More of the Same, plus Reading

Finally finished Jane Fonda's book yesterday. I have to say it was pretty good. I'm adding her to my list of people to contact to see if she will support the Girls Gotta Run Foundation's efforts. She seems to want to try to leave the world a better place than she found it before she dies and is devoted to several other efforts to help girls. In the end it was like she had taken one of my courses in psychology of women and gender, as her consciousness was raised and she discussed many if not most of the issues we dealt with. A troubling thing for me was that, although she talks at times of not having much money, it seems she always had enough to pay people to help her do much if not most of the grunt work most women usually have to do, so in spite of her feminist epiphanies, she still maintained some aura of being above the real fray which I can't quite put my finger on. I guess it doesn't really matter. She seems like a good person. And one thing I became painfully aware of while teaching at a women's college is that neither class nor money prevent women from being abused.

I also started reading "Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier" by Alexander Fuller. My friend Deborah Gussman is right; the author writes beautifully, poetically and what she writes about is very intense, brutal, primitive, including the landscape. For awhile I kept wondering why, when she has moved to the United States, she would choose to live in Wyoming, of all places. She may as well stay in Africa. It seems that is the point. She LIKED the landscape there. So she and her husband, who is from the United States, compromised on Wyoming. She mentions it is a tourist place, though, so I'm guessing Jackson Hole, which isn't all that......
Anyhow, the book is great. She also wrote "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" which got a lot of attention, but which I haven't read yet. I believe I'll put it on my list.