I took my third pill tonight.
I'm on the pill. Not because I don't want another baby -- I want one desperately. I can't have one right now, for reasons so painful I can only glance at them and then change the subject. It's a shame for so many reasons, one of them being that conceiving and having a baby might do a great deal to alleviate the problems that are why I went on the pill in the first place.
I am so healthy compared to so many that I feel guilty for every frustrated thought or word I've ever had regarding my own body.
It wasn't too bad before I was working. Homeschooling is flexible. It can roll with the punches. But deadlines don't care how I'm feeling, and now that it looks as if I'm getting some real advertisers -- a couple more have signed on since my last posting on the subject -- I have real deadlines. This can't be just the magazine that comes out when I can manage to make it.
My odd symptoms -- odd in every sense of the word -- come and go. Some of them are one-time visitors. I spent almost three weeks last year in a state of -- well, not dizziness, but a state in which dizziness might descend at any moment, for any reason or no reason. I learned to be very careful not to move my head too suddenly, because the room would spin at the least little shift. I didn't drive except in emergencies. Getting up in the morning was like falling down a well. And then one day it disappeared, just like that. It hasn't been back since, but I know it might stop by again any time, just to see how I'm doing.
I've bought books about endometriosis, but I haven't read them as much as I should, because I'm still resisting the idea that I have it. I didn't know until after the dizziness came for its extended slumber party and I looked it up that it was one of many possible symptoms of endo.
I knew about irregular cycles, and heavy bleeding, and pain along with them that medication just glanced off of. That was the first clue I had to what might be wrong with me.
Then came stupefying sleepiness for days at a time no matter how much rest I got. And then an occasional pain so humiliating and intense that even I couldn't ignore it. I'm not a stranger to pain from within. My childhood was spent in an almost constant state of illness. I had pneumonia and scarlet fever and my left lung collapsed when I was seven years old. (Ironically, I had none of the usual childhood diseases -- chicken pox, measles -- possibly because I missed so much school that I never had the chance to catch them.)
Pain and weakness became roommates I learned to ignore since I couldn't evict them. I read incessantly, and learned that if an adventure story was engrossing enough, sometimes even the harshest asthma attack would ease up a bit. If it didn't, at least I had something else to think about.
And then came early adolescence, and copious bleeding and the pain I never questioned because everyone said that "cramps" were part of being female.
And then came my son's homebirth, because I figured I'd learned the worst my body could deal out and I wasn't afraid of some pain for a good cause like a healthy baby. (Which turned out to be more pain than I'd ever dreamed I could contain, in exchange for an almost supernaturally healthy child -- to this day he's barely been sick a day in his life.)
None of this prepared me for the pain I still have no words for.
It comes at night, usually. Usually just as I'm about to fall asleep, but sometimes it shakes me awake.
Sometimes it stays for ten minutes, sometimes for two hours.
Sometimes I can ride it out with one painkiller and a book and breathing and clenched fists. Sometimes I crawl whimpering into the bathroom and hope the other tenants in our apartment building can't hear me trying not to scream as I run the hot bath that probably won't help, but I can't think of anything else to do and I have to do something. I climb in and try the breathing exercises I learned for childbirth (they helped for about the first hour). I stare at the clock as if it's my executioner, and every fifteen minutes I allow myself another painkiller. I try not to think about what these episodes are probably doing to my liver.
With all this ibuprofen I've had to gulp down, I probably should have just gone ahead and become a heavy drinker, the way writers are supposed to.
My husband and I sleep separately, so I have to call him at work the next day to let him know I've had another nighttime visit.
Attacks, I call them. Not like a heart attack, but an ambush by an enemy in a war I still don't know why I have to fight.
"I had an attack last night," I say tersely, and he knows that if I'm unusually bitter or exhausted or depressed, he shouldn't blame himself, or inquire farther into the cause.
I have lived like this for so long, it's beginning to feel like normal.
A friend of mine won't let me keep doing this. She knows my feelings about doctors. Quite aside from my angry sense that they work for the insurance companies rather than for me, and my bitter experience that even women doctors can be condescending and disbelieving when it comes to "female problems," I don't like being dependent on an outsider for treatment I need. I take over the counter painkillers because I don't want to have to worry about getting a subscription, or wonder if we'll still have insurance by the time I need a refill.
My friend, who knows all of this and intuits more, and who has a science background, has procured a six-month supply of the pill for me, for free. Just try it, she says. If it helps, go to a doctor or a clinic -- there are clinics for this kind of thing, women's clinics, it doesn't have to be a doctor -- and tell them you want to go on the pill. You can tell them you were on it before and it seemed to help you. If it does. It might. Just try it.
So I am.
I hate taking something so unnatural into my body on a regular basis.
But natural isn't all sweetness and light, as I've seen for myself. As one of my favorite web sites likes to point out, poison ivy is one hundred percent natural. So is dying of the flu. Or living in pain.
I'm on the pill. Have been for three whole days.
I keep waiting for something to happen, and then reminding myself that what I'm waiting for is something not to happen.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
WE GOT ONE!!!
So I was going to write some schmaltzy piece about turning forty last Thursday, and going to the Getty Villa museum with my family as a special field trip, and then realizing about halfway through the day that I'd decided to celebrate my birthday at a place that specializes in antiquities.
But then I got home.
There was a package on our doormat.
I looked at my husband, thinking this must be some last-minute birthday surprise.
"Did you order something?" he asked.
"I thought you did," I said.
I picked it up. It had my name and -- hey! The return address was the Critical Thinking company. They'd contacted me a few days ago about reviewing some of their stuff.
I brought it in and we all sat down to look it over. It was amazing. The kind of books where you wish you could set the homeschooling clock back about four years and start over with these. My husband went one better.
"Why didn't they have these when I was in school?" he asked.
He was thrilled -- and yes, this is the kind of thing that gives him a genuine thrill -- to see that some of the comprehension tests gave you the option to answer true, false, or unknown. "I always wanted that," he said.
I calmed him down, and we looked at our loot a little more and read about some of the other books CT offers, and my husband started drooling and demanded to be homeschooled and I told him to get in line. And then I decided that it was time for he and my son to go out and bring back dinner from the Italian restaurant down the street while I lolled around in a manner befitting one of my dignified years.
All my lolls start with a quick check of my email. I noticed a letter from Gail, my advertising guru. The subject heading said, "Invoice," which always means she's sending me a copy of the bill she's going to send someone who's expressed an interest in advertising.
I sighed and got ready for another trip down Research & Rejection Lane. If you've been reading recent posts here, you know that at this point, SHM's track record has been that if an advertiser wants us, we don't want them, and vice versa.
So I braced myself.
I read the invoice Gail had made out to the latest Wanna Advertiser.
And it was Critical Thinking.
That screaming you may have heard last Thursday? That was me having the best birthday ever.
But then I got home.
There was a package on our doormat.
I looked at my husband, thinking this must be some last-minute birthday surprise.
"Did you order something?" he asked.
"I thought you did," I said.
I picked it up. It had my name and -- hey! The return address was the Critical Thinking company. They'd contacted me a few days ago about reviewing some of their stuff.
I brought it in and we all sat down to look it over. It was amazing. The kind of books where you wish you could set the homeschooling clock back about four years and start over with these. My husband went one better.
"Why didn't they have these when I was in school?" he asked.
He was thrilled -- and yes, this is the kind of thing that gives him a genuine thrill -- to see that some of the comprehension tests gave you the option to answer true, false, or unknown. "I always wanted that," he said.
I calmed him down, and we looked at our loot a little more and read about some of the other books CT offers, and my husband started drooling and demanded to be homeschooled and I told him to get in line. And then I decided that it was time for he and my son to go out and bring back dinner from the Italian restaurant down the street while I lolled around in a manner befitting one of my dignified years.
All my lolls start with a quick check of my email. I noticed a letter from Gail, my advertising guru. The subject heading said, "Invoice," which always means she's sending me a copy of the bill she's going to send someone who's expressed an interest in advertising.
I sighed and got ready for another trip down Research & Rejection Lane. If you've been reading recent posts here, you know that at this point, SHM's track record has been that if an advertiser wants us, we don't want them, and vice versa.
So I braced myself.
I read the invoice Gail had made out to the latest Wanna Advertiser.
And it was Critical Thinking.
That screaming you may have heard last Thursday? That was me having the best birthday ever.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
OT, but important (and hey, it's MY blog)
On Monday, my son and I went to my friend Siobhan's house for our usual weekly French class. (Note: to save me time and typing, when you see my friend Siobhan mentioned anywhere, please mentally plug in one or more of the following descriptives: classy, gorgeous, politically active, environmentally sound, elegant, funny, brilliant, artistic, sophisticated, down-to-earth, modest, well-read, kind. If you have any questions {as I do} as to why she's slumming with a slob like me, kindly keep them to yourself.)
Anyway: when we got to her place, she apologized for not being completely ready to receive us. Her sister lives in Myanmar, and Siobhan had been lucky enough to manage to get in email contact with her and learn that she was all right, and then of course had to contact the rest of the family to let them know.
Siobhan is on my local homeschooling loop, and posted this today. I know it has nothing to do with homeschooling or magazine editing, but I really wanted to pass it along. I hope you'll do the same.
In case anybody else's kids are also raising money to help the Burmese people recover from cyclone Nargis I thought I would forward this from my sister who has lived in Burma for the last dozen years working for MSN (Doctors Without Borders), ICRC (International Red Cross), and translating for Aung San Suu Kyi. My extended family is also sending money directly to my sister as she has a lot of contacts for getting supplies to people.
..Siobhan
...I am recommending four groups, which you will see in the signature of this message, with url links. Some groups are soliciting for aid, which are not really working in the country right now! Of course they need money to start projects, but I don't think this is the time for that. The ones I recommend below are already working, and have high capacity for relief.
I am afraid that the govt way typically does not turn out well. Typically with all the chaos it is easy to think "Well, my family is suffering too..." or to give money first to their favoured groups. In a study of aid for cyclone relief in Bangladesh in the late 90s, it was found that only 3% of such aid reached the disaster victims...
For those who want to contribute to Nargis relief funds, here are the organisations which I think can use the money most:
For a local NGO which you can donate to online, I recommend Gitameit, whose people are already at work in disaster relief (instead of the usual music). You can also donate to Foundation for the People of Burma at this site, who will do development and reconstruction later, as well as relief:
http://www.gitameit.com/wp/page/4/
For international NGOs with the highest capacity for working in the delta, I recommend:
MSF - Holland
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=2656
and CARE
http://my.care.org/05/myanmar/?qp_source=170860490000
and Merlin
http://www.merlin.org.uk/Lists/News-Detail.aspx?id=687
Anyway: when we got to her place, she apologized for not being completely ready to receive us. Her sister lives in Myanmar, and Siobhan had been lucky enough to manage to get in email contact with her and learn that she was all right, and then of course had to contact the rest of the family to let them know.
Siobhan is on my local homeschooling loop, and posted this today. I know it has nothing to do with homeschooling or magazine editing, but I really wanted to pass it along. I hope you'll do the same.
In case anybody else's kids are also raising money to help the Burmese people recover from cyclone Nargis I thought I would forward this from my sister who has lived in Burma for the last dozen years working for MSN (Doctors Without Borders), ICRC (International Red Cross), and translating for Aung San Suu Kyi. My extended family is also sending money directly to my sister as she has a lot of contacts for getting supplies to people.
..Siobhan
...I am recommending four groups, which you will see in the signature of this message, with url links. Some groups are soliciting for aid, which are not really working in the country right now! Of course they need money to start projects, but I don't think this is the time for that. The ones I recommend below are already working, and have high capacity for relief.
I am afraid that the govt way typically does not turn out well. Typically with all the chaos it is easy to think "Well, my family is suffering too..." or to give money first to their favoured groups. In a study of aid for cyclone relief in Bangladesh in the late 90s, it was found that only 3% of such aid reached the disaster victims...
For those who want to contribute to Nargis relief funds, here are the organisations which I think can use the money most:
For a local NGO which you can donate to online, I recommend Gitameit, whose people are already at work in disaster relief (instead of the usual music). You can also donate to Foundation for the People of Burma at this site, who will do development and reconstruction later, as well as relief:
http://www.gitameit.com/wp/page/4/
For international NGOs with the highest capacity for working in the delta, I recommend:
MSF - Holland
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=2656
and CARE
http://my.care.org/05/myanmar/?qp_source=170860490000
and Merlin
http://www.merlin.org.uk/Lists/News-Detail.aspx?id=687
Saturday, May 3, 2008
My Mad Fixations
Someone commented on my recent posting about Paradigm Accelerated Curriculum (PAC) and my refusal of an offered advertisement from them. She thinks that -- oh, well, hell, I don't want to paraphrase for fear I'll be told I misquoted someone; so, as it wasn't a private email, I'll just repost it here in its entirety:
"I want to clarify some things. I do not work for PAC, never have, never will. I am about as atheist as they come and have been for some time. I am vehemently against religious agenda of any kind.And yet, I've used PAC, their full course and I loved it. Their English and History are spot on and thorough and their math, while a bit jumpy, is very solid. I never saw any of the things you've mentioned and I've not only spoke to the guy on the phone, but met him in person and he is nothing but genuine. They are not bigots or religious fanatics. I think the things you've chosen to hyperfocus on as being 'problems', really are not.Of course you are entitled to you opinion and you should(rightly) choose proper advertising for your readers. But I think this one time you might be slightly off in your assumptions about a company."
I didn't make any assumptions about PAC. I did what I've done with every other potential advertiser: I went to their site and checked out their product.
A friend of mine explained to me that I'm an obsessive-compulsive personality (which is not the same thing as someone suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder). I really didn't know where she got an idea like that until this morning, when I (for once) had some time to get some work done and felt actual physical discomfort doing anything but going back to PAC’s site and seeing if I had, in fact, misread, misinterpreted, or overreacted.
I just spent over an hour there.
I'm standing by my previous posting about them.
You can't take two steps in the sample lessons they offer without tripping over a quote from or reference to the Bible. And that's in the science lessons.
Just as a really, really typical for-instance, here's what PAC has to say about silver:
"Joseph, during biblical times, was sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver. Later, when he became governor of Egypt, Joseph sold grain to people who paid in silver, copper, and gold coins."
Now, look. No matter what religion you are, the fact is that there is no archeological evidence for the existence of Joseph, as slave or as governor of Egypt. Yet he's being referred to in a science lesson, in a paragraph that is immediately followed by one about how much silver used to be in American dimes and quarters and when it was eliminated from them.
There are constant references to the Bible and the Christian God in the sample lessons PAC offers. If those samples are not typical of the curricula customers receive on purchase, how could I or anyone else know that PAC is perfectly fine even for someone who's "as atheist as they come"? If these are not representative of their product, why does PAC have them posted?
I also said in my previous posting that people should judge for themselves as to whether or not I was either overreacting or reading out of context. I'm not asking this rhetorically: am I overreacting to these paragraphs from PAC's second lesson in Integrated Physics and Chemistry?
"From 600 AD to 1400 AD, Europe fell into the Dark Ages (also called the Middle Ages). Science did not advance during this era of time. The Bible was forbidden in many countries, thus, learning and knowledge came to a standstill in Europe."
"The true science of chemistry replaced the false science of alchemy in the 1600s when church reformers began to demand that common people should be able to read the Bible and write about its application to everyday life and science. The study and publication of chemistry developed because church reformers provided the Bible and other books in the common language of the people."
Regardless of what one might think of these as accurate portrayals of history -- is this what you expect to find in a supposedly secular science lesson?
I didn't "assume" that PAC would consistently refer to the Catholic church as "The Roman Church." I simply found it to be so. When I asked a Catholic friend of mine if this was something she'd have found offensive, she said yes -- especially in a work purporting to be religiously neutral.
As for their history being "spot on," here's a sentence whose veracity in that respect I'd question:
"The next great civilization in the chronology of world history after the Egyptians was the Greeks."
One of my friends, on hearing this, wanted to know when and how exactly China had fallen off the face of the "world."
These are all things I didn't mention in my previous posting on PAC. I was too busy "hyperfocusing" on the picture of Hitler and Auschwitz victims in the lesson on Darwin.
I guess, if hyperfocusing means that one is riveted with stupefied fascination, then yes, I did hyperfocus on that page. That’s the kind of thing that tends to get my attention. Call me funny that way.
As I said in my previous posting on the subject, I realize that I don't have to be in love with a product or company to accept an ad. I just have to feel sure of their appropriateness for a secular audience. PAC failed that test.
However, I'm going to go ahead and be glad about rejecting their ad for a reason that has nothing to do with secular appropriateness, though it has everything to do with my own ideas about intellectual rigor.
I am screamingly wild about Robert Ingersoll. I want to marry him or at least have a mad, steamy affair with him, and never mind the fact that he's been dead for over a hundred years. That's how good a writer he is. (And that's how hot I get for smart, smart men.)
Ingersoll was so ahead of his time that even now, his work can startle. He's like Mark Twain, only never sentimental or mawkish and with about twice the kick.
I live in California, where one of the legal homeschooling options is to register as a private school. These schools must have names. Ours is The Ingersoll Academy.
I mention all this because at the end of one of PAC's physics lessons, there was presented for the reader, apropos of absolutely nothing, a "Life Principle," as follows:
"The superior woman stands erect by bending above the fallen. She rises by lifting others."
I'm a screaming redheaded feminist, so this isn't the kind of sentiment that just makes me feel happy all over. It makes me feel barfy all over, to be exact.
I know that I'm not a typical feminist, given the fact that I'm a stay-at-home homeschooling mother who does a lot of cooking and cleaning; but I consider myself to be a feminist in a very basic sense: if you're going to hate me, condescend to me, or deny my intelligence, abilities, or essential rights, you'd damned well better be basing your behavior on something other the fact that I'm a woman.
So any quote that seems to say that, by virtue of my gender, my best and only job must be to take care of children and other needy helpless beings is going to bug me. Not because such work isn't worthy, but because I don't like having it dictated to me.
This particular quote bugged me for another reason. The source of it was simply "Anonymous." Did that mean that no one knew who penned this sentiment, or that the writer at PAC just hadn't looked hard enough?
Turns out, it means “c. none of the above.” Which is where my morning got really interesting.
I could find no references to this quote, either in my books or on the Internet. I did, however, find an eye-opening passage in a speech that Robert Ingersoll gave in 1883, in response to the United States Supreme Court's decision that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional.
The whole of the speech can be found on a site called The Secular Web. Here's a link to them:
http://www.infidels.org
and here's a link to the whole speech, in case you feel like taking a gander:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/civil_rights.html
And here, finally, is the passage that I think deserves to be quoted in full:
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others."
Ingersoll was a passionate defender of the rights of women. Long before it was fashionable, he urged the right for women to vote, to be able to own their own property even after marriage, to be able to divorce abusive husbands, and to be treated as human beings. It was a point of pride to him that he never treated his wife like "a beggar," as he put it. He was not the keeper of the cash in his house, and his wife didn't have to ask him for money or explain why she needed it. He once graciously gave an interview to a cub female reporter on her very first assignment, and set her at her ease by telling her how glad he was to have a woman reporter to talk to, as he was "sick of men" and would give her an interview that would "make the men ashamed." He was a feminist.
And now, words of his have been twisted into a cutesy-dootsy little maxim that has nothing to do with what he really said and everything to do with the old idea of women being at their best when they're least visible.
Forget it.
I had a root canal yesterday, and I just paid my taxes a few weeks ago; and I still don't need the money that badly.
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"I want to clarify some things. I do not work for PAC, never have, never will. I am about as atheist as they come and have been for some time. I am vehemently against religious agenda of any kind.And yet, I've used PAC, their full course and I loved it. Their English and History are spot on and thorough and their math, while a bit jumpy, is very solid. I never saw any of the things you've mentioned and I've not only spoke to the guy on the phone, but met him in person and he is nothing but genuine. They are not bigots or religious fanatics. I think the things you've chosen to hyperfocus on as being 'problems', really are not.Of course you are entitled to you opinion and you should(rightly) choose proper advertising for your readers. But I think this one time you might be slightly off in your assumptions about a company."
I didn't make any assumptions about PAC. I did what I've done with every other potential advertiser: I went to their site and checked out their product.
A friend of mine explained to me that I'm an obsessive-compulsive personality (which is not the same thing as someone suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder). I really didn't know where she got an idea like that until this morning, when I (for once) had some time to get some work done and felt actual physical discomfort doing anything but going back to PAC’s site and seeing if I had, in fact, misread, misinterpreted, or overreacted.
I just spent over an hour there.
I'm standing by my previous posting about them.
You can't take two steps in the sample lessons they offer without tripping over a quote from or reference to the Bible. And that's in the science lessons.
Just as a really, really typical for-instance, here's what PAC has to say about silver:
"Joseph, during biblical times, was sold into slavery for twenty pieces of silver. Later, when he became governor of Egypt, Joseph sold grain to people who paid in silver, copper, and gold coins."
Now, look. No matter what religion you are, the fact is that there is no archeological evidence for the existence of Joseph, as slave or as governor of Egypt. Yet he's being referred to in a science lesson, in a paragraph that is immediately followed by one about how much silver used to be in American dimes and quarters and when it was eliminated from them.
There are constant references to the Bible and the Christian God in the sample lessons PAC offers. If those samples are not typical of the curricula customers receive on purchase, how could I or anyone else know that PAC is perfectly fine even for someone who's "as atheist as they come"? If these are not representative of their product, why does PAC have them posted?
I also said in my previous posting that people should judge for themselves as to whether or not I was either overreacting or reading out of context. I'm not asking this rhetorically: am I overreacting to these paragraphs from PAC's second lesson in Integrated Physics and Chemistry?
"From 600 AD to 1400 AD, Europe fell into the Dark Ages (also called the Middle Ages). Science did not advance during this era of time. The Bible was forbidden in many countries, thus, learning and knowledge came to a standstill in Europe."
"The true science of chemistry replaced the false science of alchemy in the 1600s when church reformers began to demand that common people should be able to read the Bible and write about its application to everyday life and science. The study and publication of chemistry developed because church reformers provided the Bible and other books in the common language of the people."
Regardless of what one might think of these as accurate portrayals of history -- is this what you expect to find in a supposedly secular science lesson?
I didn't "assume" that PAC would consistently refer to the Catholic church as "The Roman Church." I simply found it to be so. When I asked a Catholic friend of mine if this was something she'd have found offensive, she said yes -- especially in a work purporting to be religiously neutral.
As for their history being "spot on," here's a sentence whose veracity in that respect I'd question:
"The next great civilization in the chronology of world history after the Egyptians was the Greeks."
One of my friends, on hearing this, wanted to know when and how exactly China had fallen off the face of the "world."
These are all things I didn't mention in my previous posting on PAC. I was too busy "hyperfocusing" on the picture of Hitler and Auschwitz victims in the lesson on Darwin.
I guess, if hyperfocusing means that one is riveted with stupefied fascination, then yes, I did hyperfocus on that page. That’s the kind of thing that tends to get my attention. Call me funny that way.
As I said in my previous posting on the subject, I realize that I don't have to be in love with a product or company to accept an ad. I just have to feel sure of their appropriateness for a secular audience. PAC failed that test.
However, I'm going to go ahead and be glad about rejecting their ad for a reason that has nothing to do with secular appropriateness, though it has everything to do with my own ideas about intellectual rigor.
I am screamingly wild about Robert Ingersoll. I want to marry him or at least have a mad, steamy affair with him, and never mind the fact that he's been dead for over a hundred years. That's how good a writer he is. (And that's how hot I get for smart, smart men.)
Ingersoll was so ahead of his time that even now, his work can startle. He's like Mark Twain, only never sentimental or mawkish and with about twice the kick.
I live in California, where one of the legal homeschooling options is to register as a private school. These schools must have names. Ours is The Ingersoll Academy.
I mention all this because at the end of one of PAC's physics lessons, there was presented for the reader, apropos of absolutely nothing, a "Life Principle," as follows:
"The superior woman stands erect by bending above the fallen. She rises by lifting others."
I'm a screaming redheaded feminist, so this isn't the kind of sentiment that just makes me feel happy all over. It makes me feel barfy all over, to be exact.
I know that I'm not a typical feminist, given the fact that I'm a stay-at-home homeschooling mother who does a lot of cooking and cleaning; but I consider myself to be a feminist in a very basic sense: if you're going to hate me, condescend to me, or deny my intelligence, abilities, or essential rights, you'd damned well better be basing your behavior on something other the fact that I'm a woman.
So any quote that seems to say that, by virtue of my gender, my best and only job must be to take care of children and other needy helpless beings is going to bug me. Not because such work isn't worthy, but because I don't like having it dictated to me.
This particular quote bugged me for another reason. The source of it was simply "Anonymous." Did that mean that no one knew who penned this sentiment, or that the writer at PAC just hadn't looked hard enough?
Turns out, it means “c. none of the above.” Which is where my morning got really interesting.
I could find no references to this quote, either in my books or on the Internet. I did, however, find an eye-opening passage in a speech that Robert Ingersoll gave in 1883, in response to the United States Supreme Court's decision that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional.
The whole of the speech can be found on a site called The Secular Web. Here's a link to them:
http://www.infidels.org
and here's a link to the whole speech, in case you feel like taking a gander:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/civil_rights.html
And here, finally, is the passage that I think deserves to be quoted in full:
"I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart -- the best brain. Superiority is born of honesty, of virtue, of charity, and above all, of the love of liberty. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others."
Ingersoll was a passionate defender of the rights of women. Long before it was fashionable, he urged the right for women to vote, to be able to own their own property even after marriage, to be able to divorce abusive husbands, and to be treated as human beings. It was a point of pride to him that he never treated his wife like "a beggar," as he put it. He was not the keeper of the cash in his house, and his wife didn't have to ask him for money or explain why she needed it. He once graciously gave an interview to a cub female reporter on her very first assignment, and set her at her ease by telling her how glad he was to have a woman reporter to talk to, as he was "sick of men" and would give her an interview that would "make the men ashamed." He was a feminist.
And now, words of his have been twisted into a cutesy-dootsy little maxim that has nothing to do with what he really said and everything to do with the old idea of women being at their best when they're least visible.
Forget it.
I had a root canal yesterday, and I just paid my taxes a few weeks ago; and I still don't need the money that badly.
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Filthy Lucre
Time for a little straight talk about money (also known as moolah, which two of the three people in our apartment call, for reasons that seemed to make sense at some point in our lives, moo-cow moolah, which became moo-cow, and then just moo; so that now, if you stop by at just the right time, you may hear a grownup explaining to her child with a perfectly straight face that she would love to order pizza for dinner, but she just doesn't have the moo).
Sorry. No more digressions. It's all about the moo-cow now.
Secular Homeschooling costs $7 an issue.
Many homeschooling families are getting by on one income.
Which makes $7 a lot of moo.
Let's talk about that.
A very wonderful lady brought her copy of SHM to her local park day gathering. Another gorgeous dame saw it and liked the looks of it so much that she not only ordered a copy of her own, she mentioned it on a homeschooling forum she's a member of.
Which generated SHM's site some decent traffic. Which I need, because my advertising guru Gail is trying to get people interested in advertising on the site, and they aren't inclined to do that until I'm getting more people stopping by.
But I digress.
Except not really, because this is about money, and money is about advertisers, and I basically have none. None on the site, and almost none in the mag itself.
One of the women on the abovementioned forum said that she'd purchased a copy of the first issue, but hasn't ordered the second one, because of the price. "Hopefully it will come down a little," she added, "because I would love to support it."
Let's talk vocabulary for a minute.
Support is what you offer friends and other people you care about. They need you, and you're there for them.
Waiting until this costs less before I buy it is bargain-hunting. It's what you do when money is tight and you're being careful what and how you spend.
Both of these are noble endeavors, but let's not confuse the two.
When I -- the publisher, editor, copy-editor, proofreader, main writer, envelope-sticker, and stamp-buyer for SHM -- have more support, the magazine's price will come down because I'll be able to consistently place a large enough order at the printers that my own costs will come down. Then, thanks to terrific supporters like the two mentioned above, I will be able to offer a real deal to the bargain-hunters, and we'll all be happy.
I cannot lower the price of the magazine until I have more subscribers, because I have basically no advertisers and I can't count on getting them any time soon, in spite of all poor Gail's hard work. The ones who would be appropriate for SHM are unthrilled by our circ numbers; and the ones who'd be happy to place an ad are companies with names like Gracious God's Homeschooling Curriculum For Wee Lambs of Our Lord Jesus.
(I am not making fun of Christians, Christian homeschoolers, or Christian homeschooling educational materials here. I do think it’s humorous that companies with names remarkably similar to the one above really do contact Secular Homeschooling Magazine.)
Per-issue costs to the publisher notwithstanding, $7 an issue is, nevertheless, a large enough sum to give the average homeschooler pause.
It doesn't differ that much from $6.50 an issue, which is the per-issue price of the terrific Home Education Magazine, which is an older, more established journal with advertisers. They, too, had humble beginnings, which gives me hope; but then I look at their advertisers, many of whom wouldn't be appropriate for SHM, and then my shoulders slump down again and I reach for the chocolate.
Of course, in a way HEM does cost much less than SHM, even though they come out more often, because they offer subscriber discounts. I can’t yet. I can’t afford to.
SHM is a quarterly. The first issue was 60 pages long; the second is 62.
All text. Long, deep-delving articles with basically no ads. And no religious landmines.
Which means that if you put away $2.50 a month, at the end of three months you can put fifty cents back in the laundry-quarter jar and mail the rest in for a copy of SHM.
If you have a friend who's also interested in reading SHM, you have three months to save up $3.50. Of course, then there's the whole custody-battle aspect of things; but still, three months should give both of you plenty of time to arm-wrestle over who gets to read it first.
If you have no heathen-homeschooler friends and no moo-cow moolah, you might have a local public library. A library supported by your tax dollars. Tell them you want them to subscribe to SHM.
In the meantime, I'll be working on the next issue. And I'll be trying very hard not to think about the morbid conversation I had recently with my math-nerd (that's a compliment at our place) husband. We were talking about per-copy costs -- printers, postage (going up in a couple of weeks), envelopes -- and just to make my day complete, we tried to factor in the time we spend working on the mag.
We even pretended that the time he spends typesetting the magazine doesn't exist. We just looked at me.
We’re not losing money. That’s good news, anyway.
However, I'm not making as much as I'd make if I just gave up and went back to working retail.
I'm not making half as much.
I'm making something like a tenth.
Plus, if I got back behind the counter of a bookstore, I'd get an employee's discount.
Okay, I'm getting back to work on an article I've been trying to finish for weeks now. Trying not to think about all that.
Still -- who do I call if I want to report myself as a sweatshop owner?
Sorry. No more digressions. It's all about the moo-cow now.
Secular Homeschooling costs $7 an issue.
Many homeschooling families are getting by on one income.
Which makes $7 a lot of moo.
Let's talk about that.
A very wonderful lady brought her copy of SHM to her local park day gathering. Another gorgeous dame saw it and liked the looks of it so much that she not only ordered a copy of her own, she mentioned it on a homeschooling forum she's a member of.
Which generated SHM's site some decent traffic. Which I need, because my advertising guru Gail is trying to get people interested in advertising on the site, and they aren't inclined to do that until I'm getting more people stopping by.
But I digress.
Except not really, because this is about money, and money is about advertisers, and I basically have none. None on the site, and almost none in the mag itself.
One of the women on the abovementioned forum said that she'd purchased a copy of the first issue, but hasn't ordered the second one, because of the price. "Hopefully it will come down a little," she added, "because I would love to support it."
Let's talk vocabulary for a minute.
Support is what you offer friends and other people you care about. They need you, and you're there for them.
Waiting until this costs less before I buy it is bargain-hunting. It's what you do when money is tight and you're being careful what and how you spend.
Both of these are noble endeavors, but let's not confuse the two.
When I -- the publisher, editor, copy-editor, proofreader, main writer, envelope-sticker, and stamp-buyer for SHM -- have more support, the magazine's price will come down because I'll be able to consistently place a large enough order at the printers that my own costs will come down. Then, thanks to terrific supporters like the two mentioned above, I will be able to offer a real deal to the bargain-hunters, and we'll all be happy.
I cannot lower the price of the magazine until I have more subscribers, because I have basically no advertisers and I can't count on getting them any time soon, in spite of all poor Gail's hard work. The ones who would be appropriate for SHM are unthrilled by our circ numbers; and the ones who'd be happy to place an ad are companies with names like Gracious God's Homeschooling Curriculum For Wee Lambs of Our Lord Jesus.
(I am not making fun of Christians, Christian homeschoolers, or Christian homeschooling educational materials here. I do think it’s humorous that companies with names remarkably similar to the one above really do contact Secular Homeschooling Magazine.)
Per-issue costs to the publisher notwithstanding, $7 an issue is, nevertheless, a large enough sum to give the average homeschooler pause.
It doesn't differ that much from $6.50 an issue, which is the per-issue price of the terrific Home Education Magazine, which is an older, more established journal with advertisers. They, too, had humble beginnings, which gives me hope; but then I look at their advertisers, many of whom wouldn't be appropriate for SHM, and then my shoulders slump down again and I reach for the chocolate.
Of course, in a way HEM does cost much less than SHM, even though they come out more often, because they offer subscriber discounts. I can’t yet. I can’t afford to.
SHM is a quarterly. The first issue was 60 pages long; the second is 62.
All text. Long, deep-delving articles with basically no ads. And no religious landmines.
Which means that if you put away $2.50 a month, at the end of three months you can put fifty cents back in the laundry-quarter jar and mail the rest in for a copy of SHM.
If you have a friend who's also interested in reading SHM, you have three months to save up $3.50. Of course, then there's the whole custody-battle aspect of things; but still, three months should give both of you plenty of time to arm-wrestle over who gets to read it first.
If you have no heathen-homeschooler friends and no moo-cow moolah, you might have a local public library. A library supported by your tax dollars. Tell them you want them to subscribe to SHM.
In the meantime, I'll be working on the next issue. And I'll be trying very hard not to think about the morbid conversation I had recently with my math-nerd (that's a compliment at our place) husband. We were talking about per-copy costs -- printers, postage (going up in a couple of weeks), envelopes -- and just to make my day complete, we tried to factor in the time we spend working on the mag.
We even pretended that the time he spends typesetting the magazine doesn't exist. We just looked at me.
We’re not losing money. That’s good news, anyway.
However, I'm not making as much as I'd make if I just gave up and went back to working retail.
I'm not making half as much.
I'm making something like a tenth.
Plus, if I got back behind the counter of a bookstore, I'd get an employee's discount.
Okay, I'm getting back to work on an article I've been trying to finish for weeks now. Trying not to think about all that.
Still -- who do I call if I want to report myself as a sweatshop owner?
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