Grapevines are so magical. They give you shade and food and beauty. And wine. For many years I lived in Tuscany where I was told grapes needed to be planted in the earth and not in a pot if you expected any fruit. We don’t have any land but I wanted a grapevine so badly that I had a hole made in our concrete covered parking space just to plant a vine in the earth. And now, after several years, we have this, a balcony vineyard.
Due to COVID-19, we were unable to come in the spring and when we finally arrived in the latter part of August, we found our vine loaded with fruit…more than we were able to eat. So some clusters were given away to neighbors and some I sundried on the roof to make raisins as the grapes are seedless. One night it rained (it takes days for them to dry out) and the grapes got wet so I finished drying them in the oven and it worked out quite well.
When we arrived on Paros, our neighbor gave us a jar of grape spoon sweets (stafyli gliko) that she’d made. Normally spoon sweets are used as a topping for yogurt. I found a recipe to try HERE. And because we have so many grapes, I’ve tried finding different ways of using them such as making smoothies with grapes and figs (from our neighbors). Delicious!
Even though it’s not the right month to prune, I started trimming what I could because grapes were falling everywhere. I will take a few cuttings to Rome to plant on my balcony. From THIS link, it seems as if grapes can be grown in pots but, obviously, produce only a cluster or two of grapes.
Our neighbor makes his own wine. To make sweet wine, the grapes are left out in the sun for ten days. See THIS for more info.
Seedless green grapes are good for your health. The antioxidants in them absorb the bad and increase the good cholesterol. The potassium in them helps lower blood-pressure and the skins are anti-inflammatory meaning they help fight cancer. Grapes contain calcium, magnesium as well as many other essential minerals. And the melatonin in grapes helps fight insomnia. (I am not a doctor and can only retell info I’ve read.)
Art tells a story. The story here is about a white wall that someone felt the need to cover with flowers. The story here is about that someone and the reason why they painted these flowers. Maybe it was because art is a transcendental experience and helps you go beyond the mechanics of sheer existence.
Art is a dialogue between maker and viewer. And dialogue helps to keep us connected. But sometimes the eyes just need to listen when the artist is speaking.
Everyone has a story to tell just waiting to be heard.
After her son’s crucifixion, the grieving Mary sorrowfully cradled her son. Her mourning was a common theme in religious art known as “Pietà”. The most famous “Pietà” is Michelangelo’s statue in St. Peter’s Basilica.
For all those self-declared Christians who witnessed the abduction of children from their mothers by ICE only to be locked in cages, I ask: What would Mary have said? What Jesus would have said is written in the Bible:
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6
The children mentioned above came from Christian South American countries. It would appear that soon the sea floor will be covered with millstones.
This Republican administration claims severe measures were taken against immigrants because “they’re taking our manufacturing jobs, they’re taking our money”. So how does the head of this administration justify having products with the family name being manufactured in places like China and Indonesia?
And I am still waiting for those who call themselves “Pro-Life” to justify their lack of outrage.
-30-
Sources: Migrant children in the US: The bigger picture explained (BBC) + HUNGER IN AMERICA, ESPECIALLY FOR CHILDREN, HAS “SKYROCKETED” DURING COVID-19, DATA SHOWS …the most recent Census data from the end of August of this year showed that 10 percent of households said they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat within the past seven days. Levels of food insecurity in Black and Latino households are significantly higher, at 19 percent and 17 percent, respectively, compared to 7 percent in white households + Pietà in art + Timeline of events related to migrant children’s detention centers in the United States + The president and his daughter largely manufacture Trump-branded products in countries like China, Indonesia, Turkey and Canada + Death sentence for abortion? The hypocrisy of US ‘pro-lifers’ is plain to see + Have mercy on us all. + #WhereAreTheChildren showcases the power and the pitfalls of social media
This post was written for young women who haven’t studied history and for those, no longer young, who, in the words of George Santayana, refuse to remember the past and are thus condemned to repeat it.
This post is dedicated to my mother who, as a single parent in the 1950s-1960s, didn’t need to study history to understand the injustices women were (and still are) subjected to.
Democracy, the idea that citizens should elect who governs them, has been around for c. 2,500 years. But for c. 2,400 years, women were not part of that process.
In the Russian Republic, women were given the right to vote in 1917. In New Zealand, this right had already been given to women in 1893. For Germany the year was 1918. But it was only in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment that women could vote throughout the United States. In theory, Black women had this right, too, although many southern states deprived them of it. It wasn’t until President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, that discriminatory voting practices were outlawed with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the battle for women’s equality was far from being over.
Thanks to her determination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg graduated from Cornell and then, in 1956, enrolled at Harvard. Of a class of 500, only 9 were women. Her professors gave her a hard time saying she was taking up the space a man should have. Discrimination didn’t stop her from earning a law degree from Cornell. Despite the fact that she’d tied for first in her class, she had difficulties finding a job.
Eventually, in 1963, Ruth found a job teaching at Rutgers Law School. She was paid less than her male colleagues simply because her husband had a well-paid job. In 1972, Ruth co-founded ACLU’s Women’s Right Project and began strategically fighting against gender discrimination.
Up until the mid-1970s, banks denied married women credit cards in their own names. Single women, for all practical purposes, were not even taken into consideration. Ruth fought and fought hard for gender equality. In 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act finally came into effect prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age in credit transactions.”
When you see women on TV series like “Law and Order” sitting on a jury, please note that it took years before women were allowed to do so. It was believed that women were better off at home taking care of chores related to their husband and children. It was also believed that women were not intelligent enough to make rational decisions. Eventually, in 1975, the Supreme Court struck down this ban.
And if a woman who worked for necessity got pregnant (thanks to a male orgasm and not her own), she could immediately lose her job. Fortunately that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in Mexico c. 48% of the representation in government is female compared to the United States’ 24% leading me to believe that we need more Adelitas and fewer Karens.
Today Ruth has become a cultural icon best represented by her lace collars. She had quite a collection and wore them according to the cases that were to be heard (she had a special one for dissent). The standard judge’s robe accommodates the male’s shirt and tie. So Ruth, along with Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Justice on the court, decided not to be masculinized and went for some lace.
Ladies, if you don’t want to dismantle what women before you have struggled to create, stand by your womanhood and don’t be obliterated by some power hungry misogynist. In the words of Ruth “I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
Male and female roles should be seen as complimentary and not competitive. To be deprived of our right to contribute to society as ourselves as opposed to a male standardization as to what they think we should be not only harms women but is detrimental to society as a whole.
Born Again Discrimination…GOP Senator introduces bill that could require genital exams for girls competing in school sports, Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s bill to ban transgender girls from school sports is meant to “protect women,” …however, genital check is only for females and not males. I guess this is to protect the boys from showing the size of their penis risking ridicule.
The Narrative Within 