We are four days into our spring break and though I had thought I would go to my office and clean up for spring, I haven't made it over there yet. Perhaps tomorrow. But after four days I am getting the hang of doing things. I have moved books, moved furniture, washed, tidied, and created more and more trash. Yes, I have actually decided there are things that need to be released into some landfill and I will not feel too bad because I recycle everything else possible every day. And the more space I make in the house and in my head, the more I find projects forming in my mind...good thing we have one more week of spring break.

This morning we watched a movie made in 1933 called Eskimo. Amazing footage of whale hunting and a caribou stampede; inside views of igloos and travel by dog sled. At first I thought it was a documentary, but it quickly turned into a meeting of a white men (a ship's crew) and indigenous people.

The story line included an Eskimo's offer to share his wife with the ship's captain following a successful exchange of goods. The Eskimo goes off on a whale hunt and asks the captain for permission to leave his wife behind in their igloo. The captain agrees, but plies the woman with liquor and takes advantage of the situation. The woman ends up drunk and is accidentally shot when she tries to crawl away to get back to her igloo, collapses on the ice and is mistaken by a hunter for a seal. The scene was as much as I could watch having just finished reading In the Name of Honor by Mukhtar Mai, a Pakistani woman who, in 2002, seeks justice after being gang raped and living in fear for her family's safety. She talks about cultural attitudes towards women with frankness and resignation, discussing the use of women as objects of revenge. Against all odds, Mukhtar Mai who is illiterate and uneducated, starts a school for girls and boys in an attempt to bring education and literacy to girls in Pakistan. Later in the morning we listened to former Governor Christine Whitman talk about why the Republican party is having trouble attracting women to public office. In the car I hear an interview about the continuing debate between stay-at-home moms and working moms. I am feeling that it is exhausting being a woman.