I'm back and ready for action!

Dearest Readers (though there may only be one or two),

It's been a good month since I last posted anything. Luckily, LR has been holding down the fort with some exquisite posts complete with fantastic adjoining visuals. August ended with an amazing trip to Seattle and a quick sailing adventure around the San Juan Islands (pictures to come). Then it was a rough couple weeks personally and economically. It might have been hormones, it might have also been the stock market. Did anyone else notice a change in their mood? I managed to sneak in another trip up to San Fran to see LR. We spent a lovely morning drinking tea and discussing the topics we like most, life, art, and feminism or more importantly, the intersection of these concepts and practices.

I know everyone is about Palined out, but I came across this article on the New York Times website I wanted to share. Although I don't quite agree with Ms. Warner's Elle Woods analogy to Palin, I have met a lot of women who suffer from "Impostor Syndrome" (myself included) and wonder when we as women are going to start to be honest with ourselves. Conforming to an image created by the media about how a woman should look, dress, and act does us a disservice at demonstrating what we are truely capable of when it comes to tackling major issues.

Republican women may be rallying around Sarah Palin because she is someone they can relate to, but her brazen self-confidence is one of the things I can't stand about her. She is unwilling and unable to show her insecurities because that would make her appear weak and timid. These are the very things that make us able to relate to each other as human beings. Not to mention that fact that women are generally thought to be more nurturing and thereby better able to encourage and support others who might need some help gain true confidence rather than the false sense of self that makes Palin out to be the "frontierswoman". Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I am sick to death of this power-hunger, winner-take-all, Manifest Destiny complex that many Americans have and feel like they need to have in order to achieve individual success.

Which brings me to my point. How are we measuring success these days? A failed economy, a country almost 10 trillion dollars in debt to countries like China and Saudi Arabi, a sensless war that continues, an abysmal healthcare system, the list goes on. Conforming to a patriarchal society hasn't really gotten us very far in terms of looking out for everyone's best interest. So let's ditch the "mavericks" and look to the community organizers, because it's all about unification and solidarity baby. I hear socialism calling in the death knoll of corporate capitalism.