• From the Leader - Motherhood and Why Evolution is True
• ESWoW Community Call - MONDAY, May 7, 2012 - Motherhood
• AEU Assembly Registration

From the Leader

Susan Rose writes about motherhood, and attending a lecture by evolutionary biologist, Dr. Jerry Coyne.

ESWoW Community Call
MONDAY May 7, 2012  
Prior to Mother's Day, let's share our experiences of mothers and motherhood, either as mothers ourselves, as the child of a mother, or in society in general. 

The call is at 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, and 8pm ET.

The number to join the call is 866-740-1260, access code 5766842#.

AEU Assembly

Our Assembly is an important point in our lives as Ethical Culturists. It is an opportunity to immerse ourselves in what it really means to belong to Ethical Culture. The annual Assembly gives us an opportunity to experience the Ethical Movement in a larger context.

This year, there is especially exciting programming.  I am most excited about the social justice programming happening on Saturday, June 16, 2012.  The social justice theme is Criminal Justice, and there is a stellar line-up of speakers both from within the Ethical Movement and people working in the criminal justice field.

There will be a special meeting time for ESWoW members to get to meet with each other in person and we are able to renew and make new acquaintances with members of societies from across the country. It is an exciting opportunity to learn from each other, not only through the many workshops but by strengthening communication Rose know if you are planning to attend the Assembly and interested in being an ESWoW delegate.

Most of us have a mother or had a mother.  Some of us are mothers, want to be mothers, can't be mothers or choose not to be mothers.

It's not all as simple as Hallmark would have you believe.  Sometimes there is a warm and loving relationship, but from the ones I know about, I wouldn't say they are simple.  This perhaps most profound relationship of our lives is usually rich, complex, and sometimes even mucky.  And sadly, sometimes there is no real relationship there.

We have such high expectations for mothers; for who our mothers should be, for what they should be able to do for us, for how they should prepare us for the world. And if we are mothers, we have such high expectations for ourselves.  We think, or at least I think, "I'll only do the good things my mother did, not the bad.  I'll do all the things I wished my mom had done, but didn't."

What a mixed bag.  I wish my mother had lived long enough to be a grandmother to both of my children instead of dying when my son was 2 1/2.  She loved those years as a grandmother, she had great joy and would have had total delight with her granddaughter who has so many of the same interests as my mother did.

I wish I could have asked my mom for advice, asked her what I was like when I was young, but mostly, I wish I could tell her that while it was easy to think that I'd only do good things for my kids, and none of the bad, that I now know how much it easier it is to think that as a teenager than to actually do it once you have kids. Read more »

Dear Dr. Coyne, Read more »

I love lilacs.  A lot.  One of the best things about living in New England is that there are lots and lots of lilac trees here.  Way more than any other place I have ever lived.  I like to stop and smell them, and every few years, I go to the Arnold Arboretum and glory in the hundreds of lilac trees they have there.

So why am I sad about lilacs now?  Because I am writing this on April 19, 2012, and I've been seeing lilac trees in bud for several days now.  Lilacs aren't supposed to be in bud here until May - the middle of May.  They are a full month early the way I see it.  

We have had a wacky winter in New England. Following the great amounts of snow wehad last year, this winter has been exceptionally mild, and at times, even tropical with there being days in a row of weather in the eighties.  

Yes, there is climate change, and yes,people are part of what is exacerbating climate change.  What signs of climate change have you noticed where you live?  What are you doing to help the rate of climate change slow down?

I never thought I'd be sad to see lilacs, and yes, I will still stop and smell them, but what will I do in the middle of May when they might even be gone?  I'll be sad again, but roses will probably be blooming early too.

Sunday, April 22, 2012 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, and 8pm ET. The number for the call is 866-740-1260, access code 5766842#. The call will last one hour.

Bart Worden, Leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester, in White Plains, NY, will be joining the ESWoW Community Call to discuss the issue of racial bias in law enforcement, our part in such bias, and thoughts about what we can do to make positive changes.

Bart has been taking action on this issue in Westchester and wrote "Police Officers Reflect Our Racial Bias," for the local Westchester newspaper the Journal News. I found this paragraph to be most thought-provoking:

But let’s face it: our law enforcement is a reflection of us. Our own attitudes, opinions, misperceptions and apprehensions are what drive the behavior of law enforcement. Our obsession with personal safety, our fear of people who don’t look like us, our inattention to the lives of anyone who is not perceived as “our kind” lay the groundwork for racial bias and provide a sustaining environment for that bias.

Please invite anyone you know who is interested in this issue and/or Ethical Culture to participate in the call.

• Around the Ethical Movement - Anne Klaeysen,  Bart Worden
• Community Call - SUNDAY, April 22, 2012 - with Bart Worden
• American Ethical Union Assembly -  June 14- 17 

Around the Ethical Movement:  

Two colleagues have had articles published recently and I share them both with you.

Anne Klaeysen, Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and a recent presenter for an ESWoW Community Call, was published in the NY Times Room for Debate Forum.  Her article, "The Founders Preferred E Pluribus Unum,"  addresses the language found on all US currency.   Here's part of what Anne wrote:

The cost is only part of the problem with U.S. currency. As a religious humanist, I am more concerned with the words imprinted on every coin and bill in the United States: “In God We Trust,” a motto that the House of Representatives recently saw fit to reaffirm in a resolution that cited “a crisis of national identity.” A far more inclusive motto, “E pluribus unum,” proposed for the first Great Seal of the United States by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in 1776, also appears on all of our coins and some of our bills.

Please take a look at the full article and add a comment if you'd like. Read more »

• From the Leader - Keep Your Laws Off My Body
• Community Call - Monday, April 2, 2012 -  Womb Raiders

From the Leader
Keep Your Laws Off My Body
Susan Rose writes about women's reproductive rights, a subject that is surprisingly prominent in the news these days.

ESWoW Community Call with Catherine Bordeau
Catherine Bordeau joins our ESWoW Community Call to share her knowledge and expertise about women's reproductive rights.

"First, an understanding of reproductive rights includes that women should have the right to her own reproductive decision-making, including voluntary choice in marriage, family formation and determination of the number, timing and spacing of her children and the right to have access to the information and means needed to exercise voluntary choice.

Second, a more specific priority includes the right to sexual and reproductive security, including freedom from sexual violence and coercion, and the right to privacy. Read more »

Women's reproductive rights in America.  We thought the books had all been written.  That's how it seemed when I was at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR.  (How's that for subtle name-dropping?) a few days ago looking in the Women's Reproductive Rights section (yes, they are that big that they have a special section - 3 shelves worth).  The most current book I found dealing with reproductive rights and women's bodies was from 2004 -  The Boundaris of Her Body.

Contraception in all forms became legal in the US decads ago  and abortion was legalized in 1973.  Don't want to use contraception?  Don't.  Happen to be lesbian or gay - don't even need to think about contraception.  Against abortion? Don't have one,  as the bumper sticker says.  

Sure there's been backlash over the years, people saying that abortion is taking lives.  Interesting that so many of those who are against abortion are for the death penalty, for war.  A bit of hypocrysy here?  You bet.  I have more respect and understanding of people who say that all taking of life is wrong, but I disagree with them saying that other people can't make their own choices.
I thought we had settled that no one is really pro-abortion, and that the important aspect is a woman's ability to be able to make her own choices about her own body.
 
And then there are so many who are both against using contraception and against abortion - does that baffle you as much as it does me?   Read more »

ESWoW Community Call with Catherine Bordeau Read more »

Opening Words
First let me say that I saw as the immediate goal of women in Ethical Culture to work< toward the achievement of full equality for women, inside the Society, not by becoming more like men, but by securing an equal valuingof those qualities which in our culture have been called feminine and denigrated:  greater sensitivity to people - greater empathy, compassion, warmth, nutururance; greater awareness of and response to physical surround;greater openness to the immediately felt quality of life, to what is immediately apprehended rather than logically comprehended, i.e., mediated by the intellect.  In short, greater valuing and incorporation of intuition, emotionality, human heartedness.

I am not saying women should bow to men intellectually any more than I would deny that there are men who are gifted with these "feminine" attributes. Read more »