Everywoman, An Allegory

This is how it went down, see: In a parallel universe, not unlike our own, Everywoman had studied the Holy Writ. She had read the Gospel of Zora and the Gospel of Alice, so she knew just what to do. Her journey would begin at the dinner table, with domestic implements, say an iron skillet or a carving knife. She knew, as the goddess had spoken through the Gospel According to Audre, that the master’s tools would never destroy the master’s house. However, Everywoman had read enough to know that those tools could render the master quiet for a while, thus allowing her time for escape, if wielded with a pure heart, a steady hand and, if necessary, the Evil Eye.

Everywoman chose her old Granny’s pecan cracker. She slapped it down on the table right after serving the banana pudding.
“Mm-mm,” said Mr. P_____, “You gonna crack me some pecans?”
“No,” Everywoman replied, “I’m cracking me some other nuts if you stand in my way. For today, Mr. P_____, I declare my independence from cleaninglaundrycookingshopping. I will no longer be your mule. I am marching off to Freedom Land. And it’s ‘pe-cahns,’ not ‘pee-cans.’ You sound like a hick. Bye now.”

Everywoman waved goodbye and stood up from the table as Mr. P_____ sat there open mouthed and wide eyed. She grabbed her nutcracker and a small suitcase she had tucked away under her chair. “Toodles,” she said, sunnily. She was almost out the door when Mr. P_____ caught up with her, grabbing her forcefully and spinning her around.
“Now just you wait, ho-bitch. You can’t take care of yourself out there without me. How are you going to support yourself”
Mr. P_____’s grip was strong and his glare was mean, but Everywoman had prepared herself for this. She underhanded him with a nutcracker to the crotch.
“Listen up, silly man, and listen good. I am marching off to Freedom Land. I got plenty to take care of myself. I got my Friends and Family Plan. I got my Credit Card. I got my Good Looks. I got my Wits. And Goddess knows, I got my Anger. You better let me go. Now.”
Everywoman squeezed harder on the nutcracker. Mr. P_____ winced. “You’ve seen the movie. It won an Oscar, for Goddess’s sake. You better let me go, or else you’re gonna wind up drunk and alone, dead, or both. Now don’t make me use the Evil Eye, too.”
Mr. P_____ blinked. “Go. You’ll never get into Freedom Land anyway. I made the door, and I own the key to all the locks. You’ll be back.”
“Ha,” said Everywoman, sashaying away.

All the rest of the day, Everywoman was feeling mighty good about herself. She didn’t need a map or the GPS function on her cell phone to find Freedom Land. She had memorized the directions from the Holy Writ. She could follow the sun in the day and at night, the stars. She had packed enough food in her suitcase for the time it would take to get her there. All she needed was a change of clothes, a light sweater, and plenty of new, clean underpants in case, as her old Granny had told her again and again, she was in an accident, she would not be found in torn, dirty panties. The only problem was that her cell phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing with that darned Friends and Family Plan, and each person saying the same thing:
“Are you o.k.? Are you sure you’ve done the right thing? You know it’s not safe out there for a woman alone. He wasn’t that bad. He went to work every day. He had a good job. He was a good provider. He didn’t hit you. He didn’t hit you much. He didn’t draw blood. Maybe you should forgive and forget. What would Jesus do? Are you safe by yourself? What if you run into someone dangerous out there by yourself? What if you run into someone who hurts you? Maybe you should go home where it’s safe. What are you going to do in Freedom Land anyway? What you’re doing sounds crazy. It’s not practical. You should go back to Mr. P_____. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
Everywoman got so angry that she told them all to go to the devil and threw her cell phone in a pond. And that was the end of her Friends and Family Plan.

Soon Everywoman was tired. It had been a long day with all the leaving and the doubting. She lay down for a rest under a nice live oak tree, covering herself up with her sweater and using her suitcase as pillow. She kept the nutcracker in her hand just for safety. Everywoman was no fool. Luckily, she passed through the night without incident but woke up the next morning feeling as if something was amiss. Sure enough, there on a rock next to a stream was a brawny armed, flaxen haired man, talking up her Good Looks and rubbing his finger along her upper thigh!
“Ooooh, Anders,” Good Looks cooed, “I love a little Danish in the morning.”
“Yeah, yeah, and a Swede in the afternoon,” Everywoman harrumphed as she stalked over. “Good Looks, what are you doing?”
Good Looks rolled her eyes at Everywoman. “You are such a party pooper. Listen, I’m tired of this journey. It’s positively giving me blisters. You go on ahead. Anders here is giving me a ride.”
Everywoman was devastated. She and Good Looks had been BFF since birth, and now she was being deserted . . . For a Man! She could not believe this was happening! Yet she knew all along that it would, just not so early in her journey.
“Peace be with you, Good Looks,” she said.
As for Good Looks, she never looked back. That’s what hurt Everywoman the most, or so she thought.
“Well, if I can’t have Good Looks, I might as well have a chocolate doughnut,” Everywoman said, gathering her stuff and walking toward the café. But when she got there and placed her order, she found that not only had Good Looks deserted her, she had also ripped her off. Everywoman’s Credit Card was gone!

Everywoman cried and cried. She started on her journey again, but she could barely walk, so busy she was wailing and gnashing her teeth, pulling her hair and rending her clothes. This was truly a fit of Biblical proportions. She staggered from one side of the road to another, back and forth, like a madwoman. Everywoman hardly paid attention to where she was going. This went on for some time, until she almost ran into a fish on a bicycle.
“Hey lady,” he bubbled, “Have you lost your wits?”
Everywoman looked around. Indeed she had! She had somehow left her Wits, and her suitcase with her supply of food and clean underpants back at the café. She was not even certain where she was any more. This was clearly not part of her plan. There was nothing to do but sit down and wail. And that she did.

Everywoman wailed so much that she barely heard the still, small voice just to her left.
“’Scuse me, ‘scuse me. Didn’t you forget somebody?”
Everywoman turned around. There, filing her teeth and nails, and wearing a bright red dress and black stripper pumps was indeed someone she forgot, her old friend Anger. Everywoman jumped up, hugged her buddy and they both danced a jig.
“Anger! Anger!” Everywoman said, “I thought everyone left me. I thought I was lost. And here you are! Where are we, by the way?”
“Right here at the Slough of Despond, silly goose. You remember it from the map. I was with you all the time. I’m always with you. I never desert you. You know that.”
“But how do we get into Freedom Land?” Everywoman asked. “I thought I had to be pure of heart. I thought I needed my Friends and Family plan.”
“Oh, Everywoman, Everywoman, Everywoman,” Anger tsked. “Didn’t you read ALL of the Holy Writ? You can still be pure of heart and walk with me to Freedom Land.”
“But, but, but,” Everywoman said. “I thought I’d need you to blow up the entrance because Mr. P_____ made the door and owns the key to all the locks!”
“No, no, no. You haven’t been using me correctly. You’ve been using me as a weapon. You need to use me as a tool. Mr. P_____ may own the all key to the locks, and he may have made the door, but there are ways to get in other than using me as a weapon.”
Everywoman leaned in closely and looked Anger right in the eye. “How, Anger, how?”
Anger said right back, “This is a good start, Everywoman. The first thing you need to do, instead of tuning me out, is listening to me. Here goes. . . . “

First They Came For Wisconsin

This blog announces the return of Ms. Fredonia Woolf, Esq. from a long hiatus. Recent events compel me to speak and take action, and I am here to tell you, brothers and sisters, they should compel you, too.

Once Ms. Freddie’s wits left her momentarily, and she considered leaving her warm, cozy Florida home for places more ideologically compatible. A liberal publication she subscribed to published an article on “livable cities,” and Ms. Freddie ventured forth on a sunny May day to visit them. She travelled across our fair land, from Burlington, to Madison, to both Portlands (Maine and Oregon), and many other places: all cold. IN MAY. Let us make one thing perfectly clear. Ms. Freddie in cold is like the Wicked Witch of the West in water. She doesn’t melt, but it ain’t pretty. The one thing about cold, though, it can sharpen one’s senses. Ms. Freddie considered that it was easy to be liberal in places like Madison, where most everyone else was liberal, vegetarian restaurants abounded, and people read books. Being liberal in places like Madison was actually conforming, and Ms. Freddie likes conforming about as much as she likes cold.

But that was then. This is now. And my how things change. This, brothers and sisters, is not the “change” Ms. Freddie was “hoping” for in 2008.

What is happening in Wisconsin – an “easy place to be liberal” – is a very scary example of how rights are being taken away from us, one by one. Republican legislators defied their constituency and the legislative process itself to dismantle public service workers’ collective bargaining rights. That means people like teachers, police officers, and firefighters (the very people who are supposed to teach us how to be good citizens and defend our freedoms, right?) can’t organize and negotiate for fair pay because THEY are called a drain on the public budget. In what universe is this democracy? In what universe is this freedom? In what universe is this America?

Do you remember that infamous statement by Martin Niemöller that came out of Nazi Germany:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.



Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.



Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.


Then they came for me,
but there was no one left to speak out for me.

Well, Ms. Freddie woke up this morning to read on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times, her newspaper of choice, this headline: “Next in line: Florida unions.” It is not just the unions, brothers and sisters. Voting rights have already been targeted. So have reproductive rights. In Florida, these are code words for minorities and women. The Times headline was just to the right of another from the national stage that read, “Tension, tears, and terror: A congressional hearing on Muslims is both defended and called a witch hunt.”

There is no place left where it is easy to be a liberal. There is no place left where it is easy to be a thinking, feeling, moral person who can remain silent and passive. Your only choice, brothers and sisters, is to live in the swamp like me. I don’t mean the literal swamp, with cypress trees and alligators. I mean that mental place that is outside of the mainstream: a space of radical resistance, philosopher bell hooks calls it. The swamp is the opposite of McDisneyworld, where your mind grows lazy from too much time in front of the shiny box, force-fed a diet of sugar and fat. The swamp is that free space inside you from which you think, organize, and act.

Ms. Freddie used to think she could go it alone in the swamp. She would be independent, a survivalist. Now, caught between a Marco Rubio rock and a Rick Scott hard place, she calls upon others to join her, sound their barbaric yawps, take up their word-weapons. They are coming for you, brothers and sisters, so don’t just sit there in silence. Remember Audre Lorde’s words: your silence will not protect you.