oh what a lightening of load - it is my first full week of summer vacay, and although i have a job and thesis work to do, i feel so free. and i am super excited about guiltless reading for pleasure. i feel like i just discovered that one can use the university library for more than research. and so i ILL'd rushdie's 'the ground beneath her feet,' and just today checked out "red emma speaks" and "living my life." since i saw a biographical show on emma goldman last year on pbs, she's been in my pantheon and i've been wanting to know more. and so, i'm pleased to cut the ribbon on the summer session of carrie university.
out on the patio, dinnertime, i just read one of her essays: Marriage and Love
it's a thankful challenge to imagine where she was coming from, so harsh on marriage is she, in her eyes and heart a show of man's superiority and female opression. it's no wonder she raised feathers, really heralding non-marital sex for enjoyment and ecstasy. but oh, she is a believer in love, and it is dramatic in her writing, which for summertime is just right. all this, and i went to a new (to me) women's health clinic. a feminist women's health clinic, where all services were free to me, and i was handed birth control pills without question, i was offered a speculum to take home to see my own cervix, and without requesting it, a package of emergency contraception. how do you like that, emma?
last night talking with my soon-to-be housemate, i expressed my hesitation in taking a women's studies class - i'm not sure i want to walk around with that lens for 10-plus weeks, i just feel sure that it would make me scowl too much. but it appears that i've signed up today for just that. i would like to know more, i would like to talk to the crones and know the changes over the years. better or worse mrs. vanek, so vibrant and gossipy and 80 years and married forever? what say you aunt jean, so adventurous and independent and then you married in your 40s and now it's your husband and dog? always fighting fighting for more, but it's important to see all that came before.