O is for Our Bodies, Ourselves

Our Bodies, Ourselves was listed on the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s ’50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century’. The book’s website saw this as newsworthy and accepted the designation gracefully, even posting the text of the review.

1971 edition

For a number of reasons, I have long had a copy of the book Our Bodies, Ourselves on my bookshelf. It was a bible of women’s health at a time – the early 1970s – when there was a lot of misinformation about the same. I had a lot of women friends who might use it as reference material.

From this PBS story from December 2012 entitled American Voices: Judy Norsigian-

The Library of Congress recently named Our Bodies, Ourselves as one of 88 books that shaped America. It’s had a profound impact on our consciousness, on the ability of women to see the importance of asking questions, not to just take whatever a doctor says.

Back in the late ’60s and early ’70s…there was so little information, even college-educated women knew very little about our bodies, about pregnancy, about birth, about birth control.

And it was out of that dire need to educate ourselves that we created what was a wonderful self-help project. It was simply women coming together, acknowledging our ignorance, and saying, “We’re gonna do something about this.”

As the book evolved over the years, it began to tackle other areas of women’s health. If you’ve ever read medical studies from the 1950s or before, you would notice that most were done on men, and assumed to also apply equally to women. We know now that it often isn’t the case.

2011 edition

In the past year or so, there has been a move to send copies of Our Bodies, Ourselves to members of the United States Congress. Obviously, there is STILL a bunch of misinformation, or disinformation, out there. The prime, but hardly only, example was when then-Representative, and Senate candidate, Todd Akin of Missouri proclaimed on August 19, 2012: “From what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape is] really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

From Wikipedia: “Our Bodies, Ourselves was also listed on the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s ’50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century’. The book’s website saw this as newsworthy and accepted the designation gracefully, even posting the text of the review.”

The 2005 edition, I believe, is the ninth iteration of the book, and there is now a 2011 version; don’t know if there was a version in the interim.

This was, BTW, the book my wife bought for herself last fall, after hinting around about me getting it for her, much to my chagrin. Since I had already purchased it, I gave it to one of my colleagues for Christmas instead, and it was well-received.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

Obsessive ecology

The Wife and I are rather obsessive about recycling; we just can’t stand throwing away items that can be easily salvaged.

When our family travels by car, bus, or train, I usually bring a stack of unread newspapers to read through. Why look at old news? Because, even a couple of weeks after the publication date, I usually find some story that I did not know about. It’s also when I finally discover that my Times Union blog has been excerpted its print edition.

Auto travel usually means eating at chain restaurants. We’ve discovered, unfortunately, that it’s easier to ascertain at those places whether the food on the menu is peanut-free; the Daughter has allergies. That’s how we discovered that Applebee’s, at least the one we stopped at in central Pennsylvania, had a notice that it could not promise that the food was prepared in a manner that was safe for her. We bemoan the fact that too many plastic milk cartons and salad bowls, e.g. get thrown in the trash because the locales don’t have a recycle bin.

The Wife and I are rather obsessive about recycling; we just can’t stand throwing away items that can be easily salvaged. All those newspapers I’m done with get thrown in the trunk of the car or collected in my luggage. It will be recycled our next chance, at our destination or back at home.

Likewise, we will travel many miles with used plastic food containers from, say, McDonald’s, rather than tossing them in the trash. We’ll rinse them out, and then recycle them when the opportunity presents itself.

We can’t stand throwing away items that will end up in some city dump when that can easily be avoided. I see people put even returnable bottles and cans in the trash, which is literally throwing money away.

Happy Earth Day! Maybe, as someone said of me in another context, I AM a neurotic intellectual.

Oh, so THAT’S how you do it!

My wife kept talking pictures with her digital camera, confident that, SOME DAY, we would figure it out how to access them.

My birthday week (last month) became quite busy, though entertaining. On my birthday itself, my wife and daughter took me out to go bowling. I used to love to bowl, going back to when I was in a league when I was just ten years old. My game was definitely off, but it HAS been over five years.

That evening at choir, we had a dearth of tenors, and I was requested to sing in that section, rather than with the basses. Fortunately, the parts aren’t TOO high, or too difficult. The snow that fell that night was wet and slippery but was largely over the next day.

Friday night and Saturday morning, I helped with the setup of our church’s participation in the Giffen School Book-and-Author event, then worked the event, as did The Wife and The Daughter.

Came home and played hearts with friends Jendy, Broome, and Orchid. At the end of the play, there was some desire to take photos. We took a picture of Broome, Orchid, and me, Jendy already having left. They said, “You can send that picture to us, right?” My wife and I had to acknowledge sheepishly that while we could TAKE pictures on my wife’s digital camera, we didn’t know how to SEND pictures.

It was after a wedding of a friend of my wife’s on July 28, 2007, that she expressed interest in greeting some sort of digital camera, and I bought it for her in either December 2007, for Christmas, or July 2008, for her birthday. It stayed in the box for well over a year, before she tried to figure it out. After some technical difficulties, partly based on a dying battery, she started taking pictures in the summer of 2010 at Lydia’s ballet class. She could even take videos. But moving these from camera to another medium was not in our skillset. Among other things, the manual was MIA. If there was some sort of cord attachment, it was missing as well. Yet, my wife kept talking pictures, confident that, SOMEDAY, we would figure it out.

Roger, Orchid, Broome

Apparently, some cameras can send pictures through the wireless Internet, though ours was from an earlier generation. But Broome popped out the little drive and uploaded it onto my daughter’s laptop. So, over the next several months, or years, you’ll see the output; after all, we have 2.5 years of pictures previously inaccessible, including some short videos.

How did I put pictures on this blog in the past? I used to take photos with a one-use camera and get them made into a CD-ROM. Not quick, or cheap, but it worked. These aren’t necessarily great photos here – the first and last (so far) taken by my wife – but you’ll see some really nice ones over time.

That problem no solved, it’s time to use the Kindle my wife got for her birthday back in July 2011.

Opps – I mean, oops

Some people want to have corrections noted so that they may fix them.

NOT opps

One of the inevitable things about writing a daily blog edited by no one is that, now and then, I’ll get something wrong. (I know you are shocked, from that gnashing of teeth I’m hearing.)

Occasionally, it’s something that is substantial. I wrote about the Electoral College recently and said that Maine and Missouri were the two states that had a proportional allocation of EC votes when it was Maine and Nebraska; obviously, I had the Missouri Compromise of 1820 stuck in my mind, in which Maine joined the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.

More common, though, are typos. Not typos, per se, but a word or a letter left out so that the spellcheck wouldn’t catch it. One time Arthur, who had also caught the previous mistake, found THREE errors in one of my pieces. I was SO angry, not at him, but at me. I was only mildly comforted when I could find a mistake of his.

I have discovered out is that some people like being corrected. Let me say that a better way: some people want to have corrections noted, so that they may fix them. I don’t LIKE being corrected, but I NEED the blog to be as write as it can – wait, as RIGHT as it reasonably can be. So do Arthur and Lisa.

I’ve made it a practice to e-mail folks with corrections whenever possible, rather than leaving it on the page, though it depends on the circumstances. Brian Ibbott has the podcast Coverville, and Arthur a couple of podcasts. If they write something in the description that’s incorrect, I’m going to e-mail them. But if they SAY something that’s incorrect on the podcast itself, I’m more likely to write something in the comments section.

Then there are those people who I NEVER correct. They may write well content-wise, but they make the same spelling errors over and over again; I won’t name names. Pointing out their mistakes, only to see them there the next time is too Sisyphean.

 

Revealing deep dark secrets

Blogging has set ME free too.

Amy, who wields that Sharp Little Pencil wrote:

If you were a tree… oh, never mind.

I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a chestnut tree. In my neighborhood, I remember collecting horse chestnuts, which were inedible, because they were a pretty dark brown, and so smooth. I’d collect them for a while, and then dump them to pick new ones in the new season.

How about this: If you had one of those “shameful secrets,” would you speak out about it?

I only wonder because I write a lot about being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse (usually most women’s “secret” and a shame that can grow like a pustule in your gut) and my past drug use and my mental illness all the time. I get notes from folks saying, “I can’t believe you said that.” And yet, it gives me back my own power. I live life on my own terms and write what I want.

It’s difficult to say in the abstract. I wasn’t sexually abused. I tried cocaine once and didn’t like it; think of the scene in Annie Hall. Even marijuana, which was readily available in the 1970s, was something I could take or leave.

If I were to have become addicted to anything, it would have been pharmaceuticals. My father once gave me one of his sleeping pills, and it felt SO good, it scared me. I tend to avoid them for that very reason.

I’ve told you about getting arrested and being briefly married 40 years ago. I’ve shared more about my parents because they’re both deceased. Haven’t told some other details about my life because it involves other people who are still alive. (My college ex-wife is still alive, too, but I figure the statute of limitations has run out.)

I WILL say that getting older has been rather liberating in this area. It’s a combination of the passage of time since some events, and my understanding of my mortality, which has generated a degree of freedom.

Blogging – and therapy – have set me free. Love your blog, Rog, and you are wonderful. Amy

Blogging has set ME free too. Love your blog, Amy, and you’re wonderful as well.
***
More Chris:

If you were a character in a book or a comic, what would your standard or symbol be?

A green peace symbol, maybe with some prongs at the end like a trident. Peaceful, but I have my limits.

I’ll ask this one like I asked Jaquandor: Have you ever fantasized about being a female character in a novel or a story?

Yes, and she really kicked butt.

Actually, any number of characters run through my brain. None of them are coherent enough to write down.

A little bit more specific question than “ask about racism”: have you mentioned the Cinna/ Hunger Games thing [to the Daughter]? She’s the right age for Hunger Games and I can say for me that struck me as a huge example of “Wow, racism has gotten complicated but is still lurking around behind people’s eyes.”

I haven’t watched/read Hunger Games. My sense, though, is that it’s too intense for her. There have been other things that were age-appropriate but just terrified her.

To the specific question: I’ve seldom worried what the fanboy/fangirl base says about anything. (I used to sell comic books.) That said, I’ve long favored unexpected casting. If I were enough of a fan, I’d be watching that show Elementary with Lucy Lui, an Asian woman, as Dr. Watson to Jonny Lee Miller’s Sherlock Holmes.

Ramblin' with Roger
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