"A few choice words from five plain-spoken women of the prairies.”
Just over two years ago, five Lincoln women gathered at a
local coffee shop to talk over how they might come together and write a weekly
blog featuring a variety of voices.
Over the next few meetings, planning went smoothly until
the group got stuck on choosing a name … Five Women Stew? Five Women
? At some point one of the soon-to-be bloggers spotted a poster hanging
on the coffee shop wall … and one word from that poster resonated with all of
us.
Mayhem.
Thus, our blog was born – the first column published in February of 2020.
Eager
to get started, we each created a long list of potential story topics and had
finished one single round of five blogs – when a mysterious virus clobbered the
world and, strangely enough, turned life into true mayhem. Little did we
know how appropriate our name would be.
So, today we thank our readers for coming along with us on this wild and wooly journey. And we honor our two years of mayhem … as each blogger considers the past two years.
JoAnne Young
The universe had delivered mayhem, but in the midst of that, it handed the five of us this gift: a way to give voice to our fears, our frustrations. To muse and reflect. And to find the joy of sharing words and thoughts with anyone willing to read them, to look a little deeper, to have those rangy conversations with you all.
I wrote about the lesson I learned from the brother of a fallen Lincoln police inspector to not put off being with friends and family with the thought “one day I will …” Do whatever possible to see them, even if it’s just a regular meeting on the porch to share your day or your week, or lunch on the deck.
I lost my own sister in early 2021, who I hadn’t seen through all of the pandemic and even before, and as I traveled across half a country to see her one last time, the many bridges I crossed to get there showed me the meaning of siblings in our lives.
“We use those bridges while we can. Because at some point, the darkest of waters are there before us and we must find a way to cross them on our own.”
The circumstances of the past two years have also given me time to reflect on the role of women and how we can’t let down our insistence on equal opportunities and representation, and respect for what we have to offer our city, our state and the world.
Our country is still facing crisis after crisis affecting women.
What would it be like in Nebraska, I mused in a 2021 blog, if the numbers were reversed? If 36 women served in the Legislature and 13 men? If the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor and attorney general were all women instead of men? If a woman were president.
We are still far from where we need to be. And as Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, in 1776 before the meeting of the Continental Congress, if the needs of women are not addressed “we are determined to foment a rebellion.”
We are still waiting for our Equal Rights Amendment.
Mary Reiman
5 Minutes...maybe 6
On May 3, 2020 I wrote about my mom ‘...5 minutes is our new
normal. It’s how long I seem to keep her attention before she hands the phone
back to Carol.’
Today’s Update: We disconnected the telephone last week. Mom is almost 99 years old
and no longer wants to talk on the phone. That is disconcerting for this
daughter who lives 255 miles away. However, it is with great joy that we are
again allowed to sit in her room, watch her sleep, talk with her as she wakes
up and smiles, read her our favorite childhood poems, respond as she asks a
question, and then watch as she returns to sleep. That happens within 5
minutes...maybe 6, and recharges my heart and soul with love, happiness and
gratitude. I am still amazed she recognizes us with our masks and goggles, but
she does! She continues to receive great care and I am still in awe of the
goodness, kindness and dedication of the nursing home staff, especially as they
have maneuvered through the last two years.
Forever Grateful
As I reflect on the 18 months since the passing of Supreme Court
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I am reminded of her words, “Real change, enduring
change, happens one step at a time.” As I think about how best to be an
advocate, an activist, I think WWRD...What Would Ruth Do?
‘How and Why’ I Read
The title of my first blog. I have expanded my reading to more
biographies and memoirs, hoping/needing to find inspiration in the words of
others. Perhaps it’s just a yearning for words that will heal the unsettled
feelings I have too often. I highly recommend Jane Goodall’s ‘The Book of
Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times.’
“Hope is what enables us to keep going in the face of adversity. It
is what we desire to happen, but we must be prepared to work hard to make it
so.” AND “True wisdom requires both thinking with our head and understanding with
our heart.” This is still why I read.
Mary Kay Roth
Over the
past two years the power of writing blogs turned into something almost magical
for me, something like holding up a candle in a pretty dark place. I’m not sure I could have survived the pandemic
without our Five Women Mayhem family … and words that consistently helped me embrace
and illuminate the turmoil of a perplexing world.
Our very
first blog in February, 2020 – featuring my dad’s old, frayed t-shirt, tucked away
in the back of a dresser drawer – was really about the perplexities of grief.
“After the loss of our parents, there will always be unanswered
questions. Unexpectedly and periodically, the finality of their departure will
still smack us in the gut. And I’m guessing, here and there, we will need to
readjust our settings – something like when our GPS gets all messed up – to
follow our own true north. Meanwhile, I still have that old gray t-shirt,
tucked in my dresser drawer.”
(Update: The t-shirt remains in
my drawer. And every now and then
I still take it out and hug it close.)
A mere five
weeks later the world had transformed – as I wrote the first of many pandemic
blogs, this one right on the cusp of COVID:
“… I must admit, COVID-19
is the perfect name for a villain virus. I can picture it sheathed in
black, heaving and breathing with the menacing voice of James Earl Jones: ‘You
don’t know the power of the dark side …’
“So today, just for today, I will enjoy my cup of coffee. I will think about the scent of my granddaughters, cradled in my arms. I will remember the honey golden light splashing into my window at dawn, right alongside the earliest of birdsong. Because, yes, the first robin is back … there are sandhill cranes dancing along the Platte River. Today I am planting pansies. And for now, that’ll do. That’ll do just fine.”
(Update:
I am planting pansies again. Very soon.)
Penny Costello
Mary Kay
Roth and I have lived on the same street for 25 years. We’ve grown from
next-door acquaintances to dog co-parents, to dear friends. Over morning coffee
we’ve shared the trials and tribulations of parenting, grandparenting, our
professions, and politics. When Mary Kay came up with the idea of starting this
blog, she invited me to join in the Mayhem, providing an opportunity to explore
a new way of writing, and the pleasure of collaborating with four amazing
women. It’s been both a grounding and an expansive experience in a time of
forced isolation and disconnectedness in uncharted territory. In that spirit, I’d
like to reflect upon some recent events that give me hope.
In “On Buddies, Dogs, and Humans” I shared tales of what I call the Good Dog Club, my extended family of canines who regularly spend time in my home or on play dates with me and my two dogs. BABNAB is the acronym for the cardinal rule of the Good Dog Club – Be a Buddy, Not a Butthead. In that post, I submitted that, in these increasingly divisive times in America, BABNAB could apply to humans as well.
This week, one of, if not THE biggest butthead in the Nebraska State Legislature has resigned, rather than face the blinding light shed by the public exposure of his misdeeds. Instead of being a buddy, he has used his public face and voice to denigrate other Senators with middle finger salutes on the legislative floor. He has referred to advocates for LGBTQIA inclusion as ‘pronoun Nazis’, and his generally dour curmudgeonly demeanor has spewed forth across the state for far too long. Score one for civil discourse in the Nebraska Unicameral.
Monarchs were feared to be on the verge of extinction in 2020. Populations had decreased by over 90% in the past two decades, due to habitat loss, agricultural practices, and human encroachment. Sites that previously had been the winter home for millions of butterflies were visited by a few hundred. But hope, and apparently Monarch Butterflies spring eternal. In 2021, about 7,000 arrived at Pismo Beach in Central California. That’s a 3,500% increase from the previous year. Hopefully the upward trend, and human support for that resurgence, will continue.
Marilyn Moore
In the past two years, I have written twenty-four thousand, eight hundred seventy-five (24,875) words, in 23 blogs, about life in mayhem. I wrote to figure out what I was thinking, often surprised by my own thoughts as they took shape on paper. And I grounded my footsteps and my soul in the prairie….
From “More Work to Do,” June 19, 2021: “A critical issue in our state, as in every state, is the disparity between opportunities and outcomes based on race and ethnicity. Whether we look at high school graduation, college enrollment, lifetime income, family wealth, home ownership, or any of the health measures we might examine, there is a gap between those who are white and those who are persons of color…and the outcome is always better for persons who are white. Let’s be a leading state to acknowledge the disparity and make plans and allocate resources to reduce that gap, to assure life’s best opportunities for all Nebraskans. (An understanding of historic practices and policies that have resulted in these disparities might be helpful….)” More work to do, and the conversation is getting harder….
I hoped….
From “The Great Upheaval,” May 23, 2020, where I likened the impact of Covid to a powerful earthquake, with all the tectonic plates (our social institutions) shifting and reminding us of our utter connectedness: “I hope that when we are able to gather again, at places of work, places of worship, places of learning, family picnics, graduations and weddings and funerals, concerts and ball fields, that we do so with profound joy and gratitude at the simple gift of being in community....because it is in the connections that we find meaning, substance, energy, and life itself.” Still hoping for this….
I was awestruck….
From “Of Matters Celestial,” December 20, 2020: “The fact that we know it (the science of the winter solstice) is the most awesome of all, that human minds have begun to understand the Mystery of Mysteries in the universe and beyond…and the questions that are raised from what we know causes us to raise our eyes to all that we do not know…and that is truly awesome.” The earth, the sky, the water, the cells deep within us and the universes and galaxies beyond our own…the most awesome of all.
Some blogs close easily with “the end.” This is not one of them. This is clearly “to be continued….” Because that’s what's happening right now with mayhem – it’s not going away.
*** And neither are we. Like us on Facebook at 5 Women Mayhem***
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