Howdy Howdy all! I am using some personal information to help me illustrate a larger point--so stay with me--

Well my niece is at it again. Yet another young fellow has her attentions. The boy is really quite nice and very polite. Here is the thing that she is having some issue with--not bad issues--good issues. The way he shows her that he notices her. Mind you my niece(will be 15 this year) is under heavy supervision--some might even say she is sheltered to a degree. Phone calls are not monitored but they cease at 8pm and bed is at 9pm. She may speak to her friends on the phone from 7-8pm on weekdays and 7-9pm on saturdays. No phone on Sundays unless it is homework related or to her very best friend Linh (Who is trying to teach my niece how to speak vietnamese--so her mom lets them gab outside of the appointed times usually).

Back to the young fellow. He knocked on her door and asked her mother if he could start calling my niece on the phone. (I know! adorable!). Mom said yes after a short discussion of who he was and his school and who is parents are. He is being raised by a single father who drove him over to the house to ask. His father spoke to mom and stepdad about them talking to one another. He explained that he has strict rules for his son (ex-military) and wants to see the kind of family the young lady was from before letting him talk to her. I was like uhm --is Dad seeing anyone? LOL

At school he opens doors, carries her tray at lunch and her books. Gave her flowers when they went on their group date to the movies. A quote from my niece "Oh my Goodness Aunt Environgirl! This is how people should treat each other. It is so nice to be noticed nicely by someone for just being you. He is the nicest person I have ever met that was my own age."

Now my niece makes things and so she made him a nice simple friendship bracelet and decorated a book cover for his history book (the class they take together). She bakes also (we are a very domestic bunch of women--Ask Myclette  and she makes them little treats to share during the walk home (could you just pinch their cheeks? How cute is that?)

Okay the point of this is that it really is nice to be noticed, which is why I like to let the people I like for just being themselves know by saying "Hey", if I get to greet them in the flesh or on the phone, or by reading what they have to say and commenting if I have time on Mindsay. I would like to say thanks to the folks who notice me and are cool with me just because I'm me. I think you are the bees knees as well...even if I dont always get to tell you in a timely fashion...I think one of these days I gotta put down what I dig about the folks on my friends list---Hmmm

How about some poetry...here goes...But first---(Cosmetics which cause Cancer in large groups of women is a form of violent action --even if there is no intent- the responsibilty to public health remains--This topic is important to me because I am female, I have worn cosmetics, the women and girls of my family wear cosmetics, the women I know wear cosmetics and The incidents of Cancer in women have risen even though deaths from Cancer have fallen--I rejoice that we are not dying at the same rate but I would rather we not GET IT in the first place and the things our bodies come into contact with are key...let's hold the money-makers accountable for what they sell us..--this is taken from my womens news blog). Our health is very important and it is something we can take control over readily and immediately--so we should. I underlined some of the passages in this poem that stuck out for me...

Violence Against Women

Once in the West Pennines I was shown
the source of the Industrial Revolution—

the first streams harnessed to the wheels
which drove the mills which spun out textiles

which emptied out the cottages and hillsides
and sent men and women down to Hades.

(Fast water and mountains without lime
and greed all complicit in the shame.)

Real men and women, flesh and blood
and long dead and ready to be understood—

and not those abandoned and unsaved
women who died here who never lived:

Mindless, sexless, birthless, only sunned
by shadows, only dressed in muslin,

shepherdesses of the English pastoral
waiting for the return of an English April

that never came and never will again.
Wheels turned, the jenny worked, a plain-

spoken poetry was chanted by the flow
and finished them. They were the last to know

what happened in this north-facing twilight,
the aftermath I saw there, staring at

an old site of injury, a hurt
that never healed and never can. O art,

O empire and the arranged relations,
so often covert, between power and cadence,

tell me what it is you have done with
the satin bonnets and the pastel sun, with

the women gathering their unreal sheep
into real verse for whom no one will weep? --Eavan Boland

Goddess Bless