The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian story about a world where Christian Fundamentalists have taken over the government of the United States and suspended the Constitution. Women have NO rights. Minorities are expelled – Jews are specifically discussed, but there is no mention of any other ethnicity other than white. There are also fertility problems that are, naturally, blamed on women – not men. The women who are deemed to be fertile are declared to be Handmaids.

Handmaids are forced to join an organization that brainwashes them into subservience and obedience. Once they are officially inducted they are identified by the red dresses and white wimple. The Handmaids are sent to “postings” where they are expected to become pregnant by the male head of the household (Commander or member of the government) during a ceremony where the Wife is present. Each Handmaid lives with this “family” for two years during this effort to conceive. If no child is born, she is moved to another posting. If she fails to conceive after three different postings, she is sent to “the colonies” to clean up toxic waste and die.

There are three other classifications for women in the world of The Handmaid’s Tale. They are Wives (who wear blue dresses and are married to the Commanders), Marthas (who are domestic servants and wear green uniform dresses) and Econowives (who wear stripped dresses and are married to lesser men in the government). There are no old women in this society. When women of little status become too old to work, they are also shipped off to “The Colonies.” Women (of all status levels) are also not allowed to read or write as the current government sees teaching women to read and write is one of the mistakes that society made in the past.

Now I know that the story I’ve described so far does not sound like a fun and cheery read. It’s not and it doesn’t get any better – though it is a well-written story. However, I do feel that it is important to read stories like this from time-to-time because we can see some of the elements of this cautionary tale in US society today. The Tea Party, the rise of mega-churches and fundamentalist Christianity, the vitriol against immigrants, gays, and other religious philosophies like Judaism, Islam, Atheism, and other belief systems that do not conform to the majority’s belief systems.

I would recommend this book to all women, teenage girls and men who love strong women. The world portrayed in The Handmaid’s Tale could come to pass if it is allowed to through in-action and apathy. As with all prejudices and systems of hate, people of good and moral character have to speak up and say “Stop” in order to prevent the folly such systems would bring. Parables like The Handmaid’s Tale warn us of what could happen in order to make us aware and enable us to avoid going down that undesirable path.

Overloaded Donkey Cart OR My Life as a Donkey

The last couple of months have been “interesting.” There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” 2010 has definitely been that for me! In the last couple of months my post-concussion syndrome headaches have reasserted themselves. They haven’t been as bad as they were initially, but they’ve still been very hard to deal with. I’m on a different headache preventative Rx, but they still come and go. They just make dealing with everyday life difficult. So I decided to make a few changes in my life in order to try to relieve stress and, hopefully, prevent headaches.

1. I decided to take a break from school. I’m not quitting. I’m not even stopping working on my dissertation. I’m just taking a few months off from classes. I’m thinking that I will start back up again after the New Year. I’ve just been so tired with everything and everyone but school has made the sacrifices for me. Work has been wonderful. My family and friends have been supportive. Mark has been phenomenal! I just need to take some time to relax a bit.
2. I’ve decided to stop watching so much TV. I have already cut out the commercials by recording everything I watch on DVR first, but so much of TV is just pure drivel lately. Even the “educational” channels like Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, and Biography have turned to mush with sensational, shallow, and hollow TV shows. It’s really quite sad… Not even the SciFi (now Syfy) Channel has embraced the lowest form of SciFi for movies and gone away from its original mission and started showing “professional” wrestling and Ghost Hunters.
3. To replace all of my TV watching I’ve decided to read more. I suddenly find myself in various stages of several types of books, depending on my mood. I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (more on that later…). I’m also reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Ethics: The Heart of Leadership, Socialnomics (as an Audible.com book), and Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (another Audible.com book). All are interesting and the topics vary pretty widely.
4. I’ve also decided to take on a mini-project called Photo365. The idea is to take one photo each day for a year and post it on the web to share. Yes, this is another social media thing. I’m going to start on September 1st and go through August 31st, 2011. Once I start uploading photos, I’ll post them on http://365project.org/ and share them here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
5. I also plan to blog more often. I’m considering starting some series on life, photography, interesting questions to ponder, the aforementioned reviews of what I’m reading, and probably some op-ed pieces too.
6. I’ve taken a break from Toastmasters. I was in two clubs and was also being encouraged to participate in leadership roles. While I enjoy the Toastmasters program and have learned a LOT about public speaking, I find that a) I want to dive in and fully participate right before b) I collapse in an exhausted heap from even thinking about diving in and participating fully. I will return to it, but I just found myself having to say “No” and feeling lousy because I really wanted to say “Yes” to everything I was asked to help with.
7. Finally, I’m going to get into an exercise regimen. I joined Curves and really enjoy the program, but all of the headaches I’ve been having, coupled with all of the pressure I’ve been under lately, have made getting there to DO the exercise quite difficult. Starting Monday, I’m getting back on that horse and will go AT LEAST 3 days each week.

Have you ever had to do anything like what I’ve done here? How did you handle it? Any advise? Please comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Shasta is the Yellow Lab...

In the last month-and-a-half my husband and I have had to deal with one figurative blow after another. It started with my incident on December 9th, continued with 3-4 weeks of a head cold while I was on short-term disability, and has come to another two points in the last week.

First our oldest dog, Shasta (4 years old), became very lethargic and was not her happy, active self.  Thursday we took her in to the veterinarian for the second time and had x-rays taken. They indicated that she had a blockage between her stomach and small intestine. She required surgery. Let me tell you, surgery for a dog is expensive!!! We had to drain our savings account and make a withdrawal from my husband’s 401k to pay that bill and meet some other challenges as well. There was no other way we could cover everything. Thankfully, Shasta is home and doing well now.

On top of this, Mark’s truck has stopped working. We don’t know why it’s not working because there is no check engine light which means the truck won’t give us a code to tell us what’s wrong. Mark is taking it to a mechanic tomorrow and we have some funds set aside to handle that crisis, but we’re not certain yet if it’s going to be enough.

The lesson we will take from this past month is to plan for contingencies quite a bit better. We were lucky to have some funds in reserve, but I think we need to become more serious about saving for both crises and for things like vacations. There are lots of places that Mark and I would like to travel to, but we have no active plan for saving for those trips.

The frustration we are feeling right now would probably be less if we were saving more – a retirement fund (which we both already have) along with a separate contingency fund account (which we sort of have) and another vacation fund account (which we don’t have at all). Now we just have to figure out how to get ALL that set up and how to afford it along with our other obligations. Time for some long-term thinking… Do you have any suggestions?

Image Credit: The “Budget Pie” image was retrieved on January 25, 2010 from Village Park using Google Images.