Equal Rights the Hard Way: Pushing for what you want

Equal Rights the Hard Way: Pushing for what you want

reprinted from The Davidsonian (the Davidson College student newspaper)

Davidson, North Carolina, September 24, 1982

This past summer I worked in the laundry at Yellowstone Park, only five hundred feet from Old Faithful. Old Faithful continued to build pressure and erupt every 72 minutes or so, but I noticed a different pressure rise in me and other women who had everything to gain and nothing to lose from the ratification of the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment]. At the laundry I saw firsthand the need for sexual equality on the job, but I didn’t expect such frustration dealing with these problems. Davidson has probably made me more of a feminist than I might be if I attended a more liberal school. My alma mater displays chambermaids on pedestals, and its women’s tennis team hitchhikes to tournaments, all of which forces me to oppose vehemently its sexist nature. Unfortunately, the state of nature out west reflects sexism elsewhere in the world.

There are two sections in the Yellowstone laundry—a wash floor and a finish floor. The finish floor consists of the drying, ironing, folding, stacking, counting, and loading of 15,000 pieces of linen a day—from towels to napkins to pillow cases. We also checked sheets for stains of various types, but I’ll save those stories for another week. Tedious and unstraining, finish floor proved to be the same day after day.

Wash floor, on the other hand, tests not only one’s strength and endurance but also one’s mental capacity to operate steam valves and 350-pound washers and work with chemicals. Usually the big guys, like Yogi and Boo Boo, work wash floor. Yet my first day at the laundry I was told some women in the past had worked wash floor. I said I would like to work wash floor. No response. Not until the middle of July did I finally learn the mechanics of lifting five-hundred-pound bins into extractors using a two-ton crane and experience strained muscles, aching feet, and hands covered with chemical burns, blisters, and broken skin. Being a masochist, I asked to work wash floor the next day but was refused:

You aren’t strong enough. You don’t have the muscles in your arms, chest and back that you need. You’d have to give 150 percent to match a guy physically. Men and women don’t labor well together. It’s too strenuous mentally as well as physically—you need time to recover.

This reply infuriated me. Who could tell me what I could and could not do? Who had the right to dictate my physical limitations?

After working finish floor diligently a few weeks, I again asked to work wash floor.

No, we can’t afford to replace one of the regular wash floor guys with you, and anyway, you’ll be leaving in a month, and we don’t have time to train you.

Why outdo myself and run my body ragged just to prove I could do the work? All laundry workers were paid the same, worked the same hours, and enjoyed the same watermelon at break. My friends on finish floor were singing, laughing, and having a rollicking time. Why work a wash floor position that would put me in contention for the Miss Body Building contest or Davidson Homecoming Queen!

The week before leaving I figured I had nothing to lose and asked to work wash floor one last time. Again I was refused. Upset, I went to my female supervisor and asked for help. This is what she said:

You can talk all you want about an equal rights amendment and equal opportunity. You can go to the head of personnel and claim sexual discrimination. You can think you have the right to work wash floor and shouldn’t have to beg for the job. Fine. But unless you are willing to push for what you want, equal rights doesn’t mean a thing. Men have to push for what they want, and so do women. Nothing gets handed to you on a silver platter. You have to get in there, work until it kills you, and push! Then and only then will you achieve equality.

The next morning, my day off, I was called to the laundry; a guy didn’t show for work, and the needed an extra person on wash floor. Of all the people with the day off, they asked me! I was ecstatic! And even with a full crew, I kept working wash floor that last week.

Laundry work, usually associated with subjection of women, became my liberation, for although laundry work is sex-biased, it forced me to overcome the norm and be aggressive. Despite ERA’s defeat, I personally ensured my rights as a woman. And until an equal rights amendment is ratified, individual struggles for equality must suffice. Where does that leave us here at Davidson College with its sexist admissions policies? [For every three males admitted, only one female was admitted.] I figure we can either turn the laundry into an admissions office or turn the admissions office into a laundry.

Lindsay Biddle

Class of 1983

Unforgettable Communion

Unforgettable Communion

I was born on the Mississippi River, in Memphis, Tennessee, and my last residence in the U.S.A.—before moving to Scotland in 2004—was approximately 900 miles upstream, in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The difference between Southern culture and northern ways is still as vast as the difference between the early 1960’s of my childhood and today half a century later.

For example, whenever I hosted a meal at my home in the Twin Cities area, guests often took it upon themselves to bring a “salad” (if a concoction of canned fruit and whipped cream and mini marshmallows truly qualified as such, but that’s what they called it) or a casserole (which should be renamed a “cannerole” since most of the ingredients came out of cans), even after I had politely turned down their polite offers to contribute a side dish. I, of course, thanked them and made room on my already-crowded serving table. Later, I had to tell myself that these Scandinavian types were not being rude by arming themselves with extra food. When I had said, No, you don’t need to bring anything, they probably thought I was just being modest and meant, You don’t need to bring anything but it’s fine if you do.

Where I grew up it would have been an insult to the hostess—not that she would’ve shown it—to arrive with an unexpected dish. Even at a potluck the hostess was in charge of the menu. However it was customary to ask a Southern hostess if she would like some assistance in the kitchen. It’s not that she needed assistance—she was perfectly capable of turning out the meal by herself—but it was a matter of courtesy. Yet in Minnesota I had to be assertive if I needed a helping hand; only on one rare occasion did a guest hop up from the table and help me clear the dishes—and I married him.

Having lived all over the United States and now residing in a foreign country, where we enjoy hosting people from different backgrounds, I like to play anthropologist and study various styles of hospitality. “Etiquette” sits right beside “Religion” in the Dewey Decimal library cataloging system—and rightly so, as religion could be defined as social organization in the big picture (that is, our relationship to God, oneself, and others), while etiquette could be defined as social organization in the details (how we behave and relate to one another in particular situations). One has to do with the world-wide table we might call Creation, around which all of us creatures are gathered by God to co-exist. The other pertains to the tables around which we gather for purposes of social recreation: the tables in a church hall for Christian fellowship, the table in a boardroom for conducting business, or our dining tables where rules and expectations are graciously set aside in favor of unforgettable communion that transcends time and place.

Dream Notebook

Dream Notebook

I keep a blank notebook and a pen beside my bed. Whenever I have a dream, the next morning—first thing—I describe as much of the dream as I can remember in the notebook.

Once I dreamed that I needed some money to exit a parking garage, only my change purse had pounds, dollars, and euros all mixed together. In my dream I grew frustrated trying to sort the various coins.

I know what spurred this dream. I spent the first four decades of my life living in the United States before moving to Glasgow where I’ve stayed the past ten years, with occasional trips to other countries. And my Tennessee accent—which I had tried to tone down all the while I lived in Minnesota—has come back, in contrast to the lilting Glasgow patter that I hear and understand more each day but will never be able to speak.

Changing cultures is challenging. Often I’ve wished my new life in Glasgow came with a rule book to help me sort it out. But it doesn’t. Only a dream notebook. And it’s filling up fast.

The Significance of Apples in My Religion

The Significance of Apples in My Religion

Apple season is upon us, and this morning I picked up about twelve dozen apples—a dozen dozen aptly named a “gross.” This was in addition to the many dozen I picked up last evening, and the gross I collected yesterday morning, the evening, the afternoon, and the morning before that, and the day before that, and the day before that.

We’ve had several apple-peeling sessions: one person peels and another person chops, dousing the tart chunks with lemon juice to keep them fresh. When the compost bucket is full we dump it in the back garden—picking up apples as we pass under the tree—and start over again.

So far we’ve enjoyed one large apple crisp and one deep-dish apple pie as well as two apple flans and some apple cakes made by our houseguest who we’ve indentured into the assembly line of peeling and chopping. We’ve given away apples to my church members and our neighbors, and we’ve set aside bags of apples for my husband’s church members and for our mail carrier. Anybody who rings the doorbell must take a bag of apples.

After putting up all the apple slices that our freezer can hold, we decided to dry apple pieces that can be stored in the pantry. My husband express-ordered two mesh screens which go in the oven at a low temperature and dehydrate raw food in about eight hours. Given that there are, still, only twenty-four hours in a day, he works three shifts daily, making the house smell, continuously, like a just-baked apple pie.

When I studied Latin American Church History in seminary, I wrote a paper on “The Significance of Corn in the Mayan Religion.” Originally inhabiting the Yucatan area of Mexico and parts of present Guatemala, the Mayas lived on corn to the extent that their whole civilization—including their religious beliefs—centered on corn. Adept at math and astronomy, and with a highly developed system of carved glyphs for recording past events, the Mayas created a remarkable calendar to chart the best times for seeding, irrigating, tasseling, and harvesting corn.

Unlike us westerners who try to separate the spiritual world from the temporal world, Mayas understood the interconnectedness of the earthly and the divine. Their primary foodstuff, corn, was the chief provider of life and the Chief Provider of meaning and order to life. Daily existence revolved around cultivating corn, and corn surpluses led to trading for other goods and specializing in different corn-related activities, like making crafts or guarding the corn. Thus an organized religious structure arose within Mayan society to maintain—and protect—the whole cycle of life.

Like Western Christianity, Mayas believed that humans were made in the divine image, and given that 75% of their diet was composed of corn they saw themselves as creatures of the God of Corn. They used corn to mark various rites of passage, from dedicating their children, to coming-of-age rituals, to marriage ceremonies and fertility practices, to the final harvest of death and the afterlife.

And like Christians the Mayas had more than one god, but all their gods—indeed, all their relationships—were linked to the Corn God, “Kavil,” which means “surplus sustenance.”

Kind of like my current worship of the God of Apples:

Dear Generous Sustaining God,

You created fruit—fruit of all kinds and colors and textures and smells and tastes—

   and it drops from the trees for me and all.

But I grow weary of having to pick up this free food.

I admit I do not look forward to receiving your many gifts, preparing them,

   even sharing them—because it takes up my time, my energy for a whole season.

Forgive me, O God,

   Creator of the apple tree in my garden and all it produces,

   Maker of the seasons, each hour of the day and every day of creation.

In the beginning, O God, you said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation:  

   plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth 

   that bear fruit with seed in it,”

   and it was so, and you saw that it was good.

Energize me, energize each one of us, to lift up your free gifts.

Give us courage to claim your gifts,

   patience to prepare them,

   enthusiasm to share them,

   any time, all the time.

Amen.

Do's and Don't's

Do’s and Don’t’s

When I started this blog, over a year and a half ago, I made two lists to guide my writing.

One list reminded me to be biblically-grounded, historically-informed, socially-engaged, communally-nurtured, globally-connected, ecumenically-involved, and earth-friendly.

The other list warned against being preachy or churchy. No writing about my writing (which I’m doing now), or writing about my living relatives (which I’ve done, mostly to their amusement), or writing about my congregation (I couldn’t help it). Steer clear of Guidepost magazine types of articles, like, “How my dog saved my life again” or “My grandmother’s recipe for canine communion wafers.” Don’t be sectarian and talk down about a particular religion. And avoid insider-speak, which plagues most ministers.

I vowed to keep things personable but not get personal or bitter or whiney. Be professional in the true sense of that word: profess my convictions. Describe rather than judge.

There’s an adage among preachers to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I aimed to fall on the side of comfort—but hopefully padded with integrity.

Even though I’m a die-hard Presbyterian, I wanted my words to be organic and any humor natural, all lending to a certain poignancy (one of my favorite words to say). There are other Presbyterian columnists in the world, each of whom measures differently on the “get-real” spectrum: Dave Barry (son and brother of Presbyterian clergy) is the one to emulate. Those who spin spiritual candy floss or wallow about whether puppies can cry—they can stay in their self-made hell-hole.

In everything I write I try to employ inclusive language and imagery rather than talk about inclusiveness, so I won’t talk about it now. Inclusiveness speaks for itself.

I enjoy playing with gender and stereotypes and upsetting assumptions. One of the reasons I went into ministry was to challenge patriarchal notions of what a minister is and does. Ministry is full of quotable quotes and cringe-worthy clichés. I happen to believe we are made of—and for—truer words.