Thoughts on Disability

Defining Disability and Driftwood

You have to love this author, Alison Kafer. She begins her chapter, “A Future for Whom: Passing on Billboard Liberation”, by commenting on Superman.  She comments while looking up at a billboard of Christopher Reeves which is intended to inspire recognition at his dreadful accident and acknowledge his courage.  However, the public relations campaign behind this feel-good message is subversive. Actor Reeves is associated with his most famous role of Superman. Now he is paralyzed and unable to survive without help from personal aides.  Kafer points out that the billboard image of his disability, other than an oxygen tube in the corner, lessens the impact of his disability. . The considerable financial and medical resources which supported his existence are not visible. They are invisible by intent. “Values.com/Foundation for a Better Life” sponsors the billboard and their agenda is politically ultra conservative. 

Reeves is white, male, and his billboard photo appeals to conservative values by taking advantage of America’s white/male/hegemony. He is obviously super-masculine in spite of his physical paralysis. This is deliberately tendered as success due to his manly “courage”.  If you are a different gender or race, you are invisible.

Community values trump individual obstacles. By making public perception one of individual vulnerability, by not acknowledging the enormous numbers of physically and mentally impaired coming home from war, the attitudes presented by FBL’s Superman billboard thrust the burden of disability on the individual. The message is one of “buck up” instead of “how can we help”.

This politicization of disability is intended to diminish and quiet activists who campaign for accommodations for the handicapped, or as Kafer puts it, the “queer crips”. Anyone who is outside the norm, whether sexually, racially, or disabled is different and queer.  Numbers of elderly are expected to swell the ranks of those outside the norm. Consider that stereotyped wheelchair persons are commonly perceived as less intelligent and therefore undesirable. For decades, handicapped persons were sterilized so they could not have children who might pass on “defective” genes.  Politicizing ignores reality and makes the elderly and disabled expendable.

A wheelchair bound person spends a lot of time waiting for suitable vehicle transportation which leads to the concept of “crip time”. Crip (read crippled) time has to allow for situations that do not accommodate physical needs.  Not only is the issue one of access, but the unexpected aspects of physical transport lead to living in the moment. This philosophy arose out of the HIV and AIDS era, when recovery was dismal and any future belonged to others. Crip time cannot be regulated by the clock; it moves to a disjointed rhythm that depends on need and services.

             Perhaps the most egregious attitude toward handicapped people is the notion that a disabled person is limited because they are not trying hard enough. Kafer writes, “…FBL’s website clearly delineates the group’s perspective by encouraging ‘adherence to a set of quality values through personal accountability and by raising the level of expectations of performance of all individuals regardless of religion or race’ (89)”.  By emphasizing community values over personal needs, the conservative position makes it clear that vulnerable disabled have to, and should, fend for themselves.

Disabled who dare to speak out, these“queer crips”, have to fight hard for ramps, elevators, public access across many venues, but more importantly, just to maintain their position in public consciousness. Kafer says, “I envision a media campaign that favors dissent at least as much as unity, that recognizes political protest and activism as signs of courage, that is as concerned with collective responsibility and accountability as personal (100)”. It doesn’t take much to give a hand up. Someone living in a physically challenged body just wants to get on with living.

"Intersectionality" and Equality

Intersectionality Toolbox

In their highly regarded text, Intersectionality,Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge write, “Intersectionality is a way of understanding and analyzing the complexity of the world, in people, and in human experience.” (2)  This intersectionality technique shows how many peoples interact and influence each other. Their guide is helpful to understand and analyze how differing contexts of human experience impact social and political results. By suggesting multiple possibilities for study, that might otherwise be overlooked by stereotyped bias, it promises that a specific inequality is not as likely to fall through the cracks. The authors note, “… intersectionality can be a useful analytic tool for thinking about and developing strategies to achieve….equity ((3)”.

Major social elements such as race, class, gender, sex, etc. exist in nearly infinite range of possibilities. Considering complexities and permitting unexpected combinations can produce positive results. Intersectionality rejects the usual “normative” position in order to open up to the possibility of a more equal and level playing field.

Inequality issues of gender and LGBTQ can also be studied in the intersectionality framework. This is helpful on constructing gender identity for those not able to advocate for themselves. The authors note, “Relational thinking rejects either/or binary thinking…opposing theory to practice, scholarship to activism, or blacks to whites. Instead, relationality embraces a both/and frame…examining their interconnections (27)”. These interconnections pave the way for inclusiveness.

 In an interesting example, intersectionality shows how powerful wealthy business interests interfered with the political and social structure of Brazil during the 2014 World Cup. FIFA soccer lobbied for laws that restricted everything from travel to food concessions outside the venue. Without considering the way all Brazilians might be affected, the concerns of poor men and women were not included in tournament planning. Because many people enjoy sports, it was assumed that even poverty stricken people would be in favor of the extravagance. The opposite occurred. Brazilians suffered hardships from the exclusivity of arrangements aimed at an international clientele instead of local population. In spite of high expectations, Brazil lost the games and lost millions of money. The scandal following the games suggested massive bribery and corruption. The power domain enjoyed by the organizers had been based on the assumption that sports benefit everyone. That was certainly not the case for women because only men can compete in the tournament. That was not the case for non-athletes because the sport is exclusively for extraordinarily talented athletes. A level playing field, for most of the country outside FIFA, definitely did not exist.

Intersectionality, used to study Brazil, discloses many social aspects not addressed by the common assumption that there are no racial barriers. About a thousand Brazilian feminists felt they were discriminated against and gathered to express their African roots. This was contrary to Brazil’s policy of racial democracy which emerged from its history as a colonial mix of native and outside nationalities.

The authors note that the black women’s movement in Brazil, “shows how intellectual and political activism work by growing by a specific set of concerns in a specific social situation, in this case the identity politics of the Afro-Brazilian women (28)”. This focuses thinking about social inequality and power relationships in various contexts.  The importance of context broadens the appreciation of specific kinds of problems in social situations across the world and the awareness that one size does not fit all.

 

 

The Transgender Need for Recognition

Transgender Dilemma

Leslie Feinberg was a transgendered activist who wrote the groundbreaking novel, Stone Butch Blues.  Feinberg died in 2014 but her novel is relevant in our culture as America’s political institutions resist inclusion. Her lead character of Jess Goldberg comes from Feinberg’s own bitter experience as a lesbian Jewish woman trying to fit in as living as a man. Trapped in a homophobic society by the male power structure, her struggles are tragic.  The forces which shaped her identity jump off the page with intensity that cannot be ignored.

As Dan Frosch previously noted, “…gay and transgender advocates say transgender students…are vulnerable to bullying and harassment” since institutions measure against a norm. Nonconforming persons are targeted. In the novel, Jess Goldberg and her friend Mona are jailed following a police raid against gays. She says, “The drag queens were in the large cell next to ours. Mona and I smiled at each other… Then she walked forward with them, rather than be dragged out (35)”. This is Jess’s first experience with police brutality against gays. The text continues, “About an hour later the cops brought Mona back…she could barely stand…blood running down (35)”. Mona tells inexperienced Jess, “It changes you…what they do to you in here…everyday on the streets---it changes you, you know?” (35)

 The queer person does not fit in and therefore constantly fights for recognition. Feinberg’s character is not just lesbian, but yearns for female love and a life gendered as a man.  Jess struggles to find someone who understands her quandary.  She lives as a border dweller, vigilant, with a foot in two worlds, trying to survive and how to fit in. Without a model to follow, the unscripted journey fraught with disaster. She dresses as a male but is incomplete without a companion to share her world of fluidity. As Jess’s lover Edna puts it, “I don’t want to go back to the bars and the fights. I just want a place to be with the people I love.  I want to be accepted for who I am, and not just in the gay world (218)”.  

Leslie Steinberg underwent hormone therapy and ultimately decided against continuing disruptive treatment. Toward the end of her life, she reconciled with the body she was born in and tried to increase awareness of the needs of gender queer issues. She is gone too soon.

 Deciding not to undergo gender modifying surgery becomes a political barrier to those identifying documents that signal change for a transgendered person. New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie has vetoed legislation, allowing birth certificates and passports to show transgender name and sex change, unless the person has submitted to sex change surgery. This means that not only is there still a challenge to a person’s liberty to be at peace with one’s self, but there is a political mandate to inflict potential harm on a person’s body.  Not much has changed institutionally since the homophobic abuse of pre-Stonewall police raids on gay and lesbian bars, as so graphically pictured by Jess Goldberg in Steinberg’s Stone Butch Blues.

Inscribing Gender on the Body: We Cannot All Be a Ten

Gender Expectations Shape the Impossible

When you meet someone for the first time, several things register: the overall impression of male or female sex, specifics like hair, eyes, makeup or lack of it, clothing that reinforces male or female gender, erect confident posture, or a yielding slouch that signals submissiveness. This immediate “read” is complicated if all the elements do not fit. American culture values thin, white, young as the desirable norm. This unspoken but powerful yardstick discriminates against Blacks, Asians, Latinos, the elderly and disabled, who are compelled to remake their body image to fit in. Long hair is usually gendered feminine. However, if the person with long hair is wearing trousers and work boots and wants to use the Gents restroom, it provokes harassment.   Dan Frosch writes about Coy Mathis, born a boy but now at the heart of a challenge to anti-discrimination against transgendered people. He writes, “…gay and transgender advocates say transgender students…are vulnerable to bullying and harassment (246)”. Political decisions and institutions cater to the norm and these forms of “other” have to constantly fight for recognition and consideration.

Women in American culture feel pressured to have a larger bosom and some resort to plastic surgery implants. In Donald Trump’s world, a woman with a small bosom has a “hard time to be a 10”. This sexist labeling lies behind the insecurity many women feel that they do not measure up to an unwritten norm. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, writing in her essay Breast Buds and the ‘Training’ Bra, notes that a girl’s insecurity begins early. She says, “…in gyms and locker rooms of post-war junior high schools, girls began to look around to see who did and did not wear a bra…and this visual information was very powerful (206)”.  As mass produced clothing produced a need for standard bra sizing, it also creates the idea of measuring up to a norm that had to be reinforced in some way.  She writes, “The old idea that brassieres were frivolous or unnecessary for young girls was replaced by a national discussion about their medical and psychological benefits…. An adolescent girl needed a bra to prevent, sagging breasts…which would create problems in nursing her future children (206)”.  The bra also draws attention to the sexual possibilities of breasts, rather than their biological function of nursing.  The result is an obsession for everywoman to present as a “ten”.

A woman’s hair represents an inescapable biological connection to gendered expectations. Thinking of hair as beautiful is culturally graded by sex but can also be exploited as a way to enforce power. In the white privileged culture in the United Stated, long fine straight hair is seen as beautiful. Minh-Ha T. Pham, writing in her essay “If the Clothes Fit: A feminist Take on Fashion”, says, “Professional women of color …consciously and unconsciously fashion themselves in ways that diminish their racial difference (247)”. Asian women perm their hair; Black women straighten their hair. She continues, “If fashion has been used to introduce new ways of expressing womanhood, it has also been a tether that keeps women’s social, economic and political opportunities permanently attached to their appearances (248)”. Women in the daily eye as part of their job, find that one’s natural styling is discouraged in favor of a treatment that appeals to a media enforced norm.  Rose Weitz, writing in What We Do for Love, says, “If we ignore cultural expectations for female appearance we pay a price in lost wages, diminished marital prospects, lowered status, and so on (119)”.

One last thought: age gives one a different set of values. Seniors Rock.

 

Thoughts on Gendering in Presidential Election

How Americans view sex and gender has never been more relevant. We had a former First Lady and Secretary of State with an unparallelled executive resume on paper. However by gendered perception, the female candidate was doomed to second place. If authoritative and assertive, she was regarded as bitchy and bossy. Photos of her with her new grandchild could have softened the portrait and then she was accused of lacking “stamina”. Her opponent was filmed crowing about his voyeuristic ability to dominate the naked women competing in his beauty pageants, and it was dismissed as men’s locker room talk.  To top it off on Election Day, one woman was interviewed as saying she voted for Trump because “a woman should not be President”.   This persisting gendering of women contributed to an unexpected Republican victory.

Culture Creates Concepts of Sex and Gender

Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, in Women’s Voices and Feminist Visions, note, “…gender is constructed through intersection with other differences among women such as race, ethnicity, and class…related to other systems of inequality and privilege (116)”.   Gender assignment, identity and expression contribute to notions of sex and gender in ways peculiar to the United States. Sex is decided at birth, according to obvious genitalia, and subsequent growth and behavior is channeled into expected patterns according to this binary. If a person’s internal sense of identity does not fit expected gender patterns, sexual labels go beyond binary choices. Subsequent gender expression, which does not follow the binary view, shapes social interactions which can unsettle one’s sense of self. (119)  Countries beyond America do not challenge transgendered identity in the same way which results in varying degrees of tolerance.

Evelyn Blackwood discusses the many kinds of masculine expression among females in West Sumatra and Indonesia.  Since gender is defined by intersections with other identities, each with their own perspectives and agendas, it follows that some combinations will occur as exceptions to the norm. 

Transgender may be applied to identities or practices that intersect queer socially constructed binaries based on the usual male/female expectations. Female-bodied persons may identify and live in ways which are casually stereotyped as male gendered.  Sometimes this takes the form of transgendered females who “appropriate and manipulate cultural stereotypes of ….a hybrid form of masculinity…as possessing a male soul in a female body (150)”.

 One of these identities in Indonesia is that of “tomboi”.  To deal with describing the gender-fluid woman Dedi, instead of using “him” or “her”, Blackwood creates an unusual form, “ h/er”.   She says, “Dedi was dressed in h/er typical man’s attire and appeared to be quite comfortable around h/er family (151)”.  This tomboi enjoys moving about freely and sleeping wherever she wishes. She is not concerned about sexual violence because her manner is masculine and tough.

Women are closely watched so freedom is encoded as masculine privilege.  The pressure for the female-bodied butch tomboi to marry, presents difficulties. Blackwood says, “Marriage is the most troubling challenge to their positionality as men (152)”. If married, would be forced to live in the constant role of female. This is uncomfortable so many transgendered put off the issue as long as possible. Dedi has compromised by following female gendered expectations when at her mother’s house, as long as it does not challenge her assumed masculinity. She will do repairs around the house but will not cook. She is not viewed as a sexual rival by other men, but rather as a woman with special insights. The text says, “…Dedi recalls h/er female body as part of h/erself, giving voice to a cultural expectation that female bodies produce female ways of knowing (154)”.  This shows that she has incorporated her body as part of her total identity, not merely a phase or convenient pose.

As the article h/er creates a space for Dedi in the discussion, Indonesia terms of address are much more complicated. She notes, “People tend to employ gender-marked kin terms when addressing acquaintances or close friends… (154)”.  This results in tomboi identity being expressed in public as a shield for moving freely, but gender-marked terms are dropped when she is more secure at home and her defenses are down. The transgender aspects of Didi’s persona also do not disrupt her culture because family practices still read them as female. Blackwood says, “Social relations of kinship and family connected tombois with discourses of femininity…and offered the efficacy that tombois attained as intelligibly gendered beings…that create space for themselves and their partners (155)”.

 

Seniors Rock!

 

 

Intersectionality: Walking in Another's Moccasins

Socially Constructed Differences

            If one is cisgendered, with gender identity matching the societal assigned gender, one is privileged to live in a world of normal expectations.  On the other hand, a transgendered person faces every day with challenges that change with each new situation.  Navigating the public forum is fraught with occasions that are uncomfortable, or even criminal, since gendered privilege dominates the environment. The bathroom use issues in N. Carolina come to mind. Living in a body easily recognized as either male or female does not oppose dominant ideology. Therefore, as Evin Taylor says, when one is cisgendered a person “generally needs to spend less energy to be understood by others (94)”. Culturally established hegemony drives politics and institutions.

1. Poverty: In the absence of a way to understand the structure of society based on classism, discontented people look for scapegoats. Women and the poor are especially vulnerable. Poverty has created a class of females who work more than one job and still cannot achieve the level of men who are paid more. (98) This is problematic in many organizations which may fire employees for merely sharing pay check information. Yeskel says, “…being poorer or richer than others leads to secrecy and silence (99)”.  She adds, “By definition it is impossible to have equality between classes while still having classes (99)”.

2. Disabled: Susan Wendel says, “…the biological and the social are interactive in creating disability (101)”. Standards of normality lead to social construct which excludes full participation in society. Expectations of performance give rise to the identity of being inadequate, and therefore disposable, if not one of the superior abled individuals.  Society’s failure to protect the vulnerable from wars, disease, and many other elements, creates the inequity of persons unable to physically measure up to a norm. Social factors that allow high risk working conditions, contaminated environments and poverty contribute to increasing numbers of disabled persons. Improved medical care results in partially abled survivors instead of deaths. Wendell includes the elderly, “since more people live long enough to become disabled (102)”. Disability is not merely a question of physical access but is also a construct of the mind.

3. Patricia Hill Collins, writing in “Toward a New Vision”, points out that the interlocking nature of race, class and gender is an essential element in analyzing the true nature of social relationships following the legacy of slavery in America. (p74) This intersectionality begins with understanding the overarching hegemony of white male privilege that affects women, both white and black, and the many poor who lack agency and a voice. Collins says, “Widespread, societally sanctioned ideologies used to justify relations of domination and subordination comprise the symbolic dimension of oppression (74)”. This means that dominant groups apply universal categories to those viewed in order to push them away and diminish their status. The dominant force in America is white and male. If you are a white woman, you are lesser in status to prevailing white male privileged patriarchy. If you are a black man, a black woman or poor, you rank even lower. The English language privileges the masculine form in discourse in spite of cultural changes which now see women in gender roles formerly held by men. This creates a need for gender neutral terms like “mailperson”.  Symbolic values make shortcuts that can ease everyday challenges but this perspective of stereotyping does not lend itself to analysis and objectivity. There must be equilibrium. For example: like a metaphoric seesaw, superior images of white womanhood must be balanced by lesser images of black women. (74) To correct this stereotyping, intersectionality increases awareness of privilege and prejudice and opens up multiple perspectives. Intersectionality enables an individual’s experience to connect and interact with another.  Walking in another’s moccasins has never been more applicable.

Empowering Beyond Feminism

Here are some comments from my Women Gender Studies for this semester:

Empowering Beyond Feminism

Admitting women to a patriarchal world of higher education opened the topic of women to study and research. Prevailing hegemony presumed that knowledge came from men, was about men, and women were merely a limb on the tree. A new focus on women validated uniqueness and awareness of gender issues. Writing in Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions, Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee note, “WGS is generally associated with feminism as a paradigm for understanding self and society (13)”. Feminism now expresses intersections of gender across diverse identities of race and class. 

Shaw and Lee say, “Patriarchy…shapes how women and men think about the world…and their relationships with one another (15)”. The first wave of feminism emerged to give women a voice in political matters affecting them.  Nineteenth century suffragettes stumped for equality and, by 1920, finally won the right to vote in America.  A second wave of feminism was directed at inequality in the workplace and family, with special emphasis on sexuality and reproductive freedom. However, injustices affecting women, and those who identified as women, were world-wide issues. The intersections of post-modernism, LGBT voices and multiracial awareness resulted in a third wave of feminist activism. Thanks to the Internet and economic globalization, women across the world are connected against institutional male inequality. (17)  Diverse perspectives and motivations contribute, even as they complicate, political progress.

1. Beverly Guy-Sheftall describes the strides that women’s studies have made in the forty years. Efforts to mainstream into male dominated curriculum have come a long way to balance gender in the academic establishment. Heightened awareness and sensitivity in a predominately male society produce advocacy for women of color and the poor.  Black women’s studies, incorporating intersectional analysis into topics of women and gender, contributed to the third wave. (31)

2. Bonnie Thornton Dill says, “We wanted feminist theory to incorporate the notion of difference… (32)”. If girls are stereotyped as not able to do math, they will be limited to lower status opportunities. If blacks are stereotyped as less intelligent than whites, then they will be steered to non-academic opportunities.  Intersectionality means that gender depends on elements of race, class, etc. which reinforces a classism of white privilege. (32)

3. Bell hooks defines feminism as “…a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression (37)”. America’s white/male/power balance shifted when white women gained agency. While they made gains in the workplace, they were still allied with the system which left women of color struggling. (39)  She thinks that sexism, not men, is the real problem. Although patriarchy is sexist, this does not make feminism anti-male or feminists man-haters.

4. C.V. Harquail writes, “When it comes down to distinguishing between women and feminists, we need to separate marketing and politics (43)”. The essay proposes a model of Facebook for women.  She says, “Feminist design of a product is a political action….intended to change power relationships and advance social change… (44)”. Faced with challenges stirred up by technology, the male (technology) can be subverted by designing women who are determined to reflect feminist priorities.

           

Inside Business noted that Microsoft has delayed its Windows 10 goal because the phone business collapsed. The connection is weird....seems like they wanted to hit the billion mark for customers. Well, after talking to Kapersky guys, I figured I did not have the time to adjust to a new system. Now it looks like the July 30 deadline may not apply to the free upgrade.

Hmmm. Stay tuned.

In other news, Quentin Keynes now has a face book site. I was trying to find my BlogSpot and lo, behold, using the Quentin article got me to his site. He passed a couple of years ago but his life was really interesting. I knew him back in the 60's and 70's....and we used one of his Jensen's on our honeymoon. Sigh.

Well, that's all for now.....

Senior citizens rock.

The Artfull Codger: Meanderings for a Country Mouse

The Artfull Codger: Meanderings for a Country Mouse

Meanderings for a Country Mouse

     We dodged a bullet this weekend and the storm was not as bad as it could have been. The best part is this upcoming week promises a stretch of light-as-a-feather weather. The air is crisp, cool, with a hot sun that reminds me of trying to make hay decades ago in the fickle weather of late May and early June.
   
     We spent many mornings waiting for the dew to dry enough to tedd what we cut the day before. Then it was a roll of the dice to see if it dried enough to rake. I loved those days...tedding, fluffing cut grass so it dried underneath... an excuse to get outdoors in the first part of the day.

     The tricky part was timing raking and baling. Raking picked up the hay so it could catch the breeze and rolled it in neat rows from one side of the meadow to the other. Nature could sabotage your efforts at this point. In the late 70's some farmers sprayed their bales with nitrogen to dampen spontaneous combustion. This was an added expense that also increased protein content, enhancing roughage for cows. However, it was thought that the additional nitrogen might be too much for equine digestion. So we made hay the old fashioned way, by waiting on the weather to assure the correct moisture for our bales. The problem was that the nutrient value would evaporate with plant juices. If too wet, there was a fear of fermentation and a very real threat that spontaneous combustion inside the bales could burn down the barn.

     Haymaking led to some rather bizarre anecdotes. There was a local phenomenon that spread rapidly back in those days without cell phones. One farmer would chew on his pipe and tell another that "S" was "making hay down by the river" and a spontaneous row of pickups would mosey down the river road....to watch "S" making hay. Black braids and lots of turquoise jewelry added to the exotica of the Arabian horse breeder getting a suntan...while covering bottom land with her gray ford tractor...topless.

     I remember using our road tractor and lowboy in the fields to pick up the hay bales. We mowed several acres under the power line right of way which was straight enough to get a big rig in. That seems like a lot of work but in the long run made a lot of sense, if you thought out of the box. We trudged after that trailer in the hot sun, tossing 40 pound bales up to the trailer. Then the guys stacking lifted them up to the desired height. Every trip was a mathematical challenge. Stacking meant they would and could topple. So it was theorized that alternating direction would lock the load. Then posts inserted in the sides of the rig gave additional purchase to tie down. In hindsight, it was fairly efficient, even if unorthodox.

     There was a fair amount of controversy about the right haymaker mix for field hands. Most concoctions included molasses or maple syrup for sugar, home-made vinegar or lemon juice to cut it, and lots of strong tea.  Sweat took salt and electrolytes out of the body so the contents of these jugs were serious business. There is a version hitting grocery stores now by Turkey Hill Ice Cream that harks back to these fortifying drinks for field workers.

    Unloading hay was the other half of a dusty and dirty job. We split people into those outside and those inside the barn. There was no way around the physical effort to get hay from field to the barn. The hay elevator transported bales up to the loft (no more than two bales on the lift at a time). Then someone hauled each one off at the top of the barn, tossed it laterally to the left or the right, where inside workers dragged each bale to its assigned place. There were more workers at the top of the piles inside, with dust building up in spite of the handkerchiefs over your face a-la-Jesse James, and part of their job was to see that the temperature did not soar into dangerous ranges. There were round vents with fans at each end of the hay loft. The heat building inside vented outside. For at least three days after the hay making, barn checks with a hand between bales, were essential. If anyone could feel heat between bales he would tear back to the house and we would all go out to monitor. Every year there were barn fires so we did not want to have an incident. Moving loads around kept mold down and guaranteed that the hay could be enjoyed down to the last sprig.

     The only way hay making seems to have improved is that now huge round bales are rolled up and covered for months. I guess this means that the heating from curing hay dissipates in the open air instead of building up in a barn loft.  But moving the buggers is a real problem. We used to try for two cuttings off the same field so those round bales would be a hassle. There is an ailment called "farmer's lung" which comes from inhaling the dust and mold spores in those hay making days. Later efforts to mechanize the production of fodder for equines might decrease the incidence of crippled breathing. Looking at the situation today, it does not seem that a great deal has changed. Horse enthusiasts import hay bales from out of state so our local fields now grow McMansions. Out of state sources seem to be still baling along with old methods. Perhaps these out of state farmers use paid labor instead of family members but the job seems basically the same. Privately, this country mouse thinks our hay was vastly superior to the dry stuff trailered in from Maine....

Seniors still count.