Thursday, May 04, 2006

The Iowa Sisterhood moves southwest
I just returned from a five day meeting in Iowa City, Iowa, home of the University of Iowa (proudly a Big 10 School) and also the former capital of Iowa. It's not unlike Lawrence in atmospheric feel. It had a Quinton's, It's Brothers, LYS (local yarn store) that looked a lot like the Yarnbarn but not quite as cool, but the owner DID call me "honey". Our conversation went like this:
Me: I'm visiting and forgot all my knitting in a rush to get out the door this morning, then the kids at the front desk of my hotel sent me thru the hood to get over here.
LYS Owner: Did you drive down Iowa Street?
Me: Yes. It looked pretty rough, but I can see that a regentrification program is at work to improve things.
LYS Owner: Oh HONEY! That's where the tornado came down.
Me: Bye! (Duh!)

So I heard a lot about the Iowa Sisterhood, a group of pioneering female Unitarian (pre-merger with the Universalists) ministers who paved the way across Iowa for liberal religious movements, social justice, and women. I've been thinking a lot about ministering. It's hard not to when you drink beer with ministers all weekend. The dictionary says that "to minister" is to attend to the wants and needs of others. Pretty vague there. Pretty common to what most women have to do every day of their adult lives. I like to think that I am a member of my own sisterhood. The I-70 Sisterhood, or Jayhawk Sisterhood we could call it. We ladies, be we Queens or Goddesses or unaffiliated chick gang members who flock together as a gaggle of blondes (that's for you, SJ), minister to each other and spread the gospel of Feminism. I wore my "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" shirt recently, and when my son asked what a feminist was, I told him it was a person who believed that men were just as good as women. If that's the case, then I am not a feminist. I do not really believe that men are as good as women at most things. It's not mens' faults that they cannot be as good as women at the things that we do all the damn time without thinking, but that they do not value the same things. They do not value the art of putting the clean dishes away where they belong. They do not value the simple pleasure of folding laundry. Maybe they do not value taking chaos and creating order, which is frustrating for me as I am a foot soldier in the war on entropy. Does it matter that my husband does not value sitting around with only members of his gender and doing practically nothing for hours? No, it does not, but he knows it has value for me. And that is what matters - respect for different values. I respect that my husband is obsessed with brewing beer, and is right this moment in the basement lovingly wrapping a blanket around one of his carboys, most likely cooing to it sweetly. He respects that sometimes I need to hang with my chicas and talk about absolutely nothing and everything all at once. R - E - S - P - E - C - T! Sock it to me.
posted by Rosie @ 5/04/2006 10:11:00 AM

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