The Lilith Blog

July 14, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

The Playboy and the Pencil Case

It was our turn to host Charlie, the school rabbit for the weekend.

It died.

Seeking to comfort my distressed children, we went to WH Smith, a large stationery shop to buy some coloured pencils.

‘Imma, there’s Charlie,’ my little one shouted. ‘They’ve put him on the pencil case. Look, he’s on the folder as well.’ Here, in full view, next to Minnie Mouse was the eponymous Playboy symbol plastered over a range of children’s stationary. ‘Can I have the pencil case?’ my little one asked.
‘What about Winnie-the-Pooh? It’s so cute,’ I replied.
‘I want Charlie. ’
Could Hugh Hefner ever imagined that one day, little girls would aspire to own Playboy branded stationary, blissfully unaware of its associated connotations?

‘But darling, it’s not Charlie. It’s a different rabbit – what about Minnie?’

‘Minnie is an idiot. I want the one with the rabbit.’

‘But don’t you understand, DARLING, you’ve been conned by this whole pink glittery thing. Can’t you see that even your sweet young kodesh teachers, freshly minted from a year at sem, are walking around school carrying pink folders, furry pencil cases and packets of cute mini neon highlighters suggesting a permanent state of infantile sexuality. Playboy represents the exploitation of women’s bodies and promotes a sexualized view of women that frankly, I find quite offensive. Don’t you see that by putting this cute logo on everything, the company is seducing unwitting young children into supporting this adult brand. Parents who buy this stuff are just colluding with the sex industry.’

She’s looking at me strangely. ‘What?’

‘Nothing. Choose something else – the rabbit is naked – it’s not very tznius and your teachers won’t like it in the classroom.’
I always play the modesty card when I am stuck. I am pathetic.

A newspaper cites Louise Evans, the head of media relations for WH Smith. “Playboy is probably one of the most popular ranges we’ve ever sold. It outsells all the other big brands in stationery …We offer customers choice. We’re not here to act as a moral censor.”
Of course not, that’s my job – Moral Mother. If only I had the same courage as Reverend Tim Jones – a vicar who found his 15 minutes of fame in the national media when he initiated a petition objecting to the sale of these goods to his local store and moved all the Playboy products to an empty shelf. This could have been an excellent spot of interfaith collaboration, but a rabbi-t was nowhere to be found.
We eventually settled on Minnie Mouse. After all, when Minnie and Mickey debuted together in the film Plane Crazy, she did not agree to his request for a kiss in mid-flight. Further, when Mickey eventually forced Minnie into a kiss, she heroically parachuted out of the plane. Minnie definitely had the makings of a Beis Yakov icon. Shame her skirts were just not long enough.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to The Jerusalem Post blog.

The Lilith Blog

July 11, 2008 by admin

Jewish Women Artists Emerge at Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Photographic Account

Catie Lazarus with the evening’s prize, a “schlep” bag containing a can of Meshugge-Nuts.

Co-sponsored by the Young Friends of the Museum and emceed by the very funny comic Catie Lazarus, the event was another in a long line of exciting programs being held at the museum, and a chance to see some talented artists — many of them women — before they hit it huge.

The evening opened with a great short set by the four-person “punk klezmer” ensemble Luminescent Orchestrii, including an original tune whose refrain went, “Who put the pudding in the punim?” You gotta love any band whose members came together “through their love of Balkan and Gypsy music.” But seriously, their eclectic mix of influences melded together well, and, at least as far as attire went, it was the bands’ female members, Sarah Alden and Rima Fand, who put the punk in punk-klezmer.

Eve Lederman telling a story, because that’s what professional storytellers do.

But the real stars of the evening were emcee Lazarus and fabulous storyteller Eve Lederman, co-author of Letters From My Sister: On Life, Love and Hair Removal. Lazarus kept the show moving along and the audience laughing (along with her jokes, not at her). My favorite lines were when Lazarus referred to the New York Times wedding page as “the Jewish sports page,” and when, while discussing ridiculous-sounding Upper East Side names for children, she said, “Just name the child Visa, it sounds slightly ethnic.”
Next to Lazarus’s energetic comedy, Lederman’s demeanor was calm and quiet, perhaps a deliberate device to make the audience listen all the more closely. And with a perfectly-timed delivery and impeccable writing, her tale-telling was a real treat. Her first story was about her one-time, same-sex sexual encounter with her best friend (a blond bombshell who I witnessed being accosted, loudly, in the bathroom by an overzealous audience member — “Are you the one from the story? Can’t miss you, a tall blond in a roomful of Jews!” — Oy.) The second story was about the aging owner of the Orchard Corset Shop, an old-time Lower East Side bra shop, and her Hasidic son who helps run the store. Orchard Corset is also the subject of Lederman’s documentary “A Good Uplift.”

The work of another talented female storyteller, filmmaker Pearl Gluck (“Divan”), was showcased as part of the big finale, Okunov’s fashion show. An excerpt from Gluck’s in-progress film about the designer kicked off the Okunov part of the night. Gluck’s work has taken a special interest in formerly-Hasidic rebels like the 21-year-old Okunov, who, endearingly, still pronounces clothing as “cloything.”

As much as the evening was about celebrating emerging artists, it was clearly also an opportunity to showcase the Museum of Jewish Heritage and attract a wider audience than the usual Jewish-museum-goers. I, for one, think it worked, bringing together a variety of Jews and non-Jews.  Case in point: At the cocktail hour after the performances, one of Okunov’s African-American models, hobnobbing with the artsy Jewish crowd, suggested Okunov design a bra made of kippot. How strange and strangely satisfying it was to tell her that one already exists.

In real life, the models looked more like robots — or human hangers — than dolls. Not a little disturbing.–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

July 10, 2008 by Mel Weiss

At 232, a New Day?

So, America turned 232 this past weekend. Unfortunately, it seems like lots of people aren’t feeling too good about the state of the nation. Polls indicate people are feeling bad about the direction America seems headed in. I think when kids studying U.S. political history look at our era, they’re going to be reading something about low national morale. Or at least, they should, because this feeling of low, which I think has passed beyond partisan lines.

And why not? Jobs are disappearing, the price of gas is skyrocketing towards European levels, food costs more both because grains cost more and because it costs more to ship it from place to place, and the government keeps listening to your conversations. This to say nothing of a never-ending war in Iraq, and a never-ending war on drugs at home. We’re not doing so hot in either. Morning in America, frankly, it’s not.

But we shouldn’t despair just yet, I think. I’ll admit, I’m curious. Despite all the hubbub about liberals being divided, and the fierce partisan divide, I wonder if we’re not, as a nation, slowly coming together. I wonder if I’ll get to see a wide-scale demonstration of American civic spirit. It’s a much talked-up phenomenon which I feel like I see on a small scale from time to time, but a main marker of my political growing-up has been disdain for the lack of civic interest—people simply seemed to discard the good of others if it interfered with good for them. This happens a lot in history, but when you’re born into “Morning in America,” it’s especially noticeable. Anyway, I feel a rumbling underground that we’re slowly getting there, that maybe America will react to this low by coming together for the common good.

And I hate to sound preachy here, but I do feel like liberal political philosophy encourages that. It’s a good moment for liberal causes when people come together to help one another through bad times—not issues like gay marriage, but more fundamentally populist ones, ones that actively value everyday people, like education, small-business support, national health and health care, etc. So I’m ready for a big swing to my side of the field. I learned most of my early we’re-all-responsible-for-each-other lessons from women, Jewish and otherwise, and my most recent love affairs with communal bettering have been via Jewish organizations that recognize we’re part of a larger community—not just an American community, but a global one.

I, for one, am ready to be a better neighbor. What do you think?

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

July 8, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

Much to Learn from Frum Women

Billed as the ‘largest kosher bakery in Europe,’ Mr. Baker is a great meeting spot, punkt in the heart of one of London’s main Jewish thoroughfares. Israeli taxi drivers, Polish builders, Slovakian au-pairs and Hendon housewives can all be found drinking coffee and eating fresh pastries in this huge bakery-cum-coffee shop.

In a country where trees are not adorned with notices and their tear-off telephone numbers, kosher shops are an important part of the information highway. Free notices about shiurim, items for sale and job vacancies within the community are common. Last Friday, I saw a 14 page booklet – The Gemach Database – on the information counter. An acronym for ‘Gemilut Hasidim’  (trans. acts of kindness), a Gemach is essentially an organisation that loans useful items for free. This Gemach Database has a comprehensive list of facilities including all the typical ones such baby equipment, bedding for extra guests, clothing, medical necessities and catering equipment. However, there are also the unusual ones including  ‘Humane pest control – animal friendly traps for catching mice, rats, squirrels, etc without harming them,’ ‘Bubble blowing machine for use at parties,’ and the ‘Cut Price Bris Service,’ (did they intend the pun?), while the most sensitive Gemach has to be the spare breast milk supplied by nursing mothers for premature babies.

Women in the religious community know how to organise themselves in ways that other communities can only dream of. I showed this Gemach database to a friend who is not connected to the religious community at all – she was very impressed and immediately labelled it as a ‘model of community empowerment, resource sharing and grass-roots social action.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘you’ve completely missed the point. This is just frum women doing what they do – it’s part of being frum and belonging to a community.’ While it may serve as a good example of the sociology of religion, it is more significantly, religion writ-large. These women keep the social engines well-oiled, organising the nitty-gritty of day to day life with total selflessness and modesty. ‘Social action’ is currently being touted as an important tool for strengthening Jewish identity – I’d say the wider community have a lot to learn from these women

–Modesty  Blasé

The Lilith Blog

July 8, 2008 by admin

Entry #3: Transcendence

Why does it feel impossible to imagine your mother as anything but that, when up until you she was everything but that?

I remember when I was eight years old. The sun peeking in, cool dew blanketing the lawn, her voice a tether rope pulling me from sleep. Her voice rod-stout and firmly soiled. My world moved in motion circling hers, child keeping up. These mornings we’d rise early, chain our mutt to the leash and leave my sister sleeping, cross the street and walk the gravel backroads around a forgotten lake. The early morning was an allergist’s dream, fields strewn with sword grass and cockleburs. Power walking now, as if collecting all the dew and laying it on our bodies. Body-damp, this was our morning ritual.

One day, my mother’s exercise routine changed. One day she laced herself in gumption and began to run. The mutt and I kicking at her heels, scraggly, chipped in motion. I remember the shock, the betrayal at her running. How could she? She was not my mother then, she was a woman running, pitted in her needs and not mine. Was I so ego-swelled? I remember her, lifting sheer out of her motherskin, part animal.

Why does it feel impossible to imagine her as anything but that when up until now she was everything but that? I circled back, this is what I saw.

Before the mother was a divorcee searching for love in the form of a man. Before the mother was a woman working for the wage and for the dream, scraping a marriage like leftovers, hoping for seconds. Before the mother was a peasant-dressed hippie on Haight Street was a hope-drenched hair-ironed college student was a brooding adolescent. Before the mother was a sensitive child was a take-charge toddler was a babe longing for less formula and more breast. Before the mother was a babe simply wanting more from a curtain-drawn mother.

Illness changed everything. I divorced my child role, I committed to every other. (Infancy.) I remember chemo weeks, driving away from the hospital with her asleep in the front seat, watching the dash marks on the road. At home tucked in bed, she slept dreamlike. I’d check in periodically, bare silhouetted head covered in shelled light. All of the rooms in the house felt quiet with the presence of a newborn. (Childhood.) I remember the importance of the spreadmarks of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the critical placement of pink sippy straws in gingerale, the devoutly watched movies of dogs as famed-heroes.

I remember senility too. (Senility I say.) When she fell face first in a bus station and my racing heart. Her declarations. ‘I’m never going to see my future grandchildren’ she’d bemoan, wrapped in a turban and facing the television. Or, ‘When you’re all at my funeral…’ I seized these moments urgent as opportunity. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you.’ I spoke to the whole room (the sleeping beagle; the stepfather, bifocaled and Sodoku-playing). Miraculously she conceded. Somehow my words secretly soothed her. Somehow she sensed my refusal to discuss her funeral plot was a rejection of her deterioration and a call out to live.

Who was she before mine?

Before the babe was a clot like a red comet arced in motion. Before the clot was nothing but sky, was a constellation punched into the shape of a woman’s body. Before we knew who we were we reached for each other high as constellations and motioned as comets would. Before we were joined we blanketed the sky, checkered in electric light. We weren’t always cut and jigsawed. We weren’t made for each other but here we are.

Who was I before hers?

I am still her child, but a juggler too, eyes skyward, each ball in flight.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

July 8, 2008 by admin

Knees and Shoulders: Even Modesty Should Have Its Limits

Modesty is in.

So proclaims a recent Newsweek article, “Girls Going Mild(er)”, that notes an emerging movement to encourage girls to dress modestly. And, right in line with this trend, is a line of dolls that encourages modest Jewish values in Jewish girls. While this trend certainly has its positive points, it also must lead one to ask, how modest is too modest?

Newsweek reports that a slew of websites and clothing companies are catering to

…a growing movement of “girls gone mild”—teens and young women who are rejecting promiscuous “bad girl” roles embodied by Britney Spears, Bratz Dolls and the nameless, shirtless thousands in “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Instead, these girls cover up, insist on enforced curfews on college campuses, bring their moms on their dates and pledge to stay virgins until married.

Not surprisingly, many of these modesty-promoting organizations are rooted in religion, and one of the major proponents of this movement is an Orthodox Jew, Wendy Shalit, who has written books encouraging modesty.

Now a trend of modesty may seem all well and good, but the pressing question is, as Jennie Yabroff asks in Newsweek, “[I]s the new modesty truly a revolution, or is it merely an inevitable reaction to a culture of increased female sexual empowerment…?” Put another way, if we consider scantily-clad, uber-feminine, style-obsessed celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton representatives of a first wave of the post- (read: anti-)feminist backlash, is modesty merely its second wave, a reactionary movement taking women back into the kitchen (barefoot and pregnant)?

To show the potential of this movement to be just that, I want to consider the modesty trend in light of a true story that a friend related to me recently.

His relative from Israel, a young woman, came to New York for a visit and, like most Israelis visiting the States, wanted to go shopping. She was taken to the discount downtown department store Century 21 and headed to the lingerie department to look for bras. After picking out her selections, she went to the fitting room to try them on but was told that she could not try bras on in the fitting room. So she did the logical thing: she left the fitting room and proceeded to strip, trying the bras on in the middle of the store, for all to see.

While this is not the way most of us would behave in the situation, and not behavior we would consider modest, I can’t help but admire this woman’s moxie. The story reminds me that the opposite of being modest is being bold, and that a little or a lot of boldness is often required to get what you want. And so, when I think about the focus on teaching our daughters to be modest, I worry that what starts with encouraging them to cover their bare shoulders will end with encouraging them to stifle their opinions, desires and ambitions.

Take the Jewish-values line of Gali Girls dolls referred to earlier. It’s a nice idea to have a line of dolls that model Judaism for young girls — dolls that they can relate to and that can be used as a tool with which to teach Jewish ritual and values in a fun and natural way. Plus, the line of historical Gali Girls, which come with books about them like American Girl dolls do, sound really interesting (there’s one about a girl in a Jewish community in China).

But what’s not as nice is the internet video ad that sells the Gali Girls as a modest alternative to the scantily clad Barbie-type dolls that are teaching young girls to dress inappropriately. The problem with that message is twofold (at least). First, implying that dolls, rather than everything else in popular culture, are the culprits encouraging girls to dress inappropriately is just plain silly. Second, the idea of limiting Jewish girls’ play only to the realm of Jewish girls and women is (and here’s where the Orthodox world is going to disagree with me) potentially damaging to Jewish girls and the women they will one day become.

For all the criticism of Barbie dolls as being bad role models for girls, it’s been my experience that children don’t look to inanimate dolls as role models; rather, they use dolls to act our their own imagined stories and games, which can be taken from wherever. For example, while my own childhood Barbie games tended to involve the stuff of the romantic comedies and teenage dating movies I watched as a kid, I remember playing with a more religious friend whose Barbie games revolved around Jewish weddings. Barbie was the kallah and Ken was the chattan. Same dolls, very different storylines.

The point is, it doesn’t necessarily matter what the intent of the doll-makers is — children will use the dolls for their own purposes, based on their own experiences or their own wild imaginations. The Gali Girls may come with Shabbat candles to light but they can just as easily be used to act out the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or even a Brittany Spears video, or — God forbid — the story of Mary and Joseph.

However, that said, I wonder how much limiting children’s play only to dolls with such a specific and modest intent as the Gali Girls might also make the scope of their imagination more modest. The one good thing about Barbie is that she can do everything. She’s a rock star, a news anchor, a mom, an athlete, a beauty queen and everything in between. Though it may be subtle, the plethora of Barbies out there shows little girls the variety of possibilities for their own lives. Even the American Girl dolls teach kids about aspects of American history and culture that are different from their own.

Whether it’s Gali Girls or not (and I really have no problem with the dolls themselves), the idea expressed in that video ad of limiting girls’ play only to dolls that look and act just like they do, or like their Bubbe thinks they should, is just another way to shelter religious girls and stifle their potential ambitions for their adult selves.

Not to mention making something that’s supposed to be fun and expansive — playtime — just plain dull.

–Rebecca Honig Friedman

The Lilith Blog

June 30, 2008 by Modesty Blasé

What Is It with Religious Women and Sex and the City?

There was a text on my phone the other day: “Come and see Sex and the City and raise money for underprivileged kids at the same time.” Hundreds of religious women are flocking to see Sex in the City. ‘It’s a charity thing,’ said one. ‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ protested another. Seems to me that the money collected might be better spent on a bit of stomach stapling for these SATC doppelgangers from the London suburbs of Hendon and Hampstead Garden Suburb.

What is it with religious women and SATC? Carrie’s masochistic relationships with men (before Mr. Big decides to commit), Miranda’s accidental single
motherhood (before Steve decides to commit), Samantha’s ruthless pursuit of sex without love (before Smith decides to commit) are hardly the values of Orthodox women determined to pursue marriage and family. Even Charlotte, the WASP-turned-JEW, relies on all the negative stereotypes of contemporary Jewish life to stake her claim: married to the wealthy lawyer, reveling in materialism, and relentless complaining about nothing. Of course, she does all this in an apron making gefilte fish.

Carrie’s life is the antithesis of the religious woman, and yet it is funny how the lure of supporting a soup kitchen will get hundreds of them out in their heels to watch Carrie’s denouement. Are married religious women so bereft of imagination that they have to rely on SATC for entertainment? Are their husbands so boring? Similarly, it would be easy to think that religious single women have nothing in common with the untrammeled sexuality of Carrie and her friends. Au contraire. While the necklines are higher and the skirts are a little longer, single religious women are also looking for Mr. Big. Carrie and her friends might not be subject to a community of rabbis, but they are also surrounded by smug marrieds regarding them with suspicion, pity and ambivalence. Smug marrieds who should stick to texting each other and stop bothering me.

–Modesty Blasé

Cross-posted to The Jerusalem Post’s blogs

The Lilith Blog

June 30, 2008 by Mel Weiss

Get Off the Sauce, People

It’s funny how a news cycle—and even an important policy debate—can kind of sneak up on you. When did offshore drilling become such a hot topic? How is it possible, in this post-Inconvenient Truth era, we’re somehow still having a debate about whether or not to radically curtail our consumption of oil?

Jon Stewart summarizes the issue well when he says our energy policy is now: “I have a cocaine problem. I’m out of cocaine. What say we turn the kids’ rooms into cocaineries.” Look, I understand that people are hurting now. The price of gas is actually not the commodity price hike I’ve most noticed vis-à-vis my own wallet, because I live in a big city with vast mass transit, I don’t own a car and I rarely ride in one. But I read, I hear people talking (and I pay more for shipped goods, too). And I grasp that we need some serious help here. Now, I am not a scientist, nor an economist, nor an engineer nor even a consumer in this field, so I can’t tell you what the solution is by a long shot. But even I can begin to understand that some proposed answers are just ridiculous.

For starters, there’s the ridiculous gas-tax holiday plan, supported by John McCain and, back in the day, Hillary Clinton. This holiday plan,
which at most would save the average American sixty cents a day, provides little incentive for consumers to change habits or the market to provide affordable alternatives except for the fact that it really doesn’t help very much. Sure, sixty cents a day may sound like a lot, but when you’ve seen gas jump over a dollar per gallon in a year (and barely any effect on the size of tanks) you get to thinking that maybe we need to have a little more foresight than that.

So, we can either throw a lot of money to science and to local non-carbon efforts at stuff like energy efficiency and non-oil, non-ethanol fuel, or we can…go to offshore drilling? Seriously? These are my options?

It’s not like we’re all strangers to the politicization of science or its distortion for political purposes (“partial-birth abortion”?), but this is kind of worse than that. This is messing with the heads of people who are hurting amidst price hikes on a lot of consumer items previously taken for granted, and telling them that if we start drilling pretty much anywhere we can, this will bring the price of gas down to something affordable and is the better option right now than, say, federal loans for hybrid cars. Oh, yeah, and that we should all be mad at the environmental lobby, because this is all their fault.

We’ve got a problem. Actually, we’ve got a problem and a problem with our problem, if you know what I mean. The Talmudic sage Rav warns his son in Pesachim 113a not to take drugs, because “the addiction to them will take its toll.” We’re that kid at the party who’s had too much cheap beer, and what we need is both the concerned friend (that should be the government) who will take our keys our keys away and find us a ride home. We need to let that happen—in fact, we need to encourage it to happen. Desperately searching for what will ultimately be a few more hits of oil isn’t going to save us in the long run. It’ll barely save us in the short run. So let’s put our keys in the bowl and admit we have a problem, enter the fray for better mass transit and recognize that no short-term tax “holiday” or new-and-barely-offshore-environmental-disaster-waiting-to-happen is going to put this right. We’re going to have to do some serious work.

–Mel Weiss

The Lilith Blog

June 25, 2008 by admin

Entry #2

‘I have a secret to tell you.’ The room is painted mustard. Her voice is a thread  above a whisper. They watch her like a dreamed President. She stands before them with a promise; they all want the truth. No one is older than 10 in her 5th-grade classroom. 15 sets of eyes are sunken into 15 watching heads. 15 gangly bodies hunker down in 15 little desks. Expectant, giddy, they lean like rabbits at the stick.

After months away, she’s come back to them. Back to this school, this room, these wooden desks, this nubby carpeting. They wrote her cards because she was sick. “When will you come back?” “Get better and come back soon!” Their questions seemed to chirp and pucker, voices unused and new. She was their teacher, and they missed her.

She stood before them, speaking in edifying, lesson-planned tones. “I’m sorry I was away for so long, but I was sick…with cancer. Does anyone have any questions for me about it?” Hands shoot up high as pipe dreams. No one’s ever asked them something like this. It feels like an opportunity. It’s when they’re done asking that she whispers it.  “I have a secret to tell you. This isn’t my real hair; it’s a wig (eye-bulge, jaw-drop). I’m not telling any other classes, it’s a secret. And…if you close your eyes, I’ll show you.” A fellow teacher in the back of the classroom stifles her laughter, such moxie.

Fifteen sets of eyes shut like snakes in the night, 15 bodies feel bright and chosen. When they open, she’s before them, bald, transformed, Queen-like.

The next day she sees one of her fifth-graders in the hallway. The girl scampers over squinty-eyed, “Is that a wig?” she wants to know. My mother nods. The wave of specialness returns to the girl. She feels relieved that it’s just as she was told the day before. No one’s hiding, despite the costuming.

–I. Kramer

The Lilith Blog

June 25, 2008 by admin

Is the Grass Always Greener?

It’s a little ironic to write about rural life—Jewish or not Jewish—as this week, I’m writing from Washington, DC. I’m eating amazing brioche with apples at Patisserie Poupon and watching the diverse parade of people. A young couple with their tiny two-week-old baby. And elderly woman with beautiful white hair sipping espresso with a short elderly man with an amputated leg. A young man with at least sixteen pierces reading philosophy. (Really…no lie.)

Over the last few days, I’ve walked from Dupont Circle to Georgetown, through the Mall and around town. No one knows me. No one stops me on the street. My hair, suffering the effects of increased humidity and a not-great night of sleep, has been a mess, but no one has noticed.

It’s not just diversity I miss.
It’s anonymity—it is easy to disappear in the city.

In New Hampshire, there is no such thing as anonymity. If this café was in my town, I would have spoken to all the other coffee drinkers. In my rural community, when I walk down the street/write on my laptop/shop for shoes, people recognize me. They say hello. And if they don’t, they introduce themselves.

In a small town, everyone knows when you’re having a bad day. Once, after scolding my daughter in the market, there were three messages on my machine:

Sarah, I heard you were having a bad day. Can I help?
Sarah, I heard from D and she said you looked pretty upset.
Sarah, this is your mother. Please call. (Well, that message comes all the time, no matter where I live!)

Anonymity is one of the things you give up when you enter a rural community (along with great Chinese food and the opportunity to wear all my high-heeled shoes). When you live in a small town, you give up the ability to disappear, to run your errands without interruption, to have a bad day unnoticed.

But you also never celebrate or deal with any of those bad days alone.

–Sarah Aronson