Back to the USA - Land of the Unfree

"No access to the lakefront,"  "No tresspassing"  "Private property,"  "Tresspassers will be prosecuted," "Private beach," " Private Road - no walking or biking," "Keep Out." 

Wow, I had forgotten how stuck I feel whenever I get back to the US. 

Granted - in Britain half a percent of landed aristocracy own 60% of the land - but everywhere there are public footpaths and bridleways, so walking, biking, horseback riding or having a picnic in a field, on a cliff, by the shore, next to a stream is never a problem. 

I regard free movement as part of my quality of life - to hell with a hundred feet of private beach front.  What's the point of THAT??   

Fracking Crazy!

The drilling rig is to arrive at a site in East Sussex today with drilling to commence on Saturday.

Follow this live Facebook Note for updates: https://www.facebook.com/notes/frack-free-sussex/cuadrilla

What are they up to?  Drilling in the London Banker belt, destroying fox hunting grounds, horse paddocks and sweeping views from hill top mansions is not the obvious course of action when a country is faced with pensioners’ plight in the face of rising energy costs.

So what is on their mind?

Fracked !

                                       

Fracking - the process of drilling deeper and deeper into the Earth and using more and more invasive methods of extracting methane gas from shale rock is symptomatic of the MALE approach to coping with fear: 

Impose yourself - control by all means - focus on ensuring survival of the species at all costs. 

 Frack!

Chimp

We all are trying to move along in a semi-coordinated three-beat, trying to avoid the obvious stumbles while keeping our elbows pointing outwards and our smiles frozen for best appearance. I have come to see myself as nothing more than a prototype of a human primate. I fulfill my role as a mother, friend and mate. I deploy a gamut of strategies to secure group acceptance and I avoid conflicts by backing down whenever the risk of losing are too high, which is usually when there is an aggressive male around. My handicap is that I am acutely aware of the plan Bs, the compromises and the second best options I am constantly willing to accept. My staggeringly keen awareness of the dirty underbelly of this human existence render contentment almost impossible. My coping skills are humor and playful frankness, but usually all I have to offer is honest despair. My moments of happiness are with the kids, which again, is a predictable outcome as a female human who had to accept her lot.

Fifteen Minutes

Jules: Mom, why is your watch fifteen minutes early? 

Me: If it were running on time, I would always be fifteen minutes late. 

Jules starts giggling. Me: Does that make any sense? 


Jules: No!

Hand me those Shoes!!

After years of married life with children, I have, despite my most fervent determination to the contrary, morphed into a doormat. I am seeing everyone off in the mornings and welcome them back at night. I patiently attend to the grubby side of family life - the underbelly of a well-tuned family saga of clean sheets, matched socks, starched shirts, and folded laundry (most of the time anyway). I am on the scene before anyone else and I rest only once all is as it was before the little steps and clunky big ones have all passed through my gateway. Unnoticed in the corner I sit and reflect on the tenacious nature of gender based inequality and its manifestation in an age that has brought forward the atomic bomb, climate change, hydraulic fracturing, mass shootings and record number genocides, as well as ubiquitous digital images of sexual domination and an unsustainable population growth. Oh well, but luckily when the mood tanks, there is always another pair of shoes to dote on...