paris Was A Woman: Portraits From The Left Bank
By Andrea Weiss
Reviewed by Cleis
Images of women as sex symbols about in popular culture today: Pamela Lee Anderson, Naomi Campbell1 and Cindy Crawford. Names of creative, intelligent women, such as Madeline Albright, Maya Angelou, and Gloria Steinham are not given as much media attention. Perhaps we, as a society are responsible for perpetuating the myth of women as sex symbols rather than perceiving women as human beings who shape our culture.
The city of paris, long imbued with feminine qualities, has been viewed by male artists of the 1920's as a mistress and muse. Fortunately, these myths were dispelled by empowered, cultured, and educated women, such as Gertrude Stein, Bryher, and Janet Flanner. Through their art, novels, and photographs, these expatriate artists not only transformed their lives from within, but also transformed the character of paris itself. paris offered these artists freedom from heterosexual relationships and motherhood. The subject of their loves and the lives of their friends often became the topic of novels. Janet Flanner commented on cultural and political affairs in "Letter from paris", a column for The New Yorker for over 25 years. While Djuna Barnes and Natalie Barney wrote about lesbianism in blatant terms, Stein encoded much of her work. Certainly, Stein's prolific writing would not have been possible without her lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas.
Women were able not only to write but also to publish, manage their own bookstores, and sponsor the work of new writers in little magazines. The salons of Stein and Natalie Barney united Modernist artists like Bryher, Colette, and Flanner as a community. Literary relations between France and America were also shaped by the book shops of Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach, as well as little magazines published by Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and Bryher. Moreover, the bravery qf these women extended from their personal loves and lives to their work in the Red Cross through both World Wars. Bryher helped over 100 refugees escape through Switzerland during World War II.
Unfortunately, many of these artists and their works are largely forgotten. Until we learn to preserve the voices of women artists literature, art, and history are in danger. With its lush black and white photographs, paris Was A Woman takes us on a journey of open.mindedness, the space all artists require to create. It invites us to reread, remember, and reprint the works of these important artists, so we may continue to produce the environment for strong, artistic women.
Price: $20 Available at Book People In Sioux City
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Nature's Remedy
"Trust in the healing power of nature" Rasputin
As an adolescent, I helped my father tend the garden. Before the tomato and bean plants ever sprouted blossoms, my father generously dusted them with a pungent, white powder. Despite our efforts, insects still ate holes in the deep green of the bean leaves.
When it came time to plant my own garden, I thought I must dust my garden with this white powder. Luckily, my friend had questioned this idea long ago. So, instead, we created an organic garden by planting onions and garlic around the perimeter, lightly dusting select plants with cayenne pepper, and companion planting herbs such as cayenne pepper ans summer savory next to the beans. We researched other methods that involved collecting various bugs within the garden, blending them, and spraying their juices on the plants. It seemed somewhat distasteful.
Birds naturally deter insects, according to my wise and patient gardening companion. Her father built a bird house and nailed it on the fence toward the back of the garden. Within weeks, there was a nest. Seven bird eggs nestled among feathers, twigs, and straw.
As the spinach ended its cycle of growth and began to seed, tomatoes bloomed into large, green fruits and beans lengthened with no sign of insects. While I hoed and harvested beans, the chirp of wrens reminded me of the harmonious cycle of life and the balance of nature's own remedies.
Sometimes, we need only trust in the power of the universe as we take steps to co-create our reality. Like the wrens who have come home, we may make a home within our lives by tending to an inner garden of stillness.
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A Lesson in Reverence and Renewal
"In my childhood rural Midwest, you found your place in the world through your hands," writes Mary Swander in her memoir Out of This World: A Woman's Life Among the Amish. She is hailed as a twentieth century Walden. Due to her Environmental Illness, Swander rediscovers "her place in the world," a place of balance and simplicity, by returning to the Midwest to live in a one-room schoolhouse nestled in the Amish community. The lessons of how to build a goat shed, cook sorghum, grow bok choy and okra, and embark on a "spring frog gig", reveal deeper spiritual truths, like the Midwestern winds "with their constant threat of lifting us up-not so gently-to the heavens.
When the treatment of an incompetent allergist left her hospitalized after dropping twenty pounds in ten days and "one bite of rice made me black out, one leaf of lettuce made my mouth break out in huge, raw sores," she was forced to reinvent a healthy diet of "safe" foods, such as bear stew, frog legs, squirrel, and venison from fresh road kill. Environmental Illness prevented her from indulging in a Big Mac or a chocolate bar, wearing perfume or makeup, and breathing in second-hand smoke.
Far more devastating than her Environmental Illness was the emotional numbness. "It was as if my hands were still stuck in that car door, and never grew again." Hands, shut in the back door of her father's Studebaker, become a central metaphor for the emotional and physical pain Swander has endured. Her silence is representative of the stoicism with which her Midwestern neighbors faced the loss of forty pigs in the Great Flood of 1993, the slow destruction of prairie grasses, and the threat of tornado and fire. However, Swander returns to voice her knowledge of Environmental Illness on public television and commentaries on Iowa Public Radio.
Above all, Swander approaches life with a gentle reverence. "A plain piece of yucca on a plate can be just enough to pull me back over to the 'spirit world'." Separated from our human masks, Swander reawakens us to the "spirit world", a world in which we are connected to the land of our ancestors and to all living things. As a poet, she teaches us to "relish the day" by finding the sacred in the familiar. When her blinded pygmy goat Mac regains partial vision, we marvel with her: "disability connects us, creates a stronger spiritual glue for all earthly creatures."
While the "imprint of that door latch [remains] across your palm, intertwining, merging with your life line," Swander offers a lesson in renewal as her hands become "birds, goldfinches that dip and dive over the garden". Ultimately, she begins to heal herself by working in the garden. She delights in growing her own organic vegetables' zucchini and peppers, and cultivating dandelions, plantain, and pursulance. She saves her garden from fire and the ravages of locusts.
Her garden, "a symbol of stability within change", shows us that there are things we can rely on in the midst of chaos: the steady massages of Esther Chupp, the sage advice of Miriam and Moses, "the passing of the opera glasses" from one generation to the next, the unpredictability of the Midwestern winds, and the religiou divisiveness among neighbors. It reassures us of the circular path in life. As certainly as the goose Ruby will return to her lifemate Groucho, we will also come full circle to learn of ourselves and our Midwestern roots by searching in our own backyard where "country roads [become] nerve fibers."
Mary Swander is a Professor of English at Iowa State University in Ames, IA. She has written several volumes of poetry, including Driving the Body Back and Heaven-and-Earth House, and co-authored Parsnips in the Snow, a 1990 Publisher's Weekly Editor's Choice. She has received numerous awards including a 1994 Whiting Award, two Ingram-Merrill Fellowships, and the Carl Sandburg Literary Award.
Out of This World: A Woman's Life Among the Amish is available for $20.00 at Book People.
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Celebrate your love
Book Review by Cleis
Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Have you found a gift for the outrageous lesbian love in your life? Are you tired of giving her the same old gift: chocolate, flannel pajamas, and power tools? Why not celebrate your love and the rich history of lesbian culture with a copy of Between Us: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters? An assortment of postcards, e-mail, and letters from 1852 to the present day, they reveal intimate portraits of sexual chemistry, geographical separation, daily life, and painful breakups.
Some may question the need for such a legacy. As the editor, Kay Turner points out; the staying power of lesbian love is extraordinary. Nancy Morgan's stepmother bought an old picture frame in the 1960s, only to discover letters written in 1912 by Margaret to Louise. Twenty years later, when Morgan revealed her sexual orientation to her stepmother, she received the letters as a present. In the corner of the frame Louise had scrawled "The courage of the commonplace is greater than the courage of the crisis."
Margaret and Louise certainly felt the repressive mood of the country towards their relationship. It became necessary for lesbians to "encode" their love for each other in the 1920's as male sexologists created the term "lesbian" to describe a "social-sexual abnormality and psychological inversion." Throughout the herstory of lesbian loving, many letters have been destroyed due to fear and repression.
Thankfully, by the 1960s women began to cast off their fears and to challenge the world. As one of the authors writes, "There must be something wrong with the world, I think. Why should we be afraid of what we feel, of what we think? Why should they be right and we be wrong? It's not just a matter of a woman falling in love with another woman, it's a whole way of approaching life, a whole series of beliefs and ideals, and feelings that is at stake. And I'm too selfish, too self-confident, to accept theirs instead of mine." This change in mindset opened the way for Nancy Morgan and others to openly proclaim their love for women.
Proclaim your love today. Affix a post-it note on her favorite box of cereal, send an e-mail, or save her letters in a homemade scrapbook. Become a part of lesbian herstory: donate your letters to local or national archives. Speak your truth.
Between Us: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters, edited by Kay Turner, is available at Bell, Book & Candle for $17.95 (hardbound).
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A Pagan Celebration
Book Review by Cleis
Every year on February 2nd, the media descends on Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to determine if Phil will see his shadow. Can we expect six more weeks of winter, or is spring only six weeks away? Why do we bother Phil if both of these statements are true with or without his shadow? How did Groundhog Day originate?
While most people believe there are only four seasons, marked by the solstice or equinox, there are four cross-quarter days as well: February 2, May 1, August 1, and November 1. The cross-quarter days, according to Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles and Celebrations mark the halfway point of each season.
February 2 has been celebrated across cultures and throughout time. This midwinter festival is used not only as a prognosticating tool, but also as a purification rite. Fire, in the form of candles, symbolizes the cleansing of the spirit and the desire to be one with the Source. The ancient Celts observed it as "Imbolic" and lit candles for Bridget, the "Northern White Goddess, guardian of the home fire and hearth." In honor of Ceres, the ancient goddess of grain and fertility, and the search for her daughter Persephone, the Roman women paraded the streets with candles. In an effort to stop goddess worship, Pope Sergius I renamed it "Candlemas" to honor the Virgin Mary.
Other cultures also practice the ritual of relighting fire. The Iroquois observe a six day ceremony, in which the "False Face Society" extinguishes the fire in each home, pokes the ashes, and pours them on each member to open them to the "divine light."
Known as "Badger Day" to Germans, they traded the badger for a groundhog when they settled in Pennsylvania. The badger signified an "underground movement in life".
Like the badger, we have only gone underground, plumbing the depths of our subconscious and readying ourselves for the light. February finds us much like nature that surrounds us. Buds are beginning to form imperceptibly on trees. Plants are pushing their way up. Tentatively, animals unearth themselves long enough for a meal. We can smell the promise of spring. It is all around us; it is within us. By observing this midwinter festival, we honor our universal connection, that creative divine spark of light within all of life.
Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles, and Celebrations, by Donna Henes, is published by Perigee Books.
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The Goddess of Spring and Wonder
"The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder." Jostein Gaardner from Sophie's World
Spring is the time of year in which we notice with incredulity the changes in the natural world. The air smells different. Crocus bulbs unfurl. Tadpoles emerge. The earth pushes up new life, and the trees blossom. For some of us, it is almost as if the breath of spring has infused our bodies, minds, and spirits with renewed energy. It is a palpable rebirth. Think back to a time when you were a child. Do you remember when you sat at the kitchen table, awaiting dozens of eggs to cook for what seemed hours? How did the egg shell feel against your palm as you dipped it in various colors? How did you feel when you were done with your creation: the Crayola-riddled, multi-speckled, striped cosmic egg? We are, each of us, Picassos during springtime.
There are some things in life, such as spring, that link both the wonderment of childhood and the heritage of our ancestors. According to Celestially Auspicious Occasions: Seasons, Cycles & Celebrations, by Donna Henes, Easter originated as an "ancient fertility rite." In honor of "Eostre" (also known as "Astarte", "Ishtar," and "Esther"), eggs were dyed "blood-red" and "rolled in the newly sown soil in order to fertilize the fields." Our commercialized Easter Bunny is equivalent to the "Moon Hare, sacred animal totem of Eostre." Across cultures, eggs have been dyed red and given away as gifts during the spring festival. The art of "pysanki" in Poland and the Ukraine requires time alone for women to meditate, to contemplate the goddess, and to depict their sense of eternity on an egg. Cross-culturally, mythology has described the egg as the original mother of the universe. She is called by different names: "Knosuano, the Moon Egg of Ghana"; "the Druidic Egg of the World"; "the Great Midwife". What if we did originate from a great cosmic egg? What if this egg gave birth not only to our small universe but to other universes as well? What if you met another from a different universe? Would you be an alien to them? Most of us consider these questions absolute foolishness. Think back to a time when you were a child, and you watched, in amazement, as grown adults performed simple tasks around you. Wonder surrounds us in each moment; we need only recognize its form. Let the goddess of spring work in your life today.
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Riddle Me This, Dear Reader
A conundrum, according to Webster's Dictionary, is: "1. a riddle whose answer contains a pun. 2. any puzzling problem." The Forgetting Room, by Nick Bantock, combines art and narrative to lead the reader through an enthralling series of conundrums. If you are a fan of Nick Bantock's Griffin & Sabine trilogy and love a good puzzle, you are sure to find his most recent work equally as compelling.
Armon Hurtago, a reserved bookbinder, has settled for the routine of American life. When his grandfather Rafael dies, Armon inherits his home in Ronda, Spain. Rafael, an artist, has given away all of his paintings and left a simple box for Armon. Within the box is a conundrum that Arinon finds himself drawn to unravel each day.
"The Forgetting Room" is both the name of his grandfather's studio and the title of the puzzle. Armon recalls Rafael's voice: "Remember, Armon, here in the Forgetting Room, the past is present." Guided by his grandfather's spirit, Armon immerses himself in painting, a process he has not allowed himself to indulge in since he was a child. The creative process frees him up to question the history of his family, to recall childhood memories, and to discover the beauty of Ronda.
Yet, Armon still believes he will discover some of Rafael's pictures. What he discovers, as Rafael planned, is that life is not about a finished product or painting; instead, life, like art, is a process. Ironically, in the setting of the "Forgetting Room", he rediscovers his desire to paint, a desire which reawakens his zest for life.
The Forgetting Room is available in hardback for $22 at Book People.
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