2 kids home sick, get ready for a stream of blogs

Hi all,

I’m desperately trying to complete the middle grade fantasy-adventure I’m writing with my husband, thus I’ve hardly blogged for the past month. I think that’s a record of apathy for me, given my blogging addiction. There’s so much I wanted to post about including the new releases I saw with my kids: Annie, Selma, and Into the Woods; we streamed Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken; I read and loved Brooke Shields excellent memoir There Was A Little Girl about growing up with an alcoholic parent. At this point, I’ll have to skip my annual frustration about gendered Christmas and sexist specials (This year my kids and I all cracked up watching Rudolph when the dad tells the mom she can’t go look for her lost kid because “it’s man’s work.” I do feel grateful my children are at least aware of this bullshit, that I’ve done my best to help them get that even if its normal to see sexism, it shouldn’t be.) Right now, I’m reading Watership Down, I talked my 11 year old into getting the book because she just got a rabbit, but I stole it from her. I’m on Chapter 7 and not one– NOT ONE– female rabbit has had a speaking part, and that includes legends of rabbit mythology the rabbits tell each other. The author, Richard Adams, writes in his introduction that Watership Down started as a story he told his two daughters. Two daughters! And no female characters. WTF? Please don’t tell me the rabbit world is “naturally” a patriarchy. These rabbits can speak English but we can’t imagine gender equality for them? And they worship male gods? ARGH. But wait– all I wanted to write in this blog is I have 2 kids home sick. We are stationed in front of the TV watching “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” on PBS (after just watching Curious George. Next will be “Cat in the Hat” all shows starring males with male characters in the title.) So that’s my excuse for blogging today. I’m going to try and catch up.

4 thoughts on “2 kids home sick, get ready for a stream of blogs

  1. Oh. Watership Down was one of my favorite fantasy books. It came out while I was in college. It’s funny. I was taking the newly created Women’s Studies courses at San Diego State but I never noticed the discrepancies in the book. I guess I separated them from one another.

  2. Real live rabbits are actually quite hierarchical in their social structure, and it’s the females who rule the roost. When I read the book I just change the gender of each and every character in my head and it mostly works. It’s a frustrating exercise though.

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