Hello, Again!

My hiatus is over, and I am returning to the world of blogging! I have a lot of catching up to do; to speed up the process here are some quick updates:

1) I am doing recruiting work for the Catholic Volunteer Network, CVN. They help people find service opportunities, like my VSC year. Check them out here. I did training with them in DC for a weekend, during which I met some awesome people and decided to be excited about grad school again.

2) I want to give a shout out to Ana, Julia, Wendy, and Emily as well as my mother and her sister, who have been awesome support for me over the past two weeks. I've always known the women in my life were amazing, but this just made it hit home all the more. Most, if not all, of you ladies read this blog: thanks! <3

3) Lots and lots of testing. I'm ready to be a student in the classroom again, but I am not thrilled about having to study again.

4) The Great Move to Ohio happens soon. Virginia is protesting with all her might, in the form of a 5.9 earthquake. Sorry, my dearly beloved state, but have no fear: our separation is not forever!

Hiatus

During the ups and downs of the move from the 'burg to NoVA, I considered taking a break from blogging. I promised myself, when I started this blog, that it would not be an emotional crutch for me. Instead, I just cut back posts, assuming things would settle once I moved home. Now, I am finding my life more emotionally turbulent than it has been in a while. In honor of removing the temptation to vomit emotion all over my loyal readers, I am taking an official hiatus from the blog for at least two weeks. I will be in touch again, loyal readers, when I am in Ohio and officially a full-time student once more!

Day-Maker #40

This afternoon I noticed, in a window across the room from me, that it was raining. When I glanced to the window closer to me, there was no rain! I stepped outside, where I discovered that my house was right on the rain line : on the west side of the house, we had a summer shower; on the east side, the world was dry.

Homecoming

My brief stay in NoVA is already 1/3 of the way over. Since I lack both gainful employment and formal school-time, I have dedicated a good deal of time to seeing people. As I bop from place to place, I am discovering the sure signs of homecoming:

1) Talk of politics. My homecoming coincided with a beautiful example of Washington politics at their most agreeable. In addition to the glory of the debt deal, Republican candidates for the 2012 election are starting to pop up. These events keep me entertained as friends and family keep analyzing and offering opinions on them.

2) Highways. In NoVA, we gossip about our highways the way stereotypical small towns gossip about people. And with the new construction of HOT lanes on the beltway, I-495 provides endless conversation, and we are constantly looking for detours and other routes.

3) Fresh tomatoes. Nothing says summer at home like garden-ripe tomatoes pulled from the backyard to color a salad, or be eaten on their own. I tend to forget what real tomatoes taste like until I eat one from my father's garden.

4) Mosquitoes that eat me. Part and parcel with the garden, unfortunately. The only place on earth where mosquitoes genuinely like me is in the backyard garden, when I am picking those tomatoes that I love.

5) Starbucks. In general, I avoid chain coffee shops and try to find local places to satisfy the love of coffee shops I discovered with Ana in St. Louis. However, we have essentially no local places in my neck of the woods, and Starbucks provided a home for my particular subset of the high school youth group. I'm still friends with those two lovely ladies and whenever two or three of us are gathered, it happens at Starbucks.

6) Decaf tea. For some reason, I don't buy a lot of it on my own. But when I'm at home, I drink it like there's no tomorrow.

7) Friends and family. Really, it's people who make home. And while I'm missing a few specific individuals like mad, I have a blessed gathering of awesome people close to me!

Day-Maker #39

Video-chat makes my life happy. It is awesome to be able to see faces far away.

Feminist Leanings

If I haven't said it enough on here, or out loud in frustration, exasperation, or excitement, here it is again: I am seeking what it means to be a true feminist. And how to balance feminism and Catholicism, two interrelated aspects of myself. This search takes up space in the back part of my mind almost constantly and on some occasions rises to the surface.

Yesterday, my mother saved a newspaper article for me about the rise of a new feminism. The headline reads, "Evangelical women create their own brand of feminism." (The online version has about 3 different headlines, none of which are quite the same as the print one.) It's a trend I noticed two summers ago during my internship with SFLA. Women bringing their femininity to the forefront as they rise to power on the Republican side of the aisle. I went to an event on Capitol Hill hosted by Concerned Women for America, one of the groups mentioned in the article. (We were subsequently evacuated from the Capitol building.)

According to Miller, this new branch of feminism combats the traditional left-leaning of feminism by presenting strong women with strong right-wing tendencies. These women also see traditional "family values" (specifically marriage and motherhood) as a source of strength. I love that women are complicating narrow notions of feminism, especially the idea that a feminist is pro-choice; I want to be, to use Miller's phrase, a "pro-life butt-kicker."

However, this new brand of feminism does not satisfy me. Apart from the obvious problem that I do not subscribe to many conservative ideals, I have fairly significant issues with other aspects of the movement that Miller describes. Michele Bachmann, the example of the new feminist, "credits her professional success to the submission of her will to Jesus and her husband." The new feminist is "a Christian wife and mother, above all." Marriage and motherhood are beautiful, valuable, and important vocations. But attaching supreme value to them excludes many women called to other vocations. Some women are single or have no children for now; others are single and have no children as more permanent state of life. They too belong under the umbrella of feminism.

So I thank Bachmann and Palin for their contribution to the discussion surrounding feminism. I'm glad they've come to the table and posed questions and challenges. They just haven't given the answers for which I am searching.