Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I talked to a childhood friend a couple of days ago who has just found out she has stage 4 breast cancer.  She sees her oncologist tomorrow and will then know the treatment plan.  She's just had knee surgery, and has a history of back surgeries, knee and hip replacements and now this.  It's a shock for her, and she felt like it came out of nowhere.  I hope I reassured her of the many options these days for treatment, and that she felt a bit better when we rang off.  But really, I'm many states away and though another friend of hers and I plan to visit, we really won't be much help.  Fortunately, her husband will be right by her side, and they've made friends where they live now and have many others across the country.  She has a daughter that just moved to my town, so maybe I'll be able to offer support for her.  But this journey is a difficult one and there is little I can do to ease it.  I will pray for her.  She was so good to my parents when they were alive, and I'm forever grateful.  They would be devastated if they knew.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

So I had my eye appointment this morning, and my eye is still holding, which is a relief.  I was waiting outside after for my husband to pick me up, when the woman I was sitting next to inside asked if she could talk to me.  Had I had eye injections.  Yes, I said.  Many.  She asked did it hurt?  I assured her it did not, and explained the procedure and my experiences.  She said she was relieved, because she hadn't been able to decide between injection and an experimental study.  She was my older daughter's age, coloring and had had breast cancer twice, like my daughter.  She had first been diagnosed at the same age as my daughter.  We discussed how the treatments can affect the eyes, and I shared that my daughter now wore glasses, when she hadn't before.  I told her to be sure to get MRIs periodically to check that she was still in remission.  We talked about needing an advocate when you have medical visits.  She said her mother is hers, but she hadn't been able to be with her this morning.  I saw my husband double parked to pick me up, and we quickly hugged and said we'd pray for each other, and it was as if I'd been given the gift of hugging my daughter two states away.  We connected, this young woman with a battle behind her, and I, mothering her a tiny bit in the absence of her mother.  I felt love for her.  Immediate and true.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I received two back to school photos of our granddaughter.  She's dressed head to toe in black with a purple backpack.  Shades of her mother in her Goth phase.  Though only 10, she looks older and she certainly has the will power and mind of a much older person.  I love it that she revels in her own beauty and mind and talents, and pray that puberty, when it really hits, doesn't undermine that confidence.  Her parents do all the right things to keep her creative and stimulated.  It's just I know the next few years are hard for kids, and hormones and social twists and turns are stressful.  Our culture is trying harder to make the environment for girls more relevant and supportive.  But we still have a long way to go.  I wish for her that she knows her strength and fights for what she wants.  Girl power!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I drove up to babysit my older grandson, and at dinner he fell asleep sitting up.  He snored.  I couldn't wake him up, so I texted my son and he said just let him sleep.  I pulled back the covers on his bed and stuck him in wearing his soccer shorts, shirt and socks.  He slept like a rock until this morning.  We went out to breakfast and I visited his preschool, then said goodbye.  He knew he'd missed really being with him much, but he'd had a playdate that morning and I delivered a train table for his birthday, and there had been too much excitement.  He's having challenges about sharing his toys, who is a best friend and what is a best friend.  Social drama is exhausting him a bit, but he's up to the challenge.  Luckily, I see him again next weekend, and we'll ride a train and see a train museum, so more excitement is coming up soon!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday my husband and I along with our younger daughter, son-in-law and grandson attended an open house for my long time friend up the street.  She had her house converted to a duplex, with her having almost the same amount of space, but a new living space added on for her daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren.  It was fascinating to see an accommodation for my friend's advancing years and widowhood.  She now has built in company, and a bustling family with which to engage.  Since she has been babysitting these grandchildren three days a week since they were born, it feels natural.  Now her grandchildren can go to the elementary school down the street where she herself taught kindergarten until she retired, and her daughter lives in a better neighborhood than she could probably afford otherwise.  I wonder how it feels for the daughter to be back in the house in which she grew up, but in a part that didn't exist until now?  I'm so curious to see how people my age adjust to needing less stairs, more help and a new lifestyle.  It looks like my friend has made a bold and wise move.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday we took our younger grandson to a museum, where we perused the history section for wagons and old cars and firetrucks, then headed for natural sciences, where we pointed out animals and saw a bear video.  But his favorite moments were watching the turtles in a pond in the courtyard, as they jumped off and swam with just their little heads out of the water.  Next favorite:  the koi in that same pond.  After that we tried art for a few minutes, and he loved an installation about mountains that he could walk in, sit down and snuggle with his kitty.  We wisely left after that one exhibit.  He's quite an amiable child, as are my other two grandchildren.  I take no credit, they are being raised with love and thoughtfulness, but it means going places with them is pure delight.  I even have enthusiasm for cars and trains and trucks, because they rub off on me!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

When I was at the museum with my friend yesterday, we decided to order a curry at the cafe, and lo and behold, it was scrumptious.  The beauty of the sauce, a creamy soft yellow, was worth the price, but tiny tofu chunks, sweet potatoes, squash, pepita seeds, lime leaves, coconut, and other delights caused us to eat slowly and savor every bite.  At some point we both said how we were sick of cooking meals at home.  But neither of us wanted to go to restaurants that often either.  We wanted a COOK.  Someone who planned and shopped for the meals, perhaps consulting with us as to the menu, but basically leaving us free in the late afternoon to read or listen to music until we heard a little bell for dinner.  We are both married to wonderful men who will chop and dice and occasionally shop, but the burden essentially falls on us.  I told her I feel like I've made every meal a million times, and even when I tear recipes out of magazines or browse my cookbooks, everything feels like a slight variation on something I've made before.  I wonder if I'd have dinner at all if it weren't for my husband.  So we laughed and felt the relief of admitting all the fun had gone out of meal preparation, and went home and in my case I sent my husband to pick up crispy chicken tacos.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I went to see an art show, and really enjoyed it, though we weren't crazy about the Pre-Raphaelite painters, we liked seeing the Botticellis, Raphaels, Veroneses, and all the influential European painters they were responding to.  We didn't know the history, and it was interesting to see how the Pre-Raphaelites eroticized the earlier works.  Romance and color and the Greco-Roman face got cherry lips and hair flying about and lush fabrics draping and adorning the models.  We went through once with the audio then after lunch came back to choose in each room the art work we liked most.  We both bought books with cats inserted into the famous paintings, and I guess that reveals we were not taking anything too seriously.  Sometimes the lesser shows are more fun, because you aren't stunned with the importance of the work or the timeless beauty that is shocking and exhausting.  I guess I just don't understand the appeal of the Medieval mysteries and knights and maidens and star crossed lovers.  Especially the courtly love thing.  All I can think of are plagues and no indoor plumbing and women dying in childbirth and Crusades that pillaged other cultures.  Oh, well, it was all very swoony while it lasted.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My friend and I went antique shopping today and met a delightful, 85 year old woman who works in the shop two days a week and has some of her stuff there on consignment.  I ended up buying a sheet music stand that sits on the piano.  No more of my husband's chorus music all over the living room, I hope.  Eternal optimist, that's me.  I also bought a Russian painted, laquered box for my friend, as it is her birthday.  But the big treat was talking to the lady, who was half German and half Chinese, with beautiful, clear blue eyes and amazing skin.  I told her she looked way younger than us, and it was true.  She said she likes to keep her hand in to socialize with customers and get out of the house.  She laughed about how her kids and grandkids don't want her stuff, and she can't sell it either, but she still appreciates beautiful things like napkin rings and placecard holders and she sits down every night with her good china at the dinner table.  We ohhed and ahhed over the many treasures in the glass cases, and told each other stories, and our encounter with her was the highlight of our day.  She revealed she still goes every year to Japan to soak in a hot springs there and says she will do so as long as she can walk and manage the trip.  I will think of her there, her twinkly eyes closed in complete relaxation, and her body becoming younger and younger as she poaches like a fine fish.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I was sorting through my books yesterday, and came upon a very old paperback by Raymond Carver, called "Furious Seasons".  I met him once, at a writer's conference.  I found out later he was newly sober, and he gave me some kind advice.  I was in a fiction writing class at the conference with a man who's father was famous, and on who's name he'd traded on all his life.  We were supposed to bring in a short story, and he denounced mine, as was his right, but because it had a man hitting a woman in it and he thought it unrealistic.  He said he'd never known that to happen in real life.  Since it was my real life I was writing about, it was as if he'd said I was delusional.  I went in the next day during Mr. Carver's office hours, and showed him the draft and what the other teacher had said.  I knew we came from the same real world, and sure enough, he laughed at the teacher's remarks, which he called absurd.  Now I know he was pals with this guy, but he told me to keep telling the truth, and not get discouraged.  I've never forgotten his kindness.  I did keep writing, and he did as well to the end of his way too short life, and often in his stories there were people like the people in my stories.  People who tried, but often failed to be kind, or responsible or do the right thing.  People like us.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In the sports section of the newspaper this morning my husband found an article about the recent fires and how it affects animals.  The news encouraged me.  Birds fly away, and the birds have been spending the season in Mexico (who wouldn't rather do that?!)  The larger animals most get away, and their number one destination is golf courses, where it's green and wet.  The small animals burrow under the ground and wait out the fire (very smart).  And the fish swim to the deepest part of the water, and, like submarines, bide their time until the surface temperature of the water cools down.  So nice to know they have a plan, unlike most humans.  Fire is part of their lives, so they know exactly where to go.  Now, since fire is a fact of our lives where I live, I hope humans will take the hint.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We watched "Secretariat" on TV last night, and I was reminded of how social horses are, and how much our own horse needed to be with other horses, and luckily, my neighbor and friend let her graze in her field with her own horse in the summers.  A few years ago, at a retreat at my Zen teacher's place, when I did walking meditation or was out on the back property I could see a lone horse next door.  I finally spoke to my teacher about it, and she said she would talk to the owners.  They found a home for the horse that was not so isolated.  And yesterday, at the Pet Shop with our grandson, I was struck again by how responsive the birds were to our voices and presence.  I love seeing the birds, but when I think of them not flying and being in a cage, it seems so cruel and unnatural.  I could never own one.  In Chincoteague, we got to see the wild ponies in their harems and how important it was that they socialized and stayed in their protected groups.  They can run with no fence to stop them.  How few horses in the world there are who are not imprisoned and lonely.  They turn to us for company and we sell them, betray them in every way.  For our entertainment and sport.  They want to be friends, but we don't seem to know how to be, except in rare cases.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We had a lovely outing with our grandson.  We visited the local pet shop and saw three kittens, two big black and white bunnies, two dutch bunnies, fish and the birds.  A huge parrot was out eating a hazelnut.  He loved the finches, the parakeets, the exotic big birds of all kinds.  Two magnificent birds bounced on their perches and screeched at him.  They were very social.  Then we went to the toy store and he played at the train table.  He knows all the names of the cars, the trestle, the tunnel, the overpass, the roundhouse.  We took him in the other room and he made a beeline for the trucks, found a large dump truck on the floor, picked it up with his one arm in a cast from fracturing his wrist, and headed straight for the front door.  I looked questioningly at my husband, he nodded, and we bought the truck for $25.  We got back home and he didn't want his bottle, did want his monkey pacifier, which my daughter had left in her car, and he cried and cried.  I called her, got him back out of the portacrib, we went downstairs and read and played until Mommy's rescue.  He's determined.  I felt bad that I'd called, but I needed to know:  nap with a whole lot of crying or no nap.  He's probably sleeping soundly now, but at my house, without monkey, it was just not happening.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

In my gratitude journal it asked me to write about a pet I loved.  That was easy, as there were many and I loved them all, even the ones no one else in the family cared for.  I loved our nasty cat, seeing that she had been dominated by our slightly older male cat, and really never got her fair share of attention, even having to eat second as long as he was alive.  She had a habit of biting people's legs, but she never bit me.  She badly scratched the ear of one of our pups, but really, she knew what was coming and she was absolutely correct.  We had a dog no one in the family paid attention to but me, and it made me sad.  When we tried to move him two states to here he went crazy, but he'd been out in the country with a big yard and now he had a tiny space on the deck and I was taking care of my dying father and my husband and kids were overwhelmed.  We took him to a shelter to be adopted, but he was old, and he had tried to bite the mailperson.  I still have pangs of criminal guilt at giving him up, but I couldn't be in two places at once.  I mourn both of them, perhaps more than the popular pets we've had, because they did not get the life they deserved, and it wasn't their fault.  They needed much more time and attention that our family gave.  Then there is the lab we adopted from a shelter but he bit the neighbor and had to be given away to a goat farmer who wanted a biting dog.  And the dog I ran over in our driveway, and the cat my friend lost when we moved.  Oh, dear.  I loved them, but no one misses them but me.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today I had fun shopping with a friend.  She needs regular clothes.  As a doctor, she had to be polished and professional, but now she wants jeans and tees in her retirement.  I showed her some places my younger son took me to, and she got two pair of jeans and a raincoat.  I mean, it WILL rain, eventually.  She also ordered new glasses.  We had a long cappuchino and the sun was out and I felt much happier than yesterday, when the fog made everything gloomy and chilly.  I even had the heater on in my studio.  AND I was sipping hot cocoa.  I am determined to wear sandals and no socks as long as possible without catching pneumonia.  I missed summer at the cabin due to smoke and fires, so I just have to pretend it's summer here.  And today, with sunshine and our grandson coming over later, I can easily keep up the delusion.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm reading a spy novel of Daniel Silva's - The Other Woman.  It was slow to build, but in the meantime I was struck by how much I used to think these kind of books were fiction, and how it has only recently dawned on me how very much they reflect the real world.  Because this book brings in real names of real exposed spies, it has hit me harder.  This is really what our governments do.  I'm pretty horrified.  And in light of new information about Russia it seems as if we are in a terrible cold war that I naively assumed was over.  So world operates in an ugly manner, with the intent to sabotage each other.  Great!  I feel like a kindergardener who has just discovered there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. 

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Yesterday we could see the smoke from the fires.  Today it's supposed to be clearer.  My friend's daughter was trying to find someplace smoke-free to have a small vacation.  We finally thought of San Luis Obispo.  So much of the state is smoky and hazardous.  And today in the paper I read that after the fire's out, carbon is still being emitted, so much so that our attempts at regulations and hybrids are going to be wiped out.  I also read that the fires since 1900 are 90% man made.  It is we who are burning up our planet.  I've been worried also about the trees:  the Mariposa Grove, the Merced Grove, the world's oldest Juniper near our cabin.  These are the animals' habitats, and the terror and devastation must have claimed so many animals.  We are all interconnected, but so few humans understand that connection or even get to feel it.  Forests and the seas are suffering.  Listen.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I'm reading Roxanne Gay's "Not that Bad", a book she edited with stories from, as she puts it, "the rape culture".  Each story is powerful and different from the ones before, and they range from the physical to the mental.  These stories wake you up, and remind you of experiences you blamed yourself for or that seemed inconsequential at the time.  Honor is due:  women are on a battlefield most of the time, we just take it for granted.  Gay doesn't want us to be so cavalier about the "little things".  She wants us to sit up and notice how it's the little things that wear us down.  That and fear.  When we don't speak up we have good reason.  It's because we've seen what happens to women who do, and we don't want to be heroes, we want to be alive.  But if we don't pay attention to the little things, how will we protect our daughters and granddaughters?  How will they know it's not right for anyone to touch them, to catcall, to tease in mean ways.  How will they know to speak up in class and not let the boys hog the teacher and the conversation and the atmosphere?  And then how in the  blazes is anything ever going to change?

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've gotta say, this new Oscar category for "Popular" film strikes me as racist.  Why?  Because the Academy is afraid of Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, Blindspotting and BlackkKlansman.  They KNOW Get Out was the best film last year:  fresh, creative, about important issues, funny, scary, etc.  They dodged a bullet by giving Jordan Peele best Screenplay, but now that 12 Years a Slave has won, and this year, all these amazing films by Black filmmakers, they know they've got nothing up their sleeve to compare.  Spike Lee is long overdue.  It's his time.  But they're fighting it, fighting for sequels and cartoons and formulas that have bored us here, and only make money overseas.  They are afraid the British actors who reside in Hollywood might not stack up against these Black actors blowing our minds.  I hope I'm wrong, but it bears watching.  We have to bear witness.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I just saw a movie with right speech and wrong speech.  "Black Klanskkman", Spike Lee's new film, "tells it like it is", and he's not afraid to confront the history of racism in America and show us who we are as a nation.  The movie is funny, human, horrifying and grieving.  It's bookcased by Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation and, at the end, footage of Charlottesville.  We might have grown beyond race baiting and fear, but we have not.  It's powerful and wrenching.
Wow!  What a year!  Get Out, Black Panther, then Sorry to Bother You, then Blindspotting and now this.  Black filmmakers have come into their own.  And each film is fresh and unique and breathes new life into movies.  And the young filmmaker Jordan Peele of Get Out is the producer of Black Klanskkman, by the venerable Lee.  Lots of right speech, heartfelt speech, speech that we should listen to and learn from.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today I received photos from my daughter who is in Bali.  The place is gorgeous, colorful and lush, and she and her friend seem delighted.  It makes me want to go there.  This same daughter I have followed all over the world as she traveled, and benefited from the gentle tug to go where she was.  I saw India, Morocco, Spain, Prague, France, and Manhattan many times, as well as upper New York state, Brooklyn, Long Island.  Now I see Oregon:  Portland, Canon Beach, Ashland, Crater Lake, and when I'm done mosey up to see my friend in Washington.  We've gone to Vancouver B.C. and Victoria, and will probably get to Alaska soon.  My younger daughter has been the incentive for visits to France.  Then the older two kids' stepmother and halfbrother have taken us to Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England.  We've traveled places on our own as well, like Egypt and Greece and Italy and Amsterdam, but it's more vivid and memorable to have the added excitement of seeing the kids and now grandkids.  It's amazing how they get me up and about and in a plane!

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I had Facetime with my older grandson who is almost three.  He was overtired and distracted, but willing to discuss steam engines.  He had had a big weekend going to a Thomas the Engine event and also Monterey Bay Aquarium.  He liked the penguins and jellyfish.  Fish are nice, but clearly the winner was the train ride.  We are taking him Labor Day weekend to a train museum, train ride and gold rush event with his younger cousin and aunt and uncle.  Lots of excitement coming up.  I'm of a generation that actually rode trains to get places, like visiting my grandparents.  I loved it too, but then there was no choice between that and airplanes.  Airplanes were for the rich, and I don't think I was on one until I was 22 and visiting my Dad's father before he died.  My next flight was to Fiji to join my husband and live, and that had to be broken up in Honolulu.  No wonder when I deplaned I felt as if I was in a fairy tale.  I could not believe I had traveled so far.  And yet it looked like Missouri in some ways.  As Dorothy, I wasn't in Kansas any more.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

A friend sent me a website for an artist she enjoys, and I've just finished looking at gorgeous still lifes, as well as some landscapes.  She was taken by the shape of some lemons.  I love the yellow in some of the works, and the thick smeariness of the paint and the leap the viewer must make to identify them.  I've gotten out of the habit of seeing art, and I need to get back in the swing of going to art museums and soaking in the beauty and thought and soul.  I know that one bad print can send me soaring emotionally.  I love the Monet print of the magpie on a gate in a snowy landscape.  I've seen the original painting twice, and just the small print brings back standing before the huge painting and feeling I was seeing my brave soul up there before the world.
I've been thinking a lot about the Louise Bourgois sculptures I visited last week, and how she makes something light and delicate become heavy and massive.  Women are often identified with spiders - Black Widows - and others, and I love seeing the strength in her sculptures.  We are, in fact, quite strong and indomitable.  We just need reminding.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Well, the best laid plans, etc, etc.  We went to the cabin a day late because we were worried about smoke.  "Moderate" was all the information we could get, so we decided Sunday morning to head up, and it seemed okay.  We couldn't smell smoke, and lots of people were around.  We lugged our stuff up the stairs, unloaded and our friends took their boat off the trailer and put it in the water with our canoe.  We had a simple dinner out on our deck.  The next morning at six am my husband got up to pee and came back to say the smoke was awful.  We went back to bed, and a couple of hours later our friends came from next door and said they were packed up and going to leave so we ate, packed up and fled.  The smoke from the Ferguson fire was heavy, but a new fire had started twelve miles from us, and it was unreachable and there are no more firefighters.  So our two week retreat in the mountains dissolved in smoke, which followed us heading down for close to two hours.  I said goodbye to our cabin, as we may not see it again.
Our older daughter is in Bali, and we haven't heard from her since four hours after the earthquake on Lombok, so I'm worried about her as well.  There have been 14 quakes, and she must be pretty shook up.  She's on her last stop, and will be home at the end of this week.  So her get-away wasn't as relaxing as she expected either.
Expectation.  That thing that is constantly being overturned and contradicted.  Change, and planning.  They don't always mix.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

We were supposed to go to the cabin today, but fires around made us wait, hoping for better air quality.  We decided to go tomorrow, and see for ourselves what the air is like.  Of course, a change in wind, new fires, extreme heat, and many other factors make this utter guesswork.  So we have reassured ourselves that if it's bad, we can leave, and come back up again later or not at all.  This is the new reality:  fires are bound to happen, the forests are tender from dead trees and climate change.  We will never again be as naive as we were for most of the thirty plus years we've owned the cabin.  Now fires are not elsewhere; they surround us.  I'm grateful we enjoyed the forest for so long, and we love it even with it's transformation because of the millions of trees that have died.  But it's a rapidly changing landscape, and a more dangerous one.  The suffering of the animals is relentless, and even here when we went on a hike around the reservoir this morning, we saw deer wanting to be near the water instead of up in the forested hills.  As we left, dozens of turkeys were under the shade of two oak trees, trying to cool off.  This is the reality deniers of climate change refuse to see.  I've got a feeling they don't walk in the forest, or camp, or fish in a mountain lake or enjoy any of nature's abundant beauty.  They have no heart for the trees, plants and creatures all around us, or even for any of us who feel it is essential to our souls.  They have already lost theirs.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

A friend from a long time ago surprised me by texting this week.  She and I had stopped communicating years ago.  She was the one to go silent, but when, several years later, she sent me a card wanting me to email or call, I wrote a long letter saying I felt that our friendship had unraveled and it didn't see a way of knitting it back together.  We'd only known each other three or so years, and met in the workplace, so when first I moved several states away and then she did as well, and we were two states away.  We saw each other a few times, but then our communication after was by phone.  She'd asked me for money several times, and I gave her an amount that was a free gift.  I didn't want loans to come between us.  But her situation with her youngest drove her to despair, and she, in a letter, said she felt I had all the luck and she none.  She admitted feeling ressentful, and I responded that we hadn't had a long enough friendship before we moved to really know who each other was.  And the distance thing made it impossible to rectify our ignorance of each other.  While we were in the same location, I'd been her birth coach, coaching her through 14 hours of labor and in the delivery room with her and her husband, when her third child, a girl, was born. 
So the reason for the text this week was that that beautiful girl, now 33, had died of a drug overdose.  She'd been struggling since her early teens.  I felt the blow, and the tragedy, and the world of pain the friend is in, and I told her so, but will not be resuming the ghost of a friendship because of it.  I will pray for her.  And, this connection has caused me to revisit a sad episode in my life:  the loss of a friend long ago, because she projected onto me what she wanted me to be.  And I need to be seen.

Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

My older son has noticed that Thomas the Engine products and videos are overwhelmingly a male world.  So much so that my grandson doesn't want any of the several token girl engines.  That got me thinking about my kids' era, which thankfully included Mr Roger's Neighborhood, with some strong girl characters, but, since it was often voiced by Fred Rogers, was tilted toward the male Daniel Tiger, King Friday and the mailman.  But remembering Sesame Street disturbed me more.  Since the puppeteers were male, strong female characters consisted of Miss Piggy.  Big Bird, Oscar, Bert, Ernie, Snuffaluffagus, Animal, Kermit and the rest were male voices.  Yes, some of the live people were female, but were they strong and inspiring?  I'd have to say no.  Miss Piggy is desperate to be romantic with Kermit, and bossy and vain and silly.  My two daughters could not have found any encouragement from the show, and there was no Dora the Explorer then.  Later, my last child saw a bit of Where in the World is Carmen Santiago, but in the meantime she was watching the Little Mermaid or Robin Hood.  Oh, dear, what will my 10 year old granddaughter be absorbing?  And the two little grandsons?  It's as if they are reassured that the world is shaped and meant for their maleness, and, all right, it is, but let's change it for the sake of all our children and their future happiness and coexistence.