped liver post! Thanks, loupmojo. Hilarious.
Men and Women
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Tag Archives: The Daily Post
So What Am I, Chopped Liver?
So What Am I, Chopped Liver?
The first time I can remember feeling unequal was in college, in Modern American Literature class. I remember the teacher (male) asking questions and I would usually raise my hand and answer first. I would make a point about whatever we had been reading and there would be a moderate reaction on the part of the teacher and the mainly male members of the class.
Half an hour later, after much discussion, invariably, one of the male members of the class would repeat what I had said as his own opinion and everyone would laud what he had to say as insightful and brilliant and everyone would agree!
This happened time after time. It was as though none of them really listened to what I said, or perhaps that their minds weren’t ready to accept it unless they went through a period of inductive reasoning first and they needed all the accumulated comments of the class to bring them to acknowledge what I had known from the beginning.
What it felt like, however, was that they put no credence in the ideas of a woman. This is not the only time I have noticed this. It happens now and then in the small poetry workshop I am a member of. I am really curious about whether any other woman has ever noticed this same phenomena.
The Prompt: Unequal Terms—Did you know today is Blog Action Day? Join bloggers from around the world and write a post about what inequality means to you. Have you ever encountered it in your daily life?
The Obvious
Since it is obvious my desktop barely has a gap,
it’s clear to see why my computer sits atop my lap!
The Prompt:Sweeping Motions—What’s messier right now — your bedroom or your computer’s desktop (or your favorite device’s home screen)? Tell us how and why it got to that state.
The Twenty-fifth Hour
I found five old passports and an international driving permit from 1986.
Why, oh why can I not find my current passport?
An extra hour would be nice. A day’s not long enough.
I know I’d use the extra hour looking for lost stuff!
My passport has gone missing and it’s been a major pain.
I would give most anything to have it back again.
I’ve looked in all my files, my drawers and every purse.
I have too many places. It couldn’t get much worse.
If I ever find it, I’ve made myself a vow to
make my life much simpler, if I just could figure how to!
Post Script: I actually lost my passport a few years ago. I looked for it for 4 or 5 hours without finding it, but my housekeeper found it in 5 minutes when she came the next day–in a place where I’d looked twice!!! She lit a candle and said whenever I lost things I should do the same. She says her friend has a Virgin and Child statue, and whenever she loses anything, she takes the baby out of the mother’s arms and says she’ll return it when she has helped her to find whatever she has lost!! Talk about blackmail in high places! Ha. A simple solution.
Exhortation in Support of the Written Word!
Exhortation
in Support of the Written Word!
Discussing a good book can improve any conversation,
while other books just serve us as a means of rumination.
Books come in many forms from poetry to exhortation.
Some use them to improve their minds, others as decoration.
Books furnish everyone a chance to get an education
as writers entertain us and provide elucidation.
Ghost stories and horror books give rise to palpitation.
Action and adventure lead to heights of exultation.
Comics lead to laughter and beyond—to jubilation.
Histories tell tales of conquerors and usurpation—
deprivation due to wars, like bombing raids and rations,
slaughter, mayhem, battle strategies and amputations.
Some books furnish thrills while some serve only as sedation.
Some books read as sermons, others bombastic oration.
Preachers read from Bibles to provide their congregation
with words that furnish some with hope, others with trepidation.
Some dread books they feel may raise their “lessers” to their station.
Some fear the joy they rouse in us and label our elation
as the hands of Satan, which they’ll cure with amputation,
labeling their action as an act of “God’s creation.”
Driven to destroy the means of all our excitation,
having few words of their own, a zealot’s main “quotation”
is burning books they fear in a colossal conflagration
that gives another meaning to the word “illumination!”
Whatever you might like to read, a certain exultation
waits for you when reading is your favorite vocation.
A torrid romance may work best while on a beach vacation,
(the heat a good excuse for your excessive perspiration.)
Mysteries serve for planes and trains—all forms of transportation—
either while you’re riding or just waiting in the station.
Books are everywhere. They form a great accumulation.
They bore us, reassure us, or provide great inspiration.
Information in most books serves as a vaccination
against hate and bigotry and all discrimination.
For those trapped by fate, they make a good means of migration,
as reading has no borders as to neighborhood or nation.
The Prompt: Reader’s Block—What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without reading a book (since learning how to read, of course)? Which book was it that helped break the dry spell? (My consideration of books took me off on a slightly different tangent, but the prompt is to get us started. Right?)
Two Will Do
I used to like friends by the score
squeezed wall-to-wall and door-to-door.
A party didn’t even count
until the guests began to mount
up to sixty, seventy, more.
But now, I’m finding crowds a bore.
Now I find that two-by-two
is something I prefer to do.
Conversations more intimate
make it simpler to relate.
So though I used to be a grouper,
now I’m just a party-pooper.
The Prompt: Counting Voices—A lively group discussion, an intimate tête-à-tête, an inner monologue — in your view, when it comes to a good conversation, what’s the ideal number of people?
Coffee with No Ceremony!!
All dressed up for the coffee ceremony, but what is missing?
The Prompt: Dictionary, Shmictionary—Time to confess: tell us about a time when you used a word whose meaning you didn’t actually know (or were very wrong about, in retrospect).
Coffee With No Ceremony
I lived in Addis Ababa adjoining Mexico Square.
I ate injera every day. Had cornrows in my hair.
I thought I knew it all, and though my language skills were poor,
I knew enough Amharic to get by in any store.
Seated in a circle, on low stools around a flame,
We watched Demekech fan the fire—this ritual the same
in every house and every village all throughout the land.
The thick and sludgy coffee was always ground by hand.
Boiled in a clay carafe, then set aside to brew
as in another little pot, some corn kernels she threw.
The popcorn taken from the flame, the colo nuts were next.
Except—we found that we had none, and we were sorely vexed.
The coffee jug was sealed up with a fresh-wound plug of grass
ready for the pouring, but one aspect of our mass
was missing, so I said I’d go to buy some at the souk,
lest our hospitality give reason for rebuke.
These little shops were many, lining both sides of the street;
and at each one, I knew the custom—always did I greet
the owner with proper respect, and always, he said, “Yes!”
when I asked if he had colo, but I couldn’t guess
why no one ever seemed to want to sell any to me.
Always the same reaction—first the shock and then the glee.
So, finally, I walked back home. My failure I admitted.
Departing, I had felt so smart, but now I felt half-witted.
What had I done wrong? I knew that every shop had colo.
The problem must have been that I had gone to get them solo!
Returning empty-handed, I felt I was to blame.
Coffee without colo was a pity and a shame.
But my roommate and our guests and cook were really most surprised.
I must have asked for something else than colo, they surmised.
What did I ask for? When I told them, they dissolved in laughter.
They said that I was lucky not to get what I asked after.
For colo had two meanings, depending on the stress
put on the first syllable, and I had made a mess.
Instead of nuts, they told me (and this was just between us,)
I had asked each souk owner—if he had a penis!
(This is a true story of only one of the gaffes I became famous for in the year and a half I taught and traveled in Ethiopia in the period leading up to the revolution that deposed Haile Selassie.)
Rummy
Upturned Noses—Even the most laid back and egalitarian among us can be insufferable snobs when it comes to coffee, music, cars, beer, or any other pet obsession where things have to be just so. What are you snobbish about?
Rummy
Forget my birthday or my name.
Beat me at my favorite game.
Insult my décor or my looks.
Ignore my artwork and my books.
Any coffee brand will do.
I am not snobbish about my brew.
If you must, you may be tardy.
Just serve me no rum but Bacardi!
If someone one day deemed to proffer
the finest Cuba has to offer,
there is no choice. I wouldn’t totter.
I’d just decline and ask for water!
Back and Forth
If I should find a time machine, I might or might not buy it.
And even once I bought it, I might or might not try it.
To think about the future always makes me sweat,
for I am trepidatious about how bad it might get.
I foresee live-in bubbles for one or two or three
who merely turn on YouTube for whomever else they see.
Pollution would be too advanced to venture far outside—
the world turned way too violent for most folks to abide.
If I visited the future, chances are I’d see
the death of friends and loved ones—perhaps the death of me!
See our country crumble due to earthquakes or to slaughter.
See Monsanto poison food crops after ruining our water.
Our seasons turned to drought, tornado, hurricane and flood—
by turn made dry or spinning or blown away or mud.
I know there are alternatives, but I can’t help but doubt
that current politicians will let it all work out.
But if I went into the past, perhaps I’d also rue it.
I might just be happier if I chose to eschew it
I might see as a toddler that I was just a brat—
a little squirming dervish—graceless, spoiled and fat.
I might hear that my singing voice was just a bit off-key
and see the looks the others gave as they were hearing me.
If I encountered me, we might just end up in a fight
like ones I had with sisters—and discover they were right!
Yet, this probably won’t happen and perhaps it might be fun
to have another look at what I’ve seen and what I’ve done.
And though to relive some things would leave me feeling queasier,
I know that it would certainly make memoir-writing easier.
What fun to relive Christmases from year to year to year,
To see my mom and dad again, what’s more, to get to hear
all the stories of my dad and this time to record them—
to spend time with my sisters and to show how I adored them.
What fun to watch me with my friends— Rita, Lynn and Billy—
to see when we were children if we were just as silly
as little kids I see today who just seem to be reeling
with energy and foolishness and excesses of feeling.
I’d drive on roads with fewer cars to spots no longer there.
Go roller skating in Draper gym. Fall on my derriére!
I’d have a Coke in Mack’s Café and then I’d shop at Gambles.
Buy love comics at Mowell’s Drug and then expand my rambles
down to the playground monkey bars, where I would do a flip.
Then to the Frosty Freeze where I would have another sip
of orange slush and then I’d have to buy a barbecue.
(I fear that in my tiny town, that’s all there was to do!)
I’d skip ahead, then, many years, to 1971,
and fly off to Australia for adventures in the sun.
Then Singapore and Bali, Ceylon and Africa.
See everything as it once was, when it was new and raw.
Regrets? Of course. I’m human, and so I’ve had a few,
but over precognition, I prefer déjà vu.
The Prompt: One-Way Street—Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?
Hard Transit
My grandfather and his two teenaged daughters
drove a wagon to Dakota to claim a homestead.
I never asked how many weeks they traveled, or the hardships that they faced.
The young don’t know what answers they will wish for when it’s too late;
so only imagination serves to describe the heat,
day after day with no water except for what they carried,
coyotes, gray wolves and the glaring sun of the treeless prairie.
My aunts were just young girls dealing with the difficulties young girls face
in the sparsest of conditions. No mother. No water.
The jarring ride—grasshoppers so thick the wagons skidded off the tracks,
and that loneliness of riding into
the emptiness of a strange world.
Now, I stand impatiently at the immigration window,
then the ticket line and the security line.
I empty pockets, discard water bottle,
remove computers from their cases, take off shoes,
raise my arms for the check,
struggle up the escalator with bag and purse,
find the right gate,
negotiate the walkway to the plane,
lift the heavy carry-on and lower myself into the too-small seat.
“Plane travel isn’t what it used to be,” my neighbor says,
and we console each other about how hard it is.
“Nine hours from Guadalajara to St. Louis—
a plane change and a three-hour layover in Atlanta,”
I grumble, and he sympathizes.
The Prompt: In Transit—Train stations, airport terminals, subway stops: soulless spaces full of distracted, stressed zombies, or magical sets for fleeting, interlocking human stories?
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 