Category Archives: small town USA

What Would You Do?

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So what would you do?

I joined the American Association of University Women to meet other educated women. They fact that they wanted to change the world for the better for future women was a bonus.

The group recently decided to book a DEI speaker; when I found out who it was, my heart sank. Don was on the board of a local theater and held a terrible conversation with me about being unwilling to pay a black female storyteller the same as a white male teller. During the conversation, he said the festival was already diverse because it had a performer from the LGBTQ+ community. I was the one causing trouble by making a false claim in the first place.

I left that committee; Don then denied he’d said most of that. In my opinion, this man has as much business talking DEI as the pope does birth control. I took my concerns to the AAUW person overseeing that program, who said she hadn’t booked him and shared my belief that he was inappropriate, not least because a man would talk to women about DEI. She asked me to line up an alternate. I did, but Don was then left in place. “What’s done is done,” she emailed me, when I asked what happened.

So here’s my question: do I go to the meeting and confront this DEI champion of the old school upholding he is benefiting from, or do I walk away? An org that says it intends to make the world better for successive generations of women but doesn’t want to start now isn’t a good bet for a future plan. But is it worth going to the talk, sitting with a fixed smile, and then asking him why he supported not paying the white male and black female storytellers (of equal national standing) the same amount?

Because, you know, if women want to change the world, we need to do so politely. Raising our voices, challenging questions, breaking a sweat: do we really need to do those? Won’t I just be seen as a woman being rude, perhaps even personal?

Every chance to make the world better is a rare one these days. If I don’t confront this situation, am I doing what I am accusing the AAUW group of: taking the easy way rather than challenging the old order in favor of stronger voices with better representation? Or will I be the bitch who yelled?

Accepting advice now, thanks.

The Differences Come Home

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OK, sorry about that blog post lapse. In two words: jet lag. It takes me longer to get over it. Yesterday was my first 9-6 sleep since returning. Slowly back to US time.

But maybe not back to some other US norms. One of the things you can’t help but notice, staying with friends in Ireland and Scotland, is the lack of plastic. Even my friend who lives life in the fast lane doesn’t have an overrun of plastic bags and containers in her kitchen. She merely saves her ice cream tubs for occasional leftovers.

There are fewer leftovers, because Brits invented portion control. Everything is sized to eat once. Brits don’t make nine-day stews, vats of crock pot suppers, or spaghetti for 60 and freeze it. It’s a day-by-day cooking plan. Part of the mindfulness that permeates the culture, perhaps? Why would you need so much all at once?

The kitchen is the first place you’re going to see how differently Brits and Americans live: you don’t need plastic leftover containers because you’re controlling your servings. You don’t need a huge fridge because, same. You don’t need a vast array of kitchen gadgets, because you’re doing a one-time prep of servings for four, so it’s not hard to chop, grind, dice, or juice. And you tend to have pleasant conversations with friends and family while you’re doing it. Meal prep isn’t “get this done so we can get to the next thing.” It IS the thing.

This is pleasant. Even on stressed days, when the chores are divided, it’s a nice thing to sit with someone in the kitchen, pulverizing what you plan to eat while sipping a glass of wine and talking stress factors. It works.

Not that they don’t have shortcut foods, simple shortcuts, etc. Bisto in every meat and veggie flavor is a staple of the well-stocked Scottish kitchen, certainly. It’s a little like bullion. I brought some home with me.

So I’m back in the States, sipping tea in my kitchen, marinating beef in Bisto, and eyeing things I’m getting rid of in order to simplify. This may have crept past the kitchen, because there’s a bunch of Scottish paraphernalia from other spaces that we won’t bother carrying back to the home country. If you want to see what’s on offer, check Jack’s Facebook offerings online. We put them on a bunch of local yardsale websites, although not marketplace. I don’t think any of it is plastic. I put that in the recycling.