GOES Project Science is a joint project involving NASA and NOAA – the National Oceanic Atmosphere Administration. Satellite pictures of Earth that are snapped daily can be found here. Click on any of these to see how the planet looks on a given day. Then take a look at this You Tube video. Anyone have any idea what this could be?
from Carl Jung’s Red Book
In 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, we talked about how synchronicity often occurs during periods of transitions – a move, marriage or divorce, birth, death. Tonight, I ran across some good ones involving Jung.
I was paging through a biography on Jung by Barbara Hannah- Jung: His Life and Work, a Biographical Memoir. Hannah was a pupil and close personal friend of Jung’s and a training analyst at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich. As she states in her preface, her book isn’t an official biography of Jung, but rather a biographical memoir, “showing his life as it appeared to me.” She knew that Jung’s children were against anything biographical being written about him; they felt he had said it all in his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections. So Hannah didn’t tell them she was writing the book. But when she had completed it, she gave it to them to read. “They thoroughly disapproved.”
Toward the end of the book, in a chapter called Back to Rhitzome, 1960-1961, the author discusses Jung’s last recorded dream, which he had several nights before his death on June 6, 1961, It was recorded by Ruth Bailey, a woman who worked for Jung, and she gave it to the author.
“He saw a big, round block on stone in a high bare place and on it was inscribed: This shall be a sign unto you of wholeness and oneness.
In the dream, there were “a lot of vessels, pottery vases, on the right ide of a square place.” There were also a “square of trees, al fibrous roots, coming up from the ground and surrounding him. There were gold threads gleaming among the roots.”
Hannah recognized this as a death dream, but thought it was quite beautiful and illustrated his “unity and wholeness,” which were shown to him in the symbol of a round stone. She also felt the pots in the square to the right were meaningful. “In ancient Egypt, some parts of the dismembered corpse of the god Osiris were kept in pots, because it was from these that the resurrection was expected to take place…The old Greeks kept pots in their houses full of wheat seeds. The pots and the soil represented the underworld and the seed the dead waiting for resurrection.”
Jung passed away at 3:45 (interesting time, right? Sequential numbers!) on a Tuesday afternoon, June 6, 1961. Hannah says that just before he died, she went to get her car and found found the battery was completely run down. The car wasn’t old and the battery had never given her any trouble. “This puzzled me very much at the time; when Ruth telephoned about half an hour later, it seemed quite natural and as if the car had known.”
There were some reports that a thunderstorm had occurred when Jung died, but Hannah points out that the thunderstorm occurred several hours later ( scroll down to Miguel Serrano).
“The lightning struck a tall poplar tree in his garden at the edge of the lake. This is most unusual, for the water attracts the lightning and therefore trees and houses on its banks are usually immune. The tree was not destroyed, only a great deal of its bark was stripped off.”
Miguel Serrano, a Chilean author who developed a friendship with Both Jung and Herman Hesse at the end of their lives, wrote about this in his book, Record of Two Friendships: “I took it as a sign that Jung had reached the center of universal forces; Nature had responded; it had been moved; there was synchronicity.”
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When I read this story about Hannah’s battery, I was reminded that when our first agent died years ago, I heard about it shortly before I left the house to pick up Megan from school. I was in the pickup line when the car suddenly died. The battery in our car, like the one in Hannah’s, wasn’t old. It really was as if the car knew that the agent’s life had run out. Perhaps dead car batteries are like clocks that stop at the time a loved one passes on, another archetype of synchronicity.
I wrote this story for our Thriller-Chiller blog, but Trish it migrated over here. I was wondering if there was a synchronicity involved with this post. I couldn’t see one. But then I looked at the departing tolley car in the cover art by Christian Guldager and saw that it was #22. Megan is 22 and soon leaves home for her new job at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Which just happens to be a short distance from Universal Studios, and the on-going Indiana Jones performance. A stretch, but there it is. 😉
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Every so often I get an e-mail from someone asking if I wrote a novel called Indiana Jones and Staff of Kings. As any avid Indy fan knows, that’s the name of the sixth version of the Indiana Jones computer game. There is no novel by that name. But there was supposed to be one. I know. I wrote it.
It rests on a shelf behind me in manuscript form. Had it been published, it would’ve been my seventh Indiana Jones novel.
The novel was written under contract, it was accepted for publication, and I was paid quite well for it. I was even flown out to LucasFilm in San Francisco to talk about the novel.
Everything seemed to be going quite well until the publisher literally forgot about it. The jargon phrases used for such a mistake go like this: ‘Someone dropped the ball.’ Or, ‘It fell through the crack in the floor.’ No, it wasn’t a ball, it wasn’t a crack. It was rigid thinking by the company execs, and an overworked editor.
You see, the publisher was fixated on the novel coming out the same time as the related computer game. The problem was that LucasFilm changed their game platform and that changed their schedule. No one told the publisher about it. Well, actually I did. A couple of avid Indy bloggers informed me of the changes, which I passed on to the editor. Unfortunately, the message never got through. The editor thought I had it wrong. Certainly, she would be informed on such matters, she implied.
Then the game came out just as the bloggers had said it would, but there was no book accompanying the release. The logical thing, it seemed to me, would be to rush the book into print. Nope. Somehow, the powers-that-be felt the book would not sell well unless it was released precisely at the time the game came out.
That’s what I call rigid thinking. Do people who buy and play computer games buy a related book? Maybe some do. But I think it’s a different audience. If you’re spending money on games, you’re probably not buying books.
So Del Rey lost money on the project, namely because no one ever had an opportunity to buy the book. An Indy fan wrote Howard Roffman, president of the Lucas Licensing, and asked what happened to the book. The response was forwarded to me. ‘Rob MacGregor missed the deadline.’
Oh, yeah. I wrote to Roffman and told him that Del Rey had the completed novel for more than a year before the game came out. He checked on it, wrote me back, and apologized.
From a writer’s point of view, it’s all part of the business. If you get a contract and get paid, what happens to the book is basically none of the writer’s business. It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a publisher who accepted my work, paid me, then failed to follow through. Years ago, Trish and I wrote for OMNI Magazine and they did the same thing. Repeatedly.
Of course, OMNI doesn’t exist any longer, and I’m thinking that many of the major publishers will fall through that ‘crack in the floor’ themselves…because someone ‘dropped the ball.’
This synchronicity came from Vicky Watt, whose blog – Acoustic Wave – covers all sorts of mysterious stuff, including synchronicity. It’s a good one!
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Yesterday – Thursday 24th November – I finally finished a 6-part ‘Be The Change’ blog series on my own webspace. It was very late at night and it had taken me all day to create. Following an initial post a couple of weeks earlier (inspired by your Occupy/Stephen King discussion funnily enough), I had planned to just write a follow-up post with a few bullet points summarizing the way people might embrace the ‘be the change’ ethos. Clearly I subconsciously knew that each theme deserved to be a little more fleshed out as I had already stalled the project for many days. At the same time, I was very keen to complete it all in one day because I’d put it off for so long! When it was finally complete, I laughed out loud to my partner, asking what had even compelled me to create the ‘Be The Change’ series? I joked that few people would even read it! My blog doesn’t have a very big readership 🙂
Anyway, despite it being very late at night, we had agreed to watch an episode of the American TV comedy drama ‘Castle’ before going to bed. First, I browsed the other writers on my blog list and saw that Seth Godin had written a new post for Thanks Giving. The post read…
“A great way to give thanks…for the priveleges we’ve got is to do important work. Your job, your internet access, your education, your role in a civilized society…all of them are a platform, a chance to do art, a way to give back and to honor those that enabled you to get to this point. For every person reading this there are a thousand (literally a thousand) in underpriveleged nations and situations that would love to have your slot. Don’t waste it.”
This small note from Seth Godin to his readers really inspired me. He was right. The message I took from this for myself is that it didn’t really matter how few people were reading my blog. I was in a very privileged position and I should use it, wherever possible, to speak my truth, to to share positive messages. Isn’t that what it means to be the change?
Finally, just before a long overdue bed time, we cozied up to watch the episode of ‘Castle’ and as I relaxed into its lighthearted fictional storyline about a crime writer who helps to solve cases, I forgot all about being the change for a while. Then, at the end of the episode – just before the credits rolled – the woman who plays the part of Castle’s mother, announced that as part of her new career as a life coach, she was hosting
a ‘Be The Change You Wish To See‘ gathering for her social group.
That night, I slept happily, knowing that my efforts had somehow been given a little nod and wink of acknowledgment from the universe.
I have a friend who repeatedly experiences ‘like attracts like’ in a very odd way. He used to be a neighbor, a single guy who lived in the same development years ago. We’ve kept in touch and get frequent updates on his life since he and I go on lengthy early morning bike rides a couple of times a month, followed by breakfast. We have the biking in common, and he’s a nice enough guy.
However, he’s quite skeptical about the paranormal and always thinks there must be some trick involved. He believes most of it is razzle-dazzle and doesn’t really comprehend how much of a role these matters play in my world and Trish’s as well. He thinks it’s just a way that we’ve managed to make a living, a niche in publishing.
So, with that in mind, it’s very interesting to hear about his relationships with women over the years who inevitably are involved in New Age-related matters. His girlfriends have included a psychic, a UFO contactee, a witch, and most recently an acupuncturist – though I’m not sure the latest will develop into a romantic relationship.
Whenever he told us about one of these relationships, we were usually quite interested in meeting his new friend. But soon we started seeing a certain pattern. He was unconsciously drawn to women who re-enforced his beliefs about ‘New Age types.’
The witch was probably the best of them. We liked her, but noticed that she was quite confrontational about her beliefs with people who had misguided ideas about Wiccans. There’s nothing wrong with that. But she tended to get into conflicts with authority figures, such as bosses, and inevitably she became a ‘victim’ of their ill-informed ways.
The UFO contactee was someone we met once and never cared to see again. She felt she was the selected messenger the aliens had chosen. She was bombastic and sounded utterly ridiculous. If she wasn’t crazy, then the aliens were.
Then there was the psychic. She topped them all. We had heard about her for awhile, but never met her until one evening when we had a party involving several friends who were involved in metaphysical areas. One is a well known past life therapist and author, another is a Hollywood script writer, who is also a talented psychic, an astrologer who is married to a former military remote viewer and author, and a couple of others.
We all got along quite well, but then my friend arrived with the mystery psychic. She sat at one end of the table and every time she spoke, it was the same sort of material that we had heard from our friend’s previous paramours. She had inside information on aliens invading earth and she was the one with the answers. It wasn’t long before everyone else moved away from the table. I got stuck talking to her for quite awhile, and realized that my biking buddy had hit a new low. This one was truly certifiable, and in fact within two weeks she was committed and the relationship ended.
I don’t know much about the acupuncturist, except she lives in Palm Beach and says she’s close to Donald Trump and provides acupuncture at Mar-del-Lago, Trump’s ritzy Palm Beach resort. I really don’t want to meet her.
My friend wants to believe. Yet, repeatedly, he has entered relationships which confirm his doubts. As I said, like attract like. But in an unusual way.
So, you might wonder, why is he my friend? Probably because he’s not judgmental. He accepts people for what they are. After all, if he were overly critical, he would never have entered such unusual relationships in the first place. I get along with him. We don’t talk about aliens or the paranormal…or his old girlfriends. We just talk about guy stuff. Enough said.
Oh, yeah, and his name is Rob.
In celebration of the lunar eclipse – and an early Christmas gift for the family – we bought the virtual workshop in Phoenix that was held on the day of the lunar eclipse, December 10. It was the first Esther Hicks has done since the death of her husband, Jerry, about three weeks ago.
I was curious about how Jerry’s death might impact Esther’s ability to connect with the nonphysical group, Abraham, that she channels. On a personal level, I was trying to put myself in her shoes. Not only did she lose her spouse of decades, but the man who was her business and spiritual partner. This workshop was the most powerful I’ve seen, either virtually or physically.
In a nutshell, the Abraham/Hicks premise is that we create our own realities through our emotions, beliefs, and thoughts, which determine our “vibration,” a magnet through which we attract everything in our lives. This premise isn’t new.
Carl Jung, in his introduction to the I Ching, wrote, “like attracts like.” He was discussing why the I Ching, an oracle that uses coins and 64 hexagrams, was able to answer questions. But like attracts like also became the basis of his theory of synchronicity. Seth, a nonphysical energy channeled by author Jane Roberts, put it more bluntly: You get what you concentrate on…there is no other main rule.
My introduction to these concepts began with the I Ching when I was about 18, and then continued with the Seth material when I was in my twenties. The Seth books were the first channeled books I’d ever read that resonated on an intuitive level. Seth and Jane wrote twenty some odd books before her death in 1984. I read all of them. I even bought the books that contained “the deleted material” – information Seth provided to Jane and her husband, Robert Butts, about her physical ailments, their private lives, their marriage. Some of the deleted material is difficult to read, particularly the stuff that was channeled when she was bedridden for a year because of her rheumatoid arthritis.
But the messenger can never be confused with the message: that’s what I ultimately took away from the Seth books – and from the virtual Phoenix workshop we watched. And yet, the messenger’s presence is important.
In the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s, when Jane and Seth wrote most of their books, there was no Internet, social media, cell phones, iPad, iPhones, Facebook, blogs, Amazon, Twitter…you get the idea. Jane and her husband worked out of their home in Elmira, New York, holding regular Seth sessions for more than twenty years. To my knowledge, there is only one video in existence of Seth speaking through Jane. Today, of course, there are many websites about the Seth material, but these are not written by Jane Roberts or Seth.
For awhile, Jane held sessions in her home for outsiders and some of these outsiders, who were really young when they attended, are now carrying on her work – Rick Stack, for instance, and Sue Watkins.
Esther Hicks is a whole different ballgame. She and Jerry, when he was alive, embraced every social media venue to promote Abraham’s ideas and products. And there are many products – books, CDs, workshops, a cottage industry. And yet. There’s Esther herself. When Megan and I attended one of her workshops in person in 2009, I went with the intention of trying to determine if she was in a trance during the entire six hours of the workshop. By the end of the workshop, that point was rendered irrelevant because the message, the philosophy, the core of the material is so inherently positive and resonates for me.
During tonight’s workshop, the impact of Jerry’s transition was apparent. As Abraham said at one point, Jerry’s transition was the next logical step. His overwhelming desire to know and understand had triggered their journey and now his transition gave him the ability to view the larger picture, from a nonphysical perspective.
The best parts of these workshops are the questions that are posed when someone is selected to sit in the “hot seat.” This is like a one on one with Abraham, and never is there any apparent struggle on Esther’s part to answer the questions. She’s always composed, listening intently, and you sense that she’s tuned in to something other than herself, something greater than herself. Now and then, when the person in the hot seat talked about suffering and the great works of art that came from pain, Esther made these very strange sounds, a kind of high pitched shrieking, and then looked off to the side and murmured, “That was Jerry.”
Suffering, apparently, is not the preferred method for creating great works of art, music or literature. But it may be the point where the musician, artist or writer releases his or her resistance to success, beauty, whatever. Even though Tchaikovsky’s life was one of pain and suffering, when he composed music, he released himself from resistance and the universe flowed through him. Isn’t this process the epitome of creativity? Of synchronicity? Abraham is quick to say that suffering isn’t necessary to release resistance, that awareness is key.
During the last segment of the workshop, Rob, Megan and I kept relating our personal experiences to what Abraham was saying, a sure sign of psychic resonance. And in the end, there really isn’t any other criteria that matters more than what we ourselves feel and know when evaluating information.
from touchdrawing
The other night in Rob’s meditation class, he said or did something that prompted me to think of Will Lansa, his Native American character. Will has now been featured in four books – Prophecy Rock, which won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for best YA novel in 1996; Hawk Moon, nominated for the award the next year; and now Double Heart and Time Catcher. And that’s when it struck me that the characters created by a pair of married fiction writers aren’t just confined to the pages of books.
Writers spend thousands of hours creating characters, plots, and stories for their novels. If you’re a Dan Brown writing in The DaVinci Code or The Lost Symbol, or Jeff Lindsay writing about blood splatter expert and serial killer Dexter, then you’re spending hundreds of hours doing research before you even begin your novel. Once you’ve got your characters, you need to come up with story that’s in alignment with the characters you’ve developed.
So with two married fiction writers, your breakfast conversation goes something like this:
“I’m making headway on what happens to the tulpas in part two,” Rob says.
“I think Dominica is going to be disappeared to the dawn of time. But what are the tulpas doing right now?”
“The same thing your brujos are doing, creating havoc.”
Any outsider who overhears this conversation probably relegates us to some psyche ward. Fortunately, it’s our daughter who overhears this as she walks into the kitchen. She looks at us, long, deliberate looks, rolls her eyes, grabs her coffee yogurt, and sits down with the newspaper’s daily puzzle. She then ignores everything she has just overhead.
She already knows that she shares this house with Will Lansa, Nick from Crystal Skull, Mira Morales from Tango Key, Tess Livingston and the ghosts of Esperanza, Indiana Jones, and all the human and animals characters we’ve created. She has her own characters struggling to be born; our guys are probably an irritant for her.
During that meditation when I recognized Will Lansa in Rob, I thought, Oh wow, he needs to meet Mira, the psychic bookstore owner from my Tango Key series. Or: Tess from Esperanza should travel to the Hopi rez to meet meet Will. Uh-huh, sure. Given the state of publishing these days, that’s not going to happen. And yet, the characters who dominate our creative lives also lurk in the corridors of our real lives. They are the heroes, the antagonists, the archetypes that define us as human beings. Even if you don’t write fiction, these characters are alive, somewhere, within you.
As human beings, we live in a collective soup. We’re connected in ways we don’t yet understand. Perhaps fiction is one venue through which we explore those connections. So when Tess Livingston sits down for coffee with Will Lansa, what do they talk about?
Well, ask Megan.
But she’ll probably ask you not to interrupt her as she works out the daily Suduko.
We recently started a blog on our fiction writing. It is a huge part of our married lives, with more than 50 novels between us, and all these odd fictional characters running around in our psyches. On the blog, we talk about anything related to writing, publishing, stories, characters… and the changing face of the publishing industry. Rob’s post today talks about the lost Indiana Jones novel.
This story comes from Mike Perry in the U.K. When I first read it on his blog, I was intrigued not only by what happened, but by the time it occurred: 3:33 AM. In UFO lore, this time is important.
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With the curtains tightly drawn the room was almost pitch black and all was quiet. Without warning there was a clattering sound as something hit the wooden floor and rolled towards the far wall.
“What on earth was that?” said my wife, suddenly awake.
It had woken me too and as I glanced at the digital clock it read 3:33.
I snapped on my bedside lamp to look around our bedroom. The noise seemed to have traveled across the room to my side of our bed. I saw nothing at first until I spotted my wife’s wedding ring standing on end near to the window,
“It’s your wedding ring,” I said, and Karin looked at her finger to make sure.
“How on earth did it get over there?” she asked, not really expecting an answer.
“No idea.”
I retrieved the ring, handed it to her and she slid it onto her finger where it usually resides quite happily.
Karin was soon fast asleep again but I kept wondering about what had happened. How could a ring have rolled across the floor and then remained upright, as per the photo? (I took the photo this morning to illustrate the post).
I thought about the number 3, the ring or circle and so on, but nothing of any real significance came to mind and … I fell asleep.
In the morning my wife said, “I think I know what must have happened. I put some hand cream on before going to bed and must have taken my ring off to do so and left it on the bed cover. It probably got kicked off during the night and rolled across the floor.”
Okay, but to roll right across the floor on its edge, at precisely 3:33? I don’t know.
I Googled the number 333 and most sources seem to say it represents something similar to:
“333 – The Ascended Masters are near you, desiring you to know that you have their help, love, and companionship. Call upon the Ascended Masters often, especially when you see the number 3 patterns around you. Some of the more famous Ascended Masters include: Jesus, Moses, Mary, Quan Yin, and Yogananda.
I’ll be giving it some more thought. Any interpretations welcome!
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It’s synchro weirdness, the most mysterious kind!
On November 24-25, there was a solar eclipse in Sagittarius. On December 10, there’s a lunar eclipse in Gemini. Where solar eclipses usually concern external events, lunar eclipses are about inner events, our emotional reactions, our deeper feelings.
On December 10, at 9:36 AM EST, the lunar eclipse in Gemini is at 18 degrees. Before we talk about it, go here first to see your own natal chart. You’re looking specifically for the Gemini glyph so that you can tell in which house the eclipse falls. Let’s say Gemini appears on the cusp of your 10th house at 23 degrees. Since the eclipse is at 18 degrees Gemini, your ninth house rather than your tenth would be the impacted. For what the houses mean, click here.
Lunar eclipses not only impact our inner lives, but also the women in our lives. (The moon in astrology is considered to be feminine and the sun is thought of as masculine.) Gemini rules communication, travel, our conscious minds. So with a lunar eclipse, our inner worlds become more conscious. Whatever we need to know becomes glaringly obvious. It could concern a relationship, something about your job or profession, some element of your personal life. Something – or someone – is “eclipsed,” marginalized, and that’s what you see.
The solar eclipse of November 24-25 and this eclipse occur on an axis of energy. If the SE fell in your first house of self, then this one falls in your seventh house of partnerships. If the SE fell in your second house of money and values, this one falls in the eighth, the house of shared resources and your partner’s income, and so on around the zodiac. For me, these two eclipses fall on my financial axis – the second house of money and values and the eighth house of shared resources, partner’s income, and things that go bump in the night. Sometimes, lunar eclipses spell a culmination or the end of something. For me, it could be that a source of income is reaching an end. Or, equally likely given my interests, I have some sort of powerful psychic experience that answers questions I have.
So once you determine which house is affected by the lunar eclipse, look to the opposite side of your chart to see where the SE hit on November 24-25. Let’s say the lunar eclipse occurs in your tenth house – your professional life and career. That means the SE in November occurred in your fourth house – your domestic environment, home, family. One house is very public, the other very private.
Both Saturn and Neptune form strong, beneficial angles to the eclipse degree. Saturn’s angle suggests a stabilizing influence of some kind; Neptune’s angle suggests higher inspiration, spiritual issues, creativity that comes from deep within. Mars, the warrior, forms a challenging angle to the eclipse degree, so it’s best to avoid confrontation on or around the time of this eclipse. Uranus, the planet of sudden, unexpected events, turns direct the same day as the eclipse, in Aries, so there’s an explosion of intense internal energy.
Mercury is still retrograde until December 13 and forms a close, beneficial angle to Uranus. Sudden, unforeseen – and positive news – is a distinct possibility.
This evening, we came up with a good thing to do on the day of the eclipse – a virtual Abraham/Hicks workshop. This workshop will the first Esther has done sine her husband, Jerry, passed away several weeks ago from leukemia. We’ve tried to sign up four or five times for this workshop and, true to Mercury retro, the Google checkout doesn’t seem to be working. We’ll keep trying.
Wishing everyone a positive, happy lunar eclipse!
If you’re a young woman of child bearing age, then Plan B is what you rely on if you’ve had unprotected sex.
That age group – young women – is where things get murky. Here’s why. Plan B is the morning after pill. It’s a hormonal contraceptive that has been shown to be 89 percent effective at safely preventing pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex. The current law requires women ages 17 and older to ask a pharmacist for the pill. Women aged 16 and younger must obtain a doctor’s prescription to access Plan B. Reproductive health advocates contend that the law may make it logistically difficult for the age 16 and under group to prevent pregnancy.
After nearly a year of reviewing the evidence on Plan B, the FDA determined it should be made available to everyone over the counter. But here’s the shocker: Kathleen Sebelius, Obama’s U.S. Department Health and Human Services Secretary, vetoed the Plan B decision. Why? Because “adolescent girls may not have the behavioral maturity to understand how to use the morning after pill.”
Really? Adolescent girls are illiterate? Stupid? Can’t follow directions?
This is one of the lamest excuses I’ve ever heard for restrictions on a woman’s right to determined the fate of her own body. Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAl Pro-Choice America organization, said: “We had every confidence that this Bush-era policy would come to an end. The Obama administration has broken a key promise to the American people that it would base its decisions on sound science and what’s in the best interest of women’s health. In short, this is a failure to deliver change.”
But really, the bottom line is this: what gives the government the right to determine the decisions a woman makes about her own body? To my knowledge, there aren’t any such laws for men. And really, let’s get bottom line honest here. If men were the ones getting pregnant, giving birth, and nurturing the child in the subsequent year, Plan B wouldn’t even be an issue. Abortion wouldn’t be an issue.
Years ago, I had an English professor who actually indulged my ridiculous discussions about life, weirdness, and all the rest of it. Dr. Millett. He was thin, tall, a consummate communicator, and a fantastic teacher who made literature come alive. And one afternoon when we were sitting in his office, he said, he said, “Trish, here’s the secret. You women have all the power because you can give birth.”
These words were uttered with the utmost sincerity, but I burst out laughing. “Hey, Doc, we can be fertile, we can be ready or not. But without the guy, there’s no baby.”
He thought about this for a moment, then laughed, too. “I’d better inform all those male literary writers who believe otherwise.”
I believe this conversation took place round 1969. We’re now at the tail end of 2011.
I recently read a story about an Afghan woman who was sentenced to 12 years in prison after her cousin’s husband raped her. She’s now been released so she can marry her rapist. Sounds like something out of the Handmaid’s Tale, but set to Afghan standards.
In Saudi Arabia, considered to be among our staunchest allies, women aren’t allowed to drive and can’t even leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. Why not? How do women in burkas present any threat at all to men? Are men so hormonally ramped up that they would be tempted to do unspeakable things to a woman driving a car? Walking home alone through a neighborhood? What are these Saudi guys afraid of, anyway?
I don’t mean to make this post a feminist rant, but honestly, it wasn’t that long ago that women in the U.S. had the right to vote. We still have a male-dominated world, where war and aggression are business as usual, and where mostly male politicians are still trying to regulate what a woman does with her body.
Sorry, boys. Our bodies belong to us, not to you – Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, John Huntsman, or hey, Newt Gingritch, you, too. Guys, go pound sand. You don’t own us or our bodies and never will.
