Letters to the Editor
Allie_
Published Letters: 1252 Editor's Choice: 109
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Mennonite encounter
[Read the article: Amish like me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I like to quilt (she says, deliberately avoiding the phrase 'I'm a quilter') and so I spend a fair amount of time in fabric stores. Hardly anyone enters fabric stores in my town these days; me, old ladies who quilt, young women with perplexed expressions and fabric swatches in quest for a new couch cover, and Mennonites. This was a young woman (radiantly beautiful, like the one Keillor encountered - I think it's the diet free of fast foods) with three daughters or possibly younger sisters, all wearing the same pattern of simple, loose dress in slightly different solid colors. She was talking on a cell phone.
Huh. I worked up the nerve to ask the obvious question. It turns out that Mennonites like cell phones. They welcomed them as a useful technology.
Who knew?
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that's some fancy rhetoric right there
[Read the article: A peek behind the veil (again)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's another reason those purely reactionary narratives, which do speak to a certain truth, aren't enough. They simply allow us to identify with the plight of Saudi women in the only way we know how -- through the experiences of a Western woman. And all the while we're allowed to maintain ignorance about our own, peripheral participation.
I think you got a little carried away with your closing paragraph. Really, what else is an article written by a Western women for Westerners supposed to do, make pancakes?
I've wondered for years - ever since I had a college boyfriend stationed in Riyahd - what I would do if I were forced to visit Saudi Arabia. Would I don the clothes, leave my Bible at home, stand in the right line? What does it say about us as a country that we force both women and people of faith in the service to go to Saudi Arabia and conform to their norms, giving up both (in the case of Christians) the right to practice their religion and (in the case of women) the right to be treated as human beings?
Rosa Parks was a hero, but Rosa Parks was from here. A black women who was a European citizen visiting America wouldn't have had the same right to protest she had. There's a difference between trying to change your own society and passing judgment on someone else's society. I don't know what I would do if I were forced to visit that country. I do know that I wouldn't visit voluntarily, just as I refuse to attend weddings at churches which require women to cover their heads because Saint Paul said women's heads weren't made in the image of God; just as I refuse to enter private clubs which don't allow black or Jewish members.
"I don't need to," she said calmly, blinking slowly and deliberately. "If I have a father or a husband, why do I need to vote? Why should I need to work? They will take care of everything."
This was the quote which gave me the shivers.
Nice in theory, except for two things. What if they don't? What if they die? What if they beat you? What if you marry a lazy S.O.B. who lies around all day instead of working?
And then there's this: what if you have something to offer the world, something you should be doing, but you don't do it, because working is something other people do? Does Islam have a parable similar in spirit to "hiding a candle under a bushel"?
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well, now
[Read the article: Healthy, my ass]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That is one big ass.
I'm gonna agree with those who say Buffie the Body isn't a perfect example of an obese woman. She doesn't appear to have much visceral fat, which is the kind of fat that kills you.
However, I also know what Debra's trying to say. I live in Memphis. The word is "thick". Thick can mean anything up to 350 pounds. Thick can mean ladies like the lady in that Eddie Murphy movie. Ladies whose ankles not only no longer touch, they're in two different zip codes. BIG ladies. "Mmm, she's thick," someone says as one of these super-plus-size ladies strolls by, setting off a chorus of appreciation.
On the one hand, there are black women like the friend who was my matron of honor. She's a professional woman, head of the teaching staff at a medical hospital, light-skinned, and she's always hated what she calls her "big black ass." She worked out and dieted obsessively, and although the rest of her became spindly, the ass remained. So she got lipo, only to discover that when you try to rearrange your body with lipo too much, the fat can come back in really strange patterns. So she got more lipo. It was a mess, and all this fuss over an ass that wasn't particularly big in the first place. On the other hand, there are the riding-cart women who can't make a short dash to catch a two-year-old who runs out into traffic, and the guys who like 'em thick. Neither of these seems like an ideal to emulate.
I applaud black men (and women) who reject the idea that the perfect body belongs to a skinny white girl with a butt like a 10-year-old boy's. But, as James Thurber said, You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
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um, what?
[Read the article: Is that laptop eating your daughter's brain?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem is what now? Advertising? Here's a quick lesson in child management: "No, you can't have anything you have to pay for." Lesson over.
Heck, I've made some of these paper dolls myself. Everyone in chat went nuts on them one day. It's possible to make the case that there are more productive ways to spend time than searching through thousands of tiny graphics for the perfect shoes to go with that outfit, but that can be said about most activities. At least the kids aren't playing in traffic.